Monthly Archives: June 2017

This is a short message from inside the belly of the beast. Read it with an open mind and discuss it with others. You may agree with it. You may find it totally repulsive. Either way we are making progress.

The War on Drugs has been lost. We are spending millions and millions on law enforcement, on the housing of able bodied men in prisons, on the building of prisons, and on support for families who have lost the main person who can work. Has there been any lessening of the availability of drugs? No. Has there been any headway made in this fight? No. Now guess who has been paying these bills? Is it the dealers? No. Is it the users? No. Its you and me.

Is the violence, associated with the drug trade, over drugs? No. There is no fight over drugs. There never has been. The fight is over money, plain and simple. The fight is over who gets to control drug turf. This is all because of the money to be made. People are being robbed, shot, maimed, and killed, not because of drugs, but because of money. Drugs are an illegal black market item and this causes profits associated with their sale to be astronomical. Has the violence associated with the fight over massive profits generated from the fact that drugs are illegal lessened? No. Its actually increased because the profits associated with dealing drugs, as an illegal black market item, are almost beyond belief. By making it illegal you drive up the price and profits on the black market. As soon as you lock up one dealer, ten more scramble to take his place because of the money to be made. Will your son, daughter, father, mother, brother, cousin, uncle, etc. be next? If they badly need money, and the opportunity arises, they may very well be.

The government has made two false assumptions which have driven the stupid decisions our government has made in thinking that the War on Drugs could be won. First, that by making drugs illegal people wont use drugs. Some people are going to use drugs whether they are legal or illegal. This has been going on since the beginning of time. We have been distilling spirits and crushing up roots, anytime it could give us a mind altering experience since Adam and Eve. It doesnt matter whether the drugs are legal or illegal. Those that want them will find a way to get them.

There are just as many people strung out on prescription drugs as illegally obtained drugs. Prescription drugs are usually the preference of those with money (ex. Rush Limbaugh, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, etc.). My doctor prescribed it so I can get legally blitzed daily. You see they can afford a mind altering substance by paying a doctor. If they get caught with a stash of prescription drugs, they dont go to jail. Its a better all around deal.

Poor people cant afford the doctor visit, so they just pick up whats on the street prepared by some unlicensed pharmacists. They pick up naturally grown drugs such as marijuana, mushrooms and peyote etc. or grow their own. They also buy drugs cooked up by unlicensed pharmacists or some idiot with a beaker and some chemicals.

Others have no interest at all in drugs. Those that dont use drugs, are not going to begin using them whether they are legal or illegal. You could give them a pound of cocaine or a six pack of Xanax, and they would flush it down the toilet. They surely should not bear the costs associated with drug use.

It should also be noted that of the 230 million drug users worldwide, ninety percent are not problematic. They use drugs recreationally and keep jobs and function in society without arrests or other criminal conduct.

The second false assumption the government has made in thinking that the war on drugs could be won is this. Our government thinks that locking up everybody associated with drugs will stop drug use that has been going on forever. The thought is that, if we scare them bad enough they wont dare do drugs. Its very popular for politicians to say well just lock everybody up. That is the same mentality that led to the racks, hangings, electrocutions, dungeons, etc. This led to some of the most violent times in the history of mankind. Dont try to find the cause of drug use and the violence associated with the black market money. Heaven forbid, you mean look for a cause and cure. Hell, lets just lock everybody up.

No one even took the time to see how much it would cost to lock everybody up. Surely, no one thought of who was going to pay for it. The ones paying are people that either arent using drugs or arent dealing drugs. Further, no one thought this would ever become a never ending process with astronomical cost in actual dollars spent and manpower that could be better used elsewhere. It has nearly brought our government to its knees. Here are some actual figures. One trillion dollars has been spent in the war on drugs since 1971. The number of prisoners in prison for drugs in 1981 was approximately 40,000. Today its well over 500,000 prisoners. Average cost per inmate is approximately $30,000 per inmate, (By comparison we spend only an average of $11,655 per year for a public school student.)

Now, here is what is really stupid. We have already dealt with this exact same problem to a T. Back in the early 1900s there was a popular drug that we made illegal. It led to organized crime getting involved for the huge profits that could then be made. There was still a tremendous demand for the drug, but it was now illegal. Huge black market profits were there for the taking. This led to all kinds of violence, shootings, maiming, and death. Fighting over drug turf to generate these profits occurred daily. Sound familiar?

Therefore, we legalized one of the top five worst drugs in the world. This drug makes you feel ten feet tall and bullet proof. You can drive ninety miles per hour and feel like you are going forty. It will make you swear you dont feel anything right before you fall on your face and throw up. Thats right. You got it. Alcohol.

Why was it legalized? Because when we made it illegal, people used it anyway (just like they have been drinking wine and digging up roots to get high since we came out of caves). We also realized that locking everybody up was futile. We realized it was a stupid use of manpower to try and stop humans from doing something they have done since the very beginning of time. This was a huge waste of manpower and the cost was astronomical. The violence associated with black market profits related to alcohol disappeared. Sound familiar? We realized that taxing it could help us pay for any attendant costs associated with its legalization so that those costs did not fall on those that did not use it. We realized by regulating its use, we could better control it. We could better keep it out of the hands of our youth. Cartels would implode.

Regulating alcohol and taxing it made those using it more responsible for the problems and costs that arise from its use (ex. DUI, public drunk, etc. requires many to attend counseling and treatment and pay fines that are paid for by them and not those who dont drink), This helps curb excessive usage by putting the cost burden directly on the user. Taxes on the alcohol help pay for other attendant costs and raise money for other governmental programs.

Portugal has done this and the results have been dramatic. Criminal activity associated with drug use has dropped drastically.

Is it a perfect solution? No. What would be perfect is if people did not use any mind altering substances, but that aint going to happen. Its too entrenched in our society. Mind altering substances are now an accepted form of socializing and of medical treatment. It is in our very nature that some of us will either use drugs or abuse drugs. Some wont. Accept it. Deal with it intelligently. Lets at least be as smart as we were when we eliminated prohibition.

Just a word or two from inside the belly of the beast, hoping that one day, your son, daughter, or loved one does not get caught up in this ridiculous mess that we call, The War on Drugs.

Jacque D. Hawk is the CEO and founder of The Hawk Firm. He has been named a Top 100 Trial Lawyer by the American Trial Lawyers Association.

The War on Drugs: Inside the Belly of the Beast was last modified: June 7th, 2017 by Jacque Hawk

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The War on Drugs: Inside the Belly of the Beast - Metro Spirit

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Four players publish column aimed at revived war on drugs ... - NBCSports.com

Los Angeles Police officers assist Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA agents serving a federal warrant to shut down a Marijuana dispensary operating in the Chinatown area of Los Angeles.

For the first time in U.S. History, more Americans died in 2016 of drug overdoses than were killed in the Vietnam War. Let that sink in.

Last years death toll in the War on Drugs was 59,000 killed, while during the entire Vietnam War, 1955 to 1975, 58,220 American service members lives were lost. And, thanks to the immoral and futile police approach to the drug problem, there appears to be no hope in sight for the tide to change.

As The Free Thought Project had previously reported, drug overdose deaths outnumber the number of Americans killed in automobile accidents each year. Answering the question of who is responsible for so many overdose deaths requires a careful examination of the crisis which has now reached epidemic proportions.

The principal players appear to be pharmaceutical companies, who knowingly manufacture dangerous opioids essentially synthetic heroin which, alone, kills tens of thousands. Big Pharma has been caught time and again pushing the pills onto the nations physicians who prescribe the dangerously powerful painkillersen masse even to children.

Then, there are the abusers, those who are addicted to opiates. Getting hooked on opiates is easy, according to the CDC, who recently recommended the powerful class of drugs be taken for no more than 14 days. According to the Washington Post:

Noting that long-term opioid abuse often begins with treatment of acute pain, the CDC said that three or fewer days of opioid treatment usually will be sufficient for most non-traumatic pain not related to major surgery.

Street pushers provide the missing source for the drugs when doctors will no longer prescribe the pills to patients who have demonstrated a pattern of abuse. Yet, thanks to the war on drugs pushing the sale of these drugs into dark alleys and the like, the quality of street drugs is questionable with every dose sold. Some opiates have even been laced with the powerful drug Fentanyl, a drug so dangerous even casual contact with it can prove fatal.

As TFTP reported, Insys Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Fentanyl, donated half-a-million dollars to keep marijuana from becoming legal in one U.S. state. One-third of the overdose deaths in Ohio were linked to Fentanyl, yet instead of creating a safer drug, the company was more concerned with combatting cannabis legalization.

Last, but certainly not least, is the governments own Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEAs only purpose is propping up Big Pharma while raining hell down on Americans for their choice of substances. The DEA even admitted, early this year, it has been trafficking large quantities of controlled substances into the country.

Any decision to ban opiates or remove them from the market, would likely further drive the drugs underground, increase crime, criminalize abusers, lead to growth in the prison industrial complex, and result in many more overdoses. In fact, that is exactly whats happening. The war on drugs is creating a de facto prison state.

Some U.S. States are taking matters into their own hands. As TFTP reported recently, Ohio is now suing drug manufacturers for their role in the crisis, stating their desire to increase their bottom line profit margins have crossed ethical lines and led to the deaths of countless Ohioans.

Other states and police departments are also taking radical measures to fix the problem instead of prolonging and expanding it through the use of police violence.

As the Boston Globe reports:

As Gloucester police chief, Leonard Campanello pledged in 2015 that drug users could walk into the police station, hand over heroin, and walk out into treatment within hours without arrest or charges. The concept of help rather than handcuffs became a national sensation.

Campanello is no longer police chief there, but the program is continuing in Gloucester. The concept of helping addicts instead of criminalizing them is such a success, its been adopted by 200 police agencies in 28 states. This encouraging phenomenon shows that its possible for law enforcement to listen to reason when it comes to drug abuse and actually helping communities.

It puts police in the lifesaving business instead of the spin-drying business of arresting and releasing, said John Rosenthal, a Boston resident fighting the opioid epidemic. We estimate that approximately 10,000 people have been placed into treatment.

In Gloucester, records show that 530 people have sought help at the police station since June 2015. Steve Lesnikoski was the first person to get help under the program, and now, after 18 months of being clean, he says without the Angel Program, Id probably be in jail or dead.

Fatal overdoses and drug arrests have decreased in Gloucester. A study by Boston University and Boston Medical Center provided compelling evidence for the Angel Programs efficacy.

In 417 cases where a person who visited the Gloucester police station was eligible for treatment, police data showed that 94.5 percent were offered direct placement and 89.7 percent enrolled in detox or other recovery services, according to Dr. Davida Schiff, a BMC pediatrician who was lead researcher in the study.

Those numbers, reported in December by the New England Journal of Medicine, compared with less than 60 percent of direct referrals from hospital-based programs, which recruit patients who visit emergency rooms with substance-abuse disorders, Schiff said.

It is also important to mention that the opiate addiction, overdose, and accidental death problems might simply be avoided if, ironically enough, marijuana is made legal nationwide. A little over half of the United States have legalized cannabis in some form, leaving nearly half of the remaining states and their residents with no access to legal weed.

As TFTP has documented on several occasions, cannabis holds the promise of helping opiate addicts kick their addiction by substituting their cravings for opiates with the non-addictive pain killing properties of marijuana. And its not folklore. Doctors have experimented with cannabis as a substitute for opiates with high degrees of success.

For now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the direction of Attorney Jeff Sessions and his staff, has threatened to roll back the progress cannabis activists have made in the last eight and a half years. Joining the DOJ is the DEA which refuses to reclassify cannabis, and remove its current status as a Schedule I narcotic, alongside cocaine, LSD, and heroin.

All of these moves and potential moves by the DOJ and DEA will only make the problemworse unless states like Ohio take measures into their own hands. Now that many in Congress have addicted family members, children, siblings, and friends, the matter has been taken much more seriously.

The idea of treating an addict with compassion instead of violence is a revolutionary notion in this country. However, in other countries, such as Portugal, its effects have been realized for more than a decade. In 2001, the Portuguese government decriminalizedall drugs.

15 years later, drug use, crime, and overdoses have drastically declined in Portugal exposing the disturbing reality of prohibition.

Police departments choosing compassion over the kidnapping and caging people is the solution and this programs massive adoption by hundreds of departments across the country is nothing short of a bombshell. It is revolutionary, and will undoubtedly lead to progress. However, there is still a long way to go.

This is how change comes not through the barrel of a gun but through empathy and peace.

Stories published in our Hot Topics section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy.

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War On Drugs Killed More People In 2016 Than US Troops Killed In Vietnam War - Mintpress News (blog)

Tshwane metro has allocated R40 million in the 2017/18 financial year to step up the fight against drugs.

MMC for community safety Derrick Kissoonduth said the war on substance abuse and related crimes in the metro was an ongoing campaign since it took office in August 2016.

The R40 millions formed part of the metro police department allocation of R2 billion.

Mayor Solly Msimanga said drugs increased the rate of social ills including drug-related crimes.

He said the scourge kept users away from productivity and drove them to criminal activities.

We are duty-bound to get lawless persons off our streets. It is therefore critical that we do not just pay lip service but do the actual work and arrest the peddlers, said the mayor.

It is noteworthy to also indicate that we do not only exercise the might of the law but we also actively undertake workshops and awareness campaigns to teach our communities on how to deal with this phenomenon as drugs affect us all whether directly or indirectly, further the manufacturers, dealers and users live in our communities.

ALSO READ:Drug dealers arrested for selling drugs to police officers

He said the metro allocated R40 million in the 2017/18 financial year to introduce measures detailed in the substance abuse strategy within its area of jurisdiction.

Msimanga said the metro held a drug and substance abuse stakeholder consultative workshop with representatives from the academics, NGOs and the government.

The objective was to find ways to counter the supply of and harm caused by the abuse of drugs and other substances.

The workshop also discussed means of fighting drug trafficking and related crimes.

Workshop resolutions include:

There would be a community based rehabilitation programme in partnership with the University of Pretoria rehabilitated users will be up-skilled and placed in job opportunities to prevent them from relapsing.

The metros communication and marketing unit will support the department of health to champion an education and awareness programme.

The metro will support and ensure functionality of the local drug action committees in line with the national drug master plan.

Launching a helpline to assist with support and counselling to users and affected families as well as referrals where intervention is required.

The metro will continue to partner with and support the community based organisations involved in the fight against drugs.

More stringent monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to be put in place to ensure that public resources are used for what they are intended.

The metro is looking to pilot a smart city concept including face detecting cameras in the future.

Other plans include identifying buildings owned by the state that can be renovated and used as the rehabilitation centres and to equip local clinics to deal with drug and substance users.

ALSO READ:Tshwane partners with UP to tackle drugs abuse

Kissoonduth said the budget would help the metro police and law enforcement to increase visible policing in strategic areas and improve the ability to respond to a variety of challenges.

Members of the community are urged to report drug trades in their homes and neighbourhoods at 012-358-7095/6 [24 hours a day].

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More money for war on drugs in Pta - Pretoria East Rekord