WAR ON DRUGS or is it a WAR ON US???

[roots69]

How the Rockefeller drug laws changed America

Governor Nelson Rockefeller surprised his own staff with his dramatic shift on drug policy.
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Jan 24, 2013 — Forty years ago this month, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller launched his campaign for what came to be known as the Rockefeller drug laws.

Rockefeller demanded tough prison sentences, even for low-level drug dealers and addicts. It was an idea that quickly spread, influencing state and Federal law across the US.

In the decades since, the nation's prison population has grown seven-fold — with more than two million men and women now behind bars.

Over the next year, North Country Public Radio will be looking at ways the Rockefeller laws changed America — from their impact on race relations to the growth of a booming prison industry here in the North Country.

We're calling it the Prison Time Radio Project. We start our series by going back to the beginning, when Americans were demanding solutions to a heroin epidemic that was scarring urban neighborhoods.

Join in the conversation about New York's Rockefeller drug laws and find more information and photographs at prisontime.org.

In the 1960s, New York state was known for treating drug addiction as a medical problem – not a criminal one.

One of the champions of that approach was Nelson Rockefeller, New York's popular Republican governor.



I have one goal and one objective, to stop the pushing of drugs and to protect the innocent victim.
"I was trying to get the addict off the street into treatment," Rockefeller said. "It was a beautiful concept."


But by the early 70s, attitudes about drugs and crime were changing fast. Heroin was turning up in more urban neighborhoods.

A sense that cities were unraveling

Films like "Panic In Needle Park" and "The French Connection" portrayed narcotics as an out-of-control epidemic.

In New York City, community leaders like the Reverend Oberia Dempsey began calling for a national crusade to stop the tide of drugs.




Films like "Panic In Needle Park" helped shape a mood of fear in American cities. Source: Wikipedia
"I have seen the nation's number one state, New York, become a state of fear," Rev. Dempsey argued. "Dope pushers made this so."


In 1973, there were 1,600 homicides in New York City – four times as many as there were last year. Muggings were common and people like Dempsey were convinced that the core problem was drugs.

"I was assaulted by members of a dope mob and we know what it is like to be victimized by drug-thirsty, money-hungry death-dealing criminals."

Scott Christianson is a journalist and historian. In the early 70s, he was digging up stories about drug crime and drug-related corruption. He said there was a sense that American cities were unraveling.

"I didn't see it as being inflated at the time, a young 23 and 24 year old, churning out the stories about heroin and corruption," Christianson recalled. "I contributed to the notion that this was such a danger to America."

In 1971, President Richard Nixon launched what he called a national war on drugs.

"As I talk to the people from New York state, we must wage what I have called total war against public enemy number one in the United States – the problem of dangerous drugs," Nixon proclaimed.

Rockefeller's about-face

Rockefeller – who was widely seen as more liberal — had resisted that kind of tough-on-crime rhetoric. But political pressure was building.

Late in 1972, Joseph Persico, Rockefeller's speechwriter, was in a meeting with the governor when Rockefeller suddenly laid out a radical new idea.

"He turned and said, 'For drug pushing – life sentence. No parole, no probation, no plea bargaining.'"

Persico said there was a long silence. Many of Rockefeller's own advisors immediately hated the idea.

"And we all looked a little bit shocked and one of the staff said, 'Sounds a little bit severe.' And he said, 'That's because you don't understand the problem.' And that's when we realized that he was serious."

Persico says Rockefeller learned about this zero-tolerance approach while studying Japan's war on drugs.

He thinks Rockefeller had decided that more moderate approaches to drug treatment had failed.

"So what he did was he just lashed out, as a leader who tried all the right things and he was frustrated."

In January of 1973, Rockefeller rolled out a no-holds-barred political campaign, pushing for mandatory prison sentences of 15 years to life even for those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin.

"I have one goal and one objective and that is to stop the pushing of drugs and to protect the innocent victim," Rockefeller declared.

The policy drew sharp criticism from drug treatment experts and some politicians, who called the sentences "draconian."

But the idea of hitting drug dealers hard caught the mood of the country, winning support from leaders in New York's black and Hispanic communities.

"Our young people are dying, they're being destroyed," said Glester Hines, who led an organization in Harlem called the People's Civic and Welfare Association.

"And unless you back this bill, New York state is doomed. And not only the state of New York, but all the other states are watching to see what New York is doing."

Polls showed that the new policy was hugely popular and five months later, Rockefeller signed it into law.

Albert Rosenblatt was a prosecutor at the time and wrote the first book detailing how district attorneys should implement the new rules.

"I don't remember thinking or believing, nor did my colleague DAs at the time, that this was going to somehow revolutionize and change everything," Rosenblatt recalled.

Unexpected and troubling results

But Rosenblatt, a Republican who later served as a judge on New York's highest court, says prosecutors quickly realized that the laws were producing unexpected and troubling results.

White people were using a lot of drugs in the 1970s. But the people being arrested and sent to prison for lengthy sentences came almost entirely from poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

"We were aware of it. I mean, it's hard not to be aware of it when you see a courtroom and a cadre of defendants – many of whom or most of whom were people of color."

There were other problems. New York's prison population soared from just over 13,000 to a peak of roughly 72,000 inmates, many of them non-violent, first-time offenders.

During those years, tough, Rockefeller-style sentencing laws were also being implemented around the US. Rosenblatt says he's no longer sure that was a good idea.




Rockefeller-style sentencing laws led to dramatic increases in inmate populations in the US. Image:
Corrections work has become a major industry in the North Country, where there are 16 state and Federal prisons. Photo: Wikipedia
With nearly 7 million Americans now in prison or on some kind of supervised criminal probation, drug-related violence still plagues urban neighborhoods.


Joseph Persico, the aide who helped to push through the Rockefeller drug laws, says he thinks the policy was a mistake.

"I concluded very early that this was a failure. This was obviously unjust – and not just unjust, it was unwise and it was ineffective."

But supporters of mandatory minimums point to dramatically lower crime rates in some cities, including New York, as evidence that long prison sentences can make communities safer.

And Persico says Rockefeller himself never expressed any doubts or regrets about the policy that carries his name.

"Never had any second thoughts or any doubts about the wisdom of what he had proposed.

A lot of historians think Rockefeller's push for tough drug laws may have helped to revive his national political fortunes.

In 1974, one year after he pushed the new laws through New York's legislature, Rockefeller was chosen by President Gerald Ford to go to Washington to serve as vice president of the United States.

 

[roots69]

George Bush Sr. on Drugs
President of the U.S., 1989-1993; Former Republican Rep. (TX)


Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky, p. 56-57 , Jun 1, 2010
Interdiction System. It brought together many agencies--Defense, CIA, Customs, to name a few--and later became the model for one of Dad's first initiatives as president, the creation of the office of the "drug czar." My father's experience from his CIA years came in very handy.

Source: My Father, My President, by Doro Koch Bush, p.207 , Oct 6, 2006
My Father, My President, by Doro Koch Bush, p.310-311 , Oct 6, 2006
The Family, by Kitty Kelley, p.486-487 , Sep 14, 2004
home when a pickup truck roared through the front yard, threw out a bundle, and drove off. The bundle was her drunken husband. The man hears about it to this day.

Source: The Faith of George W. Bush, by Stephen Mansfield, p. 31-32 , Apr 12, 2004


security, President Bush traveled to Columbia to attend the drug summit and sign the Declaration of Cartagena--which provided a framework to help the 4 countries better coordinate the war against drugs.Source: Heartbeat, by Jim McGrath, p. 77 , Mar 2, 2002
continue to oppose it

PEROT: Any time you think you want to legalize drugs, go to a neonatal unit. Just look at those crack babies, and if anybody can even think about legalizing drugs, they've lost me.

Source: The First Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate , Oct 11, 1992

Noriega in prison helps Panama and hurts drug lords
It's a good day. Fed drops the [interest] rates one quarter, and Noriega goes to prison for 120 years..It's big, big news and sends a strong message to indicted drug dealers.
Panama is doing much better. They are growing at 9%; Democracy is there; American lives were protected; and one of the results was that this drug warlord was brought to trial and is going to pay a price.

Source: Letter from George Bush in All The Best, p.555 , Apr 8, 1992

Take my word for it: This scourge will stop
I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other’s attitudes and way of life. There are few clear areas in which we as a society must rise up united and express our intolerance. The most obvious now is drugs. And when that first cocaine was smuggled in on a ship, it may as well have been a deadly bacteria, so much has it hurt the body, the soul of our country. And there is much to be done and to be said, but take my word for it: This scourge will stop.

 

[roots69]

A Brief History of the Drug War



This video from hip hop legend Jay Z and acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple depicts the drug war’s devastating impact on the Black community from decades of biased law enforcement.

The video traces the drug war from President Nixon to the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws to the emerging aboveground marijuana market that is poised to make legal millions for wealthy investorsdoing the same thing that generations of people of color have been arrested and locked up for. After you watch the video, read on to learn more about the discriminatory history of the war on drugs.

The Early Stages of Drug Prohibition
Many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes. So why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? It's not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs – but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.

The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws in the early 1900s were directed at black men in the South. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

Nixon and the Generation Gap
In the 1960s, as drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. 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.”Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.

Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use.

Within just a few years, though, the tide had shifted. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were abandoned as parents became increasingly concerned about high rates of teen marijuana use. Marijuana was ultimately caught up in a broader cultural backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s.

The 1980s and 90s: Drug Hysteria and Skyrocketing Incarceration Rates

The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.

Public concern about illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed “crack.” Soon after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan "Just Say No."

This set the stage for the zero tolerance policies implemented in the mid-to-late 1980s. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who believed that “casual drug users should be taken out and shot,” founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly harsh drug policies also blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the late 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of draconian penalties in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who saw drug abuse as the nation's "number one problem" was just 2-6 percent. The figure grew through the remainder of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 percent – one of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in polling history. Within less than a year, however, the figure plummeted to less than 10 percent, as the media lost interest. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, however, and continued to result in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.

Although Bill Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, after his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug war. Notoriously, Clinton rejected a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

He also rejected, with the encouragement of drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, Health Secretary Donna Shalala’s advice to end the federal ban on funding for syringe access programs. Yet, a month before leaving office, Clinton asserted in a Rolling Stone interview that "we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use "should be decriminalized."

At the height of the drug war hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a movement emerged seeking a new approach to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation – describing it as the “loyal opposition to the war on drugs.” Prominent conservatives such as William Buckley and Milton Friedman had long advocated for ending drug prohibition, as had civil libertarians such as longtime ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. In the late 1980s they were joined by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Federal Judge Robert Sweet, Princeton professor Ethan Nadelmann, and other activists, scholars and policymakers.

In 1994, Nadelmann founded The Lindesmith Center as the first U.S. project of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. In 2000, the growing Center merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create the Drug Policy Alliance.

The New Millennium: The Pendulum Shifts – Slowly – Toward Sensible Drug Policy
George W. Bush arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam – yet he allocated more money than ever to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote student drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly.

The era of George W. Bush also witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug law enforcement. By the end of Bush's term, there were about 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year – mostly for nonviolent drug law offenses, often misdemeanors. While federal reform mostly stalled under Bush, state-level reforms finally began to slow the growth of the drug war.

Politicians now routinely admit to having used marijuana, and even cocaine, when they were younger. When Michael Bloomberg was questioned during his 2001 mayoral campaign about whether he had ever used marijuana, he said, "You bet I did – and I enjoyed it." Barack Obama also candidly discussed his prior cocaine and marijuana use: "When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently – that was the point."

Public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of sensible reforms that expand health-based approaches while reducing the role of criminalization in drug policy.

Marijuana reform has gained unprecedented momentum throughout the Americas. Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Washington State, and Washington D.C. have legalized marijuana for adults. In December 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legally regulate marijuana. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans legalize marijuana for adults by 2018.

In response to a worsening overdose epidemic, dozens of U.S. states passed laws to increase access to the overdose antidote, naloxone, as well as “911 Good Samaritan” laws to encourage people to seek medical help in the event of an overdose.

Yet the assault on American citizens and others continues, with 700,000 people still arrested for marijuana offenses each year and almost 500,000 people still behind bars for nothing more than a drug law violation.

President Obama, despite supporting several successful policy changes – such as reducing the crack/powder sentencing disparity, ending the ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and ending federal interference with state medical marijuana laws – did not shift the majority of drug policy funding to a health-based approach.

Now, the new administration is threatening to take us backward toward a 1980s style drug war. President Trump is calling for a wall to keep drugs out of the country, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made it clear that he does not support the sovereignty of states to legalize marijuana, and believes “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Progress is inevitably slow, and even with an administration hostile to reform there is still unprecedented momentum behind drug policy reform in states and localities across the country. The Drug Policy Alliance and its allies will continue to advocate for health-based reforms such as marijuana legalization, drug decriminalization, safe consumption sites, naloxone access, bail reform, and more.

We look forward to a future where drug policies are shaped by science and compassion rather than political hysteria.

 

[roots69]

The Secret History of the War on Drugs

The “War on Drugs” Begins. In 1971, U.S. President Nixon declared the “War on Drugs”. He said, “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse,” but Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, said in 1994 before he died:


The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. . . . 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. 1 2


Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff also said:


P [President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.3


Reagan Amplifies the War. In 1981, President Reagan launched his own “War on Drugs,” including his “Just Say No” campaign. But Reagan conveniently forgot to mention that top U.S. Government officials and the CIA were secretly smuggling drugs into the United States, selling them to America’s urban communities, and using the proceeds to buy weapons and pay mercenaries in Nicaragua to sabotage the Nicaraguan Government. Senior U.S. Government (USG) officials were also using American taxpayer funds to support the corrupt Somoza crime family, which is what enabled that family and the USG to brutally dominate Nicaragua for decades. When the Nicaraguan people tried to rise up and replace the blood-thirsty Somoza family with a democratically elected leader, the USG deliberately sabotaged and destroyed the Nicaraguan economy . . . after it had already manipulated and controlled the economy for decades.4 5 6


The War on Drugs Has Spawned the Largest Prison Population in the World. The tsunami of crack cocaine that flooded the U.S. with the complicity and knowledge of senior USG officials has ripped apart thousands of communities and millions of families in the United States. The USG’s response has been to perpetuate the corrupt War on Drugs and implement draconian anti-drug laws, rather than logically treat the problem as a public health crisis. Amplified by the rising political power of for-profit prison corporations since the early 1980s, the confluence of systemic federal agency corruption and special interest lobbying has resulted in the U.S. having the largest prison population in the world, in both relative and absolute terms.7

See the complete list here.


Nixon’s Goals Were Achieved. As intended, the tsunami of crack cocaine disproportionately decimated African-American and poor “hippie” communities. The U.S. prison population exploded by 700% between 1970 and 2005 and is still growing today. Of course, there are other complex economic and cultural challenges associated with poverty and crime, but all those challenges are magnified by the blatant sabotage and systemic corruption perpetrated and perpetuated by politicians. That’s why all Americans should be outraged at any government that shamefully and compulsively engages in criminal behavior and the grotesque waste of our national wealth.


The Futility of the War on Drugs. Portugal, Switzerland, Canada (Vancouver), Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Germany have all rationally decriminalized marijuana. Predictably, in every case there has been dramatic public cost savings and dramatic improvements in overall public health outcomes. Unlike the U.S. where drug use and death rates have been consistently rising, the rates in those countries that decriminalized marijuana remained relatively constant.8 That suggests drug use correlates with a certain personality type in every population, which will find a way to use drugs regardless of their cost and availability. The chart below confirms what anybody already knows if they’ve studied the history of the Prohibition Era: Criminalizing alcohol, tobacco, drugs or any sin product does nothing to eliminate its use, but criminalization inevitably and dramatically increases their costs to society.

The Global River of Drug Money Fuels Anti-Democracy Operations.A kilogram of gold has a market value of approximately $40,000 (mid-2017); in contrast, a kilogram of heroin has a market value 4.5x higher at approximately $180,000 (mid-2017). The inflated market value of heroin only exists because of the USG’s destructive War on Drugs, which gives violent drug cartels monopoly power over the highly inflated $500 billion-per-year global drug trafficking market.9 This market is also a significant source of illicit cash for the CIA and other government agencies around the world, which tap into the global river of drug money whenever they need an off-book source of funds to pay for their covert anti-democracy operations. This is one of the most significant reasons why the USG has refused to decriminalize drugs.


Drug Criminalization is far More Destructive than Drug Use. Over $1 trillion of wasted American taxpayer funds, gang shootings, murderous drug cartels, deadly overdoses due to uncertain purity/quantity of doses, exploding prison population, infectious diseasesfrom needle-sharing, illicit wars and funding of anti-democratic regimes worldwide, broken families and communities . . . all these problems are directly caused by the criminalization of drugs, not the actual use of drugs. Despite overwhelming evidence that the War on Drugs has actually been a War on Liberty and a total failure in every conceivable dimension of public health and economic policy, why did the first African-American U.S. President continue the same policies as his predecessors? Why does the USG continue to inflict this ill-begotten War on Liberty upon its citizens and allow generations of Americans to rot in prison? Now we’re ready to learn the whole truth.


Unemployment Fuels the Exploding Prison Population. The following chart illustrates the connection between the War on Drugs, the unemployment rate, and the growth of the prison population. In the chart, you can see how the two major campaigns in the War on Drugs were launched immediately after two of the longest economic recessions in modern U.S. history, which correspond to the biggest spikes in the unemployment rate prior to 2008.10

A Mountain of Incarcerated Humanity. Like all leading socioeconomic indicators, the unemployment rate spikes must occur before prison population spikes, i.e., deteriorating economic conditions are a precondition for rising prison populations. This is why the prison population rises after the unemployment spikes. Then, the longer mandatory drug-related prison sentences implemented by the Reagan Administration transformed the prison population spikes into a cumulative mountain of incarcerated humanity.


Political Fear of Unemployment Feeds the Prison Nation. Nothing terrifies politicians more than a rising unemployment rate, which is why they engage in every conceivable kind of propaganda and manipulation to control our perception of the unemployment rate. The economic conditions in the early 1970s put pressure on Nixon to make himself look like a respectable candidate for the 1972 presidential election. He hoped his War on Drugs would distract people from all the economic problems and make him look courageous, fearlessly tackling “public enemy number one,” which the Nixon Administration artificially inflated into an existential monster to scare the American people. Nixon tried to distract Americans from the real enemy: his own corruption, warmongering, and incompetent fiscal and monetary policies.11 12


War on Drugs: Round 2. The early 1980s were also plagued by intense political and economic turmoil. The disinflationary effects of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker’s strict monetary policy, the political fallout and regional instability from the Iranian Revolution, two recessionswithin two years (the second was the deepest recession since the Great Depression), rapidly rising oil prices (again), high unemployment . . . all these events resulted in terrible public opinion polls for President Reagan between 1980 to 1982, which was expected to hurt the Republicans in the upcoming 1982 midterm elections. What did they do about all these economic problems? Declare another War on Drugs less than a month before the November election!13


Most People Don’t Take Drugs When They’re Happy. What type of population is more likely to take drugs: A jobless and insecure population suffering from systemically hostile economic conditions; or, a population anchored by a strong Middle Class that has enough economic security to achieve a sustainably high quality of life? Despite the deceptive labor statistics propaganda from the USG, the rising drug use in America is directly caused by our country’s deteriorating economic conditions. Every living creature seeks to escape their pain, but Americans would have no need to escape into a drug-induced euphoria if they felt secure and happy.


Why Does the War on Drugs Continue? Many people think racism is the culprit, but that’s not completely true. From Nixon to Trump and every U.S. president in between, this despicable War on Libertycontinues because it’s much easier for politicians to criminalize drugs, store unemployed humans of all races in prison cages, and enrich profit-seeking prison corporations than to honestly deal with the ongoing human tragedy caused by their incompetent economic policies.14 It’s easier to destroy urban families and inner-city communities than to admit that neoliberal economic policies actually create more losers than winners. It’s easier to pander to Transnational Cannibals and incentivize them to discard the human labor force in their home country than to fix the structural economic conditions that cause them to discard the labor force in the first place.


Restoring Economic Security and Personal Liberty. Creating the conditions necessary for human security and happiness is the primary reason that Democracy and representative governments exist. In fact, this is the theoretical deal of our constitutional republic: Citizens agree to give up a little bit of freedom by obeying legitimate laws in exchange for a secure and equitable society, but the USG is not upholding its end of the bargain. To the contrary, the War on Drugs is a War on Liberty, which is destroying American Capitalism and Democracy.


Please read Broken Capitalism: This Is How We Fix It to learn about the realistic, politically viable solutions that would stabilize the Middle Class, stop the criminalization of our lives, and restore trust and integrity in our global economy.

 

[roots69]

Why the 'War on Drugs' Was a 'War on Blacks

Kenneth B. Nunn


excerpted from, Kenneth B. Nunn, Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: or Why the 'War on Drugs' Was a 'War on Blacks', 6 Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 381-445, 386-412, 422-427 (Fall 2002) (519 Footnotes Omitted)

The War on Drugs that has been a centerpiece of American foreign and domestic policy over the past two decades should not be viewed as a war against a particular collection of inanimate objects. The War on Drugs in this sense is but a convenient, yet inaccurate, metaphor. Instead the War on Drugs should be understood as a special case of what war has always been-the employment of force and violence against certain communities, and/or their institutions, in order to attain certain political objectives. Race has played an important role over the years in identifying the communities that became the targets of the drug war, consequently exposing their cultural practices and institutions to military-style attack and police control. Although the drug war has certainly sought to eradicate controlled substances and destroy the networks established for their distribution, this is only part of the story. As I shall explain, state efforts to control drugs are also a way for dominant groups to express racial power. Before addressing the historical and culturally entrenched connection of drug control and race, I first want to explore the origins of the most recent round of American anti- drug policies-the so-called War on Drugs-and examine the impact of these policies on African American communities.

A. The War on Drugs

1. Origins of the Drug War

In October of 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs. Speaking to the nation in his weekly radio address, Reagan promised a 'planned, concerted campaign' against all drugs-'hard, soft or otherwise. ' Reagan described his campaign in military terms, using words like 'battle,' 'war,' and 'surrender.' '[W]e're going to win the war on drugs,' he vowed. President Reagan increased anti-drug spending and increased the number of federal drug task forces. Most importantly, the Reagan administration launched a public relations campaign designed to change the public perception of drug use and the threat posed by illegal drugs. The centerpiece of this public relations campaign was a new rhetorical strategy that sought to demonize drugs and ostracize drug users. Presidents Bush and Clinton continued the Reagan administration's anti-drug policies. President Bush established a national office of drug policy, appointed a drug 'czar,' increased anti-drug spending and intensified drug law enforcement efforts. President Clinton, for his part, increased the anti-drug budget by twenty-five percent, proposed expanded drug testing rules and intensified efforts toward drug interdiction and prosecution.

No matter who has occupied the executive branch, the United States has pursued the same overall policies throughout the drug war. Anti-drug policies can be separated into two general camps, 'supply-reduction' and 'demand-reduction.' Supply-reduction strategies seek to reduce the availability of drugs by limiting access to drug sources and increasing the risks of drug possession and distribution. Demand-reduction strategies, on the other hand, seek to reduce demand for illegal drugs through drug use prevention and treatment. The rhetoric of war helped shape the strategies that were used to combat the perceived drug threat. The Reagan administration embraced a supply-reduction strategy focusing on interdiction, seizure and criminal prosecution, rather than a demand-reduction strategy that focused on public education and drug treatment designed to reduce demand for illegal drugs. The supply-reduction strategy adopted by the Reagan administration fits a war model of the drug problem. Viewing the drug problem through a war model implies that the perceived drug problem can be attacked through aggressive law enforcement measures designed to seek out and destroy contraband and interrupt distribution networks. These kinds of measures are more analogous to the military tactics one would expect to see in warfare than are demand-reduction measures, which are primarily social service based.

According to Michael Tonry, the drug war was 'fought largely from partisan political motives to show that the Bush and Reagan administrations were concerned about public safety, crime prevention, and the needs of victims. ' While the drug war may have been initiated out of political motives, this assessment does not tell the entire tale. To understand the origins of the War on Drugs in its entirety, we must know what was going on in the cultural landscape that made it politically advantageous to fight a war on drugs.

When Reagan declared war on drugs, a broad cultural change was underway in the United States. The country was moving from a period of relative liberalism that included skepticism toward government and authority and an emphasis on personal freedoms, to a period of relative conservatism that included respect for government and authority and an emphasis on personal responsibility. Reagan's very election to the presidency was in large part a manifestation of this shift in attitudes. Reagan was the embodiment of a mainstream reaction to the counterculture of the 60s and 70s. Part of this sea change in cultural attitudes was a different perspective toward drugs.

In 1982, when the drug war began, the recreational use of illegal drugs was in decline. Tonry points out that in 1982, surveys conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed significant drops in drug usage over long periods for a wide range of age groups. This decline impacted the use of both legal and illegal substances. For example, the percentages of respondents 18 to 25 years of age reporting marijuana use during the preceding year dropped by approximately 15% between 1979 and 1982, and continued to decline sharply throughout the decade of the 80s. Reported use of cocaine by the same age group also dropped by approximately 15% between 1979 and 1982, and continued to decline throughout the decade. Finally, 18 to 25 year olds who reported using alcohol during the preceding year rose only slightly from 1979 to 1982, but also declined sharply following a peak in 1985. According to Tonry, these statistics 'signal a broadly based and widely shared change in American attitudes toward the ingestion of dangerous or unhealthy substances that can have little to do with the deterrent effects of law enforcement strategies or criminal sanctions. ' Consequently, Reagan's declaration of war tapped into a growing public sentiment against illegal drug use. Many citizens viewed drugs as a menace and many of these same citizens were readily supportive of Reagan's proposals to address the drug problem.

This widespread public support explains the political value of the War on Drugs. The cultural environment created virtually unanimous bi-partisan support for an extensive and costly intervention into the world of drugs. Both Republicans and Democrats sought to exploit the public sentiment against drugs. The drug war also fostered a remarkable level of cooperation between the executive and legislative branches. In response to Reagan administration proposals, Congress quickly moved to pass and fund tough drug enforcement initiatives. Fueled by political considerations, the drug war took on a life of its own. For each anti-drug measure that passed, it became necessary to further escalate the war so that no one, Democrat or Republican, executive or legislative branch, could be called soft on this critical issue.

In addition to shaping the methods used to address the drug problem, the rhetoric of war also shaped the impact of those methods, for a war requires not only military strategies, but an enemy as well. For the constituency the Reagan Administration was trying to reach, it was easy to construct African Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color as the enemy in the War on Drugs. These are the groups that the majority of white Americans have always viewed as the sources of vice and crime. Reagan's anti- drug rhetoric was skillfully designed to tap into deeply held cultural attitudes about people of color and their links to drug use and other illicit behavior. According to mass communications scholar William Elwood, Reagan's rhetorical declaration of a war on drugs had a deliberate political effect. In Elwood's view, 'Such rhetoric allows presidents to appear as strong leaders who are tough on crime and concerned about domestic issues and is strategically ambiguous to portray urban minorities as responsible for problems related to the drug war and for resolving such problems.' Thus, the origins of the drug war can be traced to shifting public attitudes toward drugs in the early 1980s. President Reagan sought to exploit this change in attitude through a public relations campaign that promised to wage 'war on drugs.' As the metaphor of war might suggest, the War on Drugs required both weapons and enemies. A punitive law enforcement policy of prohibition and interdiction provided the weapons and, while the professed enemies of the War on Drugs were drug cartels in drug source countries, those most affected were people of color in inner city neighborhoods, chiefly African Americans and Hispanics.

2. How the Drug War Targeted Black Communities

By almost any measure, the drug war's impact on African American communities has been devastating. Millions of African Americans have been imprisoned, many have been unfairly treated by the criminal justice system, the rights of both legitimate suspects and average citizens have been violated and the quality of life of many millions more has been adversely affected. These effects are the consequences of deliberate decisions; first, to fight a 'war' on drugs, and second, to fight that war against low-level street dealers in communities populated by people of color. In this section, I consider the impact of the War on Drugs specifically on the African American community.

a. Mass Incarceration and Disproportionate Arrests

As a result of the War on Drugs, African American communities suffer from a phenomenon I call 'mass incarceration.' Not only are large numbers of African Americans incarcerated, African Americans are incarcerated at percentages that exceed any legitimate law enforcement interest and which negatively impact the African American community. While African Americans only comprise twelve percent of the U.S. population, they are forty-six percent of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons. At the end of 1999, over half a million African American men and women were held in state and federal prisons. A disparity this great appears inexcusable on its face. However, the inequity is even worse when one considers the rate of incarceration and the proportion of the African American population that is incarcerated.

The rate of incarceration measures the likelihood that any African American male will be sentenced to prison. In 2000, the rate of incarceration for African American males nationwide was 3457 per 100,000. In comparison, the rate of incarceration for white males was 449 per 100,000. This means, on average, African American males were 7.7 times more likely to be incarcerated than white males. For some age groups, the racial disparities are even worse. For young men between the ages of 25 and 29, African Americans are 8.7 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. For 18 and 19 year olds, African American men are 8.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites.

Another way to measure the extent of mass incarceration is to examine the proportion of the African American population that is serving time in prison. In some jurisdictions, as many as one third of the adult African American male population may be incarcerated at any given time. Nationwide, 1.6 % of the African American population is in prison. However, nearly 10% of African American males ages 25-29 are in prison. Nearly 8% of African American males between the ages of 18 and 39 are in prison.

The mass incarceration of African Americans is a direct consequence of the War on Drugs. As one commentator states, 'Drug arrests are a principal reason that the proportions of lacks in prison and more generally under criminal justice system control have risen rapidly in recent years.' Since the declaration of the War on Drugs in 1982, prison populations have more than tripled. The rapid growth in prison populations is particularly clear in federal institutions. Although the overall federal prison population was only 24,000 in 1980, by 1996, it had reached 106,000. The federal prison population continued to grow in the 1990s. In 2000, the federal prison population exceeded 145,000. Fifty-seven percent of the federal prisoners in 2000 were incarcerated for drug offenses. In 1982 there were approximately 400,000 incarcerated persons. By 1992, that number had more than doubled to 850,000. In 2000, there were over 1.3 million persons in prison. From 1979 to 1989, the percentage of African Americans arrested for drug offenses almost doubled from 22% to 42% of the total. During that same period, the total number of African American arrests for drug abuse violations skyrocketed from 112,748 to 452,574, an increase of over 300 %.

Jerome Miller analyzed arrest statistics from several American cities to determine the impact of the War on Drugs on policing. He found striking racial disparities in how drug arrests were made. In many jurisdictions, African American men account for over eighty percent of total drug arrests. In Baltimore, for example, African American men were eighty-six percent of those arrested for drug offenses in 1991. The fact that African Americans are incarcerated in such large percentages and are arrested and incarcerated at such disproportionate rates is shocking. It is obscene in the absence of a strong showing that African Americans are responsible for a comparable percentage of crime in the United States.

The claim that African Americans violate the drug laws at a greater rate, and that this justifies the great disparities in rates of arrest and incarceration, seems unlikely. Most drug arrests are made for the crime of possession. Possession is a crime that every drug user must commit and, in the United States, most drug users are white. The U.S. Public Health Service Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported in 1992 that 76% of drug users in the United States were white, 14% were African American, and 8% were Hispanic. Cocaine users were estimated to be 66% white, 17.6% Black, and 15.9% Hispanic. Rather than demonstrating patterns of use that approach arrest disparities, African Americans 'are less likely to . . . [use] drugs than whites are, for all major drugs of abuse except heroin.'

There also seems to be insufficient evidence to conclude that African Americans are more likely to deal drugs, and thus more likely to be arrested. Most drug users purchase drugs from persons of the same race and socio-economic background. So, the large numbers of white users would suggest an equally large number of white dealers, as well. On the other hand, there are logical reasons to conclude that the number of African American dealers may be disproportionately large. Still, it is unlikely that drug use and offense are so out of balance that Blacks constitute the vast majority of drug offenders given that they are such a small minority of drug users.

Disproportionate enforcement is a more likely cause of racial disparities in the criminal justice system than is disproportionate offending. Differences in the way that Black dealers and white dealers market drugs may encourage law enforcement officers to concentrate efforts against African Americans. Michael Tonry argues that it is easier for police to make arrests in 'socially disorganized neighborhoods' because drug dealing is more likely to occur on the streets and transient drug buyers are less likely to draw attention to themselves.

In addition, disproportionate arrests may simply be a function of discriminatory exercise of discretion by police officers. Police officers may decide to arrest African Americans under circumstances when they would not arrest white suspects, and they may be in a position to do so more frequently than with whites because they are more likely to stop and detain African Americans.

b. Crack Cocaine and Sentencing Disparities

Perhaps no aspect of the drug war has contributed to the rapid increase of African American prisoners in federal prisons more than the federal cocaine sentencing scheme. Federal sentencing rules for the possession and sale of cocaine distinguish between cocaine in powder form and cocaine prepared as crack. A person sentenced for possession with intent to distribute a given amount of crack cocaine receives the same sentence as someone who possessed one hundred times as much powder cocaine. This difference in sentencing exists notwithstanding the fact that cocaine is cocaine, and there are no physiological differences in effect between the powder and the crack form of the drug.

The difference in crack/powder cocaine sentencing is significant because African Americans are more likely to use crack, while white drug users are more likely to use powder cocaine. Since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which first enacted the crack/powder sentencing disparity, virtually all federal cocaine prosecutions have been against African Americans charged with the possession or sale of crack cocaine. Although, the disproportionate racial impact of the Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986 has been noted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, neither Congress nor the executive branch has moved to rectify the disparities in the law.

The disparity in cocaine sentencing is obvious and may be traced to the language of the underlying statute. Even in the absence of such a manifest cause of discrimination, African Americans have traditionally received more severe sentences than similarly situated whites. Although it is by no means conclusive, there is substantial evidence that racial discrimination within the criminal justice system is the cause of the sentencing disparities that exist between Blacks and whites. Numerous surveys have found racial disparities in the sentencing process and attributed those disparities to racial discrimination. For example, a study by Miethe and Moore in 1984 found that African Americans received longer sentences than whites and that African Americans were less likely to benefit from lower sentences as a result of plea-bargaining. Likewise, Welch, Spohn, and Gruhl reviewed convictions and sentences in six cities nationwide in 1985. They found that African Americans were substantially more likely to be sentenced to prison than whites and that the disparity in incarceration rates is due to 'discrimination in the sentencing process itself.' In 1983, Baldus, Pulaski, and Woodworth subjected death sentences in Georgia to painstaking review. Using multiple regression analysis to control for over 230 nonracial factors, the researchers found that the race of the victim was the determining factor in whether a defendant received the death penalty. They found defendants who killed white victims were over four times more likely to receive a death sentence than defendants whose victims were not white. In addition, African American defendants who killed whites were eleven times more likely to receive a death sentence than white defendants who killed Blacks.

Racial discrimination in sentencing can only be worsened by efforts to make sentences tougher and harsher. The War on Drugs has spawned a panoply of 'get tough on crime' measures such as 'three strikes and you're out' and habitual offender provisions, as well as enhancements for possession of weapons and for selling drugs near schools or public housing. The cumulative effect of these sentencing policies has been to increase the proportion of convicted drug dealers sentenced to prison and increase the length of their sentences. A substantial increase in length of sentence for drug offenders is precisely what Marc Mauer found when he analyzed the impact of mandatory sentences in the federal court system. Mauer observed:

Drug offenders released from prison in 1990, many of whom had not been sentenced under mandatory provisions, had served an average of 30 months in prison. But offenders sentenced to prison in 1990-most of whom were subject to mandatory penalties-were expected to serve more than twice that term, or an average of 66 months.

Guideline sentencing has also contributed to the increase in African Americans incarcerated as a result of the drug war. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, by depriving judges of discretion, have resulted in many more defendants serving substantially longer sentences. This combined with the fact that African Americans in general usually get longer sentences than comparably situated whites, means that drug war sentencing has been particularly unkind to African Americans.

c. Driving While Black, Drug Sweeps and the Overpolicing of the African American Community

The gross disparities that exist in the criminal justice system may be traced to the differential treatment that African Americans and other people of color receive from the police. A growing body of evidence suggests that Blacks are investigated and detained by the police more frequently than are other persons in the community. This unwarranted attention from the police is a result of the longstanding racism that pervades American culture. Like all who are socialized in American culture, police officers are more suspicious of African Americans and believe they are more likely to engage in crime. Consequently, police concentrate their efforts in areas frequented by African Americans and detain African Americans at a greater rate.

In part, this concentration of effort may be designed to uncover specific illegal activity. Certain police activity, such as undercover drug buys, may be more frequent in African American communities than in other areas of a city. As a consequence, a disproportionate number of African American drug dealers may be arrested, leading to racial disparities in drug prosecutions and sentencing. To the extent that the concentration of investigation and arrests in African American communities exceeds that in white communities, without reason to believe that African Americans offend at a greater rate than whites, then such practices amount to unjustified 'over- policing.' Over-policing may also occur when the police concentrate their efforts not on illegal activity, but on legitimate citizen behavior with the hope that in the process of investigation some evidence of crime may be uncovered. This kind of over-policing is what occurs when police conduct drug sweeps in Black neighborhoods and detain African American motorists for 'driving while Black.'

'Driving while Black' refers to the police practice of using the traffic laws to routinely stop and detain Black motorists for the investigation of crime in the absence of probable cause or reasonable suspicion for the stop. There is reason to believe that this is a widespread practice performed by police officers throughout the nation. Many prominent African Americans have reported being victimized by these stops. Although they have unfortunately become routine, 'uch stops and detentions are by their very nature invasive and intrusive.'

The intrusive and invasive practice of detaining African American motorists without cause has occurred in other contexts as well. 'Driving while Black' is essentially a type of racial profiling. People have claimed to be the victims of racial profiling while walking on the street, shopping or strolling through department stores and malls, seeking entry into buildings, traveling through airports, or passing through immigration checkpoints. In all of these situations, African Americans are subjected to police harassment and denied the freedom of movement to which other citizens are entitled.

Perhaps the most egregious intrusion into the rights of African Americans occurs during so-called 'drug sweeps.' 'Drug sweeps' or 'street sweeps' occur when the police simply close off a neighborhood and indiscriminately detain or arrest large numbers of people without lawful justification. Police conduct street sweeps in order to subject those caught in the dragnet to questioning and searches in the absence of probable cause or reasonable suspicion. One such drug sweep, which occurred in New York City, was described in the following account:

In a publicized sweep on July 19, 1989, the Chief of the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB), led 150 officers to a block in upper Manhattan's Washington Heights. Police sealed off the block and detained virtually all of the 100 people who were present there for up to two hours, during which time the police taped numbers on the chests of those arrested, took their pictures and had them viewed by undercover officers. By the end of the operation, police made only 24 felony and two misdemeanor arrests . . . which strongly suggests there was no probable cause to seize those who were arrested.

African Americans have long had to suffer police harassment and disregard for their rights. However, the drug war made the types of police harassment described above more likely to occur. One of the key consequences of the War on Drugs is that courts have relaxed their oversight of the police. In a series of decisions written since the declaration of war on drugs, the Supreme Court has made it easier for the police to establish grounds to stop and detain motorists and pedestrians on the street. In particular, two recent decisions have made it virtually impossible for African Americans to move freely on the streets without police intervention and harassment.

In Whren v. United States, the Supreme Court held that an officer's subjective motivations for a stop were irrelevant to Fourth Amendment analysis, and that the legitimacy of the stop should solely be determined by an objective analysis of the totality of the circumstances. Under Whren, so long as an officer can offer an 'objective' reason for a detention or arrest, it does not matter whether the officer's 'real' reason for the stop was racist. In Illinois v. Wardlow, the Supreme Court ruled that the flight of a middle-aged Black man from a caravan of Chicago police officers provided reasonable suspicion for his detention and search. In the majority's view, African Americans have no legitimate reason to flee the police. Thus, the Court, in essence, established a per se rule that flight equals reasonable suspicion. As Professor Ronner has remarked, this perspective takes 'an apartheid approach to the Fourth Amendment and actively condones police harassment of minorities. '

d. No-Knock Warrants, SWAT Teams and Military-Style Police Tactics

The War on Drugs has led to the militarization of police departments across the nation. More specifically, it has led to the increased deployment of military-style tactics for crime control in African American communities, with a correspondently greater potential for death and destruction of property. As these new tactics have become commonplace, the role of police has changed, altering the character of many police departments from law enforcement agencies to military occupation forces.

The militarization of local police forces can be traced to the proliferation of paramilitary police units, often referred to as Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. Los Angeles established the first SWAT team in the 1960s. Originally, paramilitary police units were intended for use in special circumstances, such as hostage situations and terrorist attacks. In the 1960s and 70s, there were few SWAT units; those that existed were typically found in large metropolitan areas. However, the policies and practices of the drug war encouraged the use of SWAT teams to expand rapidly into small and medium sized cities throughout the country. As a consequence, 'most SWAT teams have been created in the 1980s and 1990s. ' A study by Peter Kraska and Victor Kappeler showed that by 1997, in cities with populations over 50,000, SWAT teams were operated by nearly ninety percent of police departments surveyed. Surprisingly, the survey also disclosed that seventy percent of the police departments in cities under 50,000 had paramilitary units, as well.

SWAT units have provided a conduit for the transfer of military techniques and materials into the hands of ordinary police departments. As a result of a 1994 Memorandum of Understanding between the Justice Department and the Department of Defense, civilian police departments have access to 'an array of high-tech military items previously reserved for use during wartime.' Between 1995 and 1997, the U.S. military donated 1.2 million pieces of military hardware to domestic police departments, including 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers. Other sophisticated equipment provided to police departments includes the following: 'automatic weapons with laser sights and sound suppressors, surveillance equipment such as Laser Bugs that can detect sounds within a building by bouncing a laser beam off a window, pinhole cameras, flash and noise grenades, rubber bullets, bullet-proof apparel, battering rams, and more.'

Although originally intended for extreme and dangerous situations that were beyond the response capability of regular police patrols, the ubiquity of SWAT teams means that police departments often use their paramilitary units for routine law enforcement activities. The main use of a SWAT team in departments throughout the country appears to be to support the drug war. According to Kraska and Kappeler, the respondents to their survey 'reported that the majority of call-outs were to conduct what the police call ' high risk warrant work,' mostly 'drug raids.'' Less than twenty percent of paramilitary police unit calls were for situations understood as typically amenable to SWAT team intervention. Particularly in so-called 'high crime areas,' police departments are likely to use SWAT teams as proactive units to seek out criminal activity, as opposed to using them solely to respond to a crisis situation. Kraska and Kappeler found 107 departments that used paramilitary police units as a proactive patrol in high crime areas. According to some of the SWAT team commanders that Kraska and Kappeler interviewed, '[T]his type of proactive policing-instigated not by an existing high risk situation but one generated by the police themselves-is highly dangerous for both PPU [police paramilitary unit] members and citizens.'

Warrant work conducted by SWAT teams 'consists almost exclusively of what police call 'no-knock entries.'' The potential danger of allowing police officers to enter homes and businesses without announcing their identity and purpose has been well-known since colonial times. Officers may startle residents who may seek to defend their homes. Officers may inadvertently harm residents or innocent bystanders by the use of force necessary to effect the sudden entry of targeted buildings. Breaking into buildings through surprise and stealth seems like a tactic better suited to an occupying army, then to civilian peace officers. However, the drug war has worn down the traditional resistance to the no-knock warrant. Since the onset of the drug war, courts have been willing to legalize no-knock warrants and issue them to the police. Thus, African American communities are now subject to this potentially dangerous and intimidating police technique.

The extension of paramilitary police units into everyday policing not only escalates the degree of force and violence that may be interposed between citizens and the state, it also escalates the likelihood that more forceful methods will actually be used. In the context of a war on drugs, the identification of drug users and dealers as an enemy upon whom force may be used, is not surprising. The very use of the metaphor of 'war,' as a conceptual matter, implies the use of force. As Kraska and Kappeler state:

t takes little acumen to recognize how the metaphor of 'war'--with its emphasis on occupation, suppression through force, and restoration of territory---coincides naturally with the 'new science' of the police targeting and taking control, indeed ownership, of politically defined social spaces, aggregate populations, and social problems with military-style teams and tactics.

Thus, the growing collaboration between the police and the military can be expected to have ideological consequences, as well as technological ones. As police paramilitary units train with military organizations, they may be encouraged to develop what amounts to a 'warrior mentality.' While training 'may seem to be a purely technical exercise, it actually plays a central role in paramilitary subculture,' as several scholars of police behavior have observed. The inoculation of a 'warrior mentality' in police officers, however, is inappropriate because police and military have different social functions:

The job of a police officer is to keep the peace, but not by just any means. Police officers are expected to apprehend suspected law-breakers while adhering to constitutional procedures. They are expected to use minimum force and to deliver suspects to a court of law. The soldier on the other hand, is an instrument of war. In boot camp, recruits are trained to inflict maximum damage on enemy personnel. Confusing the police function with the military function can have dangerous consequences. As Albuquerque police chief Jerry Glavin has noted, 'If [cops] have a mind-set that the goal is to take out a citizen, it will happen.'

The danger that SWAT teams pose to inner-city communities has been exposed by several incidents in which citizens have been unnecessarily harmed as a result of paramilitary police activity. In Dinuba, California, a man was wrongly killed when a SWAT team stormed his house looking for one of the man's sons. The man was shot fifteen times before he or his wife could determine who was breaking into their house and why. Albuquerque, New Mexico has experienced several controversial SWAT team killings. Professor Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska was hired by the City of Albuquerque to evaluate police department policies and procedures. 'According to Walker, 'The rate of killings by the police was just off the charts. . . . They had an organizational culture that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalating.'. . . [T]he mindset of the warrior is simply not appropriate for the civilian officer charged with enforcing the law.'

As a consequence of the War on Drugs, the use of military-style weapons and tactics by police departments throughout the nation has become routine. Police departments are locked in a race to see who can arm themselves with the most powerful weaponry available for civilian use. Yet, the easy manner in which military technology can be obtained, and the militaristic attitudes that police officers using this technology also acquire, pose potential dangers to citizens who are unfortunate enough to encounter paramilitary police units, especially those African Americans who live in the areas where these units regularly patrol.

3. Tonry's Thesis: Did Drug Policy Makers Intentionally Target the Black Community?

In 1995, Michael Tonry, a criminologist and law professor at the University of Minnesota, wrote a book published by the Oxford University Press entitled 'Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment in America.' In his book, Tonry proffered a thesis, which generated a significant amount of controversy. Tonry charged that the racial disparities in the criminal justice system were not merely happenstance, but the result of a 'calculated effort foreordained to increase [the] percentages [of Blacks in prison].' According to Tonry, the planners of the drug war knew that the War on Drugs was unnecessary, and that the policies they selected to fight the War on Drugs would not work. More critically, Tonry charged that the drug war's planners were aware that the ineffective policies they proposed to implement would adversely affect African American males.

The War on Drugs was unnecessary, according to Tonry, because drug use was already declining in the United States, and had been doing so for several years. If less and less Americans were using drugs, then a costly war to reduce drug usage would not seem to make sense. More importantly, Tonry charged, even if the drug war was necessary to address a burgeoning problem with illegal drugs in the United States, the policies the drug warriors selected to deal with that problem were not likely to work. Tonry argues that changes in drug usage are best effected through a combination of supply reduction and demand reduction strategies. The anti-drug policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations were skewed too far in favor of supply reduction approaches to be effective. The drug policy strategists who planned the drug war, Tonry asserts, knew this.

Tonry's most explosive charges addressed the racial imbalance in drug war motivated arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. According to Tonry, 'The War on Drugs foreseeably and unnecessarily blighted the lives of hundreds of thousands of young disadvantaged lack Americans.' Tonry believes the planners of the drug war knew their decision to increase penalties for drug possession and sale would adversely and disproportionately affect African Americans because while white middle-class drug use was declining, other data showed that drug use among poor, urban African Americans and Hispanics remained steady. In Tonry's words:

The white-shirted-and-suspendered officials of the Office of National Drug Control Policy understood the arcane intricacies of NIDA surveys, DUF, and DAWN better than anyone else in the United States. They knew that drug abuse was falling among the vast majority of the population. They knew that drug use was not declining among disadvantaged members of the urban underclass. They knew that the War on Drugs would be fought mainly in the minority areas of American cities and that those arrested and imprisoned would disproportionately be young blacks and Hispanics.

Thus, the adverse impact of the drug war could not be accidental. The architects of the drug war had to know who would be most affected by their policies. They had to understand what Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out in 1993 when he said 'y choosing prohibition [of drugs] we are choosing to have an intense crime problem concentrated among minorities.' At best, according to Tonry, the explosion in the Black prison population was 'a foreseen but not an intended consequence' of the War on Drugs. At worst, Tonry says, it was 'the product of malign neglect'-a consequence that was malicious and evil.

If the architects of the drug war knew their plans would have devastating impact on the African American community, then they apparently did not care. What could provide the motive for such an assault on African Americans? According to Tonry, the motive was two-fold. First, Tonry claims that to the extent the Reagan and Bush administrations attempted to craft an actual drug policy, they intended to use the criminalization of behaviors disproportionately found in the African American and Hispanic community to shape and encourage anti-drug values and beliefs in the white community. Thus, the drug war was 'an exercise in moral education' that inflicted great damage on young African Americans and Hispanics 'primarily for the benefit of the great mass of, mostly white, non-disadvantaged Americans.' But Tonry suggests there is another, more sinister, reason for the sacrifice of the young African American victims of the drug war. According to Tonry, the drug war was 'launched to achieve political, not policy objectives.' Reagan's advisors wanted to reap the political benefits of appearing tough on drugs at a time when drug use had fallen into disfavor with the American public. The drug war, then, was a cynical way to 'use . . . disadvantaged lack Americans as a means to the achievement of politician's electoral ends.'

. . .

To fully understand the significance of the drug trade and the oppression of African people and other people of color, one must recognize the central role drug trafficking has played in the European conquest of other cultures and the maintenance of white supremacy worldwide. Addictive and deleterious substances have historically been used to undermine non-European societies and further white interests. In this connection, drugs can be used to weaken a country or culture internally and limit its ability to resist white economic or cultural intrusion. This classic use of drugs for political purposes is what happened to China during the Opium Wars. The supply of alcohol to Native Americans in North America is also a primary example of the use of drugs for oppression.

In more recent times, drugs have been used to advance the political interests of European and European-derived countries in two additional ways. First, as a means to generate finances for covert or 'off the book' activities, and secondly, as a way to reward collaborators and favored parties in countries under attack with a lucrative franchise. In 1946, the French began a secret war against the Viet Minh in Indochina, which they financed by taking over the opium trade in that region. The covert action branch of the French intelligence service, Service d'action, transported large amounts of opium into Saigon and used the profits from the drug trade for covert operations. The United States used the same tactics when it inherited the Indochinese war from the French. To support its mercenary armies, the CIA ferried the opium its clients produced out of the hills of Laos to urban markets. The CIA later relied on heroin smuggling to finance covert operations in Afghanistan and cocaine trafficking to fund military support for the Nicaraguan Contras.

Many in the African American community have long believed that the United States government has been implicated in the drug epidemics that have swept through the Black community over the years. Many African Americans have reached this conclusion after observing the correlation between periods of high Black political activism swiftly followed by periods of easy drug availability in the Black community. In August of 1996, news reports surfaced that stoked African American fears that the government was behind the influx of drugs into the Black community. Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in the San Jose Mercury News, alleging that the government was allowing Nicaraguan Contra supporters to smuggle crack into south-central Los Angeles in order to support their war against the Nicaraguan government. 'For the better part of a decade,' wrote Webb, 'a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerilla army run by the CIA.' The stories caused a sensation at the time and led to the extraordinary appearance of CIA Director John Deutch at a town hall meeting in south-central Los Angeles in an attempt to defuse the anger of the Black community. Although Webb's story was viciously attacked in some quarters, it was just the tip of the iceberg. Both preceding and subsequent investigations have bolstered Webb's disclosures and expanded the range of government culpability.

While the government was trumpeting its War on Drugs and an anti-drug culture ideology, it was in fact deeply involved in the drug trade. The government had organized and financed organizations that were importing massive amounts of drugs into the African American community and the government looked the other way while they did it. At the same time, the government was vigorously enforcing harsh drug laws that led to police harassment and intimidation of African American communities and the mass arrest and incarceration of low-level drug dealers. These law enforcement efforts had enormously deleterious effects on the entire African American community and did little to stem the tide of illegal drugs. Consequently, the Black community was targeted by a vicious three- pronged assault; a drug epidemic with all of the attendant social, health and economic costs; a draconian prosecution-centered drug policy that did not stop the flow of illegal drugs and exacerbated the Black community's social and economic problems; and the callous exploitation of the African American community's misery to advance the government's larger geo-political ends.

[1]. Professor of Law, University of Florida, Levin College of Law.

[1]. By 'War on Drugs' I mean the anti-drug policies and law enforcement practices commenced by the Reagan administration in the fall of 1982 and continued by the Bush and Clinton administrations until at least the end of the year 2000. This period is only the most recent manifestation of America's ongoing war against drugs. Clarence Lusane states that '[n]early every President since World War II has declared a 'war on drugs.'' Clarence Lusane, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs 77 (1991). Steven Witsotsky has identified three wars against drugs in American history. See Steven Witsotsky, Beyond the War on Drugs: Overcoming a Failed Public Policy xvii-xviii (1990). The first began with the passage of the Harrison Act in 1914 and includes the period of its enforcement by the Department of the Treasury. Id. at xvii. President Nixon commenced the second in the late 1960's. Id. at xviii. Nixon's 'total offensive' against drugs set the pattern for the drug war waged by Reagan, Bush and Clinton. See id. For more on America's earlier drug wars, see Edward J. Epstein, Agency of Fear (1977) (examining anti-drug campaigns from the turn of the century through the Nixon presidency). It remains to be seen whether the younger Bush will continue the federal government's drug war policies, since law enforcement resources and priorities have shifted to 'the war against terrorism.'

 

[roots69]

A classic book!! Must read!!


The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow

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By Michelle Alexander

Over since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.
Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

• There are more African Americans under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
• As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80 percent.) These men are part of a growing undercaste—not class, caste—permanently relegated by law to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

There is, of course, a colorblind explanation for all this: crime rates. Our prison population has exploded from about 300,000 to more than 2 million in a few short decades, it is said, because of rampant crime. We’re told that the reason so many black and brown men find themselves behind bars and ushered into a permanent, second-class status is because they happen to be the bad guys.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades—they are currently at historical lows—but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.

The drug war has been brutal—complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, andsweeps of entire neighborhoods—but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.

That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.

This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That’s why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it’s all about violent crime.

Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.

The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes—sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.

Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove that they could be even tougher on the dark-skinned pariahs. In President Bill Clinton’s boastful words, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.” The facts bear him out. Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. He and the “New Democrats” championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how minor the offense) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps, for life. Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal, if you’ve been labeled a felon.

Facing Facts
But what about all those violent criminals and drug kingpins? Isn’t the drug war waged in ghetto communities because that’s where the violent offenders can be found? The answer is yes... in made-for-TV movies. In real life, the answer is no.

The drug war has never been focused on rooting out drug kingpins or violent offenders. Federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses. What gets rewarded in this war is sheer numbers of drug arrests. To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use 80 percent of the cash, cars, and homes seized from drug suspects, thus granting law enforcement a direct monetary interest in the profitability of the drug market.

The results have been predictable: people of color rounded up en masse for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, only one out of five for sales. Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s—the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war—nearly 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city.

In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time—a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of color are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for.
Affirmative action, though, has put a happy face on this racial reality. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and become CEOs or corporate lawyers—not to mention president of the United States—causes us all to marvel at what a long way we’ve come.

Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. Nearly a quarter of African Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same percentage as in 1968. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that’s with affirmative action!

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our “colorblind” society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure—the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.
This is not Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. This is not the promised land. The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.

Michelle Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010). The former director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Northern California, she also served as a law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently, she holds a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. This article was previously published at tomdispatch.com.

 

[roots69]

Rooted in Slavery: Prison Labor Exploitation

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Reprinted from RP&E Vol. 14, No. 2: Just Jobs? Organizing for Economic Justice

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By Jaron Browne

The United States has once again surpassed its own world record for incarcerating the highest percentage of its population. According to a report released by the Bureau of Prison Statistics, one out of every 32 adults was in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005. But the crisis of mass incarceration is not felt evenly in the United States: Race defines every aspect of the criminal justice system, from police targeting, to crimes charged, and rates of conviction. African American men between the ages of 20 and 39 account for nearly one-third of all sentenced prisoners.[1]

Over the last three decades, the explosion of the prison population in the United States paralleled the stagnation in the global economy. In the early 1970s, the United States and the G7 nations began implementing neoliberal policies, moving production from the North to the global South, pushing entire sectors of workers in the United States out of the economy. As the economic role of the working class in the United States shifted from manufacturing to staffing a rising service industry, African American workers faced staggering rates of unemployment. The mid-1970s is also the first period when the incarceration rate in the United States began to rise, doubling in the 1980s, and doubling again in the 1990s.

It may surprise some people that as the number of people without jobs increases, the number of working people actually increases—they become prison laborers. Everyone inside has a job. There are currently over 70 factories in California’s 33 prisons alone. Prisoners do everything from textile work and construction, to manufacturing and service work. Prisoners make shoes, clothing, and detergent; they do dental lab work, recycling, metal production, and wood production; they operate dairies, farms, and slaughterhouses.

United States Prisons mirror Free Enterprise Zones in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the prison is a reflection of the Third World within the United States. Prisoners are not protected by minimum wage laws or overtime, and are explicitly barred from the right to organize and collectively bargain. In fact, the conditions for the overwhelmingly black and Latino men and women inside the United States prison system are so similar to that of workers in the maquiladoras and sweatshops of the global South that in 1995, Oregon politicians were even courting Nike to move their production from Indonesia into Oregon prisons. “We propose that (Nike) take a look at their transportation costs and their labor costs,” Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix explained in an interview with researcher Reese Erlich, “We could offer [competitive] prison inmate labor” in Oregon.[2]

Rooted in Slavery
To understand the conditions that have allowed such an exploitative industry to develop, we have to look at the origin of the United States prison system itself. Before the abolition of slavery there was no real prison system in the United States. Punishment for crime consisted of physical torture, referred to as corporal or capital punishment. While the model prison in the United States was built in Auburn, New York in 1817, it wasn’t until the end of the Civil War, with the official abolition of slavery, that the prison system took hold.

In 1865, the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery for all people except those convicted of a crime and opened the door for mass criminalization. Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave black workers. In the late 19th-century South, an extensive prison system was developed in the interest of maintaining the racial and economic relationship of slavery.
Louisiana’s famous Angola Prison illustrates this history best. In 1880, this 8000-acre family plantation was purchased by the state of Louisiana and converted into a prison. Slave quarters became cell units. Now expanded to 18,000 acres, the Angola plantation is tilled by prisoners working the land—a chilling picture of modern day chattel slavery.

Black Codes and Convict Leasing
When slavery was legally abolished, a new set of laws called the Black Codes emerged to criminalize legal activity for African Americans. Through the enforcement of these laws, acts such as standing in one area of town or walking at night, for example, became the criminal acts of “loitering” or “breaking curfew,” for which African Americans were imprisoned. As a result of Black Codes, the percentage of African Americans in prison grew exponentially, surpassing whites for the first time.[3]

A system of convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners in the South to literally purchase prisoners to live on their property and work under their control. Through this system, bidders paid an average $25,000 a year to the state, in exchange for control over the lives of all of the prisoners. The system provided revenue for the state and profits for plantation owners. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 prisoners, and all but 115 were African American.[4]

Much like the system of slavery from which it emerged, convict leasing was a violent and abusive system. The death rate of prisoners leased to railroad companies between 1877 and 1879 was 16 percent in Mississippi, 25 percent in Arkansas, and 45 percent in South Carolina.[5] The stories of violence and torture eventually led to massive reform and abolition movements involving alliances between prisoner organizations, labor unions, and community groups. By the 1930s, every state had abolished convict leasing.[6]

Chain Gangs
As the southern states began to phase out convict leasing, prisoners were increasingly made to work in the most brutal form of forced labor, the chain gang. The chain gangs originated as a part of a massive road development project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of prisoners, shackling five together while they worked, ate, and slept. Following Georgia’s example, the use of chain gangs spread rapidly throughout the South.[7]
For over 30 years, African American prisoners (and some white prisoners) in the chain gangs were worked at gunpoint under whips and chains in a public spectacle of chattel slavery and torture. Eventually, the brutality and violence associated with chain gang labor in the United States gained worldwide attention. The chain gang was abolished in every state by the l950s, almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War.[8]

Prison Labor Exploitation in the 21st Century
Just a few decades later, we are witnessing the return of all of these systems of prison labor exploitation. Private corporations are able to lease factories in prisons, as well as lease prisoners out to their factories. Private corporations are running prisons-for-profit. Government-run prison factories operate as multibillion dollar industries in every state, and throughout the federal prison system. In the most punitive and racist prison systems, we are even witnessing the return of the chain gang. Prisoner resistance and community organizing has been able to defeat some of these initiatives, but in Arizona, Maricopa County continues to operate the first women’s chain gang in the history of the United States.[9]

Shifts in the United States economy and growing crises of underemployment and poverty in communities of color have created the conditions for the current wave of mass incarceration, and the boom in prison labor exploitation. In the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco, a historically black community with an estimated 50 percent unemployment rate, the community is facing criminalization, incarceration, and mass displacement as a result of gentrification. San Francisco, along with eight other counties in California, is implementing gang injunctions—curfews, anti-loitering, and anti-association laws that function very similar to Black Codes for black, Latino, and Asian youth—using the pretext of gang prevention to track young men into the prison system to become prison labor, while preparing the community for redevelopment and gentrification. People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) is building power among Bayview residents and fighting for economic development that addresses the interests of the black community, which will create alternatives to prison labor exploitation.[10] Struggles like this are being waged all across the country and provide an opening to link the demands for worker rights, community rights, and prisoner rights.

The fight against the exploitation of prison labor is at once a fight against racial profiling and mass incarceration, and also for genuine economic development in black, Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. The labor movement in the United States has a responsibility to support prisoner unions such as the Missouri Prison Labor Union (MPLU), which is fighting for higher wages and collective bargaining, and to challenge labor unions who dismiss prisoners as stealing jobs from the “good law-abiding workers” on the outside. As Sidney Williams of the MLPU states, “In this struggle we seek to regain our human dignity.” That is the demand of the slavery abolition movement of the 21st century.

Endnotes

1. There are more than 46 black men in prison nationwide per 1000 black men in the population, whereas the rate for white men is four per 1000. Democracy Now, “United States prison population jumps 3.7 percent to two million; Increase of 700 inmates every week.” Wednesday, July 30, 2003.
2. Erlich, Reese, “Prison Labor: Workin’ For The Man.” Covert Action Quarterly #54, Fall 1995.
3. In Tennessee, for example, African Americans were only 33 percent of the prison population in 1865, by 1877 the number had swelled to 67 percent of the total prison population. Shelden, Randall G., “Slavery in the 3rd Millennium: Part II—Prisons and Convict Leasing Help Perpetuate Slavery.” The Black Commentator, Issue 142, June 16, 2005.
4. Green, Fletcher M., “Some Aspects of the Convict Lease System in the Southern States.” Essays in Southern History, vol. 31, (Durham: University of North Carolina Press), 1949, pp. 116-120.
5. Hartnett, Stephen, “Prison Labor, Slavery & Capitalism In Historical Perspective” (c. 1997). Referencing Novak, D.A., The Wheel of Servitude: Black Forced Labor After Slavery.
6. Lichtenstein, Alexander, “Good Roads and Chain Gangs in the Progressive South: The Negro Convict is a Slave.” The Journal of Southern History, (Athens, Georgia: Southern Historical Association), 1993, p. 87.
7. Wilson, Walter, Forced Labor in the United States, (New York: AMS Press, Inc.), 1933, p. 68.
8. Prison Law Office, The California State Prisoners Handbook, Section 3.17, pp. 79-80.
9. Reuters. “Sheriff runs female chain gang.” www.cnn.com. October 29, 2003.
10. POWER is a San Francisco-based multiracial organization of low-wage workers and tenants. For more information, see www.unite-to-fight.org.

 

[roots69]

The Untold Story of Mass Incarceration
The Untold Story of Mass Incarceration

Ronald Reagan, with Nancy Reagan, signing the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Photo – Public Domain

By Vesla M. Weaver —

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
James Forman, Jr.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27 (cloth)

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform
John F. Pfaff
Basic Books, $27 (cloth)

I once got into a heated argument with my husband about drug use. I made the offhanded remark that when our infant son reached adolescence, “I will tell him to stay away from the hard stuff; if he must do something, try a little pot.” I have not seen the look on my spouse’s face before or since. After questioning my sanity, he countered that our son would absolutely not touch any drugs: “AT ALL. Never. No way.” My point of course had not been that I would encourage our son to use drugs. It had rather been to draw a crucial distinction between very addictive drugs and those of the weaker variety, knowing that teens will sometimes dabble in the occasional joint, no harm done. But my son’s father is from a community that during his upbringing saw drug use of any kind as derailing, a certain gateway to addiction, jail, and a lifetime of hardship. The casual joint smoker was inseparable from the woman he would see frozen and hunched over in a heroin high by the subway each morning. And both were an insufferable drag on his community.

Forman makes an argument that many scholars have shied away from: that black political leaders played a role in shaping drug crime policy and, ultimately, the consequences of those policies on their neighborhoods.

Readers will come to understand this perspective after reading James Forman, Jr.’s hard-hitting new book, Locking Up Our Own. Just as my spouse was adamantly opposed to my distinction, one I just assumed most of us shared, Forman contends that black leaders in Washington, D.C., during the 1970s vigorously and successfully countered attempts by white lawmakers to lessen the severity of drug laws. Indeed, in the face of arguments from some sectors that marijuana was not a gateway to criminal activity and that users of harder drugs should be treated more leniently than sellers, black leaders doubled down in pursuit of toughened criminal penalties, even for casual users. But not just that. They mobilized behind an agenda aimed at correcting what they perceived as a lack of law enforcement in their communities, as well as a “revolving door” approach to justice. They wanted to create stiffer drug penalties, criminalize more behaviors related to dealing drugs and wielding guns, and expand police authority to surveil and arrest. Black Washingtonians played a crucial role in shaping crime policy and, ultimately, the consequences that those policies would have on their neighborhoods.

Forman asks a question many scholars have shied away from: if mass incarceration is a project of white “law-and-order” politicians and their racially threatened electorates, how did Washington, D.C., a black-governed city with a majority-black police force—the nation’s “chocolate city”—end up with such punitive drug policies and aggressive policing tactics, to the devastation of the city’s poorest communities? When black councilmembers were presented with the option to make marijuana possession punishable by a fine rather than prison time, why didn’t they take it? And when authoring one of the nation’s harshest gun laws, why couldn’t they see what would eventually befall their young? In short, how is it possible that the black political class in Washington would mimic much of the same rhetoric, legislation, and policing strategies found in the broader war on crime?

Evading easy answers, Forman persuasively situates black Washingtonians’ decisions within a context of pitched violence and addiction and an under-responsive criminal justice system. Washington’s turn toward drug prohibition came at a moment before the drug wars, when addicts rarely went to prison. The idea that stricter laws would land many black youth in jail was difficult to fathom but the immediate scourge of violence and drugs drenched the city’s black neighborhoods in fear. The murder rate in Washington had multiplied, guns were easily obtained, and so prevalent were heroin, crack, and PCP that “the police had adopted the strategy of opening fire hydrants and flooding the gutters to wash away drugs and syringes.” In 1975 it was as reasonable, Forman argues, to see marijuana as a “gateway to heroin” as it is now to see marijuana as “a gateway to the criminal justice system.” What looks unjust today—the asset forfeitures, the profiling of the Rapid Deployment Unit, the jump-out squads, the heavy penalties for small-time users—looked acceptable to “many black citizens facing the horrors of the crack epidemic” in the 1970s and ’80s.

Despite the impressive rise in attention to racialized punishment and policing, the role that blacks themselves have played in shaping our criminal justice system and responses to violence have received markedly little attention. Given the currency black crime has wielded historically, what historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad calls the “enduring . . . discourse of black dysfunctionality,” perhaps scholars have recoiled from the topic. Against this backdrop, Forman’s book is brave, offering a nuanced examination of how black communities and their elected representatives wrestled with rising violence and drug addiction; how they came to embrace a war on drugs and aggressive policing tactics years before Reagan’s war or the advent of broken windows policing; and how they came to eventually regret the surveillance, forfeiture, and criminal records they helped create.

An ill-fated desire to protect black people led black Washington elites to advocate a tough, no-tolerance line on drugs.

Forman undoes the idea that the black elite exhibited what Michelle Alexander calls “an awkward silence” around punishment. Black lawmakers and residents were vocal, proactive, and important agenda-setters. Indeed, it was an ill-fated desire to protect black people, Forman argues, that led black Washington elites to advocate a tough, no-tolerance line, just as my spouse had. Witnessing their communities reeling from violent drug markets and addiction, black leaders practiced what Forman calls the “politics of responsibility” (in a nice twist on the politics of respectability).

Forman’s book shares some key arguments and methodology with Michael Fortner’s Black Silent Majority (2015), which argues that Harlem’s middle-class black anti-crime crusaders were largely responsible for the Rockefeller drug laws and harsh policing tactics unleashed on the lower class. As case studies of Washington, D.C., and New York respectively, Forman’s and Fortner’s books each pursue the thesis that the black community was more responsible for the rise of the carceral state and aggressive policing than is generally supposed. Far from maintaining Alexander’s “awkward silence,” both authors show that anxiety over crime generated a vocal response by black community leaders and lawmakers, one that disproportionately punished blacks by increasing sentences, legislating more crimes, and expanding police presence in black neighborhoods.

Readers familiar with the critiques of Fortner’s book—including Donna Murch’s in Boston Review—will find that Locking Up Our Own evokes some of the same concerns. Both rely heavily on telling the story through black newspapers, which historian Nathan Connolly reminds us were not the representative, agenda-free, and classless spaces Fortner and Forman assume them to be:

Black papers, especially the longer-lived ones like the New York Amsterdam News, tended to veer toward bourgeois visions of black community. In the realpolitik of interracial America, black newspaper owners colluded routinely with white powerbrokers to secure much needed resources for working- and middle-class African Americans. That collusion almost always included assertions of bourgeois black unity, a condemnation of the black poor, and a professed commitment to those forms of state violence white Americans most widely found acceptable.

However, Forman ultimately delivers a more compelling account in several respects. Unlike Fortner, who gives the microphone to a few extreme black voices and asserts that they represent a silent majority, Forman’s account is based on a broad swath of political actors, thought-leaders, and representatives. In addition, his account is based not just in the Amsterdam News but in the actual minutes of city council meetings, which show that debate was tense and votes on measures were often very close. Forman highlights that, at least in Washington, the black poor and working class were often on board with (and voted for) policy responses that ended up criminalizing and punishing; this is in marked contrast to Fortner’s assertion of a class war.

Forman also hones in on an important feature of black political discourse absent in Fortner: he shows that the views of political actors were often quite subtle, rarely describing problems in binary terms—either punish orinvest, either safety or racial justice, that violence sprung from either individual or structural conditions. Moreover, their beliefs were neither fixed nor monolithic: Forman shows how their sentiments shifted as the costs of the strategies became clearer and as murder declined. But most importantly, Forman does not minimize the role of racism or claim at the outset (as Fortner does) that black anti-crime mobilization was more important than racially-laden campaigns for “law and order” by white elites. Forman’s book is a compelling example of how to do local history.

How does the focus on black leaders’ mobilization for harsher punishment distort our perceptions of their full political lives?

To ground his story, Forman introduces us to the Washington municipal leaders, local black clergy, and black nationalists who saw themselves as guardians of the black community, bent on “protecting the legacy of the civil rights movement.” For these activists, safety and abolishing drugs were fundamentally civil rights issues that would save black lives. Drug decriminalization might work in white communities, these leaders thought, but a strong assault against drugs was needed in poor black communities, where youth already faced more obstacles and the streets were made perilous by drug crime. Decriminalization, in their view, would be tantamount to abandoning black youth. Some local activists adopted even more aggressive anti-drug rhetoric: the Blackman’s Development Center, led by prominent black nationalist Colonel Hassan Jeru-Ahmed, argued that drugs were another tool for whites to oppress black men and equated addiction to enslavement. Blacks who trafficked drugs were traitors to the race and needed to be wiped out. Once framed in these ways, “the punitive response was hard to resist.”

It was their concern for black lives that gave municipal leaders such as Douglas Moore and John Wilson the resolve to pass legislation that would confine to prison those who committed crimes while in possession of a gun. This concern also triggered a campaign to toughen Washington’s sentencing guidelines for drugs in 1981, led by the city’s first black police chief, Burtell Jefferson, and John Ray, a councilman. And it also was echoed in Eric Holder’s defense of Operation Clean Sweep’s undercover police jump-out squads, which made 46,000 drug arrests in a year and a half alone, ushering in “a new era of policing, one that would endure long after the decline of the open-air drug markets to which the operation had initially responded.” A call to protect black communities was also at work in Initiative 9, the law that substantially raised the mandatory sentence for violent crimes while armed and raised the minimum for selling drugs to 4, 2, and 1 years for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana respectively. Two years after it passed, the number of prosecutions for drug offenses soared 300 percent, from 838 in 1982 to 2,277 in 1984. Crucially, it was passed in all of the city’s black neighborhoods (and received its most pronounced support in poor areas) and failed in just one—a majority white neighborhood.

Representatives such as Moore, Ray, and Wilson were not acting in bad faith, nor were they naïve. They recognized the immediate costs of a racist police force that targeted their communities; but an increase in black arrests for drugs was a necessary price—unfortunate, yes, but ultimately less harmful than the decimation they were witnessing. Arrests were seen as “a tax paid in exchange for the right to move in public spaces.” They also understood that calls to be tough and anti-crime were often anti-black. And they knew the history of racist campaigns to disarm blacks as well. But the murder rate of black youth and the violence brought about by the crack epidemic loomed larger. Broader solutions—treatment, better jobs and housing—were long-term solutions that Holder, Jefferson, and Fulwood supported, but which were not immediately available to them. “And in times of crisis,” Forman concludes, “even a bad answer beats no answer at all.”

Forman’s core innovation is the “politics of responsibility” idea, which meant that black leaders were as concerned with the front-end investments in their people as with the back-end investments in keeping lawbreakers accountable. Forman reminds readers at several key points that Moore, Rey, Wilson, and others advocated not only for more punishment but for an “all of the above” approach that would lessen violence and drugs and attack inequality. He parts ways with Fortner in a crucial respect, noting that black leaders never abandoned a commitment to “root cause” solutions to violence. This meant that they also vigorously supported housing programs, jobs, better health care, an expanded welfare state, and quality schooling, and they opposed Reagan’s drastic cuts to social programs. They sought harsher laws and better opportunities simultaneously. But in his richly detailed account, the weight of the prose, granular archival documentation, and even the bombastic title, Locking Up Our Own, goes to showing black leaders asking for one solution—tougher laws and greater enforcement of the laws.

Despite an incredibly powerful and well-researched account, after I finished reading, I couldn’t help but wonder how Forman’s focus on black leaders’ mobilization for harsher punishment distorts our perceptions of their full political lives. What else did they put on the agenda that was ignored because it did not square with politically resonant discourses of criminalization? And how did their response interact with the broader institutional context? This was the decade, after all, when Washington, D.C., was being used as a testing site for national anti-crime efforts and billions of dollars were flowing into local criminal justice efforts, as Elizabeth Hinton has shown in her recent book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (2016).

The fact that black calls for more punishment always win the day—while calls for greater investment are ignored—points to the dynamic of ‘selective hearing’ that so often characterizes black relationships to power.

For instance, in the chapter on guns, Forman discusses John Conyers’s harsh legislative proposals on gun bans. But he does not discuss Conyers’s other main priorities, which commanded much more of his attention than guns—namely, his desire for a full employment bill, his efforts to create a Citizens Community Anti-Crime program, his opposition to the crime control legislation foisted on the district by Nixon, and his almost endless politicking in the 1970s about the necessity of solving crime’s root causes. We see Maxine Waters as an assemblywoman in California successfully increase criminal penalties for PCP in 1978 but not her role in banning police from strip searching people suspected of misdemeanors. We hear Jesse Jackson and Marion Barry likening drug dealers to Klansmen and slavery but rarely their statements in support of ending poverty. Forman concludes, hoping to elicit the reader’s sympathy, “Instead of an all-of-the-above response to drugs, violence, and disorder, black America had gotten only one of the above: punitive crime measures.” But with statements accompanied by little specific detail of their “all of the above approach,” this statement is much less powerful than it could have been.

Forman is masterful at showing that these issues were contested among black Washington elites and that calls for more punishment came before the fallout of such an approach came into view. However, I suspect that Forman downplays the degree to which black Washingtonians were both more uneasy and more prescient than he implies. In a column in the Amsterdam News in 1973, Leroy Clark wrote:

I would like to give some warnings—which shouldn’t even be necessary—warnings against us—you and I—making the addict and even the addict pusher the ‘new ******’ and the ‘new spick’—for it can’t be done without your help. And I say these warnings shouldn’t be necessary because, unless you have forgotten, when has ‘law and order’ ever meant protection for our elderly Mrs. Jones, so that she won’t have her pocketbook snatched with her little change in it? When has it ever been more that a racial signal to galvanize crippled white minds to do battle against us—to divert them away from the sources of their real oppression?

The tragedy of the United States’ routine “one of the above” response to black “all of the above” requests for criminal justice reform raises questions about the fundamental limits of democratic responsiveness to black communities. The fact that black calls for more punishment always win the day—while calls for greater investment are suppressed or ignored—points to what Hinton, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, and I have referred to as the dynamic of “selective hearing” that so often characterizes black relationships to power. Similarly, Muhammad has spoken of black calls for punishment as a “passport for relevancy” in a society that regularly subverts black demands for social intervention.

In the final appraisal, few books surpass Forman’s in offering an account of how our criminal justice system came to be at the local level. And this is further enriched by Forman’s ability to bring his reader to the present, drawing on his extensive experience as a public defender and educator in Washington, D.C. Using firsthand narratives, he shows how Initiative 9, Operation Clean Sweep, Operation Ceasefire, and the many pieces of harsh drug-law legislation continue to damn Washington’s poorer black youth to lives of surveillance and jail.

John Pfaff’s message in Locked In is direct: we are looking for the causes of America’s incarceration crisis in all the wrong places. To argue his case, he positions his book as an attack on what he calls “the Standard Story,” a set of beliefs about the causes of incarceration that he argues is commonplace and quite misguided. This Standard Story centers the war on drugs as the cause of incarceration’s historic rise and adds the following three auxiliary points: 1) most of our prison population is made up of nonviolent offenders; 2) long prison sentences fueled our prison boom; and 3) mass incarceration derives from changes at the federal level.

Pfaff’s Standard Story is a strawman: no scholar working today accepts these premises in total. Several have already made the point that we have overemphasized the war on drugs, that we focus too little on violence, and that while the private prison industry is a sexy topic, it is also a limiting one: the most prominent include Hinton, Jonathan Simon, Lisa Miller, and Marie Gottschalk. It is fairly common these days for scholars to note that even if we were to free all drug offenders and abolish both the entire federal prison system and the whole private prison system, engorged prison populations would still be a crisis, one that would continue to set us apart from the rest of the world’s democracies. And Pfaff pretty much buys the standard functionalist argument that our modern carceral regime arose from an attempt to deal with actual crime, without reflecting on the many ways that the modern state actively channels black youth into a system that finds increasingly inventive, perverse ways to define their lives as criminal.

Underappreciated in most scholarly accounts of the carceral state, local prosecutors have been largely responsible for driving prison expansion since the early 1990s.

In spite of these shortcomings, Pfaff offers a unique and quite compelling thesis for what is driving incarceration, at least since the early 1990s: he argues that prison expansion was caused largely by local prosecutors. Underappreciated in most scholarly accounts of America’s carceral state (and in public reform discussions until very recently), county prosecutors control who is imprisoned because of the “unfettered, unreviewable power” they have over a key point in the criminal justice process: the decision of whether to charge a person, what offense to charge, how many charges to bring or whether to dismiss a case, and whether to invoke prior offenses. These decisions are pivotal in determining who is locked up and who remains free. More than the judge, more than the legislative statute governing our responses to crime, and more than the decision by police to arrest someone, “the person driving up [prison] admissions is the prosecutor.” Almost every powerful actor in the criminal justice system has checks on their power and is subject to important oversight mechanisms. Except prosecutors. And given this power and lack of oversight, it is remarkable that few scholars have engaged in a systematic analysis of prosecutorial power and its excesses.

Prosecutors escaped our notice even as their actions rapidly changed, Pfaff contends. From the mid-1990s on, prosecutors steeply increased the rate at which they filed charges; between 1994 and 2008, the number of felony prosecutions rose from 1.4 million to 1.9 million in the 34 states with reliable data. Otherwise stated, the odds of catching a felony case once arrested soared (rising from 1 in 3 arrests leading to a felony case to 2 in 3). And because the odds of landing in prison once charged with a felony did not change, this meant that more and more people went to jail despite an overall decrease in the number of arrests during the same period. Indeed, Pfaff shows that the rise in prison admits derived almost entirely from prosecutors bringing many more cases, particularly against violent offenders. This growth in felony filings happened at the very same time as—and in spite of—the nation’s historic drop in crime rates.

Plea bargaining has become prosecutors’ weapon of choice, with strict mandatory sentences wielded by aggressive prosecutors as a credible threat to induce people to plead guilty to avoid unconscionably long sentences. Thanks in large part to these strong-arm tactics, an astonishing 95 percent of Americans charged with a crime end up pleading guilty, usually to a lesser crime. As a result, “nearly everyone in prison ended up there by signing a piece of paper in a dingy conference room in a county office building, or in a dingier room in a local jail.”

In general, Pfaff is a careful statistician. At times though, his claims do not jive. For example, he makes an important point that by the time Reagan’s drug war commences, the incarceration rate had already expanded 80 percent. Yet so doing, he appears to undermine his own analysis of prosecutors and their dramatically increased case filings, which is a 1990s story. As Gottschalk reminded us years ago, the carceral state’s scaffolding was built up over a very long time, long before it registered in incarceration rates. But Pfaff basically ignores infrastructural developments that Hinton and Gottschalk have masterfully elucidated. He also claims that prison growth is the result of more people being admitted to prison “for fairly short terms” but then later says it is not “the case that we are in fact admitting more marginal offenders to prison.” If the latter is right, then it has to be the case that we are admitting more serious, violent offenders to prison for short terms. But this is never explicitly demonstrated.

One of Pfaff’s key contentions is that, for all the hubbub over legislative moves to increase prison stays, the facts show otherwise: time served barely increased and so cannot be a major driver of prison expansion. To make this point, he looks at the change in time to release from 2000 to 2010. Not much changes. However, it is curious that he does not look at a longer time horizon given his argument that prison is rising before Reagan’s war on drugs. This is where the argument breaks down. If one extends the trend further back than 2000, inmates began serving longer terms for many offenses, particularly violent. For example, in 1964 the median time served for whites for homicide was 46 months; in 2005, these offenders were serving 66 months.

Median time served expanded even more for blacks for homicide, from 51 to 108 months from 1964 to 2005. Also, it is quite possible that by the 2000s, what characterizes our system’s transformation was both a flow and a stock: more people were being admitted for short stints at the very same time as a large portion of inmates started staying longer. The median would not register much movement even while time served for some had lengthened. And finally, focusing on county-level incarceration rates is a strange choice; as Pfaff himself notes many times, prison inmates are counted in the often distant counties they are confined in, not the places they call home.

Prosecutors enjoy unchecked power over a key point in the criminal justice process: the decision of whether to charge a person, what offense to charge, how many charges to bring, whether to dismiss a case, and whether to invoke prior offenses.

Pfaff is at his best when illustrating the profound structural biases that facilitate prosecutorial overreach: because counties fund prosecutors but prisons are funded by the state, prosecutors can be aggressive—go on prosecution sprees, even—and not bear any of the financial costs of their decisions (and probably incur political benefits). Moreover, because county jails and county probation systems come out of the county’s wallet but prisons are state-funded, “leniency is actually more expensive than severity, and severity is practically free.”

Add to this the fact that the prosecutor answers to no one at the county level besides an electorate that rarely votes him or her out. The political incentives prosecutors face to be punitive are strong—after all, it is rare that an elected official is ousted for locking up too many wrongfully convicted people. In addition, the selection of district attorneys often gives disproportionate power to suburban whites in a county, who do not bear the costs of prosecutorial punitiveness. It is an old story: those with the most power feel the least sting.

Despite this incredible power, few mechanisms exist to rein in prosecutorial power. Prosecutors are shielded from public accountability and few successful models for regulating their power exist. Pfaff writes:

It should alarm all of us as a case of democratic failure. Prosecutors are profoundly powerful. We should not be forced to guess why they do what they do, or why their behaviors or attitudes have changed over time. Prosecutors should be as closely studied, examined, pushed, and prodded as any other government official.

Pfaff’s intervention is a major step in that direction, and his book is peppered with astute observations. He notes, for example, that our prison is not just made up of an aging population; we are actually admitting more older offenders than ever before. This makes little public safety logic, since these older inmates are so much less likely to be in their peak crime-producing years. Moreover, the focus on the private prison industry has distracted us from the fact that the public prison industry faces growth incentives that are just as intense, for which reason it will fight decarceration tooth and nail. Pfaff excels at appreciating the distortionary dynamics imposed by federalism, the fragmentation of authority, the power of public sector prison unions, and how the system has several defects that encourage expansion.

That said, Pfaff is much better at showing what is not than at developing an account of what is. If prosecutors deserve more attention than we have given them, a point Pfaff argues convincingly, what explains why their power came to matter when it did? Why did prosecutors change so radically in a matter of years even as the structural incentives and design deficits mentioned above have always been present? If these are the key drivers of prison growth, why did local prosecutors across a number of locales decide to start filing more cases around exactly the same time? Did the opportunities for discretion shift or was it something about a changed bureaucratic culture, incentives, or expectations? And why did they go unchallenged?

Pfaff briefly suggests some potential reasons: an upsurge of people with past criminal records could have made prosecutors pursue more prison time and less likely to drop cases; the appalling lack of resources for public defenders could have tilted the playing field, making the system less adversarial; a substantial rise in the number of full-time prosecutors nationally, and especially in rural counties, could have increased local capacity to initiate charges; the growing political ambitions of prosecutors could have made getting tough more alluring. Pfaff does not strenuously test any of these theses, and that is a shortcoming of the work. Just as he wants us to get reforms right by honing in on the right causes, we should be equally precise about the causes of the substantial increase in prosecutorial aggressiveness. After all, an explanation that has to do with criminal records has very different policy implications than one that has to do with paltry resources for public defenders. This part of the narrative is hasty and undercooked, leaving the reader firmly convinced of the pivotal role prosecutors played in the construction of the carceral state but wondering why their influence expanded so mightily.

It is easy to see why Pfaff does not dig in. Studying prosecutors is an uphill climb because, as he reminds readers many times, almost no data exist on their decisions. For all their power, they remain a veritable “black box” in our criminal justice system. We have the Uniform Crime Reports, a survey of inmates, and several annual measures of every aspect of our criminal justice system, but no systematic data set of prosecutorial decisions or power: cases they dismiss or take forward, how many black prosecutors there are, the threatened charge verses the plea deal, variation across local offices, prosecutorial misconduct, or their relationship to other actors in the process. But to write a book about the crucial role prosecutors have played in the carceral state without deeper investigation of how they wield their discretion is to give readers a present but not allow us to open it. Pfaff could have interviewed a sample of current or past prosecutors, he could have examined prosecutor decisions in a few important localities.

He could have examined low-incarceration counties to see if there is something distinctive or more accountable about their prosecutors or the incentives, institutional arrangements, and electoral pressures they face. He could have at least told his readers what we would need to have or amass to understand what to him is the most important component of our nation’s criminal justice system and ground zero of our nation’s biggest domestic policy failure. At the end of the book, we are sadly left with a thumbnail description of what prosecutors do, how they vary, and why they changed.

Another shortcoming that limits Pfaff’s book is his insistence that our prison system is sustained by those convicted of violent crimes. It may be true that drug offenders, parole violators, and other nonviolent offenders do not separately make up a large share of the prison population. However, together they make up a big chunk of prisoners and, more importantly, make up a very large portion of the “ever been in prison” population. More crucially, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated account for only a sliver of Americans impacted by the carceral state.

Setting aside family and friends of those who are incarcerated, there are many whose even glancing encounters with law enforcement lead to ruin: for example, Forman tell the story of Sandra Dozier, a FedEx driver who loses her job after she is pulled over on a pretextual stop and found to have a dime bag of marijuana. One could say that Pfaff promotes his own Standard Story, one that sees American punishment as only entailing formal incarceration, or rather imprisonment, and leaving aside the much larger, equally pernicious tentacles of the carceral state: police arrests; police stops with no further action; long probation; misdemeanor convictions; the large share of Americans passing through Rikers, Cook County Jail, and other county jails; and on and on.

What can be done? Pfaff urges us to think much more creatively about prison reform. Instead of focusing on states and changing statutes, our approach should be bottom-up, focusing on prosecutors and other actors who can change how many people enter prison. We need to target and regulate prosecutors’ behavior and control their ability to admit so many to prison, perhaps through plea guidelines of the sort that the New Jersey Supreme Court imposed, which limit the range of sentences that prosecutors can offer when making deals. We should shift the budgetary tab to counties or reward those that divert would-be prison admits to probation.

As importantly, we should boost public defense so that it can truly be a challenge to prosecutorial aggressiveness. Pfaff also believes that allowing cities and suburbs to select their own prosecutors would undo a key defect of the system and ensure that prosecutors are “selected by people who directly experience both the gains from enforcement and its costs.” If we have learned anything from Forman’s Locking Up Our Own, however, we should anticipate that they would not necessarily choose differently.

Both Forman’s and Pfaff’s ambitions are to get us to see causes of criminal justice transformation over the last half century that have been submerged. Both rectify major blind spots in our knowledge about the causes of America’s carceral failure. Forman uncovers the importance of black lawmakers who shape local crime policies while Pfaff presses us to see the importance of the prosecutor in how those laws are implemented. And for both, getting the story right matters because reform efforts will be impeded unless we understand the complex political forces that gave rise to the vast and unprecedented expansion in punishment and surveillance.

 

[roots69]

This shit is all by design!! They plan this bullshit out decades in advance!!


School-to-Prison Pipeline is a Direct Policy Descendant of Nixon’s War on Drugs


Nixon’s drug policies that began in the 1970s seeped into our nation’s education policy 20 years later, and today funnels hundreds of thousands of youths from schools into prison.

By: Lorna Hermosura
Columns appearing on the service and this webpage represent the views of the authors, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

As we prepare to vote for the next president of the United States, it is important for voters to carefully consider the character of the candidates. Why? Because although a presidential term only lasts for four years, a president’s policies and legacy can cause devastation for decades.

Case in point: President Richard Nixon and “The War on Drugs.”

Nixon’s drug policies that began in the 1970s seeped into our nation’s education policy 20 years later, and today funnels hundreds of thousands of youths from schools into prison.

Voters should keep in mind that we are entrusting the president to influence federal and state policies that shape our day-to-day existence. Much of what happens — in our schools, with our food and drinking water, with our health care, jobs, housing and transportation — is shaped by policies that are ultimately put in place, reauthorized or rescinded by people appointed or influenced by the president.

In his book “Smoke and Mirrors,” author Dan Baum detailed his interview with Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, who quoted Nixon as saying, “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

Baum noted that the year before Nixon declared drug use to be “public enemy No. 1,” the number of deaths (3,707) from the flu was nearly double the number of deaths (1,899) involving legal and illegal drugs combined.

Decades after his presidency, Nixon’s policies wreak havoc on our nation’s youths. The school-to-prison pipeline is a direct descendant of Nixon’s Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, reauthorized by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which included the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act.

This was then reauthorized by President Bill Clinton as the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1994, which tied federal school funding to student behavior reporting and mandated zero-tolerance policies.

This effectively diverted educator attention away from teaching and learning toward scrutinizing student behavior and incentivized over-disciplining students and over-reporting behavioral infractions to demonstrate a need for additional funds.

Zero-tolerance policies mandated harsh punishments for students’ behavioral infractions without consideration for the circumstances surrounding them, and mandated schools to report specific student behavior to the criminal justice or juvenile delinquency system.

These policies then converged with President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which centered schooling on accountability and standardized testing and incentivized pushing low-scoring students off school rosters. Together, these policies cemented the school-to-prison pipeline.

Manifesting Nixon’s intentions, the school-to-prison pipeline affects African American students at a rate three times higher than all other students. A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights showed that 260,000 public school students nationwide were referred to law enforcement, and 92,000 students were subjected to school-related arrests during the 2011-2012 school year alone.

Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, who worked with Carl Bernstein in the early 1970s to investigate and expose the Watergate scandal, recently said: “We missed the story. The story was character.” The story should have exposed Nixon’s character before he assumed office, Woodward said, so voters could knowingly cast their votes for president.

And that’s exactly what voters need to keep in mind when heading to the polls. In this age of social media, we can knowingly cast our votes by looking beyond the headlines and sound bites and examining each presidential candidate’s character for ourselves.

We must pay attention to how candidates behave outside of planned settings. Doing so will provide insight on the content of their character. Their Twitter posts, interactions with rally attendees, reactions to one another, and their history of leadership and policy decisions are far more telling than scripted responses at debates and public events.

As Nixon taught us, our president’s character indeed matters. Let’s use our breadth of resources to elect a president whose character we can trust to uplift us all — today and in our future. Because, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

 

[roots69]

The War on Drugs: The Narco States of North America
Too many Americans are dying from trafficked illegal drugs, and too many Mexicans are dying from violence related to the criminal gangs that traffic drugs.

Too many Americans are dying from trafficked illegal drugs, and too many Mexicans are dying from violence related to the criminal gangs that traffic drugs. That is the unfortunate summary of a shared problem: Mexican organized crime groups help feed U.S. demand for illegal drugs, and in turn, many billions of U.S. dollars feed the violence and corruption which the criminal groups spawn in Mexico.

More than ever, we need to break this pattern by working together more closely with our southern neighbor. Unfortunately, the harsh words and tone often used regarding Mexico, the lack of appreciation for the strategic importance of having a stronger and more prosperous southern neighbor, and the hardline approach the United States is taking to the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are undermining the ability of Mexican officials to maintain, let alone deepen, U.S.-Mexico cooperation against transnational criminal groups.

President Donald Trump is to be praised for highlighting opioid addiction crisis in the United States and promising steps to address it. Regarding Mexico, however, he highlighted that an estimated 90 percent of heroin used in the United States is from Mexico (correct) and added that his proposed border wall would help deal with that. The assertion about the wall is dubious since most hard drugs are believed to enter the United States through legal ports of entry. Strikingly, the president also neglected to mention that his current chief of staff earlier this year had made it a priority to forge agreement with the Mexican government to enhance cooperation against the criminal groups trafficking drugs

In May 2017, then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other U.S. officials agreed with Mexican counterparts on an overall strategy for strengthening the common effort against the entire chain of illegal drug production, trafficking, sales, etc. That agreement included a promise of action on addiction/drug demand in the United States. Mexican and U.S. officials have been working to implement that strategy since, including going after heroin production.

The United States and Mexico have revalidated and prioritized capacity building and other assistance under the bilateral “Merida” program, which began in 2008. Under Merida, the United States has spent some $1.6 billion to help strengthen Mexican law enforcement and justice institutions, to improve Mexican capacities at its borders and to help strengthen communities beset by criminal cartels and gangs. American assistance has produced good results. At present, the U.S. is working hard with Merida funds, for example, to strengthen the forensic skills of Mexican officials in order that more criminals can be convicted successfully under Mexico’s new justice system. The Mexican government has spent at least ten times what the U.S. has provided to strengthen its own law enforcement, intelligence and justice agencies. Along with Merida assistance, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies have built more effective operational cooperation against criminal groups.

The added effort strengthened the capacities of Mexico’s federal law enforcement and resulted in a large number of cartel and criminal gang leaders being taken off the field. Criminal gang related violence in Mexico capped in late 2011 and has declined as the enhanced government efforts impacted cartels. But over the last several years, criminal groups have significantly increased opioid production and trafficking, and in 2016–17 violence in Mexico, as measured by homicides, has significantly rebounded.

From a U.S. perspective, the sharp rise in drug overdose deaths, particularly from opioids, and the concomitant increase in production of heroin and transshipment of synthetic opioids like fentanyl makes better U.S.-Mexico cooperation an even higher priority. About 64,070 drug overdose deaths in the United States were recorded in 2016, with over 20,000 of those coming from fentanyl and similar drugs and some 15,500 coming from heroin. Since 1999, overdose deaths in the United States involving opioids has quadrupled, fueled initially by abuse of prescription drugs.

Mexican drug cartels observed the rise of U.S. abuse of prescription opioids, and in response, increased heroin production and imports of fentanyl from China to supply growing U.S. demand. Both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies correctly see this as a shared problem. Mexico though has not been able to stop the increase in opium and heroin production in several of its states (and illicit imports from Asia). And, in the United States, the drugs are getting in and being transported far from presumed ports of entry.

On the financial side, the profits from illegal drug sales in the United States are estimated at between $18 and $30 billion. However, neither U.S. nor Mexican authorities have been able to recover anything like those sums of money. However, enough of those profits have gotten back to the criminal groups for them to not only finance the purchaseof high-powered weapons and other equipment from the United States, but also to threaten and buy off officials. This has likely contributed to a new wave of violencesweeping through Mexico.

Inside Mexico, the federal government has focused its strategy on going after the key figures in criminal groups. They have taken many cartel leaders out of action. Earlier this month, for example, they arrested the chief financial officer of the Sinaloa Cartel. Yet that very success in leadership decapitation has led to a proliferation of criminal organizations now led by those previously operating at the lower levels of the cartels. In addition to competition among the remaining larger criminal organizations (e.g. Sinaloa versus Jalisco Nueva Generacion) for sales in the U.S. market, smaller groups have also turned to other kinds of crime, such as extortion and gasoline theft from the national oil company’s pipelines. Crime and violence has spread to states that were previously relatively peaceful. June 2017 was the most violent month in Mexico in twenty years, as measured by homicides, and some observers are predicting that 2017 could set a new record.

Privately, senior Mexican officials recognize the problem and argue that, sadly, most of Mexico’s state governments and cities still have weak police forces that cannot handle the criminal groups that were formed when the larger groups were decapitated. Mexican officials say their proposed solution was to create stronger and unified police forces in each state (a policy known as “Mando Unico”) and to allow more participation of the armed forces in going after criminal groups. They privately blame Mexico’s congress for not passing the proposed laws to make that possible. Other officials add that the implementation of justice reform has been so poor that arrested criminals are being released in large numbers. Many nongovernment observers accept some of those points, but criticize the government’s effort as broadly insufficient. Whatever the reasons, violence is on the rise, including in previously safe areas. The U.S. State Department recently issued a travel warning for Mexico that includes popular vacation spots.Tourism is reportedly down since.

When the U.S. and Mexican secretaries of foreign affairs and homeland security forged and agreed a broad strategy in May 2017, they set out a very ambitious agenda: to destroytransnational criminal organizations by using a wide range to tools and going after all the elements in the chain of activity—from production (or import) to transport and distribution networks to the flows of money and procurement of weapons.

Officials on both sides recognize that this strategy is very challenging to implement effectively across all of the lines of action—from intelligence sharing to effective eradication, from disruption of logistics and taking down financial networks to more successful arrests and prosecutions. But both sides have engaged seriously. The week of October 16, the multiagency U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation Group met in Mexico City to review progress.

Reaching a new level of effectiveness in fighting cross-border criminals, however, will demand much more trust and closer cooperation than exists today. The same holds true for helping to better manage migrants headed across Mexico to the United States from Central America and other regions such as South Asia, where Mexican authorities have become very important partners.

Senior Mexican officials privately say, however, that trust is being diminished by the threatening U.S. approach to NAFTA and the many negative top-level U.S. comments being made about Mexico. Favorable public opinion of the United States has plummeted by more than half to 30 percent in Mexico. Mexican officials privately worry that they will have neither the political space nor the enthusiastic support of their teams to deepen cooperation—especially if the United States were to end NAFTA or were to be further perceived as unfairly bullying Mexico. These officials say they want to maintain and strengthen cooperation against criminal groups because it is good for Mexico, but with the Mexican presidential and congressional elections coming up in July 2018, and a souring Mexican public attitude toward the United States, they are worried. The United States should be worried too, instead of fueling mistrust.

 

[roots69]

HOW ROCKEFELLER FOUNDED MODERN MEDICINE AND KILLED NATURAL CURES


(

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People these days look at you like a weirdo if you talk about the healing properties of plants or any other holistic practices. Much like anything else, there is a lot of politics and money behind our modern medical system.

It all starts with John D. Rockefeller (1839 – 1937) who was an oil magnate, a robber baron, America’s first billionaire, and a natural-born monopolist.

By the turn on the 20th century, he controlled 90% of all oil refineries in the U.S. through his oil company, Standard Oil, which was later on broken up to become Chevron, Exxon, Mobil etc.

At the same time, around 1900, scientists discovered “petrochemicals” and the ability to create all kinds of chemicals from oil. For example, the first plastic — called Bakelite — was made from oil in 1907. Scientists were discovering various vitamins and guessed that many pharmaceutical drugs could be made from oil.

This was a wonderful opportunity for Rockefeller who saw the ability to monopolize the oil, chemical and the medical industries at the same time!

The best thing about petrochemicals was that everything could be patented and sold for high profits.

But there was one problem with Rockefeller’s plan for the medical industry: natural/herbal medicines were very popular in America at that time. Almost half the doctors and medical colleges in the U.S. were practicing holistic medicine, using knowledge from Europe and Native Americans.

Rockefeller, the monopolist, had to figure out a way to get rid of his biggest competition. So he used the classic strategy of “problem-reaction-solution.” That is, create a problem and scare people, and then offer a (pre-planned) solution. (Similar to terrorism scare, followed by the “Patriot Act”).

He went to his buddy Andrew Carnegie – another plutocrat who made his money from monopolizing the steel industry – who devised a scheme. From the prestigious Carnegie Foundation, they sent a man named Abraham Flexner to travel around the country and report on the status of medical colleges and hospitals around the country.

This led to the Flexner Report, which gave birth to the modern medicine as we know it.

Needless to say, the report talked about the need for revamping and centralizing our medical institutions. Based on this report, more than half of all medical colleges were soon closed.

Homeopathy and natural medicines were mocked and demonized; and doctors were even jailed.

To help with the transition and change the minds of other doctors and scientists, Rockefeller gave more than $100 million to colleges, hospitals and founded a philanthropic front group called “General Education Board” (GEB). This is the classic carrot and stick approach.

In a very short time, medical colleges were all streamlined and homogenized. All the students were learning the same thing, and medicine was all about using patented drugs.

Scientists received huge grants to study how plants cured diseases, but their goal was to first identify which chemicals in the plant were effective, and then recreate a similar chemical – but not identical – in the lab that could be patented.

A pill for an ill became the mantra for modern medicine.

And you thought Koch brothers were evil?

So, now we are, 100 years later, churning out doctors who know nothing about the benefits of nutrition or herbs or any holistic practices. We have an entire society that is enslaved to corporations for its well-being.

America spends 15% of its GDP on healthcare, which should be really called “sick care.” It is focused not on cure, but only on symptoms, thus creating repeat customers. There is no cure for cancer, diabetes, autism, asthma, or even flu.

Why would there be real cures? This is a system founded by oligarchs and plutocrats, not by doctors.

As for cancer, oh yeah, the American Cancer Society was founded by none other than Rockefeller in 1913.

In this month of breast cancer awareness, it is sad to see people being brainwashed about chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. That’s for another blog post … but here is a quote from John D. Rockefeller that summarizes his vision for America…

 

[roots69]

Western Medicine is Rockefeller Medicine – All The Way

How many must feel, stuck on the Western medicinehamster wheel of pill after pill after pill …

Western medicine is Rockefeller medicine – all the way.
Western medicine has some good points, for sure, and is great in an emergency, but it’s high time people realized that today’s mainstream medicine (western medicine or allopathy), with its focus on drugs, radiation and surgery, is at its foundation a Rockefeller creation. The Rockefellers, of course, are one of the most rich and powerful families of the elite black nobility. Behind their spurious facade of philanthropy, they are power-hungry tyrants intent on owning the entire world, and depopulating it through eugenics-based programs like forced sterilization, water fluoridation, abortions and vaccinations. They have either majorly or fully created (and still dominate) the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, Planned Parenthood and many, many other organizations that either rule the world or influence culture to a large extent.

Despite the dominance of western medicine nowadays, even just 100 years ago the situation was very different, so it’s worthwhile casting our minds back to how the we got to this place. How did western medicine and the giant conglomerate of multinational pharmaceutical corporations (“Big Pharma”) become the mainstream medical system in the US and other first world nations? And what alternatives are there?


Petroleum Drugs
Let’s go back in time to the late 1800s. John D. Rockefeller, a man quoted to have said “competition is sin”, is the head of the Rockefeller family and has just become very rich through extracting oil from the ground. Now he is looking for ways to capitalize even further with his oil, and he comes across the idea of using coal tar – a petroleum derivative – to make substances that affect the human mind, body and nervous system. These are called drugs, and they are excellent at masking or stopping symptoms, but overall do not cure the underlying cause of a disease.

Like other elite leaders of the New World Order who fit the description of an “evil genius” – those high on intellect and low on compassion – Rockefeller used his oil money to buy out part of the massive German pharmaceutical cartel, I.G. Farben. This was the very same cartel that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision of a New World Order founded on racial supremacy, by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. With the control of drug manufacturing under his wings, Rockefeller then embarked on a decidedly wicked plan – wicked from the point of view of a free and healthy humanity, but brilliant from a business perspective.


Western medicine relies on Big Pharma’s petroleum drugs, which the body can never ultimately assimilate. Meanwhile, it engages in biopiracy to steal Nature’s best compounds and patent them.

Destroying any Competition to Western Medicine
Rockefeller saw that there were many types of doctors and healing modalities in existence at that time, from chiropractic to naturopathy to homeopathy to holistic medicine to herbal medicine and more. He wanted to eliminate the competitors of western medicine (the only modality which would propose drugs and radiation as treatment, thus enriching Rockefeller who owned the means to produce these treatments), so he hired a man called Abraham Flexner to submit a report to Congress in 1910. This report “concluded” that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all the natural healing modalities which had existed for hundreds or thousands of years were unscientific quackery. It called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only the allopathic-based AMA be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US.

Sadly, Congress acted upon the conclusions and made them law. Incredibly, allopathy became the standard mainstream modality, even though its 3 main methods of treatment in the 1800s had been blood-letting, surgery and the injection of toxic heavy metals like lead and mercury to supposedly displace disease! It should be noted that hemp was also demonized and criminalized not long after this, not because there is anything dangerous about it, but because it was a huge threat (as both medicine and fuel) to the Rockefeller drug and oil industries, respectively.

The Rockefeller and Carnegie Tax-Exempt Foundations for “Efficient” Philanthropy
The story doesn’t stop there. Rockefeller and another elite leader Carnegie used their tax-exempt Foundations, from 1913 on, to offer huge grants to the best medical schools all over America – on the proviso that only an allopathic-based curriculum be taught, and that some of their agents be allowed to sit on the Board of Directors. They called this “efficient” philanthropy, which, when through the Orwellian translation unit, means they wanted a return on their investment. They systematically dismantled the curricula of these schools by removing any mention of the natural healing power of herbs and plants, or of the importance of diet to health. The result is a system which to this day churns out doctors who are, almost always, utterly clueless about nutrition and disregard the idea that what you eat can actually heal or hurt you.

A couple of decades after this, another law was passed that further entrenched western medicine in America. The Hill-Burton Act of 1946 gave hospitals grants for construction and modernization, on the condition they provide free healthcare to anyone in need, without discrimination of any kind. Although there were good sides to this, the downside was that once people had become dependent on this system for their healthcare needs – especially those on pharmaceutical pills which need to be taken day after day without end – the system switched into a paid system, and the Rockefellers found themselves with new lifelong customers.

The bitter truth is that, in general, when you go to your Western doctor, you are seen as a potential market for the medical factory’s products. For Big Pharma, there is no financial incentive to heal you, because a patient cured is a customer lost. Even if you are not sick, Big Pharma is still targeting you, trying to convince you that you are ill (e.g. with psychiatry’s ridiculous list of fictitious diseases, many of them fake) so that you will try its latest pill. Pregnant women who go to the doctor are treated like this, and peddled intravenous fluid bags, fetal monitors, ultrasound (radiation for a vulnerable baby), a host of drugs, the totally unnecessary episiotomy, and – to top it all off – the Caesarean delivery!

Bio-Piracy: The Business Model of Western Medicine’s Big Pharma Cartel
Remember, all these synthetic drugs are isolates. Many are derived from plant compounds, but because Nature cannot be patented and sold, Big Pharma has no interest in natural cures. What they do instead is engage in bio-piracy – research natural compounds, copy them (or modify them slightly) in a lab, then try to steal and patent them. If they get a patent, they then market their pill as a wonder drug while simultaneously (through fake scientific research) suppress and criticize the original plant as being worthless, so you won’t go to the source of the cure. Ironically, guess what type of medicine John D. Rockefeller used and the British Royal Family still uses? Homeopathy!

Modern western medicine seems to have lost the supposed point of its existence: healing people. In his revealing book “Confessions of a Medical Heretic“, Dr. Robert Mendolsohn quotes an article entitled “Cleveland’s Marvelous Medical Factory” which boasted of the Cleveland Clinic’s “accomplishments last year: 2,980 open-heart operations, 1.3 million laboratory tests, 73,320 electrocardiograms, 7,770 full-body x-ray scans, 24,368 surgical procedures.” Seems fancy, yet none of these procedures has been proven to have anything to do with maintaining or restoring health. When people get screened for a disease, they are being subjected to dangerous radiation (more money for the Rockefellers) which harms tissue and can end up causing the exact disease it is supposed to be protecting against – as happens daily with the mammogram scam, designed to drum up new breast cancer clients.


John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon who helped create Big Pharma and Western Medicine.

Rockefeller Philanthropy is Social Control
The Rockefellers and other elites use philanthropy as a tool for control. It’s social engineering with a nice PR sheen. A free lunch is not really free, whether private (Rockefeller-style western medicine) or public/governmental (Obama-style socialized medicine), because even if you get something at no cost, you are required to give up your data and your privacy. They want you dependent on their system – then they’ll raise the rates once you’re trapped.

This is big business – and it’s also a big killer. Dr. Barbara Starfield published a study in the year 2000 that found that there were 225,000 iatrogenic (allopathic doctor caused) deaths in the US every year. However, this was only counting direct deaths; when you factor in all indirect deaths, as Dr. Gary Null did in 2011 in his report Death by Medicine, the figure is closer to 784,000 per year! That’s 7.8 million people dead from western medicine every 10 years!

Null concluded: “It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States …”

Whenever a lot of people die in a staged false flag attack (like 3000 people on 9/11) or in a staged mind control shooting (like 50 or so people) we hear all about it on the media. Yet between 616 and 2147 Americans are dying every day from Rockefeller Western medicine, and we don’t hear a thing!

Natural Solutions that Surpass Rockefeller-Created Western Medicine
At this point let us turn from the problem to the solutions – and fortunately there are many. The famous ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote:

“Nature heals. The doctor’s task consists in strengthening the natural healing powers, to direct them, and especially not to interfere with them.”

The immune system is your number one defense against any disease – not a vaccine. Most natural medicine is designed to treat the body holistically, not to “cure” one disease only to have it transform and mutate into another ailment. When you takes plants and herbs as medicine, you normally take the whole food, not an isolate, because it is based on a holistic understanding. Likewise, Traditional Chinese Medicine defines all disease as stagnation and treats sickness as an imbalance to be brought back into balance. What is the point of transferring an imbalance in one area into an imbalance in another area? None, unless you are trying to profit off disease like Big Pharma. It is not real healing.

There are so many natural cures and remedies out there, if you take the time to look. Two examples among thousands are turmeric which will do more for your blood pressure and diabetes than any drug can, and apricot kernels (rich in laetrile which selectively kills cancer cells and leaves healthy ones intact) which will handle cancer better than chemotherapy. The Gerson Therapy has also healed thousands of “terminal” cancer patients who were told by doctors of western medicine, “there’s nothing more we can do for you.”

Western medicine has its time and place, and its strengths and weaknesses. Western medicine may be a good system in a critical emergency and for complicated surgical procedures, but for general conditions, there are so many better alternatives. Time to start exploring them!

 

[roots69]

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG EMPIRE
The Drug Story
by Hans Ruesch

In the 30s, Morris A. Bealle, a former city editor of the old Washington Times and Herald, was running a county seat newspaper, in which the local power company bought a large advertisment every week. This account took quite a lot of worry off Bealle's shoulders when the bills came due.

But according to Bealle's own story, one day the paper took up the cudgels for some of its readers that were being given poor service from the power company, and Morris Bealle received the dressing down of his life from the advertising agency which handled the power company's account.

They told him that any more such "stepping out of line" would result in the immediate cancellation not only of the advertising contract, but also of the gas company and the telephone company.

That's when Bealle's eyes were opened to the meaning of a "free press", and he decided to get out of the newspaper business. He could afford to do that because he belonged to the landed gentry of Maryland, but not all newspaper editors are that lucky.

Bealle used his professional experience to do some deep digging into the freedom-of-the-press situation and came up with two shattering exposés - "The Drug Story", and "The House of Rockefeller."

The fact that in spite of his familiarity with the editorial world and many important personal contacts he couldn't get his revelations into print until he founded his own company, The Columbia Publishing House, Washington D.C., in 1949, was just a prime example of the silent but adamant censorship in force in "the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave".

Although The Drug Story is one of the most important books on health and politics ever to appear in the USA, it has never been admitted to a major bookstore nor reviewed by any establishment paper, and was sold exclusively by mail. Nevertheless, when we first got to read it, in the 1970s, it was already in its 33rd printing, under a different label - Biworld Publishers, Orem, Utah.

Examples
As Bealle pointed out, a business which makes 6% on its invested capital is considered a sound money maker. Sterling Drug, Inc., the main cog and largest holding company in the Rockefeller Drug Empire and its 68 subsidiaries, showed operating profits in 1961 of $23,463,719 after taxes, on net assets of $43,108,106 - a 54% profit. Squibb, another Rockefeller-controlled company, in 1945 made not 6% but 576% on the actual value of its property.

That was during the luscious war years when the Army Surgeon General's Office and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were not only acting as promoters for the Drug Trust, but were actually forcing drug trust poisons into the bloodstreams of American soldiers, sailors and marines, to the tune of over 200 million 'shots'.

Is it any wonder, asked Bealle, that the Rockefellers, and their stooges in the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, the Army Medical Corps, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and thousands of health officers all over the country, should combine to put out of business all forms of therapy that discourage the use of drugs.

"The last annual report of the Rockefeller Foundation", reported Bealle, "itemizes the gifts it has made to colleges and public agencies in the past 44 years, and they total somewhat over half a billion dollars.

These colleges, of course, teach their students all the drug lore the Rockefeller pharmaceutical houses want taught. Otherwise there would be no more gifts, just as there are no gifts to any of the 30 odd colleges in the United States that don't use therapies based on drugs.

"Harvard, with its well-publicized medical school, has received $8,764,433 of Rockefeller's Drug Trust money, Yale got $7 ,927,800, Johns Hopkins $10,418,531, Washington University in St. Louis $2,842,132, New York's Columbia University $5,424,371, Cornell University $1,709,072, etc., etc."

And while "giving away" those huge sums to drug-propagandizing colleges, the Rockefeller interests were growing to a world-wide web that no one could entirely explore. Already well over 30 years ago it was large enough for Bealle to demonstrate that the Rockefeller interests had created, built up and developed the most far-reaching industrial empire ever conceived in the mind of man.

Standard Oil was of course the foundation upon which all of the other Rockefeller industries have been built. The story of Old John D., as ruthless an industrial pirate as ever came down the pike, is well known, but is being today conveniently ignored. The keystone of this mammoth industrial empire was the Chase NationaI Bank, now renamed the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Not the least of its holdings are in the drug business. The Rockefellers own the largest drug manufacturing cormbine in the world, and use all of their other interests to bring pressure to increase the sale of drugs. The fact that most of the 12,000 separate drug items on the market are harmful is of no concem to the Drug Trust...

The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation was first set up in 1904 and called the General Education Fund. An organization called the Rockefeller Foundation, ostensibly to supplement the General Education Fund, was formed in 1910 and through long finagling and lots of Rockefeller money got the New York legislature to issue a charter on May 14, 1913.

It is therefore not surprising that the House of Rockefeller has had its own "nominees" planted in all Federal agencies that have to do with health. So the stage was set for the "education" of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media-makers.

A compilation of the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent for advertising the sum total of $1,104,224,374, when the dollar was still worth a dollar and not half a zloty. Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan's death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now.

Censorship
"Even the most independent newspapers are dependent on their press associations for their national news," Bealle pointed out, "and there is no reason for a news editor to suspect that a story coming over the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service is censored when it concerns health matters. Yet this is what happens constantly."

In fact in the 50s the Drug Trust had one of its directors on the directorate of the Associated Press. He was no less than Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and as such one of the most powerful Associated Press directors.

It was thus easy for the Rockefeller Trust to persuade the Associated Press Science Editor to adopt a policy which would not permit any medical news to clear that is not approved by the Drug Trust "expert", and this censor is not going to approve any item that can in any way hurt the sale of drugs.

This accounts to this day for the many fake stories of serums and medical cures and just-around-the-corner breakthrough victories over cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, which go out brazenly over the wires to all daily newspapers in America and abroad.[1]

Emanuel M. Josephson, M.D., whom the Drug Trust has been unable to intimidate despite many attempts, pointed out that the National Association of Science Writers was "persuaded" to adopt as part of its code of ethics the following chestnut:

"Science editors are incapable of judging the facts of phenomena involved in medical and scientific discovery. Therefore, they only report 'discoveries'approved by medical authorities, or those presented before a body of scientific peers."

This explains why Bantam Books, America's biggest publisher, made a colossal mistake in its initial enthusiasm and optimism sending review copies of SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT to the 3,500 "science writers" on its list, instead of addressing them to the literary book reviewers who are not subject to medical censorship. One single censor decreed NO and SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT sank in silence.

Thus newspapers continue to be fed with propaganda about drugs and their alleged value, although according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1.5 million people landed in hospitals in 1978 because of medication side effects in the U.S. alone, and despite recurrent statements by intelligent and courageous medical men that most pharmaceutical items on sale are useless at best, but more often harmful or deadly in the long run.

The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers.

To teach the Rockefeller drug ideology, it is necessary to teach that Nature didn't know what she was doing when she made the human body. But statistics issued by the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency show that since the all-out drive of the Drug Trust for drugging, vaccinating and serumizing the human system, the health of the American nation has sharply declined, especially among children.

Children are now given "shots" for this and "shots" for that, when the only safeguard known to science is a pure bloodstream, which can be obtained only with clean air and wholesome food. Meaning by natural and inexpensive means. Just what the Drug Trust most objects to.

When the FDA, whose officials have to be acceptable to Rockefeller Center before they are appointed, has to put an independent operator out of business, it goes all out to execute those orders.

But the orders do not come directly from Standard Oil or a drug house director. As Morris Bealle pointed out, the American Medical Association (AMA) is the front for the Drug Trust, and furnishes the quack doctors to testify that even when they know nothing of the product involved, it is their considered opinion that it has no therapeutic value.

Persecution
Wrote Bealle:

"Financed by the taxpayers, these Drug Trust persecutions leave no stone unturned to destroy the victim. If he is a small operator, the resulting attorney's fees and court costs put him out of business.

In one case, a Dr. Adolphus Hohensee of Scranton, Pa., who had stated that vitamins (he used natural ones) were vital to good health, was taken to court for 'misbranding' his product.

The American Medical Association furnished ten medicos who reversed all known medical theories by testifying that 'vitamins are not necessary to the human body'. Confronted with goverment bulletins to the contrary, the medicos wiggled out of that one by declaring that these standard publications were outdated!"

In addition to the FDA, Bealle listed the following agencies having to do with "health" - i.e., with the health of the Drug Trust to the detriment of the citizens - as being dependent on Rockefeller:

U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Veterans Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Surgeon General of the Air Force, Army Surgeon General's Office, Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, National Health Research Institute, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington is considered the all-wise body which investigates everything under the sun, especially in the field of health, and gives to a palpitating public the last word in that science.

To the important post at the head of this agency, the Drug Trust had one of their own appointed. He was none other than Alfred N. Richards, one of the directors and largest stockholders of Merck & Company, which was making huge profits from its drug traffic.

When Bealle revealed this fact, Richards resigned forthwith, and the Rockefellers appointed in his place the President of their own Rockefeller Institution, Detlev W. Bronk.

America's Medico-Drug Cartel
The medico-drug cartel was summed up by J.W Hodge, M.D., of Niagara Falls, N.Y., in these words:

"The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organisation which ever managed a free people in this or any other age.

Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors'trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs.

Every practioner of the healing art who does not ally himself with the medical trust is denounced as a 'dangerous quack'and impostor by the predatory trust doctors. Every sanitarian who attempts to restore the sick to a state of health by natural means without resort to the knife or poisonous drugs, disease imparting serums, deadly toxins or vaccines, is at once pounced upon by these medical tyrants and fanatics, bitterly denounced, vilified and persecuted to the fullest extent."

The Lincoln Chiropractic College in Indianapolis requires 4,496 hours, the Palmer Institute Chiropractic in Davenport a minimum of 4,000 60-minute classroom hours, the University of Natural Healing Arts in Denver five years of 1,000 hours each to qualify for a degree. The National College of Naprapathy in Chicago requires 4,326 classroom hours for graduation.

Yet the medico-drug cartel spreads the propaganda that the practitioners of these three "heretic" sciences are poorly trained or not trained at all - the real reason being that they cure their patients without the use of drugs.

In 1958, one of those "ill-trained" doctors, Nicholas P. Grimaldi, who had just graduated from the Lincoln Chiropractic College, took the basic science examination of the Connecticut State Board along with 63 medics and osteopaths. He made the highest mark (91.6) ever made by a doctor taking the Connecticut State Board examination.

Colonization
Rockefeller's various "educational" activities had proved so profitable in the U S. that in 1927 the International Educational Board was launched, as Junior's own, personal charity, and endowed with $21,000,000 for a starter, to be lavished on foreign universities and politicos, with all the usual strings attached.

This Board undertook to export the "new" Rockefeller image as a benefactor of mankind, as well as his business practices. Nobody informed the beneficiaries that every penny the Rockefellers seemed to be throwing out the window would come back, bearing substantial interest, through the front door.

Rockefeller had always had a particular interest in China, where Standard Oil was almost the sole supplier of kerosene and oil "for the lamps of China". So he put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build the Peking Union Medical College, playing the role of the Great White Father who has come to dispense knowledge on his lowly children. The Rockefeller Foundation invested up to $45,000,000 into "westernizing" (read corrupting) Chinese medicine.

Medical colleges were instructed that if they wished to benefit from the Rockefeller largesse they had better convince 500 million Chinese to throw into the ashcan the safe and useful but inexpensive herbal remedies of their barefoot doctors, which had withstood the test of centuries, in favor of the expensive carcinogenic and teratogenic "miracle" drugs Made in USA, which had to be replaced constantly with new ones, when the fatal side effects could no longer be concealed; and if they couldn't "demonstrate" through large-scale animal experiments the effectiveness of their ancient acupuncture, this could not be recognized as having any "scientific value".

Its millenarian effectiveness proven on human beings was of no concern to the Westem wizards.

But when the Communists came to power in China and it was no longer possible to trade, the Rockefellers suddenly lost interest in the health of the Chinese people and shifted their attention increasingly to Japan, India and Latin America.

The Image
"No candid study of his career can lead to other conclusion than that he is victim of perhaps the ugliest of all passions, that for money, money as an end. It is not a pleasant picture.... this money-maniac secretly, patiently, eternally plotting how he may add to his wealth....

He has turned commerce to war, and honey-combed it with cruel and corrupt practices.... And he calls his great organization a benefaction, and points to his church-going and charities as proof of his righteousness. This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion. There is but one name for it - hypocrisy."

This was the description Ida Tarbell made of John D. Rockefeller in her "History of the Standard Oil Company", serialized in 1905 in the widely circulated McClure's Magazine. And that was several years before the "Ludlow Massacre", so JDR was as yet far from having reached the apex of his disrepute.

But after World War II it would have been hard to read, in America or abroad, a single criticism of JDR, nor of Junior, who had followed in his father's footsteps, nor of Junior's four sons who all endevoured to emulate their illustrious forbears.

Today's various encyclopedias extant in public libraries of the Western world have nothing but praise for the Family. How was this achieved?

Ironically, the two apparently most NEGATIVE events in the career of JDR brought about a huge POSITIVE change in his favor, to a degree that he himself could not foresee. To wit:

In the year when according to the current Encyclopaedia Britannica (long become a Rockefeller property and transferred from Oxford to Chicago), Rockefeller had "retired from active business", namely in 1911, he had been convicted by a U.S. court of illegal practices and ordered to dissolve the Standard Oil Trust, which comprised 40 corporations.

This imposed dissolution was to provide his Empire with added might, to a degree that was unprecedented in the history of modern business. Until then, the Trust had existed for all to see - an exposed target. After that, it went underground, and thereby its power was cloaked in security, and could keep expanding unseen and therefore unopposed.

The second apparently negative experience was a certain 1914 event that persuaded JDR, until then utterly contemptuous of public opinion, to gloss over his own image.

"The Ludlow Massacre"
The United Mine Workers had asked for higher wages and better living conditions for the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, one of the many Rockefeller-owned companies.

The miners - mostly immigrants from Europe's poorest countries - lived in shacks provided by the company at exorbitant rent. Their low wages ($1,68 a day) were paid in script redeemable only at company stores charging high prices.

The churches they attended were the pastorates of company-hired ministers; their children were taught in company-controlled schools; the company libraries excluded books that the Bible-thumping Rockefellers deemed "subversive", such as "Darwin's Origin of the Species."

The company maintained a force of detectives, mine guards, and spies whose job it was to keep the camp quarantined from the danger of unionization.

When the miners struck, JDR, Jr., then officially in command of the company, and his father's hatchet man, the Baptist Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused even to negotiate.

They evicted the strikers from the company-owned shacks, hired a thousand strike-breakers from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, and persuaded Governor Ammons to call out the National Guard to help break the strike.

Open warfare resulted. Guardsmen, miners, their women and children, who since their eviction were camping in tents, were ruthlessly killed, until the frightened Governor wired President Wilson for Federal Troops, who eventually crushed the strike, The New York Times, which then already could never be accused of being unfriendly to the Rockefeller interests, reported on April 21, 1914.

"A 14-hour battle between striking coal miners and members of the Colorado National Guard in the Ludlow district today culminated in the killing of Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek strikers, and the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony by fire."

And the following day:

"Forty-five dead (32 of them women and children), a score missing and more than a score wounded is the known result of the 14-hour battle which raged between state troops and coal miners in the Ludlow district, on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holding.

The Ludlow is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleded in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes that had been dug for their protection against rifle fire, the women and children died like trapped rats as the flames swept over them. One pit uncovered this afternoon disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women."

Thorough Facelift
The worldwide revulsion that followed was such that JDR decided to hire the most talented press agent in the country, Ivy Lee, who got the tough assignment of whitewashing the tycoon's bloodied image.

When Lee learned that the newly organized Rockefeller Foundation had $100 million lying around for promotional purposes without knowing what to do with it, he came with a plan to donate large sums - none less than a million - to well-known colleges, hospitals, churches and benevolent organizations. The plan was accepted. So were the millions.

And they made headlines all over the world, for in the days of the gold standard and the five cent cigar there was a maxim in every newspaper office that a million dollars was always news.

That was the beginning of the cleverly worded medical reports on new "miracle" drugs and "just-around-the-corner breakthroughs" planted in the leading news offices and press associations that continue to this day, and the flighty public soon forgot, or forgave, the massacre of foreign immigrants for the dazzling display of generosity and philantropy financed by the ballooning Rockefeller fortune and going out, with thunderous press fanfare, to various "worthy" institutions.

The Purchase of Public Opinion
In the following years, not only newsmen, but whole newspapers were bought, financed or founded with Rockefeller money. So Time Magazine, which Henry Luce started in 1923, had been taken over by J.P. Morgan when the magazine got into fInancial difficulties.

When Morgan died and his financial empire crumbled, the House of Rockefeller wasted no time in taking over this lush editorial plum also, together with its sisters Fortune and Life, and built for them an expensive 14-story home of their own in Rockefeller Center - the Time & Life Building.

Rockefeller was also co-owner of Time's "rival" magazine, Newsweek, which had been established in the early days of the New Deal with money put up by Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, the Harrimann family and other members and allies of the House.

The Intellectuals - A Bargain
For all his innate cynicism, JDR must have been himself surprised to discover how easily the so-called intellectuals could be bought. Indeed, they turned out to be among his best investments.

By founding and lavishly endowing his Education Boards at home and abroad, Rockefeller won control not only of the governments and politicos but also of the intellectual and scientific community, starting with the Medical Power - the organization that forms those priests of the New Religion that are the modern medicine men.

No Pulitzer or Nobel or any similar prize endowed with money and prestige has ever been awarded to a declared foe of the Rockefeller system.

Henry Luce, officially founder and editor of Time Magazine, but constantly dependent on House advertising, also distinguished himself in his adulation of his sponsors. JDR's son had been responsible for the Ludlow massacre, and an obedient partner in his father's most unsavory actions.

Nonetheless, in 1956 Henry Luce put Junior on the cover of Time, and the feature story, soberly titled "The Good Man", included hyperboles like this:

"It is because John D. Rockefeller Junior's is a life of constructive social giving that he ranks as an authentic American hero, just as certainly as any general who ever won a victory for an American army or any statesman who triumphed in behalf of U.S. diplomacy."

Clearly, Time's editorial board wasn't given the choice to change its tune even after the passing of Junior and Henry Luce, since it remained just as dependent on House of Rockefeller advertising.

Thus, when in 1979 one of Junior's sons, Nelson A. Rockefeller died - who had been one of the loudest hawks in the Vietnam and other American wars, and was personally responsible for the massacre of prisoners and hostages at Atticia prison - Time said of him in it obituary, without laughing:

"He was driven by a mission to serve, improve and uplift his country."

Perhaps it was all this that Prof. Peter Singer had in mind when telling the judges in Italy that the Rockefeller Foundation was a humanitarian enterprise bent on doing good works.

One of their best works seems to be sponsoring Prof. Peter Singer, the world's greatest animal friend and protector who claims that vivisection is indispensable for medical progress and for more than 20 years refuses to mention that legions of medical doctors are of the opposite view.

Compare Cancer Research, Toxicity Testing & Animal Experimentation (flawed science costing human lives).

Millions of Dollars Free Publicity
Another interesting revelation in the article of Time was that many years ago already Singer "was pleasantly surprised when Britannica approached him to distill in about 30,000 words the discipline that is, at its heart, the systematic study of what we ought to do."

So now we touch the subject of sponsorisation and patronage. They don't always mean immediate cash but, more important, long-term profits.

Many decades ago the Encyclopedia Britannica moved from Oxford to Chicago because Rockefeller had bought it to add much needed luster to the University of Chicago and its medical school, the first one he had founded.

Peter Singer, "the world's greatest animal defender" who keeps a door permanently open to vivisection and the lucrative medical swindle, gets millions of dollars free publicity thanks to the worldwide engagement of the Rockefeller Foundation and the mediamakers who are in no position to oppose it.

From the article in Time we also learned that Singer's mother had been a medical doctor in the old country, which could mean that little Peter started assimilating all the Rockefeller superstition on vivisection with his mother's milk.

 

[roots69]

The Evils of Big Pharma Exposed

Originally published on Global Research in January 2015

What’s wrong with America is what’s wrong with Big Pharma. And what’s wrong with Big Pharma is what’s wrong with America. This circular reality is aimed to be thoroughly covered in this presentation. This is the story of how Big Pharma seeks enormous profits over the health and well-being of the humans it serves, and how drug companies invasively corrupted the way that the healthcare industry delivers its vital services. This is neither a new nor unique story. In fact, the story of Big Pharma is the exact same story of how Big Government, Big Oil, Big Agri-Chem Giants like Monsanto have come to power. The controlling shareholders of all these major industries are one and the same. Big Money belonging to the global central banking cabal own and operate all the Fortune 500 companies in addition to virtually all national governments on this earth. The Rockefellers privatized healthcare in the United States back in the 1930’s and has financed and largely influenced both healthcare and Big Pharma ever since.

The history of the last several centuries is one in which a handful of these oligarch families, primarily from Europe and the United States, have been controlling governments and wars to ruthlessly consolidate and maximize both power and control over the earth’s most precious resources to promote a New World Order of one totalitarian fascist government exercising absolute power and control over the entire global population. This group of oligarch families have systematically and effectively eliminated competition under the deceptive misnomer of a free enterprise system. Modernization is synonymous with globalization, privatization and militarization. Subsequently, an extremely small number of humans representing a privileged ruling elite has imposed a global caste system that’s hatched its long term diabolical plan to actualize its one world government. Sadly at this tumultuous moment in our human history, it’s never been closer to materialization.

Here in the early stages of the twenty-first century, a ruling elite has manipulated our planet of seven billion people into a global economic system of feudalism. Through pillaging and plundering the earth, setting up a cleverly deceptive financial system that controls the production and flow of fiat paper moneyusing the US dollar as the standard international currency, they have turned the world’s citizens and nations into indentured servants, hopelessly in debt due to their grand theft planet. With Russia and China spearheading a shift away from the US dollar and petrodollar, and many smaller nations following their lead, a major shift in the balance of power is underway between Western and Eastern oligarchs. Thus, by design escalating calamity and crises are in overdrive at the start of 2015.

By examining one aspect of this grand theft planet through the story of Big Pharma, one can accurately recognize and assess Big Pharma’s success in its momentum-gathering power grab. Its story serves as a microcosm perfectly illustrating and paralleling the macrocosm that is today’s oligarch engineered, highly successful New World Order nightmare coming true right before our eyes that we’re all now up against. By understanding how this came to manifest, we will be better able to confront, challenge and oppose it.

Every year a handful of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations are a well-represented fixture amongst the most powerful Fortune 500 companies of the world. The twelve largest drug manufacturers and the eight largest drug delivery companies (or otherwise known as the drug channels companies) that include drug wholesalers, chain pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers (so called PBM’s) consist in total only 20 of the top 500 global corporations in the world. Thus, despite making up only 4% of the total Fortune 500 companies in 2014, both Big Pharma’s highly profitable revenues and absolute economic and political power in the United States and world are unprecedented.

The median revenue of the drug channels companies that made 2014’s Fortune 500 from the most recent available 2013 figures was $95.1 billion with a median profit as percentage of assets of 2.9% over the year before. The top 12 drug manufacturing companies held a median revenue of only $17.5 billion but a median profit of assets level of 10.6% over 2012. Though the channels companies like CVS (the top channels company and #12 on Fortune 500), Walgreen (#37) and Rite-Aid (#118) overall maintain higher revenues and positions in the Fortune 500 list, their profit margins are not nearly as immense as the pharmaceutical manufacturers that are almost four times more profitable.

Big Pharma’s top eleven corporations generated net profits in just one decade from 2003 to 2012 of nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars – that’s just net profit alone. The net profit for 2012 amongst those top eleven amounted to $85 billion in just that one year. The majority of these largest pharmaceuticals are headquartered in the US – including the top four, Johnson & Johnson (#39 on Fortune 500 list), Pfizer (#51), Merck (#65) and Eli Lilly (#129) along with Abbott (#152) and Bristol Myers Squibb (#176). The healthcare research company IMS Health projects worldwide sales of Pharma drugs to exceed one trillion dollars by 2014. With that kind of obscenely powerful money to throw around, what Big Pharma wants, Big Pharma nearly always gets.

Just as the oligarchs buy, own and control national governments to do their sleazy bidding, Big Pharma as an extension of those same oligarchs does too. Perhaps what makes Big Pharma unique in the US is that the industry outspends all others in laying down cold hard cash into its lobbying efforts – another word for bribing governments that includes not only US Congress (and parliaments) but its US federal regulator, the bought and sold Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It poured $2.7 billion into its lobbying interests from 1998 to 2013, 42% more than the second most “Gov. Corp.” bribe which happens to be its sister industry insurance.

And it’s this unholy trinity of the medical establishment (personified by the American Medical Association), embedded insurance industry that wrote Obamacare into law and Big Pharma that makes the United States the most costly, broken, corrupt, destructive healthcare system in the entire world. The structured system is designed and layered with built in incentives at every tier to make and keep people sick, chronically dependent on their drugs for survival that merely mask and smother symptoms rather than cure or eradicate the root cause of disease.

Plenty of empirical evidence exists that confirm concerted diabolical efforts have been made to ruin the lives ofpioneering heroes who have come up with possible cures for cancer, AIDS and other terminal illnesses. Obviously their work poses a serious threat to medical status quo. Hence, their treatments have all been effectively suppressed by conventional medicine. Bottom line, if humans are healthy, the healthcare industry does not survive. Thus, it’s in its own inherently self-serving interest to promote illness in the name of wellness.

Also because natural healing substances cannot be patented, Big Pharma has done its sinister best to squelch any and all knowledge and information that come from the far more affordable means of alternative health sources that explore ancient traditional cultures’ medicinal use of hemp along with thousands of other plants and roots that could threaten drug profits and power of Big Pharma and modern medicine as they’re currently practiced and monopolized.

Another cold hard reality is pharmaceutical drugs especially when consumed to manage chronic disease and symptoms cause severe side effects that also damage, harm and kill. The most prescribed drugs of all are painkillers that typically are highly addictive. Big Pharma with the help of their global army of doctors have purposely and calculatingly turned a large percentage of us especially in the United States into hardcore drug addicts, both physically and psychologically addicted to artificial synthetic substances that are detrimental to our health and well-being. More than three quarters of US citizens over 50 are currently taking prescribed medication. One in four women in their 40’s and 50’s is taking antidepressants. Though the US contains just 5% of the world population, it consumes over half of all prescribed medication and a phenomenal 80% of the world’s supply of painkillers. Those who admit to taking prescription drugs on average take four different prescription drugs daily. Taking massive amounts of prescription drugs has caused an epidemic that’s part of a sinister plan to squeeze yet more profit out of a system designed to keep humans chronically unhealthy.

Even more alarming is the fact that death by medical error at near a quarter million people annually has become thethird largest killer of US citizens behind heart disease and cancer. Other more recent studies have estimated upwards of up to 440,000 have died yearly from preventable mistakes at hospitals. Blind obedience to Big Pharma and a conventional medical system too dependent on surgery and technology has inflicted more harm than good on the U.S. population.

Because doctors now are forced to rely so heavily on drug companies for information about what they prescribe, they’re ill equipped and ill-informed in their lack of adequate knowledge and training to understand what all the interactive drugs are doing to toxically harm their human guinea pigs they call patients. We are finding out that thecumulative and synergistic effects of poly-prescription drug use is frequently a lethal cocktail to millions of human beings on this planet. Combine that with the negative effects of our air, water, food and alcohol/illicit drugs, and the health dangers increase dramatically.


Look at the current damage done by over-prescribing antibiotics. Studies have learned that too much antibiotics cause trans-generational permanent DNA damage. The 20,000 times a year in the US alone that antibiotics are prescribed are highly toxic and damaging to the nervous system. On top of that, they simply don’t work anymore. The epidemic of trans-mutated bacterial infection and parasites that invade and infest the digestive tract in particular killing good bacteria and spread to other internal organs have become highly resistive to overuse of antibiotics. Big Pharma and doctors know all this yet they are responsible for antibiotic overconsumption by uninformed Americans.

Then look at what we are now learning about Big Pharma vaccines and the wanton reckless endangerment of children and pregnant mothers with toxic levels of mercury causing increased rates of autism, brain damage and even death. The criminal cover-up by Big Gov. and Big Pharma is egregious. Flu vaccines have recently been exposed that are totally ineffective along with the horrific damage being done to humans worldwide. Instead of preventing and decreasing illness, vaccines too often have had the opposite effect, exponentially increasing illness, causing irreversible damage and even death to thousands of unsuspecting victims mostly living in Third World nations. India’s Supreme Court is currently looking into charging Bill Gates with criminal harm to many of its citizens especially children injured or killed by his global vaccine program.

A growing number of critics believe Gates’ true aim is to eugenically reduce the world population from seven billion down to a “more manageable” size of half to one billion people. With the precedent of a well-documented history of horrifying eugenics practiced on the poor and most vulnerable in the US up till the 1980’s, oligarchs have been scheming to kill most of us on the planet for a long time now. With last year’s West African outbreak of the most deadly Ebola virus ever, and it being patented as bio-warfare, and mounting evidence that it was purposely started by a joint US military-university research team in Sierra Leone causing its global spread, more people than ever have perished and a growing segment of the population suspect that it is being used as a weapon of mass destruction to effectively depopulate the earth. We can largely thank the demonic partnership between Big Pharma and US Empire for that.

To further control the global health system, Big Pharma has largely dictated what’s been taught in medical schools throughout North America, heavily subsidizing them as a means of dictating the conventional dogma that’s standard curriculum down to even the textbooks. Several years ago a revolt at Harvard amongst med students and faculty went public. For a long time now doctors have been educated primarily to treat their patients with drugs, in effect becoming drug pushing, pharmaceutical whores, mere foot soldiers in Big Pharma’s war on health. Starting in the final year of med school, Big Pharma insidiously hones in on young med students, seductively wining and dining prospective physicians, showering them with money in the form of educational handouts, gifts, trips and perks galore to recruit its legions of loyal, thoroughly indoctrinated drug peddlers around the world. Thousands of doctors in the US are on Big Pharma payrolls. Typically early on in their careers physicians are unwittingly co-opted into this corrupt malaise of an irreparable system that’s owned and operated by Big Pharma.

And here’s why the drug companies control the global healthcare empire. Since 1990 Big Pharma has been pumping at least $150 million that we know about (and no doubt lots more we don’t know about) buying off politicians who no longer represent the interests of their voting public. Thanks to Big Law via last spring’s Supreme Court decision, current campaign financing laws permit unlimited, carte blanche bribery power for America’s most wealthy and powerful to fill the pockets of corrupt politicians with absolutely no oversight. Though the corporate buyoff of other nations around the globe may not appear quite so extreme and blatantly criminal as in the United States, international drug companies make certain that every national government allows full access and flow of their prescription drugs into each nation, including rubber stamped approval by each nation’s regulatory body to ensure global maximization of record setting profit. But because far more money is spent on the healthcare industry in the US, twice as much as the next nation Canada and equal to the next ten combined, it’s no surprise that hapless Americans end up having to pay far higher exorbitant costs for their made-in-the-USA drugs than anyone else on the planet. The average US citizen spends about $1000 on pharmaceutical drugs each year, 40% higher than Canadians.

Big Pharma also invests more dollars into advertising than any other industry in America, transmitting its seductively deceptive message direct to its consumers, explicitly giving them marching orders to request specific drugs from their doctors. In 2012 alone, pharmaceutical corporations paid nearly $3.5 billion to market their drugson television, radio, internet, magazines, saturating every media outlet. Their message – pleasure, relief, peace of mind, joy, love and happiness are all just a pill away. No problem or pain in life can’t be conquered by a quick fix – compliments of Big Pharma.

Much of Big Pharma’s success over the last couple decades has been the result of specifically targeting special new populations to con and win over, resorting to creating new diseases and maladies to entice troubled, stressed out, gullible individuals into believing there’s something abnormally wrong with them, that they are among always a growing segment of our population who quietly suffer from whatever discomforting symptoms, deficits, dysfunctions, ailments, syndromes and disorders that enterprising Big Pharma connives to slyly invent, promote, package and sell. This unethical practice has been called “disease mongering.” Drug companies today operate no different from the snake oil salesmen of yesteryear. Saturating the market with their alluring, promising ads, check out any half hour of national network news on television targeting the baby boomer and geriatric crowd and you’ll notice 95% of the commercials are all brought to you by none other than Big Pharma. Of course they pay big bucks for slick ad marketing campaigns that shrewdly target the oldsters most apt to suffer health problems in addition to being virtually the only Americans left still watching the nightly network news. Three out of four people under 65 in the US today recognize that mainstream news media is nothing less than pure Gov. Corp. propaganda.

Also in recent years Big Pharma has become deceitfully masterful at repackaging and rebranding old meds at higher prices ever in search of expanded consumers. It’s a lot easier and far less money to engage in this unethical industry-wide practice of recycling an old pill than to manufacture a new one. Prozac became the biggest drug sold until it was learned that it caused so many people to kill themselves or others, especially adolescents. Then Eli Lilly deceptively repackaged and relabeled it under the less threatening name Sarafem at a much higher price tailored to target unsuspecting women seeking relief from menstrual pain. Like Prozac as another Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor antidepressant, Paxil was suddenly repackaged as the cure-all for shyness under the guise of treating social anxiety. Taking full advantage of knowing that millions of humans feel unsure of themselves dealing with strangers and groups, Big Pharma to the rescue exploiting people’s nervousness by clinically labeling it as social anxiety and reintroducing the antidepressant pink pill as their panacea to personal happiness, lifelong self-confidence and success in life. This most prevalent industry pattern of reusing the same old drugs all dressed up with new custom designed names for new purposes on new custom designed populations for yet more price gouging is nothing less than resorting to a predatory practice of criminal false advertising.

Perhaps as sinister as any aspect of the drug business is how Big Pharma has completely taken over the FDA. A recent Harvard study slammed the FDA making the accusation that it simply “cannot be trusted” because it’s owned and operated by Big Pharma. With complete autonomy and control, now pharmaceutical companies knowingly market drugs that carry high risk dangers for consumers. But because they so tightly control its supposed regulatory gatekeeper, drugs are commonly mass marketed and before the evidence of potential harm becomes overwhelming, by design when the slow bureaucratic wheels turn issuing a drug recall, billions in profit have already been unscrupulously reaped at the deadly expense of its victims. Additionally, doctors, pharmacists and patients rarely even hear about important recalls due to dangerous side effects or contamination. Yet hundreds of Big Pharma drugsare recalled every year. Many FDA approved drugs like FenPhen, Vioxx, Zohydro and Celebrex kill hundreds before they’re finally removed from the shelf. This withholding the truth from the professionals and public consumers is yet more evidence that Big Pharma protects its profits more than people.

This evil practice that keeps repeating itself is proof that Big Pharma is a criminal racket. It no longer needs outside independent research demonstrating a drug’s efficacy to be FDA approved. Currently research is conducted and compiled by the pharmaceutical industry itself to fraudulently show positive results from methodologically flawed drug trials when in reality a drug proves either ill effective at doing what it’s purported to do or downright harmful. Research outcomes only need to show that the drug outperforms a placebo, not other older drugs already available on the market that have proven to be effective at lower cost.

Similar to shady personnel moving seamlessly in and out of governmental public service to think tanks to universities to private law to corporations to lobbyists, the same applies to heads of the FDA moving to and from Big Pharma. Unfortunately this is how our government has been taken over by special interests. Yet this rampant conflict of interest goes unchecked.

Because Big Pharma sometimes outright owns and largely controls today’s most prominent medical journals, spreading false propaganda, disinformation and lies about the so called miracle effects of a given drug is yet another common practice that is malevolent to the core. 98% of the advertising revenue of medical journals is paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. Shoddy and false claims based on shoddy and false research all controlled by Big Pharma often get published in so called reputable journals giving the green light to questionable drugs that are either ineffective or worse yet even harmful. Yet they regularly pass peer and FDA muster with rave reviews.

But because Big Pharma’s never held accountable for its evildoing, it continues to literally get away with murder, not unlike the militant police, the CIA, Monsanto and the US Empire that willfully and methodically commit mass murder on a global scale or through false flag terrorism having its mercenary Moslem allies kill innocent people as on 9/11 and France’s recent “9/11.” Since all serve the interests of their oligarch puppet masters toward grand theft planet and New World Order with total impunity, the world continues to suffer and be victimized.

Nearly five years ago the Justice Department filed and won a huge criminal lawsuit against Pfizer, one of the largest pharmaceutical corporations in the world employing 116,000 employees and boasting an annual revenue of more than $50 billion ($53.8 in 2013). Fined $2.3 billion to pay off civil and criminal charges for illegally promoting the use of four of its drugs, the unprecedented settlement became the largest case of healthcare fraud in history. The crux of the case centered on Pfizer’s illegal practice of marketing drugs for purposes other than what the FDA originally approved. While the law permits a wide leeway for physicians to prescribe drugs for multiple purposes, Pharma manufacturers are restricted to selling their drugs only for the expressed purposes given them by FDA approval.

The 2003 lawsuit would never even have been filed had it not been for whistleblowing sales rep John Kopchinski who forced authorities to investigate what’s been a common Big Pharma practice, selling drugs for off-label uses. While back in 2001 the FDA had approved a 10 mg dosage of Bextra for arthritis patients and for menstrual cramps, Pfizer sent Kopchinski out with instructions to give complimentary 20 mg samples of Bextra to doctors, thus willfully and illegally endangering patient lives, particularly because in 2005 Bextra was taken off the market due toincreased risk of heart attacks and stroke. The truth is Big Pharma will do anything to boost its money making big profits, including killing innocent people.

But the story doesn’t end here. This legal case potently illustrates how the US federal government has been co-opted and conspires with Big Pharma to knowingly do harm to American citizens. When the story broke in the fall of 2009 of this record fine levied against Pfizer, assistant director Kevin Perkins of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division touted how the feds mean business going after lawbreakers within the pharmaceutical industry, boasting that “it sends a clear message.” But it turns out that that false bravado was an all-for-show facade.

The truth is the US government will knuckle under to Big Pharma, Wall Street and Big Banks every single time, even when it knows these “too big to fail” criminals repeatedly violate laws intended to protect the public. And constantly bailing them out at overburdened taxpayer expense only causes them to become more brazenly criminal, knowing they will always be protected by their co-conspirators the feds.

Back in November 2001 the FDA had stated that Bextra was unsafe for patients at risk of heart disease and stroke, rejecting its use especially at higher than 10mg doses on patients suffering from post-surgery pain. Yet Pfizer went ahead anyway marketing its product for any doctor who “used a scalpel for a living” as one district manager testified. It was learned that Pfizer deployed multimillions of dollars to its well-paid army of hundreds of doctors to go around “educating” other MD’s on the miracle benefits of Bextra. Again, misusing doctors as pitchmen to sell inflated false claims is employing the medical profession as Big Pharma’s industry whores.

By the time Bextra was finally taken off the market in April 2005, after killing a number of at risk patients that never should have been prescribed the painkiller, Pfizer had already made its cool $1.7 billion off the drug being illegally sold for purposes the FDA had expressly forbidden. Here’s where Big Pharma rules over Big Gov. Because by law any company that’s found guilty of fraud is prohibited from continuing as a Medicare and Medicaid contractor, which of course Pfizer is and was, the feds under the morally bankrupt excuse that Big Pharma’s also “too big to fail” made a dirty little secret deal with Pfizer in the backroom law offices of the federal government.

Just like US Empire uses the “national security” card, so do the banksters, Wall Street and Big Pharma use their “too big to fail” trump card to get away with their own crimes against humanity. It’s a rigged world where an elitist cabal of cheats and thugs mistreat fellow humans as owned commodities and indentured expendables. Money and power mean everything while human life means nothing to them. So the secret deal was cut where on paper only the fake Pfizer subsidiary Pharmacia and Upjohn that never sold a single drug would be found criminally guilty so the conveniently contrived loophole would spare Big Pharma Pfizer’s from its alleged death. Records show that on the very same day in 2007 that the feds worked out this sweetheart deal with Pfizer, this hollowed out shell company as Pfizer’s backdoor nonentity was born. How convenient as Big Gov. and Big Pharma got to live happily ever after together in criminal conspiracy against their own people they’re supposed to serve and protect, kind of like the way police forces across this nation are “serving and protecting” citizens.

Then with drug profits so obscenely high, even with a slap on the hand penalty fee of $2.3 billion, Big Pharma’s net profit for just one quarter easily can pay it off. Three years later in July 2012 the Justice Department handed down yet an even bigger fine of $3 billion to UK’s global healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline for the same exact crimes. As long as Big Pharma continues raking in such enormous profits, fines into the billions mean nothing since they’re paid off in a few months’ time. Not until CEO’s and top executives of Big Banks, Big Wall Street and Big Pharma start going to jail to serve long term sentences for their crimes, it’ll conveniently remain business as usual. And as long as Big Pharma owns Big Gov. Corp., just like the oligarchs own everything there is to earthly own, nothing will ever change for the better unless we as citizens of the world demand accountability and justice that punishment rightly fit the corporate crime.

 

[roots69]

List of industries and organization fighting hard to keep cannabis illegal, Youll be surprised whos against it and then again you shouldnt be surprised


Private-sector organizations[edit]

• Abbott Laboratories[6]
• American Anti Drug Council
• American Legislative Exchange Council
• American Society of Addiction Medicine[4]
• Blue Lives Matter
• Corrections Corporation of America[8]
• Dalgarno Institute
• Drug Abuse Resistance Education
• Drug Free America Foundation[1][4]
• Families Anonymous
• Foundation for a Drug-Free World
• The Heritage Foundation
• Insys Therapeutics[6][7][9]
• Independent Order of Rechabites
• International Organisation of Good Templars
• Marijuana Anonymous
• Narconon
• National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre
• National Families in Action
• National Family Partnership
• Pacific Justice Institute[10]
• Partnership for Drug-Free Kids[4]
• Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America[11]
• Purdue Pharma[6]
• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston[12]
• Smart Approaches to Marijuana[1][4]
• Straight, Incorporated[1]
• Two Is Enough D.C.
• University of the Philippines Manila[13]
• Wackenhut Corrections
• White Ribbon Association
• Woman's Christian Temperance Union
• Youth Challenge International

Political parties[edit]

• American Constitution Party (Colorado)
• American Freedom Party
• American Nazi Party
• Communist Party of the Philippines
• Moderate Party
• National Alliance (United States)
• Prohibition Party
• Republican Party (United States)

Governmental organizations[edit]

• Anti-Narcotics Force
• Campaign Against Marijuana Planting
• Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
• Commission on Narcotic Drugs
• Drug Enforcement Administration[1]
• Federal Drug Control Service of Russia
• High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area[1]
• International Narcotics Control Board
• Israel Anti-Drug Authority
• Main Directorate for Drugs Control
• National Institute on Drug Abuse
• National Marijuana Initiative
• Office of National Drug Control Policy[1][4]
• Oficina Nacional Antidrogas
• Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission
• Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force
• Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency
• Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking
• United Nations Drug Control Programme

Anti-cannabis campaigns[edit]

1980s Advertising Council poster for National Institute on Drug Abuse
Public campaigns[edit]

• International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking
• Mandatory minimum sentencing
• Operation Green Merchant
• Operation Green Sweep
• Operation Intercept
• Operation Jackpot
• Operation Keymer
• Operation Kruz Control
• Operation Pipe Dreams
• Red Ribbon Week
• Three-strikes, you’re out
• War on drugs
• Washington State anti-cannabis public service announcements
• Zero tolerance

Mass media[edit]

• Above the Influence
• Assassin of Youth
• Just Say No
• Marihuana
• National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
• Reefer Madness
• She Shoulda Said No!
• Stoner Sloth
• The Marihuana Story
• This Is Your Brain on Drugs
• Winners Don't Use Drugs

 

[Chitownheadbusa]

On topic: Recreational weed will be legal in Illinois starting next year. Got 7 months to set up shop- chicago has limited options...... NBA allstar weekend will be here Feb 2020. Think......

 

[roots69]

On topic: Recreational weed will be legal in Illinois starting next year. Got 7 months to set up shop- chicago has limited options...... NBA allstar weekend will be here Feb 2020. Think......

I hope your going to get into the cannabis green rush!!Damn, legalize cannabis and All star weekend= fun ass time for all!!

 

[roots69]

Western vs. Herbal Medicine. The Pros and Cons
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HERBAL REMEDIES MEDICINE 28TH OCTOBER 2018 SHARE

Accordings to the WHO there are over 300 Million people who suffer from depression worldwide. It is characterized as the “leading cause of disability worldwide”. That’s huge! However there are many more diseases, illnesses and disabilities which plague many people. There is no sign of a cure for diseases such as cancer or depression. Many of us may already be familiar with the drugs associated with these diseases but it is important to look at all options available. Below is a short summary of the pros and cons of traditional western medicine and alternative herbal medicine.

• Western medicine may be more effective in a trauma situation- Many herbal medicines take time to start working. When someone has been in a car accident, fallen from a tree, or experienced extreme trauma, measures like intravenous pharmaceutical drugs, imaging technology, and surgery can make the difference between life and death. The quick response allowed because of medical technology can also encourage proper healing sooner.
• Western medicine is heavily based in science. Though research is not always perfect, pharmaceutical drugs prescribed to patients undergo rigorous laboratory testing and must receive approval before they are available to patients.
• Western medical practitioners undergo rigorous training and must follow strict guidelines to continue their practice of medicine. They are educated for years and become experts in their chosen field. This gives patients confidence.
• Western pharmaceuticals are typically created in a laboratory, which is sterile and free from contamination. This can make them safer to take than some herbal supplements, especially those created and marketed by unknown, third-party manufacturers.
• Western medicine uses technology, which greatly helps with diagnosis. Without the same imaging and diagnostic equipment, it can take holistic practitioners longer to isolate their patient’s problem.

Western Medicine: Cons

• Western medicine focuses more on symptoms than total body wellness. For example, people who are obese might suffer from frequent back pain and have a high risk of heart disease because of their weight. Under conventional medicine, the back pain may be treated with prescription pills for pain and physical therapy, while heart symptoms might be treated with medication as they arise. Even though doctors might suggest that the patient lose weight, or at the very least change their diet to one that is not going to be as harmful to their heart health, they often continue to treat the symptoms rather than focusing on a full-body approach. This can lead to lifelong illness.
• Western medicine also uses pharmaceuticals that are more likely to have side effects than herbs. It is not uncommon for patients to find themselves in a constant cycle of treating symptoms and then treating symptoms that arise from their medicine.
• Western medicine may require the use of harsh drugs that the body must later eliminate from itself. This places strain on organs like the liver and kidneys, which are responsible for eliminating the waste. If these are not monitored and drug treatments are not adjusted, some medicines can even cause organ failure.
• Western medicine follows a one-size-fits-all approach. This does not always work because people experience their illnesses and ailments differently. Factors like their own antibodies and their biological makeup can change the way they react to medicine. This means that in some cases, the one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
• Western medicine also has many restrictions. It is often costly and patients who do not have health insurance may not be able to afford life-saving treatments. There are also financial restrictions on finding the funds to conduct research to find better, more affordable drugs.

Herbal Medicine: Pros

• Herbal medicine often focuses on full-body treatment. This allows the patient to restore overall balance to the body and promotes the body’s natural healing abilities. In most cases, the treatment for an ailment can have benefits in other areas as well.
• Herbal medicines can be preventative. This means promoting overall wellness before you get a disease, which can lessen its impact or stave off the disease altogether.
• Herbal medicine may be called upon by patients who have not had success with conventional therapies. It provides hope, even in times when western medicine has failed.
• Herbal medicine is more available than pharmaceuticals. This makes it a good choice for patients who cannot afford western drug therapies.
• Herbal treatments are gentler on the body and typically have fewer side effects than pharmaceutical drugs. This does not mean that they cannot become toxic if abused—but they are considerably safer when used as recommended.

Herbal Medicine: Cons

• Herbal medicine has less chance of a diagnosis. Though an herbal practitioner might be able to provide you with possible diagnoses for your condition, they do not use the technology that can get you a definitive answer.
• Herbal medicines are not FDA-regulated, and thus, do not have the same rigorous standards as pharmaceutical drugs. There is also the possibility of placebo-effects since a great deal of the evidence is anecdotal.
• Even though herbal medicines are safer, they are not always completely safe. Large amounts of certain supplements can cause problems like photosensitivity or toxicity. Additionally, some herbal supplements can interact negatively with pharmaceuticals and have negative effects during pregnancy.
• Herbal supplements are not all created equal. Some have different supporting ingredients that boost the effects of the drug, while others have different potency and purity levels. It is important to know what to look for to find a high-quality supplement and always choose a supplement from a well-established company that has a good reputation for providing quality supplements.

From the information presented above, it is clear that each of these systems has its benefits. China, which is a highly developed country, typically offers natural medicine alongside more modern methods. For example, acupuncture may be used to stimulate healing after surgery. Even though modern medicine has come a long way, the continued use and existence of medicinal herbs in technologically advanced societies proves that there is a basis to herbal medicine and the way it is used. By playing to the strengths of each of these types of medicine, it is possible to find the best overall treatment.

However, keep in mind that if you are using conventional medicine or you have a pre-existing condition, the use of certain herbs can become dangerous. You should consult with a medical professional before beginning a regimen using medicinal herbs in either of these cases or if you are unsure of the effects of a certain herb. This is a huge topic which cannot be done justice in an article. For more on the subject check out the latest release from urbanehaus Should I go Herbal? The Science Behind Herbal Remedies

 

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Top 10 Drugs Prescribed in the U.S.


Medications are prescribed abundantly throughout the United States every day. Just go into any pharmacy and you can see how busy the are as they fill prescriptions as fast as they can. Here's a list of the top ten prescribed drugs in the U.S. How many of these do are you taking?

1. Vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen)
Vicodin is a popular drug for treating acute or chronic moderate to moderately severe pain. Its most common side effects are lightheadedness, dizziness, sedation, nausea, and vomiting. Vicodin can reduce breathing, impair thinking, reduce physical abilities, and is habit forming.

2. Simvastatin (Generic for Zocor)
Simvastatin is one of the first "statins" (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) approved for treating high cholesterol and reducing the risk of stroke, death from heart disease, and risk of heart attacks. Its most common side effects are headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and musclepain. Like other statins it can cause muscle break down.

3. Lisinopril (Generic for Prinivil or Zestril)
Lisinopril is an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor used for treating high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and for preventing kidney failure caused by high blood pressure and diabetes. Lisinopril side effects include dizziness, nausea, headaches, drowsiness, and sexual dysfunction. ACE inhibitors may cause a dry cough that resolves when the drug is discontinued.

4. Levothyroxine (generic for Synthroid)
Levothryoxine is a man-made version of thyroid hormone. It is used for treating hypothyroidism. Its side effects are usually result from high levels of thyroid hormone. Excessive thyroid hormone can cause chest pain, increased heart rate, excessive sweating, heat intolerance, nervousness, headache, and weight loss.

5. Azithromycin (generic for Zithromax, Z-PAK)
Azithromycin is an antibiotic used for treating ear, throat, and sinus infections as well as pneumonia, bronchitis, and some sexually transmitted diseases. Its common side effects include loose stools, nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting. Rare side effects include abnormal liver tests, allergic reactions, nervousness, and abnormal heart beats.

6. Metformin (generic for Glucophage)
Metformin is used alone or in combination with other drugs for treating type 2 diabetes in adults and children. The most common side effects of metformin are nausea, vomiting, gas, bloating, diarrhea, and loss of appetite.

7. Lipitor (atorvastatin)
Lipitor is a "statin" (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) approved for treating high cholesterol. It also prevents chest pain, stroke, heart attack in individuals with coronary artery disease. It causes minor side effects such as constipation, diarrhea, fatigue, gas, heartburn, and headache. Like other statins it can cause muscle pain and muscle break down.

8. Amlodipine (generic for Norvasc)
Amlodipine is a calcium channel blocker used for treating high blood pressure and for treatment and prevention of chest pain. Its most common side effects are headache and swelling of the lower extremities. Amlodipine can also cause dizziness, flushing, fatigue, nausea, and palpitations.

9. Amoxicillin
Amoxicillin is a penicillin type antibiotic used for treating several types of bacterial infectionssuch as ear, tonsils, throat, larynx, urinary tract, and skin infections. Its side effects are diarrhea, heartburn, nausea, itching, vomiting, confusion, abdominal pain, rash, and allergic reactions.

10. Hydrochlorothiazide
Hydrochlorothiazide is a diuretic (water pill) used alone or combined with other drugs for treating high blood pressure. Its side effects include weakness, low blood pressure, light sensitivity,impotence, nausea, abdominal pain, electrolyte disturbances, and rash.

 

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Top 100 drugs filled not using insurance
1. Phentermine
2. Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen
3. Amphetamine/Dextroamphetamine
4. Zolpidem
5. Alprazolam
6. Lisinopril
7. Amlodipine
8. Gabapentin
9. Tramadol HCL
10. Amoxicillin
11. Azithromycin
12. Atorvastatin Calcium
13. Clonazepam
14. Omeprazole
15. Escitalopram
16. Cyclobenzaprine
17. Ondansetron
18. Pantoprazole
19. Sertraline
20. Cetirizine
21. Oxycodone/Acetaminophen
22. Metformin
23. Promethazine
24. Vitamin D
25. Losartan
26. Prednisone
27. Bupropion
28. Duloxetine
29. Venlafaxine
30. Amoxicillin/Clavulanate
31. Lorazepam
32. Cialis
33. Metoprolol
34. Ibuprofen
35. Oxycodone
36. Fluticasone
37. Carisoprodol
38. Simvastatin
39. Citalopram
40. Methocarbamol
41. Fluoxetine
42. Loratadine
43. Hydrochlorothiazide
44. Folic Acid
45. Lisinopril/Hydrochlorothiazide
46. Metoprolol Tartrate
47. Benzonatate
48. Acetaminophen/Codeine
49. Diazepam
50. Clindamycin
51. Meloxicam
52. Cephalexin
53. Clopidogrel
54. Buprenorphine
55. SMZ-TMP DS
56. Tamslosin
57. Ciprofloxacin
58. Furosemide
59. Montelukast
60. Trazodone
61. Levothyroxine
62. Fluconazole
63. Ferrous Sulfate
64. Viagra
65. Methylpred
66. Temazepam
67. Finasteride
68. Sumatriptan
69. Lamotrigine
70. Quetiapine
71. Vitamin D3
72. Estradiol
73. Ranitidine
74. Hydroxyzine
75. Valacyclovir
76. Cyanocobalamin
77. Pravastatin
78. Carvedilol
79. Metronidazole
80. Losartan/Hydrochlorothiazide
81. Cheratussin
82. Sildenafil
83. Testosterone
84. Atenolol
85. Levofloxacin
86. Naproxen
87. Topiramate
88. Levetiracetam
89. ProAir HFA
90. Eszopiclone
91. Buprenorphine/Naloxone
92. Doxycycline Hyclate
93. Paroxetine
94. Tizanidine
95. Synthroid
96. Spironolactone
97. Methylphenidate
98. Armour Thyroid
99. Clonidine
100. Ventolin HFA

Top 100 drugs filled through insurance
1. Atorvastatin Calcium
2. Levothyroxine
3. Lisinopril
4. Omeprazole
5. Metformin HCL
6. Amlodipine/Benazepril
7. Simvastatin
8. Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen
9. Metoprolol Succinate
10. Losartan Potassium
11. Zolpidem Tartrate
12. Azithromycin
13. Hydrochlorothiazide
14. Furosemide
15. Metoprolol Tartrate
16. Pantoprazole
17. Gabapentin
18. Amoxicillin
19. Prednisone
20. Sertraline
21. Tamsulosin
22. Fluticasone
23. Pravastatin
24. Tramadol HCL
25. Montelukast
26. Escitalopram
27. Carvedilol
28. Alprazolam
29. Warfarin
30. Meloxicam
31. Clopidogrel
32. Amoxicillin
33. Allopurinol
34. Bupropion HCL
35. Lisinopril/Hydrochlorothiazide
36. Citalopram
37. Losartan Potassium
38. Atenolol
39. Cialis
40. Duloxetine
41. Fluoxetine
42. Fenofibrate
43. Crestor
44. Venlafaxine
45. Ventolin HFA
46. Amphetamine/Dextroamphetamine
47. Cyclobenzaprine
48. Trazodone HCL
49. Potassium Chloride
50. Methylprednisolone
51. Lantus Solostar
52. Advair Diskus
53. Potassium Chloride
54. Glimepiride
55. Levofloxacin
56. Oxycodone/Acetaminophen
57. Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim
58. Celecoxib
59. Cephalexin
60. Clonazepam
61. Ciprofloxacin
62. Valsartan/Hydrochlorothiazide
63. Acetaminophen
64. Esomeprazole
65. Viagra
66. Amlodipine Benazepril
67. Triamterene/Hydrochlorothiazide
68. Spironolactone
69. Ibuprofen
70. Synthroid
71. Zetia
72. Proair HFA
73. Lorazepam
74. Ranitidine
75. Lantus
76. Lansoprazole
77. Januvia
78. Finasteride
79. Valsartan
80. Bystolic
81. Valacyclovir
82. Doxycycline
83. Cefdinir
84. Latanoprost Ophthalmic
85. Lyrica
86. Fluconazole
87. Testosterone
88. Triamcinolone
89. Paroxetine
90. Xarelto
91. Lovastatin
92. Bd pen needle
93. Estradiol
94. Naproxen
95. Pioglitazone
96. Oxycodone
97. Ramipril
98. Methylphenidate
99. Isosorbide Mononitrate
100. Vytorin

 

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Opioid Drugs: Dosage, Side Effects, and More


When you have a mild headache or muscle ache, an over-the-counter pain reliever is usually enough to make you feel better. But if your pain is more severe, your doctor might recommend something stronger -- a prescription opioid.

Opioids are a type of narcotic pain medication. They can have serious side effects if you don't use them correctly. For people who have an opioid addiction, their problem often started with a prescription.

If you need to take opioids to control your pain, here are some ways to make sure you're taking them as safely as possible.

How Opioids Work
Opioid drugs bind to opioid receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and other areas of the body. They tell your brain you’re not in pain.

They are used to treat moderate to severe pain that may not respond well to other pain medications.

Opioid drugs include:
Codeine (only available in generic form)

• Fentanyl (Actiq, Duragesic, Fentora, Abstral, Onsolis)
• Hydrocodone (Hysingla, Zohydro ER)
• Hydrocodone/acetaminophen (Lorcet, Lortab, Norco, Vicodin)
• Hydromorphone (Dilaudid, Exalgo)
• Meperidine (Demerol)
• Methadone (Dolophine, Methadose)
• Morphine (Kadian, MS Contin, Morphabond)
• Oxycodone (OxyContin, Oxaydo)
• Oxycodone and acetaminophen (Percocet, Roxicet)
• Oxycodone and naloxone

Your doctor can prescribe most of these drugs to take by mouth. Fentanyl is available in a patch. A patch allows the medication to be absorbed through the skin.

Working With Your Doctor
You'll need a prescription from your doctor before you start taking opioids. The doctor can adjust the dose as needed to help control pain.

You may receive around-the-clock doses to manage pain throughout the day and night. And your doctor may prescribe opioids to be taken "as needed" in case you have "breakthrough" pain -- a flare of pain that you get despite round-the-clock doses.

While you're on opioid pain medications, check in with your doctor regularly. Your doctor will need to know:

• How your pain is responding to the drug
• Whether you're having any side effects
• Whether you have any potential interactions or medical conditions that could make you more likely to have side effects, such as sleep apnea, alcohol use, or kidney problems
• Whether you're taking the drug properly

Never change or stop taking any opioid medicine without first checking with your doctor. If a pain medication isn't working as well as it should, your doctor may switch you to a different dose -- or add on or try another drug.

When you're ready to stop taking opioids, your doctor may help wean you off them slowly -- if you have taken them for a long time -- to give your body time to adjust. Otherwise, you may have withdrawal symptoms.

Opioid Side Effects
One of the reasons why your doctor needs to manage pain medications so closely is that they can cause side effects, such as:

• Constipation
• Drowsiness
• Nausea and vomiting

The drugs lubiprostone (Amitiza), methylnaltrexone (Relistor), naldemedine (Symproic), and naloxegol (Movantik) are approved to treat constipation due to opioid use in those with chronic pain.

Opioids can be dangerous if you take them with alcohol, or with certain drugs such as:

• Some antidepressants
• Some antibiotics
• Sleeping pills

Make sure your doctor knows all of the other medicines you're taking. That includes:

• Prescription drugs
• Over-the-counter drugs
• Herbal supplements

Opioid Tolerance and Addiction
After taking opioid pain medication for a while, you might find that you need more and more of the drug to achieve the same effect in easing pain. This is called tolerance. It's not the same as addiction, which involves a compulsive use of a drug.

When you use opioid medication over an extended period of time, you can have dependence. This can happen when your body becomes so used to the drug that if you abruptly stop taking it, you get withdrawal symptoms such as:

• Diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting
• Muscle pain
• Anxiety
• Irritability

You can also get a serious addiction to opioid pain medications. People who are addicted compulsively seek out the pain medications. Their behavior usually leads to negative consequences in their personal lives or workplace. They might take someone else’s pills or buy them off the street, which is especially dangerous since those drugs are often laced with lethal amounts of fentanyl.

If you are having a problem with addiction, you need to see your doctor or an addiction specialist.

 

[roots69]

The Big List of Narcotic Drugs


The term narcotic has historically been used to refer to a number of mind-altering substances as well as to provide a broad legal designation for a range of illicit drugs; today, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) more specifically defines narcotic drugs as those that relieve pain and dull the senses, and the use of the word is most commonly associated with opioid drugs.
The naturally occurring opiates (plant alkaloids derived from the opium poppy) as well as synthetic (man-made) and semisynthetic opioids are considered to be narcotic drugs, which include both legally prescribed and illicit varieties. Opioids not only diminish the perception of pain signaling in the central nervous system but also produce rewarding, euphoric effects, making them targets for abuse and highly addictive.


Commonly Abused Narcotics & Opioids
Below is a brief list of some of the more widely-known narcotics and opioids drugs:

• Opium
• Heroin
• Codeine
• Oxycodone
• Hydrocodone
• Tramadol
• Morphine
• Hydromorphone
• Fentanyl
• Carfentanil

The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. The American Society of Addiction Medicine(ASAM) indicates that close to 3 million people battled opioid addiction (to either heroin or prescription painkillers) in 2015. More than 60 percent of the record-high overdose deaths in 2015 involved an opioid drug, and 91 people in the US die from an opioid overdose daily, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports. Also in 2015, roughly 300 million prescriptions were dispensed for narcotic pain medications around the world, and Americans consumed 80 percent of them.


Opioid abuse, addiction, and overdose are considered serious public health concerns in the United States. Here we’ll provide more detail about some of the more commonly discussed prescription painkillers and illicit narcotic drugs.

Learn About Specific Narcotics & Related Drugs

• Heroin
• Morphine
• Fentanyl
• Oxycontin
• Oxycodone
• Codeine
• Hydrocodone
• Demerol

• Dilaudid
• Opana
• Percocet
• Vicodin
• Tramadol
• Meloxicam
• Kratom

processing, opium consisted of a mixture of naturally-occurring opiate alkaloids—substances that serve as the building blocks for the synthesis of many modern opioid drugs. Opium was sometimes distributed as a liquid or solid, but most commonly encountered as a brownish powder, according to the DEA. Opium was most commonly smoked but could also be pressed into pill form or dissolved into a tincture or other solution for oral use or injection.

The opioid alkaloids contained in opium extracts (e.g., codeine, morphine, thebaine) are used to synthesize many prescription narcotics (like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, etc.). Heroin is also made from raw materials obtained from the opium poppy plant. Opium is not as common a drug of abuse in the United States as other opioids are, and outside of limited use as an anti-diarrheal agent, has no medical use in its traditional form.

heroin is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States, as it has no approved medical uses and a high potential for abuse and addiction. Opioids like heroin dull pain but can also impair cognition, increase sedation, and slow certain autonomic functions such as those that control respiratory rate. Heroin may be distributed as a brown or white powder or a sticky black substance called “black tar heroin.” The drug can be snorted, smoked, or injected. Heroin creates an intense and rapid “high” or “rush,” and individuals often cycle between an awake and unconscious state, called being “on the nod.”

More than 400,000 Americans reported past-month heroin use on the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The CDC reports that heroin use is increasing across most demographics in the US in recent years.

As prescription opioids become costlier and less accessible, individuals may be opting for cheaper options like heroin. The CDC reports that three out of four people who initiate heroin use began by abusing a prescription opioid, close to half of those who use heroin are addicted to prescription opioids, and nine out of 10 also abuse another drug.

Overdose is a major risk of abuse. The rate of heroin overdose deaths increased by nearly 20 percent from 2015 to 2016, and close to 15,500 people died from drug overdoses involving heroin in 2016. Heroin overdose symptoms may include markedly constricted pupils, difficulties breathing, respiratory arrest, stupor, sluggish movements, confusion, clammy and cold skin, slow heart rate and low blood pressure, a bluish tinge to the nails and lips, and a potential loss of consciousness. Heroin overdose is a medical emergency; if an overdose is suspected, call 911 immediately.

ASAM reports that more than 600,000 people battled heroin addiction in 2015. Heroin and other opioid drugs increase dopamine activity in the brain. This surge in dopamine accompanies the burst of pleasure that is associated with opioid use and strongly reinforces continued, compulsive use of these drugs.

OxyContin is an extended-release formulation of oxycodone that has made more than $35 billion in sales for Purdue Pharma since it burst onto the market with aggressive marketing strategies in 1995, Forbes reports. Purdue has paid out millions for its alleged role in the opioid addiction epidemic currently sweeping across America.

OxyContin and other opioids containing oxycodone are effective painkillers for moderate to severe pain; however, they can quickly lead to the development of physical dependence and addiction with regular use or abuse. In its various formulations, oxycodone is dispensed as both immediate and extended-release tablets intended for oral use. Oxycodone is also available in several combination formulations that include analgesic pain relievers such as acetaminophen and aspirin.

Oxycodone is a Schedule II controlled substance, which means that it does have accepted medical use; however, it is also commonly abused for its mind-altering effects and can also lead to addiction. OxyContin and other oxycodone products contain a black-box warning regarding their high diversion, abuse, dependence, addiction, and overdose potential.

NSDUH reports that more than 4 million American adults were currently abusing prescription painkillers at the time of surveying in 2014. In 2016, the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey published that 3.4 percent of high school seniors had abused OxyContin in the previous year.


People may crush, grind, or dissolve oxycodone tablets in an attempt to bypass those with an extended-release mechanism prior to snorting, smoking, or injecting the drug. This greatly increases the odds for overdose as the full dose intended for a timed release is delivered much more quickly. Oxycodone is one of the most prescribed prescription pain relievers and also one of the most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose fatalities.

In 2007, OxyContin was reformulated to make it more abuse-deterrent. When crushed, the result is now a gooey substance that is more difficult to abuse. Even so, the drug can still be abused by swallowing and taking higher doses at one time. The Pharmaceutical Journal reports that while the reformulation of OxyContin did decrease abuse rates, individuals may be turning to the illicit drug heroin as a replacement.

Hydrocodone is the top-prescribed and most regularly diverted and abused opioid drug, according to the DEA. Americans consume around 99 percent of the world’s supply of hydrocodone, which became more tightly regulated in 2014. Hydrocodone and its many combination products are now classified as a Schedule II controlled substances.

In addition to being an effective painkiller, hydrocodone has some cough suppressant (antitussive) properties and is a component of some prescription cold and cough formulations. Prescribed as tablets or oral solution, hydrocodone products are intended for oral administration, but some may attempt to misuse them by snorting, smoking, or injecting the drug. Nearly 3 percent of high school seniors reported misusing Vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen) in 2015.

The DEA warns that hydrocodone is one of the drugs most frequently involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths, and it is considered highly addictive.

Morphine continues to be one of the most widely utilized pain medications in hospital settings, where it was once administered almost entirely as an injectable solution.

Today, it is available in other forms, including both immediate- and extended-release tablets, oral solutions, and rectal suppositories. Those dependent on morphine may prefer to inject the drug as it provides a more rapid onset of effects than taking it orally.

Morphine typically remains active in the bloodstream for 4-6 hours, and dependence can develop rapidly. The Global Information Network about Drugs (GINAD) reports that between 1990 and 2010, the US consumed over half of the world’s morphine, and an estimated 10 percent of Americans have abused an opioid drug (including morphine) at least one time in their lives. Many synthetic and semisynthetic narcotics are derived from morphine.

there were close to 4 million prescriptions dispensed for hydromorphone products.

Though indispensable as a powerful agent for pain control in hospitals and other clinical settings, hydromorphone is commonly diverted after being obtained through “doctor shopping,” forged prescriptions, questionable prescribers, and pharmacy and nursing home theft. When misused, people may attempt to smoke, snort, or inject the crushed tablets. It is a semi-synthetic opioid derived from morphine that is very potent, highly addictive, and has a high potential for overdose when abused. The Drug Abuse Warning Network estimated that, in 2011, nearly 20,000 people received care in an emergency department (ED) for the misuse of hydromorphone.

50-100 times more potent than morphine.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is also manufactured illicitly in illegal laboratories and may be used to “cut” heroin or used as a cheaper substitute. Individuals may not realize that the drug they are taking is laced with, or contains fentanyl.
Overdose rates for synthetic opioids (including drugs like fentanyl) increased 100 percent between 2015 and 2016. Fentanyl was involved in nearly 3,000 overdose deaths in the second half of 2016. Given the startling prevalence of fentanyl overdoses throughout the country, numerous warnings regarding the danger of this drug have been issued.


The DEA reports that 6.5 million prescriptions for fentanyl were dispensed in 2015. Fentanyl is available as lozenges, sublingual tablets, buccal tablets, as well as metered nasal and sublingual sprays. It may be abused by freezing and cutting up the patches to suck or chew on them, or by scraping the gel off for injecting or oral ingestion.

The drug is capable of eliciting an intense and rapid rush of euphoria, making it extremely addictive. Due to its small molecular size, fentanyl is able to be absorbed through the skin on contact and can be lethal in relatively small doses due to its potent effects.

Codeine is a relatively mild opioid analgesic and a less potent painkiller than morphine. Codeine also has antitussive properties, and it is regularly prescribed to treat coughs as well as pain. The drug may be misused by consuming the tablets or oral solution in quantities that exceed prescribed doses as well as by combining it with other intoxicating substances.

Around 10,000 people received emergency care for misusing codeine in 2011, according to the DAWN report. It is generally thought to be less addictive and habit-forming than more potent narcotics; however, it still carries a risk for abuse, dependence, addiction, and overdose.

prescribed as replacement therapy to treat opioid dependence and manage opioid withdrawal as part of a medical detox protocol. It is dispensed in pill, wafer, or liquid forms to be administered once a day through federally regulated clinics, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA) publishes.

Methadone is one of the longer acting opioid agonists, staying active in the bloodstream for close to a full day, meaning that it can be prescribed in lower doses less often in order to keep opioid withdrawal symptoms at bay. Methadone is still an opioid agonist drug though; therefore, it does have the potential to be abused and also lead to the development of physical dependence and addiction. More than 66,000 people were treated in EDs for the misuse of methadone in 2011, per the DAWN report. It is also one of the most common drugs found in prescription opioid overdose fatalities.

prescribed as a tablet or syrup. In cases of significant physiological dependence, people may benefit from a slow tapering and other medical detox interventions to avoid severe withdrawal at the start of the recovery period.

powerful painkiller for the treatment of severe pain. It is usually prescribed when alternative treatments are ineffective or when a person is already tolerant to other opioids. It is roughly twice as powerful as OxyContin, and its maker, Endo Pharmaceuticals, reported nearly $400 million in sales in 2011.

In 2010, OxyContin was reformulated to make it more difficult to misuse, and this change may have actually opened the door to the abuse of Opana. At the time, the extended-release tablet form of Opana (now discontinued) could be crushed and then snorted or injected for an intense high. In 2012, Opana was itself reformulated to deter abuse. While the new coating did decrease the rate of intranasal abuse of Opana, it is still possible to crush and inject the drug. Repeated oxymorphone use can easily lead to physical dependence, and it is extremely addictive.

Tramadol is a somewhat unique opioid analgesicthat not only has opioid agonist effects but also acts to block the reuptake of norepinephrine and serotonin. More than 43 million tramadol prescriptions were dispensed in 2013.

Tramadol has generally been considered to have a relatively low abuse and dependence potential, the Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports; however, the DEA classified tramadol as a controlled substance in 2014, as over 3 million Americans were reported to have abused it in their lifetime by the year 2012. Tramadol is most often abused by people who are opioid-dependent already, by healthcare providers, and by chronic pain sufferers. While it may be less addictive than other opioid narcotic drugs, it still may lead to physical dependence and addiction, especially when misused.

as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine, the DEA warned in a 2016 alert to the public and police in response to the increasingly common presence of carfentanil in illicit drug samples.

The drug is often encountered in a form that may resemble powdered heroin or cocaine, but it is much more dangerous and may be lethal in exceedingly small doses. It may be being added to heroin, used to “cut” or stretch the drug, or passed off as a different drug. In addition to having a very high potential for fatal overdose, it is also highly addictive.

medication for opioid dependence. It is available in different forms under brand names such as Buprenex, Butrans, and Probuphine. In combination with the opioid antagonist drug naloxone, buprenorphine is available as Suboxone, Zubsolv, and Bunavail.

In 2012, more than 9 million buprenorphine prescriptions were dispensed in the United States. Though widely used as a treatment medication for managing opioid dependence, it may still be abused and has some dependence liability of its own.

The introduction of naloxone in combination products was made to deter some of the inherent abuse potential or buprenorphine, as naloxone is an opioid antagonist drug. The naloxone component is poorly absorbed when used orally, allowing the buprenorphine component to remain active when taken as directed for therapeutic use. However, when buprenorphine combination products are intentionally misused via injection routes, the naloxone effectively blocks some of the opioid effects, and can furthermore precipitate the immediate onset of uncomfortable opioid withdrawal symptoms.

Despite the progress made with the safeguards of the combination products, some forms of buprenorphine are still abused. The DAWN report includes an estimate of more than 20,000 people receiving ED treatment for buprenorphine abuse in 2011.

42,000 opioid-related deaths were reported in the United States in 2016, amounting to more than 66% of all drug overdose deaths that year. In addition to the undeniable risk of overdose, chronic opioid misuse can lead you or a loved one toward a compulsive cycle of physical dependence, withdrawal, and other opioid addiction associated health effects.

Early intervention is key, as overdose is preventable, and opioid addiction is treatable. There are several things to watch out for when abuse of a narcotic is suspected, such as:

• Mood swings
• Erratic sleep patterns
• Changes in appetite and weight
• Slurred speech, uncoordinated movements, euphoria, sedation, shallow breathing, face flushing, pinpoint pupils, droopy eyes, itching of the arms, calmness, and dry mouth, which can all indicate opioid intoxication
• Unexplained medication bottles or pills
• Presence of drug paraphernalia
• Withdrawal from friends and family
• Increased secrecy and time spent online in drug forums or chat rooms
• Lack of interest in recreational and other activities that were once a priority
• Financial strain
• Potential legal and/or criminal entanglements
• Trying to get prescription refills when they are not needed or early

• Taking more pills at a time than prescribed
• Going to multiple doctors, or “doctor shopping,” for additional prescriptions
• Altering medications (e.g., chewing or crushing them)
• Asking friends and peers for their medications
• Increased pain sensitivity
• Lack of motivation
• Difficulties concentrating and issues with short-term memory functions
• Decline in personal hygiene and care over personal appearance
• Drop in work/school attendance and production
• Inattention to normal obligations
• Tolerance and taking more medication to feel its effects
• Drug dependence and withdrawal symptoms that are physically similar to the flu and that emotionally include depression, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, and drug cravings

Narcotic drug abuse and addiction are treatable with behavioral therapies, counseling services, medications, detox services, and supportive care. There are many different forms of treatment available to choose from; the key is to reach out for help as soon as possible.

Other Classes of Prescription Drugs

• Opiates
• Benzodiazepines
• Barbiturates
• Stimulants
• Prescription Drugs

 

[roots69]

13 Pros and Cons of Chemotherapy


Chemotherapy, or simply known as chemo, is the most common treatment for cancer. In its truest sense, chemotherapy is not a treatment. At the early stages or cancer or at the onset of a malignant tumor, surgery is the recommended treatment. But surgery cannot ensure that the tumor wouldn’t recur again and thus the possibility of malignancy or cancer does exist.

Chemotherapy is introduced at this stage to reduce the chances of recurrence. If someone is diagnosed at an advanced stage of cancer when surgery would not be a cure, chemotherapy is recommended to manage the symptoms and to provide some relief from the ill-effects of cancer. Chemo in such latter stages helps people to live a relatively normal life. Chemo does have the ability to prolong a person’s life which is otherwise curtailed by cancer.

List of Pros of Chemotherapy
1. Potential to Cure Cancer
When diagnosed at an early stage, when the tumor is yet to become severely malignant, chemo along with a horde of treatments or medications can do away with the cancerous cells. The tumor can be managed and then surgery can completely cure the malignancy. In such cases, chemotherapy is life saving.

2. Increase Cancer Survival Rate
Even if chemo fails to cure cancer or there is consistent recurrence of cancerous cells, the treatment can still help a person to live longer. The effects of cancer are unbearable as the condition worsens and in such cases chemo can make living relatively comfortable or bearable. Later stages of cancer can render a person incapable of doing even the normal tasks of day-to-day life. Chemo can help to an extent.

3. Increase Lifespan
Chemo can provide that bit more time which many terminally ill patients want. In the most advanced or worst phases, people get very few days to live and there may be a degree of uncertainty to that as well. Chemo can help in providing a few additional days of life. That can allow terminally ill patients to do things they want, meet people they want to and just to get that time for certain wishes or desires to be satiated.

4. Scientifically Evolved Treatment
Today, chemotherapy is considerably evolved. The extremely painful experiences that were common a decade or two back are not exactly the encounter one shall endure today. With better technology, understanding of how chemo works, more advanced medications and immaculate diagnosis by experts, patients feel relatively comfortable and they can often regain hope and be optimistic with their life.

List of Cons of Chemotherapy
1. Ineffective Treatment to Some
First, chemotherapy may work for someone or it may be completely ineffective. There is no surefire treatment that would work for all and sundry, at least for cancer. Not only are there various types of cancer but the exact stage, the general health of the person, existing medical conditions and even the strength of the immune system, several factors influence the impact of chemotherapy. In effect, chemotherapy may cure a person and may not have any effect on another person. Hence, it is necessary that this possibility of success and failure is factored in.

2. Physical Side Effects
No matter what type of cancer it is or how healthy a person is, chemotherapy will have some side effects. The severity or the nature of the side effects will vary but anyone being administered a chemo will suffer from some problems. The most common problem is fatigue. A person will feel tired or exhausted after every session of chemotherapy. This fatigue may last for a few minutes, a few hours or it can last for days. That depends on the health and lifestyle compulsions of the person. One may not be able to work or even do the normal chores if the fatigue or weariness is unbearable.

3. Suffer From Discomfort
Discomfort is very common as well. It is difficult to define or explain this discomfort because people experience it differently. Some people feel uncomfortable, they don’t like to lie down, sitting may not be convenient and one may not like anything around. Some people feel nauseous, vomiting tendency is very common and one may even struggle to breathe. There are medications that can control or reduce the severity of such symptoms. Some people can get complete relief from such symptoms with the help of prescribed medications but these side effects are common and it is rare for someone to not experience them at all.

4. Not Available Everywhere
Chemotherapy isn’t always available everywhere. Someone living far away from the nearest hospital or healthcare facility where chemo can be administered and a doctor can be consulted with will have to travel long distances and on many occasions in a month. This is not a desirable approach to treatment. Paying for treatment or care at home can cost a fortune.

5. Can Cause Death
Although rare, chemotherapy can cause or lead to death. There are cases of people who have not been able to endure the treatment of chemotherapy and have succumbed as a result. Chemo isn’t a facilitator of cancer as some perceptions may lead one to believe. Chemo may be ineffective in curing or managing the severity of cancer in some cases but it doesn’t enhance the growth of cancer cells.

6. Interfere with Other Medications
Chemotherapy can interfere with a horde of medications. From the drugs meant for diabetes to treatments for people with chronic cardiac ailments, a huge list of medicines can be rendered ineffective or there can be some severe fallout and a multitude of adverse side effects if proper care and assessment is not indulged in before chalking out a chemo treatment plan.

7. Loss of Senses
There is a phenomenon, known as chemo brain, which some patients experience. It is sort of a mental fog that lasts for some time after every treatment. A person may not be in the right senses, may not remember the names of family and relatives or where one stays. Inactivity in the brain or temporary fogging of cognitive senses is a relatively common side effect of chemotherapy.

8. Daily Life Impacted
Eating, exercising and sleeping may be hampered due to chemotherapy. Appetite and taste would be substantially affected. Ability to exercise will be curtailed and sleeping may be very uncomfortable at times. One may also get very little sleep while undergoing chemo.

9. Hair Loss
Hair loss is another very common side effect. The skin becomes more sensitive to the sun.

Many of these side effects can be managed with adequate planning and guidance from the doctor. From using certain medicines to being prepared to handle the mental and physical impact of chemotherapy, there are ways to overcome certain cons of chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy Explained
Chemotherapy is not a simple or an ordinary medical treatment. The procedure or the treatment plan itself is complicated and would be influenced by several factors. Chemo or chemotherapy is a treatment for many types of cancer where medications or drugs are used to target and destroy cancer cells. Cancer is caused when cancerous cells start to grow, divide and regenerate rampantly without any order and start to destroy healthy cells or noncancerous cells. Hence, to cure or to manage cancer the cancerous cells must be destroyed. That is what chemotherapy does or aims to do.

In some cases, chemotherapy can destroy all cancer cells in the human body and as a result a person can be completely cured of cancer. There is a possibility of the cancerous cells growing again but then chemo is recommended as an ongoing treatment precisely to counter that recurrence. Chemo doesn’t have the same level of impact on all types of cancer. Also, the impact of chemo varies largely as the stage of cancer advances or worsens. Chemo can reduce or manage symptoms of cancer and can also help in delaying the advancement of a particular stage or onto a more severe stage.

Administering Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is not confined to cancer treatment. It is also used along with biological or radiation therapy and as a supplementary treatment to different types of surgery. In case of cancer, chemotherapy may be used to make a tumor smaller so it is easier to get rid of during surgery. Chemotherapy can also supplement radiation therapy.

The method of administering chemotherapy will depend on the type of cancer, its stage, prior treatments if any and the nature of the drug that is being prescribed. Prior history of chemotherapy and any medical conditions that a person may have will also influence the choice and method of administering chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy may be administered via an injection. Such in injection is administered at the thighs, hip, arm or under the belly. Intra-arterial chemotherapy involves administering the drug directly into the cancerous artery. Intra-peritoneal chemotherapy is administered into the peritoneal cavity, which is the part of the body containing the stomach, intestines, liver and ovaries. Intravenous chemotherapy is administered into a vein. There are creams available today which can be applied topically. Oral pills, liquids or capsules are also available that one can swallow.

 

[roots69]

 

[roots69]

Natural Supplements vs. Pharmaceutical Drugs

There are always two sides to every story. Likewise, there are always positive and negative effects for every choice you make. In this case, both previous statements stand true. It’s true that we’ve been using pharmaceutical drugs or prescription drugs for most of our lives. But recently, the natural and organic lifestyle is growing. That means many people are going back to their roots and relying on homemade natural supplements or herbal medicine.

Like I said, there are pros and cons for each. First of all, one seems safe, but is not yet clinically proven. However, the other has strict regulations, but not always safe. There are always various opinions about using prescribed medicine and alternative medicine. This makes you confused as to which one is the most effective solution for whatever ailment it is you’re facing.

This is quite a controversial topic. As you read on, make sure to keep an open mind, remember the positives and the negatives about each option, and then decide for yourself.

Regulation of Pharmaceutical Drugs


The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for monitoring the safety, efficacy, and security of pharmaceutical products. Many people assume the agency itself does the tests on new drugs. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Pharmaceutical companies only provide the FDA with their own research from clinical trials to prove their new drugs are safe for the market. This is a practice that leaves quite a lot of raised eyebrows.

Says Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, “Can we believe those trials? After all, that crucial last stage of research and development is usually sponsored by the company that makes the drug, even if the early research was done elsewhere. Is there some way companies can rig clinical trials to make their drugs look better than they are? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Trials can be rigged in a dozen ways, and it happens all the time.”

In addition, FDA approval committees often include members with connections to pharmaceutical companies. In fact, the 2006 Institute of Medicine’s study says that the FDA should “establish a requirement that a substantial majority of the members of each advisory committee be free of significant financial involvement with companies whose interests may be affected by the committee’s deliberations.”

FDA Credibility


In recent years, the credibility of the FDA has noticeably gone down. Critics are suggesting that the FDA is too eager to please pharmaceutical companies. There is an obvious bias and influence of money and politics in the supposedly unbiased and independent government agency.

In a recent confidential survey conducted among FDA staff scientists, 19 percent reported that they were pressured to give a drug the go signal, even though they had reservations about it. In addition, 66 percent of the staff said they were not sure that the FDA properly monitors drugs after they go out to the market. And finally, 50 percent of the entire staff believe that the agency is going in the wrong direction. This and many other accusations lead to many more people shunning the use of over-the-counter medications.

Regulation of Natural Supplements


Of course, the use of herbal medicine has been around way longer than prescribed medicine. All around the world, people make use of whatever is available in nature, and through trial and error, they are able to figure out which herbs work, what are their side effects, and which herbs are deadly.

The knowledge of the use of these natural supplements have been handed down from generation to generation. Many tribes that are still existing today still employ these modes of treatment.

Currently in the United States, dietary or natural supplements are considered food, not drugs. This is according to the 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DHSEA). So ultimately, supplement manufacturers hold sole responsibility in making sure their products are both safe and effective. These companies aren’t required by law to register their products with the FDA.

However, they must have an FDA disclaimer and must notify the FDA within 30 days of marketing their product. In addition, manufacturers may print various health claims on the product’s packaging only with the approval of the FDA. And finally, the FDA is responsible in taking care of products that are available in the market, but encounter problems.

Many people nowadays prefer to take in herbal medicine as compared to these pharmaceutical drugs. In addition, fewer people suffer adverse reactions to these natural supplements than to drugs.

Effectiveness of Pharmaceutical Drugs


Without a doubt, many people will agree that prescription drugs are evidence-based medicine. Before being let out to the market, they all undergo thorough studies and trials. These evaluate their safety, quality, and effectiveness before being available in the market.

These drugs go through a complete evaluation of their metabolism, their interactions and effects with other drugs, and potential differences in safety and effectiveness for people of different races, ages, genders, etc.

Since then, there have been many strict laws and processes pharmaceutical companies have to comply with before being able to release their drug products out in the market. All these ensure the safety and effectiveness of the drug.

Effectiveness of Natural Supplements


Though medical science official reports are still lacking, many people who have been dependent on natural supplements to cure or treat certain diseases swear that they really are effective. The reason is all the ingredients in the products are from nature, meaning there are no harmful chemicals or additives in them.

In addition, the negative side effects of these natural supplements are still lesser than compared to those reported against over-the-counter medication.

Another thing that people notice is that herbs cost less. The average prescription drug price is around $50 for a month’s supply. On the other hand, natural supplements cost way lesser, around $10 to $20 a month. That saves you quite a lot of money.

Also, many doctors and other medical professionals are starting to recognize the value and effectiveness of some natural supplements.

Herbs vs. Drugs


So, really, which is better for us to take? Which is more effective?

The truth of the matter is that these medicines, both herbal and pharmaceutical, are businesses. Currently, Americans spend about $200 billion a year on prescription drugs. Surprisingly, they also spend around $20 billion per year on natural supplements.

When choosing which medicine to take, we just want the safest, most effective, and preferably the one that costs less. At the end of the day, it really is our choice. All the pros and cons are there for you to see. It’s just a matter of you choosing which one.

In the Internet age today, you have full access to health!!!

 

[roots69]

War on Drugs

The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by increasing and enforcing penalties for offenders. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today. Over the years, people have had mixed reactions to the campaign, ranging from full-on support to claims that it has racist and political objectives.

The War on Drugs Begins
Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country’s inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50. (At that time, cocaine use had not yet been outlawed.)

In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking. However, opium could still be used as a medication. This was the first federal law to ban the non-medical use of a substance.

In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

Alcohol prohibition laws quickly followed. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which offered guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

Prohibition lasted until December, 1933, when the 21st Amendment was ratified, overturning the 18th.

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937
In 1937, the “Marihuana Tax Act” was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana.

The Act was introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina and was drafted by Harry Anslinger. While the law didn’t criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren’t paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

Controlled Substances Act
President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970. This statute calls for the regulation of certain drugs and substances.

The CSA outlines five “schedules” used to classify drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.

Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they pose a very high risk for addiction with little evidence of medical benefits. Marijuana, LSD, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) and other drugs are included on the list of Schedule 1 drugs.

The substances considered least likely to be addictive, such as cough medications with small amounts of codeine, fall into the Schedule 5 category.

Nixon and the War on Drugs
In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” stating that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.”

A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s likely led to President Nixon’s focus on targeting substance abuse. According to a 1969 Gallup poll, about 48 percent of Americans thought drugs were a serious problem.

As part of the War on Drugs initiative, Nixon increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures, such as mandatory prison sentencing, for drug crimes. He also announced the creation of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which was headed by Dr. Jerome Jaffe.

Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973. This agency is responsible for tackling drug use and smuggling in the United States.

At the start, the DEA was given 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and a budget of $2.03 billion.

John Ehrlichman
During a 1994 interview, President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, which mainly involved helping Nixon keep his job.

In the interview, conducted by journalist Dan Baum and published in Harper magazine, Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon campaign had two enemies: “the antiwar left and black people.” His comments led many to question Nixon’s intentions in advocating for drug reform and whether racism played a role.

Ehrlichman was quoted as 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.”

The 1970s and The War on Drugs
In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana. During his first year in office, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

Say No To Drugs
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon’s War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the “Just Say No” campaign, which was an effort to educate children on the dangers of drug use.

President Reagan’s refocus on drugs led to a significant increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug crimes.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was later heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans).

Critics also pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites, leading to disproportionate incarceration rates among communities of color.

The War on Drugs in the 21st Century
Public support for the war on drugs has waned in recent decades. Some Americans and policymakers feel the campaign has been ineffective or has led to racial divide. However, others still passionately support the effort.

In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use.

Technically, the War on Drugs is still being fought, but with less intensity and publicity than in its early years.

 

[roots69]

Nixon's War on Drugs and the Present

“Blunt Truths” tells the origin story of marijuana prohibition.

The story so far: The United States' first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry Anslinger, knowingly used racist messaging to scare white America into legislating against cannabis and the plant's users. Lacking a Constitutional basis for cannabis prohibition, Anslinger created the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which mandated a prohibitive tax on every marijuana purchase or sale, making all marijuana users who didn't pay “tax cheats.” When racism became a less effective cudgel, Anslinger invented the “gateway theory,” an equally fabricated justification to ratchet up punishment for cannabis crimes.

Though Harry Anslinger officially retired from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in July 1962, his hold on the bureau continued, almost as if he'd never left, in part, because Anslinger's deputy, Henry Giordano, was hired to replace Anslinger. Hiring Giordano was like re-hiring Anslinger, but without Anslinger's strengths as a bureaucrat and public relations genius. Within a year, the bureau was under assault from politicians wanting to kill the FBN because of persistent corruption.

The FBN had been plagued by corruption since its inception. J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime FBI director, had resisted getting his agency involved in narcotics at first because he feared that narcotics prohibition would corrupt the FBI just as alcohol prohibition did. Without Anslinger to successfully run interference for the FBN, as he had for 32 years, the bureau suffered.

Another problem plagued the FBN. Common sense reared its head, albeit briefly.

Though Anslinger officially “retired,” rumors persisted that he was forced out by John F. Kennedy, who was keeping a campaign promise to hold a Conference on Narcotic and Drug Abuse at the White House.The Prettyman Report — the paper produced by the conference and written by E. Barrett Prettyman, a retired U.S. Supreme Court of Appeal judge — put it bluntly: There was simply no link between cannabis use and criminality, other than people being turned into criminals because they used cannabis. Further, reports of cannabis' dangers were “grossly overstated;” America's marijuana prohibition laws (especially its sentencing guidelines), the report concluded, demonstrated “poor social perspective.”

Reporting based on anecdotal information suggested that Kennedy might have used cannabis himself; Snopes investigated this claim and found it to be unproven. While no evidence exists that cannabis was part of the medical protocol Kennedy consumed because of his various maladies, namely Addison's disease and profound back issues caused by his World War II experience, he may have used cannabis recreationally — several times — with a woman he was linked with, Mary Meyer.

We'll never know for sure. Responding to the Prettyman Report's findings, Kennedy appointed aPresidential Advisory Committee on Narcotics and Drug Abuse in 1963 that roundly condemned the country's attitudes toward cannabis. What had been a “Mexican” or “black” drug was rapidly becoming a young, middle-class white drug. The kid who couldn't legally buy a six-pack of beer could, often much more easily, score a bag of weed.

Writers including Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, and Timothy Leary began to speak honestly about using drugs — cannabis especially — with nothing like the horrifying experiences Anslinger had described. A whole generation realized that cannabis prohibition was based on outright lies. That realization alone did tremendous harm to what a growing youth culture thought of as “the establishment's” inherent untruthfulness. If they lied so blatantly about cannabis, what else were they lying about?

The truth about cannabis also filtered back to America via soldiers returning from Vietnam. In “Cannabis: A History,” Martin Booth wrote: “For the U.S. troops in Vietnam, smoking marijuana was not a political statement. It was an escape from the horror of fighting and a recreational drug in place of alcohol, which is prohibited to American forces.”

On top of that, medical and legal professionals increasingly saw drug addiction as a medical probleminstead of a crime. For a brief moment, in the mid-'60s, America's commitment to cannabis prohibition wavered as its use spread. But, the more cannabis use became a form of calculated civil disobedience, the more it became a target, too.

In 1967, though he'd been out of office for five years, Anslinger testified before a U.S. Senate committeethat the lobbyists seeking to liberalize marijuana laws were really out to legalize it. Giordano also testified before Congress that many parts of the country that had previously been “free of drug abuse now report a small but persistent traffic, centering on the 'hippie' elements and college campuses.”

Adding his voice to the establishment mix, J. Edgar Hoover sent a directive to the FBI in 1968 that stated: “Since the use of marijuana and other narcotics is widespread among members of the New Left, you should be alert to opportunities to have them arrested by local authorities on drug charges.”

Richard Nixon, running for office in 1968, had two clear enemies: the antiwar left and African Americans. When journalist Dan Baum interviewed Nixon's assistant John Ehrlichman in 1994 for Harper's magazine, Erlichman forthrightly explained Nixon's strategy regarding cannabis: “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, 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.”

Former President Richard Nixon's war on drugs linked the counter culture with marijuana, causing long-lasting repercussions.
In 1973, Nixon amalgamated all the federal government's various drug enforcement agencies (the FBN had been folded into the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1968) into one mega-agency: the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Unlike Anslinger's underfunded, understaffed FBN, the DEA began its life with 10,000 agents operating around the world, a massive budget, and extraordinary intelligence-gathering powers with virtually no transparency.

Nixon's “war on drugs” was never about substance abuse. It was about punishing political enemies and indulging in racism.

Anslinger finally realized his original dream — a potent federal agency with a potent mandate to punish people — when the Reagan administration oversaw passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which changed the system of federal supervised release from a rehabilitative system into a punitive system and enacted new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana.

Too bad for Anslinger that he'd been dead for 11 years. After suffering through ill health — including terrible angina for which the former FBN chief regularly took morphine, Anslinger died of heart failure on Nov. 14, 1975.

Conclusion
As this series has pointed out, death did not end our relationship with Anslinger. He impacts our lives to this day. He certainly impacted the lives of the millions of people — far, far too many of color – who were prosecuted and punished for using cannabis.

In 2017, the U.S. spent more than $47 billion on the war on drugs, arresting 1,632,921 people for drug law violations. Of those, 1,394,514, or 85.4%, were for possession, while 659,700 of those were for cannabis law violations.

Of those people arrested for drug law violations, 46.9% were either black or Latino despite combined making up only 31.5% of the U.S. population, according to the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). Though it's impossible to quantify what Anslinger's racist quest cost the U.S. and the world, multiply those numbers times the 75 years that his misguided views and policies have been embedded in law and society. As the U.S. continues to grapple with legalization, it's imperative to remember history's lessons and take them to heart. If Anslinger taught us anything, it's this: nothing is more important than the truth.

The mandate now is to recognize the truth, to differentiate truth from myth, and most importantly, to seek information from many sources, including from public officials. If truth and information can replace fallacy and deception, then it's much more unlikely to be seduced by the comforting but willful deceptions of a Harry Anslinger.

 

[roots69]

Harry Anslinger is one of the most lying piece of shit!! His whole story is nothing but made up lies!! If this doesnt show you, the whole story of copper color people is nothing but a big ass lie, I dont know what will!! Anyway, watch and read how lies can grow outta control and ruin 1000's of copper color men and women whole life!! Question everything, believe nothing!!



Nixon's War on Drugs and the Present
“Blunt Truths” tells the origin story of marijuana prohibition.

The story so far: The United States' first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry Anslinger, knowingly used racist messaging to scare white America into legislating against cannabis and the plant's users. Lacking a Constitutional basis for cannabis prohibition, Anslinger created the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which mandated a prohibitive tax on every marijuana purchase or sale, making all marijuana users who didn't pay “tax cheats.” When racism became a less effective cudgel, Anslinger invented the “gateway theory,” an equally fabricated justification to ratchet up punishment for cannabis crimes.

Though Harry Anslinger officially retired from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in July 1962, his hold on the bureau continued, almost as if he'd never left, in part, because Anslinger's deputy, Henry Giordano, was hired to replace Anslinger. Hiring Giordano was like re-hiring Anslinger, but without Anslinger's strengths as a bureaucrat and public relations genius. Within a year, the bureau was under assault from politicians wanting to kill the FBN because of persistent corruption.

The FBN had been plagued by corruption since its inception. J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime FBI director, had resisted getting his agency involved in narcotics at first because he feared that narcotics prohibition would corrupt the FBI just as alcohol prohibition did. Without Anslinger to successfully run interference for the FBN, as he had for 32 years, the bureau suffered.

Another problem plagued the FBN. Common sense reared its head, albeit briefly.

Though Anslinger officially “retired,” rumors persisted that he was forced out by John F. Kennedy, who was keeping a campaign promise to hold a Conference on Narcotic and Drug Abuse at the White House.The Prettyman Report — the paper produced by the conference and written by E. Barrett Prettyman, a retired U.S. Supreme Court of Appeal judge — put it bluntly: There was simply no link between cannabis use and criminality, other than people being turned into criminals because they used cannabis. Further, reports of cannabis' dangers were “grossly overstated;” America's marijuana prohibition laws (especially its sentencing guidelines), the report concluded, demonstrated “poor social perspective.”

Reporting based on anecdotal information suggested that Kennedy might have used cannabis himself; Snopes investigated this claim and found it to be unproven. While no evidence exists that cannabis was part of the medical protocol Kennedy consumed because of his various maladies, namely Addison's disease and profound back issues caused by his World War II experience, he may have used cannabis recreationally — several times — with a woman he was linked with, Mary Meyer.

We'll never know for sure. Responding to the Prettyman Report's findings, Kennedy appointed aPresidential Advisory Committee on Narcotics and Drug Abuse in 1963 that roundly condemned the country's attitudes toward cannabis. What had been a “Mexican” or “black” drug was rapidly becoming a young, middle-class white drug. The kid who couldn't legally buy a six-pack of beer could, often much more easily, score a bag of weed.

Writers including Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, and Timothy Leary began to speak honestly about using drugs — cannabis especially — with nothing like the horrifying experiences Anslinger had described. A whole generation realized that cannabis prohibition was based on outright lies. That realization alone did tremendous harm to what a growing youth culture thought of as “the establishment's” inherent untruthfulness. If they lied so blatantly about cannabis, what else were they lying about?

The truth about cannabis also filtered back to America via soldiers returning from Vietnam. In “Cannabis: A History,” Martin Booth wrote: “For the U.S. troops in Vietnam, smoking marijuana was not a political statement. It was an escape from the horror of fighting and a recreational drug in place of alcohol, which is prohibited to American forces.”

On top of that, medical and legal professionals increasingly saw drug addiction as a medical probleminstead of a crime. For a brief moment, in the mid-'60s, America's commitment to cannabis prohibition wavered as its use spread. But, the more cannabis use became a form of calculated civil disobedience, the more it became a target, too.

In 1967, though he'd been out of office for five years, Anslinger testified before a U.S. Senate committeethat the lobbyists seeking to liberalize marijuana laws were really out to legalize it. Giordano also testified before Congress that many parts of the country that had previously been “free of drug abuse now report a small but persistent traffic, centering on the 'hippie' elements and college campuses.”

Adding his voice to the establishment mix, J. Edgar Hoover sent a directive to the FBI in 1968 that stated: “Since the use of marijuana and other narcotics is widespread among members of the New Left, you should be alert to opportunities to have them arrested by local authorities on drug charges.”

Richard Nixon, running for office in 1968, had two clear enemies: the antiwar left and African Americans. When journalist Dan Baum interviewed Nixon's assistant John Ehrlichman in 1994 for Harper's magazine, Erlichman forthrightly explained Nixon's strategy regarding cannabis: “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, 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.”

Former President Richard Nixon's war on drugs linked the counter culture with marijuana, causing long-lasting repercussions.
In 1973, Nixon amalgamated all the federal government's various drug enforcement agencies (the FBN had been folded into the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1968) into one mega-agency: the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Unlike Anslinger's underfunded, understaffed FBN, the DEA began its life with 10,000 agents operating around the world, a massive budget, and extraordinary intelligence-gathering powers with virtually no transparency.

Nixon's “war on drugs” was never about substance abuse. It was about punishing political enemies and indulging in racism.

Anslinger finally realized his original dream — a potent federal agency with a potent mandate to punish people — when the Reagan administration oversaw passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which changed the system of federal supervised release from a rehabilitative system into a punitive system and enacted new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana.

Too bad for Anslinger that he'd been dead for 11 years. After suffering through ill health — including terrible angina for which the former FBN chief regularly took morphine, Anslinger died of heart failure on Nov. 14, 1975.

Conclusion
As this series has pointed out, death did not end our relationship with Anslinger. He impacts our lives to this day. He certainly impacted the lives of the millions of people — far, far too many of color – who were prosecuted and punished for using cannabis.

In 2017, the U.S. spent more than $47 billion on the war on drugs, arresting 1,632,921 people for drug law violations. Of those, 1,394,514, or 85.4%, were for possession, while 659,700 of those were for cannabis law violations.

Of those people arrested for drug law violations, 46.9% were either black or Latino despite combined making up only 31.5% of the U.S. population, according to the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). Though it's impossible to quantify what Anslinger's racist quest cost the U.S. and the world, multiply those numbers times the 75 years that his misguided views and policies have been embedded in law and society. As the U.S. continues to grapple with legalization, it's imperative to remember history's lessons and take them to heart. If Anslinger taught us anything, it's this: nothing is more important than the truth.

The mandate now is to recognize the truth, to differentiate truth from myth, and most importantly, to seek information from many sources, including from public officials. If truth and information can replace fallacy and deception, then it's much more unlikely to be seduced by the comforting but willful deceptions of a Harry Anslinger.

 

[roots69]

What Stoners Know That Harry Anslinger Didn't Care to Know

At a time when the U.S. grapples with the question 'What Is Truth?', the story of cannabis prohibition should be an object lesson in what happens when a culture doesn't care what the truth is. The object lesson: one day, it will.

We need only to look to the story of Harry Anslinger, who in 1930 became America's first commissioner of narcotics, a position that allowed him to paint a picture of marijuana's supposed evils that continues to color public perception today.

Bias appears in subtle ways, particularly in word choice. We know – empirically – that cannabis affects everybody differently. It would be inaccurate to say one person's experience with the drug is exactly like the next person's.

It would be easy to assume that Anslinger enacted marijuana prohibition because of proven concerns about harm to public health. Anslinger helped stifle the research that might have supported his assumption that marijuana posed a health hazard. From the start of his administration onward, the federal government refused to allow any federally funded testing on cannabis.

However, a legitimate case can be made that racism was always behind Anslinger's actions. When he was appointed as the founding commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — America's first narc — he took over a bureau with no money, no manpower, and no mandate; all narcotics were legal. Of all the drugs under his purview, Anslinger singled out marijuana as the most dangerous, though even then all evidence was to the contrary. Using his own soon-to-be-evident racism as a guiding principle, Anslinger also refused to accept the truth or the word no in his relentless quest to make marijuana illegal and to punish the people who used it.

To determine whether cannabis is harmful to us, first, we have to try and figure out who, if anyone, is telling the truth about it.

The dictionary definition of empirical truth, the most verifiable kind, is, “exact conformity as learned by observation or experiment between judgments or propositions and externally existent things in their actual status and relations — called also actual truth.. If the subject under discussion were acid reflux and a pharmaceutical product that easily dealt with it, this would be a far simpler conversation for us to have. The topic is cannabis, however, and the body part it most evidently acts upon is our brains where subjectivity rules. Conversations get harder.

Getting to empirical truth gets harder, too.

The late Booker Prize-nominated English historian and author Martin Booth, writing in “Cannabis: A History,” describes how as far back as 10,000 years ago, humans began their relationship with cannabis, most likely in eastern Asia, where ample evidence of that relationship has been found in pottery shards, tombs, and even silk scarves are interwoven with hemp thread. Hemp and cannabis and their relationship with humans spread from there.

The idea of making cannabis illegal is a fairly recent phenomenon, scholar Barney Warf told Prohbtd. Warf, a professor at the University of Kansas in the Geography and Atmospheric Science Department, studies how people have moved around the planet. He's concluded that cannabis has a long history within many cultures, including the ancient Greeks.

According to Warf, “It's really in the moral panic of the early 20th century that it becomes demonized. … I think all its history and geography reflect its centrality to many cultures, and the idea that there's something bad about smoking it is a more or less uniquely American kind of interpretation that then became globalized.”

For most of its history, cannabis was not only legal but also tolerated and even actively promoted by empires and corporations, such as the British East India Company.

However, it's more difficult to determine when humans first realized that cannabis had psychoactive properties. There are illuminating blips in the historical record. Back to Booth, who describes the story of Haydar, founder of the Persian Sufi Hyderi sect. A monk living a simple life, Haydar returns from a walk in the countryside with a smile on his face and in a “capricious mood.” The usually reserved monk had encountered a marijuana plant and he became fascinated by its ability to withstand the heat. Legend has it that as he walked on, he chewed on the plant's leaves – and, according to Haydar's chronicler “…remained in a capricious mood until his death 66 years later.”

So, we can conclude that the capricious mood did not kill him. Or, if it did kill him, it took 66 years to do it.

Meanwhile, every time that Haydar chewed those cannabis leaves, the THC supposedly found its way into his bloodstream and his brain where the THC's psychoactive properties went to work. But what do we mean by went to work?” According to the National Institute On Drug Abuse, THC's chemical structure is similar to the brain chemical anandamide. Our brains recognize this chemical and readily bond with it. But that's from THC's point of view.

Let's look at it from our brains' point of view.

What are thoughts: Thoughts are generally considered to be the product of chemicals traveling between paths of neurotransmitters, which are like digital switches; they're either open or closed. Open: They're able to receive incoming chemical information. Closed: They're not able to receive that information.

As anyone who has ever experienced how THC feels – that additional data flowing through your brain heightens sensory perceptions. THC can make food taste incredible. It can make light look transcendent. It can make friend's last statement profound. It can make something mildly amusing seem like comedy gold. Some of us feel as if we see more, hear more, take in more. Some people, by contrast, find that increased information flow unpleasant or distracting; it makes them feel paranoid even while their friends are blissed out beside them.

Those are the experiential effects most cannabis users recognize. For most marijuana users, very little reliable data exist at present that says cannabis is hurting their brains, though the drug can affect certain populations. There are data that suggest marijuana use can exacerbate or accelerate psychosis in marijuana users who are predisposed genetically or circumstantially. But – causal links are harder to come by. As the authors of a review of studies for The International Journal of Drug Policy point out: “Few studies have evaluated the relative strengths and limitations of these methodologically heterogeneous cohort studies, and how their relative merits and weaknesses might influence the way the link between cannabis use and psychosis is interpreted.”

Even smoking cannabis, at present, is “not linked to cancer,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” which found that, “more research is needed to know if smoking cannabis increases a person's risk for lung cancer. However, it is difficult to determine whether there is a link, because cannabis use often overlaps other behaviors related to lung cancer, such as tobacco use.”

The one real battleground seems to be the brain. Some studies have shown cannabis can exacerbate or trigger psychosis.Another study links conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to premature brain aging; it sees a similar link between alcohol and cannabis users. An Australian study found that cannabis use can disrupt the effectiveness of some treatments for schizophrenia (while not interfering with others). It's brain chemistry. It's complicated. There are people for whom cannabis would be a poor choice – of medicine or recreational drug. Their brain chemistry and THC probably shouldn't be together.

Given that prohibition prevented extensive cannabis research, the only thing that scientists and legislators can say with certainty is that we need more research into cannabis and its effect on the brain. Without sufficient research, experts can't say for certain that cannabis causes its users to take unnecessary and dangerous risks, nor can it or has it incontrovertibly compared those actions with alcohol. The law, however, treats cannabis as if alcohol and THC impacted the user's cognition in exactly the same way, even though they are different chemicals entirely.

In its report “Marijuana Impaired Driving,” the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) noted that the effects of THC on cognition — as opposed to behavior — is still under debate. Yet even as it described marijuana use as “impairment,” it also found that alcohol users become more dangerous drivers, but cannabis users drive more carefully as a result of having consumed THC. Evidently, cannabis users compensate for their “impairment” by driving more cautiously.

NHTSA concluded that the current state of research on cannabis and its impact on operating a motor vehicle “does not show a relationship between THC levels and impairment.”

One more statistic that flies in the face of conventional wisdom and how cannabis actually affects people: medical cannabis use does not increase the likelihood that a user will be in our cause a vehicular crash. Clearly, THC cannot be impairing cannabis users the same way alcohol affects drinkers. Why then do we still treat it and criminalize it like it did have the same effect? The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has compiled a list of well-documented scientific research on marijuana and driving.

In the absence of enough data to form a scientific consensus we can't answer the question “What does cannabis do to the people who use it?” To answer, you would have to ask every cannabis user. That's not meant to be flippant: Anecdotal uses of cannabis provide the biggest data pool we have.

When you read a lot of what gets written about cannabis, one thing becomes clear: when it comes to cannabis and how people experience cannabis, cannabis users usually know what they're talking about far more than non-users. It's that subjective and experiential.

So, what is the straight dope on dope? Because of how THC works in our brains, it's probably isn't a good medicine or recreational drug for some people with certain brain chemistry issues. More research is needed. For most other people however, little to no data exist that says marijuana is in any way profoundly harmful or bad for you. Vastly more data say that marijuana is efficacious as a medication for a variety of ailments – medical and otherwise.

There simply never was a 'medical' – or moral – reason to make marijuana illegal.

 

[roots69]

The Great Hemp Conspiracy

The story of marijuana prohibition so far: Racism lay at the heart of marijuana prohibition. The man most responsible for making marijuana illegal in the United States, former prohibition cop Harry Anslinger, assumed office as America's first commissioner of narcotics in 1935. At the time, he oversaw a patchwork of state-by-state regulations, a small staff, a minimal budget and virtually no mandate to do anything. Of all the substances under his control, the one Anslinger hated most was marijuana. But it wasn't so much the drug, Anslinger hated, as the people who used it.

Jack Herer, the Cannabis Crusader
Hemp and marijuana. They're like conjoined twins – variations on a theme – the same plant but with distinctly different attributes. Like red wine grapes and white wine grapes: the same, but different.

It all comes down to THC content. Hemp contains far less THC than marijuana and more CBD. Smoking it might give you a headache. It won't get you high.

Yet, in the United States, hemp suffered the same legal fate as marijuana: prohibition and cultural banishment. On the battlefield, it's called “collateral damage.”

In 1973, a man named Jack Herer opened a head shop in San Francisco. Herer, a former Goldwater Republican, and hard-core marijuana prohibitionist had seen the light about marijuana. Actually, he fell in love — with a woman who turned him on to marijuana. The prohibitionist became a crusader determined to make smoking marijuana legal and to “fix” the collateral damage that also made hemp illegal. Herer became so synonymous with marijuana normalization and legalization that a popular hybrid marijuana strain was named for him.

In 1985, Herer published “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” which Larry Sloman, author of “Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana,” called the “Bible of the hemp movement.” Twelve editions (the last published November 2010) and 700,000 copies sold, according to JackHerer.com, make the case.

Reading Herer's book, it becomes apparent that he was something of a hoarder of marijuana and hemp information. Herer didn't just quote from his sources, he provided them — photocopied newspaper clippings, Congressional testimony and authoritative white papers — cramming them into the pages and even the margins of “Emperor” with a whistle-blower's eye for specificity (and a hoarder's need to cram everything in).

The more Herer researched marijuana and hemp — and why they had been made illegal — the more convinced he became that a terrible wrong had been done and desperately needed fixing. He committed himself to change not just the laws, but also the mythology surrounding marijuana. Herer, in the book's 1990 through 1995 editions, wrote: “What came together, fact after empirical fact, was a picture of a world being destroyed by a malicious conspiracy to suppress not a 'killer-weed but the world's premier renewable natural resource, for the benefit of a handful of wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations.”

Jack Herer at the Portland Hempstalk Festival, September 12, 2009, Portland, Oregon. Photo by D. Paul Stanford.
It is hard to imagine marijuana now being legal in so many states and Canada without Jack Herer's passion and perseverance — and his determination to tell marijuana and hemp's true story. His attention to detail served him and his cause well. But his convert's zeal may have gotten the better of him occasionally.

Among the individuals on whom Herer focused his growing exasperation that marijuana and hemp became illegal: Harry Anslinger. In “Emperor,” Herer used Anslinger's own words to establish Anslinger's racism. He quoted Anslinger extensively; in fact; Anslinger was Herer's best witness — against Anslinger. But Herer took a wider view of events. His extensive research convinced him that Anslinger wasn't the only person on a personal mission to make marijuana illegal.

While hemp had been grown and processed into a variety of products since the nation's founding, hemp had attributes that made it difficult to process — especially when it came to easily and cheaply break down marijuana's tough and complex lignan so it could be turned into pulp. Through the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, inventors tried to solve this problem by inventing machines called decorticators to strip the skin, bark or rind off of nuts, wood, plant stalks, or grain so they can be processed.

Herer tells the story of George Schlichten, a 50-year-old German immigrant who, in 1917, objected to “the felling of forests for paper, which he believed to be a crime.” Having spent $400,00 of his own funds developing his decorticator — but needing a buyer, Schlichten headed to America. During World War I, the price of newsprint skyrocketed; Schlichten believed this presented an opportunity for hemp – now that Schlichten's invention could process hemp more efficiently and cheaply – to take the place of wood pulp.

In California, Schlichten caught the attention of wealthy industrialist Henry Timken and newspaper giant E. W. Scripps, founder of United Press International. For two weeks in August 1917, Scripps and his partners negotiated enthusiastically with Schlichten. Then, suddenly, they changed their minds —and insisted that hemp could never be economically feasible.

In “Emperor,” Herer blamed Scripps' sudden shift on William Randolph Hearst. Understood to be the model subject for Orson Welles' classic movie “Citizen Kane,” Hearst, like Kane, owned newspapers, enjoyed considerable power, and had political aspirations. Herer also suggested that Hearst owned timberland, which he used to make newsprint for his newspapers.

It's true that Hearst owned huge tracts of land including the 270,000-acre ranch in San Simeon, California, where he built Hearst Castle and the 900,000-acre, heavily timbered Babicora Ranch in Mexico. Historically, Hearst was a buyer of newsprintand not a maker or seller of it.

Dale Gieringer, . state coordinator of the California National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), in his highly respected paper “The Origins of Cannabis Prohibition in California”, pointed out that Hearst's newspaper empire depended on Canadian newsprint, not newsprint he produced. When the price of Canadian newsprint rose in 1939, Hearst was forced to reorganize because he was so strapped for cash. Geiringer concluded: “It, therefore, seems that it would actually have been in Hearst's interest to promote cheap hemp paper substitutes, had that been a viable alternative.”

Herer makes a very strong case that hemp paper could have replaced wood pulp, in theory. In practice, however, the hemp industry could not possibly have produced the amount of pulp required. The machinery didn't exist, though it could have, and it never occurred to Hearst — or any consumer of newsprint — to employ hemp-based newsprint instead of wood pulp newsprint.

Herer also saw a similar marijuana conspirator in DuPont. In 1937, DuPont patented processes to make plastics from oil and coal, Herer pointed out. Herer contended that DuPont could have chosen hemp oil instead as the base — as with wood pulp, technically true. Hemp oil is used today to make plastics. But, by 1937, DuPont was already producing plastics usingpetrochemicals. In the abstract, the cost of retooling to accommodate the differences in manufacturing petrochemicals vs hemp oil would have been prohibitive. There's no evidence that DuPont ever even considered using hemp-based oil instead.

Herer also pointed out the family relationship connecting Anslinger to the du Ponts: Anslinger's wife, Martha Kind Denniston, was the niece of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who created Anslinger's post and then hired Anslinger to fill it. While theappearance of nepotism suggests possible corruption, no other evidence exists that Anslinger's familial relationships affected events.

In “Emperor,” Herer called out Anslinger as a “bureaucratic police liar” in part because of Anslinger's consistent myth-making. Whether motivated by a convert's zeal or just the accumulated frustration of countering Anslinger's relentless myth-making, Herer occasionally gave in to myth-making himself. For those of us trying to navigate this minefield in search of the truth about cannabis, Herer reminds us: Myth-making cuts both ways.

 

[roots69]

Enter Harry Anslinger
The story of marijuana prohibition so far: Racism lies at the heart of all marijuana prohibition. The man most responsible for making marijuana illegal, former prohibition cop Harry Anslinger, assumed office as America's first Commissioner of Narcotics in 1930. At the time, he oversaw a patchwork of state-by-state regulations, a small staff, a minimal budget, and an equally minimal mandate.

In the popular mythology of events, Harry Anslinger was already plotting how to get his hooks into “marihuana” even as he strolled into his office on his first day as the nation's first ever Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) on July 1, 1930. The truth was, Anslinger's brand-spanking-new agency — it was officially created on the same day Anslinger started working at it — began its life with some serious limitations. The bureau's mandate gave it the authority to investigate and detect the presence of illicit narcotics and narcotics traffic.

Marijuana wasn't part of its mandate. It doesn't seem to have been Anslinger's mandate, either. There's nothing — not even in Anslinger's own writing — that says it was part of his thinking at the time he started at the FBN.

It would be part of his thinking soon enough.

But, as he settled in to his desk chair, in his fifth floor Washington, D.C. office at the corner of 14th and K Streets, Anslinger's concerns focused on more practical issues. His mission was mostly interdiction — the prevention of smuggling. But the money and manpower the agency had been allotted would make accomplishing that mission virtually impossible. Anslinger's meager force of fewer than 250 agents was charged with guarding 4,000 miles of border and 20,000 miles of coastline. That meant each agent was, theoretically, responsible for guarding 100 miles of coastline or border all by himself. Remember, in 1930 the automobile was still relatively new. Phones weren't cellular. They stayed in one place and couldn't send messages or take pictures.

Anslinger has a biographer — a respected academic and historian, John C. McWilliams. In “The Protectors,” McWilliams' straightforward, even-handed account of America's first drug czar, he described how Anslinger immediately got to work turning his underfunded and undermanned agency into a well-funded, well-staffed personal fiefdom that he ran successfully for three decades. Anslinger “… cultivated and sustained solid political ties with key members of both parties and gained the support of dozens of interest groups and lobbies…, ” McWilliams wrote.

From day one, Anslinger got to work not just interdicting narcotics, but also working the room. As his biographer put it, “In a short period, Anslinger developed a keen understanding of Washington politics and the importance of establishing influential connections.” These would serve him well in the years ahead; they were instrumental in Anslinger eventually seeing his prize — the Marijuana Tax Act — made into law in 1937.

Anslinger's considerable abilities as a bureaucrat were evident early in his life and career. He was ambitious, smart and detail-oriented. He quit school while in the eighth grade to join his father working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Anslinger completed his course requirements as a part-time student and even enrolled at the Altoona Business College and later Pennsylvania State College, where he received a two-year associate degree in engineering and business management.

While working in the intelligence department for “The Pennsy” as it was known, , Anslinger discovered he had a knack for detective work. In his book, “Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana,” Larry Sloman describes how young Anslinger sniffed out an attempt to defraud the railroad. He found evidence that proved a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the railroad was fraudulent. Saving his employer from the $50,000 settlement it was about to make established Anslinger's reputation.

When World War I began, Anslinger enlisted. Again, ambition and initiative served him. He turned a stateside commission as assistant to the chief of inspection of equipment into a position with the diplomatic corps in the State Department as an attaché in the American Legation in The Hague, Netherlands. McWilliams tells the story of how Secretary of State Robert Lansing sent Anslinger on a top-secret mission to “establish personal communications with the Kaiser.” Having grown up in a German-speaking home, Anslinger was fluent in German and taught himself Dutch while working in The Hague. On the one hand, Anslinger was at the right time and place with the right skill set. On the other hand, Anslinger made a lot of his own luck.

Remaining with the State Department after World War I, Anslinger was sent to Hamburg, Germany. According to McWilliams, it was in Hamburg that Anslinger first saw the international trade in narcotics as a problem. He wasn't a prohibitionist toward them, however. In his book “The Traffic in Narcotics,” Anslinger writes about the benefits of narcotics. “The use of opium in medicine and surgery,” he wrote, “is indispensable.”

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Prohibition became law on October 1919. The Volstead Act passed, finalizing the prohibition of alcohol. Something else was happening, far out of view: a ripple effect of another piece of sweeping legislation. Five years before, in 1914, Congress had passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products. The law also criminalized opiates. Even prescribing them became difficult.

Prior to 1920, heroin addicts could receive treatment under trained supervision in legally sanctioned clinics. When the Harrison Act closed down the clinics, according to McWilliams, “The addicts were literally forced into the street where they resorted to illicit means to obtain illicit drugs.” Many turned to crime to support their now illicit habit. The prisons began to fill.

Returning to the U.S., Anslinger segued into a job as chief of the newly created division of foreign control in the State Department's prohibition unit. Prohibition of alcohol agreed with Anslinger and, according to McWilliams, Anslinger agreed with it. As Anslinger settled into his new assignment, one of the Harrison Act's unintended effects was boomeranging back at America.

Not only had the Harrison Act not solved America's narcotics problem, it had made it significantly worse: America's prisons were now filling, if not already filled, with drug addicts.

By 1928, America's addiction problem was considered so severe that Republican U.S. Rep. Stephen G. Porter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, introduced HR 12781, a bill intended to mitigate the burgeoning addiction problem by establishing two prison hospitals that Porter referred to as “farms”. McWilliams described these facilities as “clearinghouses” for addicts already in state or federal penitentiaries.

But Porter wanted the job of overseeing the farms taken off the prohibition unit's plate. He saw an independent Bureau of Narcotics as the logical next step.

As a result, the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics was inspired, in large part, as a necessary response to the glaring failures of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.

McWilliams didn't write whether Anslinger actively sought the appointment as the bureau's first commissioner, but he had lots of friends soliciting on his behalf. More than a dozen applicants competed with Anslinger.

The day before the U.S. Senate was scheduled to vote on who would be appointed commissioner, as McWilliams tells the story, Anslinger oversaw a narcotics raid that seized $1 million dollars worth of product. If Anslinger's connections hadn't sealed the deal, his boss, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon — who also was his father-in-law — the raid did.

Anslinger became the bureau's first commissioner.

Tempting as it is to dismiss Anslinger as a bland, soulless, racist bureaucrat, the simple fact is, Anslinger succeeded almost entirely at getting what he wanted. It took Anslinger 10 years to go from a lowly clerk to commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. That career path suggests that the person on it shouldn't be taken for granted. As Anslinger would consistently demonstrate, those who bet against him usually lost.

The story so far: Racism lies at the heart of all marijuana prohibition. The man most responsible for making marijuana illegal, former prohibition cop Harry Anslinger, assumed office as America’s first commissioner of narcotics in 1930. At the time, he oversaw a patchwork of state-by-state regulations, a small staff, a minimal budget and equally minimal mandate. Anslinger’s assigned mission, as he began, was interdiction of opium and cocaine smuggling. Marijuana regulation played no part in it. But then — something changed.

The first crisis in Harry Anslinger’s tenure as first-ever commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics erupted in 1931, a mere nine months after he started, “when three federal agents of the local New York narcotics bureau were arrested as conspirators in an attempt to bribe a federal official,” according to Anslinger’s biographer, John C. McWilliams, writing in “The Protectors,” his painstakingly researched history of Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Corruption, McWilliams noted, would not be a stranger: “Throughout Anslinger’s career and after his retirement, scandals involving corrupt agents frequently rocked the bureau.”

In that corrupt environment, Anslinger turned his attention to his bureau’s assigned mission: interdiction. In author Larry Sloman’s authoritative history of marijuana, “Reefer Madness,” he wrote Anslinger had wanted to bring marijuana under his tight control, but many medical professionals objected and communicated their objections strenuously. Having bigger problems on his hands such as corruption and the drugs already under his control, Anslinger backed away from pursuing marijuana prohibition.

Meanwhile, marijuana was finding its way into American culture. Most marijuana historians agree that once marijuana landed in New Orleans, its place in American culture was fixed. The lyrics to a 1930s jazz song were just one clue that hinted at the marriage of jazz and marijuana.

“Dreamed about a reefer five feet long.

Mighty Mezz, but not too strong.

You’ll be high but not for long

If you’re a viper.

I’m the king of everything.

I’ve got to be high before I can swing.

Light a tea and let it be

If you’re a viper.”

– “If You’re A Viper” (originally ‘You’se A Viper’), Stuff Smith

In “Cannabis: A History,” author Martin Booth described how “Itinerant musicians attached to circuses, medicine shows, and saloons, or working the Mississippi paddle-steamers had frequently used drugs for the same reasons slaves and labourers had: to keep them going in a hard life. Most had used opiates or cocaine but, as these became increasingly hard to obtain, they switched to marijuana.”

In New Orleans, marijuana found a happy home among the musicians who were in the midst of creating that most American of musical forms: jazz. As one jazz musician put it in his autobiography, “Really The Blues,” when he played with marijuana in him, “I began to hear my saxophone as though it were inside my head… Then I began to feel the vibrations of the reed much more pronounced against my lip … I found I was slurring much better and putting just the right feeling into my phrases….” That musician, Mezz Mezzrow, became a legend in the jazz world, not so much for how he played — he was well-respected — but for his advocacy of marijuana.

In New Orleans, marijuana created circumstances that other drugs, chiefly opiates and cocaine, had not. Booth pointed out that “… Jazz musicians, who were mostly black and played in the brothels or saloons, avoided alcohol because it dulled the senses and opiates because they sent the taker to sleep. Marijuana, on the other hand, with which they were familiar, kept them alert and fought off exhaustion. It also enhanced their musical creativity.” Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, one of the best-known jazz musicians — and a known marijuana user and aficionado — put it this way: “It makes you feel a special kind of kinship.”

That “kinship” horrified several people in New Orleans.

An earlier reaction to musicians, prostitutes, drug addicts, and their environment had led the city’s authorities to close in 1917 New Orleans’ fabled red-light district, Storyville. As the Great Depression gripped the nation a decade later, a man named Dr. A. E. Fossier decided that marijuana was the cause of a rise in crime in New Orleans. Fossier was “a bigot and a racist,” Booth said. In “The Marihuana Menace,” an article Fossier contributed in 1931 to the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, he wrote: “The dominant race and most enlightened countries are alcoholic, whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp and opium, some of which once attained to heights of culture and civilization have deteriorated both mentally and physically.” Those deteriorated qualities, Fossier squawked, were causing crime.

New Orleans’ rise in crime, Booth pointed out, was far more likely being caused by the effects of Prohibition on the city. Nonetheless, New Orleans listened to Fossier. In the crackdown that followed, marijuana-inspired musicians went on an exodus up the Mississippi River that took them to the places the Storyville musicians had gone: Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago. They spread from there. By 1930, as Anslinger settled in to his job, Booth wrote that marijuana had spread through most major American cities.

Jazz was spreading to those places, too.

Jazz’s Marijuana Man
Milton ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow was a Jewish kid from Chicago who, Sloman put it, “got in with the “wrong” crowd early on, learned to blow some sax, and spent the rest of his seventy-three years obsessed with riffs and reefer.” Mezzrow, by his own admission, rejected white society and, per Booth, “considered himself to be black.” In fact, Booth pointed out, in 1940, when the U.S. Army draft board listed Mezzrow, they listed him as “a Negro, much to his delight.” “African Americans,” wrote Mezzrow, “were my kind of people. And I was going to learn their music and play it for the rest of my days.”

Mezzrow didn’t just play jazz, he organized sessions and recordings, and played with renowned jazz artists including Sidney Bechet, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. From his first experience with marijuana on a bandstand in Chicago, Mezzrow was a confirmed head. As he put it in “Really the Blues”: “I began to feel very happy and sure of myself. With my loaded horn I could take on all the fist-swinging, evil things in the world and bring them together in perfect harmony, spreading peace and joy and relaxation to all the keyed-up and punchy people everywhere.”

In time, Mezzrow wasn’t just singing marijuana’s praises, he was selling it or giving it away to anyone who wanted to experience the same creative euphoria. Sloman pointed out though that Mezzrow was meticulous about his integrity — and reefer’s integrity, too: “As the reefer scene burgeoned in the early ’30s, Mezzrow turned down many offers, from organized crime and others, to expand his herbal business.” It was understood: Mezzrow had the best dope of anyone. Even “the other dealers were all customers of Mezz’s when it came to their personal stash.”

References to marijuana began to appear in song titles and lyrics, such as “Have You Met That Funny Reefer Man,” “Viper Mad” and “If You’re A Viper.” Curiosity about this new drug began to spread into the white world. So long as marijuana had stayed within the Mexican and black communities, McWilliams pointed out, Anslinger’s bureau gave it little notice. But when it began to spread into white populations, “Anslinger mobilized his narcotics force into a nationwide crusade against a drug whose properties and effects were more feared than understood.”

Harry Anslinger Had it Out for Jazz Musicians
It’s likely Anslinger knew of the marijuana stories that occasionally appeared in the nation’s newspapers. He would later use them in his gore files, the newspaper clippings and other supposed documentation of “marihuana’s” horrors that he used as ammunition in his crusade. But it may not have been the terrifying tales of marijuana’s destructive nature that most compelled Anslinger to make cannabis, of all the drugs eventually under his control, his ultimate bête noir.

Music may have been behind Anslinger’s loathing. Using Anslinger’s own words and a slew of bureau communications, Sloman described in great detail how Anslinger ordered his agents throughout the country to open and maintain criminal files on jazz and swing musicians. The names on those files are a who’s who of American jazz: Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Les Brown, Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Cab Calloway. Anslinger especially hated Calloway, and wrote of him “flashing his pearly teeth.”

Anslinger didn’t quit there. He also kept files on the NBC Orchestra (many of its musicians doubled as jazz musicians), “The Milton Berle Show,” “The Jackie Gleason Show,” and even “The Kate Smith Show.”

It is possible that Anslinger’s dislike for jazz stemmed exclusively from his racism. But working on the Pennsylvania Railroad had not been Anslinger’s first career choice. Music was. According to McWilliams, while he was still a student at Pennsylvania State College, Anslinger “indulged a passion to one day become a concert pianist and earned tuition money as a substitute piano player for silent movies in a downtown theater.”

It’s possible to assume that Anslinger’s musical taste played a part in his crusade against marijuana. Or that Anslinger was driven more by what Dale Gieringer, director of California’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) chapter called a technocratic rationale for legislation. Whichever it was, once Anslinger committed to bringing down marijuana, he didn’t stop.

Despite Anslinger, marijuana continued to burrow into American culture. The chasm between those who’d sampled it and loved it versus those who never stopped being afraid of it grew wider. Like a man on a mission, Mezzrow insisted that marijuana wasn’t an evil at all. Under marijuana’s physical and creative influence, as Mezzrow put it, “I began to preach my millenniums on my horn, leading all the winners to glory.”

Anslinger would see “glory” differently.

Harry Anslinger

The story so far: Racism lies at the heart of all marijuana prohibition. The man most responsible for making marijuana illegal, former prohibition cop Harry Anslinger, assumed office as America's first commissioner of narcotics in 1930. At the time, he oversaw a patchwork of state-by-state regulations, a small staff, a minimal budget, and equally minimal mandate. Anslinger's assigned mission, as he began, was the interdiction of opium and cocaine smuggling. Marijuana regulation played no part in it.

In his book “Cannabis: A History,” author and historian Martin Booth said that as Anslinger got older, he was “frightening in appearance. His square head was out of proportion to his body, he had huge ears and his eyes could be staring. In short, he looked the part of the tough lawmaker and drug buster, this commanding power filtering down through his organization.”

"Frightening” might be a little over the top.

He does appear confident, self-assured and like a man accustomed to having things his way.

Anslinger began his tenure at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) as part of a steady upward career path that seemed to begin the day he quit high school and went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroadalongside his father. Anslinger's biographer, John C. McWilliams, put it in “The Protectors”: “In a short period Anslinger developed a keen understanding of Washington politics and the importance of establishing influential connections.”

In time, McWilliams points out, that combination of political shrewdness and the existing social conditions brought Anslinger victory; he would mold society to his wishes, for decades.

But the process of Anslinger having his way — with the law, with how American culture viewed (and still views) marijuana — was more circuitous than most people realize. The path challenged, but didn't overwhelm, Anslinger's abilities as a bureaucrat and as a politician.

But Anslinger's path — and how he chose to travel it — also revealed something about America as a country and a culture.

In his early years at the bureau's helm, Anslinger repeatedly steered the FBN away from addressing marijuana.

In “Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana,” Larry Sloman described a letter Anslinger received on March 14, 1931, from Carl Murphy, the president of the Afro-American, the self-billed “Worlds' Biggest All Negro Weekly.” If marijuana was in fact “injurious,” Murphy asked the commissioner to provide insight into the drug and the federal government's potential response.

According to Sloman, Anslinger “replied with a standard letter describing Cannabis indica, detailing its deleterious effects, and noting the 'grave question' as to its constitutionality if it were to be placed under the Harrison Act.” The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1915 regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products, but marijuana was excluded from it.

Even Anslinger knew that making marijuana illegal wouldn't pass any sort of constitutional muster. McWilliams described a lecture Anslinger gave in December 1932 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he outlined his concept for the FBN's policies: “Rather than concentrate on individual peddlers and addicts, Anslinger felt that the federal government should break up international rings of narcotics runners, and stop interstate narcotics traffic rather than clean up the numerous dens that fell under local police jurisdictions.”

At no point did Anslinger refer to marijuana as an “assassin of youth” or “the killer drug,” as he would later call it in other speeches such as the one he gave to the Women's National Exposition of Arts and Industry in March 1935.

In our last installment, we described how it wasn't until New Orleans began cracking down on black, marijuana-smoking jazz musicians — who quit The Big Easy and headed north, following the Mississippi — that most of America even had an inkling that marijuana existed.

Marijuana seemed to terrify people in ways morphine and cocaine didn't. It didn't motivate them to learn about marijuana but it did seem to motivate them to try and restrict it.

McWilliams described how, in the early 1930s, the National Conference of Commissioners drafted aUniform Narcotics Drug Act to combat drug problems not dealt with by the Harrison Act. Sloman described how, after going through five drafts, the drug proposals were published with the cannabis section withdrawn. As the Great Depression raged, enthusiasm for regulating drugs was minimal. When the final vote was taken by the commissioners on their legislation, Sloman said, almost half of the Commissioners failed to even show up to vote.

By March 1935, only 10 states had enacted the Uniform Narcotics Act. The states were reluctant for multiple reasons, McWilliams explained: First, the Great Depression burdened everyone profoundly. Their budgets stressed, the states couldn't possibly afford the enforcement costs. On top of that, the special licensing of doctors and pharmacists threatened endless red tape. And on top of that, those same doctors and pharmacists bristled at giving the courts virtually unlimited power to suspend their licenses and ruin their livelihoods. Finally, outside of the Southwestern states, no one perceived marijuana as a pressing problem needing legislation.

For his part, as late as 1936, Anslinger still regarded marijuana as an intrastate problem, not a federal one. McWilliams quoted testimony Anslinger gave before the House Appropriations Committee that year when asked whether he would recommend that marijuana be included under the Federal Drug Act.

“Not at this time,” Anslinger replied, adding, “until the states become conscious of their own problems, I think it is a mistake for the Federal Government to take on the whole job.”

The truth was, Anslinger's bureau couldn't afford to take on the whole job. The same dearth of tax dollars that plagued the nation also plagued the FBN. Like everyone else's budget, the FBN's got chopped considerably. This seemed to be the moment, Booth pointed out, where Anslinger — who had previously given marijuana little thought and deferred putting it under federal control, now set about demonizing it.

What happened? What caused Anslinger to suddenly take up a veritable crusade against marijuana? The consensus seems to be: success. Whenever Anslinger talked about marijuana in public, the public responded. That is, the white American public to whom marijuana was strange, frightening and foreign. They responded. And Anslinger noticed.

Around this time, Anslinger began to assemble what became known as his “gore files” — anaccumulation of hand-written notes and magazine and newspaper articles that Anslinger used as a combination data file and crowd motivator. The stories in the gore file were lurid, meant to shock, although a story's veracity was not a deal-breaker to Anslinger. The fact that many of his notes were clearly stated opinions with no basis in fact did not stop him from often stating those opinions as facts anyway.

Nothing in Anslinger's gore files addresses or even bothers with marijuana's deleterious effect on a user's physical health. Anslinger was, by contrast, all over marijuana's supposed impact on a user's mental health. Note after note, file after file, newspaper clipping after newspaper clipping, the drumbeat is the same: Brown or black people smoke marijuana and bad things happen to white people.

The trouble is, using racism worked. The more Anslinger went out into the public — not only making speeches, but also writing pamphlets, magazine articles, and newspaper pieces — the more the public came around to his way of thinking about marijuana. And Anslinger's thinking about marijuana started with racism. Sloman pointed out that by 1935, another 18 states had signed on to the Uniform Narcotics Law.

And still — as Anslinger looked out at the country and considered what he had accomplished, it wasn't enough for him. Whatever mission Anslinger had started with, it now changed. The historical record points to a clear demarcation point where Anslinger became determined to bring marijuana fully under his control. Being a skilled bureaucrat, he knew that was going to require Congress' help.

Good thing skilled bureaucrat Anslinger had lots of friends in all the right places.

 

[roots69]

Here's Every State That Has Legalized Weed

In the mid-1600s, hemp was a cash crop for European settlers who had recently arrived in what would become the United States. It remained an integral part of the colonies', and later independent country's economy for centuries, until the early 1900s, when Americans started to change their attitude toward cannabis.

The budding marijuana movement of the present day has overcome enormous obstacles in its long, winding attempt to end cannabis prohibition, from the fear that was ingrained into society by Harry Anslinger, the infamous 1936 drama “Reefer Madness,” and the war on drugs initiated by the Nixon administration in the 1970s.

Cannabis legalization hasn't spread across the U.S. in a linear fashion, though. Aside from a few exceptions, notably Colorado, medical marijuana legislation took root on the West Coast, followed soon after by the Northeast.

Prohibition received its first series of blows when California, Oregon, and Washington legalized medical cannabis during the 1990s. Voters in these three Pacific Coast states were also among the first to legalize recreational cannabis, starting with Washington. Then, as if the enthusiasm behind weed legalization decided to board an airplane and fly east, the next wave of legalization began in the Northeast, with a layover in Colorado.

Gradually, cannabis prohibition has been withering, now that 10 states have legalized adult-use cannabis, also known as recreational use, and a total of 33 have medical marijuana legislation in place. Some states without any form of legal cannabis are starting to allow medical use of cannabidiol (CBD) products with low amounts of THC.

The federal government also is starting to embrace the plant that was a vital part of the U.S. economy. The 2018 Farm Bill, signed Dec. 20, 2018, removed hemp's status as a controlled substance and legalized industrial hemp production.

Every state that has legalized medical or recreational cannabis in the United States.
States That Legalized Adult-Use Weed
Alaska

• Alaskan voters approved the Alaska Medical Marijuana Initiative, or Measure 8, in 1998. While the bill technically legalized medical cannabis use for qualifying patients to possess and use, the system did not initially provide patients with a legal way to obtain medical marijuana.
• The Alaska Marijuana Legalization Initiative, or Measure 2, was approved by 53% of voters in 2014, making it the third state to legalize recreational cannabis. The measure allowed for the regulation, production, sale, and use of recreational cannabis across The Last Frontier. Under the law, which went into effect February 2015, adults 21 and older are permitted to possess up to 1 ounce, or 28.35 grams, of usable cannabis and up to six cannabis plants at home for personal use.

California
As the first state to legalize the medical use of cannabis and break the chains of prohibition, California has solidified itself as a pioneer of the cannabis legalization movement.

• The state's medical system was established in 1996 after the Compassionate Use Act, or Proposition 215, was passed by voters, making it the first medical marijuana ballot initiative to pass at the state level.
• Two decades later, on November 8, 2016, California voters passed Proposition 64, legalizing the sale and consumption of recreational cannabis for adults 21 or older. Adult-use sales began Jan. 1, 2018.

Colorado
The Centennial State has been a trailblazer of the cannabis movement in the U.S., becoming one of the first states, on Nov. 6, 2012, to vote for recreational cannabis legalization.

• Medical cannabis was legalized in Colorado after the approval of Initiative 20, which earned 53.5% of the vote, in 2000.
• The Colorado Marijuana Legalization Amendment, or Amendment 64, was approved by 55.3% of voters on November 6, 2012. A landmark law for the nationwide recreational cannabis movement that followed, the measure legalized recreational cannabis for adults 21 and older, and established sales and cultivation taxes. Many of the laws and regulations established in Colorado have been closely observed and adopted by other states.

Maine

• Medical cannabis has been legal in Maine since 1999. Maine Medical Marijuana for Specific Illnesses, or Ballot Question 2, passed with 61% of voters in favor. This legislation allowed doctors to recommend medical cannabis to patients suffering from serious health conditions.
• Maine was one of four states to legalize recreational cannabis during the general election in November 2016. The Marijuana Legalization Act, or Ballot Question 1, made it legal for adults 21 and older to possess, consume, and cultivate marijuana for personal use.

Massachusetts

• The Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative, or Question 3, was approved by 63% of voters in November 2012. After the measure passed, the state established the Massachusetts Medical Use of Marijuana Program to regulate the medical cannabis system.
• Four years later, in November 2016, voters approved The Massachusetts Marijuana Legalization Initiative, or Question 4, which legalized adult use and led to the creation of the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC), which regulates marijuana statewide.
• Adults aged 21 and older are legally allowed to purchase, possess, and consume cannabis. Meanwhile, the CNB has been approving licenses for retail cannabis shops to open across the state.

Michigan

• Michigan voters approved the Michigan Compassionate Care Initiative on Nov. 6, 2008, legalizing medical cannabis use for seriously and terminally ill patients to use marijuana with a doctor's approval.
• Recreational cannabis system was legalized after Michigan voters approved Proposition 1 in November 2018, making it the first state in the Midwest to legalize recreational cannabis. Since then, the state has been slowly rolling out regulations and establishing its licensing for provisioning centers, the term Michigan uses for dispensaries, and cultivators.
• Proposition 1 made it legal for adults 21 and older to grow up to 12 plants and store up to 10 ounces, or 283 ½ grams, in their Michigan residence.

Nevada

• Nevada voters approved The Medical Use of Marijuana Act, or Question 9, in 2000 with 65.4% in favor of allowing patients to cultivate cannabis for medical use.
• The sale of medical marijuana was not permitted in the state until 2015, 15 years after Question 9 was passed. Shortly after, on Nov. 8, 2016, 54.4% of voters in Nevada voted in favor of the Nevada Marijuana Legalization Initiative, or Question 2, allowing adults 21 and older to purchase and consume cannabis recreationally.
• Under Question 2, the law permits possession of up to 1 ounce, or 28.35 grams, of flower; or one-eighth of an ounce, or 3.54 grams, of marijuana concentrates.

Oregon
Both recreational and medical marijuana were legalized in Oregon following a similar timeframe as its neighboring state to the south.

• Medical marijuana was legalized in 1998 with 54.6% of voters approving the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act.
• Legal adult-use marijuana followed in 2014 when the Control, Regulation, and Taxation of Marijuana and Industrial Hemp Act passed, with 56.1% of the vote.
• Cannabis consumers in the Beaver State, who must be 21 or older, are allowed to buy 1 ounce, or 28.35 grams, of cannabis flower per day.

Vermont

• The medical cannabis system in Vermont was established in 2002, giving qualified patients access to medical cannabis. Republican Gov. Phil Scott expanded the program on June 9, 2017, by signing S.16, a measure that improved patients' access to medical marijuana by adding more qualifying conditions and setting regulations to allow additional dispensaries.
• In Vermont on Jan. 22, 2018, H. 511, legalized the possession and cultivation of cannabis for recreational use by adults 21 and older.
• The law allows adults to legally possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana and grow up to two mature marijuana plants. The Vermont Senate voted 23-5 to pass S.54, a bill that would regulate and tax cannabis sales, on Feb. 28, 2019.
• Though Vermont law permits adult-use cannabis, the state does not offer residents a legal way of purchasing marijuana. Vermont's five dispensaries serve medical patients only.

Washington
Similar to the other states on the West Coast, Washington was among the first states to usher in a new era of legalized medical and recreational cannabis.

• The Medical Use of Marijuana Act, or Initiative 692 (I-692), was passed in 1998 with nearly 60% of the vote, providing protections to qualifying patients and caregivers.
• In November 2012, nearly 15 years after the passage of the medical marijuana initiative, voters in the Evergreen State approved recreational cannabis legalization via the Washington Marijuana Legalization and Regulation Initiative, or Initiative 502 (I-502).

District of Columbia

• Washington, D.C., legalized medical cannabis with the voter-approved Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998, or Initiative 59. The measure, which was initially blocked by Congress under the Barr Amendment, eventually allowed patients and caregivers to purchase medical cannabis from a registered dispensary designated on a patient's registration identification card. The first medical cannabis sale didn't take place until 2009, more than a decade after medical marijuana legislation was passed.
• The Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal Use Act of 2014, or Initiative 71, was approved by nearly 65% of Washington voters in November 2014 and allowed adults 21 and older to possess small amounts of cannabis for recreational use.

States That Have Legalized Medical Weed
Alabama

• Alabama has taken a restrictive and gradual approach to legalize medical marijuana. In 2014, Republican Gov. Robert Bently signed Carly's Law, allowing the University of Alabama at Birmingham to conduct a five-year clinical study in which non-intoxicating CBD oil was administered to children with seizures. A slightly more expansive measure, Leni's Law, was passed on July 1, 2016, allowing possession and use of CBD oil by patients with a debilitating medical condition as diagnosed by a physician.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Arizona

• Voters narrowly passed the Arizona Medical Marijuana Question in 2010, garnering 50.13% of the vote.
• Arizona voters have been making a concerted effort to legalize medical marijuana since the first initiative was approved in 1996, but later overturned. Proposition 203, a measure that aimed to legalize medical cannabis in 2002, was defeated with 57% voting no.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

Arkansas

• The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, or Issue 6, won 53% approval on Nov. 8, 2016. The law allows qualifying patients to obtain and consume medical marijuana with a doctor's approval.
• The state intends to finish the approval process and allow medical marijuana sales to start in mid-May 2019, according to The Associated Press.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

Connecticut

• The Connecticut General Assembly of Representatives passed HB 5389, which legalized the medical use of cannabis, in May 2012. Registered patients and caregivers can purchase medical cannabis from licensed dispensaries throughout the state.
• Connecticut has not legalized recreational marijuana, but state officials have made strong legislative efforts to allow adult-use in 2019. Possession of small amounts of cannabis was decriminalized after Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a General Assembly-drafted measure in June 2011.

Delaware

• The Delaware Medical Marijuana Act (DMMA) was signed by Gov. Jack Markell in 2011, allowing qualifying patients and their caregivers to purchase and consume cannabis for medical use. Prior to the signing of the DMMA, possession of cannabis was a criminal offense. However, in December 2015, Delaware House Bill 39 took effect, decriminalizing cannabis possession statewide.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed, but cannabis possession was decriminalized statewide in December 2015 after Delaware House Bill 39 took effect. Recreational legalization was attempted in 2018 with House Bill 110, but failed to pass in the Statehouse.

Florida

• Medical cannabis was first introduced in the Sunshine State in 2014 with the passage of the Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act. The restrictive law gave seriously ill patients with cancer or epilepsy access to low-THC cannabis.
• In 2016, more than 70% of voters approved The Florida Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative, or Amendment 2, ushering in broader legalization of medical cannabis and expanding the list of qualifying conditions.
• After Amendment 2 passed, Florida lawmakers imposed a ban on smokable marijuana. The state's Supreme Court voided the ban, and lawmakers passed a bill in early 2019 to permit smokable forms of medical marijuana. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill March 18, 2019.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed.

Hawaii

• Medical cannabis was technically legalized in Hawaii in 2000 with Act 228, but dispensaries were not approved until after the passage of Act 241, which led to the creation of the state's Medical Cannabis Dispensary Program. The licensing system for dispensaries and production centers was established shortly after when Democratic Gov. David Ige signed Act 242. The first medical marijuana dispensaries did not begin opening in the state until 2018.
• The state has not legalized recreational marijuana, but on March 19, 2019, two Hawaii Senate committees approved a bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Illinois

• Medical cannabis was legalized in Illinois after Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act in August 2013, allowing qualifying patients and caregivers to legally purchase medical marijuana from a dispensary.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed, but Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker confirmed during his inaugural address in January 2019 that he intended to legalize recreational cannabis. As of April 2019, other state lawmakers have joined the governor to openly push for full-scale recreational legalization, according to Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV.

Louisiana

• Medical cannabis was technically legalized in Louisiana after Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards signed SB 271 in 2016. However, as of April 2019, the state has failed to implement a system because of a variety of regulatory and legislative issues.
• Current law mandates that the state's cannabis supply must be cultivated by a single producer and distributed to 10 pharmacies. GB Sciences, the chosen cultivator operating the Louisiana State University AgCenter, intends to have cannabis available sometime in 2019.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

Maryland

• Medical marijuana was legalized in Maryland with House Bill 881, or the Natalie M. LaPrade Medical Marijuana Commission, signed by Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley on April 14, 2014. The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission (MMCC) is responsible for establishing and enforcing the program's regulations regarding consumption, cultivation, possession, and distribution of cannabis for medical use.
• The state's first legal medical cannabis transaction took place in December 2017, more than three years after the legislation was signed.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed.

Minnesota

• The Minnesota Medical Cannabis Act was signed into law by Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Gov. Mark Dayton on May 29, 2014, making the state the 23rd to legalize medical marijuana. By spring 2014, patients with qualifying medical conditions were allowed to receive certification from health care practitioners and enroll in the program.
• Medical cannabis must be consumed in the form of a liquid, topical, pill, or vape; flower is not legal.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use. A measure to legalize recreational cannabisin Minnesota, aptly named HF 420, was introduced on Jan. 28, 2019.

Missouri

• The Missouri Legislature in 2014 passed HB 2238, which created the Missouri Hemp Extract Registration Program (MHERP). The state's regulations allow only qualifying patients with intractable epilepsy to obtain, possess, and use low-THC hemp extract.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed. Possession of 10 grams or less of flower was reduced to a misdemeanor in 2014 after SB 491 passed.

Montana

• Nearly 62% of Montana voters decided to legalize medical cannabis in 2004 via a ballot initiative, the Montana Medical Marijuana Allowance, or I-148.
• Lawmakers attempted to repeal the law in 2011, and after the initial effort was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the state Senate enacted Senate Bill 423, which added stringent conditions to the existing medical marijuana system.
• In 2016, nearly 58% of voters approved the Montana Medical Marijuana Initiative, or I-182, removing many of the restrictive regulations and adding more qualifying conditions.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

New Hampshire

• New Hampshire passed medical marijuana legalization in 2013 with House Bill 573 (HB 573), a measure that established a restrictive system of qualifying conditions, which required patients to exhibit severe symptoms of the debilitating condition. The Granite State was the 19th state to legalize medical cannabis, but was the last in New England.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed, but a marijuana decriminalization bill was signed by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu in 2017, reducing penalties for possessing three-fourths of an ounce, or 21.26 grams, or less of cannabis from a misdemeanor to a civil violation. The New Hampshire House gave preliminary approval to recreational legalization on Feb. 27, 2019.

New Jersey

• The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act (CUMMA), or SB 119, was passed in January 2010, making New Jersey the 14th state to legalize medical cannabis. The state's list of qualifying conditions was expanded by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in March 2018.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed but has come extremely close to passing adult-use legislation, expungement, and a medical expansion. These bills were recently pulled from the legislative agenda because they lacked enough votes to pass in the Senate. Advocates are encouraging a vote before the end of June.

New Mexico

• New Mexico expanded its medical cannabis system after passing the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act, or SB 523, in 2007. The measure gave qualified patients and caregivers access to medical cannabis.
• The state has not yet legalized weed for recreational use, but Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a marijuana decriminalization bill on April 3, 2019. After the state's legislative session ended on March 16, 2019, Grishman also urged her colleagues to put recreational cannabis legalization back on the agenda for the next session.

New York

• Medical cannabis is legal in the state of New York under S923, a part of New York's Compassionate Care Act, which was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014. The measure allows “possession, manufacture, use, delivery, transport, or administration of medical marihuana by a designated caregiver for a certified medical use,” but excludes flower as a legal form of consumption.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed, However, city and state officials, including Cuomo, have taken steps toward legalization of adult-use cannabis. A proposal that aimed to legalize marijuana statewide was dropped from the budget in March 2019. The legislature and the governor have committed to finding a resolution by the end of the session in June 2019.

North Dakota

• Medical cannabis was approved by North Dakota voters in November 2016, but the state's first dispensary did not open until March 1, 2019. The House passed various bills in February 2019 to expand the existing medical marijuana system, including a measure to add more qualifying conditions to the state's list.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use. Voters rejected an initiative, Measure 3, to fully legalize adult-use of marijuana on Nov. 6, 2018.

Ohio

• Medical cannabis was legalized in Ohio after House Bill 523, or HB 523, was passed in September 2018. One year later, the Ohio Department of Commerce (ODOC), the state department responsible for developing medical marijuana regulations, set forth rules for cultivation, lab testing, qualifying patients, and more. The state's first four medical marijuana dispensaries opened in January 2019.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed.

Oklahoma

• Oklahoma became the 30th state to legalize medical marijuana after voters approved the Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative, or SQ 788, on June 23, 2018.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

Pennsylvania

• The Medical Marijuana Act was passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on April 17, 2016, legalizing the possession, sale, and consumption of medical cannabis. The first dispensary opened in May 2018. Flower and edibles are not allowed to be sold.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed.

Rhode Island

• Rhode Island became the 11th state to legalize medical cannabis after the passage of The Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act, in 2006. The measure was initially vetoed by Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri in June 2005, but his veto was overridden by the state House.
• The state has not legalized recreational weed, but possession of small amounts of cannabis has been decriminalized. In January 2019, Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo stated that she would work on a proposal to end cannabis prohibition in the Ocean State.

Utah

• Proposition 2, a measure allowing qualifying patients to obtain and use medical marijuana, was passed in Utah on Nov. 6, 2018. It also set up a licensing framework from facilities to grow, process, test, and sell cannabis for medicinal use.
• Qualifying patients were legally protected starting Dec. 1, 2018, but most of the regulatory and licensing guidelines in the proposition will not be enacted until 2020.
• Previously, in March 2014, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert signed HB 105, which in addition to permitting industrial hemp production, also allowed patients with intractable epilepsy to consume low-THC CBD oil.
• The state has not legalized weed for recreational use.

West Virginia

• The West Virginia Medical Cannabis Act, or Senate Bill 386, was signed into law on April 19, 2017, allowing medical cannabis to be consumed in the form of pills, oil, topicals, or vaporization, but excluding flower. The Bureau for Public Health intends to distribute patient and caregiver identification cards in July 2019, but that deadline could be delayed because of regulatory issues.
• The state has not legalized recreational marijuana.

States That Outlaw Medical or Recreational Marijuana
Georgia

• Georgia's current medical marijuana laws only permit CBD in the form of extracts that are low in THC, 5% or less to be exact. A patient registry for those with qualifying conditions was established with HB 1, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal on April 16, 2015. More recently, on May 9, 2018, Deal signed SB 16, a measure that expands the program by expanding the list of qualifying conditions and improving access to low-THC oil for hospice residents.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Idaho

• The state has not legalized medical marijuana or adult-use cannabis.

Indiana

• After a couple of attempts to pass medical marijuana legislation in Indiana failed in 2015, legalization finally took place in April 2017 with the passage of HB 1148, a stringent measure which allows the use of CBD oil containing less than 0.3% THC for patients with uncontrollable seizures. In March 2018, Republica Gov. Eric Holcomb signed SB 52, allowing the use and sale of CBD products containing less than 0.3% THC by weight for any purpose.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Iowa

• The Iowa Legislature passed SF 2360, or the “Medical Cannabidiol Act,” in 2014. The measure allowed patients with intractable epilepsy to use CBD products with 3% or less THC content. Three years later, the list of qualifying conditions was expanded under 2017 Medical Cannabidiol Act, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Kansas

• Kansas allows no medical or recreational use of cannabis, but things are slowly starting to change in a state known for having one of the nation's strictest stances against cannabis legalization.
• Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer signed into law SB 263, also known as the Alternative Crop Research Act, on April 20, 2018, leading to the creation of a program that will investigate the potential benefits of industrial hemp. Currently, residents in Kansas can possess and use hemp-derived CBD products that contain no THC.

Kentucky

• Once the largest source of hemp plants in the continental U.S. before prohibition, Kentucky lawmakers decided to start hemp cultivation again with the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill. That same year, SB 124, a law that allowed patients to use CBD products with a physician's written approval, was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear. Multiple attempts to legalize and expand access to medical cannabis in Kentucky have been thwarted.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Mississippi

• HB 1231, also known as Harper Grace's Law, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant in 2014, allowing patients suffering from an epleptic condition to possess and use CBD oil which contains no more than 0.5% THC.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Nebraska

• Medical marijuana and adult-use cannabis are currently prohibited in Nebraska.
• There are several ongoing legislative efforts to legalize medical cannabis use in Nebraska. A petition initiative, sponsored by Sens. Anna Wishart and Adam Morfeld, aims to amend the state constitution to allow people to use, possess, and cultivate cannabis for serious medical conditions. Wishart also introduced a legislative bill, LB110, which offers the regulatory framework for a medical program.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

North Carolina

• House Bill 1220, or Epilepsy Alternative Treatment Act, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2014. The measure gives patients with intractable epilepsy access to low-THC hemp-derived extracts. The law was expanded in July 2015 to increase the number of qualified physicians and number of certified hospitals.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

South Carolina

• In South Carolina, medical patients are legally confined to CBD oil that contains no more than 0.9% THC, which can only be recommended by licensed physicians under FDA-approved clinical trials. A medical cannabis bill, the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act, was being debated in the state Senate as of April 23, 2019.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

South Dakota

• The state has not legalized medical or adult-use marijuana.

Tennessee

• Similar to other states in the South, Tennessee has a highly constrained medical cannabis program that gives patients with intractable seizures access to hemp-derived CBD. A more expansive measure, which would expand the list of qualifying conditions and provide patients with sprays, pills, ointments, and other non-smokable forms of marijuana, has been delayed until 2020.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Texas

• Legislators in the Lone Star State passed the Texas Compassionate Use Act, or SB 339, on June 1, 2015. The highly restrictive measure allowed the cultivation, production, and sale of low-THC cannabis oil to patients with intractable epilepsy and their caregivers. Smoking cannabis flower, either for medical or recreational purposes, is prohibited by law.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Virginia

• The Old Dominion has a strict stance on both medical and recreational cannabis. CBD extracts which are low in THC can be recommended by a physician for patients with intractable epilepsy.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or recreational weed.

Wisconsin

• The state has not legalized medical or adult-use weed.

Wyoming

• The medical cannabis system in Wyoming is currently restricted to CBD products that contain less than 0.3% THC by weight.
• Aside from CBD products, the state has not legalized medical or adult-use marijuana.

 

[roots69]

Deep Inside the Clintonian Reich: Mena Arkansas Drugs, Money, and Murder

Tucked away in the western part of Arkansas is a little town known as Mena. A town of 5,400 people that harbored the airport for one of the busiest drug smuggling in operations in the world. When a C-123K military cargo plane crashed in Nicaragua on October 5, 1986 with weapons and CIA employees on board, it was discovered that the plane and its contents came from the Mena airport.

The entire incident unraveled what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Mena was used as a training ground for the contras and a pipeline for illegal drug smuggling.

It all started in 1984 when Congress cut off funding for the Nicaraguan resistance. CIA station chief in Costa Rica, Joe Fernandez, sent a confidential message to the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Force), authorizing them to seek “alternative funds”. They were told that they would have no interference from authorities if they tried to enter the U.S. by air or sea. The alternative funds would be in the form of drugs for weapons.

Key operatives in Iran-Contra were George Bush, Oliver North, Dewey Clarridge, John Pointdexter and Caspar Weinberger. The entire operation however, would have to have bi-partisan efforts. This would require the cooperation of former CIA operative and then Governor, Bill Clinton.

Cocaine was obtained from Colombia and moved to Panama where it was protected by Panamanian defense forces. Next, drugs were moved through Costa Rica, where the shipments were personally guarded by the Minister of Public Security. The final destination was U.S. territory. The flights were handled by the FBI and CIA and met no resistance.

The major traffic point was Mena, Arkansas, where the weapons production and training of Contras took place, and where shipment of guns and trained Contras originated. Planes returning from Central America would be carrying cocaine. It was easy to load drugs on the planes that returned to the U.S. after delivering weapons to the Contras. The distribution within the United States was handled by the Mafia.

In order to have a free license for such activity, they would have to have the blessings of the highest office in the state of Arkansas. That would come from Bill Clinton, then Governor. Clinton who had been a CIA operative since his days at Oxford University, put his seal of approval on the operation, but not without a price. Clinton made deals to launder CIA money through his scam loan agency, Arkansas Development and Finance Authority. In return, he retained 10% of all the money laundered, and through the ADFA financed local companies, including the Park-O-Meter company in Russelville, Arkansas, to manufacture guns for the Contras.

The CIA chose Arkansas because it was like the banana republic where politicians could be bought for money. It was a state with a single party and no opposition. Anything could be achieved with money. In fact, the Arkansas Crime Syndicate, headed by Bill Clinton, became so deeply involved, that the CIA became concerned that they would be exposed.

KEY PLAYERS

Drug king pin, Adler B. (Barry) Seal was a key player at Mena. He made more than $50 million smuggling drugs into the United States from South America between 1977 and 1986. He became a key witness in the federalgovernment’s war on the powerful Colombian cocaine cartel. His C-123K cargo plane that crashed in Nicaragua, played a major role in exposing the Iran-Contra affair. Seal used the Mena airport for storage of planes and repair.

In 1984, Seal turned Government informer after being indicted in Florida on smuggling quaaludes and laundering money. In March of that year, Seal struck a deal with the Justice Department and the DEA to work under cover. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking.

Seal acquired the C-123K he dubbed the “Fat Lady”, in June 1984. The purchase of the cargo plane was for a DEA undercover operation that ultimately involved the CIA. This produced the first documented evidence of the communist Sandinista government’s involvement in cocaine trafficking. Seal agreed to have hidden cameras installed on the plane. This led to photos of key Nicaraguan government officials loading the plane with cocaine.

Seal was a trusted courier for cartel leader Jorge Ochoa-Vasquez, who Seal said was pioneering a new cocaine distribution route through Nicaragua with the help of the Sandinistas. The resulting sting operation made drug enforcement history and blew Seal’s cover as an undercover informant. A $500,000 contract on Seal’s life soon followed. On Feb. 19, 1986, Seal was getting out of his white Cadillac in the parking lot of the Salvation Army Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge when he was shot to death by a Colombian wielding a small machine-gun. Seal was murdered shortly before he was expected to testify about the Nicaraguan sting operation against powerful Colombian drug czars under indictment in Miami.

Sharlene Wilson was another key figure at Mena. Wilson flew cocaine from Mena to a pickup point in Texas. Other drugs, she and others say, are stuffed into chickens for shipping around the country. Wilson also serves as “the lady with the snow” at “toga parties” attended, she reports, by Bill Clinton.

THE LAUNDRY BANK

Most of the drug money had to be laundered. There would be no better way to do it than at Mena’s First National Bank. Realizing a small gold mine from the drug smuggling operations, Mochtar and James Riady purchased the bank in 1985. Now part of the Chinese Lippo Group, million of dollars could be washed without scrutiny. Mochtar had first hand experience at this, as he built his financial empire with gun and drug running in the East Indies before World War II.

THE BAG MEN

It was during Clinton’s first bid for office that we find Jerry Parks and Vince foster making numerous trips between Little Rock and the Mena airport. Parks, a Little Rock private investigator, was hired by Vince Foster to head up Clinton’s security detail at the Clinton campaign headquarters. Foster himself, was a partner with Hillary in the Rose Law firm. Clinton’s run for the presidency would require lots of cash that could be used for any number of payoffs to top officials and other illicit activity. Shortly after Jerry Park’s murder, Parks wife related one instance to the London Telegraph….

“In 1991, Mrs. Parks discovered what must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in the boot of her husband’s Lincoln car after he had made a trip to Mena airport in western Arkansas with Foster.”

“It was all in $100 bills wrapped in string, layer after layer,” she said. “It was so full I had to sit on the trunk [boot] to get it shut again. I took the money and threw it in his lap, and said ‘Are you running drugs?’ Jerry said that Vince had paid him $1,000 cash for each trip; he didn’t know what they were doing, and he didn’t care to know; he told me to forget what I’d seen.”

According to the Parks family, Jerry was keeping a file on all of this and other illicit activity. Shortly after he was murdered, gangland style, a team of police officers – including federal agents from the FBI, the Secret Service, the IRS and the CIA – searched Parks house, taking everything they could find. Parks’s computer was purged by an expert, and 130 tapes of telephone conversations were confiscated.

MURDER AND COVER UP

On August 23,1987 two boys were found dead on a railroad tracks near Mena. The bodies were Kevin Ives, 17 years old and his friend, Don Henry, 16 years old. Their deaths at the time were ruled accidental by Clinton-appointed state medical examiner, Dr. Fahmy Malak. The presumption was, that the boys fell asleep on the tracks and the train ran over them.What initially appeared to be a grossly incompetent investigation was actually an orchestrated cover-up. Residents reported small, low-flying airplanes coming in at slow speeds over the tracks in the middle of the night with their lights off just prior to revving up and flying away. Linda Ives, Kevin’s mother became suspicious of the boys deaths with all of these rumors. After fighting the Arkansas justice system for several years she won exhumation and re-autopsy. An out-of-state examiner said the cause of death was clear: murder by beating and stabbing before they were placed on the railroad tracks. Malak was exposed as an incompetent fool, yet Governor Bill Clinton supported him, in spite of his being a political liability.

The murder case was assigned to police investigator John Brown. From the get go, the case file was in shambles. Key crime scene photographs were missing. The entire list of any evidence was gone. It also appeared that no one from 1987 to 1993 had interviewed anyone of any significance in the case. John Brown’s investigation was shut down and he resigned, but not before the following pieces could be put together.

Apparently, the boys were deer hunting that night. They had no idea that the tracks were used by Mena pilots as a site for dropping off drugs and money, and that a drop had gone missing three nights previously, causing panic at Mena. The concern was not the missing $400,000, but the missing transmitter that was in the case with the money. If someone found this, it would be traceable right back to Mena. In a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kevin and Don stumbled right into a police protected drug drop site, where Law enforcement officials and drug smugglers were waiting to see who might show up. The boys were chased down and taken to another location. At that point they were beaten and stabbed. Then there bodies were placed on the track in hopes that all evidence of the murder would be distorted by the train mangling the bodies.

A US Senate subcommittee in 1989 called the available evidence about Mena sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges. But the feds scraped a five year probe of Mena and interfered in local investigations The state police were taken off the case. Clinton refused a request from one of his own prosecutors to pursue the matter any further.

In spite of the evidence, every investigator who has tried to expose the crimes of Mena has been professionally destroyed. After six investigations, no one to date has been indicted for the train murders or any other crime that has occurred at Mena.

 

[roots69]

The War on Drugs is a Racket

On a recent segment of Democracy Now, Tess Borden made an impassioned plea for the U.S. – both federal and state governments — to end the criminal prosecution of those possessing or using illegal drugs.

Quoting from a new report from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch(HRW), “Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,” Borden observed, “Every 25 seconds someone is arrested for possessing drugs for their own use, amounting to 1.25 million arrests per year.” She reminded her audience, “These numbers tell a tale of ruined lives, destroyed families, and communities suffering under a suffocating police presence.”

The study is an impressive piece of rigorous research and analysis as well as a statement of moral conviction: it’s a political call to decriminalize all personal drug use. It paints a devastating portrait of not simply the nation’s failed anti-drug policy, but reveals it to be a mean-spirited, moralistic – and racist — program of social repression.

Among the study’s key findings are:

+ Yes, every 25 seconds someone in the U.S. is arrested for the simple act of possessing drugs for their personal use.

+ Sadly, more than 1.25 million people are arrested each year for drug possession – this is more than for any other crime.

+ More than one of every nine arrests by state law enforcement is for drug possession — four times more people are arrested for possessing drugs as for selling them.

+ There are at least 137,000 men and women imprisoned for drug possession — 48,000 in state pens and 89,000 in local jails (most in pretrial detention).

+ This population consists predominantly of inner-city dwellers – African-American and Hispanic and largely youthful offenders.

+ In 42 states, possession of small amounts of most illicit drugs other than marijuana is either always or sometimes a felony offense; only eight states and the District of Columbia make possession of small amounts a misdemeanor.

+ State rates of arrest for drug possession range from 700 per 100,000 people in Maryland to 77 per 100,000 in Vermont.

A bust every 25 seconds adds up. As the study reminds readers, “tens of thousands [of people] are convicted, cycle through jails and prisons, and spend extended periods on probation and parole, often burdened with crippling debt from court-imposed fines and fees.”

The study makes clear that the war-on-drugs is a punitive, vindictive form of policing, criminal justice and imprisonment. It’s easy to be tough on those involved in mostly a victimless crime, drug use. Cops pick the easiest target, notably inner-city minority youth (i.e., “Stop and Frisk”) and, increasingly, rural white youth; prosecutors show off how tough they are by “throwing the book” at some hapless soul; and judges get easily re-elected for being tough on drug criminals, especially people of color and repeat offenders.

The study makes clear that the war-on-drugs is a failure in terms of public policy and the toll it takes on those suffocated by the drug war effort. Unfortunately, the study suffers from not pushing its inherent argument one critical step further – acknowledging that the police-court-jail system that manages the drug war is a racket, the domestic corollary to the military-industrial complex that Pres. Dwight Eisenhower identified a half-century ago.

***

Almost a century ago, the U.S. adopted the 18th Amendment establishing abstinence as the law of the land. Prohibition was inforce for 13 years and was a failure, flaunted by many and leading to wide-scale corruption of law enforcement and politicians. It was formally terminated with the adoption of the 21st Amendment in 1933 as the Depression mounted. Now, nearly a century after Prohibition was proven a failure, we may be witnessing the end to the criminalization of personal drug use.

In the wake of the failure of Prohibition, the U.S. Congress enacted the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937, effectively criminalized marijuana use. Three decades later, in 1971, Pres. Richard Nixon formally launched the “war on drugs,” transforming a relatively obscure local – and very private – issue into a national concern. He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies; he promoted mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants; he also placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs; and he called for a national commission to study the drug problem and recommend appropriate policies.

In 1972, Nixon’s drug-policy commission — the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, the Shafer Commission — unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon furiously rejected its recommendations. And the war-on-drugs has barreled on for the last four decades.

As the Watergate scandal undermined Nixon’s presidency, New York Governor, Nelson Rockefeller launched his presidential campaign in 1973 with a call to toughen the state’s drug laws. He upped the war against drugs, calling for mandatory prison sentences of 15 years to life for drug dealers and addicts — even those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin. In the wake of Nixon’s resignation, Rockefeller became Vice President and his signature effort was to implement his war on drugs as a national campaign.

The punitive anti-drug policy was further strengthened by Pres. Ronald Reagan, leading to a massive increase in incarceration rates. The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) estimates that in 1980, “50,000 people were incarcerated for violating nonviolent drug law but by 1997 the number increased to over 400,000 people.” In 1981, Nancy Reagan proclaimed a new era in the anti-drug wars, championing “Just Say No.”

The DPA also notes that during the mid- to late-1980s, the nation experienced a near-hysterical rage over the alleged threat of illegal drugs. It points out that public opinion polls in 1985 found only about 2-6 percent of Americans saw drug abuse as the nation’s “number one problem”; however, by September 1989 two-thirds of those polled (64%) considered drugs as the nation’s leading problem. It adds, “Within less than a year [1990], however, the figure plummeted to less than 10 percent, as the media lost interest.”

A quarter-century later, the drug scene has changed. During the ‘50s-‘70s, hipsters and hippies, white and black, smoking the evil weed. In the ‘80s, a “crack cocaine scare” gripped the nation following the adoption of the infamous Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986); the Act made penalties 100 times harsher for crack than for powder cocaine convictions and 85 percent of those jailed for crack cocaine offenses were black, despite the fact that the majority of users were white.

Americans love to get high. In 2013, the “legal” drug of choice was alcohol, where nearly three-fifths (58%) were drinkers and nearly a quarter (24%) binge drinkers. The use of tobacco products (e.g., cigarettes, cigars) among whites is still over one-quarter (28%). An estimated 25 million Americans were using illicit drugs, about 9.4 percent of the population aged 12 or older; this is up to from the 2002-09 rate of 7.9 percent. The drugs used were marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants and prescription-type psychotherapeutics.

Marijuana was Americans favorite means of getting high, accounting for four-fifths (81%) of illicit drug users, about 20 million users per month. Among full-time college students, whites have the highest rate of illegal drug use at 25 percent.

Methamphetamine (“meth”) was once the drug of choice among white males (e.g., outlaw motorcycle gangs and blue-collar guys) and remains so, but is losing its appeal. In the ‘90s at the height of its popularity, the Open Society estimates there were only one million meth users. Today, its use has spread to white women and Hispanics. Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health reported that between 2002-2005 and 2008-2011 there was a 75 percent jump in heroin usage among “Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites.”



The new drugs of choice among Americans are psychotherapeutic drugs and heroine. A 2010 report from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that, during 2009, 2.4 million individuals used psycho drugs, including pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives used for nonmedical purposes. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Adolescent girls and women older than 35 years have significantly greater rates of abuse and dependence on psychotherapeutic drugs than men.”

More troubling, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), overdoses (i.e., “drug poisoning”) are “the number one cause of injury-related death in the United States, with 43,982 deaths occurring in 2013.” It found, based on data from 28 states, that the “death rate for heroin overdose doubled from 2010 through 2012.” Drilling down, it found there were 8,257 heroine deaths, most involving men aged 25–44 years.

***

No one knows how much money has been spent to fight the failed war-on-drugs. According to a DPA estimate, “Over the past four decades, federal and state governments have poured over $1 trillion into drug war spending and relied on taxpayers to foot the bill.” It adds: “Money funneled into drug enforcement has meant less funding for more serious crime and has left essential education, health, social service and public safety programs struggling to operate on meager funding.”

The Drug War Facts website provides a detailed breakdown on annual federal spending on the war-on-drugs for 2013-’17. It estimates for Fiscal Year 2016, the federal government will spend $30.6 billion. A third source, the Drug War Clock, estimates that federal spending is about 60 percent of that spent by states (i.e., $49 billion); total spending for the false war-on-drugs at about $75 billion.

The expenditures associated with the war-on-drugs are, like the military-industrial complex, a vast slush fund with costs covering a very wide assortment of federal, state and local – both government and private — services and fees. Among these expenditures are:

+ Costs of policing, from the border guards to the cop-on-the-block;

+ Costs of prosecutors, courts and defense attorneys;

+ Costs for prisons, jails and probation.

These areas of expenditures do not itemize the directs costs for employment, facilities and upkeep (e.g., food, medical) let alone the profits garnered by private corporations to operate the vast infrastructure required to wage the war-on-drugs.

Nor do these expenditures included the $1 trillion that Americans spent on illegal substances between 2000 and 2010. In a 2012 study for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Randestimated the market for four illicit drugs — cocaine (including crack), heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine (meth) – at $100 billion for only one year, 2010. It noted, “This figure has been stable over the decade, but there have been important shifts in the drugs being purchased.”

With a $100 billion in illegal drug money sloshing through the economy each year, one can only wonder how much of it goes to corruption pay-offs, to law enforcement officials who look the other way. As experienced during Prohibition, the enormous cash generated by the illegal drug trade leads to endemic corruption.

Finally, as the ACLU and HRW study painfully makes clear, many, many peoples’ lives are destroyed for the possession on illegal drugs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mention the way questionable law-enforcement officials, like the notorious Brooklyn NYPD detective Louis Scarcella and former DA Charles Hynes, exploited drug busts to further their careers. (New York has paid more than $100 million to wrongfully convicted victims of their arrests and prosecutions.)

Its time to embrace the ACLU and HRW’s call to end the criminal prosecution of those who possess or use an “illegal” substance. Like alcohol, its needs to integrated into the market economy and, like alcohol, effectively regulated in terms of quality and age-of-use. Sadly, like the military-industrial complex, to many corporations, unions and people with influence have too much invested in the war-on-drugs to see it end.

 

[roots69]

The War on Drugs is a War on You


The drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of.

This is an abomination of everything that America is supposed to stand for. As long as this country continues the drug war, you are not free. At the root, then, those that force the drug war on you are enemies to your freedom.

If you are concerned at all about liberty, the economy, the Constitution and the power of the Federal Government – you cannot ignore the US government’s longest and most costly “war” – the War on Drugs.

But no matter how long it lasts, how much is costs, how many lives are disrupted, and how much it fails – the war rages on.

Why? Well, because Federal “authorities” don’t care what your local laws are, they don’t care what your personal choices are, and they don’t care what reason you have for your choices.

All they care about is their own power. Period.

In this ongoing drug war, you are always treated as a suspect and your neighborhood is much less safe. You are searched at airports and your bank accounts are spied on. While drug users who are no physical threat to anyone but themselves are put in jail, the prisons become more and more overcrowded, resulting in the early release of violent criminals on a regular basis.

If you love your freedom and you want your city to be safer, this psychotic war on drugs must be ended – now.

Understandably, many Americans are afraid that ending the drug war will result in countless drug addicts, including children. In reality, though, that’s just what we have now!

On top of it, we generally don’t even consider the people who are addicted to federally-approved drugs to be drug addicts. According to a 2004 CDC report, almost one-half of Americans use at least one prescription drug. It should be obvious, then, that the drug war has done nothing to reduce Americans’ use of drugs – it’s simply to control which drugs people use, and who can make a profit from them.

So what’s really going to be different – can our nation’s addiction to drug use get any worse? It’s doubtful that legalizing all drugs could make things any worse, but even if it does, then so be it.

People will always do plenty of things that are bad for them, and there’s no reason to put them in prison for it. Think about all the things that you do which are bad for your own health and well being – should the government outlaw those too?

People eat too much fast food and they forget to floss every day. They watch too much TV and they don’t count their calories. They stay up too late and they spend too much. And, guess what else? People swallow, snort, shoot and smoke drugs that are both legal and illegal – and it’s not going to stop. A free society just wouldn’t force you, under the threat of punishment, to be “good” to yourself all the time. That was the job of your parents – unless, of course, you want the feds to be your new “daddy.”

In all seriousness, though, if we are ever going to have a nation that respects the Bill of Rights, of which the Ninth and Tenth Amendments may be the most important, the DEA and the entire drug war must be eliminated.

If not, what’s going to be next? Orwellian telescreens in our homes and a state-mandated morning exercise routine? That would most assuredly keep the cost down on the coming national healthcare system.

Won’t that be nice?

Every day that the war on drugs continues is another day of injustice; another day of spending countless billions to lock people up that don’t behave the way the bureaucrats want them to behave.

It’s time to bring this multi-billion dollar attack on your liberty to an end.