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TechnoratiMarijuana and Cocaine Should Be Legalized, Says Latin American Drugs Commission
Marijuana and cocaine for personal use should be decriminalised because the "war on drugs" has been a disaster, according to some of Latin America's most powerful politicians and writers.
The current international policy on drugs encourages corruption and violence that is threatening democracy throughout the continent, according to the former president of Brazil, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, who is a co-president of the Latin American commission on drugs and democracy. As well as politicians, the commission includes the writers Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Paulo Coelho of Brazil.
The election of Barack Obama has opened up the best opportunity for decades to address the failure of the "so-called drugs war", Cardoso told the Guardian today on a visit to London. He said he was hopeful that the international community would acknowledge that the time had come for a "paradigm shift" in the debate on drugs. "The war on drugs has failed in spite of enormous efforts in places like Colombia - the area of coca crops is not reducing," he said.
The current system of prohibition encouraged corruption among police officers, politicians and even judges. "It poisons the whole system, it undermines democracy," Cardoso said. "The war on drugs is based on repression ... How can people believe in democracy if the rule of law doesn't work?" Users should be offered treatment rather than jail, he said.
"The starting point has to be the United States," he said. "Now we have a new American administration, which is much more open-minded than before." He said he had held talks with the US state department in the later years of the Bush administration and found that, privately, many of the officials there shared his views.
Cardoso said that the changes would have to be co-ordinated. "We need an international convention, otherwise you will have different countries doing different things," he said. "But the climate is changing for the first time for many years. Even in the US, they recognise we are in deadlock now." Obama had already made it clear that the idea of a "war on drugs" was not workable. The need for change is urgent, said Cardoso, because of what is happening in Latin America. "There is a very grave situation in Mexico," he said. "More people are being killed there (through the drugs war) than in Iraq." He said that it was easier for former presidents who were no longer in office or running for election to speak out on such a controversial issue. He added that ending the war on drugs would be not be a signal that drugs were acceptable but a recognition that current policies had failed.
"You have to show that drugs are harmful, even light drugs, like marijuana - it is better not to use drugs - but tobacco is harmful also yet its use is being reduced by education," said Cardoso. He added that the vast quantities of money being used to enforce "repressive" policies on drugs could be put into treatment and education. Hundreds of thousands of people were being unnecessarily criminalised and sent to prison, "which are schools of crime."
The previous UN drugs policy that aimed to eliminate all drug use by this year was ill-conceived, he said. "You can never stop drugs use," he said, likening it to some of the failed policies in the past over HIV/Aids. "You can't have zero drugs any more than you can have a zero sex policy but you can have a safe sex policy." He said that Brazil's success in halting the HIV/Aids epidemic, which meant promoting the use of condoms in a Catholic country, was an example of how people's behaviour could be changed by education rather than repression.
53 Comments so far
Show AllI'd like to know by what right the governments proscribe ANYTHING I, an adult, wish to put in MY body. Merkins are sheep.
Maybe if I could use marijuana, I wouldn't have to depend on fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, and a host of other dangerous narcotics now starving me to death - and killing me with their nasty side effects. But that would put one hell of a dent into the 'legal' drug industry - so it will never happen. Even with states allowing for 'medical' marijuana, you can bet that once this 'healthcare' issue is over and buried, they'll go after marijuana again, with guns blazing. Right now, they're too scared of the 'single payer national healthcare' to rattle the cage too much. As for South America - they don't have enough trade to make up for the money coming from career criminals like the DEA, FBI, CIA, BATF, ICE, etc - not to mention the military aspect of the 'illegal drug trade' - and all those local cops that depend on supplying the prison/industrial complex for their jobs... Too many multi-billions involved for this money-machine to be stopped now. All wars - drug wars, oil wars, etc - feed the war machinery and all its components, even though it would probably cost less to just pension them all off for the rest of their lives and let their 'careers' die by attrition.
I would like to go down to Whole Foods and buy some bulk coca leaves in the produce section. Chew them while riding my bike home. And why not?
Marijuana, or cannabis, rather, is not a drug. It's an herb. Coca leaves too are an herb. Cannabinol and Cocaine are drugs. I wish they would quit calling "Marijuana" a drug. It's yet another lie of the drug war.
Do what you want with your drugs, but leave me herbs alone!
hey joe (that might make a great song title, eh?)
those armed gangs would go away tomorrow if bone headed drug laws did. get it?
and gyro, you make a good point. monsanto herb??? gawd helpus.
but maybe your concerns are unnecessary. if a 2-light show in your garage became legal, why would anybody who's even half-hip buy gov't-approved, corporate-adulterated JOINTZ (tm)?
I get it. The criminalization creates the criminals. Marijuana should be grown like zucchini. It should be a truck garden industry, or a keep on truckin industry.
Joe
People could grow tobacco in their backyard or brew beer in the kitchen but they go for familiar, consistent, packaged products, instead. Think it would be the same for a lot of folks with marijuana. While it's easy to grow a pot plant, it does take some experience and attention to grow really good smoking weed.
An interesting observation: a lot of people have been espousing the "tax and control" idea here.
There's a big difference between legalizing small amounts of pot or the growth of a restricted number of plants--and creating a Marlboro Weed industry & heroin and cocaine government distribution points and rehab facilities (which would suck up mountains of tax money that would just be sent over to Iraq III anyways).
Pot smokers (and other drug users) have created a noteworthy civil society full of culture and tradition. A lot of that is because you have to do it under the radar and in the confidence of a ring of trusted folks. That culture will go the way of the speakeasy...and I'm willing to bet that the speakeasy was a hell of a lot more fun than going to a karaoke bar.
Just sayin': tax revenue might reel in the sharks who so far have been eating the small fry...but they're fucking sharks, man. Let's try to keep it in the drum circle. Unless you really want Monsanto selling you seeds....
Unfortunately in a lot of places it is way out of the drum circle already. Forget the image of your groovy local grower. I hear from a good friend that in Northern California the drug trade is now in the hands of armed and violent gangs.
Joe
The problem I have is organized crime growing it in local parks. It happens in our county all the time. They send up a few workers from Mexico who guard the place for a minimal payment. They will be deported if caught, though they seldom are. Usually the feds just find a field and trash it while the workers watch while hiding in the bush just beyond. Meanwhile, the cartel makes millions because they are doing this on a large scale, in many places. I don't think people enjoying public parks (what's left of our parks after the budget cuts) should have to worry about walking into the middle of a drug lord's field.
While there are many growers who are basically American cottage industries, there is too much money involved already for the weed economy to be free of violent, organized crime. And speakeasys were often run by men that were as ruthless as ruthless gets. That's what happens when drug prices go skyhigh because the drug is illegal -- organized crime gets involved.
its not about drugs - its about power - drug war is internal state sponsored terrorism - it has remade the political landscape via the destruction of urban america.
drug war is post segregation race policy - drug war took out both the civil rights and anti war movement - drug war put bush in power -
of course legalization would remake the political landscape - thats why we wont have it for a long time.
If not for man's use--what about the annimals that use to depend on many of these plants for food and nurishment--As a pigeon fancier I know that if you present a variety of seeds to a bird they will go after the hemp seed every time--it is a dam shame that these laws are affecting innocent wildlife through man's erradification attempts. Help the, grow herbs
If not for man's use--what about the annimals that use to depend on many of these plants for food and nurishment--As a pigeon fancier I know that if you present a variety of seeds to a bird they will go after the hemp seed every time--it is a dam shame that these laws are affecting innocent wildlife through man's erradification attempts. Help the, grow herbs
Bring America Back !!!!.....I echo the post of humbaba below who has the problem in focus !
***We the people lost the war on drugs when the first dirty cop picked up his kickback envelope from drug dealers==for not doing his job ! Dirty Cops nationwide !
***I highly suggest viewing the DVD "Serpico" with Al Pacino, the true story of a NYC Narc >. The rest is history in every major/minor city in this country.
***The official war on drugs, including the so called Czar, is a sham==a front cover to pretend the Bureaucracy really wants to do anything about it.
***If we legalized marijuana and cocaine, the poor dirty police would have no leverage against the dealers and their kickback monies would dry up !! Heaven forbid !
***Of course, the answer is legalization and treatment, but the culture of drug corruption, only magnified by the Cartel Systems, won't permit stopping the assault on our children and the loose minded addictions creating the Demand in this Nation of ours.
***Former Florida Governor Bob Graham once made a speech where he stated the Pride being the front door to USA Theme Parks and recreation; but, also Florida must admit to being the "Back Door" for the flow of Illegal Drugs into our country===not so much proud of that !!!
CQ from Maine
What would the world be like if we had continued prohibition and gone world wide in the war on booze?
O happy Taliban.
It is high time we stop worrying over poor people getting high and start worrying about poor people being poor.
And while we are changing things around a bit let's keep kids out of church until they are 21. And can think for themselves (well, maybe, anyway).
The "war on drugs" is job security for drug dealers and police officers. Nuff said.
The elites need to outlaw drugs to help divide/rule the people, and to keep public funds flowing to the sword arm. That helicopter NEEDS a mission.
It's the prohibition, stupid!
Nothing is more desireable than forbiden fruit.
The vast sucking sound is our money going to gangsters and druglords and corrupting politicians and piling up bodies. Drug Trade - propped up and controlled by the militant arm of the Bush Crime Family, the CIA, no doubt. It's the Neo-Con's version of the East India Company's Opium Wars.
Happy people have no need of such things. Unhappy people can have a houseplant. But God only knows how many millions of lives we have destroyed by restarting the Afghan opium bonanza.
I'd like it better if those who want surgery because they dissolved their septum or those that tarred their lungs towards cancer due to their habits might pay a higher premium. They should in some way bear the added cost of their poor choices.
Vaporizers and baking are the healthy way to ingest pot. One unfiltered joint has been determined to be worse than a pack of smokes...
Where's the data? (I know, data is plural, but it is morphing into a word like information.)
Joe
"One unfiltered joint has been determined to be worse than a pack of smokes..."
Reference please. I know an awful lot about this issue and your statement sounds exactly like barroom bullspit.
"One unfiltered joint has been determined to be worse than a pack of smokes..."
By whom? And if that is true, then why has cannabis NEVER been found to increase the cancer rate? The thing is that cannabis has NEVER been implicated in a single case of cancer. Cigs are known to kill 450,000 Americans a year. Part of that is that cigs are laced with all kinds of chemicals that increase it's addictive qualities, and also increase the damage done by the chemicals naturally in the tobacco itself.
The US senate back in 1970 and 1972 tried to find people who they could use as bad examples to scare people away from smoking cannabis. They went to Jamaica and Costa Rica and tested the Rastas and the Coptics, each of whom smoke FAR more cannabis than any American could dream of, and the vast majority of which was consumed in unfiltered joints. Their results were that those who smoked it lived an average of a year and a half LONGER than their next door neighbors who DIDN'T smoke it.
Vast amounts of testing have gone into this plant, it's the single most studied plant on the face of the planet. No one has EVER died from using it, no one has ever come down with cancer from it, and in fact, it's been found to have properties that KILL cancerous tumors. That, BTW, was known in the early 1970's, but thanks to our idiot gov't, that fact has been suppressed in this country.
And for the record, one of the two groups that found out about the federally proposed ban on cannabis back in 1937 and who testified against the ban was the AMA. For the first three years of prohibition, over 10,000 DOCTORS were jailed for prescribing it to their patients. It wasn't until the AMA promised to never allow it's use again that they were no longer being arrested.
You need to do some research other than listening to the drug warriors. They lie and always have.
(applause!)
You tell 'em, WJM. Right on.
On that note me theenks me now go roll a beeg faat spleeeef, mon. In the name of the most high, JAH Rastafari!
"Ya got to lively up yourself, and don't feel no dread" -Bob Marley
If the US would legalize drugs, and Mexico would legalize firearm posession by ordinary citizens, the entire corrupt traffic between the two countries would end overnight; the US prison population would be cut in half, Mexican narcos would starve, and Mexican citizens would have a means of self defense.
Sadly, it will never happen.
I wouldn't be so sure we won't see at least marijuana legalized and for a very pragmatic reason -- California wants the tax revenue they'd get if it was sold in the same manner alcohol is. If it is decriminalized here, we'd have to see if the fedes would leave us alone, but I'd say the tide is turning.
i agree w/ kity lady oregon, getreal and many of the other comments,
people use plants. it's that simple. it's been that way since we started sticking plant material in our mouths 100,000's years ago. i suspect it will be that way - the day the lunatic fringe blows up the planet.
and people love to alter their consciousness -
just look at how many americans attend fundamentalist church's on sunday across america ?
looked at the listings in the phone book under bars and taverns ?
pick your poison - jesus, whiskey or heroin. putting people in jail for using drugs is just another form of discrimination.
i'm not a big fan of amphetamines or heroin or crack cocaine - but i know w/ 100% certainty that banning the substances has created more problems than the substances create.
it's f**ked up that african americans are disproportionately jailed for drug offenses in america. it's also disturbing that the farmers who live in these contested lands - are exposed to a lot of violence w/out the benefit of receiving a cut of the profits.
if the bolivians, afghani's, columbians, burmese, equadorian people could legally grow and export these crops to legal markets in europe and north america - the revenue (distributed either through coops or through some form of national control)could provide the needed funds for schools, roads, medical attention for the poor in the lands where these drugs grow.
the US/europe also would benefit. the money is already being spent - the market for heroin ($65 billion) and cocaine already exists, eradication efforts have been a failure. reduce the price, take the money away from organized crime (gun merchants) and tax the substance (so the price floats below the black market price) generating revenue for schools, hospitals and drug education programs.
the idea is becoming more popular - decriminalization/legalization of marijuana would be an amazing step towards demilitarizing our society. if the USA altered it's approach - legalizing/regulating all drugs as opposed to prohibition - the global ramifications would be positive.
...peace...
I have long advocated for the legalization and taxation of plant based drugs. This would eliminate methamphetamines as drano poison.
We could solve our prison overcrowding by letting all the marijuana convicted people out. However, the private prison industry will cry foul because they make money off these unfortunate citizens upon whom our government has long conducted a "war".
marijuana should just be totally decriminalized, where cocaine and opium could be sold at licensed "drug" stores and taxed at a high rate. Not too high, so people who want the stuff could buy it legally rather than getting it off the streets at a higher price. Could help some of the states and the US budgets, too.
Kitty Lady - I mostly agree with what you say. But natural is not always good - take hemlock leaves, for instance. But for the most part, it is possible that natural plant based drugs are better for health than the processed stuff.
Before it was criminalized, Mark Twain wrote about coca leaves: "a vegetable product of miraculous powers; ... so nourishing and so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up-hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.”
He wished to open up a trade in coca leaves, but never did so.
Chewing coca leaves in their natural form does not seem to hurt those who live where it grows. The processing and criminalization of drugs might be part of what makes them physically, psychologically and economically harmful.
Joe
PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK. IT SIMPLY MAKES THE PROBLEM WORSE!
The comments on this site are unbelievably naive and silly, for supposed "progressives". And I'm not talking from the point of view of a weak minded, overeducated, cocooned liberal who winces at the cruel, harsh treatment of people who have committed no more of a crime than to use mood-modifying substances--of whatever kind. (And of course, that is absolutely horrible...the harsh punishment for basically nothing.)
I'm simply talking from the point of a moderately aware human being who has been reading for decades about the horrors of prohibition and the incredibly simple and obvious reality that... PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK. IT MAKES IT WORSE.
Of course we all know people who have been ruined by cocaine. I know people who have been ruined by sex, love, jealousy, gambling, etc., etc. And a huge percentage of Americans are half to three-quarters ruined by bad food and television.
The f......g Economist (deeply conservative magazine) recommended legalizing EVERYTHING for the unbelievably straight-forward reason that... PROHIBITION MAKES THE PROBLEM MUCH WORSE.
Drugs of EVERY kind will be used as long as the planet exists...period. Legal or not. People need to simply understand that. Now, what's the best approach to controlling this shit.
Legalize and control it by the gov't, same as all other drugs.
Something no one has brought up is that what might be appropriate for one population could be wrong for another. Educated people who belong to well-structured societies in which government provides necessary benefits and support (such as Western Europe) might be better suited to universal legalization. On the other hand, down here where I live (Texas), people will do all sorts of crazy things because they don't know any better and the government cares mostly about locking people up. So we ought to go slow in Texas.
Alcohol, which is legal, is probably responsible for most drug induced bad behavior in Texas, as it is elsewhere.
Joe
I like the idea of legalizing all drugs. Marijuana could be handled just like liquor. Hard drugs could be managed by setting up a government "Drug Control Board" which would sell them at a little more than cost to buyers who would be registered. In this way, each person's consumption pattern would be monitored so that adddicts could be given treatment. There might be a tendency for some people to seek an illegal source to avoid this record, but the higher price of the black market would be a deterrent.
Marijuana and cocaine are two entirely different propositions altogether. Marijuana's criminalization should be reversed post haste, while cocaine is an addictive drug that destroys lives like heroin and methamphetamine.
This does not excuse the lucrative drug market that the USA (and increasingly, especially for cocaine, Europe) provides for the most successful business enterprises in Latin America (drug corruption is starting infiltrate West Africa as well, as it is a transhipment point to Europe) whom practice mayhem and murder as mundane activities.
Many hazardous things are already legal, such as cigarettes, alcohol, prescription drugs, firearms, cars and the possession and use of them, and the practices of medicine and law. All of these are strictly controlled and licensed. Many people go to jail for abuses, but we don't see things related to them like drug cartels and/or underground financing and distribution networks not subject to taxation and reasonable regulation.
Under legalization of drugs for recreational and non-prescription use, we would still have many people incarcerated or on probation or parole for abuses such as public intoxication, driving under the influence, providing hazardous substances to minors, etc. Some addicts could survive long enough to be cured, but many of those escaping incarceration would still end up dead or hospitalized, like cigarette and alcohol addicts, or homeless and suicidal due to inability to work and maintain relationships; children and other relatives of addicts might suffer more than they do now.
To determine whether such legalization, once tried, should be continued, all of the effects, good and bad, would have to be considered in the light of modern methods of meliorating the bad effects.
Some drugs, like crack cocaine and methamphetamine, might be so dangerous that no one should be allowed to possess or use them (an analogy would be automatic weapons, which are prohibited notwithstanding the Second Amendment).
On balance, I think legalization of the more benign drugs like marijuana and cocaine, with strict regulation and control, would be marginally beneficial. To start with, legalizing marijuana and seeing if that brings an overall improvement makes sense. Don't expect me to be smoking the stuff, however.
A bit of coffee-shop wisdom buried in a whole lot of blah blah. You take yourself way too seriously. "Meliorating" for improving...!!!?????
You can always tell bullspitters by the pretentiousness of the 'vocabulary' words they drop.
Too chicken-shit to ever even try pot...? Your opinion is worth nothing.
Sorry you didn't enjoy my comment. But I did smoke a little pot years ago. And I've had lots of acquaintances going back to the 1960's who used all sorts of illegal drugs. And a few who used the word "meliorate."
Er... I don't think it's cowardice that makes a person abstain from recreational drug use. A lot of people would say that is just healthy self-preservation.
There are so many things wrong with the world. One of them is the stupid, corrupt, racist drug policy that has been foisted upon this world by the politicians and organized criminals of the United States.
We can address marijuana as we do wine. They are similar in their benefits and dangers. I'll bet you that most kids of Congresspeople and Senators have used pot. So have many police and other law enforcement people. Keeping it illegal is hypocritical cowardice on the part of legislators.
As for cocaine, it is more on the danger level of tobacco. It is not so clear to me how to handle it. It is more of a medical problem, however, than a military or police matter. If it is dangerous, we should approach it by education, reducing the demand, providing de-tox and rehab.
In any case, drugs should not be used as a pretext for marching into other countries. Nobody forces us to use drugs. That is a domestic problem.
Joe
Prohibition makes it worse...period. I don't care how awful the substance might be--and obviously some substances cause horrible harm to people (as do tobacco, alcohol, bad food, and terrible life-style habits of every kind, etc., etc.)
PROHIBITION MAKES IT WORSE.
Legalization will not make everything right...nothing will. But legalizing EVERYTHING and controlling it by the gov't is the only way to deal with the issue reasonably, and it would at least remove all the horror of the criminality...at all levels.
Sioux Rose
Can Arnold legalize marijuana so that California becomes its chief producer and domestic exporter. That would solve their budgetary problems in a buzz!
As for cocaine, it sure does ruin lives, but partially because people addicted to it do almost anything to get it. Perhaps if it was legal that would not be the case? I think the argument from Latin America's standpoint is the extreme violence associated with the cocaine cartels and how the expenses of trying to rope them in takes away funds for more vital things that societies require.
I am no personal fan of cocaine. Grass on the other hand, if every congressional member was required to smoke some and then walk through what's left of West Virginia's mountains, I have a gut feeling very different legislation would emerge. It's amazing what passes for legal today. Stone them all! (Or get them all stoned for a paradigm change!)
Russia has a rampant problem with Alcoholism. It ruins lives and leads to domestic violence. It so bad that the life expectancy among males plummets as they drink themselves to death.
Just as drug consumption in the USA the answer lies in addressing the reasons why they so heavily commit to drink rather then imprisoning people because they do.
Something is very wrong in a society that feels it MUST consume drugs at the risk of their own lives just to face life day to day.
It obvious to everyone that the war on drugs is not working so why persist?
The answer to ME is evident. This not about protecting Americans from drug use. It about the trillions of dollars made in the selling of ILLEGAL drugs to the same and the profits being channeled to the CIA and to firms on Wall street. It is about the prison system as a for profit enterprise.
Just like Mandatory Health Insurance, it to ensure money filters FROM one group of people to another .
High Sioux Rose,
AB390 is working it's way through he California legislature right now. It will probably become law in 2011.
This will legalize growing. 10 plants, all adults, not in public view.
And possession. Sales I don't know or care that is about money.
But if 10 million of us grow 10 plants that yield 2lbs each.....
2011. AB390. California.
Making drugs illegal makes the prices high, which in turn keeps profits high for cartels. And because the current drug laws are so dranconian, traffikers and dealers who choose to operate in this illegal realm are more willing to act out in extreme ways, and more willing to use violence.
But removing the heavy legal consequences for drugs will force profits to drop, and crime will drop- because the motive to act out violently will no longer be linked to high risk of incarceration for dealing/obtaining drugs in the first place.
You are right. Drug gangs and crime, corruption of law enforcement are direct results of the illegality and thus inflated profitability of street drugs.
(Corruption of our Congress, on the other hand, is the cause of inflated profitability of our legal drugs.)
Joe
"The current international policy on drugs that is encouraging violence and threatening Democracy throughout the continent."
Perfect. Democracies want their raw materials for themselves. Military dictatorships and police states give them away to their Master.
However instead of being Bad Guys supporting SomozaPinochet types, we are Good Guys fighting narcotrafficantes, but we still fly over their jungles in helicopters and shoot anything that moves.
That is control.
I dunno. I am sure that our current drug policies not only don't work, our continued consumption causes horrible problems in South America, as well as here. But I'm hesitant to legalize cocaine -- seen too many people destroy their lives with it. Marijuana should have never been criminalized in the first place, so I have less hesitation about that. For me, the difference is the physical addiction.
Every one seems to have their own views of which drug is better and which is worse and most people have rated hash a "safer" drug. I tend to think otherwise just purely due to the fact since even though they are both plants one has been sooo heavily processed that it becomes harmful!(by humans) I mean who has tryed smoking coca plant? So we dont really know the drug as to what it is in nature. Hash is the most natural purist "drug" around!
Prohibition of ANY substance does NOT work. Period. It doesn't matter what the substance is. It's the prohibition that is the failure.
Alcohol destroys people's lives as well, but we don't go around using stupid policies again after having proved that they don't work. Overeating kills people, and ruins their lives. Prescription drugs kill people, and ruins lives as well. Even religion can be seen by some people as having ruined someone else's life. Tobacco does the same thing, too. And some people can't live without their 15 or 20 cups of coffee a day.
I'm not saying that I want people to do cocaine, any more than I want them to drink or do prescription drugs. But it's got to be dealt with in some other way than making people criminals over it. We have proved time and time again, in fact, every day, that prohibition is a complete fool's game. What the substance is doesn't matter to the results of the policy. It will ALWAYS fail, even in a completely authoritarian country. It is the nature of human existence.
Criminalizing people just gives you more criminals, and no chance for actual rehabilitation. But one also has to recognize that the person has to WANT to be rehabilitated. You can't force it on someone.
BTW, cocaine has no more of an addiction rate than any other drug out there, about 10%. Meth is FAR worse, close to that of cigarettes, 90%. And the reason that cigs are so bad is because of the addition of things like formaldehyde, which increase the addictive quality by huge amounts. Meth is a far worse drug than coke is, and far deadlier. The rates of people kicking it are FAR less than coke. And that is not an endorsement of coke, in fact, I call it "instant asshole". But it's not nearly as bad as some other things out there are. It's just that most of us don't have any real exposure to meth heads, thank God, otherwise you would know that it is truly hell on earth.
But dealing with it by making users criminals helps no one, especially the users. Of ANY drug. Prohibition is a fool's game, and only fools advocate playing it.
WJM,
I respect your opinion. But I am an ethnopsychopharmoclogist by trade with decades of field research experience and I assure you processed cocaine sinks a hook like a gaff down one's nose into their soul.
However the vicious thieving scum people become behind crank is unparalleled.
But locking up users of anything is wrong.
I think cops should liberate users product if they catch them in the streets with white powder and let them walk. Even if it's packaged for sale.
I smoked some crack in the Bronx recently as part of my research and the purity level was surprising. But after only 4-5 times my system began "needing" it. This does not happen on crank even if also smoked.
I only smoke pot. Unless I'm in the desert eating peyote, in Tres Piadres on LSD, or bonging shroom caps on Halloween.
joe, cali
Are you a clinical ethno-psychopharmoclogist? ;-)
q
Hi qs, alas, lacking proper funding, grants, for the purchases I'd like to make, the right research assistant, I'm forced into the field, the elements, with nothing more than my notebook & pen. The travails, the inequities.
peace qs!
And that is not your Opinion. That is a stone-cold immutable fact. Processed coca is evil. Chewing leaves? That has been done in Bolivia and Peru for millenia w/o problems.
Marijuana. It would be healthier for middle school kids than the cafeteria food they eat.
cocaine is a bad white b**** though, the ruin of countless Americans to date, and more addicting than life itsef.