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 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."2
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 3 .
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.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.
People are talking about re-scheduling psilocybin, but they miss the point. We need to DE-schedule everything. It's anti-scientific to conclude in advance that any drug has no uses -- and it's a lie too, of course. End drug scheduling altogether! It's childish and wrong.
I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses.
"You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.
What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
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