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Dear Educator,
This issue simply needs to be addressed, and with no further delay. We are killing people because of unawareness, complacency and vulnerability to psycho-social manipulation. Like it or not, the educator holds the final responsibility; as educators, you know this.
“Basic to all life is the need to seek sustenance and avoid starvation, to seek health and avoid disease, to seek safety and avoid danger... and the best way to make this possible is for life forms to coordinate health with pleasure and damage with pain. To seek pleasure and avoid pain is apparent in all examples of animal life.”(1) We also find a need to know. “The biological pressures to develop curiosity are immense for several reasons, based on the biological drives of self-preservation, reproduction, and greed.”(2)
History shows that drugs will be had at most any cost - people will fight, kill and die for drugs.(3) Drugs are not controlled for the purpose of anybody's health and safety. The extent to which they are controlled relates, in fact, to their history of demand, and thus value. Note the extensive controls on Valium, and then look at alcohol and gasoline. Valium is effectively non-toxic; it was once frequently prescribed to hard-core alcoholics who could use it, to any level of intoxication, without physical damage. Alcohol, with its lesser but significant controls, poses a definite risk to health in relation to the amount consumed. And abuse of gasoline vapor, with basically no controls, is hardly even mentioned, in spite of its threat to health.
Drugs do not cause crime, suffering, hardship and pain. The prohibition and control of something needed causes crime, hardship, suffering and pain, either by those who must take it anyway and/or to those who are deprived. Maybe this explains why the former chief of Scotland Yard's Narcotics Division, upon retirement, immediately went public with a cry to legalize all drugs.(5)
"Amphetamines, taken orally, can be used in excess with unfortunate results; but enormous quantities of oral amphetamines were consumed in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s with apparently little misuse. As late as 1963, indeed, the American Medical Association's Council on Drugs, while recognizing the possibility of misuse, reported that 'at this time compulsive abuse of the amphetamines constitutes . . . a small problem [in the United States].' Much the same finding was reported from Sweden."(4) In the Netherlands, drugs are legally sold at drive through windows, prostitution is legal and the age of consent is thirteen. That probably explains why they have the world’s lowest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and violent crime.
Drugs offer health, relief, strength and endurance - that is why they were discovered and developed. Humans seek pleasure and avoid crime, hardship, suffering and pain in their drive to survive. When Hitler was sweeping across Europe, we discovered his secret, and responded by providing methamphetamine to our troops, too. When John F. Kennedy was under unanimous pressure from his military advisors to start a nuclear war, methamphetamine insured the clarity of mind and increased intelligence with which he safely, effectively and peacefully resolved the threat. And do not forget that this “speed freak” was the first president to really “free the slaves.” Our nation’s founding fathers were practically swimming in alcohol to provide the strength and endurance that birthed this nation. Though our combat pilots use methamphetamine before flying their bombs and missiles on mission, the lowly civilian is arrested for using it to improve his driving ability, a use for which it could at one time be prescribed.
Please remember what science has taught us regarding drug use: Those who abstain from drug and alcohol use constitute the most emotionally and psychologically unstable, disturbed and unhealthy segment of our population, while casual drug users remain the most healthy. This is a documented fact.
Drugs like methamphetamine and "ecstasy" are powerful tools with the ability to provide remarkable benefits unequaled by substitutes in areas such as pain control, emotional issues, cognition, learning and other quality of life concerns.
Methamphetamine remains one of the one-hundred most prescribed drugs in children (cheaper and safer than Ritalin, designed to replace it since meth was not patentable or profitable), and the military hold it in high regard. Take an I.Q. test the next time you are enjoying some meth; you’ll see yours raised 10 to 20 per cent. Meth administration, like Ritalin in young children, results in the development of cognitive skills which remain with that person throughout life. Yet we here complaints of Ritalin "doping" the child, as if it was a sedative! If you doubt the value of meth and Ritalin in children, you need to try one before speaking out. You will discover why that child appears so calm - immersed in though and concentration. And look at the obesity crisis that was once controllable by meth, but now has been turned into a never-ending cash cow for liars and frauds, flapping their arms and legs around in pathetic infomercials, or flapping their lips in lies about useless weeds.
Ecstasy was a venerable and respected tool in marriage and relationship counseling.(6,7) Its empathogenic qualities make it a wonder drug for issues of communication, anger management, social interaction, sexual dysfunction and more. Yet we see nation-wide television ads showing a young lady at a dance party suddenly succumbing to something that looks like exhaustion or sedative/alcohol overdose. Those of us who know the difference between a stimulant and a sedative would chuckle at this example of ignorance if it was not so tragic. ‘E’ has become the drug of choice in Australia, where its use is socially acceptable - and where people are still sociable.
Opiates are also one of our most important tools. Remember that heroin is available, at no charge, to citizens of Great Britain. Great Britain is a nation where police officers are armed with billy-clubs, whistles and radios; only special response units are issued firearms. People drive, raise their children, work and play - and use heroin. And cops do not need guns.
Benzodiazepine sedatives and tranquilizers are amongst the most prescribed CNS medications in America. Though we still ravage our bodies with distilled organic solvents, drugs like Valium and Librium are vilified - though non-toxic and profoundly safer than alcohol.
The outrageous and obscene mind control that has mesmerized and conditioned our people to demand pain, depression, anxiety, anger, violence and despair must be exposed. From our schools, our courts, our governments and our media we must banish lies and deception - we must reinstate truth, free speech and reliability. The sane mind can only embrace and proudly engage the pursuit of new and better drugs to safely provide "pleasure" and relieve "pain."
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Yet California's Proposition 36 has resulted in a policy of forcing drug law offenders to effectively accept religion in return for their freedom. This is accomplished by requiring participation in so-called "12-step programs.” The current system appears to operate under the false assumption that drug use constitutes addiction, by forcing one to define his use as either crime or mental illness.
A friend, sentenced to three years in a correctional facility after failing to complete a court-ordered 12-step program, was subjected to a another program which began with ninety days of isolation from any contact with anyone outside of the facility, and continued with routines that required inmates to actually stand and chant 12-step doctrine. The friend, who does not suffer from addiction, was basically subjected to ritualistic cult abuse, requiring that she admit to the "crime" of addiction, admit to that crime being a life-long, uncorrectable disability, and "turn her life over to a higher power."
By accepting this system as an alternative to punishment, we are making criminals of ourselves. Hypocrisy is not a solution. We are only substituting humiliation, demoralization and destruction of integrity for physical incarceration. And confinement to this "invisible prison" can be a life sentence.
In Big Bear Lake, California, a business known as Operation Breakthrough, with financial assistance from the city, and a huge involuntary client base provided by former judge Syvia Husing, has become the social center in the lives of a remarkable percentage of the population, called their "alumni." One alumnus explains how she "has a three-inch hole in the back of her head where the e-pill scraped off her serotonin." Another explains that the "problem with methamphetamine is that there's other stuff in their that doesn't get across the synapse and just stays there, floating around." Yet another informs us that "alcohol is not really a contributor to motor vehicle related injuries, since more accidents are caused by people who take their eyes ff the road to look up an address r something." "Counselors" teach that "you need to learn to put up with your pain - don't take even one Vicodin because it will start your addiction all over." At one time, hey even contacted every local physician, instructing them to not prescribe Ultram(8) "because it was addictive."
A personal acquaintance is denied the right to see his children unless visitation is supervised by Operation Breakthrough, which has instructed hem to "shun" him, and instructed his ex-wife to require a hair follicle test. In a recent court appearance, his daughter was prepped and coached into a testimony against her father, the message in which came right from the twisted mind of an Operation Breakthrough counselor. This, a case of true child abuse, will soon result in an emotional guilt trauma which will follow that teen through the rest of her life.
We are furiously un-educating, mis-informing and propagandizing our people, effectively at gun-point. The corruption has reached our medical community, where physicians are deceived or forced into operating in direct opposition to the Hippocratic Oath. I know at least one local businessman who took his own life because a well-respected physician became no longer available, and he no longer had access to the Vicodin and sedatives that had kept him sane as he climbed from the streets to a humble success. Since when is the goal of medicine to impose suffering and death? Even some of our benefactors in the anti-prohibition movement are compromising their integrity and credibility as they direct disproportionate attention to marijuana, another “cigarette,” over safer and more powerful drugs like Marinol, benzodiazepines and amphetamines. Truth is truth. It is not something which one adapts to prevailing opinion.
As a society, we are going backwards at the hands of the insane, often cloaked with the excuse of "religious freedom," who deny science, logic and evidence, while embracing voodoo, myth, greed and deceit. Ignorance and abandonment of responsibility has even made fools of our educators when it was discovered that our public school system was endorsing and promoting an anti-drug program, emerging from the Scientology cult, which taught students such nonsense as using a sauna to remove drugs from the body, forcing them out "in the form of colored ooze." Using our schools as a cult-like programming tool, while depriving our students of the capacity to reason, is a tragic and shameful crime, but we "teach" that drug use causes crime! We teach that the billions of dollars spent to incarcerate, injure and kill all over the globe is protecting our lives and freedom! This is as outrageous as non-concepts like "it has to hurt to be good," "if it feels good it is bad" or "natural is better."
It is time for our educators to come forward with the truth. It is time to expose the “myth of addiction.” It is time to really “save the children” - and our future. This is not the domain of the government (though it was intended to be), the media, cults, former addicts, recovering alcoholics or spirits in the sky. This is science, first the domain of educators, and science does not give a damn about the opinions or beliefs of the aforementioned special interests, nor must you - including their purposes of socio-forming and mind control (the absurd concept of “molding”). You out-rank them by virtue of your duty and responsibilities. You are entrusted, especially in elementary schools, with minds that accept what they are told to accept (a condition that resolves around puberty).
Physical addiction, defined by a “withdrawal syndrome” as with heroin, takes about 3 days to overcome, and is about as painful as a bad cold. But consider this:
Those of you raised with religion understand how it feels to be indoctrinated with information you cognitively know is wrong, but cannot be abandoned without the most intense anxiety and emotional consequences. Think about the Islamic mother of your student who tells you that you must destroy the school for the glory of Allah, because the teachers are evil, or forever suffer in torment, even after death. You respond how? “Yeah, right..”
How consider your student, her son. He is hearing this at home, but attends the school and knows you. Are you getting the picture? He believes, but also knows. Catholic, Baptist, Islamic - same story. This is called psychological ADDICTION. It often lasts a lifetime.
When the teacher, the parent, or an authority figure, indoctrinates a pre-pubescent child with any untrue propaganda, "spin," exaggeration, contradiction, lie, "value," or even "opinion,” like telling him “Drug use leads to addiction, loss of work, domestic crises, and crime,” - and that child later witnesses or cognitively derives a contradiction to that indoctrination, for example by using morphine or Percocet after a skiing accident, or using methamphetamine or Ritalin for mood elevation, concentration, et cetera, - you now have the makings of a psychological addiction syndrome, with all the symptoms, or worse, of that person who tries to give up the religion he knows is untrue. The adult is left with pre-pubescent indoctrination (which equals TRUTH) and experience (which also equals TRUTH). And the two truths are contradictory or oppositional. In response to the resulting anxiety, the adult is quite likely to perform as “instructed.”
In the case of religion, the adult human will tend to resolve for the TRUTH of evidence and experience - unless oppositional peer pressure, as in the form of a church congregation, is applied against the evidence. The same goes for the drug issue, with the oppositional peer pressure represented by Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, “12-step programs,” Operation Breakthrough, jails, et cetera.
Look what are youth, when “caught” in the normal, healthy and educational process of experimenting, without a physician's permission slip (which magically makes it different!) are forced to accept in return for their freedom:
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We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
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Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
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Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
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Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
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Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
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Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
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Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
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Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
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Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
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Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
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Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Another acquaintance, stopped for expired registration, was found with seven Vicodin tablets. He suffered from an old shoulder injury, and had accepted them from a friend. He was subsequently arrested and committed to a year at Operation Breakthrough, with bi-weekly urinalyses!
Please address this issue promptly. Share and discuss it with your peers until understanding is uniform and complete. This is your obligation as an educator. Bring it to administration when you are ready to extract their understanding.
Do not allow us to continue punishing our people for exactly the behavior and values that you have been teaching us since the beginning of education history. A big percentage of you would not be alive today if not for drugs. How could anyone not want to experiment with wonderful miracle drugs? Are we insane? This issue, alone, exemplifies just how serious, critical and exacting, and often thankless, are the responsibilities of the educator. From an adult who was raised in doctrine, but educated in science ("Have a questioning mind"), I assure you that your diligence will be remembered. Teach your charges the optimistic truth about the wonders of life; teach them that they will survive, advance and prosper if they experiment and learn the truth in the face of the unknown. This is what they are trying to do, confronted with the outrageous lies and ridiculous idiocy we see spread amongst us.
He who gains control always becomes the ogre. He who climbs to the top by deceit, manipulation or force, immediately becomes a target of those bested. But, with his dirty laundry, compromises, trade-offs and pork barrels, he will soon go down again, and the cycle will repeat. Animal competition insures that only the honest truth will remain a victor.
When you get together in a "think tank" session, try raising your I.Q. ten to twenty per cent with some methamphetamine. Then understand how and why our health, our freedom, our comfort, our strength, our intelligence, our knowledge and our lives, are being taken. Freedom means freedom. Freedom to impose and control is not, nor is freedom to lie and control the public mind. Our instinctive need for freedom alone evidences its importance to survival. The world is growing too small to survive careless rowdiness. We need diligent and responsible minds with pure and sincere intent.
I was born near-blind and with an I.Q. of over 185. From age 15, drugs kept me sane and healthy as I climbed to my own humble success - acquiring a family and building three of Big Bear's Internet service providers. Read what happened to me at the hands of people who needed to fabricate a "drug tragedy" when reality did not serve there purposes. An edited account appears near the bottom of the page at http://b5.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=sbcs.
"If you have not tried drugs, then all you know is hearsay."
With respect, I remain
Dennis R. Hilton DRHilton@officer.com
PMB 152, POB 1989, Big Bear Lake, CA 92315
(909) 878-3056, WD8CNW, Mensa #1037686
References:
1. “Unified Theory of the Nervous System and Behavior,” Philosophy/Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris (http://www.stevenharris.com/theory/040.htm)
2. “Taking Advantage,” Curiosity Killed the Cat: Curiosity and Advertising by Richard F. Taflinger, PhD (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/curious.html)
3. Historical Research on Drug Policy, Schaffer Library on Drug Policy (http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/history.htm)
4. “Enter the Speed Freak,” The Consumers Union Report - Licit and Illicit Drugs by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine (http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm)
5. “Why I want all drugs legalized” by Edward Ellison, Former Head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Drugs Squad (http://legalize.org.il/rashut/ellison-eng.htm)
6. (http://empathogen.wikiverse.org/)
7. “On the Analyst's Couch With Ecstasy,” By Ben Fulton and David Adams, Salt Lake City Weekly. Posted October 6, 2004 (http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/20108/)
8. Ultram (http://www.orthomcneil.com/healthinfo/painmanagement/products/ultram.html)
Additional Resources:
Educators for Sensible Drug Policy opposes criminal prohibition of drugs. Not only does it subject otherwise law-abiding citizens to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment for what they do in private, but prohibition is a proven failure as a drug control strategy. In trying to enforce the drug laws, the government violates the fundamental rights of privacy and personal autonomy that are guaranteed by our Constitution. EFSDP believes that unless they do harm to others, people should not be punished -- even if they do harm to themselves. Unfortunately, our schools are often times the battlegrounds upon which the "War on Drugs" is waged, with our children always ending up the victims. EFSDP is committed to combating the Higher Education Act Amendment, D.A.R.E. in our schools, and the drug testing of students who wish to participate in extra-curricular activities.
The John W. Perry Scholarship Fund provides scholarships for students denied federal financial aid because of drug convictions
In 1929 Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform was founded to rescue America's families and communities from the ravages of ten years of alcohol prohibition. In 2004, after thirty years of a failed "War on Drugs", the tragic consequences of prohibition are back - gang warfare, arbitrary and racially biased enforcement, corruption and broken homes. The Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform has been resurrected to return dignity to school children, responsibility to families and credibility to law enforcement.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy are the young men and women whose names the government uses to justify a war that destroys lives, a war that attempts to attain the unattainable objective of an America free of drugs. We want answers from those that wage war in our name. With hundreds of thousands of Americans behind bars for drug offenses, why are drugs purer and more prevalent? With billions of dollars invested in incarceration and interdiction, why are treatment needs unmet a majority of the time? Why has the government sacrificed our freedom, safety, and health to the Drug War?
After three decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, our court system is choked with ever-increasing prosecutions of nonviolent drug violations and our quadrupled prison population has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. We have imprisoned more than 2.2 million of our citizens and every year we arrest an additional 1.6 million for nonviolent drug offenses - more per capita than any country in the world. The United States has 5 percent of the population of the world but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Despite all that, illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and easier to get than they were 30 years ago. Meanwhile people are still dying in our streets and drug barons continue to grow richer than ever before. This scenario must be the very definition of a failed policy. Current and former members of law enforcement have recently created a new and important drug-policy reform group called LEAP. The membership of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. The stated U.S. drug policy goals of lessening the incidents of crime, drug addiction, juvenile drug use and stemming the flow of illegal drugs into this country have not been achieved. The failed policy of fighting a war on drugs has only magnified our problems but the U.S. still insists on continuing this war and also pressuring governments of other countries to perpetuate these unworkable policies. LEAP believes a system of regulation and control is more effective than one of prohibition.
For the past thirty years Judges have looked on as America’s War on Drugs has played itself out before their eyes. They have seen the inevitable increase in police powers and erosion of civil rights needed to facilitate the asset forfeiture. And they have been forced to impose unjust mandatory minimum sentences. Judges Against the Drug War are finally speaking out.
The The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics is dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of thought in the modern world of accelerating neurotechnologies. Our paramount concern is to foster the unlimited potential of the human mind and to protect freedom of thought.
The November Coalition works to end drug war injustice, the November Coalition, a non-profit grassroots organization, was founded in 1997. Members educate the public about destructive, unnecessary incarceration due to the U.S. drug war.
The The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization working to end the war on drugs. We envision new drug policies based on science, compassion, health and human rights and a just society in which the fears, prejudices and punitive prohibitions of today are no more.
The Open Society Institute (OSI) is a private operating and grant making foundation based in New York City that serves as the hub of the Soros foundations network, a group of autonomous foundations and organizations in more than 50 countries. OSI and the network implement a range of initiatives that aim to promote open societies by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health, and human and women's rights, as well as social, legal, and economic reform.
Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy represents a group of religious leaders both clergy and religious academics who have felt called to speak out on an unpopular and controversial issue: U.S. Drug Policy particularly the "War on drugs" with its unjust and discriminatory laws against drug abusers. These unmerciful and stringent drug laws against users, abusers and sellers have resulted in "cruel and unusual punishment" for people with drug problems...
Veterans for More Effective Drug Strategies favors the return of the drug problem to the domain of the medical profession. The 80-year old effort by law enforcement to resolve America's drug problem has failed and drug-related problems are growing steadily worse. Veterans for More Effective Drug Strategies formed as the US plans to expand our military involvement in the Colombian drug war. This is only one example of the increasingly militaristic nature of drug control efforts within the US and abroad. We call upon the men and women who have served this country so ably in the past to once again volunteer their service and experience to end our foreign involvement in the drug war and to determine a more effective drug strategy for this nation.
The Voluntary Committee of Lawyers is an association of lawyers and judges whose members share strong misgivings about the wisdom and consequences of America's perpetual drug war. While favoring no specific drug control policies, the VCL seeks to promote, within and by the legal profession, informed discussion about the objectives of the drug war and its costs to our cherished institutions of liberty and justice. This is the view of one of our founders, former United States Attorney General, Elliot Richardson. The VCL is modeled after a group of the same name which played a leading role in the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933. VCL members see in modern drug prohibition many of the same harmful and unintended consequences associated with alcohol prohibition. Like our predecessors, we seek to work quietly through bar association committees, encouraging study and discussion of drug policy, especially its impact on criminal justice and Constitutional law. |
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Why I want all drugs legalized
by Edward Ellison, Former Head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Drugs Squad.
As a former drugs squad chief I've seen too may youngsters die. I'm determined my children don't get hooked - which is why I want all drugs legalized.
Seven years of my life was spent in Scotland Yard anti-drugs squad, four as its head. I saw the misery that drug abuse can cause. I saw at first hand the squalor, the wrecked lives, the deaths.
And I saw, and arrested when I could, the people who do so well out of drugs; the dealers, the importers, the organizers. I saw the immense profits they were making out of human misery, the money laundering, the crime syndicates they financed.
They were running a business - a hugely profitable business where mark-ups were immense, where they had a captive market, and where they paid no taxes on their profits.
Later, in the murder squad, I saw the drugs-related killings. And as 'crime manager' of London police stations, I saw the knock-on crime: the muggings, break-ins and burglaries to which addicts resort to pay for their drugs. I had a professional interest in stopping all this.
Now I am retired, I have the strongest of personal vested interests in reducing drug use. I have two children at a vulnerable age and I will do anything in my power to keep them from the clutches of the drug barons, and to keep them from abusing drugs.
So when I now say "let us legalize drugs", I hope I will not be accused of being tolerant of the evils that drugs cause, or soft on the thugs and violent criminals who push drugs, wreck lives, and are imperiling our society.
Suffered
I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And I say legalise drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of business.
I learned one thing in those years: we all pay for drugs. The true cost of every drug deal falls on the public. Muggings, cars broken into, houses burgled - if you have suffered, the odds are that the goods you lost were used to pay for drugs. The money they fetched went into the hands of the drug barons.
More than half the victims of theft are victims of drug crime. The huge profits the drug-pushers make come from your pocket and mine. Everyone who pays increased insurance premiums is doing so, indirectly, for that same reason.
We have attempted prohibition. Police forces used to target the end-user. All that happened was that courts and laboratories became clogged with thousands of cases of small, individual users, and a generation of young people came to think of the police as their enemies. There were no resources left to fight other crime.
In sheer self-defense, senior police then concentrated on the supply chain - the pushers - and tolerated possession. End-users were let off with a caution. It saved court and laboratory time, reduced friction between police and young people, but gave us the worst of both worlds: a high crime rate and high profits for the criminals.
If prohibition is the right policy, why hasn't it worked? drug use is now part of the social life of around half of our children. From cannabis to registered heroin addiction, drug use is growing.
Police and Customs have had their successes but each large seizure they make merely drives up the price on the street, guaranteeing even higher profits for the criminals.
Quite obviously, prohibition has failed.
Demand and supply are increasing. The pushers make profits that are quite obscene. And as the stakes get higher, the violence more vicious. It means attempts to corrupt the legal system, grievous personal injury and even murder.
Why does drug gang violence occur? Because criminals fight to expand their trade and make more money. They have a monopoly business and a captive market: so the only competition is among themselves.
Government of all hues credit 'market forces' with invincible power - yet refuse to unleash that power, or deploy it in the drug fight. Let us use market forces to drive them out of business.
We can take the criminal out of the supply chain, and reduce demand by economic means and by education. We cannot do it by policing. Lord knows we have been trying long enough.
Cowardly
Time and again politicians parrot one phrase: Legalizing drugs is 'unthinkable'. Yet politicians are paid to think. Sadly, their leaders forbid them license to even discuss the matter.
The pushers earn my hatred: politicians who are too cowardly to think, or to promote public debate, earn my contempt.
They forget, those who spout the word 'unthinkable', that drugs like heroin were once legal, and fairly recently too. In the Sixties, clinics were allowed to prescribe to heroin addicts, drugs from reputable, medical sources at prices that were not inflated.
Today, drugs at cost equivalent of £1,000 pound on the street could be produced for the NHS for just £1. That is £999 that would not have to be found by the addicts - in other words, stolen from you. It is £999 that would not go straight into the pockets of crime syndicates.
The benefit to the drug addict would be huge. Getting his drugs from a legal source would access him to counseling, support, therapy - all the things he or she needs to break dependency.
'Legalized cannabis' does not mean 'encourage cannabis'. It means the reverse. I want to see the lowest level of drug abuse, with the least detrimental effect on everyone else.
Legalized cannabis would mean that parents and teachers could discuss it with young people openly, not confrontationally. It means those thinking of using it will get education, not propaganda, and they will be less likely to take it as a gesture of adolescent rebellion. The same applies to the harder drugs.
Ashamed
If reputable companies, of the caliber of ICI, say, were allowed to make and sell these drugs there would be education, knowledge and quality control. The price would plummet.
The criminals would be hit where it hurts them most - in their pockets. Their power-base would be cut from under their feet. They would have no more clients. We would truly drive them out of business.
I abhor drug abuse and criminal activity. I condemn a policy that profits criminals, and I am angered by the drug crimes that effect us all. I am ashamed at the limited resources available to support victims and their families, and I am angered most by politicians who claim to have no licence even to discuss alternatives.
We now have a drug czar, with wide-ranging powers. Keith Hellawell is a man of experience. He has a proper background and broad vision. Let us hope that the politicians will allow him to use it.
October 8, 2004
PRESS RELEASE
A short time ago, the "feedback" page of a web site belonging to the Big Bear Grizzly, the only newspaper in Big Bear Lake, California, was removed due to concerns of "liability." This occurred following the emergence of a site discussion by locals concerned with prohibition and corruption in local governments, courts and the Sheriff’s Department, and after individual censorship of their articles by the paper.
The discussion then moved to HighDesert.com, the Internet discussion forum hosted by the publisher of the Daily Press, the Desert Dispatch, the Hesperia Star and La Prensa del Mojave. Though a poll posted by one member showed near unanimous opposition to prohibition, the firm responded by closing its discussion forums, also. They were re-opened when a post, entitled "The Lights Went Out in Big Bear," appeared on Usenet, and at the discussion site of the Press-Enterprise, a Riverside, California based newspaper.
Recently, Dennis R. Hilton of Big Bear Lake posted a list of anti-prohibition groups to the High Desert site. His account was closed, the messages were removed from the board, and additional access restrictions, including individual approval of each new account were imposed.
It appears that concerns about corruption in San Bernardino County are not to be allowed, even after the FBI investigation of former district attorney Dennis Stout, Sheriff Gary Penrod's loss of the ethics challenge case, the arrest of ex-sheriff Floyd Tidwell, his sons and their families, the Lindesmith Center's report showing that the county has chosen to pervert Proposition 36 into a cash cow for the promotion of the criminal justice system, and a Sheriff's Department that trains its deputies in psychological warfare techniques to "make (suspected) drug dealers think they are going crazy" [quoting deputy Robert Rose].
Mr. Hilton also hosts the "San Bernardino County Speakeasy" and a discussion board addressing issues of drug prohibition and corruption in the notorious governments, courts and law enforcement agencies of San Bernardino County, California.
Censorship and "Mind Control" is alive and well in Southern California. |
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