I know more about drug users in Montgomery County. I think that if you could somehow do a surprise drug test for everyone in Montgomery County you would find out that about 25% of the population use marijuana on a regular basis.
I’m not talking about kids here; I’m talking about their parents and grandparents. They are what Narcotics Anonymous would call “functioning addicts”. They are mostly professionals, engineers, doctors, lawyers, almost anyone that does not work at a low level job that requires drug testing. They use at home and the only time the majority have contact with the police is when they get a parking ticket.
I don’t think Montgomery County is unusual. When you overlay the “War on Drugs” on this basic reality of USA society; hypocrisy is an understatement.
The “War on Drugs” may have begun as a noble experiment. I think the “War on Drugs” is now primarily a way for drug dealers and law enforcement to profit from addiction.
The drug dealers and drug gangs came out of Prohibition. Until Prohibition gangsters were only local. Prohibition gave them an opportunity go international and when Prohibition finally came down the gangsters made the switch to narcotics.
We are treating a medical problem called addiction by arresting the addicts. Each time we make the penalties higher for addicts we make the profits higher for the international gangsters that sell drugs. Each time we confiscate a big drug shipment we drive the price and profits up. Most of the arms that growers in South America use come from the USA and the South American drug growers are better armed than the police that go after them.
We made OxyContin a priority drug, I think, mostly to frighten MD’s and made high jacking truckloads of drugs coming out of drug manufacturers profitable for drug sellers. Make it illegal and you make it profitable.
And, because of the corrupting influence of the enormous profits some of our public officials play both sides. (Read-Police, Politics, Corruption-the mixture dangerous to freedom and justice by Col Frank McKetta, retired PA State Police.)
It looks like Vice President Joe Biden and the Obama Administration are coming to grips with that reality. A. Thomas McLellan from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and scientific director of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia was appointed to the government’s No. 2 drug-control official. When he was at the Veteran’s Hospital in Coatesville, PA he developed a universally used measuring stick for identifying alcoholism known as “3-14”:
The New York Times
Addiction on 2 Fronts: Work and Home
By By SARAH KERSHAW
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/08prof.html?_r=1&8dpc
One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
ReplyDeleteThe drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
Only on the authority of a clause about interstate commerce does the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Administration fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period. Drug juries exclude bleeding hearts.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. John Doe’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with his maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.