Tuesday, June 14, 2011

An anniversary

On June 17, 1971 President Richard Nixon declared the War On (Some) Drugs. Now, I've repeatedly pointed out some of the side effects -- the militarization of our police forces, the enrichment of drug gangs in other countries, the disenfranchisement of large swathes of minority America either through placing them in jail or through removing their right to vote after they get out of jail, and so forth. I've also pointed out that the War on (Some) Drugs has not ended drug abuse, indeed, there's as much drug abuse as ever. But let's get to the bottom line: Is the War on Drugs a success?

Now, you might wonder why I'm asking that question. Well, that's probably because you're one of the suckers who believes that the War on Drugs is -- or ever has been -- about drugs. But of course it isn't. It's never been about drugs. When Nixon declared the War on Drugs, he wasn't actually declaring war on drugs. He didn't give a shit how much pot people smoked or how much acid they dropped. He was a lizard person, remember. Lizard people don't view humans as people. They view humans as prey. Nixon could no more have cared about the horrors of drug abuse than a newt could care about the feelings of the fly he just snagged with his tongue and is in the process of eating. As a sociopath, he simply was biologically incapable of feeling anything for human beings.

So if the War on Drugs was never about the horrors of drug abuse... why, then? Okay, let me count the ways...

  1. A strike against the counterculture. The counterculture had our lizard overlords scared shitless. You had all these young people who'd tuned in, turned on, dropped out, who were going out onto the land and growing their own food and shit, not buying, not consuming... how were the lizard people going to continue their project of farming humans for profit if the humans left the plantation and went off on their own? But see, the "back to nature" counterculture had a fatal flaw: even early 20th century subsistence farmers needed a "cash crop" to buy those things that could not be grown or made on the farm, things like farm implements, cloth, jars for canning food, and so forth. And given their origins, pharmaceuticals were a primo cash crop for the counterculture. So basically, the War on Drugs allowed the lizard people to destroy the counterculture, which was a direct threat to their plantation economy where humans are farmed for profit.
  2. Put those uppity Negros in their place. It's not an accident that drugs that are most popular with minorities are also the drugs whose use or possession or sale results in the largest penalties. By giving the most onerous punishments to drugs primarily used by minorities, the War on (Some) Drugs accomplishes two things simultaneously -- it gets some scary darkies off the street (and, sister, *all* darkies are scary to tighty whitey bigot-Americans), and it disenfranchises these darkies so they won't be voting (they won't be votin' for sure while in jail, and mostly will be disqualified from voting after they get out of jail too). Can't let the darkies vote, why, they might vote for someone who, like, isn't a bigot! The horror, the horror! So by putting 25% of all black men into the criminal justice system, you give a wink and nod to poor white trash upset that now black people are as good as them under the law. And by removing the ability of these minorities to vote, you do more to preserve white power than all KKK covens combined.
  3. Expand the paramilitary forces available to the lizard people. The lizard people don't understand why, but they do understand that their programs that result in large numbers of "surplus" humans dying of starvation, exposure, or lack of medical care are unpopular with the majority of human beings and can only be imposed by force. By providing huge sums of money and motivation for militarizing the police forces, the lizard people now no longer need to hire Pinkertons to deal with uppity humans who dare resist their program of human farming with methods other than whining and wringing of hands. Instead, they have a huge number of paramilitary policemen trained to believe that all "civilians" are The Enemy and whose notion of "serve and protect" is to serve and protect their lizard overlords, not the human beings who pay their salaries.

So is the War on (Some) Drugs a success? Why... yes! It's a *SMASHING* success! Why do you ask?

-- Badtux the Cynical Penguin

7 comments:

  1. But the War on (Some) Drugs is working well with young people. It's uncool to smoke pot for many of them. They still do as a phase they go through, then drop. Some go on to harder shit, in which case pot is too weak for them. We get patients in all the time who test positive for crack and smack, but not THC, because it's not worth their while. Even older people, in the "old hippie" generation, don't toke up any more. It's regarded as declasse, something to be sneered at as a slacker's thing. So I'd say that a slow social change might be underway here.

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  2. Sorry, Bukko, but the U.S. statistics don't back you up. Marijuana usage has been pretty much stable for the past 30 years here in the U.S., with about 15% of young people having used it within the past month, dropping to around 5% of older people (unless you're talking about Willie Nelson, who probably smoked enough marijuana in the past month to account for half of the marijuana usage amongst older people ;). The deal is that you won't see potheads in your establishment because they're mellow and don't tend to get into trouble. Take Willie, for example. He keeps getting stopped and rousted by cops for having marijuana, but wouldn't ever be through the doors of a psych ward for his marijuana usage, for the simple reason that marijuana doesn't make ya crazy.

    - Badtux the Non-pothead Penguin
    (Who, however, knows a few -- including a very successful executive who was CEO of one of my past employers).

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  3. We hope that Mr. Penguin will not take cheeses as his personal savior and cease being cynical.

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  4. It all depends on the cheeses, MandT. If it's a good-quality dry Monterrey Jack, I might be tempted...

    - Badtux the Cheesy Penguin

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  5. Willie and a certain blogger (with whom I have a close, long-term personal relationship) smoke enough between them to account for two-thirds of all the marijuana smoked by Central North American seniors age 65 and older.

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  6. It also enriched the banks like Wachovia (who got caught) and corporations like CitiCorp (who made out like bandits - successful bandits!) who laundered a lot of that "illegal" drug money to finance the wars (CIA unfunded activities), illegal activities, etc.

    Remember that guy who owned one of the islands in the Caribbean who was moving vast sums of money, and is now supposedly untouchable? ("Sir" Allen Stanford?)

    Ask Colonel OLiver North where the money came from for Iran/Contra.

    He was forthcoming earlier.

    Thanks for the history lesson.

    S

    Just had some Stilton!
    ________________

    http://www.thedailyherald.com/regional/2-news/17619-us-ambassador-had-expressed-concerns-about-stanford-group.html

    BRIDGETOWN, Barbados--Was it too little, too late or a warning sent to Washington from America's diplomatic outpost in Barbados that fell on deaf ears?

    That question goes to the heart of the alleged US$7 billion dollar fraud reportedly masterminded by Allen Stanford for which he is to stand trial in a United States federal district court in Houston, Texas, in September.

    Some financial analysts and legal experts who have pored over court documents pertaining to the case believe the alleged Stanford Ponzi scheme, second only to the US$50 billion one crafted by Bernard Madoff, was too far gone by the time Mary Kramer, the United States Ambassador in Barbados in 2006, sent a cable to the American State Department in Washington warning that the Texas billionaire might have been engaged in money laundering and fraud in the Eastern Caribbean.

    Kramer, a Republican appointee, sent a diplomatic cable in 2006 from Barbados to "Foggy Bottom", as the State Department is commonly called in the American capital, expressing her concerns about Stanford, his bank and their activities in and outside Antigua where the high-flying Texan had his headquarters and where he had West Indies and international cricket almost in the palm of his hand, especially the 20/20 version of the game.

    In her cable, whose contents were first disclosed publicly by WikiLeaks and published by the Washington Post, the Ambassador alerted the state department that Stanford's "companies are rumoured to engage in bribery, money laundering and political manipulation" in and outside the Eastern Caribbean.

    The Ambassador's cable and her insights came three years before the United States Securities & Exchange Commission moved against Stanford.

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  7. I'm quite found of Gruyere.

    Yes, Tux, this is one god-damned cynical post.

    There is not one word of it with which I can disagree.

    If I may paraphrase one of my favorite fictional heroes, Jesus -- the lizard-people will always be with us.

    Which is a big part of why WASF.
    JzB

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