Why the war on drugs is unwinnable

I don’t have time to find the correct Mark Thomas Product clip right now but I remember him saying something like this on it.

Why is it that when I say “legalise cannabis”, some people hear the words “compulsory heroin for five year olds” instead?

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Have you seen five year olds these days? Compulsory heroin doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

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DEA efficiency rating of less than 1%.

That says everything a sane person would need to know about the “war on drugs”, colossal failure to the extreme.

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I know they say you shouldn’t smack children- but what about the occasional half gram just to keep them quiet?

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Poppy tea used to be a folk remedy to get the children to sleep.

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We are both terrible people.

…wanna hang out some time?

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I know two RN’s that grow poppies. And I shit you not, both of them it’s because, “just in case”.

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I don’t wonder - when troubles happen, painkillers are one of the most important resources.

I should learn the same art - just in case…

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Have I mentioned lately that when the apocalypse happens, I’m gonna be everyone’s best friend? :smiling_imp:

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Knowledge and skills that will be needed are a good thing to trade for protection. Having a good position as such best friend should be a decent survival strategy.

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The current heroin and meth epidemics have little to do with any cachet either drug possesses with US youth, but is due to the ridiculous over-supply and resultant tiny prices. Why spend more on mj when you can get even more fucked up for a fraction of the cost?

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Basically, you find some shitty, sandy, alkaline soil, throw a bunch of poppy seeds at it sometime around early march, and wait. Coastal areas and the edges of quarries (dolomite is good) are perfect.(ETA: at least in the UK, you can buy online huuuge dried poppy heads from flower arranging suppliers. Some of them have seeds in, the rest can be boiled up)

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On the plus side, it’s brought coke prices back under control in central Texas, making it affordable as long as you’re not an addict (though any addiction can bankrupt an addict). Even so, I’ve noticed it creeping back up again as young turks make their way to Austin’s booming tech sector and overpay for what they think of as a glamorous drug, driving up prices. Morons.

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… which is pretty ironic given that it seems like many of history’s well known drug addled intellectuals preferred heroin.

Another counter to the war on drugs is if drugs like heroin were decriminalized we’d probably see a lot less fatal overdoses. I’d imagine almost nobody does heroin with the intent of overdosing. It’s more a matter of having no idea what you’re getting. Just because the gram you bought from Drug Dealer Dan last week was largely battery acid and baking soda doesn’t mean that this week’s batch won’t end up being super pure. It’s not like they have any sort of FDA standards to comply with.

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Drug dealers are usually dirt bags (good people just don’t last long in that business and either get out after their first probation or wind up in jail). Better the devil you know, but actual cases of drugs cut with highly toxic substances are pretty rare. Dealers aren’t normally dumb enough to kill their customers. I’ve met some impressively stupid dealers, but even they like making money.

A reliable hook-up who takes security and discretion seriously, as opposed to some idiot teen running non-business errands with bricks in his car, is solid gold to well-heeled customers. But quite understandably, a smart dealer like that doesn’t want customers who aren’t themselves careful, so kids in their teens and 20’s usually wind up buying from incompetents or through equally clueless friends trying to re-sell some of their stash. The professionals still get caught sometimes, but not nearly as often as the kids and minorities being packed into for-profit prisons and forced to fight gladiator bouts for the guards.

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You know, it’s important to remember that we have choices besides legalizing drugs, and pouring money and lives down a sinkhole in some kind of war. We could have less draconian penalties, and use them to get people into treatment. Those who profit from the drug war love to scare people with the idea that the alternative is to legalize heroin and meth, which would be much better than what we have now, but it sounds pretty scary.

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I have a six year old and a three year old - can I get a double dose?

Fine, just the cannabis then.

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The War on Drugs/Terror/Whatever is a machine that uses emotions like fear and smug self-righteousness to convert tax proceeds and the lives of the poor into votes and justification for ever greater authoritarian control. The War on Terror is basically the same machine turned up to 11.

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Beautifully engineered appearances by the pushers. Keeps the middle classes clean of dirt.

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