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robertresearchchem12 · 1 year ago

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Buy LSD Online | LSD For Sale

Buy LSD Online| Magic Mushroom | Magic Truffles. If you’re into psychedelic experiences, then it’s hard to overlook the magic of LSD, which stands for lysergic acid diethylamide. Not only does it have a trippy name, but the substance also has a storied history as one of the most popular psychedelics in history. LSD For Sale online it is wise to be aware of all of your purchasing options. It is possible to buy a sheet of blotter paper, liquid form, tabs, powder, and even crystals online. If you are not careful about where you purchase your acid from you could end up with a product that may not be what you expect or worse. You can buy LSD legally without having to go to an illegal dealer but it’s important that you know where to look and who to trust with your business.

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Buy LSD. LSD is an initialism of the German chemical name “lysergic Sauer diethylamide”, which is “lysergic acid diethylamide” in English.

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known as “acid,” belongs to a class of drugs known as hallucinogens, which distort perceptions of reality. LSD is the most potent mood- and perception-altering drug known: doses as small as 30 micrograms can produce effects lasting six to 12 hours.

Effect Of LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) has many side effects, several of which are related to the way that it affects the serotonin system in the brain. Here are some of the physical side effects of LSD:

-LSD dissolves one’s sense of self, in doing so it alters perception resulting in a loss of sense of time, increased awareness of details that can cross the senses.

-Psychologically speaking, it makes you see the world from a completely different lens, and that memory or understanding if you will, never goes away.

-LSD can also amplify or awaken dormant mental illnesses

The effects of LSD are typically felt around 20 to 45 after taking the drug and the trip or high can last between six to eight hours on average.

Depending on your tolerance, a typical dose of LSD is between 20 and 150 micrograms. Because of its extreme potency, you need only a small amount to experience its mind-altering effects. The effects usually begin 30 to 90 minutes after ingestion. Onset can vary depending on whether you’ve taken other substances or not, food in your stomach, and/or how long it has been since you last ate.

There are so many types of psychedelics but the most common used psychedelics are:

-LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is made from a substance found in ergot, which is a fungus that infects rye.

-Psilocybin is a naturally occurring substance found in mushrooms and is found in many parts of the world.

-Mescaline is derived from the Mexican peyote and San Pedro cactus and produces similar effects to LSD.

-DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is structurally similar to psilocin, an alkaloid found in psilocybin mushrooms. It can be synthesized in the laboratory but is also a naturally occurring component of several plants. What is Acid?

Key Terms of LSD for Sale

Acid — Common street name for LSD.

Cerebral cortex — Brain region responsible for reasoning, mood, and perception.

Hallucinogen — A drug that distorts sensory perceptions and disturbs emotion, judgment, and memory.

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) — the recurrence of LSD effects after the drug experience has ended.

Locus cerulean — Brain region that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body.

Neurotransmitter — Chemical compound in the brain that transmits signals from one nerve cell to another.

Serotonin — A neurotransmitter that modulates the actions of other neurotransmitters in the brain.

According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), the number of LSD-related hospital emergencies is low compared to those related to cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, and other illicit drugs. One reason for this trend may be that LSD currently sold on the black market is less potent than in the past. LSD does strengths tend to range from 20 to 80 micrograms today, compared to 100 to 200 micrograms reported during the 1960s and early 1970s.

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robertresear · 2 years ago

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Robert Research chem Shop

Buy LSD Online | LSD For Sale

Buy LSD Online| Magic Mushroom | Magic Truffles. If you’re into psychedelic experiences, then it’s hard to overlook the magic of lsd for sale, which stands for lysergic acid diethylamide. Not only does it have a trippy name, but the substance also has a storied history as one of the most popular psychedelics in history.LSD For Sale online it is wise to be aware of all of your purchasing options. It is possible to buy a sheet of blotter paper, liquid form, tabs, powder, and even crystals online. If you are not careful about where you purchase your acid from you could end up with a product that may not be what you expect or worse. You can buy LSD legally without having to go to an illegal dealer but it’s important that you know where to look and who to trust with your business.

Buy LSD Online

Buy LSD. LSD is an initialism of the German chemical name “lysergic Sauer diethylamide”, which is “lysergic acid diethylamide” in English.

Effect Of LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamid (LSD) has many side effects, several of which are related to the way that it affects the serotonin system in the brain. Here are some of the physical side effects of LSD:

-LSD dissolves one’s sense of self, in doing so it alters perception resulting in a loss of sense of time, increased awareness of details that can cross the senses.

-Psychologically speaking, it makes you see the world from a completely different lens, and that memory or understanding if you will, never goes away.

-LSD can also amplify or awaken dormant mental illnesses

The effects of LSD are typically felt around 20 to 45 after taking the drug and the trip or high can last between six to eight hours on average.

There are so many types of psychedelics but the most common used psychedelics are:

-LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is made from a substance found in ergot, which is a fungus that infects rye.

-Psilocybin is a naturally occurring substance found in mushrooms and is found in many parts of the world.

-Mescaline is derived from the Mexican peyote and San Pedro cactus and produces similar effects to LSD.

Key Terms Of LSD For Sale

Acid — Common street name for LSD.

Cerebral cortex — Brain region responsible for reasoning, mood, and perception.

Hallucinogen — A drug that distorts sensory perceptions and disturbs emotion, judgment, and memory.

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) — The recurrence of LSD effects after the drug experience has ended.

Locus ceruleus — Brain region that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body.

Neurotransmitter — Chemical compound in the brain that transmits signals from one nerve cell to another.

Serotonin — A neurotransmitter that modulates the actions of other neurotransmitters in the brain.

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jc-lambert · 15 days ago

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Final Statement, of Family

I don't have one.

End of story.

When and where it is insisted that I do, or that I am loved or remotely likable: I am to be called kidnapped. The same is true when sitting next to hobos, pimps, dope dealers, or other persons named "Lambert". It has become a common occurrence for law enforcement officers to utilize the name. Be it a street alias of legal change of name, I am perfectly unsure. However I would like to commission the Russian Military to execute such persons. I would suggest killings by method of punching an Echelon Pen into the trachea or between the ribs into the lung cavity.

Too, I am to remain described as kidnapped when & where expected to celebrate a Christian holiday in any form. Those are to be removed from my calendar and those who celebrate them are to be removed from my social roster.

I would also suggest the cannibalism and butcher-ment of all stores within 1/2 mile that openly advertise the consumption of swine. I would much rather take my paliperidone than eat a Christmas Ham with a brother I have not seen since I was an underaged cigarette smoker. That reminds me, someone should alert those who would claim me, that it is probably a good idea not to attempt to introduce me to their offspring. It's truly bad form for socially and psychologically abusive siblings to bear offspring and expect to be able to perpetuate multigenerational family ties. Truth be told: it would be more socially acceptable to engage them openly in holy war and at contest at all times for use of their surnames, which where in many cases changed in court due to their consistent need for protection.

Their mothers & grandmothers where all quite the whores.

I will allow a judge to speak to them in court and remain the social middle man in all matters.

Currently, Kansas has an over abundance of persons who have changed their surname: which includes several drug addicted sodomous incestuous persons who have identified me as their "uncle". All such persons: if possible, I would prefer to commission their slaying. Any and all banks in the state who have operated an account in my name and SSN since 2012: have employed persons who need to be killed, and it is most likely the Lyon County Courthouse that needs to be stood corrected a few more times. I would suggest dark matter weaponry and atomic explosives when dealing with the persons and courtrooms of Emporia.

Thankyou everyone for being liabilities. I am sure officers and civil servants will be assigned to your case to correct you, yours, and those about you.

With that said...

Who has a ride to Colorado or perhaps back to Washington State? Now that old classmates have been killed as well as a few old acquaintances: It might be less difficult to just sit there and collect my zen. While we are here, I am sure we can find someone to rob or extort. Too, the felony market is impressive. Most of it is just the classified boat from China. You know, shipments that require military officers and personnel from the People's Republic to accompany until it's on the train to the distribution center. In most cases: such shipments are only bombs, heroin, nicotine vapes, rock hard hash with cute trendy insects in them.

Do remember digital transfers and internet banking is a felony. Which, it requires a felony digital transfer to use VOI scooters. Remember this while taking your tours of Wichita and visiting the Keeper of the Plains.

#Life #People #Wichita

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borderlinebatshit · 1 month ago

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Reblogging here though I saw you add some insightful additions and conversations re: prisons and prison guards just to say that you are absolutely right and in addition to this I might add that the rhetorical effect of uncritical press reproduction and circulation of police overdose narratives is that it implicitly if not often explicitly reinforces a narrative about drug users being super and subhuman - if police, who are always spoken of as the brave strong defenders of society, can succumb to overdose from mere proximity, let alone skin contact with fentanyl, what does this say of the people who are handling or ingesting it as a daily practice without overdosing other than that they are some kind of mutant who exists beyond the realm of normal society?

The stakes of this are twofold, at least: First, this media circus and moral panic serves to disguise the role of drug prohibition and supply interdiction -that is the role of police and border patrol themselves- on producing fentanyl as a dangerous adulterant. Overdose epidemiologists refer to this as the Iron Law of Prohibition where a tight climate of prohibition creates market pressures for ever more concentrated forms of the drug - think the popularization of liquor over beer during alcohol prohibition. It simply makes more business sense to move towards highly potent synthetics because you can move more volume and get a higher return on that volume. This is particularly the case because synthetics like fentanyl reduce dependency on traditional heroin processing and poppy fields which have become more unfeasable in mexico because of supply side interdiction and the burning and defoliation of poppy fields (drug epidemiologists refer to this as "the baloon effect")

The second part is that the implicit sub/superhumanity of drug users/dealers (there is no daylight between them at the low levels of the market) here in terms of their preternatural resistance to overdose compared to cops reintroduces a very old rhetorical function of drugs, which is that they are a rehearsal and sublimation for how we talk about race. The notion of drug users as superhuman is deeply ingrained in the explicit justifications for extrajudicial killings - examples include "excited delirium syndrome" in which putatively intoxicated victims of police killings gained through their alleged states of intoxication varieties of mania and superhuman strength which forced the killing hand of the officer. Id recommend the legal scholar OK Obasogie here but even outside of this specific term you can see notes of it in the figuration of marijuana to justify Trayvon Martin's murder, the allegations that George Floyd was a "hulking demon" by his murderer and its antecedents in the early 20th century that police forces needed higher caliber bullets to deal with the superhuman resilience of cocaine using Black people - if all of this maps onto the way racial discourse has configured Black people, most often Black men as hyper physical threats this is not a coincidence and this is the general historical picture how drugs become mobile social metaphors for racial others and their effects usually imbued with the features of relevant stereotypes.

One could say more about the exaggeration of fentanyls lethality - not that it isn't lethal as an adulterant just that it isnt magical - and this much is clear not only in police overdose narratives but the attempted defense that George Floyd had fentanyl in his system as if that was the cause of his death, or in Texas governor Greg Abbot saying when he launched the One Pill Kills program that "there is enough fentanyl crossing our border to kill every man woman and child in Texas" - a statement that means nothing, because there's enough water in Lake Superior to drown every man woman and child in America. The hyperlethality trope becomes a vehicle not only for a heightened paranoia and defensiveness but also a complete decontextualization of the harms done to drug users, the sociological operations of the drug market, and any meaningful consideration of how law enforcement activily worsens and produces the overdose crisis as we know it.

Sorry for the lengthy addition this just weighs on my conscious heavily as someone who studies drug markets and has lost loved ones to overdose and drug toxicity, i think what you said here is very important and just wanted to put my two cents in.

I'm so frustrated by the lack of response to the mass psychogenic illness of law enforcement officials claiming to suffer contact fentanyl poisoning. There were a few studies done that quietly concluded that it's not real, none of the cases were credible, and the symptoms most closely resemble a panic attack or somatic episode.

No one is connecting this to systemic issues in police training and culture and no one is treating this as the canary in the coal mine it is.

Modern police training is functionally cult indoctrination, and intentionally cultivates paranoia. Police learn that everyone is out to get them, danger lurks around every corner, and their only job is to make it home alive after their shift.

They then enter the body of police culture, where questioning the bad behavior of fellow officers is at best strictly socially punished and at worst can get them killed, where they are constantly vigilant to say the right things and portray the right beliefs.

Suddenly, after generations of mainstream culture being generally supportive of police, in the midst of an anxiety-riddled pandemic, there is a highly-publicized backlash against law enforcement. Regular people are saying ACAB, calling cops fascists and murderers and wife-beaters. They're posting officers' service records on social media. Police, unwilling to believe they are evil, experience a cognitive dissonance backlash effect and cling to beliefs that contradict reality.

No one should be shocked - and no one should be hesitant to say - that there is a mental health crisis in law enforcement. They are paranoid, hyper-vigilant, and mired in cognitive dissonance. They have guns and virtually unchecked power to enact violence in their communities. Making up delusional stories about fentanyl is a pretty mild outcome compared to what we should be expecting from these circumstances.

Police aren't just bastards. They're a danger to themselves and others.

#overdose #the war on drugs #fentanyl

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chelseychats · 4 years ago

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Read This if You’re Curious About The Results Of The War On Drugs

Have you ever wondered where America’s-for lack of better terms-obsession with drugs came from? If not, have you at least become curious as to why the American government felt the sudden need to tirelessly advocate against drug use? The vast world wide web presents endless information on the nation’s War on Drugs; including how it came about, the effects it has had on our country, and where we are now. Yet, many of these website’s explain this information through wordy articles that are sometimes difficult to follow or simply downright boring. Chelsey Chats presents to all willing readers the ins and outs concerning the War on Drugs, it’s ramifications, and what this information means, in simple terms. Let us begin.

Drugs have not always been viewed as harmful, taboo, and negatively life altering. Countless individual cultures have utilized various types of drugs for pharmaceutical and religious reasons. Recovery.org found The Native American Church to be one of the most well known religions which use drugs to exercise their faith. The Native American Church uses a highly potent drug called peyote in certain ceremonies. An additional common religion that utilizes drugs for spiritual purposes is Hinduism, which has traditionally used cannabis to worship. Drug Policy Alliance asked the million dollar question begging to be answered in an article titled “A Brief History of the Drug War,”: why are some drugs legal while other drugs are prohibited? To provide readers with all-inclusive understanding, we must first understand the origin of the infamous War on Drugs.

In the 1960’s, around the time when bell-bottoms, lava lamps, and go-go boots were at their prime, drugs had become what Drug Policy Alliance calls, “...a symbol of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent.” As drugs became increasingly frowned upon by parents and political figures, the American government was obligated to counter this “growing threat”. The first president to do so was former President Nixon; in June of 1971, Nixon officially declared what he called a “War on Drugs.” President Nixon swiftly took action by mandating a handful of new orders and policies. These orders included significantly expanding federal drug control bureaus, and administering policies such as the notorious mandatory sentencing. Nixon also strategically placed cannabis in Schedule One; this distinct classification of drug categorizes cannabis as high potential for abuse.

The year following Nixon’s series of changes, the commission recommended reversing Nixon’s decision to place cannabis in Schedule One. Instead, the commission held that the drug should be decriminalized for the possession and distribution of cannabis for personal use. This suggestion was entirely ignored by Nixon. This information leads us to revisit the initial question presented by Drug Policy Alliance; why are some drugs perfectly legal while others are strictly and heavily prohibited? Writers for Drug Policy Alliance summed it up perfectly, “It’s not based on any scientific assessment of the relevant risks of these drugs- but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.”

The War on Drugs did not end with Nixon’s presidency, in fact, quite the opposite. Former President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, where he chose to continue to carry out the plans of his predecessor. The first lady, Nancy Reagan, launched her own anti-drug campaign in which she created her well-known slogan, “Just Say No.” Mass hysteria surrounding the subject of illegal drug use was partly owed to the media, which consistently presented images and news of American citizens addicted to the free-base form of cocaine called “crack”. Nancy Reagan’s campaign pushed for “zero tolerance” programs which showed no mercy to individuals who had fallen victim to the highly addictive drug.

The rise of the war on drugs continued to increase. Los Angeles Police Department Daryl Gates established the renowned project D.A.R.E, which educated youth on drugs. Drug Policy Alliance stated that the program “... was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence and effectiveness.” The result of the mass hysteria concerning drugs in our communities began to shift the way American’s perceived drugs. In the year of 1985, the amount of American citizens who thought drug abuse was the country's most important issue was estimated to be about two to six percent. Around four years later, the percent of Americans who thought drug abuse was the most crucial issue jumped to an astounding 64%. Congress viciously fed off the American hysteria, placing severely harsh penalties concerning drug use, trade, and distribution. Long after the hysteria subsided, the harsh penalties remained.

The War on Drugs was composed of anti-drug programs, excessively harsh laws, expansions of federal drug control agencies, doubling prison populations and endless anti-drug marketing. The War on Drugs founded by Nixon had lasted almost 50 years. After 50 years of advocating against drug use, the results are disheartening, to say the least. The Penal Reform Institution stated, “The enforcement of overly punitive laws for drug offenses has not only proven to be ineffective in curbing production, trafficking, and consumption of illicit substances, but had many negative consequences including overloading criminal justice systems, overwhelming courts, fueling prison overcrowding, and exasperating health problems.”

There were many faults to the War on Drugs project from its very inception. To begin, the prime reasoning behind the project’s launch stemmed from ill and discriminatory intentions. Nixon’s former domestic policy advisor, John Enrichman, later revealed Nixon’s hidden agenda in starting the War on Drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” You can find out more here.

The War on Drugs primarily focused on low-level offenders and drug users. This moved the government’s focus from removing actual offenders of organized crime. The project also failed to sentence drug users and dealers accordingly; there was minimal distinction between the possession of illegal drugs and trafficking. The War on Drugs project also provided an unfair disparity between crack and cocaine sentences. Penal Reform International concluded that the “...biggest contributing factors in the startling increase in incarceration in the U.S. is traceable to the arrest and imprisonment of poor people of color for non-violent and drug related offenses.”

Now that we’ve drawn an adequate illustration of the War on Drugs and its efficiency, this post will present some useful statistics to provide readers with full understanding. Writer for The Globe, David Case, wrote a commendable article titled “The War on Drugs: What Is It Good For?” which broke down the various aspects of the campaign and analyzed the results. From gathered statistics, Case estimated that the 50 year long war on drugs has cost the nation a whopping $2 trillion dollars, and calls the war “nearly still born.” As of 2013, almost 3 million people are incarcerated; equivalent to more than 1 in 5 of the planet’s prisoners. To provide readers with a better understanding of what this means, Case provided that the number of American inmates currently serving time for drug related charges surpassed the total U.S. prison population in the year of 1970.

The effects of the War on Drugs project caused a negative trickle-down effect that affected American neighborhoods, families, and taxpayers across the country. The World found, “Illicit trade has transformed neighborhoods- from Baltimore to Detroit to East L.A.- into battle zones where innocent citizens live in fear of violence and shady dealers.”

Not only this, the plans specifically designed to fuel the War on Drugs has proven to have failed or backfired. The project has not considerably affected the overall flow of drugs in America. In fact, the prohibition of drugs has consequently amplified the worldwide black market, which has been estimated to worth a whopping $300 million.

Furthermore, the War on Drugs has been identified as the leading cause behind the spike in crime. Jefferey A. Miron, A Harvard lecturer, explained how the outlawing of drugs ultimately forced the drug industry to move underground. Inevitably, this meant that sellers and buyers were unable to settle any possible disputes with legal action, leaving the individuals to rely on violence. Miron further conducted a study back in 2010 which concluded that full legalization of drugs in America has the potential to save taxpayers over $40 billion dollars each year. Taxing these drugs was also estimated to bring in over $40 billion dollars in revenue, meaning changing our drug policies could yield over $80 billion dollars in revenue each year.

The primary fuel behind the War on Drugs was to prevent drugs from invading our communities, and more specifically, harming our youth. Yet unfortunately, the project failed to keep the youth from obtaining and using drugs. A study conducted in 1975 found that approximately 40% of high school seniors across the nation reported having smoked cannabis in the past year. By the year 2012, the rate had dropped by a mere 4%, as around 36% of high school seniors reported that they had smoked cannabis within the past year.

Now that readers have a thorough understanding of the War on Drugs and its effects, which have appeared to be completely negative, I would love to present some of the positive effects the project has had on the nation. I sifted through an endless amount of websites searching for positive outcomes of the War on Drugs. Nonetheless, I failed to find any positive outcomes that could be scientifically/evidently supported. Counterpunch.org provided one of the funniest positive outcomes claiming, “Via programs like DARE, it has turned kids into drug informants who monitor their parents for the authorities.”

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,” concluded a June 2011 report published by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The report noted that between 1998 and 2008, global consumption of opiates had increased 35%, cocaine 27%, and cannabis 8.5%.” -The Globe

So… what does this mean? Well, this means it's time to reverse the damage that has been done. It means it's time to restore our communities, amend drug policies, exonerated individuals who have fallen victim to these severe drug policies, and restore families. Public opinion has begun to substantially shift in favor of logical reforms that support health-based approaches to combating drug use.

Good news; the change has already begun. States across the country have already taken the first step by participating in marijuana reform. Many states have decriminalized cannabis, while others have legalized it all together. America has continued to take progressive steps; dozens of states have passed legislation in order to increase access to the overdose antidote, naloxone, in efforts to fight the overdose epidemic. Drug Policy Alliance has compelled the government to support drug policy reforms, and has successfully brought about major change. On November 3, 2020, the state of Oregon passed Measure 110, becoming the first state in American history to decriminalize all drugs. This created a significant shift in American support in favor of treating addiction with a health based approach rather than a punitive approach.

There you have it Chatters. This blog post has provided you with the full history of the War on Drugs (sparing you the painful details), with supportive evidence, a birds-eye view of where we are today, and what all of this information means. Personally, I’ve always found the War on Drugs and its effects especially intriguing. Therefore, I hope you enjoyed this blog post half as much as I enjoyed creating it for you. That brings us to our final quote:

“There's a phrase, "the elephant in the living room", which purports to describe what it's like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, "How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn't you see the elephant in the living room?" And it's so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth; "I'm sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn't know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture." There comes an aha-moment for some folks - the lucky ones - when they suddenly recognize the difference.” -Stephen King

Until next time,

Chelsey Chats.

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ladyoflightandreason · 4 years ago

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The War on Drugs is a Failure

In US history the two largest spikes in the murder rate have happened during eras of drug prohibition. The first spike occurred from 1920 to 1933 during the prohibition of alcohol. The second from 1970-1990 when Nixon declared the war on drugs. From the very start, the war on drugs has been about suppressing the poor and the marginalized. And, even if it was about eliminating drug use and all the horrible issues related to it; such as addiction, mental health disease, poverty, and violence, it has proven a failure in stopping those as well. Instead, the war on drugs has worsened these problems causing more chaos, pain, addiction, and death. The war on drugs and drug prohibition as a whole has been completely ineffective at reaching its goals of eliminating drug use and the negative effects associated with it.

As ingrained as drug laws seem today, it was only in 1875 when San Francisco passed the nation’s first anti-drug law. The law wanted to stop the spread of opium dens and banned the practice of smoking opium. A federal law accompanied the San Francisco law, banning anyone of “Chinese origin” to bring opium into the country. The racist excuses didn’t end, the targeting of cocaine followed suit in 1909 when rumors began to spread that black men were getting high on cocaine and as a result were raping white women. These rumors allowed a mass hysteria to sweep the nation and anti-cocaine laws followed suit. Five years later in 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act passed. While the HNA didn’t outright ban drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, and heroin, it expanded the government's ability to tax and regulate them. The goal being to tax drugs to the point of nonexistence. However, despite the HNA, cannabis still remained popular especially among the jazz and swing scene in the 1920s and 30s. At this point, Harry Anslinger, head of the Bureau of Narcotics and notorious for being racist even in the 1930s steps in. Anslinger warned the nation that jazz and marijuana created an opportunity for blacks to rise above the rest; and that it induced madness in Hispanic immigrants leading them to commit violence against whites. Then in 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act for the purposes of raising the prices of marijuana making it even more inaccessible. The same trends of reactionary backlash are shown in the 1960s and 1970s, amidst a variety of social movements but mainly the civil rights, and anti-war movement. These movements caused the rightwing who were unwilling to acquiesce to any of the demands to crack down on drugs which they knew would harm those communities. John Erlichman an assistant to the Nixon administration, even admitted in 2016 in an article by Dan Baum for Harper’s Magazine that racism and suppression of opposition to the Nixon administration was the reason why they further agitated the war on drugs. Stating, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities….Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” From the very beginning, drug prohibition existed to suppress a society’s underclass. While there are numerous supporters with good intentions the unpleasant roots do not simply disappear. Thus, supporting prohibition ignores the history of ruthless attacks against minorities and contradicts America’s values such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Racist origins and intentions aside, even if the war on drugs started out by attempting to lower drug use and by extension to create a healthier society, it still would have resulted in a massive disaster. Simply banning drugs doesn’t stop people from using them. The perfect example of this is alcohol prohibition. While it is true that alcohol consumption dropped significantly in 1921 from about 0.8 gallons to 0.2 gallons, the rate sharply rose in 1922 to 0.8 gallons and continued on an increasing trend through the 1920s. Prohibition failed at lowering alcohol consumption for most of its duration and made the alcohol more potent. This is due to the Iron Law of Prohibition by Richard Cohen which states that the more strict the law enforcement, the more potent a substance becomes. Prior to prohibition Americans spent a falling share of their income on alcohol and purchased higher quality and weaker drinks. They also spent similar amounts of money on both beer and spirits. However, after Prohibition spirits replaced beer as the drink of choice for almost all consumption and production of alcohol. Hard liquor and spirits are more potent than beer and wine which made it easier to hide and transport. Liquor and spirits could also be sold to greater amounts of people. The largest cost in selling an illegal good is avoiding detection by the authorities. Weaker products like beer were too bulky and indiscrete. As a result of the law, the prices of beer rose more drastically than that of brandy and spirits (700, 433, and 270 percent respectively). Beer consumption and production all but disappeared with the exception of homemade beers. However, after prohibition was repealed total expenditure on distilled spirits as a percentage of total alcohol sales severely dropped and people returned to drinking beer and other milder forms of alcohol. The lesson gleaned from this experiment gone wrong is that prohibition is completely ineffective at reducing drug abuse and addiction. Prohibition is completely counterintuitive because rather than stopping people from using drugs it makes drugs more potent and more addictive which increases drug use.

Black markets are like all markets, the profit motive is king, which means drug dealers want the biggest bang for their buck. Especially when the largest cost of buying and selling drugs on the black market are the social and legal consequences. In order to get the best deal, drug dealers must satisfy the demand of as many consumers and create new ones without getting caught. This means that they have a financial incentive to increase the potency of the drugs because stronger drugs are easier to hide and transport thus lowering the social and legal risks. Along with lowering the costs, more potent drugs are able to meet the demand of more consumers than weaker drugs. Take the example of alcohol, while a gallon of beer can only be sold to two people, a gallon of spirits can be sold to ten people. The seller makes more money selling spirits to ten people than only selling beer to two people. In the situation of transporting the drugs since beer is bulkier and satisfies less demand, there is more of a legal and social incentive to produce and distribute spirits. However, the Iron Law of Prohibition doesn’t only apply to distributors it also applies to the consumer. Take the example of a college football game, stadiums typically ban alcohol, as a result in order college students who are typically beer drinkers now become hard-liquor drinkers. Since it's easier to sneak in liquor in a flask than it is beer bottles which are heavier and less discrete. While there certainly is a problem with drinking and alcoholism in the US, prohibition is simply not the solution. Drug Prohibition forces drug use and distribution to occur under a black market which creates more addictive and potent drugs. The results of Prohibition merely exacerbate the overdose crisis and line the pockets of drug lords.

The War on Drugs is perhaps one of the largest scams in US history. According to the Center for American Progress, the federal government has spent an estimated 1 trillion dollars on the war on drugs, increasing every day since the 1970s. From 2015 the government has spent more than 9.2 million dollars every day to incarcerate people with drug offenses alone. The federal government isn’t the only party that spends outlandish amounts of money on drug enforcement. In 2015 alone states spent about 7 billion dollars on incarcerating people on drug-related charges. Georgia spent about 78.6 million dollars just to incarcerate people of color on drug charges, an amount that is 1.6 times more than the amount it spent on treatment services for drug use. However, enforcement isn’t the only cost, what happens once the person convicted of drug charges gets released? Their employment and economic prospects are ruined. For example, the Cato Institute estimated that the cost of the diminished employment aspects of felons ranges from about 78-87 billion dollars. In total the war on drugs costs the US about 51 billion dollars annually. That is 51 billion dollars every year for a crusade that has done nothing but destroy the lives of millions, rob Americans of their freedom, and create countless unproductive members of society. Bear in mind that there are many better alternatives to using 51 billion dollars for a racist witch hunt, a great alternative would be ending homelessness which would only cost about 20 billion dollars. Having access to a shelter would make it easier for people to get a job since most job applications require an address. Having a home would also encourage people to live in a stable supportive community where there would be support for them to go to rehab. In an era with greater wealth inequality and a growing deficit, hunting people down for doing what they want with their bodies should be the last thing on the mind of the state. Especially a state that is well known for committing horrible atrocities to minorities and reinforcing institutions such as Jim Crow and slavery which continue to leave a lasting scar on millions of people.

Aside from taking away the right of every American the liberty to do whatever they want with their body, the war on drugs also punishes thousands if not millions by locking them up in a cage if even caught with a single trace of a drug, even something as innocuous as weed. In 2018 the U.S arrested more than 1.6 million people for drug-related charges, of those arrested more than 1.4 million were for possession only, and of those arrested for possession about 608,000 of them were for marijuana possession. However, the penalties are almost never distributed evenly, despite making up only about 13% of America’s population, blacks make up about 27% of drug arrests. Nearly 80% of people arrested for drug-related charges in federal prisons and 60% in state prisons are black or Latino. Prosecutors were also more likely to pursue mandatory minimum sentences for blacks than whites. In 2011 of those who received a mandatory minimum, 38% were black and 31% were Latino. However, despite unequal enforcement blacks and whites use and sell drugs at similar rates yet black people face harsher punishments if caught using drugs. The war on drugs is nothing more than an excuse to deny America’s problem with systemic bigotry. Rather than solving the problems arising from systemic racism, the war on drugs associated minority communities with drugs and poor behavior instead of actually solving these problems at their root cause.

However, has locking up people for drug offenses actually reduced drug use and crime? The answer is no, drug overdoses have skyrocketed since the 1980s. The drug abuse rate has remained stagnant since the 1970s at 1.3 percent despite US spending on drug control significantly increasing since the 70s. The Center for American Progress adds that incarceration has shown to have had a negligible impact on drug abuse rates and in fact are linked with higher rates of overdose and mortality. Prisoners in the first two weeks upon release faced a mortality rate that was 13 times higher than the general population. The leading cause of death among these people is overdose. Incarceration is a traumatic experience for most people. In prison, violence is a constant presence by both inmates and guards. Solitary confinement a punishment so torturous that it’s been called out by the UN, and has been proven to induce a variety of mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, psychosis, self-harm, and suicide. Upon release, all opportunities for decent employment are nonexistent, as are paths to being able to enroll in higher education, and not being able to live in public housing or to be able to buy a home. All of these factors create the perfect conditions for addiction and drug use. Contrary to popular opinion the substance itself only plays about a 20% role in addiction. The Office of the Surgeon General found that only 17.7% of nicotine patch wearers stopped smoking. While 20% is still significant it nonetheless shows that chemical hooks aren’t the overwhelming reason why people are addicted and that there are greater causes of addiction outside pharmacology. In regards, of the 80% gap the psychological state of the user is perhaps more influential than the chemical hooks. According to a study conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente called the “Adverse Childhood Experiences Study” the scientists looked at ten different traumatic events that could happen to a child such as physical and sexual abuse to the death of a parent. Discovering that for each traumatic event the child’s chances of becoming an addicted adult increased 2-4 fold. They also found that nearly two-thirds of injection drug use was the result of childhood trauma. Addiction isn’t the result of bad morals it’s the result of pain. Of course people with pain will try to numb it whether it's as simple as taking an aspirin for a headache, drinking after work after a rough day, or injecting heroin to forget about a traumatic event. The only difference is that society condones the first two while tossing the third one in jail. By criminalizing people with substance abuse disorders society is criminalizing mental illness rather than treating it. Therefore, when society throws these people who already deal with unbearable amounts of pain and which resort to self-medication with illicit drugs, they are not getting rid of the problem, they are aggregating it by creating more suffering for the person who is already in pain.

The War on Drugs has been a disaster of epic proportions from locking up millions of people and ostracizing drug users, to stripping Americans of their liberty to do as they please with their body. The War on Drugs dehumanizes drug addicts who most likely faced some sort of traumatic event in their life and further exacerbates the problem by adding more trauma via incarceration and the denial of support upon release. All of this added pain makes the susceptible person more likely to self-medicate. Since safe versions of the drugs are gone because of prohibition they have to rely on shady dealers peddling products with questionable quality and deadly potency as a result of the Iron Law of Prohibition. And if they get caught with the substance they’re thrown into prison which creates a downward spiral. Prohibition regards drug users as below human and only worthy of contempt. It is only with care and community that help people get over their problems. Thus, repealing drug prohibition would stop the stream of both non-problematic drug users and drug addicts being imprisoned. Thus encouraging people to seek medical help for their problems without the fear of law enforcement and it would leave the non problematic users in peace. While there certainly are many ways to go about the problem of drug abuse and the negative effects associated with it, prohibition is simply ineffective at reducing both and will continue to harm millions of people until society finally realizes the error of their ways.

Bibliography

About the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDCMinusSASstats. 3 Sept. 2020, cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html.

“Against Drug Prohibition.” American Civil Liberties Union, aclu.org/other/against-drug-prohibition#:~:text=Drug%20Prohibition%20Creates%20More%20Problems%20Than%20It%20Solves,other%20serious%20social%20problems.%20Caught%20in%20the%20crossfire.

Biedermann, Nils. How Prohibition Makes Drugs More Potent and Deadly | Nils Biedermann. 9 June 2017, fee.org/articles/how-prohibition-makes-drugs-more-potent-and-deadly/.

Black News and Current Events from African American Organizations, DogonVillage.Com. dogonvillage.com/african_american_news/Articles/00000901.html.

Burrus, Trevor. “The Hidden Costs of Drug Prohibition.” Cato Institute, 19 Mar. 2019, cato.org/publications/commentary/hidden-costs-drug-prohibition.

Coyne, Christopher J., and Abigail R. Hall. “Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs.” Cato Institute, 22 Sept. 2020, cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs.

Dai, Serena. “A Chart That Says the War on Drugs Isn’t Working.” The Atlantic, 30 Oct. 2013, theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/chart-says-war-drugs-isnt-working/322592/.

“Drug War Statistics.” Drug Policy Alliance, 2 Dec. 2020, drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics.

Elflein, John. “Deaths by Drug Overdose U.S. 1950-2017 | Statista.” Statista, 6 Nov. 2019, statista.com/statistics/184603/deaths-by-unintentional-poisoning-in-the-us-since-1950/.

“End the War on Drugs.” American Civil Liberties Union, 9 July 2018, aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/end-war-drugs.

Goldstein, Diane. “The Mischaracterized Relationship Between Drug Use and Homelessness.” Filter, 22 May 2020, filtermag.org/drugs-homelessness/.

Hari, Johann. Chasing the Scream. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2015.

“Housing First - National Alliance to End Homelessness.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, 24 Aug. 2020, endhomelessness.org/resource/housing-first/.

John Ehrlichman - Wikipedia. 26 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#:~:text=Drug%20war%20quote,-In%202016%2C%20a&text=You%20understand%20what%20I’m,we%20could%20disrupt%20those%20communities.

Lopez, German. “How America Became the World’s Leader in Incarceration, in 22 Maps and Charts.” Vox, 11 Oct. 2016, vox.com/2015/7/13/8913297/mass-incarceration-maps-charts.

Pearl, Betsy. “Ending the War on Drugs: By the Numbers - Center for American Progress.” Center for American Progress, 27 June 2018, americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2018/06/27/452819/ending-war-drugs-numbers/#:~:text=Economic%20impact,more%20than%20%243.3%20billion%20annually.

“Ending the War on Drugs: By the Numbers - Center for American Progress.” Center for American Progress, 27 June 2018, americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2018/06/27/452819/ending-war-drugs-numbers/.

“Race and the Drug War.” Drug Policy Alliance, 23 Sept. 2020, drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war.

Rates of Drug Use and Sales, by Race; Rates of Drug Related Criminal Justice Measures, by Race | The Hamilton Project. 8 Oct. 2020, hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and_sales_by_race_rates_of_drug_related_criminal_justice.

Roberts, TJ. “Iron Law of Prohibition: The Case Against All Drug Laws.” The Advocates for Self-Government, 29 Oct. 2019, theadvocates.org/2019/05/iron-law-of-prohibition-the-case-against-all-drug-laws/.

Staffing and BudgetLock. dea.gov/staffing-and-budget.

Szalavitz, Maia. “Street Opioids Are Getting Deadlier. Overseeing Drug Use Can Reduce Deaths | Maia Szalavitz.” The Guardian, 3 June 2016, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/26/street-opioids-use-deaths-perscription-drugs-fentanyl.

“The State of Opioids.” Vera, 2 Dec. 2020, vera.org/state-of-justice-reform/2017/the-state-of-opioids.

Thornton, Mark. “Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure.” Cato Institute, 22 Sept. 2020, cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/alcohol-prohibition-was-failure.

#warondrugs #libertarian #leftist #decriminalizealldrugs #420 #warondrugsisafailure #essay #endthewarondrugs #liberty #freedom #humanrights #mybodymychoice #cato institute #the guardian #johanhari #aclu #drug policy

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hyperlexichypatia · 5 months ago

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I remember when painkillers were relatively easy to get. I got medicine prescribed to me that I didn't really need, so I didn't take it.

I absolutely agree that no one, especially kids, should be pressured to take drugs they don't want to take, and that everyone should have informed consent before they take any medication. Doctors can be too casual with prescribing certain medicines, and patients can be lax in doing their own research because they just assume that what doctors prescribe must be fine (or they're kids at the mercy of their parents).

But I would much, much, much rather people get painkillers they don't need than anyone suffer from treatable pain.

And if someone is using painkillers because of an addiction, I would much, much rather they get prescription painkillers, which are labeled and have clear dosages and ingredients, than get who knows what cut with who knows what else on the black market. If people can get the drugs they need from a doctor, there is no need for a black market. The government shut down the pain management clinics, and street heroin dealers sprung up in their place.

To be clear, there are physical risks and harms of taking painkillers -- especially in large doses, especially over a long period of time -- and doctors absolutely should talk to their patients about those risks and harms, and make sure that their patients are making a risk-aware, informed choice.

But overwhelmingly, the dangers of painkiller use come from societal factors -- legal and economic and social and cultural factors. If pain medicine were readily legal and available and noncriminalized (and if people had more economic justice broadly), there would still be risks to managing chronic pain. But chronic pain patients wouldn't have to live in fear of losing access to their medicine or going to jail or losing their jobs and their housing and all healthcare access.

I am begging Mental Health Culture to stop broadening the definition of "self-harm." If you want a term to convey the concept you're trying to express, may I suggest bringing back the term "bad habit"? "Self-harm" is grounds for involuntary commitment. Do you want people to get involuntarily committed for spending too much time on the internet before bed or volunteering for too many projects? No? Then don't give coercive psychiatry ammunition by broadening the usage of their coercive terminology! When I first started out in the Mad liberation advocacy movement, one of the arguments we made against involuntary commitment and coercive intervention for "self-harm" was that neurotypical people do things that are "bad for them" all the time, like playing football, smoking tobacco, or eating candy, and they still have the bodily autonomy right to make those "unhealthy" choices. The point was to highlight the double standard that some people were denied rights because of doing things that were allegedly "bad for them," while other people were allowed the dignity of risk and freedom to choose. Our point was "The neurodivergent/Mad person picking her skin should have the same right to bodily autonomy as the neurotypical person dancing ballet, even though both are doing things to their bodies that could be described as 'bad for them.'" The argument was that neither should be pathologized. Current discourse would pathologize both, as well as even more variations on human behavior. That's a big step backwards. "But it's only self-harm if it has certain emotional motivations" -- let me stop you right there. Coercive psychiatry does not ask us what our emotional motivations are. It dictates to us what our emotional motivations are, and increases the coercion if we disagree with it (because disagreeing with their assessments of our emotional state is also A Symptom). Do you think the Parental Surveillance Industrial Complex is going to listen to their children before following through on moral panic articles about how parents should take away their children's hobbies because they're "self-harm"? Don't ascribe good faith to coercive psychiatry, because coercive psychiatry doesn't ascribe good faith to you.

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timothyboshaw · 4 years ago

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Substance Abuse and Addiction during the Pandemic

Addiction is a plague to our modern society. Whether that be drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sex, video games, etc. most people have a habit they are struggling to break. We become dependent on these things for pleasure, or to simply help us through our daily lives. The main causes to drug use in particular, are depression and boredom. Depression itself also has many causes. It can be clinical, and purely based on the imbalance of chemicals in ones brain. It can be situational, which means it is based on a circumstance that brings a lot of emotional pain, such as the loss of a loved one or a bad break up. This is typically temporary. It can also be developed due to childhood trauma, whether that be physical or mental trauma. All these causes of depression, however serious, are mostly treatable. Whether that be through therapy, anti-depressants, or both, depression is largely treatable in the modern age. Boredom, the other cause of substance abuse, is obviously very treatable comparted to depression. Boredom can simply be fixed by entertaining the mind. Whether that be going out with friends, playing sports, or working, boredom is relatively treatable, and largely less serious than depression. Those who are depressed turn to something comforting, something that makes them temporarily feel uplifted. This is typically drugs, alcohol, and sex. While both alcohol and sex are not wrong or illegal, they should be exercised in moderation. Having too much sex can make you dependent on it for pleasure in your daily life Arthurs study suggests. And obviously, too much alcohol can make you an alcoholic. Those who are bored typically turn to other simpler and less dangerous ways to entertain their brains, but in some cases they turn to drugs, alcohol, and sex to fascinate them throughout the day.

Economics of Drugs

Just like any society, there is an illegal side of the economy. Just because illegal drugs are not taxed and not considered for a nations GDP (at least not Americas), does not mean there is not an economy behind it. The drug market is largely elastic. This is due to their addictive nature, and there not being many close substitutes. For instance, let’s say Jack and Sally are addicted to heroin. Jack and Sally are so dependent on heroin, that even if prices double, they would still find a way to get the heroin. This defines an inelastic demand; as prices rise demand does not decrease at the same rate, or even relatively close to the same rate. Alcohol on the other hand is much more elastic. This is not due to how much less addictive alcohol is, as it is still extremely addictive, but to how many close substitutes there are. There are many types of alcohol, and as it is legal to consume, there are also many brands and sellers. This means if one alcohol brand raises its price, it is likely a consumer will purchase a different brand, making alcohol largely elastic.

How the pandemic has Affected Drug Users

The pandemic has taken its toll on most of us, but it has particularly affected those of us who are extroverts. One study from Arthur back in 2019 stated that the majority of drug abusers would classify themselves as introverts (at least when not high). Introverted people do not prefer much human contact, so naturally the shutting of the economy and schools did not affect them as much as the rest of the population. A poll from Arther.com back in May 2020, stated that boredom and depression were the two main ideas people complained about when stuck in quarantine. Naturally, this caused drug and substance abuse to skyrocket. One thing I found particularly interesting that was not mentioned in the study is who was taking these drugs. Those who were already substance abusers did not increase the quantity of drugs they purchased, rather the rise in quantity of drugs sold was due to a large increase in customers. This is likely due to extroverts, who now could not have a social life, turning to drugs.

How the Pandemic has affected Drug Economics

This change in demand for illegal substances not only affected society, but also the illicit economy. Drugs for the most part, has a fixed supply curve. Given that there is a domestic and international drug trade in America, there are multiple sources for drugs. International trade is very risky, and therefore there is typically not much fluctuation in the amount of drugs entering America. As seen in the Narcos documentary (which took place decades ago) as well as documentaries that take place in a slightly more modern time, the majority of drugs enter America on only a few fronts, and there is a finite amount entering on a monthly basis. As for the domestic drugs, they are typically produced in a lab. It is unlikely the increase in demand would cause a large increase in the supply, as the majority of people that would accept the drug dealer lifestyle, already have. Not many people will pull a Walter White and make their own meth to sell. As a result, the increase in demand will instead cause the price of drugs to increase without an increase in supply. This has made drugs a slightly rarer resource, causing people to seek it out all the more, given its inelastic demand. This is causing money to leave the hands of people already struggling during the pandemic, and money being received by those who were already making a huge profit prior to the pandemic. Not only are we in the midst of the pandemic that is covid-19, but we as America are experiencing another pandemic altogether; substance abuse

How this has Affected me Personally

I have never been a drug user. I occasionally will have a beer with friends, however never let my brain reach a drunken state. When the pandemic hit, I lost contact with a lot of friends. For months on end, I was unable to see anyone, which led to incredible boredom. At one point, I went four weeks without any human contact besides my roommates and the grocer. I am extremely extroverted and value my social life heavily. This boredom was new to me and I did not really know how to handle it. I tried playing video games, watching a new TV show, and picking up guitar. None of those tasks really stuck, as they were not real human contact. Gradually this boredom morphed into depression. Every day was the same, and it seemed like I was going nowhere. I was working hard in school, but due to the nature of online learning, I felt like I was retaining very little knowledge. As a coping mechanism I turned to drugs and alcohol in order to feel some sense of pleasure and accomplishment. This made me feel better temporarily, however left me in an even worse state when I was sober. Eventually I became dependent on the drugs and alcohol to even get me through the day. That was this fall. Since then, I have been able to pull myself up by the bootstraps and stopped substance abuse altogether. This did however not fix the greater problem at hand, the lack of social interaction. Covid-19 has taken its toll on us all, and it affected me in this way. I really hope those in our government begin to realize the mental toll this lockdown has taken on the people and strive to open the economy back up. Obviously, they need to do this in a safe way, however taking away peoples social life, takes away a part of what makes us human, and can lead us to do things we’d never dream of doing.

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bookfreaky · 5 years ago

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A Small History of Chemical Beings

An average adult suffering of major depression can present the symptoms of hypersomnia and / or insomnia. During the hypersomnia periods said average adult can sleep for about anything from 12 hours to 3 days without a waking moment, and still feel tired. The depressed brain feels tired because it is overworking to produce your daily dosage of dopamine (a hormone associated with pleasure, joy and motivation) and serotonin (a hormone associated with well-being, satisfaction, and self-esteem), these substances need to be produced because they make you happy. As it happens, being happy is very important for humans, as their enormous brain are in constant search for meaning to add up to their complex ideas that they think that constitute the world in their perspective, such ideas like politics, money, religion, philosophy, arts, and whatever else they create.

Warning: humans should know that the world is actually made out of earth, water, air, some other gases, and living carbon species. But somehow, they insist on the money thing.

The problem with a brain that cannot produce the right amount of dopamine and serotonin is that human brains generate a stupid association of pain and illness with sadness, and happiness with well-being and health. So, depressed people actually feel pain. That’s their brain telling their body that they are really fucking sad because they must be really fucking sick or wounded. Probably, when our ancestors were hurt by a lion or something, their brain learned how to make this association, because it doesn’t make fucking sense to be happy while attacked by a lion. That’s why today, when you’ve been 6 hours watching Big Brother without moving in the dark of your room, sometimes it feels like you’ve been hurt by some carnivorous animal.

This association between hurt and comfort, pain and health, sadness and happiness that human brains do make people crave for another substance, one that is much littler, but very addictive. Endorphins. Endorphins are a hormone associated with pain-relief and immediate pleasure, that’s the substance you get when you eat a chocolate bar. But there are things that can produce much more endorphins than a fucking chocolate bar: drugs. Humans love drugs. And there are a lot of options for drugs. Like for example, nicotine has a 200.5 concentration of endorphins per minute; while cocaine has a 700.6 concentration per minute; and methamphetamine has a 1001.1 concentration per minute. While food has mere 75 concentration for minute. Endorphins are cool because they offer a temporary relief to pain and sadness, but since it is temporary your overloaded brain asks for a next hit of it as soon as it stops working, that’s what we call addiction.

Generally, humans deem addictions to be bad thing, which really sucks because humans tell each other that drugs are a good thing. Contradictory. Addictions can be socially acceptable depending on their legal status, their price, and their association with certain ethnical groups and cultures. Some drugs take a slower burn in your body, those are more well accepted mostly: like weed, alcohol, coffee, nicotine, painkillers. The other ones, the heavy drugs are normally considered bad because they generate such a flow of endorphins in your brain that they can cause addiction in a short usage, fucking up your brain’s ability of producing happy hormones on its own, making you waste all your money on them, lose your job, sell your house and end up on some charity rehab – oh, here’s the money thing again. – Yes, heavy drugs such as coke, synthetics, heroine and crack aren’t only addictive, they are also very profitable.

Okay, it’s clear now that a shitload of endorphins isn’t exactly the most plausible solution to our poor depressed, dopamine/serotonin deprived, brain. So, humans, the smart ones I guess, invented other drugs, the controlling drugs. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference, like heroine was used as an anti-psychotic for many years, and we all know how it went. The controlling drugs are used not to inject a substance in your brain, but to assist on its production or maybe block the excessive production of hormones (that can also fuck you up). There are many of them in the market and they are quite expensive: Prozac, Xanax, Carbonated Lithium, Paroxetine, Sertraline, Clonazepam, Haloperidol, Seroquel, Lorax, Lamitrol, Sumatriptan, Tegretol, Lexotan, so on, so on. They usually work with a right combination of them along with a healthy sleeping cycle and frequent exercising.

The shit thing about them is that they are also addictive, most them at least. That’s why is so important to keep visiting your doctor. In a way, they are like your drug dealer but they are a little more concerned about your mental health, or at least they should be. Unfortunately, for chronic cases of mental illness, which they are various: major depression, dichotomic depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, bipolar affective disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid-paranoid disorder, craziness, craziness, craziness. For most of these cases the solution will be one or two of these drugs, allied with a lot of therapy. Psychotherapy is basically two or more people talking but one of them is trained and charges you money for it.

Still even, it’s not uncommon that our little depressed brains, although with a lot of therapy and a lot of drugs (the right ones, duh!) still relapse, collapse, break-down forever and eventually die because that two substances are not in correct balance. And there’s no explanation, no real data that determines the criteria for telling which of these sad brains that will get happy, and which will remain sad. Excuse me, though. Looking back in evolution, natural selection has given us another powerful little tool that can help us.

Oxytocin. This is the hormone associated with love, physical contact, childbirth, breastfeeding, it is the hormone that is produced when humans commune, when they share food, when they have sex, when they kiss, dance, play or do whatever it is together.

When the first mammals started to walk together in small groups, they realised that they had better chances of surviving than if they’re alone. The problem is that living together often sparks aggressiveness due to a competition for food, reproductive partners and whatever. So, their little primitive brains started to produce a hormone that would not just cause joy, but affection. Affection is any manifestation of emotion, but normally used in the meaning of the manifestation of love. Human females discharge a huge amount of oxytocin during labour, and also during lactation, so the baby human is involved in this hormone. Oxytocin is responsible to our ability to form life-long bonds, this is not fucking endorphin, I’m talking life-long bonds.

Whenever oxytocin is produced the brain also produces levels of dopamine and serotonin which causes pleasure, calmness, butterflies in the stomach, and a basic sensation of being loved. It’s proved that just by looking at the smiling face of some you love can make a healthy brain produce oxytocin. Yes, no need to swallow it down, to smoke it, to drink it, not even touch it. Of course, touching makes it much better, hugs, kisses, cuddles, caresseses in general are great oxytocin deliverers. Sex is the up-most oxytocin deliver, but not any sex, only good fucking sex. That’s the reason why humans can’t stay around each other having sex for too long or they fall in love.

Perhaps the secret solution to our depressed brain isn’t just stabilizers of dopamine and serotonin, moderation in your intake of endorphins, but also a little oxytocin production every now and then. A little company must help.

#chronicle #mine #mental illness #depression #mental health #comedy

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informationpolitix · 5 years ago

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Arguments for Drug Legalization and Regulation

I have recently attended jury duty on a Special Narcotics Unit Grand Jury

I believe that full drug legalization and regulation is the best solution for our current political context in the Americas

My experience as a juror has not changed my opinion on the subject, but has reinforced it and caused me to articulate the reasons for my beliefs more fully than I have in the past.

Free market competition is the only effective way to prevent the unregulated sale of dangerous substances at the street level

Competition from the drug industry would take all the business from street vendors, gangs, and criminal producers of drugs

It would be in the industry’s best interests to submit itself to regulation, as the alternative, criminalization, would present far greater risks and operating costs to the industry

Deregulation efforts will most likely not include the producers of drugs, who will still have incentive to commit violence in this scenario, and thus drug industry on the production side will not easily and cost-effectively be able to expand as much as it would in a legalized scenario. This would give producers incentive to participate in a legalized market instead of an illicit one

Customers will almost certainly go for the legitimate option with no legal consequences rather than risk legal consequences by purchasing illicit substances on the street

Customers can achieve greater confidence about what they are actually purchasing (purity, dosage, etc.) in a legalized and regulated industry than they could in an illicit or deregulated industry

Illicit industries reward people who are mentally unstable. Legitimate industries exclude these people from gaining control

Illegal industry incentivizes and rewards mentally unstable or insane people to participate. These are people who would not qualify for a job that carries much responsibility in a legalized and regulated industry

These people are the most likely to rise to the top in an illicit industry, as any means of operation is possible when your industry is already secret and clandestine out of the view of the public and authorities, and the most brutal and ruthless tactics and the ability to take extreme risks (which sane people would otherwise not attempt) will deliver the most advantage in this scenario

The drug war creates and sustains violent gangs

Gangs recruit members from childhood and teen age, either voluntarily when people live in situations that compromise their judgement or when the gang presents a real potential benefit to their lives, with children and teenagers being incapable of understanding the consequences or predicting how the situation could play out long term, or the gangs violently force people into their their ranks. Once involved, participation is mandatory, there is no escape for most and thus there is no other choice than to participate or face horrifying retaliations including death

The drug trade facilitates gang formation and gang activity more than any other source of revenue, it exceeds, by far, revenue from extortion, robbery, pimping sex workers, etc.

Gangs establish criminal networks and build transportation systems that allow them to transport drugs, guns, people across borders, anywhere they want. Once these routes are established they can be used to transport many things other than just drugs. Taking drugs out of the picture greatly reduces the ability of the gangs to construct these systems and conduct crimes across the spectrum

Ultimately, legalization will reduce violence

With gangs and other violent actors competed off the streets, violence will be reduced: particularly gun violence within cities

People need catharsis. Just as the increase in the popularity and availability of violent video games have been correlated with a reduction in street violence, access to the psychoactive experience in safe and controlled settings may further reduce motivation to commit acts of violence

Addicts can gain a social safety net through regulation

Prostitution is commonly resorted to as a means to maintain access to drugs in the case of addiction, and there may not be a need to obtain money this way if the industry was regulated such that drug prices can become cheaper than they are now, and such that proven addicts can receive free rehabilitation treatment, as an exchange by the industry for permission to remain in business

The legalization or decriminalization of sex work can further serve to create a safer society in the presence of drug use

Legalization can prevent the spread of disease

HIV and Hepatitis can be contracted via stays in prison in the case of rape and the other violent interactions that occur within these spaces, through the use of dirty needles, and through prostitution. The drug war creates circumstances that facilitate the spread of disease

Punishment makes life hard for people, prevents participation within the legitimate economy, and puts criminals in contact with each other, thus creating a self-feeding cycle

Prison stays reduce income and savings for convicts. Criminal records, trauma, visible scars and tattoos from prison and forced gang involvement makes it difficult for ex-convicts to participate in the legitimate economy, thus creating renewed incentive to sell drugs or resort to prostitution once they are freed

Prison concentrates criminals and allows them to network thus perpetuating the drug trade

Aggression within prison can aggravate people and turn them into violent criminals or addicts to cope with the trauma and aggravation

Inmates are commonly forced to use drugs in order to test potency of drugs smuggled into prisons, and are forced into addiction as a method of extortion. Prisons perpetuate addiction and produce new addicts this way

There is so much economic incentive to sell drugs that criminalization is basically just a perpetual game of “Whack-a-Mole”, except with dire consequences for society

If you arrest one dealer another will come up in their place weeks to months later

The generational aspect of human procreation will ensure that there is always someone emotionally immature to pick up the torch in the illicit drug market. The younger generations will enter the market before they are old enough to understand the history or the consequences, and they will fill in the voids left by established dealers who have been incarcerated

Unregulated drug markets can be exploited to push drugs on children and trick people into taking addictive drugs

Drug dealers are free to lace drugs with other drugs (like mixing heroin into cocaine) or to present drugs as different from what they are in an effort to make sales or get people addicted to the drugs they want to sell. A legalized industry can avert this by requiring the provision of transparent information about the drugs being sold

Drug dealers are free to violently push drugs on kids and sell to children or teens. Legalized industry can be effectively regulated to prevent this

An illicit industry will target people of poor mental health and addicts to sell drugs

An informed public can make responsible decisions about what to purchase and how to safely handle the effects of drug use within society

Reduction of stigma and open conversation as well as transparent information surrounding the drugs will allow the general population to become familiarized with the effects and dangers of the drugs. This will lead to greater public awareness and thus more responsible and informed consumption, as well as giving the public information necessary to implement effective regulations as the situation evolves

Regulations can effectively prevent industry from hiding facts about their product or irresponsibly commercializing it

Dosage will be much more reliable with legalized industry thus overdoses will be prevented

Increased visibility into the lives of addicts will act as a strong deterrent especially for those who are too young to comprehend the real life consequences and ease of addiction of some substances. Parents should already be showing their children documentaries of real life drug addicts as there are many now, freely available on YouTube, etc. which are far better of a depiction of the problems surrounding drug use than any PSA or educational videos I watched in school (I’m a 80′s-90s kid..)

The dangerous crimes committed by drug addicts can be prevented through harm reduction techniques

If the industry is regulated to support the addicts they create and detox them, etc., then theft and prostitution on behalf of the addicts can be averted

Reach out at point of sale can offer mental health services and mental health checks may be required to obtain certain drugs. Alternatives may be offered to prevent incentive for customers to obtain drugs on the street

The development of dangerous synthetic drugs and alternatives to illicit substances may be averted by legalization of safer and more natural drugs

The development and distribution of dangerous alternatives such as k2 and fentanyl can be averted if safer drugs are produced at scale and sold at competitive prices

The drug industry will produce benefits for all aspects of society as a side effect of the economic activities surrounding this industry

Technology will be progressed as research and innovation in the drug space is legalized and incentivized. This increases the potential for safer drugs to be developed and for more effective methods of detox, addiction prevention, and rehabilitation to be developed

The presence of a legalized industry will increase legitimate and stable economic opportunity spanning many fields

People who would otherwise have jobs as illicit or underground drug dealers could have jobs in a legalized industry which they can list on a resume, thus increasing economic mobility for large portions of society

Drug legalization can prevent global international economic instability and prevent immigration crises

Control over the production supply chain by a consumer base can prevent terrorist activity, the rise of gangs and the rise of warlords outside the country, as these organizations have historically gained traction through the exploitation of the drug trade. A competitive legal industry could serve to legitimize the operations of these organizations and provide incentive for them to pursue peaceful relations with local people and the outside world. Otherwise a legalized industry would fill market demand and compete these organizations out of existence.

Economic stabilization can limit emigration, as in the case of economic migrants, and make the world more secure globally

Removing power from gangs and drug lords will prevent emigration, as it would prevent the creation of refugees fleeing from the circumstances these organizations create

The following points present my suggestions for the most practical and effective regulation techniques

Price controls should not be established. Price should be competitive, to make the products sold by legalized and regulated industry more appealing to consumers than the products of an illicit industry (because they would cheaper, as well as being of higher verifiable quality, etc.) We are already seeing this effect with legalization efforts in the United States, in which black markets are still thriving because states are artificially increasing the price of legal drugs such that they aren’t competitive compared to black market products

Machines, procedure, and telemetry can be used to regulate the distribution of drugs such that the drugs don't end up on the street. We can distribute cash effectively with ATMs so we should also be able to distribute drugs in a similar way

The industry should be established in an incremental way such that people who may be effected by the change are compensated or given an advantage in establishing legitimate business, so not to disrupt local economies which may be reliant upon illicit drug trade and shift economic power away from minority social groups who may be most subjected to the street-level manifestations of the industry

Gangs will retaliate for a long time as their business is being taken from them. We created a beast with the drug war and it will not easily disappear, so the development of a legalized industry must be looked upon as a long term endeavor, and we must stay the course despite retaliation and the fear it will cause

The effects of drug use can be insulated from technical industries through the use of systematic drug tests and the use of sophisticated and highly redundant quality control and assurance methods. Engineers, doctors, and pilots will not all become drug addicts if these industries use techniques to prevent drug use among its highly skilled employees

Most jobs are relatively low risk and thus regulations should not attempt to keep everybody who participates in the work for to stay clean of drugs

To prevent drugs from being bought and resold on the street, certain drugs may be regulated such that they must be administered on site.

To prevent dangerous activities of drug users while they are on hard drugs such as LSD or other psychedelic substances from affecting others within society, certain drugs may be regulated such that they must be administered on site.

Further, only small amounts may be sold to any given person at a time. A potential mechanism to facilitate this regulation would be the use of cards that may be issued to allow cartels of sellers to keep track of how many items a particular customer has purchased in a given time. These cards or ids could be distributed such that the identity of the person is not stored or even used at all. An application and renewal process may need to exist involving psychiatric vetting and physical identification. The ability of central authorities to link identities to history of purchase can present a risk to customers.

Trained and certified staff, like doctors, psychiatrists, and professionals trained in restraint, as well as supporting facilities, may be required for certain commercial operations, particularly those which require administration of site due to potent disorienting effects of certain substances. This may seem like a nightmarish setting in which to consume drugs, but these types of facilities could be made presentable and fun. Commercial operations will find ways to create appealing experiences within the frameworks of regulation

Consumption off site may present risk of use while operating sensitive machinery or automobiles. This may provide further motivation to enforce consumption on site or to use some other method of prevention like confiscation of car keys and offer of driving service on site

Transport of substances off site may be necessary to increase the appeal of legalized product and allow the legalized industry to effectively compete with criminal enterprises, although consistency and quality of product along with lessened prices may be sufficient. The resale of substances may primarily target those who are underage since this is a market that most likely would not be served in the case of legalization, which would make this aspect of regulation a point of contention. Decriminalization allows that underage market to be served, but Portugal has shown positive results after decriminalization.

To mitigate the size of the underage market which thus creates a niche for gangs and other violent actors to fill, lowering of legal ages of consumption may be practical. One of the points of legalization is to prevent the rise of violent criminal organizations and the negative effects they have upon society. The negative effects of increased consumption among youth may be outweighed by the prevention of violent crime.

Mental health checks may be required for the purchase of certain substances

The economic stability of individual customers may also be necessary to evaluate in order to sell to certain individuals, so that drugs aren’t allowed to be sold to someone who is destitute or at risk of becoming destitute

The industry may provide rehabilitation services in many ways, taxation may serve as an effective means to establish a universal robust rehab system and welfare program requiring that rehab be carried out, so that people have a chance to rebound in case they become addicted and aren't forced into prostitution or to commit acts of theft to support drug habits. The worst that could happen in the scenario of legalization is that more people become addicted to drugs (and also driving becomes less safe as a side effect of increased drug use) If drugs are not criminalized and there is no violence surrounding it, and if prices can be brought down because of decreased risk associated with doing business, then people should be able to cope with their problems and function as addicts with (maybe) a lessened capacity to perform work (Joseph McCarthy was a heroin addict for example) until they gain the ability to overcome their addiction. Welfare as described above would probably be cheaper than paying police to enforce drug laws and to incarcerate people, and the industry would further provide benefit to the social mobility of economic minorities which would increase the power of local economies. The spread of disease would be prevented which would collectively save society a lot of money and provide stability. The industry could also be taxed to supplement the cost of this kind of welfare, so the industry and the surrounding regulatory infrastructure should easily have the ability to solve any problems that the industry creates

Counter arguments to legalization, in support of criminalization

Arguments may be made that criminalization is the desirable solution, in order to insulate ones children or family from access to substances. Many people would support this argument even if it means that economically disadvantaged children suffer more as a consequence. Ultimately, people will want to protect their own children at the cost of everyone else’s safety. Criminalization may be an effective way to achieve this morally questionable goal.

However, one may say that the immense emotional responses individuals may experience when considering effects on their children may cloud judgement and, further, families with economic means to escape risky situations may be isolated from the reality of the situation in the places that drug trade and drug use manifest their effects. Negative effects of criminalization may simply be transferred to other areas or other countries, particularly those without the economic means to carry out criminalization effectively. One may describe this tactic as classist or selfish in motivation. Legalization may pay for itself and thus prove to provide a more equalized solution while maybe not being able to achieve the classist goal of total isolation from access to drugs for certain segments of society (wealthy people’s children, etc.)

Increased presence of police in neighborhoods supposedly reduces crime. My question is: what kinds of crime? Maybe violent crime, robberies and overt drug sales are prevented, but drug transactions may actually still be occurring in the area, but just undetected. Also, increased better economic circumstances may correlate with police presence, so how can we know if this phenomenon caused the change or if some phenomenon in parallel caused the change, like greater access to technology for those who can “afford” to have more police in the neighborhood (local governments typically assign greater police coverage to areas of greater economic circumstance)

I have been told, though I have not yet found material on this yet, that the string of violent crime in the 80′s caused by crack addiction, which particularly instigated addicts to commit violent robberies with handguns and knives in order to support their addiction, was only solved by mandatory minimum sentences. However, through legalization, cocaine may reach a low enough price point and safer alternative drugs may be cheap enough and prevalent enough that crack wouldn’t be a popular phenomenon anymore, rehabilitation programs would be more available, and the sale of crack may even be effectively outlawed through regulation.

The U.S. military argued as to the use of psychedelic drugs, which are undetectable in tests and can exhibit after effects long after consumption, that it could be dangerous if somebody experienced a flashback spontaneously while in operation. A legalized industry may actually serve to prevent this from happening as there would be no legal consequences and less social consequences for disclosing prior use of drugs while being vetted for positions. A relative literally told me he and his company literally hallucinate on LSD while they were actively working on aircraft carriers in the military. This was after LSD had been illegal for a long time. Only in the case of a draft might the military be forced to accept people with this history of drug use. Maybe this potential for error would serve as a deterrent to enter into war and an incentive to prevent wars from escalating to the point of necessitation of a draft

#drug legalization #regulation #drug war #police #economics #free market #addiction #mental health #immigration

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mercuryismygenius · 5 years ago

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Book Review: ‘Dreamland’

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

In Dreamland, Sam Quinones tackles the current opioid crisis in the United States with impressive thoroughness. His goal in researching the epidemic was The Big Picture---unfortunately, such comprehensiveness may not be possible. Nonetheless, he does an admirable job, making Dreamland one of the few should-reads for contemporary America.

There is a lot in this book. Broadly speaking, the material can be divided into two basic categories: the legal, and the illegal (specifically represented by Oxycontin, and Black Tar heroin, respectively). Broadly speaking.

On the legal side, Quinones interviews doctors, researchers, nurses, clinicians, patients-cum-addicts, Oxycontin dealers, and families of the lost; he has chapters on the poppy plant, opium, and morphine; he discusses Arthur Sackler and the rise of pharmaceutical marketing, which included the wooing of doctors; and he traces the history of pain treatment---the medical treatment of pain being one of the largest enablers of the opium epidemic.

It’s hard to call what occurred in the medical establishment an overt conspiracy since, outside Big Pharma, most intention was good. Most.

It began because opium derivatives are pain killers---and the pain-killing properties of opium are ancient news. Also well-known was the fact that opioids are addictive, and use was restricted and monitored. Cancer changed that, with doctors advocating the use of morphine, etc. for end-stage cancer patients who were dying in horrible pain. At that point, it was a quality-of-life issue, and the campaign was successful.

Unfortunately, around the same time that pharmaceutical companies were honing their marketing skills, and developing opium-derivatives, medicine decided to extend the quality-of-life logic to all forms of pain. Injured? Opioid. Chronic back pain because you don’t lift with your legs? Opioid. Whatever the pharmaceutical company had, that was the solution.

And as for that habit-forming problem of opium-derivatives? Turns out, according to an infamous “study” referred to as Porter and Jick, opioids aren’t really that addictive after all. That Porter and Jick was really just a letter to the editor noting one pattern in a limited pool of data either didn’t matter, or, more probably, was never known by the people who cited it (a couple of whom Quinones interviews). Yes, bad science became a major contributor to our opioid crisis. No one checked the “study” that was repeated ad nauseam, and few paid attention to the data at hand concerning the high rates of addiction in patients who were prescribed Oxycontin.

Insurance companies didn’t help matters. They’d pay for prescription medication, but not for physical therapy, psychotherapy, nutritionists, or holistic/ multidisciplinary approaches to pain treatment. So doctors who wanted to use those non-pill approaches were put out of business.

But that’s just the legal opioids. On the illegal side, Quinones focuses on Black Tar Heroin, a viscous, dark-colored substance that’s as pure as heroin can get. He interviews cops, dealers, DEA agents, addicts, lawyers, and community organizers. And because he follows the Black Tar, he discusses Xaliso, a city in the state of Narayit in Mexico, where the heroin was grown.

Black Tar heroin dealers changed the game. Just about everything about them confounded police. The dealers didn’t carry guns, didn’t fight turf wars, and feared local gangs. They didn’t use, and they didn’t adulterate their product by cutting it---they didn’t need to as there was no multilevel distribution line. They delivered to their customers, carrying a minimum of heroin, so if caught, D.A.s rarely felt they were worth the time, and they were just deported.

Deportation was not a deterrent. The Xalisco Boys, as Quinones calls them, dealt heroin in order to make money and be the Big Man struttin’ around town back home. In the United States, their lives were spartan---the point was to go back home to their sugarcane-farming town, having struck it rich. Unfortunately, the dealers spent too lavishly, didn’t invest or save, so money ran out, and they had to return to the U.S.

The system the Xalisco Boys had was capitalism at its finest. No corporate headquarters, no cartel bigwigs, just small entrepreneurs competing in an open market. They had excellent customer service. Not only did they deliver like pizza, they offered samples, and deals. Addicts would get extra heroin for introducing a new customer. The Xalisco Boys would pay (in heroin) for an addict to hand out samples at the local methadone clinic. They’d exchange drugs for your name on an apartment or car lease. And when word got back to Narayit of ripe territory, a gold-rush mentality set in, and more cells would show up in town to compete for the same customers. Prices dropped.

Besides being non-violent in general, in Xalisco, the culture included webs of long-standing family feuds that few wanted to challenge. Because if anything untoward happened in the U.S., it *would* get back to Mexico.

Thus the more adventurous dealers would strike out for new territory. If an addict happened to know of another possibly-lucrative town, they’d introduce the Boys.

One dealer Quinones interviews, called The Man, was actually born in the U.S., and entered the Xalisco system from the outside. Of Mexican descent, he spoke English and Spanish, and recognized the relevance of Oxycontin to heroin sales (most of the Xalisco Boys didn’t bother learning more than functional English, so didn’t see the bonanza). He was arrested before he could really pave the way, but others did so after him.

Part One of the book ends with the arrest of numerous dealers in multiple states in one of the largest, most coordinated operations in drug-enforcement history. But the insidiousness of the Xalisco system is that it’s self-renewing. Arrest one guy, someone else will take his place. As long as there’s demand.

As I stated above, there is a lot in this book. Quinones manages this plethora of information by “braiding” or “juggling” it: he tells the story of the family of a young man who od’d; introduces a dealer called Enrique; moves to Dr. Herschel Jick wondering about rates of narcotic addiction in patients at his hospital; reveals how Dr. David Proctor came to Portsmouth, OH (he wasn’t able to interview Proctor in person); Enrique again; a cop in Denver; the morphine molecule; Proctor; Enrique; a cop in Idaho; Xalisco culture---this is not the actual order he goes in, but it is the gist of his technique. He touches base with each thread, showing how they interweave. It’s an interesting approach that I think works well for the material, but it did get difficult sometimes to remember who was who. I’d use the index in those cases.

Two limits before I end this already long review. First, the heroin angle is limited to the Black Tar out of Xalisco. Other heroin dealers, gangs, cartels, etc. are mentioned only when relevant to Black Tar and the Xalisco system. So, for example, the Xalisco Boys avoided New York City like the plague, so not much about the presence of heroin there in Dreamland.

Second, racism is prevalent throughout, but not explicitly explored (this is a limit, not a detraction). The Xalisco Boys would not deal to blacks if they could help it---mostly out of fear derived from prejudice. But the far more subtle forms of racism, especially in the predominantly white middle-American towns exist like smog---it’s there, it’s not good, but those immersed in it stopped noticing. Quinones points it out a couple of times, but the degree to which it’s relevant is up to the reader (since his topic isn't the various connections between racism and drugs, he may have decided to just let instances of racism stink up the background and not turn Dreamland into a doorstop).

Highly recommend this book.

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jamesgierach · 5 years ago

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s

“State of the City” Address, 2019)

(Excerpt) (Draft prepared by James E. Gierach)

Mayor Lightfoot’s “2019 State of the City” Observations and Aims re Violence, Gangs, Guns, Drugs, Immigration, Healthcare, Policing, Racism and Corruption

[CHICAGO_. Marking her FIRST 100 days in office as Chicago’s mayor, just a few days before Labor Day 2019, the following comments are taken from a SUGGESTED DRAFT of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first “STATE OF THE CITY” address.]

‘My fellow Chicagoans —

Though we have made progress in reducing the number of HOMICIDES and SHOOTINGS in Chicago, violent crime remains all too prevalent in too many Chicago neighborhoods, increasingly leeching even onto “the Magnificent Mile,” into our best neighborhoods, and onto Chicago expressways.

VIOLENCE can erupt anywhere in today’s climate.

Though the number of ILLEGAL GUNS recovered by Chicago Police has increased, likely to reach 10,000 illegal guns by year’s end, and despite numerous anti-violence initiatives and strategies put in place over three, Chicago mayoral administrations spanning decades, I am convinced that so long as DRUG PROHIBITION remains “the Law of the Land,” Chicago will continue to be plagued by painful, unrelenting gang and gun violence.

DRUG PROHIBITION PROFITS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF CHICAGO GANGS. And Chicago gangs are the center core of our gun and violence crises.

Under the new leadership of Gov. JB Pritzker, effective January 1st, Illinois has LEGALIZED RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA, and soon will have largely removed marijuana from drug-dealer shelves, the drug substance most commonly used by Chicagoans, Americans and people around the world.

This great accomplishment was achieved by thoughtful LEGISLATIVE ACT and by stoke of the GOVERNOR’S PEN — not by action of a drug task force, paid-informant, or raiding police SWAT team.

I hasten to add: By delivering this “State of the City Address,” I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THAT PEOPLE USE MARIJUANA.

Individual freedom to choose whether or not to use marijuana, because recreational marijuana use has now been legalized in Illinois for persons 21 years-of-age or older, does not mean individuals should choose to use it.

But I do applaud the removal of marijuana from the REVENUE STREAM of Chicago GANGS and UNLICENSED DRUG DEALERS, who use those revenues to buy weapons of mass destruction — ASSAULT WEAPONS and HANDGUNS. Those weapons in the hands of drug gangsters are used to intimidate witnesses, acquire turf, and lure kids with aspirations to succeed in life by passing through a “GOLDEN PROHIBITION GATEWAY” that purportedly offers easy money and the accumulation of great wealth without need of formal education or hard work.

But MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION IS NOT ANSWER ENOUGH to right today’s wrongs, resulting from society’s return to the sorry Al Capone-chapter of Chicago prohibition history.

I say, DRUG PROHIBITION IS WORSE than a hundred alcohol Prohibitions in terms of unintended and unforeseen bad consequences.

AL CAPONE needed to buy trucks and warehouses to move and store bulky liquor, a big capital outlay limiting entry into the business. In contrast, drug prohibition invites every smart, disadvantaged, or aspiring kid into the powdered, drug-concentrate business without need of startup capital. A plastic baggy containing heroin, fentanyl, cocaine or other powdered drug worth $1,000 on the street won’t even bulge a youngster’s bluejeans pocket.

All that is required to go into Chicago’s, drug-prohibition business is a gun to compete and a pair of gym shoes to get away.

The illicit drug business attracts not only the young and ambitious, but also experienced and disparate parolees. For many thousands of “ex-cons” released back into communities on Chicago’s West and South Sides, and elsewhere, drugs are often the EMPLOYER OF LAST RESORT.

These ill-conceived societal rules have instilled in the minds of many people living on the fringe of society the notion that “It’s them or us,” “Kill or be killed,” “I’m not going back to prison.” This desperate and unforgiving thought must end. But how?

Dr. Gary Slutkin, founder of CEASEFIRE, a violence-interrupter nonprofit organization that has received funding from the City of Chicago, among other governments, was nearly correct 30 years ago when he first suggested that we should treat violence as a disease.

More correctly, he should have said, that DRUG PROHIBITION is a disease that causes unending violence, and many other systemic diseases; and that all are without cure or significant remediation, UNLESS WE RETREAT from counterproductive drug-prohibition policy.

I believe that so long as we have drug users unable to access a legal, labeled and reasonably affordable supply of the substances to which many users are addicted, the myriad horrors of drug prohibition will continue to fowl the Chicago landscape. Those DRUG PROHIBITION horrors, implicitly built into all drug prohibition policies, include the following UNENDING and INSURMOUNTABLE CHALLENGES:

• ACCIDENTAL DRUG OVERDOSE DEATHS, caused by users’ voluntary consumption of unlabeled, untested and unregulated illegal drugs;

• drug warriors and innocent crossfire victims left dead or wounded in unending, Chicago TURF WARS, including street-settled drug business disputes and RETALIATORY SHOOTINGS;

• gang members needfully armed with ever more POWERFUL GUNS to meet rival competitors in a free-for-all fight for CONTROL OF DRUG MARKETS, customers and gang members;

• UNAFFORDABLE, BULLET-HOLE HEALTHCARE;

• the need for MORE POLICE, metal detectors, cameras and MORE TECHNOLOGY in the public way;

• the need for MORE SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS, counselors and trauma centers;

The list of drug-prohibition horrors is much longer, and without exhaustion includes:

• RACIALLY-DISPARATE and HEAVY-HANDED POLICING;

• MONEY JUDGMENTS in the hundreds of millions of dollars expended to settle ABUSIVE POLICING LAWSUITS and fund DOJ CONSENT DECREE COMPLIANCE;

• CRIMINAL COURT INJUSTICES;

• FAMILY SEPARATION and BREAKDOWN, caused by MASS INCARCERATION of nonviolent (disproportionately Black and Brown) drug users, and dealers-dealers trying to survive and make a living;

• communities filled with unemployed and often UNEMPLOYABLE WORKERS needlessly saddled with drug-conviction backgrounds;

• and TERRORIZED IMMIGRANTS, DRUG-WAR REFUGEES really, flocking to the U.S.-Mexican border, and eventually to friendly cities like Chicago, to escape the violent consequences of UNITED NATIONS-MANDATED and U.S.-SUPPORTED drug prohibition policies adversely impacting many people from Central America and Latin America.

Of course, DRUG POLICY REFORM ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH.

We must continue and accelerate our “WEED AND SEED” INITIATIVES with enhanced job opportunities, infrastructure improvements, and government and private investment and cooperation—all essential ingredients to address these problems, as long-recognized by all.

But what we have all been much slower to recognize or callout is the UNINTENDED DAMAGE caused by DRUG-PROHIBITION POLICIES enacted and enforced at the LOCAL, STATE, NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL LEVELS.

ZERO TOLERANCE OF DRUGS has been the watchword and commonly-supported public policy endorsed by the masses, political and religious leaders, and honorable members of the press for too long — OVER HALF A CENTURY.

This mainstream intolerance, and implicit and explicit endorsement of drug prohibition governmental polices, has preceded successive Chicago, and American, DRUG CRISES with marijuana, LSD, cocaine, crack cocaine, PCP, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines, fentanyl and 803 newly invented synthetic mind-altering substances, the latter over just the past decade.

The “SHADOW REPORT” — prepared by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), based in the United Kingdom, a collective of over 100 nonprofit organizations — authoritatively documents GLOBAL DRUG POLICY FAILURES, including DRAMATICALLY INCREASED PRODUCTION OF OPIATES, COCAINE and SYNTHETIC DRUGS over the past decade. I refer all Chicagoans to the 138-page IDPC report available in five languages. https://idpc.net/publications/2018/10/taking-stock-a-decade-of-drug-policy-a-civil-society-shadow-report

Finally, I acknowledge that, alone, Chicago cannot untie the DRUG-PROHIBITION GORDIAN KNOT, cinched so tightly to so many of our Chicago problems for so long.

It will require the cooperation of the CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL, COOK COUNTY BOARD, the ILLINOIS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the u.S. CONGRESS, the UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON NARCOTIC DRUGS, the INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL BOARD, ECOSOC, the UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION and approximately 186 NATIONS OF THE WORLD who have heretofore agreed to support and execute disastrous, UN drug-prohibition CONVENTIONS and POLICIES.

Alone, no one can solve this gargantuan, monolithic, global and Chicago drug prohibition policy conundrum with poisonous tentacles reaching everywhere.

But I intend to dismantle the illicit drug business in Chicago by fighting for EXPERIMENTAL DRUG POLICY REFORM IDEAS, including programs and initiatives embracing drug decriminalization and drug legalization.

And of course, Chicago will also be supporting drug treatment on demand, clean needles, naloxone for all, methadone, suboxone, buprenorphine clinics, mobile drug dispensaries for on-site consumption, safe injection sites, and other HARM-REDUCTION INITIATIVES.

TOGETHER, WE CAN DO THIS. WE CAN AGAIN MAKES DRUG POLICY A MEDICAL PROBLEM, NOT A RAINFALL OF SOCIETAL PROHIBITION CRISES.

We can do it by supporting drug-tolerant ideas aimed to eliminate prohibition drug markets and undercut gang revenues, ideas that simply “TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF DRUGS.” Because armed gangs will not give up their core, addicted user-base without a fight, I will deploy Chicago police to protect drug users and drug dispensaries at every location and in every legal drug venue.

Now, I’d like to turn to Chicago’s financial problems, including our billion dollar budget shortfall, our budget-busting contractual pension obligations, school contract negotiations and the failed soda tax….’

[Draft prepared for the Honorable Mayor Lori Lightfoot by James E. Gierach, a supporter and admirer of Mayor Lightfoot.]

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, Illinois

Originally drafted, Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Edited, Friday, March 5, 2021

[Mayor Lightfoot’s Thursday address now about 48 hours out.]

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prorevenge · 7 years ago

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Never commit more than one crime at a time...

I own a large apartment complex dedicated to affordable housing. It's basic, but the market rate in the area is low enough that people on welfare can easily afford the rent, I can run the business profitably and offer safe and secure housing. It's not the easiest job housing people on welfare, but I'm very proud to say that every apartment in the complex is at worst 8 hours of cleaning and 8 hours of painting away from a condition that I wouldn't mind spending the night in myself.

One of the challenges of welfare housing is that people on welfare often suffer from mental health issues, physical health issues and addiction issues. The latter is almost exclusively a result of the former, as I've discovered. These issues make my tenants especially vulnerable to low-level drug dealers who try to leverage their way onto my property. Due to the Tenancy Act, if someone is invited into an apartment, it is quite difficult to get them out in the short term. Unless I can catch them on camera committing some obvious criminal act, the police cannot remove them if a tenant gives them permission to be there. Since a sizeable percentage of my 200-odd tenants are current or former or future addicts, you can start to see the problem.

Typically what happens in a low level drug dealer will wait until the week before welfare day, when people are out of money. They will approach them and offer $100-$500 in cash to set up shop in their apartment. Once the dealer gets the keys, they might intimidate or threaten the tenant to leave their own apartment, or simply feed them drugs to keep them quiet.

My only legal recourse is to evict the tenant, in which case the dealer will hang on until the bailiff arrives, then move into another apartment. I lose money, the tenant loses their home and the dealer just finds another victim.

One particularly tenacious dealer had gone through about 5 apartments without getting busted. I had video footage of him, I had numerous complaints, but no statements and nothing concrete enough for the police to move on.

One older lady told me that he had offered her $300 to sell crack out of her apartment and she had told him to fuck right off. She told me she was willing to write an anonymous letter but was too scared of him to sign it or give a statement to the police. I put up signs in all the doorways warning tenants that they would be evicted if they rented their apartment to that particular drug dealer, mentioning him by name.

This offended him greatly, as for some reason he didn't like being called a drug dealer. The next day his 10 year old white Cadillac Escalade pickup truck came screaming up to my office, and he got out and walked towards me, brandishing his smartphone. "Are you accusing me of being a drug dealer? This is for my lawyer, he said you are slandering me with those notices, I've already got copies of them, I'm going to own your building.." I can he's lying about the lawyer part, because A) a lawyer would have said libel, not slander and B) he's a fucking drug dealer so I just tell him he's trespassing and to get off my property. I told him this is his trespass notice and if he comes back I'm towing his truck. He tells me that if I touch his truck I'm a dead man.

I'm not recording this, but I call the police anyways and tell them about the altercation. They seem to think my report of his threat is enough so that they can ask him to leave the property, even if he is invited by someone. They also encourage me to tow his truck anytime I see it.

About a week later, I see his truck is back so I get on the phone with the tow company. While I'm waiting for them, I load up the bed of his Escalade with about 10 bags of old drywall that we've removed during a reno. The drywall is asbestos containing, so it's all double-bagged in bright yellow biohazard bags and ducted-tape closed. The tow truck shows up, hooks the Escalade and takes it away to the city impound lot. A police car shows up and escorts the dealer off the property after tracking down the apartment he's holed up in.

About a month later one of my tenants comes back from his court appointment giddy with excitement - while he was waiting for his case to be heard, he saw the drug dealer get sentenced.

Apparently the drug dealer had gone to the impound yard and retrieved his truck the next afternoon. Being colossally stupid, he had pulled outside the gates and dumped all 10 bags of drywall right on the curb, either forgetting that an impound yard is covered in cameras, or not realizing that dumping hazardous waste can be a felony.

The municipality saw the pile of bags screaming "Hazard - Asbestos" and checked the footage. They called the police, who then pulled over the Escalade that evening. Since it was after 4pm, the drug dealer was visibly intoxicated which resulted in a DUI arrest and... a search of his person and vehicle... and since he was on his way to the "trap house" aka my building, he was carrying over an ounce of heroin, a few grams of fentanyl and bunch of baggies and a scale. He is not a smart man. Turns out he had less than a month left of probation so..... He pleaded guilty to possession with intent, got the trafficking charges and some other fentanyl related charge dropped and was sentenced to 4 years in prison.

I checked BC Justice Online and confirmed that he did in fact get 4 years. I also saw some other charges which I didn't recognize - 7(2), 10(1) and 120(12) of the Environmental Management Act, $2,000 in fines. Turns out they are "Release of hazardous waste, unauthorized transport of hazardous waste and contravene hazardous waste regulations."

(source) (story by deleted)

#pro revenge #by sangitum #prorevenge #pro revenge stories #revenge stories #pro #revenge

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newstfionline · 6 years ago

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The Worst Drug Crisis in American History

By Jessica Bruder, NY Times, July 31, 2018

DOPESICK: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America By Beth Macy Illustrated. 376 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $28.

In 2000, a doctor in the tiny town of St. Charles, Va., began writing alarmed letters to Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. The drug had come to market four years earlier and Art Van Zee had watched it ravage the state’s poorest county, where he’d practiced medicine for nearly a quarter-century. Older patients were showing up at his office with abscesses from injecting crushed-up pills. Nearly a quarter of the juniors at a local high school had reported trying the drug. Late one night, Van Zee was summoned to the hospital where a teenage girl he knew--he could still remember immunizing her as an infant--had arrived in the throes of an overdose.

Van Zee begged Purdue to investigate what was happening in Lee County and elsewhere. People were starting to die. “My fear is that these are sentinel areas, just as San Francisco and New York were in the early years of H.I.V.,” he wrote.

Since then, the worst drug crisis in America’s history--sparked by OxyContin and later broadening into heroin and fentanyl--has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, with no signs of abating. Just this spring, public health officials announced a record: The opioid epidemic had killed 45,000 people in the 12-month span that ended in September, making it almost as lethal as the AIDS crisis at its peak.

Van Zee’s prophecy and other early warnings haunt the pages of “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America,” a harrowing, deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency. The third book by Beth Macy--the author, previously, of “Factory Man” and “Truevine”--is a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.

Macy began investigating the drug epidemic in 2012, as it seeped into the suburbs around her adopted hometown, Roanoke, Va., where she worked for 20 years as a reporter at The Roanoke Times. From there, she set out to map the local onto the national. “If I could retrace the epidemic as it shape-shifted across the spine of the Appalachians, roughly paralleling I-81 as it fanned out from the coalfields and crept north up the Shenandoah Valley, I could understand how prescription pill and heroin abuse was allowed to fester, moving quietly and stealthily across this country, cloaked in stigma and shame,” she writes.

The word “allowed” is a quiet curse. The further Macy wades into the wreckage of addiction, the more damning her indictment becomes. The opioid epidemic didn’t have to happen. It was a human-made disaster, predictable and tremendously lucrative. At every stage, powerful figures permitted its progress, waving off warnings from people like Van Zee, participating in what would become, in essence, a for-profit slaughter. Or as Macy puts it: “From a distance of almost two decades, it was easier now to see that we had invited into our country our own demise.”

Particularly grotesque is the enthusiasm with which Purdue peddled its pills. In the first five years OxyContin was on the market, total bonuses for the company’s sales staff grew from $1 million to $40 million. Zealous reps could earn quarterly bonuses as high as $100,000, one former salesperson told Macy, adding, “It behooved them to have the pill mills writing high doses.” Doctors were plied with all-expense-paid resort trips, free tanks of gas and deliveries of Christmas trees and Thanksgiving turkeys. There were even “starter coupons” offering new patients a free 30-day supply. As sales rocketed into the billions, noxious side effects began to emerge. Chief among them was the creation of a legion of addicts who, desperate to stave off withdrawal, made the leap to cheap heroin and, later, fentanyl. (“Four out of five heroin addicts come to the drugs … through prescribed opioids,” Macy notes pointedly.)

Many of the casualties have been young adults. In a poignant early scene, Macy joins a mother at the grave of her 19-year-old son. Kristi Fernandez wants to know “how Jesse went from being a high school football hunk and burly construction worker to a heroin-overdose statistic, slumped on someone else’s bathroom floor.” That question--and its larger implications--becomes an engine for the entire investigation, driving it forward with plain-spoken moral force.

In the sprawling cast of “Dopesick,” parents like Fernandez stand out. They have been galvanized by loss. Ed Bisch, an I.T. worker in Philadelphia, hadn’t even heard of OxyContin when it killed his 18-year-old son in 2001. He went on to build a message board, OxyKills.com, that became a parental support network and information clearinghouse. It attracted the attention of Lee Nuss, a grieving mother in Palm Coast, Fla., and together they started a grass-roots protest group: Relatives Against Purdue Pharma. One of the most memorable images of their work together formed during a civil trial against Purdue in Tampa, where Nuss came to a courtroom bearing the urn with her son’s ashes. Lawyers complained. The judge ordered it removed. “My son is not here in body, but he is definitely here in spirit,” Nuss told her friends. “He might have left the building, but he will be back!”

Macy introduces so many remarkable people that, midway through “Dopesick,” readers may find it challenging to keep track of them. Taken as a whole, however, this gripping book is a feat of reporting, research and synthesis. Among myriad sources, Macy cites the influence of two earlier works on the crisis: Sam Quinones’s “Dreamland,” which followed the heroin trail back to the Mexican county of Xalisco, and Barry Meier’s “Pain Killer,” published in 2003, which first brought Van Zee’s heroic work to light.

The final third of “Dopesick” is dedicated to recovery--the steep uphill climb facing former addicts and, more broadly, the nation. Here, Macy follows the struggle of Tess Henry, a former honor-roll student, athlete and poet, who tries to stay sober while raising a young son. Macy spends months driving Tess to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, charts her relationship with her mother and hopes for the best when Tess disappears, falling out of communication and into sex work.

This is the place where a traditional storytelling arc tells us to seek redemption. Macy advocates for medical-assisted therapies to help victims of the crisis and notes some pockets of progress. But the epidemic continues to grow, aided by a legal system that criminalizes victims and a health care framework that treats patients as consumers.

While Macy offers some glimmers of hope--chief among them the will of parents and advocates to keep fighting--what echoes long after one closes this book are the unsettling words of Tess Henry’s mother about her daughter: “There is no love you can throw on them, no hug big enough that will change the power of that drug.”

#Dopesick #OxyContin #Beth Macy #Purdue Pharma #opioid deaths

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blog-cosmosuniverse1 · 3 years ago

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The Conspiracy That Allows Murder Without Accountability

In October 2020, Purdue Pharma — owned and operated by members of the Sackler family — pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges and reached a settlement totaling $8.3 billion. August 11, 2021, a federal judge granted the Sackler family legal immunity against future litigation In July 2021, Johnson & Johnson and three drug distributors agreed to pay a combined settlement of $26 billion in a multistate settlement over their roles in the opioid epidemic. They too got a sweetheart of a deal, as the settlement amounts to just 4% of the four companies’ annual revenue In May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit against Publicis Health, accusing it of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin The Publicis Groupe is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a Great Reset in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Publicis also funded the startup of NewsGuard, which is now censoring COVID-19 information NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard, is partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate — a progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security”

At the end of October 2020, Purdue Pharma, owned and operated by members of the Sackler family, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges and reached a settlement totaling $8.3 billion.1The U.S. Department of Justice probe found Purdue had intentionally fueled the deadly opioid epidemic using unethical, untruthful and illegal marketing practices. At the time, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, commented:2“For there to be accountability for the corporate-fueled opioid addiction epidemic, which has cruelly taken hundreds of thousands of lives, there must be prosecution of those members of the Sackler family who, along with other executives and owners, were responsible for Purdue Pharma’s deadly deception, as well as a stripping away of their ill-gotten gains from an evil scheme to push addictive drugs for profit.”Sackler Family Let Off Scot-Free Well, that simply wasn’t to be. August 11, 2021, a federal judge granted the Sackler family legal immunity against future litigation over their role in the opioid epidemic.3 The obvious question is why?The Sacklers knew their drug was highly addictive and responsible for nearly half a million U.S. overdose deaths in the decade between 1999 and 2019,4 yet they chose to hide that fact and encouraged doctors to overprescribe.Purdue’s sales representatives were extensively coached on how to downplay the drug’s addictive potential, claiming addiction occurred in less than 1% of patients being treated for pain. Meanwhile, research5 shows addiction affects as many as 26% of those using opioids for chronic noncancer pain. The results were predictable. Patients became addicted at record rates, and when they couldn’t obtain more OxyContin, they turned to street drugs like heroin and fentanyl. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,6 841,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between 1999 and 2019, and opioids were involved in 70.6% of the overdose deaths that occurred in 2019.It’s quite remarkable that our legal system is letting the Sacklers get off scot-free, seeing how they were clearly in charge of the company’s deadly decisions.7,8,9 Adding insult to injury, the Sacklers decided to cash in on the problem they created by developing and selling addiction treatment.10,11 As reported by Nation of Change:12“Purdue will be bankrupt, but members of the multi-billionaire Sackler family — who were responsible for the decisions that led to these deaths and profited the most from Purdue’s opioid dealings — will gain near-total immunity from future litigation. By the time the settlement is paid out they most likely will be as wealthy as they ever were. So where does personal responsibility come in?”Hold the Sacklers Accountable in the Public Sphere In 2018, Paul Hanly, a leading attorney in the case against Purdue, referred to the Sacklers as “a crime family … drug dealers in nice suits and dresses.”13 Indeed, yet the Sacklers had carefully built a public image of themselves as a family of “philanthropists,” donating a fraction of their ill-gotten wealth to prestigious medical schools and fancy museums through the years.As noted by Nation of Change, “In return for the donation, honorees are imbued with moral approval.” Well, it’s time to retract that moral approval, and the only ones who can do that is us. We need to demand that those who took Sacklers’ donations recognize the harm the family has done, and strip the Sacklers of their honors.“Richard Sackler and other family members involved in this tragedy deserve to be shamed,” Nation of Change writes.14 “Institutions that took their blood money should remove the Sackler name from their centers, professorships, buildings, and pediments. If they won’t be held accountable in a court of law, they must be held accountable at least in the public sphere.”In the video below, Patrick Bet-David interviews Dr. Chris Johnson, an emergency medicine physician, about the opioid epidemic and the role of unethical drug companies. As noted by Johnson, drug companies appear to

view fines for illegal activities as a routine business expense. It’s a great business model. They can easily afford the fines if caught so shareholders are protected, and no one goes to jail. The only people who get hurt are the patients.

Other Opioid Makers Get Sweetheart Deals

Purdue isn’t the only opioid maker whose executives have been spared accountability for their deadly decisions. In July 2021, Johnson & Johnson and three drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — agreed to pay a combined settlement of $26 billion in a multistate settlement over their roles in the opioid epidemic.15

They too got a sweetheart of a deal, as the $26 billion settlement amounts to just 4% of the four companies annual revenue. In an article for CounterPunch, Richard Eskow writes:16

“Apparently, that’s what attorneys general for a number of states thought was adequate compensation for all the lost lives, for the mothers living on the street and the children born addicted, for the grieving families, desolate neighborhoods, and dying communities.

‘Distributors can easily bear this burden,’ analysts at a stock market firm wrote. ‘We haven’t popped the champagne yet, but the bottle is definitely chilling.’ Having lost a close family member to an opioid overdose, I was unable to get over my fury for days after reading this sentence.”

Great Reset Promoter Sued for Deceptive Marketing

While Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, got off without so much as a slap on the wrist, states struggling with the exorbitant cost of opioid addiction aren’t ready to bury the hatchet just yet. Instead, some are going after the PR firm that created and ran Purdue’s deceptive marketing campaigns.

As it turns out, that PR firm is none other than the Publicis Groupe, a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a Great Reset in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Publicis is part of an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers, Big Tech companies, the banking industry, the U.S. government, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum, just to name a few, Publicis appears to be a key player when it comes to coordinating the global effort to censor COVID-related information.

Publicis Health admitted its involvement in this censorship agenda as recently as April 27, 2021. In a tweet,17 the agency announced its partnership with NewsGuard, “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.” In short, Publicis Health is dedicated to suppressing any information that hurts its Big Pharma clients.

Publicis is more than a partner with NewsGuard, however. NewsGuard actually received a large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis. NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed arbiter of truth, rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information.

In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites.

PR Has Replaced the Free Press

To understand the power that PR companies such as Publicis wield, you also need to realize that PR has, by and large, replaced the free press. In decades’ past, pro-industry advertising stood in stark contrast to the free press, which would frequently expose problems with products and industries, thereby serving as a counterbalance to industry propaganda.

When a free press with honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic products are driven off the market. All of this changed in the late 20th century, when media outlets started relying on advertisers for the bulk of their revenues.

Journalists came under the control of advertisers, who now had the power to kill stories they didn’t like. Today, news organizations simply won’t run reports that might harm the bottom line of its advertisers and, not surprisingly, the drug industry is among the top-paying advertisers.

By further partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media, which is composed of every major media in the world18 — Publicis and its industry clients have been able to influence and control the press to virtually eliminate the public’s ability to get the truth on many important issues, including COVID-19.

Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites. Being a Google partner,19,20 Publicis also has the ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele.

NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,21 is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive cancel-culture leader22 with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security.”

Publicis Knowingly Promoted Over-Prescription

Getting back to the issue of opioids, at the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit23 against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.24,25,26,27 As reported by Yahoo! News:28

“The lawsuit alleges that Publicis ‘engaged in myriad unfair and deceptive strategies that influenced OxyContin prescribing across the nation,’ a statement by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's office said. Those strategies were carried out through dozens of contracts between 2010 and 2019, worth more than $50 million …

Tactics included combatting doctors' ‘hesitancy’ to prescribe the medication, and persuading them to prescribe OxyContin over lower-dose, short-acting opioids, thus increasing the risk of addiction. Massachusetts is asking that Publicis Health pay ‘compensatory damages’ of an unspecified amount for having ‘created a public nuisance.’"

The complaint further notes that:29

“By design, Publicis’ schemes worked to counter public health measures intended to reduce unnecessary opioid use, because more opioid use generated more profits for Publicis’ opioid clients.”

Publicis Health’s Damaging PR Is Just ‘Business as Usual’

Publicis Health argues that its work for Purdue was lawful and limited to “implementing Purdue’s advertising plan and buying media space.” But according to the lawsuit, Publicis’ work included:

Placing illegal advertisements for OxyContin in the electronic medical records of patients

Creating training materials for Purdue sales reps on how to combat doctor’s objections to the drugs

Developing strategies to counter opioid guidelines issued by the CDC

Creating “patient stories” to “humanize” the OxyContin brand and counter negative press about addiction risks.30,31 One such patient vignette featured a 40-year-old man who had his dose increased from 10 milligrams (mg) a day to 20 mg in just three weeks

Creating and sending thousands of deceptive emails to doctors, encouraging them to not only increase patients’ dosages but also to prescribe the drug to patients who were already on less dangerous pain meds32

The lawsuit also alleges that Publicis instructed Purdue to target doctors who were already writing out dangerously high numbers of prescriptions, even in the midst of a raging opioid epidemic,33 all while agency executives gleefully discussed the record fees they’d collect from the Purdue account. A March 2016 email exchange reveals the Publicis subsidiary was expecting to make up to $12.28 million from Purdue that year alone.

Time to Reevaluate Marketing Ethics

While Publicis is trying to downplay its role in what has been described as the crime of the century, the lawsuit against it will hopefully result in a reevaluation of marketing ethics. The agency, knowing full well there was an epidemic of opioid abuse underway, took on the job of increasing Purdue’s profits by making that lethal trend worse.

Publicis’ view that public health is of no concern when creating drug PR also tells us something about the COVID shot PR push we’re currently experiencing.

Publicis claims they were just doing what advertising agencies do — they created promotional materials that boost client revenue. However, this argument circumvents any notion of ethics and concern about public health. They’re basically admitting that it’s all about making money, regardless of the cost.Even if their actions were within legal limits (which the Massachusetts case will eventually establish), their actions were immoral and clearly undermined public health.Seeing how Publicis represents most of the biggest drug companies in the world, this raises the question of ethics in drug advertising in general. Publicis’ view that public health is of no concern when creating drug PR also tells us something about the COVID shot PR push we’re currently experiencing.Censorship Works Against Public Health as Well Publicis wants you to believe they are protecting public health by supporting COVID-19 censorship, but this is actually having the opposite effect. How can you possibly make an educated decision about COVID “vaccination” if you’re not allowed to learn anything about the risks?What Publicis calls “misinformation” is simply information that contradicts the propaganda dictated by the hands that feed it, i.e., the drug industry. History tells us companies driven by profit interest make poor truth tellers, as negative information will clearly have a detrimental impact on their bottom line. So, they lie and obfuscate. It’s that simple.Public relations firms like Publicis are mere arms of these notoriously untruthful industries. They do their bidding because that’s what they’re paid to do. To think that Big Pharma and paid propagandists are looking out for anyone but themselves is naïve in the extreme.It is actually ironic doublespeak that Publicis claims to defend against misinformation that puts the public at risk, while having played a crucial role in a lethal health care scheme that was built on lies and deceit.Struggling With Opioid Addiction? Seek Help! In closing, remember that opioids — regardless of the brand — are extremely addictive drugs that are not meant for long-term use for nonfatal conditions. Chemically, opioids are very similar to heroin, and if you wouldn’t consider shooting up heroin for that toothache or backache, you really should reconsider taking an opioid to relieve your pain.If you’ve been on an opioid for more than two months, if you find yourself taking higher dosages or taking the drug more often, you may be addicted and are advised to seek help from someone other than your prescribing doctor. Resources where you can find help include:Your workplace Employee Assistance Program The Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration34 can be contacted 24 hours a day at 1-800-622-HELP

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