California is not immune, my friend. Think about Daryl Gates’ legacy of militarization of the LAPD and how other police departments across the US followed suit as if in an arms race.
From wiki (remember this?):
”His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that infrequent or casual drug users “ought to be taken out and shot” because “we’re in a war” and even casual drug use is “treason”.[19] He later said the testimony was calculated hyperbole.
His dismissive response to concerns about excessive force by police employing “choke holds.” In 1982, Gates attributed several deaths of people held in choke holds to the theory that "blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do in ‘normal people.’” (In his autobiography, Gates explained that he had been misquoted, saying that black people were more predisposed to vascular conditions and therefore less likely to have normally-functioning arteries.)”
It doesn’t require a sympathy for drug dealers to understand that this is part of a very bad thing, that is getting worse every day.
I’ll give you a few highlights of how we got to the current situation, where the heroin trade is essentially being sponsored by the government in order to keep our society cruel and violent.
Big Pharma shopped opioids like oxy as “addiction free” painkillers. They were actually addictive as hell; unfortunately pill vendors have a great deal of influence over doctors. But at this point it was just garden-variety regulatory capture, corruption and incompetence.
The current moral panic over an “opioid epidemic” (which relies in no small part on the opioid vs opiate terminology shell game) is causing lawmakers to interfere with doctors’ ability to prescribe painkillers. People with actual medical experience are being overruled in advance by grandstanding moralists whose medical knowledge was probably gained by snorting coke from the breasts of a hooker paid for by a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist.
We know, particularly from the Florida numbers, that if you restrict doctors’ ability to treat pain then the amount of money entering the heroin trade goes up, and violent crime goes up, as people trying to relieve pain and/or addiction become increasingly desperate. This is completely predictable and well documented.
The response to this knowledge has been, overwhelmingly, to put in more restrictions on access to painkillers. The people driving this are fully cognizant of what the results will be.
Since marijuana is obviously headed for national legalization despite opposition, the for-profit prisons, already in trouble due to decreasing crime rates, are contributing vigorously to campaigns to further restrict the ability of doctors to make their own decisions, and place those decisions into the hands of legislators who will act to increase illegal drug trafficking.
So essentially, the drug vendors, the for-profit prison industry, and US media have conspired to create a heroin epidemic. They did it knowingly and purposefully. Spies and spooks are probably very pleased by this as it gives them wonderful funding opportunities at home and abroad, but it was US business interests that actually did it, probably because with the legalization of marijuana looming they needed a new way to imprison and torture people. Which is what they do, after all.
So while I don’t have any sympathy for our government’s heroin-pushing pals either, I am very concerned when I see yet another group - in this case, masked armed thugs - using the manufactured heroin epidemic to push their agenda of threats and violence.
Illegal drug dealers are hardly the only people hurt in the violent, testosterone-fueled and increasingly militarized “War on Drugs” though. They’re wearing stormtrooper-style gear complete with masks and bragging about smashing down doors and busting heads.
…and shoots your dog and throws stun grenades through your bedroom windows and… wait, is this number thirty-seven? Our bad. Just keeping you safe, citizen.
Right! I do understand that there are doctors who are making the wrong prescriptions, and people who are trusting them, and ending up addicted. But the simplistic “solution” that’s being implemented is well proven to create criminals and empower violent thugs - and by violent thugs I mean heroin distribution rings, prison operators, and police.
And before anyone else brings it up, I also understand that not all individual prison staff, police and heroin dealers are necessarily violent thugs. However, in 2017 America the great majority of all three groups seem to fit that description.
It would seem better to have some Dr. Feelgoods out there keeping addicts supplied than to empower dueling gangs of masked people brandishing automatic weapons. The relative costs to society seem reasonably clear! But as you said, we don’t really have to insist on a simplistic solution.
“And so to the heroin dealers, or anyone we might mistakenly think is a heroin dealer, maybe someone to whom we were tipped off by a heroin addict forced to name someone (or just shout out an address) before we’d give them their methadone, we hope you sleep well knowing we’re about to blow your doors off.”
I hope they don’t accidentally find their way to your door.
If they start screaming “stop resisting!”, try to go as limp as you can. It’ll be difficult because they’ll be pummeling you with their nightclubs and rifles, but if you do it just right you’ll be a cripple instead of six feet under.
I’m pretty sure that most militants worth their salt would be embarrassed to look so goofy in their mirror shades and balaclavas. Apparently the look takes some skill to pull off.
