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Ceasefire in the War on Drugs?
Like those generals who used to discover that nuclear weapons were not a good thing about twenty minutes after they took off their uniforms and started collecting their pensions, we have had a parade of former presidents who knew that the war on drugs was a bad thing – but only mentioned it after they were already ex-presidents. Now, at last, we have one who is saying it out loud while he is still in office.
President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, the country that has suffered even more than Mexico from the drug wars, is an honest and serious man. He is also very brave, because any political leader who advocates the legalization of narcotic drugs will become a prime target of the prohibition industry. He has chosen to do it anyway.
“We are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the past forty years,” he told “The Observer” in a recent interview in Bogota. “A new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking....If that means legalizing [drugs]...then I will welcome it.”
Santos has no intention of becoming a kamikaze politician: “What I won’t do is become the vanguard of that movement [to legalize drugs] because then I will be crucified. But I would gladly participate in those discussions, because we are the country that’s still suffering most...from the high consumption in the US, the UK and Europe in general.”
There are no such discussions, of course. Santos is being disingenuous about this; he is really trying to start a serious international debate on drug legalization, not to join one. But the time may be ripe for such a debate, because it is now almost universally acknowledged (outside of political circles) that the “war on drugs” has been an extremely bloody failure.
Twenty years ago Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, the most influential economist of the 20th century, and an icon of the right, said: “If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel.” It is only because the government makes the drugs illegal that the criminal cartel has a highly profitable monopoly on meeting the demand.
Milton Friedman also said: “Government never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from over-eating. We all know that over-eating causes more deaths than drugs do.” But there are a quarter-million Americans in jail for possessing or selling drugs. Nobody is in jail for producing, marketing or eating junk food.
Friedman was right, of course, but forty years of the war on drugs have also shown that arguments based on logic, natural justice, or history (the obvious parallel with alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s and early 30s) have very little effect on policy in the main drug-importing nations. Many politicians there know that the war on drugs is futile and stupid, but the political cost of leaving the herd and saying so out loud is too high.
The political leaders who are starting to say that it’s time to end the war and legalize the drugs are almost all in the producer nations, where the damage has been far graver than in the drug-importing countries. In practice, therefore, they are almost all Latin American leaders – but even there they have waited until they left office to make their views known.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox supported the US-led war on drugs when he was in office in 2000-2006, but more recently he has condemned it as an unmitigated disaster. “We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs,” he wrote on his blog. “Radical prohibition strategies have never worked.”
“Legalization does not mean that drugs are good,” Fox added, “but we have to see it as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt.”
Naturally, Fox only said all that when he was no longer president, because otherwise the United States would have punished Mexico severely for stepping out of line. In the same spirit, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico made a joint public statement that drug prohibition had failed in 2009 – after they had all left office.
But gradually Latin American leaders are losing their fear of Washington. Last year Mexican President Felipe Calderon called for a debate on the legalization of the drug trade, although he carefully stressed that he himself was against the idea. (Then why did you bring it up, Felipe?) And now President Santos of Colombia has come out, still cautiously, to say that he would consider legalizing not only marijuana but cocaine.
The international discussion on legalization that Santos wants will not start tomorrow, or even next year, but common sense on drugs is finally getting the upper hand over ignorance, fear and dogmatism. And cash-strapped governments will eventually realize how much the balance sheet could be improved by taxing legalized drug consumption rather than wasting hundreds of billions in a futile attempt to reduce consumption.
46 Comments so far
Show All"“If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel.” It is only because the government makes the drugs illegal that the criminal cartel has a highly profitable monopoly on meeting the demand."
That's all that really needs to be said.
Gore Vidal made the case most succinctly in 1970 in his essay "Drugs," and I'll quote his solution, which is announced in the first three sentences: "It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect--good and bad--the drug will have on whoever takes it." http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-drugs.html
Unfortunately, in about 1100 words, he also explains why it won't happen.
The war on illegal drugs is just too big to decriminalize. The $100 of billions paid to bribe those necessary to bribe to keep the bribery going extends from the street cop all the way to judges to incarcerate offenders to populate prisons for the PIC, prison industrial complex, profits not to mention bribing politicians to pass draconian laws for the purpose of increasing prison populations. The churches are also bribed to trumpet the propaganda of the PIC. The $billions spent for bribing come from government tax revenues.The war on drugs is really the war on the U.S. Constitution, with drugs just being a smoke screen. Nixsonianism at its worst. Lastly, the $billions paid to the banksters for drug money laundering is just another incentive to keep it as it is. The drug cartels are too big to be allowed to fail just like the criminal banksters being :too big to fail".
good article. Thank you Common Dreams.
there was a time many years ago when i thought this guy was a good military analyst but that has been so over
this piece is about a fluffy and silly as any i have read anywhere in quite a while
dwyer calls the president of colombia - us puppet narco state - an honest and serious man, based on what i don't know
"Born into one of the most influential families of Colombia’s social and political elite, President Juan Manuel Santos is a true political insider "
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/149-2010-elections/9075-profile-juan-manuel-santos.html
rule of thumb: the "elites" in the narco states are the ones who run the drug trade
just ask the heroin dealer karzai over there in aghanistan
vicente fox - ex nwo scum leader of the corrupt mexican government wants to, he says, decriminalize as well
http://cnsnews.com/video/washington/vicente-fox-wants-legalize-all-drugs
blah blah blah
the fact of the matter is that the american government - like the good queen in the uk before them - has been up to their eyes in the drug trade for hundreds of years
iran contra under the senile - hey i didn't see nothing - raygun and the lying turd george h w "i was out of the loop" bush saw the military bring in tons of cocaine into the us via military planes into military bases to sell cheaply in black neighborhoods to then turn around and buy guns from the corrupt shah of iran to then turn around and give them to the death squads hired by the us to destabilize nicaraugua
you can't make this shit up.......
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/
here - you can read about the bush cheney drug empire
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html
here's a video of bush clinton and the drugs they ran through mena
video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8681225708920427234
or read these books
Castillo, Celerino III and Harmon, Dave, POWDERBURNS, Oakville, Ont., Mosaic Press, 1994 Head of DEA in El Salvador discovered that the Contras were smuggling cocaine into the United States. Castillo's superiors reacted to his reports by burying them. This book is too controversial for an American publisher to print.
Cockburn, Leslie, OUT OF CONTROL, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987 Early account of the of the Reagan Administration's secret war in Nicaragua, the illegal arms pipeline and the Contra drug connection.
Johnson, Haynes, SLEEPWALKING THROUGH HISTORY, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. Pg. 261-274, 292-293 History of the Reagan years traces the relationships of William Casey, Manuel Noriega and the Medellin cocaine cartel.
let's see the two major hard drugs in the world
cocaine - which the us miltary protects in colombia
and heroin which the military protects in afghanistan
here's a vid
U.S. Marines Guard Afghanistan Poppy Fields - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNqIrDKnNE8
"The Marines of Bravo’s Company 1st Platoon sleep beside groves of poppies Troops of the 2nd Platoon walk through the fields on strict orders not to swat the heavy opium bulbs. The Afghan farmers and laborers, who are engaged in scraping the resin from the bulbs, smile and wave at the passing soldiers.
The Helmand province is the world’s largest cultivator of opium poppies - the crop used to make heroin."
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12707
hey gwynne dyer - you should retire
then there are the banks who launder all the money
"During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.
The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
from bloomberg: "Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html
lastly from the guardian
"Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims
drugs and war - the amerikan cocktail
Thanks for your summary, medmedude.
I thought we invaded Afghanistan for oil, but maybe protection of the opium cartel was a significant goal of the bushboys.
Drugwarriors are starting to vy with Nazis on the evil villain chart.
When (or if) The Drugwar ends, they'll provide Hollywood with creepy characters for decades to come.
"I thought we invaded Afghanistan for oil...."
FYI Waganupa, no proved reserves of oil in Afghanistan. "Oil - proved reserves:
0 bbl (1 January 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 102 "
according to CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html
But that doesn't keep the oil co's and occupiers from wanting to try to find some:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-08-15/markets/30083913_1_reserves-barrels-oil. This oil is supposed to be in northern Afghanistan,.... tough country to get around in.
However, a natural gas pipelline, the TAP (trans-Afghan pipeline), that would pipe natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, Pakistan then India could very well have been the ulterior motive behind the Bush 2 war. There has been recent developments on the TAP:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-11/15/c_131248843.htm
that helps explain the US sabre-rattling at Iran.
If opiates were legal they would be really inexpensive and they are cheap when they are prescribed legally. The illegality and the black market keep the pushers/druglords rolling in the dough. The war on drugs is a boondoggle.
"I thought we invaded Afghanistan for oil, but maybe protection of the opium cartel was a significant goal of the bushboys."
multiple reasons.
1. scapegoat for 911
2. way to position US military near contested land in kashmir which could easily conflate into nuclear war.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/05/indian_pakistani_and_chinese_border_disputes
3. the pipelines for natural gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
4. precious minerals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all
5. as an example to all people of the earth that even the most indigenous tribal people living in remote locations - will be subject to the international marketplace and geopolitical reality. (which is folly as the russians discovered and the english before them) -
6. as way to quickly access pakistan (like isreal), which is an islamic state with nuclear weapons (that might not appreciate israeli or american bombers striking the neighbor iran).
7. we also invaded afghanstan to show both russia and china - that as the world's sole superpower the US was capable of asserting massive military projection of power thousands of miles away from reliable supply chains (air war). it's a constant reminder to the emerging global power - that the americans are armed and dangerious.
8. as a means to have a military presence (air feilds) before we ultimately re-patronize the oil fields to their rightful MNC owners (ahmmmm).
i'm sure there were many more reasons (hell, even the rationale that most americans accepted - gotta get bin laden - in and of itself was an amazing art of deception).
of course unlimited funding for cia black op programs would definitely be a reason for a prolonged war....
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
...peace...
MED: Interesting data, and it appears to be well-documented by the links you've supplied. However, let me add this: too many in this forum fall into perhaps what's become an unconscious adaptation to the Bush failed presidency. Often their arguments on C.D. are framed entirely within the "with us, or against us" prism.
While your points are well-taken, why not also applaud what the article is relating in the way of exposing the failed war on drugs? When you seek to discredit the author, because you can find discrepancies with his points, isn't the net effect one of also discrediting the thesis of the article? And what's the good in that?
Posters need to get past the black-white ideological divide and make note of what's good, and where enlightenment may be creeping through the cracks in The Establishment's Paradigm. Cursing the bearers of said light, or undermining their exposures is counter-productive. None of us is perfect, and using imperfection to slime a significant argument is either disingenuous or suggestive of a misuse of energy. The purist approach (if it is that), does not belong on a planet where so many are "doing time" for a "failure to evolve," potentially elsewhere!
Sioux, talk is cheap. Public statements by politicians rarely reflect their private feelings on any issue. Pay no attention to what they say/write; watch carefully what they do.
Maybe talk is cheap, but I agree with Siouxrose, that we need to positively reinforce the positive talk, reward (however possible) the behavior that you want to increase. Plus, the more the truth is spoken, the more people know about it, the more it gets talked about in the public arena, the more people hear it, etc. We have to build the momentum somehow. The more generally accepted the idea that the drug war should end, the more likely that individuals and small groups will begin to feel safe in more civic action. OWS really includes this issue too.
Talk is still cheap. The conclusions expressed by president Santos have been talked about for quite a few years. Nothing new there. Reflect for a moment on "change you can believe in" Alas
Colombia's new leader spoke out with as much courage as anybody in that position could likely do. If more leaders could speak up about this, there might begin a real move in that direction. I don't know why the US government didn't learn from the Prohibition amendment fiasco, but it seems clear from various sources that the profit motive now dominates US drug policy. It may be worth noting that more people are now being killed by pharmaceuticals than by illegal drugs. There are very few pharmaceuticals I would trust, these days.
thanks for your condescension sioux - always lets me know that i'm on the right path
first off dwyer knows better than to palpitate over this verbal drivel from a narco puppet
it is meaningless and if he wanted to provide some insight he could have just pointed that out
as for enlightenment - i leave that to the holier than thous - or yous as they case may be
my arguments are not framed in the with us paradigm as you suggest but your arguments certainly are
how ironic is that
Oh hell - don't forget the whole Barry Seal affair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal
good point
someone can google this if they want to bother - barry seale also took physical custody of lee harvey oswald under a cia mk ultra program when he was 11 or 12 years old, along with other boys, and taught him to fly
barry seale also left new orleans to fly his drugs into more friendly space like mena arkansas under the loving eyes of both clintons
hillary's firm laundered those drug funds while bubba was guv
Also remember Gary Webb, who broke the Contra-cocaine story in 1996 and tied it to the massive influx of crack in southern California in the 1980s. Webb's investigations came under withering attacks from establishment media icons such as the NY Times and Washington Post - to the extent that his publisher had to detract the stories and Webb was fired (career destroyed, he later committed suicide). Webb's piece - "Dark Alliance" - has been totally substantiated, but the dark behavior by the Times and Post only underlines the advice offered long ago by George Seldes - "tell the truth, then run!"
Another contemporary investigative journalist, Daniel Hopsicker, has been running stories for a decade now (www.madcowprod.com) on the nefarious activities at Venice Airport in Florida, where drugs and spooks operate with impunity. Venice Airport, of course, was also the base for Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers. Their behavior leading up to the 9/11 attacks suggests their origins were in the international drug milieu as opposed to simply fundamentalist Islam - although the lines between all these factions (drugs, organized crime, intelligence agencies, military, religious sects, financial institutions, etc) rapidly blur when looked into closely.
Max Kieser also provides a thorough analysis of drug cartel money, like the $400 billion deposited by the drug cartel in Wachovia bank in 2007 when the banks could no longer use their Counterfeit debt as collateral to obtain funding from other banks. They were all doing the same, using Counterfeit debt, Counterfeiting stocks and stock options. The forced contributions, withholding taxes, by taxing labor is used to pay interest on the Counterfeit debt which is made possible since it exists only in cyberspace, no cash available.From here it gets complicated.
The first sentence of this article was a real teaser.
I expected to read that Jimmy Carter, George HW, Bill Clinton, and the Shrub had surfaced to pronounce the domestic war on drugs (marihuana in particular) to be a stupid, costly, counterproductive failure similar to alcohol Prohibition, with continued criminalization serving to fuel racial and lifestyle profiling by police, and systematically inject the long arm of the law into the citizenry's privacy rights on a daily basis.
Silly me.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill,
I had the same expectations.
Thomas Gilbert-
Me too.
let's not forget nixon's nixxing of his own Senate report concluding the weed was, indeed, harmless.
George Carlin was right when he said, and I'm paraphrasing, that if you really want to stop illegal drugs in this country, you need to drag the banksters out of their banks and hang them by the neck from the flag poles in front of their banks! Because the cartels need the banksters to launder the money for them so that it looks legit! But of course, why stop at the banksters, when so many of our politicians deserve a similar fate as the banksters that they help enable!
US Prosecutors Seeking to Prevent Dirty Secrets of Drug War From Surfacing in Cartel Leader's Case
Posted by Bill Conroy - November 5, 2011 at 3:28 pm
US Government Using National Security to Conceal Evidence, Attorneys for Narco-Trafficker Zambada Niebla Claim
read all here:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/11/us-prosecutors-seeking-prevent-dirty-secrets-drug-war-surfacing-cartel-
the emperor wears no clothes so he launders money instead.
While Black Ops are funded by the Black Market, the War on Drugs cannot end.
Another role for the drug war has been to serve as a pretext to introduce US military and intelligence agents into third world countries.
A good example of this was brought out a few years ago in Venezuela. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was operating in that country without allowing the Venezuelans to monitor what they were doing. They informed the Venezuelan government that they intended to start a program which they claimed was simply standard operating procedure in many other countries: They would take a bundle of money and buy their way into the drug business in Venezuela. By pretending to by drug smugglers, they said, they would be able to get the intelligence they needed to arrest the real dealers.
President Chavez objected. He realized that what they were proposing was that they would be setting up operational relationships with organized crime in his country--assassins, kidnappers, and other criminals who would be convenient accomplices in any efforts to destabilize the government to prepare for a coup that would restore the Venezuelan "1%" to power, so the Empire could go back to plundering the country the way they did before Chavez was elected.
This was a plausible concern, given the fact that the US had been deeply implicated in the 2002 coup d'etat in which the business elite and the military kidnapped the president and held him for two days until millions of Venezuelans converged on Caracas and forced them to return him to the presidency.
Chavez said that the DEA would only be able to stay if the US would allow him to send his agents to penetrate US drug syndicates without having to tell the DEA what they were doing--in other words to deal drugs in the US with impunity. Of course such an arrangement would be unthinkable. So Chavez threw them out.
Since then Venezuela has been on the US list of countries that do not cooperate in the war on drugs, even though the Venezuelan government is routinely praised for its efforts by international drug enforcement agencies.
In another example,the US military had a very cozy relationship with the Bolivian armed forces, so not long after he was elected President Evo Morales ended that "cooperation" which was mostly justified by the war on drugs.
Of course in most countries the US military continues to use this pretext to set up bases and to co-opt military officers. A new air base in Eastern Honduras is a good example of this continuing practice.
Peter: Excellent commentary, however, in a more subtle manner, the same thing is happening right here. Back in the late l980's when I watched "The Zero Tolerance Campaign" effectively wipe out the right to privacy (especially in one's own home) along with the presumption of innocence... I saw the skids being greased to build a prison infrastructure where beds would be waiting for future dissenters. It took 911 and the manufacturing of a Homeland Security POLICE state to finalize the plan. Running in ominous parallel with the systems used in 3rd world nations, 2.2 million prison beds now exist in our own nation, as laws bend to protect trespassers and punish principled activists along with brave whistle-blowers. With so much corruption going on, and such obscene misuse of public funds and resources, along with all the dangerous legal transgressions... only the whistle-blowers can set the masses free. Increasingly those who speak up are being characterized as trouble makers, sometimes even quasi-terrorist verbiage gets tossed around. And I need not remind you that a media as propagandized as our own can set the terminology while framing the issues in a manner that falsifies the motives and testimony of the persons most apt to lead The Transition now underway.
So everything you said is true about the use of the U.S. military in foreign domains; however, it's time to draw the dots to similar campaigns taking place here within the Homeland Security Fortress. Just as it might be said that "Disaster Capitalism" was tried out on a number of other nations before hitting home, the same strategy applies to campaigns of citizen suppression.
"Back in the late l980's when I watched "The Zero Tolerance Campaign" effectively wipe out the right to privacy (especially in one's own home) along with the presumption of innocence..."
remember nixon's "no knock" law?
it's almost as if the weed was demonized so that these repressive laws could be enacted.
The elite make the drugs illegal, benefit financially from the war on drugs, from the drugs themselves,from for profit prisons and the legal drugs. It's no wonder the friendliest plant on the planet is illegal.
Dog bless the OWS.
The "War on Drugs" = Prohibition. Its the same play with different actors. Prohibition did not work, but the Government tried it again to make itself beneficiary by providing untold billions for operations not to be publicized.
one of the prime pushers for the criminalizing of the weed was Harry Anslinger, whose job at the Dept of Prohibition had just come to an end.
The fatuous praise of Santos in the CD article is, of course, ludicrous. Whatever prompted Santos to make this comment at this time was a tactical decision I won't guess at.
But it is interesting to observe the actions, as opposed to the ruminations, of Santos. The biggest news is a drastic reversal of relations with Venezuela. After Uribe's belligerence, Santos' cooperative stance has led to considerable relaxation of tension between the countries. Of course he has had some payback from Chavez, mostly in the form of backing away from the FARC. (For which Chavez has taken some heat from the left.) But given the situation of the FARC these days, this is of limited value.
So what is Santos doing? There is no doubt that he is well connected to the Colombian 1%. Uribe was, and continues to be from his chair at Georgetown University, a tool of the US. Santos was his defense chief and presided over the "false positives" program, where poor young men were recruited, shot, dressed up as FARC, and displayed as trophies.)
But, as Mao put it, one divides into two. There are factions within the Colombian oligarchy. Colombia is in South America, and under Uribe it had terrible relations with it's neighbors. This was bad for business. Venezuela and Colombia are big trading partners, and this was suffering. Moreover, South American countries have been finding all kinds of ways to cooperate diplomatically and economically, even when it means displeasing the Empire. This is bound to have made some Colombian oligarchs nervous, seeing that their country was being used as an instrument of the Empire, without regard for their profits or opportunities.
Of course other interpretations are possible. Has the Empire decided to change its tack, and to use the change of presidential personalities to effect the change? Surely Santos is not about to defy the Empire's wishes in any radically strategic way, the 1%'s of the two countries are too enmeshed for any such break.
Politicians represent factions. Factions are based on interests. What are the interests behind the change? Anybody know?
I am proud to state that I have always been a conscientious objector to the War on Drugs, and passionately demonstrate my objection whenever I get an opportunity.
Just say: no... don't mind if I do!
No, I don't mind at all either.
Puff, puff, bogart -whacked by couchmate - pass.
"a conscientious objector to the War on Drugs"
nice one, Ob.
We can do away with the WOD. Hit the streets
Actually, Presidente Fox did call for legalization of all drugs while in office. It was immediately quashed by Bush though.
The drug prohibition will not end because it has been sold to the U.S. American brain dead as a War, and U.S. Americans love War. War what is it good for, Everything! War is the only solution, it's a hammer and every problem is a nail. If it's not working get a bigger hammer and hit it harder. As with all of our major problems, the corporate bankers are in it up to their necks, and those necks need a little stretching.
cease fire?
how am I s'posed to light my pipe?
Whistleblower ATF agent Vince Cefalu sidelined and ignored after finding large shipments of guns going from US to Mexico unimpeded. Charles Bowden's "The War Nextdoor", shows the insane damage WOD does such as City of Juarez having highest death rate, equivalent to war zones. Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" details the Iran-Contra, Contra-cocaine, 80's crack epidemic connections. Robert Parry has great work also. Catch Ken Burns' Prohibition if you can. War on Drugs is another war on the 99%. "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."-Ernest Hemingway
no cease fire of the drug war in my community in the PNW - where several dispensaries were busted a few days ago (where friends of mine shop) with information (intelligence) provided by the feds (the DEA).
. . . . . . . . .
http://blog.norml.org/2011/11/15/dea-raids-washington-marijuana-dispensaries-in-cities-that-set-marijuana-as-lowest-enforcement-priority/
. . . . . . . . . .
the federal government (obama) is interfering with medical marijuana patients having access to their "medicine" b/c of antiquated concepts of right and wrong associated w/ using plants as medicine.
...peace...
Yeah, but this is old hat. When do we actually accomplish something?
Is it American arrogance that makes us tackle every failed "War On..." with a bigger hammer, rather than thinking rationally about what's gone wrong in order to find a better solution? Even use of the term "War On.." is only inflammatory & political, rather than expressing purpose of achievement.
Or are we just stupid? To treat us as stupid certainly seems to be a successful political strategy.
Or is it that we really don't want a solution? Which reminds me, use of 'disingenuous':
Perhaps Santos is a disingenuous person; politicians certainly seem so. However, use of 'disingenuous' in this article seems to me to be inappropriate & inaccurate. The man is called 'brave'. Brave men are not disingenuous. Yet, he is slapped with insult simply for explaining he won't be a vangard. The reasons are valid. Further, is it accurate? He won't be a vangard, doesn't mean he won't participate in global discussion. It seems to me, he has already done just that.
Disingenuous is big, impressive word. Use of such words can have many purposes. Appropriate use of a word that might send even educated readers to the dictionary is precision. Otherwise, keep it simple. To use such words to impress or garner sympathy is disingenuous.
For the last 43 years, I was a criminal everyday. Cannabis is my medicine that allows me to function in a dysfunctional society. I moved to California a few months ago. I cried like a baby the first visit I made to my medical marijuana clinic! I cried out of joy and release from the lifetime of oppression that I have escaped! When pot is legalized nationwide and the drug war is over and the POW's are released from the private prisons,then this toke will taste even sweeter.
Follow the money honey. Here's a real radical thought...STOP BUYING FOREIGN DRUGS. You will be boycotting the whole stinking system and take a lot of money out of the behind the scenes corporate drug lords. Afterall, one of them American banks laundered their money, and got away with it. So why do we keep supporting them?