Uncle Sam is Breaking Bad

reply to post by babybunnies

I'd just hasten to remind you in your take on drugs and personal responsibility that it isn't by choice for everyone. For some, there never was a choice.

Specifically, I'm thinking again of my wife. A major problem that I was warned about and came to see in a small way (Thank god in her case for one thing being small) was the desperate need to substitute with something else. Anything else. Just something to do what the pain killers did. To some degree, it's still there as an issue and may always be, given her chronic medical conditions.

She told me herself, if I hadn't been there and she'd been tossed off the meds they'd required her to take for so long? She would have turned elsewhere in the darkest period of her withdrawal fight ....and millions in this nation are hooked on junk which STARTED as required Rx directed by doctors who didn't give a hoot what happened after they cut the chord with or without support to make it happen.

.....and in direct relation to the forum and topic? Take Florida for an example. If my Wife had lived there and 'turned elsewhere'? Its 25 * YEARS * mandatory MINIMUM for illegal possession of Rx Prescription not in your name.

Florida’s mandatory minimum drug laws are among the harshest in the country and require courts to impose “one size fits all” sentences on drug offenders, regardless of their role in the crime, need for treatment, or prior criminal record. For example, being convicted of possessing over 28 grams of illegal prescription drugs (approximately the weight of half of a candy bar) requires a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison, regardless of whether there are any extenuating circumstances. In contrast, possession of 28 grams of illegal prescription drugs in Texas requires a minimum sentence of 2 years.

Source

Now that isn't a punishment, that's an effective end to a productive life, period. If you're 25yrs old? You're going to be FIFTY YEARS OLD when you next see sunlight and air which isn't through the fence or window of a State Corrections center.

Great OP Heff!!

I've just come onto ATS for the first time in a long, long time.

And I see that intelligent discussion on subjects is being allowed... too little too late in my mind, but I'm still pleased for those left here to be able to do this.


Well done ATS

reply to post by QuantriQueptidez


Excellent response and I fully understand where you were coming from! Thank you for clarifying~

I can't say that I disagree at all with your post.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Wrabbit your absolutely correct mate~ The laws surrounding the "War on Drugs" are just as bad. How can you constitute taking away a persons life for being lead down said path by a practitioner of Rx medicines. It's my firm belief that pharmacutical companies are hand in hand with the "devil" himself for lack of better ways of stating this.

The Florida Law your talking about equivelantly keeps those found guilty instituted and re-circulating in over crowded prisons and very unlikely that they kick that habit in the institutions if not find a alternative from other inmates.

Every state has a law similiar to Florida, it's a sick, sick game~

reply to post by Hefficide


A few minutes ago I watched a segment on CNN. It was about and advertisement at a Nascar race. The advertisement went on to describe how alcohol compares to marijuana. I was shocked to see that the MSM is actually starting to cover this. Both sides came out swinging with all their pros and cons. All I kept thinking was how this War on Drugs is a also a War on People.

Your are right in the fact that the private corporate prison systems are the ones gaining. Our system is seriously flawed. A person can be jailed because of use and not distribution. Four out of 5 incarcerated? Also, if one person uses a substance for health reasons in one state where it is legal, then moves to a state where a substance is not legal, is that not infringing on our rights? I would like to be able to make a decision regarding my health and my body that does not include the government or a pharmaceutical company.

Excellent posts, Heff. Thanks for starting this thread. This topic is something of a special interest of mine-- and I've studied it extensively for a number of years.


The so-called "War on Drugs" is a scam on a number of levels. Starting with the fact that "drugs" are neutral chemical tools not combatants. What this means, is that the "War on Drugs" is, in reality, a War on our own people. Sick people, no less. Some sick with the scourge of addiction, and some sick with greed, and some with the simple desire to survive, or get ahead in what increasingly seems like a rigged system.


With that in mind, going back to the historical roots of the "War On Drugs" for a moment....


One of the first laws passed to target and prohibit a particular drug was the "Marihuana Tax Act" of 1937. This act essentially placed a "tax" on the sale of cannabis. You had to purchase "tax stamps" in order to prove that you had paid tax on your cannabis.

"But that's not a prohibitive law," I can hear some of you saying.

Of course it's not. Not exactly. And I believe that was the entire point. The "trick," if you will. At this point, the country had recently been through alcohol prohibition, which had been ruled unconstitutional. So it is my belief (and that of others) that the law was presented in this way to avoid any accusations of being unconstitutional. While a person theoretically only had to buy the "tax stamps" to prove they paid tax on the cannabis, the catch is that they weren't giving out the stamps-- to anyone. In other words, it was a loophole around an unconstitutional prohibition.


But it gets even uglier when we look at the reasons behind it. A number of theories have been put forth. IMHO the most believable and logical idea is that at that time, industrial hemp farming was a very serious competitor to certain industries. Nameably textiles / thread and paper. For this reason, hemp (fiber) had some very serious enemies, in people like W.R. Hearst and the DuPont company. Hearst held interests in lumber, and paper production, and DuPont felt that cheap and easy to grow hemp fiber was too strong a competitor.

Fortunately, Hearst not only owned lumber and paper companies, but he owned quite a number of newspapers as well. As such, it was very easy for him to quickly and widely spread anti-hemp propaganda. And of course, they used racist claims that cannabis caused colored men to desire and rape white women, to amplify the fear against this substance.


So as you can see, some of the very first drug laws in this country had financial motivation, and were moved along by the corrupt hand-in-hand relationship between government and big business. And it's much the same today. Not only do law enforcement agencies (both federal and local) directly profit from the drug war by seizure / forfeiture laws, but we also have to consider that the Industrial Prison industry is huge business. Not to mention that legal or freely available drugs could be seen as competition for a number of industries-- big pharma, alcohol, and yes, even fiber. Not to mention that even little things people don't often think of, like drug testing (increasingly more common for pre-employment screening in nearly all industries), involves quite a lot of business and money changing hands-- from products created specifically for this purpose, to technicians, etc...


Delving back into history for a moment, and Nixon's Narcotics Act: I strongly believe there was a political motivation there, as well. Keep in mind, this was during or very close to the period of quite a lot of activism and civil unrest. There was the civil rights movement, the black panthers, groups like the weathermen. Tons of people protesting Viet Nam, etc. Now, because of our great laws, you can not prosecute people for free political speech or activism. But you can lock some of them up if you create new drug laws and make new "criminals" out of them. And given some of the ties between the "hippies" and the anti-war movement, that one was a no-brainer.

And thus, with a few strokes of the pen, you can now ("legally") lock up political dissidents.


Let's not even get started about how the CIA supposedly flooded this country with hard drugs like coc aine and heroin at various points, or the fact that the same CIA were at the forefront of '___' experimentation-- including experiments on some of our own unwitting civilian citizens. In fact, some have hypothesized that the CIA was actually behind the entire "hippie / free love / sex drugs and rock-n-roll" movement. But that's a considerably longer story that could fill a book or two....

Re-reading my post above, I noticed something:


If we are now allowed to discuss the drug war, why are words like "L - S - D" still being automatically censored? We can talk about the war on drugs, but not the CIA's role in the testing and distribution of psychedelics?

Sounds a bit odd. I'm hoping this has just been overlooked by staff.

reply to post by Hefficide


Very nice presentation Heff. I think you should have discussed the racial inequality aspect to the "war on drugs" and specifically the fact African Americans are jailed on drug offenses at a disproportionate rate to whites as well as receiving longer sentances for the same infractions that whites get. This is not by coincidence. This has to be part of the plan. I am sure white inmates get paroled at a higher rate and with more frequency then African Americans as well. The cotton plantation has moved inside the walls of correctional facilities. They simply are forcing them to work for these private prison firms so the firms make a profit and have a steady supply of new workers to help them acheive profit. It does not take a genius to see what is really going on. I would argue that forced slave labor is still being practiced in almost every state in this Country under the guise of "War on Drugs". The War on Terror and Drugs are simply unwinnable. You cannot defeat an idea ( in the case of war on terror) and as long as the demand for illegal drugs remains as high as it is and the profit margin is so incredibly high it is impossible to win the war on Drugs.

I am saying the War on Drugs is racially based in nature and application. The all mighty dollar and profit is of course the driving force besides blatant racism. Have things really changed since 1860? In my mind not as much as what you might think.

Originally posted by Bicent76
I am going to go against the grain here, not just to be a jerk, or to troll etc. I think the war on drug is something needed..

I have lived in the EU, hung out in Amsterdam, Germany etc. I really do not want to have to see Junkies passed out on stairs going to a subway etc. Speaking from real life experience. Now does the USA's war on drugs have its Corruptions hell yes it does.. Yet I would rather have a war on drugs, and yes I understand how it works, I also know how many drug offenders are doing time in a low level security detention center, and if it was a Federal drug offense they are on a club med type prison..

We cannot leave our border open to drugs, narcotics really screw people up man, Designer drugs are the worst.. We have to have laws against it hard drugs like narcotics, stimulants like coc aine, opiates, addictive destructive drugs need not be on our streets legally. I think Society would really take a strong hit if these drugs were not regulated, in so many ways.

There are some serious problems with the war on drugs, and their is corruption, there is more good then bad thou in my opinion..

When there is more bad then good, then I would be more concerned with how we are conducting the war..

I feel weird talking about drugs on ats..

edit on 26-7-2013 by Bicent76 because: (no reason given)

I understand your points. And they're reasonable. At least in their intent. But you speak as though the war on drugs somehow actually stops drugs from coming into the country, or prevents people from becoming addicts.

No one, who ever truly wanted to take heroin said: "you know what...? That stuff's illegal, so maybe I should just have this vodka instead."

That simply doesn't happen. People who want to take drugs badly enough will disobey drug laws every single time. That seemingly powerful "drive" to change their state is a recognized part of the disease of addiction. And laws simply do not stop that.

Nor do laws stop the flow of drugs into our borders. Sure, they may stop a shipment here, or there. But that is drop in the bucket stuff. We'd need 10,000 times as many resources, and agents, in order to put any appreciable dent in the game. And even then corruption would allow some to leak through. It's literally an impossible thing. As long as drugs are illegal, and there is a legal risk, smuggling and selling drugs will always be super profitable. And where there is something super-profitable, people will always be willing to take risks.


And that's still ignoring all the drugs that are produced domestically, which is quite a lot. The only drugs not seeing major domestic production are coc aine and heroin. But that still leaves meth, synthetic opioid derivatives, most of the cannabis, and quite a lot of others.


Your issues also ignore the scourge of legal alcohol addiction (which is extraordinarily dangerous and deadly) and prescription drug addiction, abuse, and diversion-- which is a pretty massive problem.


As heff pointed out-- treatment is a superior solution to jail every single time. That actually solves a part of the drug problem-- one person at a time. Less addicts mean less demand, less of a market, and so on, snowballing from there. That is, of course, assuming we can appreciably reduce the number of addicts, which is a tough thing. But it's better for society and less harmful than jail, all around. Education doesn't hurt, either. Real education-- not exaggerated "cannabis-is-worse-than-heroin" type education, which even many inexperienced kids recognize as false. Do you remember being a kid? Do you ever remember being lied to, when you knew you were being lied to, and treated as a dumb ignorant kid by adults, and how it made you feel? IMHO that is part of the problem as well.


Anyway, point being-- statistics have shown that since the start of the war on drugs, drugs have become cheaper, more pure, and there are more users / addicts than ever. If the war on drugs was really effective in the way you suggest, this would not be the case, as we have spent increasingly more money and man-power to fight it-- those figures would have gone down.

reply to post by GArnold





Source - Bureau of Prisons

Certainly there is no arguing the disparity in sentences - even today... and I imagine ( though I don't have time right now to research it ) that per capita numbers probably reflect racial trends... But the above information does demonstrate that racial biases are rapidly eroding where this issue is concerned.

Originally posted by babybunnies
It's only the liberal interpretation of law in the Western World that sees drug addiction as a "disease".

I'm far from a Conservative supporter, but starting drugs is a personal choice bought on by peer pressure, environment, and opportunity. Once people are ON drugs (at least certain ones like heroin) then yes, there is some degree of body chemistry changes that can account for the need for increased usage, and can be treated like a disease.

But the initial choice to take the drug in the first place is still personal responsibility, nothing more.

That's nearly the same as claiming that people "choose" to be bi-polar.

Yes, it is true that once a person pre-disposed to addiction chooses to take a drug, they are making things considerably worse. But that is not where the problem starts. Not according to much research. People prone to addiction are not only pre-disposed genetically, but they also often suffer from other psycho-emotional issues (as the aforementioned bi-polar issue) and their attraction toward drugs is really an unhealthy attempt to self-medicate some of these issues.

Furthermore, you make it sound black and white, as if a person who may be pre-disposed to addiction necessarily has a choice whether they will ever take an addictive substance. In many cases this may be true. But what about someone with a pre-disposition who gets into a bad accident and needs pain medication, or has a chronic or degenerative condition requiring the same treatment? Someone prone to anxiety being prescribed benodiazepine medication. Someone with severe ADHD who needs aderall (amphetamines) to function the same as a "normal" person? Many people become addicts only after being exposed to addictive substances by their doctor.


I don't think it's quite as black and white as you make it sound....

reply to post by Hefficide


I am sorry Heff, I am dependent on medicine for panic disorder, one reason my brain is fried, and my memory shot.

I hear what you are saying and after my son was arrested and railroaded for pot, realized after the kangaroo court he went through. that drugs are big business, not only for the dealers but for the justice system.

Although I don't partake, and hate what drugs and alcohol are doing to our children and our society.

And the majority of those jailed are our young men.

I think we are just scratching the service, there is a good video that touches on the subject.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Storm I'm sorry to hear about the your son being railroaded could you share a link to the video your referencing or a name to the video that can be found on YouTube???

Please advise and much apreciated~

reply to post by Hefficide


African Americans make up roughly 12-13% of the population yet the chart you provided shows they make up roughly 38% of the prison population. I am not sure that chart does anything but back up what I am saying.


Race / Ethnicity Number Percentage of
U.S. population
Americans 308,745,538 100.0 %
White or European American 223,553,265 72.4 %
Black or African American 38,929,319 12.6 %
Asian American 14,674,252 4.8 %
American Indian or Alaska Native 2,932,248 0.9 %
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 540,013 0.2 %
Some other race 19,107,368 6.2 %
Two or more races 9,009,073 2.9 %

en.m.wikipedia.org...

So, not only is it the population inside the walls disproportionate the same group receives longer sentances for the same crimes with far less chance at parole.

I want to share some home economics that I found while doing some digging~

Home Economics on "The Drug War"

I can't Quote this one.... It's entirely too long but well worth a look on the cost of this buisiness as well as some informative charts that break down the Cost to maintain the War On Drugs~

I will quote a few though

3.(Savings and Added Revenue from Legalization) "This report estimates that legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government. Approximately $8.7 billion of the savings would result from legalization of marijuana and $32.6 billion from legalization of other drugs.
"The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs."

Think of the savings and debt that could be taken off of our "National Debt"

#7 I personally felt would bring some light on this subject~

7.(Cost Effectiveness of Substance Abuse Treatment) "Substance abuse treatment is more cost-effective than prison or other punitive measures. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) found that drug treatment conducted within the community is extremely beneficial in terms of cost, especially compared to prison. Every dollar spent on drug treatment in the community is estimated to return $18.52 in benefits to society."

The cost of Abuse treatment is low IMHO with a benefit to not only the individual but to society and the community at large.

19.(Potential Retail Hemp Market) "Retail sales of imported hemp products exceeded $70 million in the United States in 2006.62 Given hemp’s wide-ranging utility, supporters of domestic cultivation estimate that it would create a $300 million dollar industry

300Million is on the LOW end I'm postulating, The textiles from Hemp and Fuel go way beyond the spectrum this link is providing IMHO

The economic link I provided goes 1~78 and there's a lot of informative information therein regarding this said topic of discussion.

I hope this helped.

Many communities and even some businesses couldn't run their daily programme without the help of inmate workforces.

The whole prison system has mutated into a revenue generating industry.

Anyone remember the judges who were convicted of sending juveniles into detention for fees ?

reply to post by PutitOntheEye


Well, you be sure to tell them White Rabbit out of S.W. Missouri is doing quite well, happy and very anxious to see their happy tails run out of their jobs, offices and Government entirely...by law and proper process, of course.

You won't need more. They'll know who I am, I'm sure. I don't know them...but I have little doubt, they know me.

You MAY succeed in scaring some brand new people here with that nonsense...but I kinda doubt it. I'd hope not, anyway. Even new folk on a site like this ought to know better. lol.... (I'll consider myself warned or something)

Originally posted by PutitOntheEye