Tag Archives: War on Drugs

Drug Cop Who Spent 14 Years Undercover Tells Truth About the Drug War, by Carey Wedler

Posted on May 17, 2017 | 1 comment

Nothing has been so propitious for the drug trade as the War on Drugs. From Carey Wedler at theantimedia.org:

(ANTIMEDIA) Yet another police officer is speaking out against the drug war, this time in the United Kingdom. Former officer Neil Woods worked as an undercover drug cop for 14 years, infiltrating some of the most violent gangs in Britain only to learn his tactics were worsening the drug epidemic. Now, he advocates ending the drug war and decriminalizing drugs as he admits his own role in fueling violence and the proliferation of narcotics.

Woods recently spoke with the Independent to make his case and recount the struggles he faced enforcing the British government’s drug war. He was first enlisted by the Home Office to tackle the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s, an effort that apparently ‘pleased the crown.’

Woods says the tactics he helped develop only exacerbated drug-related crime.

“The first place I was posted was in Derby and it wasn’t actually that difficult,” he says. “There were some proper gangsters selling crack and heroin but they weren’t used to the tactic, so although it was a bit scary it wasn’t tremendously difficult because they weren’t expecting it.”

By bringing in new police tactics, however, the dynamics started to change because, as he says, “the thing the about undercover work is that it doesn’t take long for criminals to learn the tactics.”

Woods recounted several close-call experiences, including one where he was forced to consume amphetamines to prove his credibility. In another, a dealer could sense Woods was a cop and repeatedly pressed him on it before he used intimidation tactics to neutralize the situation.  Though he escaped unscathed, he often put his life on the line only to find his work was futile.

“The ultimate defence against the development of police tactics is an increased use of violence to intimidate the community in which undercover police officers move,” he explained, describing the effects of government efforts to curb drug use.

As the drug war raged on, drug gangs became even more extreme, and Woods began to realize he wasn’t helping.

“I knew that I couldn’t win early on,” he told the Independent. “But I kept being tempted back into it because I was good at my job. The police departments would say ‘Woodsy, we need you. These gangsters are even nastier that the other ones. They’re burning people to death. They’re using rape as a weapon.”

Ultimately, however, he accepted his inability to make a difference as a cop.

To continue reading: Drug Cop Who Spent 14 Years Undercover Tells Truth About the Drug War

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How Could it Have Been Worse? by Eric Peters

Posted on May 13, 2017 | 1 comment

Trump is not starting to make Hillary look good, but he may be making her look less bad. From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Maybe it would have been wiser to just sit the last one out. Or even to have done like Khan in Star Trek II and – for hate’s sake – voted for her.

Why not, after all?

It might have turned out better.

Obamacare wasn’t going away in any case; I think we all knew that, deep down. The idea of the feds ever voluntarily giving back power once acquired is preposterous. It is a thing only fools and children could possibly believe in, like Santa Claus.

 

Under her, we would still have Obamacare, of course. But under him, we are now to be dunned $3,000 for each year we elect not to be “covered.” This will have the effect of turning hundreds of thousands of people – possibly millions – into debt slaves or “criminals” or both. A person – young, not much money or perhaps self-employed – goes “without coverage” (but not costing anyone a cent) for say five years and now he “owes” the insurance mafia $15,000. Will the government seize his bank accounts and property and dun his paycheck to collect it on behalf of the mafia?

This is what is meant by Repeal and Replace.

Instead of the so-called Individual Mandate, which belts us with a punitive tax paid to the governmentannually for failing to purchase coverage, we are to be dunned by the insurance mafia – backed by the government – if we elect not to be covered and two to three times as much.

That is the Republicans’ idea of a “market-based health care reform.”

Big corporations using the government to rob us. We might as well all be stamping out license plates in a federal pen someplace.

To continue reading: How Could it Have Been Worse?

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$8.5 Billion U.S. Counter Narcotics Effort in Afghanistan Boosts Opium Production, by Judicial Watch

Posted on February 10, 2017 | 1 comment

The War on Drugs in Afghanistan has been a spectacular and corrupt failure, which means it’s due a big budget increase and more personnel. From judicialwatch.org’s blog:

The U.S. government’s multi-billion-dollar effort to counter narcotics in Afghanistan is a humiliating failure that’s resulted in a huge increase in poppy cultivation and opium production. Despite the free-flow of American tax dollars to combat the crisis, opium production rose 43% in the Islamic nation, to an estimated 4,800 tons, and approximately 201,000 hectares of land are under poppy cultivation, representing a 10% increase in one year alone.

Uncle Sam’s embarrassing counter narcotics effort is part of a broader and costly failure involving the reconstruction of Afghanistan. More than $100 billion have been dedicated to help rebuild the war-torn country and much of it has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse not to mention corruption. The drug initiative is a recent example, documented by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in a quarterly report to Congress. The document is painful to read because it goes on for 269 pages, but Judicial Watch created a link for the counter narcotics section, which is around 19 pages and includes informative charts, graphs and the latest available statistics.

As of December 31, 2016, the United States has spent an astounding $8.5 billion for counter narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, the report reveals, making it clear that the cash will continue flowing. “Nonetheless, Afghanistan remains the world’s leading producer of opium, providing 80% of the global output over the past decade, according to the United Nations,” SIGAR writes. The watchdog includes statistics from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) confirming a 10% increase in the amount of Afghan land that was under poppy cultivation between 2015 and 2016. Despite Uncle Sam’s generosity, poppy eradiation results were the lowest this decade, the watchdog states. “No eradication took place in the biggest opium-growing provinces because of the grave security situation,” the report reveals, noting a steady rise in production and cultivation in the past decade. “Eradication efforts have had minimal impact on the rise in illicit opium cultivation.”

To continue reading: $8.5 Billion U.S. Counter Narcotics Effort in Afghanistan Boosts Opium Production

 

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Invading Mexico: More Brilliance from Washington, by Fred Reed

Posted on February 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

Fred Reed’s hypothetical US invasion of Mexico is a brilliant exposition of the pitfalls of waging offensive war, a subject SLL recently examined in Riptide. From Reed on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Time: “You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Peña Nieto, according to the excerpt given to AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

With Trump it is difficult to tell bluster and carney-barker showmanship from serious consideration or actual intention. While clearly a threat, the remark may have been intended only to intimidate, and the ascription of cowardice to the Mexican army only ill-bred. Trump’s military record leaves no doubt as to his own courage. Given his administration’s threats of military action–war–against China and Iran, the possibility that he will send troops southward may be worth pondering. Whether the President has the faintest idea of what would be involved in very much worth pondering.

If troops are sent, what will they face in Mexico? What would they do? How many would they be?

To begin with, the narcos look exactly like everybody else in Mexico. They do not carry ID cards saying “Narcotraficante.” They can easily blend into the general population. If GIs try to operate here, the inability to distinguish narcos from everybody else will quickly lead to intense frustration. Frustrated troops become angry. They begin to hate the locals as in all such wars they hated the dinks, gooks, slopes, zipperheads, sand niggers, and rag-heads. Mexicans will begin to seem treacherous to them, as always happens when US troops go to countries they do not understand. All Mexicans will come under suspicion.

To continue reading: Invading Mexico: More Brilliance from Washington

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A Better Solution Than Trump’s Border Wall, by Ron Paul

Posted on January 30, 2017 | 1 comment

The US welfare state is a magnet for illegal immigrants from the south, and the drug war and foreign military interventions send refugees to this country. Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to get benefits, junk the drug war and foreign interventionism, and immigration problems would disappear. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.com:

Just one week in office, President Trump is already following through on his pledge to address illegal immigration. His January 25th executive order called for the construction of a wall along the entire length of the US-Mexico border. While he is right to focus on the issue, there are several reasons why his proposed solution will unfortunately not lead us anywhere closer to solving the problem.

First, the wall will not work. Texas already started building a border fence about ten years ago. It divided people from their own property across the border, it deprived people of their land through the use of eminent domain, and in the end the problem of drug and human smuggling was not solved.

Second, the wall will be expensive. The wall is estimated to cost between 12 and 15 billion dollars. You can bet it will be more than that. President Trump has claimed that if the Mexican government doesn’t pay for it, he will impose a 20 percent duty on products imported from Mexico. Who will pay this tax? Ultimately, the American consumer, as the additional costs will be passed on. This will of course hurt the poorest Americans the most.

Third, building a wall ignores the real causes of illegal border crossings into the United States. Though President Trump is right to prioritize the problem of border security, he misses the point on how it can be done effectively and at an actual financial benefit to the country rather than a huge economic drain.

The solution to really addressing the problem of illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and the threat of cross-border terrorism is clear: remove the welfare magnet that attracts so many to cross the border illegally, stop the 25 year US war in the Middle East, and end the drug war that incentivizes smugglers to cross the border.

To continue reading: A Better Solution Than Trump’s Border Wall

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The Most Important Civil Rights Issue Trump Could Solve with an Executive Order: End the “War on Drugs” Gulag, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 26, 2017 | 2 comments

Charles Hugh Smith’s proposal is so sensible that the cynical among us will say it has no chance of ever seeing the light of day. With President Trump, however, who knows? From Smith at oftwominds.com:

Here is an opportunity for “Black Lives Matter” and the Trump administration to find common cause.

President Trump has a golden opportunity to strike a major blow for civil rights with a single executive order: end the failed “War on Drugs” and shut down America’s drug-war gulag. None of the previous three presidents expended any political capital on curbing the immensely destructive “War on Drugs” or freeing the (in many states, preponderantly African-American and Hispanic-American) prisoners in America’s drug-war gulag.

“Fake-liberal” Bill Clinton did nothing, “fake-conservative” George W. Bush did nothing, and “fake-liberal” Barack Obama did nothing to end the “War on Drugs” or curb the gulag it created. Their parties and supporters were delighted to appear “tough on crime” while destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of African-American, Hispanic-American and other Americans with long sentences in the gulag for selling nickel bags of “illegal” drugs, while America’s parasitic Big Pharma industry reaped billions of dollars in profits selling “legal” opiates while handing our self-serving politicos millions in campaign contributions.

The imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of young Americans–preponderantly Americans of color in state after state– in America’s drug-war gulag is the greatest violation of civil rights since the 1960s– yet fake-liberals and fake-conservatives alike have done nothing but turn their self-serving gaze away from this needless, costly, stupid waste of lives and treasure.

Step one: fully legalize marijuana on the federal level. Isn’t it time for the federal government to finally move beyond the “reefer madness” propaganda of the 1920s? President Trump could do so much good by wiping out the insanely counterproductive federal statutes against marijuana.

To continue reading: The Most Important Civil Rights Issue Trump Could Solve with an Executive Order: End the “War on Drugs” Gulag

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A Highly Respected Medical Journal Just Declared the War on Drugs an Epic Failure, by Carey Wedler

Posted on November 23, 2016 | 1 comment

If the War on Drugs had been named the War to Prevent Adults From Putting What They Want Into Their Own Bodies it never would have gotten off the ground.  Fundamentally, drug prohibition is a moral issue. What right does the state have to decide what individuals can put in their bodies? Make people liable for any harms to others or their property while under the influence, but don’t stop them beforehand; it’s a fundamental abridgement of freedom. From Carey Wedler at theantimedia.org:

(ANTIMEDIA) “The war on drugs has failed,” the editors of the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal declared this week, arguing that doctors should lead the global effort to reform drug policy.

Fiona Godlee, the journal’s editor-in-chief, and Richard Hurley, its features and debates editor, penned an analysis citing academic and scientific reports to argue global policies on drug use — including the United Nations’ — have fallen drastically short.

Godlee and Hurley note the annual cost of prohibition, which entails criminalizing “producers, traffickers, dealers, and users,” totals at least $100 billion annually.

“But the effectiveness of prohibition laws, colloquially known as the ‘war on drugs,’ must be judged on outcomes,” they write. “And too often the war on drugs plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs, and disproportionately on people who are poor or from ethnic minorities and on women.”

The authors cite a variety of reasons why the global war on drugs has been a failure.

Citing an academic study on international drug policy from the Lancet medical journal, the authors argue that “prohibition and stigma encourage less safe drug consumption and push people away from health services.”

These policies have other negative consequences. Godlee and Hurley highlight the current situation between Russia and Crimea, “where patients in Crimea died after the Russian invasion because they were forced to stop taking methadone, which is viewed as opioid misuse and illegal in Russia.”

Further, though opioid addiction is a growing epidemic, “drug control policies effectively deny two-thirds of the world’s population—more than five billion people—legitimate access to opioids for pain control.”

Another problem [pdf] with prohibition policies, they argue, is that “they impede research into medical use of cannabis and other prohibited drugs despite evidence of potential benefit.”

This is the case in the United States, where the federal government’s designation of cannabis as a Schedule I drug has hampered the ability of scientists to research the medical effects of the plant. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently ruled to maintain this classification. This decision was largely deemed hypocritical, especially considering the United States government holds a patent on cannabis for its antioxidant properties. The federal government’s National Cancer Institute also admits cannabis can help treat the symptoms of cancer and that “[c]annabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory.” In spite of the promise of the plant, it remains prohibited under federal law.

Still, Godlee and Hurley argue, the effects of the drug war aren’t limited to health. They extend to the realm of human rights:

“All wars cause human rights violations, and the war on drugs is no different. Criminally controlled drug supply markets lead to appalling violence—causing an estimated 65 000-80 000 deaths in Mexico in the past decade, for example [pdf]. Mandatory sentencing for even minor drug offences has helped the United States attain the highest rate of incarceration in the world [pdf]. The Philippines has seen 5000 extrajudicial killings [pdf] since July, after President Rodrigo Duterte’s call for vigilantism against drug dealers.”

To continue reading: A Highly Respected Medical Journal Just Declared the War on Drugs an Epic Failure

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What Can We Say About a System that Criminalizes a Safe Painkiller (0 Deaths) and Promotes Big Pharma Opiates that Have Killed 165,000 Americans? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on August 25, 2016 | 1 comment

The never ending war on drugs must continue to be fought and marijuana must continue to be criminalized, because its safer and more effective than a lot of legal painkillers and legalization would threaten drug company profits. From Chareles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

So when will the citizens wake up to the criminality of their government in favoring killer corporate opiates over safe natural painkillers?

Set your mindset to objective and come with me to the little-known but plucky nation of Lower Slobovia. The residents of Lower Slobovia have two choices when they are suffering from chronic pain:

1. A natural, non-addictive medication that they can grow themselves that has never caused a single fatality due to overdose, adverse reactions or mixing with other drugs (polypharmacy), or

2. synthetic opiates manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that are highly addictive, trigger multiple adverse reactions, manifest dangerous polypharmaceutical attributes and have killed over 165,000 people in the past 15 years– 28 times the nation’s 5,790 combat deaths in recent military conflicts.

The corporations manufacturing and distributing the synthetic opiates as “safe” hid the truth about their medications from doctors, patients and the media: ‘You Want a Description of Hell?’ Oxycontin’s 12-Hour Problem (via John F.) OxyContin’s stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn’t last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.

So take a guess which class of drugs is perfectly legal and widely promoted by Lower Slobovia’s healthcare system, and which one is classified as a restricted Schedule 1 drug by the nation’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), i.e. as dangerous as heroin?

I suspect you saw this coming, right? The natural painkiller that never killed a single soul and can be grown at home is criminalized, while the drugs that have already killed 165,000 people (a number that grossly understates the total number of deaths at least partly attributable to synthetic opiates) and addicted and/or harmed millions of other users is perfectly legal, declared “safe” by the pushers (oops, I mean pharmaceutical manufacturers) and the government, and distributed in the tens of millions of doses by the “healthcare” system.

Lower Slobovia’s DEA, the corporate manufacturers of the killer-opiates and its healthcare system that slavishly distributes millions of the killer pills should be immediately escorted to Devil’s Island and left to rot, right? And the insane laws reversed so the killer corporate synthetic opiates are declared Schedule 1 and heavily criminalized, and the natural nobody-dies painkiller legalized and distributed, right?Isn’t this obvious? Yes, I realize cannabis and opiates are not apples to apples, but you get the point–the drugs that have killed more than 165,000 people and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of others should be on Lower Slobovia DEA’s Schedule 1 of criminalized drugs instead of being passed out like candy by its “healthcare” system– a distribtion that has reaped tens of billions of dollars in sales and profits for the pharmaceutical sector.

To continue reading: What Can We Say About a System that Criminalizes a Safe Painkiller (0 Deaths) and Promotes Big Pharma Opiates that Have Killed 165,000 Americans?

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It’s Time to Abolish the DEA and America’s “War on Drugs” Gulag, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on August 19, 2016 | 2 comments

The US government should never have declared war on drugs. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Addiction and drug use are medical/mental health issues, not criminalization/ imprisonment issues.

It’s difficult to pick the most destructive of America’s many senseless, futile and tragically needless wars, but the “War on Drugs” is near the top of the list.Prohibition of mind-altering substances has not just failed–it has failed spectacularly, and generated extremely destructive and counterproductive consequences.

What was the result of the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s? Prohibition instantly criminalized 40+% of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations.

What was the result of the “War on Drugs”? This modern-day Prohibition instantly criminalized large swaths of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations.

If you want to increase drug use, criminalize innocent citizens and spawn gargantuan criminal organizations, then by all means declare “war” via Prohibition. The results of Prohibition/War on Drugs are so visibly perverse and so destructive that the entire enterprise is sickeningly Orwellian.

The well-paid apologists for Prohibition/War on Drugs claim that imprisoning millions of people “helps” them avoid drugs. If you think being tossed in prison for a few years “helps” people, then step right up and accept a fiver (5-year sentence) in an American prison, which is essentially a factory that produces one product: people damaged by imprisonment, deprived of their full citizenship, hobbled by a felony conviction–ex-con beneficiaries of years of tutorials by hardened criminals.

This is as Orwellian as the Vietnam War’s famous “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
I

f you think throwing millions of people in prison “helps” them or society, you are either insane or you’re making a living in the gulag or our sick system of “justice”. If you don’t think America has a “War on Drugs” Gulag, please glance at this chart of Americans in jail and prison–many for drug-related offenses:

The US population has increased about 40% since the War on Drugs started in earnest in 1980, while the prison/Gulag population has increased over 400% since 1980.

(Modest correction: The US population is 323 million, global population is 7.4 billion, so the US population is a mere 4.3% of the world population.)

Let’s recall that fully legal alcohol kills tens of thousands of people annually and cripples tens of thousands more via drunk-driving accidents, domestic violence and alcohol-related diseases.

If you know any emergency room physicians and nurses, ask them how many tragic medical situations arise from alcohol abuse and how many arise from marijuana abuse. You’ll hear endless tales of the terrible consequences of alcoholism and drunkenness, and essentially zero accounts of death and mayhem resulting from marijuana use/abuse.

Marijuana, a Schedule 1 drug equivalent to heroin and cocaine according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), has never been conclusively identified as the sole cause of a single traffic fatality. I researched this a few years ago; feel free to duplicate my research.

To continue reading: It’s Time to Abolish the DEA and America’s “War on Drugs” Gulag

 

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Nixon Invented the Drug War to Decimate Hippies and Black People, Former Adviser Confesses, by Robby Soave

Posted on March 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Robby Soave at reason.com:

President Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs for one specific reason: to decimate his perceived political enemies—the anti-war left, and black people.

That’s according to an anecdote in a lengthy cover story for Harper’s, in which journalist Dan Baum recounts an interview he conducted with John Erlichman, a former Nixon staffer who was jailed for one year due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Unprompted, Erlichman confessed the true purpose of federal drug prohibition:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “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.”

The dastardly plan failed only in the sense that Nixon ultimately lost—a victim of his criminal behavior and utter lack of scruples. But the War on Drugs certainly brought ruin, poverty, and crime to minority communities, cost the nation outrageous sums of money, and expanded the scope of the federal government’s oppressive power. This was not done for any noble public purpose—it was a political gambit, nothing more.

The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but it’s not only paved with good intentions.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/22/nixon-invented-the-drug-war-to-decimate

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