4901e527
XPost: talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns
From: bliss@sfo.com
Brother Nate wrote:
> JohnR wrote:
>> Brother Nate wrote:
>>> The original root of some drug prohibitions was clearly
>>> ethnic prejudice. That isn't a comfortable legacy on
>>> which to base anything, but history is what it is. We
>>> can't change the past.
>
>> You talk as though the reason drug war persists is because
>> we still have a few politicians that hate black jazz musicians.
Actually it was used 72 years ago when Southern Democrats
were still dominating the Congress and such vile slurs as used
by Hearst and Anslinger were effective propaganda.
>
> If you say so. What I wrote just a few days ago was:
>
>>> Our present official drug and alcohol policy
>>> is hysterical reaction to specific anecdotal tragedies.
>
> Personally I think it's important to know both where our drug
> policies came from and what sustains them in the present.
>
>> That's just the excuse that was needed at the time to tap into public
>> opinion and push the right buttons. Pushing public opinion buttons
>> has always been a key feature of perpetuating a policy that totally
>> fails, even by all it's own (stated) measures but needs to persist for
>> other unseen reasons, those buttons keep changing through the
>> decades but the corporate media plays ball in making sure they
>> keep getting pressed.
>
> I'm not clear how that's different from "hysterical reaction to
> specific anecdotal tragedies". Yes, vested corporate interests
> fan the flames.
The man principally responsible 72 years ago whose policies
anent cannabis are still in force was motivated by the desire to
expand his bureaucracy the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. That
was his only consideration.
>
> [...]
>> Back then of course terrorism was euphemistically referred to as good,
>> wholesome anti-communism or freedom fighting. The war on some
>> terror is simply the war on some drugs coming of age. It's marketed
>> as another war we must win but is really just the bastard offspring of
>> a long standing drug war, all the shady dark politics it's funded around
>> the world for the last 50 or 60 years and much of the fallout from that.
>> The only difference is the war on some terror now cuts out the problematic
>> third parties the (hidden) war on some drugs relied on.
>
> I have a theory about why you've had such difficulty gaining
> any ground on drug policy issues.
>
> [...]
>>> We don't have to fill jails with tobacco smokers in
>>> order to have a reasonable policy about it. I just
>>> think we should go through the list of other drugs
>>> that kill far less people than tobacco and ask ourselves
>>> why they warrant a law enforcement response that's
>>> so much more destructive than the effects of the
>>> drugs themselves.
>
>> In the UK, Professor David Nutt suggested the same and immediately
>> lost his job for daring to suggest a rational grading of all drugs policy on
>> a national platform. All dissent must be silenced, no matter (or more
>> likely because of) how logical and accurate that dissent was.
>> He even received ridicule and insult from the corporate media for
>> suggesting that horse riding is more dangerous than ecstacy, the fact
>> he was perfectly correct didn't matter in the least. Hysteria works.
Media inspired hysteria works very well.
>
> "Hysterical reaction to specific anecdotal tragedies"?
>
>> It's difficult to draw any other conclusion than a war on some drugs has
>> absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with protecting anyone from anything.
>> The real reason drug war persists and expands is because it allows
>> government power and control machinery over "its" citizens to do the
>> same.
>
> It would never have commanded the popular support it's
> had if that was the publicly stated justification. I will grant
> that It hasn't been particularly effective at reducing the
> overall damage that drug abuse causes, but there's an
> underlying premise that really should be acknowledged:
> drug abuse really can be a problem.
Drug abuse can be a problem especially when the
drug content of common stuff like coffee and beer is
ignored. Look at all the damage done by these two substances
and you wonder why they are legal unless you know the
history. Coffee was the subject of bans by the British Monarchy
especially in the form of the Coffee Houses where radicals
got together to plot the liberalization of the UK government.
Tobacco is another substance which the attempt to outlaw
failed to work in the early years of its importation to Europe
and many other places. Look how deadly a lifetime habit
may be and since we started discouraging its use the number
of adult users has been declining in the USA.
Beer couldn't even be suppressed in the USA by a
Constitutional Amendment but the whole society was undermined
by the opportunity afforded to criminal entrepreneurs to
become wealthy.
>
> We can debate what steps are reasonable to address it,
> and perhaps some people would try to argue that we
> shouldn't do anything at all about it. Personally I think
> we should assess on a case by case basis and figure
> out what to do from there.
>
> [...]
>>> We don't need to stop doing anything at all about
>>> drugs. What we need is to stop making things
>>> worse.
>
>> I agree. Regulate and educate, stop the persecution and stupidity.
>>
>> The drug war problem isn't the drugs, it's the war.
>
> There are problems with the drug war AND with drug
> abuse.
>
> Years ago I posed a question here about a lyric from a
> Grateful Dead song - "What in the world ever became
> of sweet Jane / She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't
> the same / Living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine / All
> her friends can say is 'Ain't it a shame?'"
>
> I can accept that it doesn't help sweet Jane to be arrested
> and brutalized in prison, but what I can't ultimately accept
> is that the people saying "Ain't it a shame?" were real
> friends. If they weren't even willing to mention to Jane
> the things they saw with their own eyes they were little
> better than onlookers
>
> --
> Brother Nate
> bronate@gmail.com
> Moral Compass
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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