ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the American City Homicide Awards for 2021, brought to you by drug prohibition, doing its part to keep the guns firing fast and furious in the 'hood. Now here is your host, Paxil Buspar.
PAXIL: Paxil Buspar here with co-host Adderall Zoloft, and it's an exciting night here in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
GUNSHOT
ADDERALL: Oh! It sounds like someone's trying to make sure that Atlanta, Georgia, comes out on top tonight when it comes to the homicide totals.
PAXIL: The joke is on them because it's already 2022, so any murders that are committed tonight are going to have no effect on tonight's award show.
"Yeah!"
ADDERALL: Speaking of which, it's going to be a close competition tonight.
PAXIL: That's right, Adderall. Now that Covid restrictions are easing up, we're seeing record homicide numbers throughout the country, and not just in the usual cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
ADDERALL: That's right, Paxil. Homicide totals are up all over the country, including in unlikely cities like Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; Detroit, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
PAXIL: Yes, we get the idea, Adderall.
ADDERALL: ...Portland, Oregon; Toledo, Ohio; San Francisco, California; Memphis, Tennessee...
ADDERALL: Well, you've got to give a lot of credit to America's War on Drugs, Paxil.
PAXIL: That's right, Adderall.
ADDERALL: In fact, do you know what Heather Ann Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014?
PAXIL: What's that, Adderall?
ADDERALL: She wrote, and I quote... ahem! ahem!
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
PAXIL: Nice impersonation.
ADDERALL: Thanks, Paxil.
PAXIL: All in the name of the God-fearing Drug War, Adderall.
CHURCH ORGAN PLAYING
ADDERALL: Amen.
PAXIL: Could you hand me the envelope, please? Oh, this is so exciting.
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
ADDERALL: Do you need some help with that?
PAXIL: No, thanks, I've got it.
The American city with the third-highest homicide rate per capita in 2021 is...
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
...Detroit Michigan...
CHEERING
...with 309 homicides out of a population of just over 630,000. Accepting the Silver Bullet Award on behalf of Detroit is gang member Reginald Perez from the Fiver Percenters.
REGINALD: Yo, I'd like to thank the DEA for outlawing Mother Nature's godsend medicines.
PAXIL: Oh, yeah?
REGINALD: Are you kidding me? It opened up endless entrepreneurial opportunities in the 'hood.
PAXIL: Opportunities in which guns came in handy, right, Reginald?
REGINALD: The white lady knows whereof she speaks.
CHEERING
ADDERALL: Okay, now it's my turn, Paxil.
PAXIL: Say the magic words, Adderall.
ADDERALL: Oh, great. I've always wanted to say this. Ahem. May I have the envelope, please?
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
What kind of envelopes are these, anyway? Guess they made it out of some kind of funky organic material, like seaweed. Here we go.
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
The American city with the second-highest homicide rate per capita in 2021 is New Orleans, Louisiana...
CHEERING
...with 218 homicides out of a population of 384,000. It looks like New Orleans has been pulling out all the stops...
CORK POPS
PAXIL: And all the AK47's, for that matter.
ADDERALL: To accept tonight's award on behalf of New Orleans, I'd like to welcome Tanya Wingate to the stage. She's chairwoman of the Stop the Violence Campaign in the city's historic 9th Ward.
CROWD MURMURING
What's that? Oh, that's terrible. I've just gotten word that Tanya was killed by a stray bullet while she was pulling out of her driveway this morning to catch a plane for Atlanta.
PAXIL: Oh, God, that is awful.
ADDERALL: Well, I guess I will accept this award on behalf of Tanya's next-of-kin.
PAXIL: Good idea.
ADDERALL: And congratulations once again to New Orleans for coming in second place in the 2021 homicide awards here in Atlanta, Georgia's State Farm Arena.
PAXIL: That's a hard act to follow, Adderall.
ADDERALL: I know, right? Especially if you're not wearing a bullet-proof vest.
LAUGHTER
PAXIL: But it's time now to announce the winner for the American City Homicide Awards of 2021.
ADDERALL: Here's the envelope, Paxil.
PAXIL: Nice try, Adderall, but you're not going to deprive me of the opportunity of saying those magic words once again tonight.
ADDERALL: Oh, right.
PAXIL: May I have the envelope, please?
ADDERALL: I thought you'd never ask.
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
PAXIL: Excuse me just one moment.
CHAINSAW BUZZES
There.
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
And the winner for the American City Homicide Awards for 2021 is... St. Louis, Missouri...
CHEERING
...with 195 homicides out of a population of just 300,000.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: St. Louis does not accept your stupid award.
ADDERALL: And who might you be?
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: I might be the guy that's gonna shove that microphone down your throat if you don't stop glamorizing gun violence.
AUDIENCE GASPS
PAXIL: You should be happy. Your city won the American City Homicide competition for 2021.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: Yeah, but only because the racist Drug War incentivized drug dealing, thereby filling my hometown with guns.
PAXIL: You say potato and I say potahto.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: Say what?
ADDERALL: Can we get some security officers up here, please?
PAXIL: Well, I'll tell you what. I used to live in St. Louis myself so I will accept this Silver Bullet Award on behalf of my former hometown.
ADDERALL: I didn't know you used to live in St. Louis.
PAXIL: Oh, yeah, I grew up there.
ADDERALL: Why did you leave?
PAXIL: Because between you and me, it was way too violent.
CHEERING
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to the American City Homicide Awards for 2021, brought to you by Drug War prohibition: helping to keep the 'hood exciting by incentivizing drug dealing among the poor and powerless. Do your part to marginalize and kill American minorities: tell your Congress people to ratchet up the patriotic War on Drugs today. The War on Drugs: proudly keeping Mother Nature's godsends from the American people for over 100 years.
Comedy
The drug war is laughable -- or it would be if the drug warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities. (Gee, thanks, folks, for censoring academia. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to call you prohibitionists 'fascist bastards' on THAT account. Mom just didn't raise me like that.)_
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Why understandable? Because performers can lose their livelihood should they become too self-conscious. We call that use "recreational" only because we ignore common sense psychology.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, American City Homicide Awards 2021 published on August 6, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, American City Homicide Awards 2021 published on August 6, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)