I'm still wrapping my head around the Kafkaesque world faced by so-called drug offenders in America as detailed by Colleen Cowles in "War On Us."1 For merely possessing a few pills, Americans are being charged with felonies. Felonies! An estimated eight percent of Americans have felonies, according to a study cited by Cowles, and thirty-three percent of African Americans. 33%. This means far more than that they can be sent to prison for years. Once out, they can be denied educational loans, evicted from public housing, rendered ineligible for food stamps, and forced to submit to drug testing on demand. Even after they've completed years of harassing parole, the law seeks to prevent felons from getting on with their lives. As felons, they are barred from working in a host of jobs, which Colleen tells us include, but is by no means limited to: childcare worker, electrician, engineer, judge, nurse, manicurist, midwife, optometrist, psychologist, school-bus driver, social worker, teacher... even watchman. It makes you wonder what jobs they ARE allowed to hold: circus clown, perhaps? Ayurveda healer? Video game tester? (full-time pundit against the War on Drugs?)"In 2018, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association mounted an ad campaign against criminal justice reform in that state. The New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association campaigned against parole reform. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association spends approximately $8 million annually on lobbying to defeat criminal justice reform, ranging from opposition to reform of three strikes laws to prison expansion."
"First, police departments compete for federal anti drug grants with number of arrests and drug seizures strengthening their application for those grants. The grants also incentivize departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, further militarizing our police forces. Secondly, the ability of police departments to pad their own budgets using civil forfeiture statutes makes drug arrests more lucrative than pursuing other types of arrests."
When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that signs off on Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself.
The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"
Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?
I've always wondered why we don't just let heroin users be -- or better yet, re-legalize drugs and give them choices. Why are they punished for using heroin daily while we praise 1 in 4 women for taking an even more dependence-causing drug every day of their life?
Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Now the folks who helped Matthew get Ketamine must be sacrificed on the altar of the Drug War, lest people start thinking that the Drug War itself was at fault.y
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
The goal of rehab should not be to get people off of all drugs, it should be to teach them to be in control of their drug use and to use drugs wisely for beneficial purposes.
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