The Iron Law of Prohibition at work - why do you think the drugs need to be concentrated up to such insanely high purities, when they’re just going to be adulterated by every middle man who passes it down the supply chain once it’s in the destination country?
For real - street heroin often no stronger than the raw opium from which it’s manufactured. The entire process of purification is due to prohibition.
If the shipping costs and risks of tomatoes were comparable to those of opiates, we’d only ever see sun-dried tomatoes or ultra concentrated tomato paste from Mexico, at something like $5,000 a pound. And then people would say “Oh, sure, tomatoes are an ancient thing - but you can’t compare fresh tomatoes to these new, ultra-potent, modern tomato-based drugs.”
I’ve always been in favor of at the very least decriminalizing most drugs but I never realized how many misconceptions I had about the war on drugs and it’s affects -even beyond the individual- until I read Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow.
She makes well researched case that drug laws stepped in when civil rights passed in the 60s. While white suburban and black urban drug use and sales happen at the same rate, enforcement is focused almost exclusively in black communities. Harsher penalties for crack (as opposed to coke) has put many more black men in jail. As a result often half the black men in many cities cannot vote.
No matter the intent, drug prosecution in black communities has only added to the destabilization of families and communities. Incarcerating people obviously does not work. Creating opportunity and healthy communities does.
That’s intresting still my father sometimes gets a bottle of rectified spirits (illegal in Finland) but still they are rare even in countries where they are permitted. I would quess that same would go for opium people would rather smoke it then take use heroin.
Spirits over 50% alcohol is legal where I live (Alberta, Canada) but not in the province to the East, where I grew up (Saskatchewan). There’s no border control between the provinces - if you happen to be coming back, you could pop into a liquor store before the border and buy a bottle of 95% ethanol.
In Saskatchewan, people would make a bit of a big deal about barrel-proof spirits they picked up when they went on road trips. Here, where it’s easily available in many stores, I’ve only once seen anyone actually drink the stuff.
If that were the case, maybe Heinz wouldn’t be closing the Leamington, Ontario plant where they make ketchup with liquid sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup (the stuff sold as Heinz Organic or Simply Heinz in the US is the liquid sugar stuff). Warren Buffett is my dealer and he’s changing the product.
Heinz tomato soup now tastes fuck-all like tomatoes (for that matter, it doesn’t even taste ‘red’). The generic equivalent is usually better and half the price. Fuck you, Heinz.
Cannabis has been used and cultivated (made stronger) by people far longer than alcohol. Even the naturally occurring opium poppy and cocaine leaf is prohibited and people have been using those longer than alcohol as well.
Really, I don’t think giving a special definition to prohibition just for the sake of your argument is a good idea. Let’s just use the accepted one and realize that prohibition is destroying peoples lives for the sake of greed and greed alone. We need to also accept that the situation exists as it does today due to institutionalized deception and fear mongering by corporatists and the military/police industries and not due to some moral question or the betterment of society.
I don’t see how a thinking or moral person can argue that locking hundreds of thousands of people in jail for being addicted to or using a substance not on the government approved list will benefit society.
Because those hundreds of thousands of people who’re locked up have literally become slaves. Working hard to provide cheap (23c/hour) labour to private prisons, to manufacture a host of affordable goods.
Why would any large industry want to decimate its labour-force?
Sold OTC. The original Coke recipe came from a pharmacist in Atlanta who was later mayor. They (now) claim the coca content was miniscule, but originally marketed it as a patent medicine. Laudanum was also popular…
Had a grandfather born in the 1880’s who was a Coke-drinking maniac. (No connection with the Old Coke Drinkers mentioned in the linked article. That was much, much later. He was already mad about the reformulation in the early 20th century.). Claimed only the small, old-fashioned green bottles with the metal caps were worthwhile. “That modern **** ain’t got no fahr in it, sohn!” Causes me to seriously doubt Coke’s current claim that the original coca content was ‘minimal’.
The War on Drugs was simply…not a thing at all, until it became a thing in the 1960’s. Because, Nixon-filthy-commie-hippies. The earliest and chief result was to actually insert knowledge of drugs into the educational lives of millions of children who’d never even heard of most street drugs prior to that. Because, authoritarian pronouncements given to pubescent youth really works. Like burning Beatles records and calling it ‘the devils music’ made kids stop listening to it.
Later went to a high school where they actually had mandatory showings of ‘Reefer Madness’ as part of their drug education program. Never met anyone who saw it not-baked, though. Great excitement and anticipation preceded the showings. Attendance went up, not down on those days. So…I guess the War on Drugs was…kind of successful?
Hey - I wonder if original Coca-Cola could stop involuntary head shaking and eye-rolling?
You can probably google that - think one was actually found in an old Atlanta Journal Constitution article a while back, but didn’t actually reveal the amount of each ingredient.
I think the implication is that the lapdog is fleeing after is evil master has been crushed beneath the stout workboots of the cleared eyed comrades of the people’s revolution.
Today, I am again nostalgic about the Good Old Days. When the West was ‘unsettled’. It certainly had its own problems, but at least there was somewhere to run. [sigh] I guess the tumbleweed is always tumblier on the other side of the fence…
