Monthly Archives: April 2017

We are in the midst of a national addiction to lethal legal drugs, and the White House is attacking marijuana.

A year later, it still hurts to think of Prince, alone in an elevator, dying.

He did so much for so many and meant so much to so many, but at the end, he needed helpyet he was alone. Those closest to him knew he was so out of control that he needed professional help. The day before his death an aide called a famous drug counselor and told him to come nowa day later would be too long. They were right. Prince died before the drug counselor arrived.

Weve seen rockstar drug abuse. It seems like a natural extension of rockstar excess. But Princes situation had nothing to do with that. He died after overdosing on fentanyl, a powerful prescription opioid. Its a drug meant to block pain.

Prince was using a powerful, legal, prescription drug to address chronic hip pain, something your grandmother might be doing right now. Prince filled his life with activities unique to the superrich and megafamous, but his death was tragically commonhe was just one of the thousands who die each year because of prescription pain killers.

We have a massive national problemaccording to the American Society of Addictive Medicine, between 1999 and 2008, prescription opioid overdoses were responsible for more American deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. In 2015 the leading cause of accidental death in America was a drug overdose and almost half of those deathsabout 20,000 deathswere caused by pain relievers you can get with a prescription.

We are in the midst of a national addiction to lethal legal drugs. And what is the White House doing? Theyre attacking marijuana. Which cannot kill anyone.

The Obama administration had begun cranking down the War on Drugs by allowing states to decriminalize marijuana, commuting federal drug sentences, and visiting a prison to humanize drug inmates. But of course, President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are cranking the War on Drugs back up.

This White House wants the police to be more aggressive and use stop-and-frisk, they want prosecutors to stringently enforce marijuana laws, they want judges to expand the use of mandatory minimum sentences, and they want to build more private prisons.

The Obama administrations drug czar, Michael Botticelli, once said, We cant incarcerate addiction out of people. But one of Sessionss top lieutenants, Steven Cook, has said, The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, its working exactly as designed.

Sessions himself says Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs is bad. It will derail your life.

Sessionss antiquated notion of drugs as purely bad and the sure path to life derailment is post-truth fearmongering straight out of Reefer Madness. It doesnt take into account the core of the modern problemopioids.

How is it morally wrong for us to take legal, prescription opioids for pain? Sessions also doesnt take into account that millions of productive Americans use illegal drugs recreationally and carefully, enjoying a joint at the end of day instead of a glass of wine.

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason

The majority of illegal drug users are not drug abusers and the substances are not derailing their livestheyre enriching them. Sessions also doesnt take into account that the War on Drugs has failedAmerica incarcerates more people than any nation on the planet by far while illegal drugs remain widely available, inexpensive and potent.

The War on Drugs has succeeded only in making the Mexican cartels richer than they would have been.

But maybe the War on Drugs has worked as its supposed to. Perhaps the War on Drugs is an opiate itself, meant make white people feel like theyre getting negroes under control. It declares a frightening enemythe drug-addled darkie whos liable to do anythingand a savior/hero whos here to helpthe tough white president whos sending in the troops.

The War on Drugs has given presidents, judges, and police the chance to look tough and rack up high numbers while doing nothing to actually address the drug problem.

Late in Obamas term, he earmarked more than $1 billion to combat prescription opioid abuse, but it seems like Trump and Sessions are unaware that the problem exists at all.

While theyre attacking marijuana, theyre doing nothing to address the opiate problem. This is part of the inherent madness of Trumpian thinking: instead of grappling with real problems, deal with misinformed perception.

The opioid epidemic is a huge problem in many of the counties that went for Trump. This is a life-threatening issue for many of his voters and their families. But instead of addressing the prescription drug problem, hes focused conveying the perception that hes a tough Boss Hogg type whos getting unruly weed-smoking negroes in line.

The perception may make his voters feel strong, it may make Trump look tough, it may contribute to making white people feel alpha, but it doesnt actually help anyone.

But thats the way Trump does things. The dearth of jobs is about the rise of robotization. Talking about the fiction that he can bring back coal or attacking NAFTA may make some people feel better but it doesnt address the real reasons why millions are slowly being put out of work by self-driving cars, box-carting robots, and delivery drones.

Talking about a wall and a deportation force makes Trump seem like hes tough, but immigration is at a net negative and real solutions will require business owners like Trump to on shore operations no matter what it does to the bottom line.

Trump is all about dealing with false perceptions while ignoring real problems. Hes good at making his supporters feel better without actually delivering anything. If Trump himself were a drug hed be a pill that does nothing to deal with the actual problem but is effective in blocking pain. (That pill would only work in white people who watch Fox News, but thats another story.)

If you took that Trump pill, youd feel better for a little while. Youd see America returning to the 1950s right in front of your eyes, but in reality, nothing is happening. Sounds like he wouldnt be an opioid at allhed be an hallucinogen.

Read the original here:

How the War on Drugs Failed Prince - Daily Beast

The Adam Granduciel-led band have released their first new song since their acclaimed 2014 album 'Lost In A Dream'

The War On Drugs have shared their new single, Thinking Of A Place listen to the track below.

The Adam Granduciel-led band earned widespread acclaim for their breakout third album, Lost In The Dream, in 2014 which was also their last release.

The band have now returned with their first new song in three years. Marking Record Store Day 2017 which takes place today (April 22) The War On Drugs have shared Thinking Of A Place. The 11-minute track has been released on a limited 12 for the annual vinyl celebration, and the psychedelic-tinged song is now available to listen to online.

Listen to The War On Drugs new song, Thinking Of A Place, below.

The band are thought to be working on their long-awaited follow-up to Lost In The Dream with the record set to be the first full-length release on their new recording contract with Atlantic.

Last year, The War On Drugs contributed a cover of Touch of Grey to a Grateful Dead covers album.

The extensive tribute collection entitled Day Of The Dead took over four years to record and compile, and featured over 60 artists including Mumford and Sons, The Flaming Lips, Courtney Barnett, Wilco, Fucked Up and The Walkmen.

Read this article:

Listen to The War On Drugs' new song 'Thinking Of A Place' - NME.com

Its not clear that legalize it will help much of anyone other than rich white entrepreneurs and affluent tokers.

The news last May was unambiguous: in Colorado, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, pot-related arrests were down 8 percent for white adolescents aged 10 to 17 between that year and 2014, and up 58 percent for black and Latino youth the same age, according to the Colorado Department of Public Safety. The growing theme of legalization is and was clear: leniency and riches for Steve, continued prison for LaQuan.

The report set of a mini wave of stories and posts, but little else.

Legalization remains a popular idea61 percent of Americans support it according to a recent CBS News poll, and 88 percent support legalizing medical marijuana use. Seven states plus the District of Columbia allow the possession of marijuana for recreational use. A total of 29 allow medical dispensation. And the industry is on track to rake in $20 billion in sales by 2021.

But with the ongoing criminalization of people of color, including children and teenagers, for whom possession remains illegal in states like Colorado, plus the general black-brown lockout from dispensary business, its not clear that legalize it will help much of anyone other than rich white entrepreneurs and affluent tokers. Colorados racial disparity in arrests is echoed in Washington State and elsewhere, where the pre- and post-legalization rates of arrests of white and black defendants havent changed much at all.

Most states bar anyone with the felony drug conviction from getting the licenses needed to sell cannabis legally, meaning the brothers on the corner who perfected pot entrepreneurship get to stay on the corner and watch slick players flush with Silicon Valley cash sweep into their state and take over the dispensary business, while trying not to get arrested. And as the industry grows, it develops its own imperatives to crack down on the illegal dealers, to keep them from undercutting their prices. And thus, the high-end dispensaries become allied with the police in cracking down on the very people legalization was supposed to save.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has an attorney general, Jefferson Sessions, whose obsession with punishing people for marijuana sale and use is second only to his fixation on rinsing the country clean of dusky immigrants. Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey recently said of Sessions: I think if you go back and you look at any number of the statements that hes made, the positions that hes taken, he spends a tremendous amount of time focused on marijuana, where as a matter of law enforcement, where I see the issues right now, where I see the problems, are with fentanyl and heroin. And thats not likely to change. Sessions, after all, thinks theres little difference between weed and heroin.

In Colorado, like most states, drug arrests are driven by people calling 911, which is still more common when the person suspected is black or Hispanic, and neighborhood patrols remain more frequent in heavily minority neighborhoods. Convenient at a time with the attorney general is also aggressively rolling back police reform.

Our present Fox News age, where the depiction of black and brown people as a mass of gangsters and would-be felons is par for the course, and grotesque racism and physical threats against the first black president gets you a visit to the Oval Office, it is, I suppose, an awkward time to bring up rolling back the war on drugs. The collective sympathy the country has learned toward the rural cast of Hillbilly Elegy has yet to be learned regarding the kid from Compton or Detroit who sells weed to be able to afford a decent pair of sneakers to go to school in.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been the picture of caution when it comes to marijuana legalization, which isnt helpful, given that study after study shows that their bases children are far more likely to be targeted by the criminal justice system for marijuana possession than white Americans children, despite the two having equal rates of drug use.

Drug related arrests account for a quarter of those imprisoned in the U.S. each year, and marijuana possession charges make up roughly half of drug arrests. And that has far reaching implications for everything from the ability to get employment after release to, in some states, the right to vote.

I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and have watched from a distance as it has transformed from a cool, quiet Western city to a boomtown on the back of legal weed. And the faces of those who are profiting, and driving up rents and real estate prices in the process, dont look like those in the mostly black suburb I grew up in, or like those in Five Points, the onetime downtown ghetto thats now a chichi destination for fancy hipster living.

We have a drug problem in the United States, and it isnt people who smoke weed. Its the fact that weed is about to become just another source of obscene corporate profits and racial disparity in a country that already has too much of both.

Original post:

The War on Drugs Is Far From Over for Minorities - Daily Beast