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Don't forget: The current marijuana laws around the world can all be basically pinpointed to a single person: Harry motherfucking Anslinger[0], who was in the p

by r3bl 8y ago

Don't forget: The current marijuana laws around the world can all be basically pinpointed to a single person: Harry motherfucking Anslinger[0], who was in the position of power within the US for unprecedented 32 years. He got in power 16 years before Trump was born, and ended up being in power until Trump turned 16. That guy loved to use anecdotes instead of facts, and presented marijuana as a drug that makes you kill people. As an example, he often used a case in which a guy from Florida killed his parents and chopped their bodies, always failing to mention that this person was recommended to go to a mental institution and didn't end up going there because his parents vouched for him. After Harry was done with criminalizing marijuana within the US, he started advocating for other countries to do as well, being the US representative in the United Nations Narcotics Commission. Even Thailand ended up criminalizing it, despite marijuana usage being embedded in their culture and history. The fear of the US turning their backs on you was and remained a risky action for smaller countries. The good news is we're on our way to revert his fuckery within a century. The bad news is that his fuckery lasted a century and got countless people sent to jail. For those interested in how the current drug laws came to be, I highly recommend you to read Chasing The Scream[1]. It has completely changed my perspective of drug usage and war on drugs and I consider it one of the best nonfiction books I got my hands on so far. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream

crtasm 8y ago
His department went after Billie Holiday, even as she lay in critical condition in hospital. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the-hunting-of-billie-holiday-114298?o=3 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the... (An extract from book recommended above)
VLM 8y ago
The real lesson of Anslinger is you take a guy who's hungry for power and feed him, and regardless of actual need you'll get a 10K person department under his control eventually. Its a misallocation thing. NACA (the predecessor of NASA) was 15 years old when Anslinger gained power, and if he was put in control of NACA we'd probably have landed on the moon before Pearl Harbor or some similar ridiculous accomplishment. But no, he was misallocated into some backwater of law enforcement, and thru personal skill he turned it from a backwater into maybe the dominant force in the field. Or more realistic than putting him in charge of future-NASA, if he instead were assigned to the SEC which was formed a couple years too late for him, imagine a world where a super-cop pounds down financial crime. There are bad boomer sports analogies with "the hot hand" and "the playmaker" and honestly I don't think Anslinger cared much about weed at all, as seen by his statements before he gained power; all he cared about was building a 10K person department, which led to the DEA we have today. Big corporate PR oriented mission statements mean nothing to people today, makes you wonder if they'll be vilified for ruining lives decades from now in some weird unanticipated quirk. Anslinger wasn't evil so much as he was tragic. What a waste, both his organizational skills and all the lives ruined as a side effect for decades after. Most discussion about the civilization wide effects of too many people for too few jobs focus on what millions of manual laborers or white collars being non-gainfully employed will do.. but another problem is imagine a world with 1000x as many Anslingers all able to build an empire, yet there are no useful productive empires to build, leading to 1000x the insanity of current drug laws in other fields. Imagine IP allocation, DNS resolution, or software licensing turned into a DEA-like dystopia, simply because there's no real jobs for empire builder-type people.

by r3bl 8y ago

crtasm 8y ago

His department went after Billie Holiday, even as she lay in critical condition in hospital. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the-hunting-of-billie-holiday-114298?o=3 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the... (An extract from book recommended above)

VLM 8y ago

The real lesson of Anslinger is you take a guy who's hungry for power and feed him, and regardless of actual need you'll get a 10K person department under his control eventually. Its a misallocation thing. NACA (the predecessor of NASA) was 15 years old when Anslinger gained power, and if he was put in control of NACA we'd probably have landed on the moon before Pearl Harbor or some similar ridiculous accomplishment. But no, he was misallocated into some backwater of law enforcement, and thru personal skill he turned it from a backwater into maybe the dominant force in the field. Or more realistic than putting him in charge of future-NASA, if he instead were assigned to the SEC which was formed a couple years too late for him, imagine a world where a super-cop pounds down financial crime. There are bad boomer sports analogies with "the hot hand" and "the playmaker" and honestly I don't think Anslinger cared much about weed at all, as seen by his statements before he gained power; all he cared about was building a 10K person department, which led to the DEA we have today. Big corporate PR oriented mission statements mean nothing to people today, makes you wonder if they'll be vilified for ruining lives decades from now in some weird unanticipated quirk. Anslinger wasn't evil so much as he was tragic. What a waste, both his organizational skills and all the lives ruined as a side effect for decades after. Most discussion about the civilization wide effects of too many people for too few jobs focus on what millions of manual laborers or white collars being non-gainfully employed will do.. but another problem is imagine a world with 1000x as many Anslingers all able to build an empire, yet there are no useful productive empires to build, leading to 1000x the insanity of current drug laws in other fields. Imagine IP allocation, DNS resolution, or software licensing turned into a DEA-like dystopia, simply because there's no real jobs for empire builder-type people.