Monday, April 11, 2016

A kinder, gentler war on drugs.

Image result for drugs imageGood for President Obama to declare war on drug addiction. It's a war that we must fight, and one that we cannot afford to lose.

America is in the middle of a serious drug epidemic, and it is taking the lives of countless American children in places that we never expected to see drug addiction and dependency becoming a problem.

The sate of Vermont, for instance, has a serious heroin epidemic on its hands, and not even Bernie can stop it. It has gotten so bad in that state that the poor governor dedicated his entire State of the State address to the problem. And of course we all know that Vermont is not alone.

Contrast how president Obama is dealing with America's latest drug problem to how our government dealt with a similar problem having to do with drugs over 25 years ago. In fact, some would argue, the government actually created the problem for certain communities.

Back then it was incarceration and punishment. Now it's treatment and counseling. President Obama's war on drugs is gentler than previous ones, and I suspect that I know why.

Today's drug crises is being driven by heroin, and guess which demographic uses more heroin than everyone else? If you said young white kids, move to the head of the class. 

The following is from the New York Times:

"When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor, predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. But today’s heroin crisis is different. While heroin use has climbed among all demographic groups, it has skyrocketed among whites; nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.
And the growing army of families of those lost to heroin — many of them in the suburbs and small towns — are now using their influence, anger and grief to cushion the country’s approach to drugs, from altering the language around addiction to prodding government to treat it not as a crime, but as a disease." [Source] 
Of course it's not a "crime". Crime would mean that something wrong is being done. Remember, as is damn near everything else in America, not all drug addictions are created equal.  
So now we are collectively shocked that we have such a problem with drugs in our country. Now that drugs are in our children's bedrooms, and hidden in the back of the family mini vans, we are finally realizing that we have a problem. And we realize that it is a problem that can have a negative long lasting effect on society. You know, kind of like crack cocaine did with certain segments of the black population back in the day. 
Of course their families will never recover, because their family members are serving long jail times for possessing small amounts of drugs, and there was no treatment offered to those who got hooked and couldn't get off until they were dead. The remedy for the drug epidemic facing black America  then , was draconian punishment brought on by strict sentencing guidelines, and "tougher" law enforcement. 
Quite a few politicians bolstered their careers by telling white America that they would keep them safe from the drugs those blacks were using and the type of people peddling them. (I see you Bill and Hillary) Now, I suspect. politicians will use the opposite tact to gain brownie points with voters as well. (I see you President Obama)
"At Courtney’s funeral, they decided to acknowledge the reality that redefined their lives: Their bright, beautiful daughter, just 20, who played the French horn in high school and dreamed of living in Hawaii, had been kicked out of the Marines for drugs. Eventually, she overdosed at her boyfriend’s grandmother’s house, where she died alone."
There are a lot of sad and tragic stories like Courtney's out there. Hopefully we will be smarter with the new war on drugs than we were the old one.
*Pic from youtube.com
    










51 comments:

King of the Negroes said...

Contrast how president Obama is dealing with America's latest drug problem to how our government dealt with a similar problem having to do with drugs over 25 years ago.

The government 25 years ago actually did something; Obama just talks. Just like you and every other negro, he doesn't give a fuck about white kids killing themselves with heroin. They've been told their whole lives they have no place in the America of the future. That message isn't going to stop, and neither is the flow of drugs into the country.

Anonymous said...

The 21st Century has been good for the life expectancy of blacks, who aren’t murdering each other or killing each other with AIDS as much as they were 25 years ago. And the life expectancy of Mexicans has long been phenomenally high for their incomes and obesity levels. These days, Mexicans don’t shoot heroin, as Sam Quinones documents in "Dreamland", they sell it.

In contrast, this has been a bad century for the life expectancies of working class whites, especially Scots-Irish, and American Indians.

Wesley R said...

We didn't have all of this heroin before we went to Afghanistan.

Anonymous said...

Could it simply be that society has become fed up with imprisoning non-violent drug users or dealers, period?

As to past drug sentencing, I recall harsh sentences for rock cocaine were at least in part due to serious pressure from the black community who at the time were battling the terrible crime associated with the scourge of crack in urban neighborhoods. In Manhattan, you couldn't go above 125th without seeing drug dealers hanging out on every corner, multiple murders happened up in Washington Heights it seemed every day, physical violence. The NYC crack epidemic was scary as hell.

Anonymous said...

Modern society is aesthetically ugly, spiritually empty, empirically false, and morally meaningless. The enemies of the West have won, and the storm is rising.

Anonymous said...

Each one of us is witness to events that justify overthrow of governments or the need for radical social change.

Dr. Napoleon said...

Here is the IMMUTABLE RULE. Once you have DISCERNMENT the abominations that are consuming your life & country will stop.

Anonymous said...

One single white life is worth a thousand black lives. No one cares or ever did care about the crack wars and the crack babies and disparate sentencing and all that shit. And no one ever will.

#BillClintonToldTheTruth

#ArrestSuperpredators

Anonymous said...

Field is rubbing his KFC-stained hands together reading about the white heroin epidemic. It makes his little mulatto dick hard. =D

Dr. Napoleon said...

I can confidently declare, and CAN PROVE IT, you are completely ignorant of the meaningful issues that control everything about you.

Anonymous said...

The LGBT activist behind the North Carolina push for gender neutral restrooms is a child rapist.

http://www.inquisitr.com/2870729/charlotte-nc-lgbt-anti-discrimination-leader-revealed-as-registered-sex-offender/

Bruce Springsteen, Disney and the NBA sided with a child rapist's agenda against decent Americans in North Carolina. Never forget.

The Shadow Knows... said...


@Anonymous (11:47 PM) "Bruce Springsteen, Disney and the NBA sided with a child rapist's agenda against decent Americans in North Carolina. Never forget."

Oh, we'll remember Anon 11:47 when these kids report they've been raped. I only hope that the authorities can use your comment here to trace your IP Address.

Anonymous said...

Jews are neither conservative nor liberal. Their sole concern is what's "good for Jews."

dinthebeast said...

The only two overdose deaths I knew personally were white women, and I have been around every kind of drug user there is for most of my adult life. Seen a lot of people shot, and a lot of stuff stolen over other drugs, but the only two overdose deaths were heroin.

-Doug in Oakland

PilotX said...

Once again our President has dragged America into the 21st century kicking and screaming. Progress is sometimes slow but usually steady. Just think, it wasn't that long ago when the majority of whites and whites in power had the same ideas and attitudes as some of our racist posters. Hell even the Republican Speaker of the House said "There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong."
Now that's progress. Now if we can get those heads of knuckle to acknowledge climate change then we'd be on to something.

Anonymous said...

My God, but Pilot X is a stupid piece of shit.

Anonymous said...

Leftists are basically shills for big evil corporations & the 1%

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfhuRmaWQAAaLIp.jpg:large

Shodd said...

White men = little dicks

The Fixer ™ said...

My God, but Pilot X isn't a stupid piece of shit.

There

StillaPanther2 said...

This is not a derogatory statement for the whites on this site. I speak from first hand knowledge. I would like to thank the whites that are suffering from the devastating condition of addiction. Now that you all problems are front and center, there may be true and compassionate treatment modalities to ease your suffering. Historically, Blacks' treatment was incarceration only to be bounced back to the streets where we were just fresh addicts looking for relief. There was NO COMPASSIOM.

Today you have police and family members carrying NARCAN- antidote for overdose. Some cities now have "shooting-up" stations to insure sterility and medical staff to be there immediately for any untoward outcome from injecting heroin. I think of the hundreds of people- usually Black and poor dying from AIDS due to dirty needles and cookers. I was blessed to be in the medical field and in my decades of IV use, I was not infected.

So today I say, I am glad a segment of our fellow users are demanding and receiving sane care for an insane act. I place these social actions on the same status as the white US veterans jogging a VA system that had become indifferent to the poor and minority Vietnam vets. Todays white vets also cause a system to react to someone they can place a face of deserve on.

To all my fellow addicts, keep trying cause I am pulling for you. Clean and sober 10 plus..... but the demon still knocks every now and then.

Whitey's Conspiracy said...

The question is what about America makes so many of us so desperate to drug and drink ourselves into a sufficiently oblivious state to tolerate it? It cuts across every racial, social and economic line. We might not be able to do anything about it if we figure that out, but we certainly can't until we do.

The Ministry of Truth said...

I suppose white heroin addicts can't hurt the cause of ending the War on Drugs, but I have to say, that has not been the driving force in the changed attitudes toward drug prohibition. The tide was already turning well before this latest surge in heroin use. (Witness all the marijuana legalization initiatives that have been succeeding.) I don't think it's really been any one single thing that has begun to change people's attitudes. It's more a slowly growing awareness over time of the many, many societal costs of this dreadful policy.

Alcohol prohibition took a mere 13 years to prove itself to be a wretched disaster. Unfortunately, it's taken about four decades for the same lesson to be learned with drug prohibition. I attribute that to the scale of drug consumption being less than alcohol, so that the disastrous effects of attempting to ban drugs have also been less (though still terrible). And those effects have also been concentrated in poor urban and rural communities, leaving the suburbs much more unscathed. Racial and economic divides hid those societal costs from those with the most power to demand reform. Nonetheless, when there's this much damage, you can't make yourself completely unaware of it, no matter what walk of life you're from.

Not only have the costs in ruined and prematurely ended lives added up over the years, but also the mounting dollar costs of police, courts, prisons, Latin American narco-wars -- all of it. This has recently helped sell Republican politicians on the urgency of reform. They might or might not care about kids in the ghetto overdosing or getting shot by gangbangers, but they sure as hell do care about the tax money coming out of their constituents' wallets.

Finally, another factor increasing the opposition to the War on Drugs is simply the older generation dying off. The people who initially voted for these dumb laws were the Reefer Madness generation, who had never used drugs themselves and had exaggerated ideas about the dangers of drugs(smoke weed one time, and you're a raging addict/murderer!). Most of the voters now alive have at least tried drugs at some point and have a more realistic idea of the actual dangers; they aren't as likely to support counterproductive policy based on cartoonish drug hysteria.

Lance Cockstrong said...

I'm happy and proud to say that I have never been addicted to anything in my life...except for white dick.

The Ministry of Truth said...

It's not only the U.S. that is realizing the error of its ways on drug prohibition. Many countries overseas are beginning to think about dialing back some of the moral panic. (Portugal has gone the farthest, decriminalizing all drugs, and it seems to be working well for them.)

I can't say that the U.K. has made big strides in this area, but even in that country, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I recently saw news of experimentation being done by some London researchers, using LSD to learn about brain function. This is an important avenue of research that for many years would never even have been allowed to proceed because of the reflexive Drugs Are Evil mantra. So it's a hopeful sign that at least science is not being held hostage to fearful ideology.

LSD's impact on the brain revealed in groundbreaking images

The Purple Cow said...

Quote:Little Jimmy Bold

”There is more evidence for this than you can possibly handle.”


Ha ha ha ha! – You cite La Griffe Du Lion’ – of course you do!you are so fucking predictable. There is no fascist insane enough that you won’t cite him as evidence of white superiority.

This is what Professor William D. Klinger said about old Griffe’s ‘work’.

”His article was so full of egregiously bad methodology and other mistakes that I at first assumed it was a satire of racist pseudoscience, the sort of thing that might be written for the Annals of Improbable Research or (if you're Alan Sokal) Social Text.

To mention just one example, the article's thesis is that a nation's "smart fraction" of the population predicts per capita GDP better than average IQ, but then uses (highly questionable) "data" on average IQ to pretend to estimate the smart fraction by assuming a Gaussian distribution. As any competent scientist would notice, however, the assumption of Gaussian distributions can't be used to estimate the "smart fraction" without the further assumption of a specific variance or standard distribution, for which there are no data available. In short, the article claims that data on average IQ are inadequate to predict per capita GDP, but then pretends to obtain a better prediction of per capita GDP from precisely that inadequate data by making a sequence of unsupported assumptions. We're used to seeing that kind of argument in rmcg, but scientists recognize it as a form of scientific fraud known as drylabbing.”


So your alleged ‘evidence’ is nothing more than a cheap scientific fraud. No wonder he publishes his research anonymously.

Limpbaugh said...

A friend of mine OD'ed on heroin ten years ago or so. He was white, an ex junkie, and a real bad alcoholic. I thought drinking led him to shoot up and shoot too much. But another friend of mine in the Binghamton NY area said there was bad heroin going around there. Nevertheless, I think alcohol is more of a gateway drug than marijuana is.

Kersey said...

Whitey's Conspiracy said...
The question is what about America makes so many of us so desperate to drug and drink ourselves into a sufficiently oblivious state to tolerate it?
--

Black people.

The Butcher said...

The Purple Cow said...
"So your alleged ‘evidence’ is nothing more than a cheap scientific fraud. No wonder he publishes his research anonymously"

You are unable to understand the methodology or the follow the logic of the analysis, therefore you anonymously disparage the conclusions by cutting and pasting a half-hearted refutation from someone paid to generate disinformation.

Weak.

In fact, La Griffe's site has numerous straightforward analyses that put the lie to the nonsense that our culture has fed us for decades. Ironically, your inability to understand it kind of proves his point.

The truth is liberating and should not be feared. Embrace it and your your anger would fade away, to be replaced by resolution and a new spirit of cooperation. We would all be better off dealing with reality than indulging in progressive fantasies.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/

The Ministry of Truth said...

"A friend of mine OD'ed on heroin ten years ago or so. He was white, an ex junkie, and a real bad alcoholic. I thought drinking led him to shoot up and shoot too much. But another friend of mine in the Binghamton NY area said there was bad heroin going around there."

One of the major causes of addicts ODing on heroin is that heroin is illegal, and therefore the supply is unregulated and uncontrolled. Dealers are all selling drugs of different concentrations. If you don't know how strong your heroin is, how do you know how much to take?

The champions of drug prohibition are fully aware of this, fully aware they are causing harm, but they think it is a cost worth bearing. If prohibition stops some people from shooting up, then they are willing to accept the increased risk of death to others who shoot up anyway.

But that's the main problem with drug prohibition policy: Their "math" is seriously wrong. Once you start to tally up all the costs, those costs end up dwarfing the benefits many times over.

dentshop said...

White people love taking on problems that have no solution. Climate-change, racism, environmental protection, ending poverty, the war on guns, the war on drugs, homosexual acceptance. They know they cannot win because they know deep down that there never will be a finish line. But they can, however, wave their fingers at the wrong kind of white people who were too damn stupid to listen. That for them is reward enough.

OptimusPrimeX said...

President Obama is, by a large margin of facts, the most accomplished President the United States has ever seen.


The Romans were destroyed by elitism and segregation.
The Greek Empire was destroyed by the economic effect of foreign war.
The British Empire was destroyed by the same thing
The Germans were destroyed by racism.

POTUS literally has prevented the destruction of the American Empire.

He cleaned up the Bush-Cheney assault on the American economy via unwanted wars
He cleaned up the Bush Congressional war on the American middle class
He is cleaning up the Nixon Reagan War on Drugs
He prevented the war on Mexican immigrants through Executive order
He brought home American troops from Afghanistan
He saved the American auto industry
He prevented the Republican war on sick, and poor people.
He stopped the banks from persecuting the middle class and made them pay reparations.
He extended unemployment benefits, government assistance 4x as long as any other president in history- and whites partook at a rate 300% more than the average minority.
He even told my people to take personal responsibility while at the same time, held police officers and the justice system accountable through the AG's office.
He has even helped Mother Earth, with more Earth friendly initiatives and requlations than ALL other presidents combined.

He increased Farm Subsidies, Access to College, Middle Class Tax breaks, Medicare, Medicaid, and IRA Contribution limits

Now, he is focusing on a problem that mainly affects WHITE youth only.

Yet, whites somehow still seem to be ungrateful.

Be Clear as a MF'n Bell, Rich White Republicans CONSISTENTLY implement policies that show their ABSOLUTE HATRED for Working Class Whites.

President Obama should be in a picture frame, in every home, of every person with conservative Christian values- yet somehow, these idiots think that Trump, Cruz or McConnell is interested in easing their day-to-day suffering?

Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh make over $70M/year, but cannot relate to you, nor will they ever live near you, nor will they ever argue for your family's right for reasonable access to health care, rehab, or education. They will never send ANY of their relatives to the front lines of a war, but they will gladly send your children to fight the war on terror. However, they will not contribute a dime to your kid's prosthetics when they come back. They do not live near schools with guns, but they will encourage guns in every hand.

Only an idiot would agree with these guys, and ridicule the President.

Yisheng said...

BLOOP, to the post at 1:31PM!!!

dinthebeast said...

Much of the "bad" heroin that has killed so many users, even experienced ones, is actually fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 40 to 50 times stronger that pure heroin. The normal dose is measured in micrograms (like lsd) and nearly impossible to evenly cut, leaving dangerous pockets of more pure fentanyl, which when injected, kill the user quickly, usually before any Narcan resuscitation can be attempted. My friend Michelle died from it. Some forms of pharmacochemistry are just too difficult to reliably DIY.
I agree with TMOT about the changing attitudes being largely due to the older generation just dying off. Now almost all leaders and people in positions of power have experienced drugs themselves, or if not, know someone who has quite well. That goes a long way toward weeding out deliberate misconceptions from the crafting of policy. It's a slow process, especially for the people who need policy changes now, but it is better than the nothing we have been dealt for so long.

-Doug in Oakland

The Ministry of Truth said...

"Much of the 'bad' heroin that has killed so many users, even experienced ones, is actually fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 40 to 50 times stronger that pure heroin."

Also true. Drugs are often substituted, based on whatever happens to become available to dealers. Most of the deaths due to "ecstasy" are in fact a result of users unknowingly taking a different drug than what they thought they were buying.

Yisheng said...

dinthebeast said...Some forms of pharmacochemistry are just too difficult to reliably DIY.
>>>>>>>>>

No disrespect, but I think the term you were looking for is Pharmacodynamics.


Signed, my Pharmacology degree

President Downgrade said...

"POTUS literally has prevented the destruction of the American Empire."

That there are people as divorced from reality as "OptimusPrimeX" is all the explanation needed as to why Democracy leads to Idiocracy.

Idiocracy said...

Anonymous Yisheng said...
BLOOP, to the post at 1:31PM!!!
--

From one idiot to another.

field negro said...

OptimusPrimeX, u dropped some serious knowledge in your comments @1:31PM.

Scipio Africanus said...

OptimusPrimeX said...
The Romans were destroyed by elitism and segregation.

No, the Romans were destroyed by cultural decadence and mass immigration, overrun by German barbarians who had been allowed to settle in Roman lands.

The Greek Empire was destroyed by the economic effect of foreign war.

No, the Greeks were surpassed by a militarily superior Rome. The Greek Empire actually persisted in the Eastern Roman Empire and lasted through the fall of Byzantium to the Turks in 1453, after withstanding 800 years of Muslim attacks. The ultimate cause was demographic decline.

The British Empire was destroyed by the same thing
You have a point here, exhausted by two world wars, the British lost the will to keep their empire. And their country, apparently.

The Germans were destroyed by racism.

The Germans were destroyed by the winners of WWII, a process that is still ongoing today. You could call it racism.

The Purple Cow said...

Quote The Butcher

"You are unable to understand the methodology or the follow the logic of the analysis ..."

Oh, and you are I suppose...??? Pull the other one, sunshine...

The fact is this guy is not a scientist - he's a racist charlatan masquerading as an academic while simultaneously showing a deeply flawed knowledge of statistics ad basic scientific method.

**
" therefore you anonymously disparage the conclusions by cutting and pasting a half-hearted refutation from someone paid to generate disinformation."

What's 'half-hearted' about it? It seems pretty unequivocal to me.

And at least Professor Klinger is a real professor at a real university with a real PhD.

Your guy has no known qualifications and doesn't have the guts to publish his alleged 'work' in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. (Most likely because he knows at some level that 'making shit up as you go along' does not constitute scientific method and will not therefore satisfy proper scientists. His gibberish is simply designed to reinforce the prejudices of useful idiots like you.

OptimusPrimeX said...

Allow me to add more detail, raise your hand if this sounds familiar.

Roman Senate was pervasively corrupt, serving the will of the elite, undermining the People's emperor, and demanding more sacrifice from the non-elite, through expansionist wars and taxes. This Roman Senate repeatedly nominated elitist emperor puppet. Eventually the non-elites no longer accepted the rich poor gap, and the Roman Senate needed the German settlers to do the agrarian work. Those settlers did not fall for the taxation without representation, refused to serve in Roman wars, and refused to be imprisoned for either. The effect? a rebellion or overrun as you say. The cause?elitism and segregation.

To my buddy President Downgrade,

I wish, for your sake, the facts were different. The DOW is performing the best since the Clinton years, there is more cash on Fortune 100 Balance Sheets since the 90's. The NASDAQ is on a Bull Run, the Banks haven't been this well regulated since the 1940's. The Dollar is the strongest its been against EURO and Asian currencies in 20 years. You should travel more, you are welcome in the world. When you get back, Thank President Obama.

Scipio Africanus said...

OptimusPrimeX said...
Eventually the non-elites no longer accepted the rich poor gap, and the Roman Senate needed the German settlers to do the agrarian work. Those settlers did not fall for the taxation without representation, refused to serve in Roman wars, and refused to be imprisoned for either.

Utter nonsense. The German tribes farmed for themselves in their own settlements. Their role in Rome was first and foremost as mercenaries. Eventually, they controlled the military. There was no "revolt" over taxes; the Romans were paying them tribute to keep the peace. When they saw that they could take Rome they did.

Try reading some history on the subject.

OptimusPrimeX said...

I accept all of your versions of who the German tribes were: immigrants, paid settlers, barbarians or ungrateful guest mercenary workers. Our president has helped us avoid consequences of Roman mistakes.

I thank you for your feedback.

Scipio Africanus said...

"Our president has helped us avoid consequences of Roman mistakes."

I hate to stoop to ad hominems, but you are insanely stupid.

Anonymous said...

As a black man, I detest drugs, even marijuana. I think drugs should be soley for whitey. They deserve it.

Phil Feldmann said...

Aren't blacks basically born with drugs in their bloodstreams?

OptimusPrimeX said...

You are correct again sir, I'm insanely stupid. Here's quoting the folks from Cambridge.

"Starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the Empire."--The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 13, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), page 95-101.

I'm sure we are probably neighbors, I appreciate your insights.

Scipio Africanus said...

OptimusPrimeX said...
"Starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the Empire."

The fall of Rome was not an event triggered by policy, it was a process of demography. It was not a indignant "revolt" against taxes, the process took many decades, even centuries. They were always against the empire; class concepts did not exist to the Goths, only tribal interests.

Anonymous said...

Yisheng = nigger

field negro said...

Anon@10:53, have u ever thought to yourself that there has to be more to life than this?

Sefu Binta said...

25 years ago when crack was killing the black community, they passed laws to jail as many black folks as they could. Now they whine about more rehabs.