Tag: War on Drugs

The End Is Simple

Keeping with the drug meme for today…..

Since 1971 the USA has been fighting a war of drugs and has spent an estimated $1 trillion on that fight and yet there has been no evidence that all the cash spent is winning the war or even making a dent.

Since about 1990 I have been writing that if we are serious about this then put an end to the profit margins for drug dealers and legalize.

I know this will offend the sensibilities of some but they will get over it.

I have not been alone in this call over the years and it has arisen again thanx to the attack on all those small narco boats…..

This is another opinion on the legalization thing…..

I was never that into cocaine — preferring the euphoria promised by MDMA or the relaxation offered by cannabis — but back in 2015, a cocaine-serving lounge bar, Route 36, in La Paz, Bolivia, was the talk of the backpacking circuit, and the scarcely-believable novelty of the place was alluring.

At Route 36, bags of cocaine are served on silver platters, and a friend and I got incredibly high that night. Too high, perhaps, though it was all undeniably good fun. But as soon as my first-person dispatch for Vice from the lively dusk-till-dawn session went viral, I feared that I perhaps shouldn’t have glorified the use of a moreish drug that typically leaves a trail of violent destruction in its wake.

As the years passed, however — with cocaine becoming both unprecedentedly popular and increasingly affordable despite the billions spent on the war on drugs to avoid these exact outcomes — I’ve come to realize that accepting that adults take cocaine, and legally regulating the drug, is the only sensible path forward. Establishments like Route 36, the world’s first cocaine bar, might just represent a more enlightened, peaceful future for us all.

After all, U.S.-led authorities around the world have tried everything else, and to great human cost. Coca fields across the Andes, where cocaine’s main ingredient grows, have been sprayed with harmful herbicides like glyphosate, harming the local Indigenous people for whom coca holds unique spiritual and nutritional value, and killing anything that tries to grow in the contaminated soil. Consumers and traffickers of cocaine have been imprisoned en masse, helping to create a prison–industrial complex which serves as a university of crime for its incarcerated and a fertile recruitment ground for armed drug gangs.

Legalizing Cocaine Is the Only Way to End the Drug War

This is the only way we can ‘win’ the war on drugs…..for we have had 50+ years of failed policies and wasted money.

Do the country a favor and end this war and get back to make the well-being of people of this country a priority.

Enjoy your Cyber Monday and be vigil.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Americans Love Drugs

Our 50 year war on drugs has been expanded by Donny in his less than genius thinking.

The war on drugs, sometimes referred to in the 21st century as the war on cartels in contexts of military intervention and counterterrorism, is a global anti-narcotics campaign led by the United States federal government, including drug prohibition and foreign assistance, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the US.  The initiative’s efforts includes policies intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments, through United Nations treaties, have made illegal.

The term “war on drugs” was popularized by the media after a press conference, given on June 17, 1971, during which President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one”.  Earlier that day, Nixon had presented a special message to the US Congress on “Drug Abuse Prevention and Control”, which included text about devoting more federal resources to the “prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted”; that aspect did not receive the same media attention as the term “war on drugs”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

Let’s be honest…..yes there have been some amazing seizures and busts over those 50 years…..but the problem is all the money spent and the arrests and such and drugs are still popular…..and no matter the actions, policies, and BS the drugs keep flowing…..and Donny brilliant idea of killing drug runners is not going to change anything.

The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In.” It’s a detailed account of the return of cocaine amid a recent drop in fentanyl use by Americans. “Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers,” according to the article. The drug has seen a 154 percent increase in consumption since 2019.

For a variety of reasons, the U.S. is the most significant illicit drug market in the world, with the most drug users. Though 45 percent of Americans describe the problem of drugs in the U.S. as “extremely serious,” drug use is a growing trend. About 25 percent of Americans reported past-year use of “illicit drugs” in 2024—an increase of three percentage points since 2021—according to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Many Americans have gone from tolerance of psychoactive drug use to active participation at scale, and demand is edging up. However, public drug use and the rise in fentanyl overdoses in cities such as Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, and Baltimore have spurred public outcry. Given that the country’s annual drug overdose death rate doubled between 2015 and 2023, it makes sense that 52 percent of Americans feel the U.S. is “losing ground on the illegal drug problem,” according to a Gallup poll.

https://reason.com/2025/09/19/americans-like-drugs-killing-drug-traffickers-wont-change-that/

One minor thought of drug smuggling….

Out of 12,004 nationwide drug trafficking convictions, 78 percent (9,362) involved U.S. citizens, according to the Cato Institute. The trend remains even in regions along the Southwest border, typically seen as cartel havens, where U.S. citizens account for nearly 72 percent of drug trafficking convictions. Similarly, in the Gulf of Mexico and districts along the Caribbean, U.S. citizens account for 68 percent of convicted drug traffickers.

So you see all this chest thumping over some accused drug smuggling is nothing more that an idiot attempting to look engaged.

We Americans love our drugs….get over it!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A 50 Year Dismal Failure

It all began on June 1971…..Nixon’s War on Drugs.

The beginning of this failure was not what you think….was drugs the true enemy?

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

https://drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war

Yes it has been a dismal failure…..if the true reason for such a “war” was to stop the flow of drugs….and the American people agree….

The findings released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) showed that 83% of Americans say the “war on drugs” has failed. That assessment is felt similarly across party lines; 83% of Democrats expressed that view, as did 85% of Independents and 82% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) said it’s time to end the war on drugs.

The poll also found that 66% of voters support getting rid of “criminal penalties for drug possession and reinvesting drug enforcement resources into treatment and addiction services.”

Similar percentages were seen in support for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes (64%) and for commuting or reducing the sentences of people incarcerated for drugs (61%).

A further finding was that 63% think drug use should be addressed as a public health issue compared to just 33% say it should be addressed as a criminal justice issue.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/09/poll-shows-83-americans-believe-so-called-war-drugs-abject-failure

A decade ago, 2011, a commission found that the ‘war on drugs’ was a failure and yet it continues and even expands….and the drugs continue to flow in….

The global war on drugs is a failure and should be replaced by decriminalization strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights, according to a recent report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. “Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use,” says the report.

…

As an alternative, the Commission – which includes activists, business leaders, former American cabinet officials, and former European and Latin American presidents — points to a number of countries that have decriminalized drugs without seeing a significant rise in use or drug related-violence. Portugal saw declines in heroin use, new HIV infections, and the incarceration rate once it coupled the decriminalization of all drugs with treatment policies. Similar drops in problematic drug use, especially heroin, were observed in both Switzerland and the Netherlands after adopting polices that emphasized treatment rather than criminalization.

https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/the-war-on-drugs-has-failed-commission-says/#

After billions upon billions upon billions wasted trying to prevent that we are fighting drugs has accomplished only one thing…..the incarceration of many people for minor offenses….

And the drugs flow on!

The one situation that we can thank the War on Drugs is the militarization of our police forces….

The war on drugs has impacted a myriad of domestic institutions within the United States. Nowhere is this more apparent than in analyzing the evolution of U.S. domestic policing.

Historically, laws within the United States have attempted to separate the functions of domestic police from those of the military. Police are to protect the rights of citizens — both the victims and perpetrators of crime — and are to use violence only as a last resort. The military, by contrast, is trained for war, to engage and destroy enemies. While events throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century opened the door that separated police and military, the war on drugs blew that door off its hinges.

More traditional wars, like World War II, have a clearly defined external enemy. The war on drugs is different. While the United States engages external enemies as a part of its drug interdiction policies, it also targets domestic “enemies”—drug users, dealers, manufactures, and everyone involved in the illicit drug trade. These domestic adversaries are not readily identifiable.

Militarized Police: A Consequence of the War on Drugs

Time for the admin to grow a set of nuts and face up to this failure and look to the real problems and stop pretending that we are winning an unwinnable war….time to stop wasting much needed funds on a failed policy.

And the drugs flow on!

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Oh Crap! Wrong House!

My Sunday continues as well as the rain…..

I am an old fart and I remember the Keystone Cops……a humorous look at 1930s cops and their antics to bring justice to those that do not want it……

I bring this up because of something I read not long ago…….we all have heard about the cops that are sent to the wrong house to make their arrests and sometimes it does not end well…..but this is a new twist on the wrong house scenario……

A  huge mistake led to police officers arresting each other. Undercover police went to Detroit and posed as drug dealers. However, thanks to a mess up, another police group thought that they were real drug dealers and so they raided the house in what turned out to be one of the most embarrassing things ever seen in the department according to the Police chief (see video below).

The incident occurred when officers from the 12th precinct in Detroit went undercover with the purpose of pretending to be drug dealers so they could arrest buyers. Two buyers went to the house where the pretend drug dealing police officers were but they were actually police going undercover to arrest people selling drugs. They were from the 11th district of Detroit police. They began to search the place when they arrived and they were wearing body cams that captured the whole incident of the officers fighting and punching each other.

It was said that the whole incident turned out to be something like you would see on the Keystone Cops silent films. Now the event has sparked an investigation. This is not the first time that something similar has happened. During the 80s, an incident occurred that saw two police officers killed.

While it is understood that when going undercover only those that are immediately involved can know what is happening, it can bring about unwanted consequences and mistakes. It seems that in this case, the Detroit police kept the undercover operations too undercover as one department pretending to be drug buyers arrested the other pretending to be drug dealers.

(internationalhighlife.com)

I want to add something but for the life of me I cannot think of anything to add other than…you dudes need to talk to each other.

Sunday is rainy and MoMo is bored……she does not like all the thunder……so we wait for a break so she can get her run on…..

My final thought for this Sunday….is for all the Mothers that visit IST…….

Be Well, Be Safe

Closing Thought–26Sep18

We have a War on Poverty (long since defunct), a War on Drugs, a War on Terror and now we have a new “WAR”…..the War on Chocolate……

Is everyone confused now?

Well you would not be alone…..Our Dear Leader is also…..

Spelling and grammar matter, especially when it comes to international policy decision-making.

Yet, again, we find ourselves asking: does President Donald Trump want to rid the world of chocolate or cocaine?

Speaking at a drug policy event outside the 73rd meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, Trump lamented the “scourge of drug addiction” and said the organization will “commit to fighting the drug epidemic together.”

But when his speech turned to Colombia, whose newly elected president campaigned on stopping cocaine production in the country, Trump made a familiar error.

“We look forward to partnering with his new administration to eradicate cocoa production in his country,” he said. “All of us must work together to dismantle drug production and defeat drug addiction.” [Emphasis added].

Now, according to the White House transcript, the president was supposed to call for the eradication of coca, the base plant used to make cocaine.

But this isn’t the first time he’s mispronounced the name of the plant. Last year, he appeared at a joint press conference with Colombia’s former president, Juan Manuel Santos, and said “cocoa cultivation and cocaine production reached a record high” in the country. 

(massroots.com)

Is it cocoa or coca that will be eradicated under a Trump administration?  I have used both and much prefer the cocoa.

I never thought Trump was playing with a full deck…….but guess we could say that both are addictive substances after all he is gonna solve all our drug problems….so let’s begin with chocolate…..since he, Trump, likes simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Remember That Opioid Abuse Thingy?

Closing Thought–30May18

Since 2016 there has been a big push to end the opioid abuse problem this country is having…..seem that overdose deaths are increase and something needs to be done….

One of the most abused drugs is “Oxy” and the maker of that drug has made the news….news they probably would have wanted to keep to themselves…..

The company behind OxyContin may have a little secret—that it knew early on about people abusing its powerful painkilling drug and said nothing, the New York Times reports. Purdue Pharma executives received reports of “significant” abuse soon after Oxycontin’s 1996 release, including people stealing and snorting the drug, according to a confidential Justice Department report. But when a four-year federal probe recommended felony charges against three senior Purdue Pharma executives, Justice officials in George W. Bush’s administration didn’t back the strategy and opted to settle in 2007. Three executives took sole responsibility, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor “misbranding” charge, and with the company paid $634.5 million in fines.

The Times chronicles OxyContin’s journey through the marketplace, from its questionable FDA approval to Purdue salespeople claiming OxyContin was less addictive than other opioids (despite its high narcotic levels). Reports emerged of Oxycontin’s predecessor drug, MS Contin, being abused, and by 1999 Purdue officials apparently learned that OxyContin was called “the hottest thing on the street—forget Vicodin.” Then came the 2007 case, which Justice officials called a win, while others saw an opportunity lost. “It would have been a turning point,” says a former DEA official. “It would have sent a message to the entire drug industry.” Meanwhile drug companies fueled the opioid crisis by sending pills to areas plagued by drug abuse, supplying West Virginia with enough to give each person 433 pills over a five-year period, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.

Does this really surprise anyone?  This company had enough money to buy their way out of this situation……does not surprise me in the least.

Stay tuned for more stories on the developing saga of the Chase of Opioid Abuse.

Closing Thought–09May18

Pres. Trump has jumped on the problem the US us having with opioid abuse….Trump’s big deal is that he thinks people that push opioids should be put to death and abusers should be getting massive jail sentences……this, according to him, will alleviate our opioid problem…..

Seriously?  Is that all it will take?

Criminalization of drug use and possession has had almost no impact on actual levels of drug use. However, the criminalizing of drugs does practically ensure a cycle of criminality and greater prison sentences. As outlined in a January memo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants longer mandatory minimums despite their destructive impact on the United States. At this point, it’s evident that the War on Drugs is a frantic grasp for control in a broken system.

But enacting longer prison sentences does not help reduce the misuse or abuse of drugs. Instead, it worsens it. Thankfully, there are policy alternatives to the status quo. Legalizing drugs would allow us to focus on treating drug addiction and breaking the pattern of being labeled a “criminal.” If there is no victim, there is no crime—and that’s why the War on Drugs is a war on addicts.

http://theantimedia.com/locking-up-addicts-wont-solve-opiate-crisis/

As usual Trump has lots of opinions but little grasp of the causes and the effects……in other words he has NO idea about policy just of the mind that comes with the IQ of under 50.

Opioids: The War

The big story these days to divert attention of the public is the new war on opioid addiction….I have a feeling that those people that need the meds to manage their chronic pain will suffer more than some street addict.

There are -people that have broken legs with massive metal it took to repair the damage and then then is those people that have had part of a foot amputated and need opioids to help with the pain…..and in some cases a person that has both problems and needs pain meds to manage daily chronic pain with a capital “P”……..these people that depend on pain management to get through a daily life could suffer and more so than some street dealer……

After years of having their condition misunderstood, sufferers of chronic pain now find themselves in the position of being, as one patient puts it, collateral in the country’s war on drugs. Harper’s takes a long look at self-described “pain refugees,” who need opioids to do everything from getting their kids dressed for school to just getting out of bed but who find themselves suddenly unable to get the necessary prescriptions as the US tackles its growing opioid crisis. Last June, overdose became the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. The blame is falling squarely on the healthcare industry. “There’s a desire for something simple to latch onto as a way of explaining it,” one addiction specialist says. “A story that has a clear-cut villain, with doctors as dupes and patients as innocent victims, is about as easy to sell as any story.”

But the real story is a lot more nuanced than that. High-dose opioid prescriptions dropped 41% between 2010 and 2015 at the same time overdose deaths increased 37%. And the majority of opioid misuse is not committed by people with opioid prescriptions. But what really hurts sufferers of chronic pain is people confusing physical dependence on opioids for addiction. “Someone who is physically dependent on opioids as a result of the treatment of pain but who is not craving more or harming themselves or others is not addicted,” FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb says. In fact, studies have found under 8% of Americans prescribed opioids for chronic pain are addicted. That hasn’t helped sufferers like Austin Sell, whose chronic pain has forced him from jobs and wrecked his marriage. “I’m a big black guy with tattoos,” he says. “They accused me of exhibiting drug-seeking behavior.” Read the full story here.

The death penalty for “dealers” will do little to curb the trend of opioid abuse….we could do what Kellyanne Conway, the czar for opioid abuse, says the need for users…..

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who is overseeing the administration’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic, warned millennials on Thursday not to try the powerful drug fentanyl.

“Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid — most of America suffers from information underload when it comes to the horrors and dangers and really the toxicity and lethality of fentanyl,” Conway remarked at Generation Next, a forum for millennials.

She noted that fentanyl was significantly more powerful than opioids like morphine.

“On our college campuses, you folks are reading the labels, they won’t put any sugar in their body, they won’t eat carbs anymore, and they’re very, very fastidious about what goes into their body,” Conway said.

“And then you buy a street drug for $5 or $10, it’s laced with fentanyl and that’s it.”

“So my short advice is, eat the ice cream, have the French fry, don’t buy the street drug — believe me, it all works out,” Conway added.

So a quart of Rocky Road will do the trick that opioids have filled…..this is the person that is the head of the presidential program on opioid addiction.

Remove the make-up and exposure Yoda.

This Is Your Brain On Drugs

Back in the 1980’s I recall a commercial about Reagan’s War on Drugs….it was a frying pan with an over easy egg cooking with sound…..”This is you brain on drugs”……all this ad did was increase the profits of the Waffle House….it was a worthless waste of air time for it did NOTHING to curb the abuse of drugs…..

Well I bring up this bit of nostalgia because our well informed president has weighed in on the newest war on drugs…..this time it will be zeroing in on the opioid crisis this country is facing……..

The White House has rolled out the “more nuanced” response to the opioid crisis it promised after President Trump talked about executing drug dealers earlier this month. The revised plan White House officials discussed Sunday still involves the death penalty, but officials say they don’t plan to make trafficking in fentanyl a capital crime, let alone launch a Rodrigo Duterte-style bloodbath. Instead, the administration says it will seek capital punishment for drug traffickers where appropriate under existing federal law, the Washington Post reports. Federal law allows the death penalty in four kinds of drug-related crime, all of which also involve murder, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Andrew Bremberg, Trump’s domestic policy director, says the president also wants Congress to pass legislation lowering the minimum amount of fentanyl and other strong opioids needed to trigger mandatory sentences for dealers, the AP reports. The administration says it also has a plan to reduce opioid prescriptions by one-third by 2021. “The opioid crisis is viewed by us at the White House as a nonpartisan problem searching for bipartisan solutions,” adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters, per Politico. Trump is expected to discuss the plan on a Monday visit to New Hampshire, one of the states hardest-hit by the crisis that he has declared a national public health emergency.

Trump’s speech on the crisis was something to behold……he even mentioned the making of bad ads like the frying pan of days gone by………

In a speech officially unveiling his administration’s plan to combat the nation’s ongoing opioid epidemic, President Donald Trump on Monday saod he would fight the crisis with “toughness”, the creation of “very…very…bad commercials” aimed at children; and—as expected—proposed that the death penalty be applied to drug dealers.

However, as drug policy reform advocates feared, he showed little understanding of the origins of the crisis and neglected to mention numerous measures public health experts have advocated for to stop the deadly epidemic.

A key tenet of Trump’s plan to combat the crisis, which killed nearly 64,000 Americans in 2016, is to launch an advertising campaign showing the effects of opioid use.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/19/full-war-drugs-scare-fest-trump-proposes-death-penalty-and-very-very-bad-commercials

Trump’s plan is more about some sort of vengeance than solutions to the crisis…..

Vengeance is not a public health policy. But it’s implicit in a policy measure coming out of the White House, which would attempt to solve the opioid crisis with a plan that includes sentencing some high-intensity traffickers to death. It may feel good, and for some segment of the population, vengeance may even look good.

The death of those deemed to be problematic is how some strongmen leaders that President Donald Trump has embraced keep their hold on power — such as Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte, who is following through on his pledge to kill every drug dealer he can find. But adding to the number of lives lost at the hands of the opioid crisis is not what the United States needs.
This whole policy thing smells like an utter failure…..kinda like the failure from the 1980’s.

What Happened To States Rights?

A mainstay of conservatism has been states rights…..when dealing with abortion, voting and now a days it is all about the marijuana…..a huge cash crop for states and now the DOJ is flexing its muscle…..

The AP on Thursday morning reported Attorney General Jeff Sessions was going to go after legalized marijuana, and so it came to pass. Sessions says he is rescinding a policy instituted under President Obama that had allowed legalized marijuana to flourish in six states, with more considering the move. While the drug is illegal at the federal level, Politico reports the Obama-era guidelines “effectively limited prosecutions” of entities who sold pot in accordance with their own state law. As for whether those prosecutions will now surge, who knows? “I can’t sit here and say whether it will or will not lead to more marijuana prosecutions,” one Justice Department official tells Politico, which notes the announcement seemed to be “deliberately vague” about its own impact. In a memo, Sessions noted that federal prosecutors should decide on their own whether to devote resources to marijuana cases based on other demands in their districts, per the AP. Read on for more on the move and one senator’s very vocal pushback.

Sessions crapping on states rights could drive the US Congress to take up the marijuana issue….until then Sessions will stomp on a conservative pillar….will this become the new conservatism for the 21st century?

What say you?