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Basically if you try to open a farm and a store to grow and distribute these substances, then a group of armed thugs show up and burn your products and (at best

Basically if you try to open a farm and a store to grow and distribute these substances, then a group of armed thugs show up and burn your products and (at best) kidnap you and lock you up. Amazingly, this group of drug lord enforcers is actually the US Government. The problems you are describing are not a result of paying money to someone for drugs. The problems you are describing are a result of that person then having to pass that down the line to actively violent criminals, because another group of violent aggressors works to enforce their monopoly (the DEA etc). And why does "Law Enforcement" do this? Because it means they can murder black people with impunity. It means the people behind the DEA can scare white people into voting a certain way. It's is really high time that we see that government is not full of people trying to do the right thing. Blatant racism is systemic. The war on drugs is part of that system. And is only part of that system. It is not that the government is full of otherwise good people who happen to be racist. The government is full of sociopaths and bullies. If "these truths" were self-evident, why does the constitution not apply to non citizens? Why do government paid lawyers argue that waterboarding is not torture and is legal, as long as the victim is not a US Citizen? Despite its great declaration of independence, the people that the people put in charge, are great at ruling us by dividing us up and creating differences.

flattone 6y ago
Great replies thank you. I’ll get to it: Had highly addictive substances in mind. And agree our system is forcing that money south. Obviously not all of it comes from MX. Next step isn’t clear re highly addictive drugs. Yeah 50 steps from now of people want to do whatever and law enforcement gets out of the way and we can provide those people solutions to get off drugs or exist on them without turning to crime? Something like this. The ‘highly addictive’ is a key feature which I feel sad about. Some of those substances are as hard to get away from has asking someone to unlearn English or Physically stop opening their eyes for the Rest of Their lives. Like literally the analogies are really far more appealing than kicking those habits, quite nearly 2nd handedly certain. We have a lot of stuff to complain about , and everything needs to be torn apart and rebuilt. But social cause and international crime - falling into the hands of highly successful corporate thinkers (us) where we have a bias for action and are better than insulated from unseen errors but encouraged to rage forth and develop and experiment and invent. Only here from everything I have read, 1) Agree with the need 2) but we have no fucking clue what we’re doing Please share stuff to read if anything comes to mind. I’m especially interested in learning about better understood insights on action here (non of this refers to immediate action on racism/police) but more about homelessness, drug policy. Cheers
- pessimizer 6y ago
  If people can't get off drugs, provide them with a supply of the drug, therapy, and health care. The lifestyle and life expectancy of a drug addict is 95% society, 5% the effect of the drug on the body. Heroin addicts can work as hard as anyone else, and tend to, but all of that work is put into pursuing the next dose of a drug that costs 5¢ to industrially manufacture.
- Reelin 6y ago
  I think there are an awful lot of misconceptions about "highly addictive" substances. Yes, they're addictive. That doesn't magically ruin peoples lives though. For a really obvious example, consider alcohol. For a slightly less obvious one, consider that the stimulants prescribed for ADHD are by and large amphetamines (in fact methamphetamine itself is one of them). When a significant percentage of the population is consuming the equivalent of meth on a daily basis and not experiencing significant issues it strikes me as extremely misguided to attempt to pin addiction issues on the substances alone. Regarding addiction itself, I'd suggest that life circumstances has much more to do with it than anything else. (There is research regarding this but I don't have it to hand right now.) One of the reasons addicts commit crimes is to get money to pay for drugs. However, they generally pay significantly higher prices for lower quality products compared to the local pharmacy. They wouldn't need to commit crimes in many cases if the drugs themselves were more affordable. This is entirely due to prohibition and the black market. Another common reason they commit crimes is because many of them struggle to obtain good jobs and stable housing. Much of the time this is due to their criminal record, which is often due to a drug related arrest, which is again entirely due to prohibition. Add to this the observation (already noted elsewhere in the thread) that prohibition singlehandedly fuels much of the black market and thus much of organized crime throughout the world. It also (often as a direct result) drives police militarization, widespread surveillance, and authoritarian political agendas. As far as I'm concerned, the moral panic surrounding the consumption of intoxicating substances has singlehandedly caused a significant portion of (possibly even the majority of) society's ills at this point.
  - flattone 6y ago
    I have been closer to drugs/dealers and crime since I was about 12 than a PhD to books. Your heart and faith is beautiful, and it’s very very true in some instances. Really wonderful bright people get swept up. But there are some people out there like cities worth who are just wired for a different ‘normal’ (re crime). I’ve ran with them and even years in their capacity for exploring new levels of instilling fear in innocent people and demonstrating carelessness for property, hard work, and vulnerability. . I can’t type specifics.. just out of a learned built in anxiety over even getting this into it. People get way f*g addicted. By 8th grade thanks to people smoking oxy, the gentle cool kid from the nicer end of town was stealing cars and punching his mom in the face for cig money. If that is t addiction night and day who is this person behavior 180 degree change strictly due to the pursuit of or gap of time between the possibility of having another hit of whatever. Rant but struck chord
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> And why does "Law Enforcement" do this? Because it means they can murder black people with impunity. It means the people behind the DEA can scare white people into voting a certain way. I appreciate and sympathise with the sentiment - but this just isn’t true. I agree that ACAB - but drugs aren’t illegal “so the police can murder black people with impunity”. Arguments like yours damage the credibility of the civil-rights movement. (Yes, cops routinely plant drugs on black suspects; yes, black people are unfairly targeted and prosecuted for drugs offenses; yes, penalties for crack-contained are far worse than normal concaine due to racial bias and prejudice in the system; yes, cops murder black people on the job and get away with it; yes, to a thousand and one other things - but “murdering black people” is not a significant motivator behind federal-level policymaking at-present).
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Maybe not murder with impunity, but imprison with impunity. Which is pretty bad when you consider how privately run prisons factor in. > “You want to know what this was really all about,” Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said, referring to Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. A country that is supposedly about freedom finds reasons to keep people in prisons. Imprisoning people for things like possession of marijuana (while we over-prescribe opiates) is unbelievably cruel. [0]: https://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2016/03/top-adviser-richard-nixon-admitted-war-drugs-was-policy-tool-go-after-anti https://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2016/03/top-adviser...
- lowbloodsugar 6y ago
  >I agree that ACAB - but drugs aren’t illegal “so the police can murder black people with impunity”. Arguments like yours damage the credibility of the civil-rights movement. It does sound absurd doesn't it? How about this one: A law was created so that one group of citizens could keep another group of citizens as slaves; buy them and sell them; whip them and beat them; murder them with impunity. They authorized the creation of a police force to hunt and kill any that escaped. The system was so entrenched that the leaders at the state level chose to take up arms and fight a civil war. Does that sound crazy? Now, do you believe that that entire system of racism and economic servitude just vanished at the end of the war? Do you know that the Thirteenth Amendment, contrary to its propaganda claim that it banned slavery, just changed the requirement from "being black" to "being a criminal". You get that right? You can be a slave if you are a criminal, under the US Constitution. Do you think there might be a correlation there? Something a racist state could game? The US used to have the most slaves. Now it has the most prisoners. The prisons are for profit and their labor is for profit. Wake the fuck up. This is not a few bad cops. This is systemic. From presidents on down. If you think any of these statements damages the credibility of the civil-rights movements, then you aren't going to be able to vote for the changes that are needed, are you? You'll vote for the little ones, that fit your definition of what the problem is, but you aren't going to help with the root cause. You aren't going to help end what has been going on for centuries, and is still causing black people to be murdered indiscriminately. And yes, murdering black people helps keep the white folk in line. It helps at the ballot box. It means you can talk about thugs. "Look, the fact that we kill a disproportionate number of black people is proof that black people are criminals. Better vote for someone who will fund the police!"

flattone 6y ago

Great replies thank you. I’ll get to it: Had highly addictive substances in mind. And agree our system is forcing that money south. Obviously not all of it comes from MX. Next step isn’t clear re highly addictive drugs. Yeah 50 steps from now of people want to do whatever and law enforcement gets out of the way and we can provide those people solutions to get off drugs or exist on them without turning to crime? Something like this. The ‘highly addictive’ is a key feature which I feel sad about. Some of those substances are as hard to get away from has asking someone to unlearn English or Physically stop opening their eyes for the Rest of Their lives. Like literally the analogies are really far more appealing than kicking those habits, quite nearly 2nd handedly certain. We have a lot of stuff to complain about , and everything needs to be torn apart and rebuilt. But social cause and international crime - falling into the hands of highly successful corporate thinkers (us) where we have a bias for action and are better than insulated from unseen errors but encouraged to rage forth and develop and experiment and invent. Only here from everything I have read, 1) Agree with the need 2) but we have no fucking clue what we’re doing Please share stuff to read if anything comes to mind. I’m especially interested in learning about better understood insights on action here (non of this refers to immediate action on racism/police) but more about homelessness, drug policy. Cheers

pessimizer 6y ago
If people can't get off drugs, provide them with a supply of the drug, therapy, and health care. The lifestyle and life expectancy of a drug addict is 95% society, 5% the effect of the drug on the body. Heroin addicts can work as hard as anyone else, and tend to, but all of that work is put into pursuing the next dose of a drug that costs 5¢ to industrially manufacture.
Reelin 6y ago
I think there are an awful lot of misconceptions about "highly addictive" substances. Yes, they're addictive. That doesn't magically ruin peoples lives though. For a really obvious example, consider alcohol. For a slightly less obvious one, consider that the stimulants prescribed for ADHD are by and large amphetamines (in fact methamphetamine itself is one of them). When a significant percentage of the population is consuming the equivalent of meth on a daily basis and not experiencing significant issues it strikes me as extremely misguided to attempt to pin addiction issues on the substances alone. Regarding addiction itself, I'd suggest that life circumstances has much more to do with it than anything else. (There is research regarding this but I don't have it to hand right now.) One of the reasons addicts commit crimes is to get money to pay for drugs. However, they generally pay significantly higher prices for lower quality products compared to the local pharmacy. They wouldn't need to commit crimes in many cases if the drugs themselves were more affordable. This is entirely due to prohibition and the black market. Another common reason they commit crimes is because many of them struggle to obtain good jobs and stable housing. Much of the time this is due to their criminal record, which is often due to a drug related arrest, which is again entirely due to prohibition. Add to this the observation (already noted elsewhere in the thread) that prohibition singlehandedly fuels much of the black market and thus much of organized crime throughout the world. It also (often as a direct result) drives police militarization, widespread surveillance, and authoritarian political agendas. As far as I'm concerned, the moral panic surrounding the consumption of intoxicating substances has singlehandedly caused a significant portion of (possibly even the majority of) society's ills at this point.
- flattone 6y ago
  I have been closer to drugs/dealers and crime since I was about 12 than a PhD to books. Your heart and faith is beautiful, and it’s very very true in some instances. Really wonderful bright people get swept up. But there are some people out there like cities worth who are just wired for a different ‘normal’ (re crime). I’ve ran with them and even years in their capacity for exploring new levels of instilling fear in innocent people and demonstrating carelessness for property, hard work, and vulnerability. . I can’t type specifics.. just out of a learned built in anxiety over even getting this into it. People get way f*g addicted. By 8th grade thanks to people smoking oxy, the gentle cool kid from the nicer end of town was stealing cars and punching his mom in the face for cig money. If that is t addiction night and day who is this person behavior 180 degree change strictly due to the pursuit of or gap of time between the possibility of having another hit of whatever. Rant but struck chord

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

> And why does "Law Enforcement" do this? Because it means they can murder black people with impunity. It means the people behind the DEA can scare white people into voting a certain way. I appreciate and sympathise with the sentiment - but this just isn’t true. I agree that ACAB - but drugs aren’t illegal “so the police can murder black people with impunity”. Arguments like yours damage the credibility of the civil-rights movement. (Yes, cops routinely plant drugs on black suspects; yes, black people are unfairly targeted and prosecuted for drugs offenses; yes, penalties for crack-contained are far worse than normal concaine due to racial bias and prejudice in the system; yes, cops murder black people on the job and get away with it; yes, to a thousand and one other things - but “murdering black people” is not a significant motivator behind federal-level policymaking at-present).

andrewzah 6y ago
Maybe not murder with impunity, but imprison with impunity. Which is pretty bad when you consider how privately run prisons factor in. > “You want to know what this was really all about,” Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said, referring to Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. A country that is supposedly about freedom finds reasons to keep people in prisons. Imprisoning people for things like possession of marijuana (while we over-prescribe opiates) is unbelievably cruel. [0]: https://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2016/03/top-adviser-richard-nixon-admitted-war-drugs-was-policy-tool-go-after-anti https://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2016/03/top-adviser...
lowbloodsugar 6y ago
>I agree that ACAB - but drugs aren’t illegal “so the police can murder black people with impunity”. Arguments like yours damage the credibility of the civil-rights movement. It does sound absurd doesn't it? How about this one: A law was created so that one group of citizens could keep another group of citizens as slaves; buy them and sell them; whip them and beat them; murder them with impunity. They authorized the creation of a police force to hunt and kill any that escaped. The system was so entrenched that the leaders at the state level chose to take up arms and fight a civil war. Does that sound crazy? Now, do you believe that that entire system of racism and economic servitude just vanished at the end of the war? Do you know that the Thirteenth Amendment, contrary to its propaganda claim that it banned slavery, just changed the requirement from "being black" to "being a criminal". You get that right? You can be a slave if you are a criminal, under the US Constitution. Do you think there might be a correlation there? Something a racist state could game? The US used to have the most slaves. Now it has the most prisoners. The prisons are for profit and their labor is for profit. Wake the fuck up. This is not a few bad cops. This is systemic. From presidents on down. If you think any of these statements damages the credibility of the civil-rights movements, then you aren't going to be able to vote for the changes that are needed, are you? You'll vote for the little ones, that fit your definition of what the problem is, but you aren't going to help with the root cause. You aren't going to help end what has been going on for centuries, and is still causing black people to be murdered indiscriminately. And yes, murdering black people helps keep the white folk in line. It helps at the ballot box. It means you can talk about thugs. "Look, the fact that we kill a disproportionate number of black people is proof that black people are criminals. Better vote for someone who will fund the police!"