Posted on 06/26/2017 4:43:36 PM PDT by Antoninus
Some states have drawn the line at pot. Does a line that 'society' has drawn trump the 10th Amendment?
History channel just ran a 4 part series on how these killer drugs were brought to the USA via CIA to fund their covert activities and how Presidents, congress just ignored it. Flew then crap from Laos during Nam via Air America. 1-2 soldiers OD’D daily, and how LSD was introduced into USA, spreading rapidly in black communities, Dems demanded LONG prison terms to break up the black family unit.
http://www.history.com/shows/americas-war-on-drugs
SIMPLE explanation, as I’m typing with 1 finger, R. hand is in a tight cast following hand surgery.
But locking people up rather than making them productive seems a better approach. Either way...we get to $$$ for it.
Opium was legal in the USA for centuries, and use never got anywhere near China levels.
“Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction. Environmental factors interact with the person’s biology and affect the extent to which genetic factors exert their influence. Resiliencies the individual acquires (through parenting or later life experiences) can affect the extent to which genetic predispositions lead to the behavioral and other manifestations of addiction. Culture also plays a role in how addiction becomes actualized in persons with biological vulnerabilities to the development of addiction.” - American Society of Addiction Medicine
If ease of concealment were no longer an issue - as it wouldn't be with legalization - people might well stick to less harmful drugs like marijuana.
They won't. They'll be right out there in the open destroying themselves
The ones who are deep into addiction, perhaps - but even an addict can say to himself, "The better I keep my drugs hidden, the better my chance of getting to use them."
--and many more than there are today.
So you claim.
And guess who will pay for their numerous attempts at rehab?
Any jurisdiction that votes to do so (or votes for representatives who propose to do so).
IF there's a substantial increase in addictions, and IF our elected representatives decide to pick up the tab. What I AM paying for RIGHT NOW and have been for decades is the War on Drugs.
Yes it is, but since it has been present in Human history as far back as 3 million years, I would have to say that horse has already left the barn a long time ago.
After a hard dayz work in state houses and up in D.C. legislating against all manner of drugs...law makers slap one another on the back and meet at the local drug flop house...oh, I mean the pub to throw back a few scotch and sodas.
Tawk about hypocrisy at it's finest.
Well hypocrisy is bad, but it doesn't justify creating a new method by which people can be led to harder drugs.
This is a statement I *ALWAYS* hear from someone who has not done the proper degree of research as to the American History of Drug usage and exposure.
In the early stages of this nation, there was little access to the stuff, and most people considered it to be a medicine. Nobody was shipping tonnage amounts of this stuff into our harbors. When it arrived, it was in a few bottles and those relatively small in number.
The Civil War changed everything. The Wounded in the Civil War on both sides could have their pain alleviated with Opium and Cocaine, and both sides sought to get as much of the drug as was possible. In the aftermath of the Civil War, both the North and the South ended up with hundreds of thousands of wounded men who were now addicted to Opium and Cocaine. (But mostly Opium.)
Addiction among service men became so common that they started referring to it as "The Soldiers Disease."
Add to this efforts by companies such as Coca Cola to supply Cocaine in their soft drinks, and by the 1890s, people were noticing a lot of serious problems caused by these drugs.
The Difference between the US and China is that China already had much history with Opium, and they had large supplies of it in their own country and being brought in by the British. As the addiction habits in the US were growing worse, suppliers were stepping into the market to fill these demands. Given enough time, we would have gone down the same road as China. Fortunately the Federal government stepped in, banned the substances, and stopped this addiction epidemic before it got much worse.
Opium and cannabis have been used by natives/indigenous people for thousands of years. It's only fairly recent it has become an illegal substance. Most civilizations used plant based remedies as medicine or in religious ceremony.
The bulk of the US population is not indigenous. Western people's have no long association with these drugs.
It's only fairly recent it has become an illegal substance.
So? It's only fairly recent that Opium and Cocaine became an illegal substance. They are still dangerous.
Most civilizations used plant based remedies as medicine or in religious ceremony.
So? I don't think most of the demand out there is to use weed in "religious ceremonies." Most of these people just want to get stoned.
Just my opinion. We obviously disagree...and that's ok.
I can appreciate the view, however that was almost two hundred years ago. It is a different dynamic now and the drug war is the longest running war in US history.
We do not have the stomach to execute drug dealers, or invade nations that harbor narco-cartels, and we fail to realize that the drug war has been responsible for more Constitutional challenges and case law than any other source.
It has led to the proliferation of drug gangs, in which there are well over a million documented members of all ethnicities and races. They export violence on each in unprecedented scale outside of wartime, and it causes liberals to push for more gun control. Conservatives in turn push back, and now we are nation armed and seething, almost to the point of civil war level violence.
I worked the drug war full time for five years, surveillance, raids, asset forfeiture, Title 3 wiretaps, the whole bit.
When I was done I realized I had not make one bit of difference and the taxpayer costs associated with what I was involved in was astronomical.
The dirty little secret that law enforcement and the courts don’t want you to know is that we were never winning and we are no longer holding the line. We are retrograding slowly but surely, and it does not help that few want to enter the field anymore, thanks to Brown and Baltimore as the two main offenders.
My main objective is to see the violence be seriously curtailed, I care not if adults put chemicals in their body. How many people would take it to the streets if liquor or fast food were outlawed?
I also don’t want to use China as a metric for anything.
This was 1 of the better pieces that the History channel has run. They laid out the dirty laundry on both parties. It fit most of what informed people actually know. Which is rare for them, as they slant to the left, green crapola usually.
They didn’t carry it back enough in my opinion, because it went back to the Civil War, and before that to quack cures being peddled high in booze, coke, laudanum, or heroin or a combo. Nor did they touch on the long history of opium use in the ASIAN and M.E countries.
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