But drugs are social. They're the center of so many get togethers and parties. You know, we could probably eliminate drugs but there's too much money in it for everyone, but especially for banks, who never go to jail. Remember the wachovia drug laundering case? They paid a fine which was a small percentage of the profit they made from the mexican drug cartels, then got taken over by wells fargo. Nobody went to jail of course. Obama had been in office a couple years already by then, and of course he wouldn't go against the banks. Everyone makes money on drugs including the cartels, dealers, banks, prison industry and prison guards. But only the little players and the end users go to jail.
Absolutely wrong. Most prison cases that involve drugs are the sales of drugs or using them in the commission of another (and more serious) crime. We have very few inmates in prison for drug usage alone. I believe it's something like less than 4% of our prison population, but if you want, I'll find the statistics and post them for you.
That's one of the many lunacies of the drug laws, that somehow, it's ok to prosecute just the sale and not the purchase of the same illegal product. The only reason that absurdity has developed is because the sellers generally will have more cash on hand than the buyers, and that's what the narcs are really after. They couldn't care less if Tommy or T'Neekwa are getting high. Why should they? What business is it of theirs?
I guess the logic to that is users are doing more harm to themselves than the sellers who are doing more harm to society. We have a huge opioid problem in this country. In our county, we are experiencing record overdoses and overdose deaths. Without the pusher, that wouldn't be happening, so they are bringing harm to everybody including children.
Last year we lost over 50,000 Americans to overdose deaths, and then you add in all the Americans who's lives were ruined because of drugs. For the life of me, I can't understand why people would want to see an expansion of that problem. Because let's face it, if you make all drugs legal, more people will use those drugs.
Drugs haven't really ever been legal in this country. At least not in my lifetime.I was being checked for drugs coming back from Mexico in the '60s. This drug war has turned us into a police state, and still, people get their drugs one way or the other. The drug lords are thanking us and so are the careerists in the police and justice racket. Here in Cali, a cop can retire with 30 years and 90% of his pay on his pension. Cops love the drug war, as does the prison industry.
I'm sure most cops would love to see drugs go away and never come back. The son of a friend of mine got a job as a cop in a farm town to get away from the city crime, and he says drugs are worse there than here. As for prisons, it's not an industry unless it's private, and even they are running out of room for new prisoners, so it's a problem for them too.
We are not a police state because we have laws against recreational narcotics. We have laws to protect the people who don't use drugs as well. I wouldn't want some strung out meth head around my daughter playing in the front yard, and I don't need to be dealing with coming home to a ransacked apartment because some druggie down the street knew I would not be home so he could rob the place. And yes, that did happen to me in the past.
You also have to keep in mind the confirmation bias our whole country engages in when it comes to drugs.
Whenever someone who uses meth or heroin or whatever is involved in a crime, it's described in the papers as a "meth-fueled crime spree". But if the criminals weren't using meth, it's never reported, "the pair, who never use meth, went on a crime spree..." Our brains don't pay attention to the absence of drugs, but we remember when it's present and extrapolate from that that the drugs CAUSED the crime. Imagine if we did that for criminals who were raised in religious homes: fueled by their religious upbring, they went on a crime spree. Do that long enough and it would become the accepted wisdom that religion causes crime.
And, yes, there is an opioid problem in this country, but it isn't because opioids aren't illegal enough. It's because white people are committing suicide in record numbers and opioid abuse is a slow, relatively pleasant, suicide. It's pointless and counterproductive to try to remove their suicide method of choice. Better to address why they are killing themselves, and fix THAT problem.
Until 2008, whites and yellows had the lowest suicide rates in the country. Blacks were higher, and then, way higher than anyone else, were reds. (And being Native American can be pretty bleak. It's crushing to be a defeated people. In Germany and Japan, suicides spiked in the aftermath of WWII. ) Now, black suicide rates are down at yellow levels, while whites are up with the reds, even exceeding red rates in some years. It makes a lot of sense. We are defeated, or, at least, to our white youth, it appears we are defeated.
Just think what a white kid growing up today imbibes from (((Hollywood))) and the (((press))) and the schools. All his life he has been told that his history is a history of viciousness, cheating, oppression, and genocide. In movies, he is the hapless doofus, the sexually inadequate buffoon no girl would want. The (((New York Times))) has taught him that his achievements are something to be ashamed of as he only got them through his privilege and at the expense of more-deserving minorities. All his life he has had it pounded into his head that diversity is our strength, which is to say, everything not white is OUR strength. He is our weakness. Not only is he not responsible for his successes, he is responsible for everybody else's failures because of the institutional racism he alone is responsible for. He looks around thinking he may want to start a family, but all his women are next door, spreading their legs for the black man who ridicules him openly and sings about it, taunting him. That is why young white men are killing themselves even more than young red men. They feel as defeated. Heroin is not the problem. It is only anesthetizing the pain. Rather than throw them in jail for wanting to feel better, let's join forces with them and help them defeat the people who are intentionally destroying him.