Winter in 2013 Part 5

The War on Drugs Part 2

Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans accepted the premise that the get "tough on crime" rhetoric was feasible. Today, we live in a new era of time. For over forty years, we have tried the War on Drugs in America. The conclusion (even pronounced or stipulated by the former President Bill Clinton recently) is that the War on Drugs has been a failure in American society. We've focused on mass incarceration instead of treatment for those who unfortunately experience the debilitating condition of drug addiction. Millions of people color, the poor, and even the innocent being in prisons represent the fruit of the War on Drugs. Folks from across the political spectrum like libertarians and even pro-CNP preachers like Pat Robertson disagree with certain aspects of the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs have been so bad that people with even mere possession of marijuana or any controlled substance non-violently can risk sentencing as high as life imprisonment. That's cruel and unusual punishment off the bat. Many organizations are calling for reforms or even radical solutions in response to this nefarious complication. There are proposals from drug legalization to the medicinal usage of drugs. One thing is certainly true though. The current status quo is certainly not what we need. It's been a two party system with the Republicans and the Democrats doing the same thing like Bill Clinton speaking notoriously about the get tough on crime rhetoric. Don't get it twisted, because Bill Clinton is the most famous centrist, DLC type of President in the 20th century hands down. Poverty, lack of economic job opportunities, and discrimination historically has contributed to the War on Drugs (and other such issues in general). President Bill Clinton supported laws that denied even food stamps to folks who were once caught with drugs and other reactionary, caste like policies. Clinton wanted to win back the white swing voters. That is all the more reason for us to fight to eliminate mandatory minimum laws, to end unfair sentencing practices with those with mere possession of drugs, and to end the War on Drugs once and for all. Alternatives ought to be made in place too.

The Sister Michelle Alexander wrote an excellent, new book entitled, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." In this year of 2013, we have an awakening on issues. The union of movements is more revitalized than decades ago. People are passing resolutions in states across America that oppose pro-War on Drugs policies. The truth is as old as the origin of the Universe and as clear as the law of thermodynamics or the Scriptures. The Drug War hasn't been successful in eliminating drug kingpins or lowering drug addiction at all. They can stop and frisk in Brooklyn and Harlem, but never in Cambridge or rich suburbs have (some of these areas have areas with high drug abuse).

 

The Drug War's evils have been exposed by numerous people. Today, we see that the Drug War has been used by the West as a means to militarized Latin America under the guise of free trade. The U.S. government has used hypocrisy (or claiming to be for freedom and be against gun violence, but use military arms in advancing gun violence and even restrict human liberties via fusion centers plus NSA warrantless wiretapping policies globally) as a means to justify this war. The war on Drug has been a war on youth, women, dissidents, and indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Now, we realize the existence of privatized prisons and individuals have been linked to the global drug syndicate with ties to the establishment among many times. The prison system is a revenue maker and even the U.S. military industrial complex has to deal with the large opium crops in Afghanistan. Over 40 percent of America's 2.3 million prison inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes. America is a prison society today. Congress passed legislation that sent harsh sentences for those with mere possession of marijuana. Revenues in the private prison corporations passed the $1 billion mark in 1998 and are now closing in on $2 billion. Two companies dominate the privatized incarceration industry--Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections. These two companies control 75 percent of the for-profit incarceration market--and make huge donations to Cabal lackeys. Tough on crime legislation hasn't work to solve our issues. It has only made obscene profits in the world, especially in the corporate world. There has been detention of migrants where immigrants are exploited to this very day. The more human beings in private prisons, the more money they make. ALEC is an extreme reactionary group that is allied with the private prison industry that advances anti-immigrant legislation as found in certain forms of legislation. Russell Pierce is an ALEC member and he is an Arizona state Senator. He is one of the strongest supporters of SB1070. Other copycat laws in other states regularly advance profit for the prison industry in the USA. A consortium that is made up of Corrections Corporation of America, the Geo Group, and the Management Training Corporation, own over 200 prisons and make a profit of close to $5 billion per year. The Drug War allows itself to be used as a cover for military intervention in other nations. It adds to the military budget. It increases the foreign sales of U.S. weaponry. The Drug War increases the underground market of drugs without seeing radical alternatives to it like treatment programs. The documentary entitled, "American Drug War: The Last White Hope" documented all of the truth as found in the circumstances of the War on Drugs. Our civil liberties have been attack in this war as well. Since 1979, Americans using illicit drugs have gone down. A 1998 investigation of Citibank by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) revealed that Citibank had secretly transferred between $90 million and $100 million of alleged drug money for a Mexican client, using many creative methods to camouflage the movement of the assets. Big banks and drug laundering go hand and hand for long decades in human history.

There has been the issue of drug treatment programs. On many times, these programs haven't been funded adequately. Some individuals who seek help lack access to treatment; they experience insurance barriers, have months of long waits, or participate in programs that don't meet their needs. Some can't even have treatments because of an arrest or a criminal conviction. Almost 40% of people who wanted drug or alcohol treatment reported that they are unable to obtain it, because they had no health coverage and could not afford it. There ought to be an expansion of drug treatment programs as a means to handle the end of the War on Drugs. It should be focused in handling health, safety, and improving quality of life among human beings. Others have advocated heroin assisted treatment, which has been documented to work abroad, but it is still not available in the United States. If more funds were sent to treatment and other health approaches to drug use, then you can save a whole lot of taxpayers' dollars. The effectiveness of reducing drug addiction and likeminded issues ought to discovered on the overdose deaths, amounts of drug addicted human beings, and the transmission of diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. Drug policies ought to be made and judged on the ability to help society, to improve the environment, to build up families, to restore civil liberties, and the elimination of racial disparities in the judicial system. The New Jersey Senate Health Committee unanimously passed a new bill that will expand access to the lifesaving overdose antidote called naloxone. The interesting thing about this development is that this policy witnesses a widespread bipartisan support. Now, the bill comes into the full Senate in the state of New Jersey. Naloxone is a prescription medication that blocks and reverses the effects of opioid drugs like heroin and Oxytocin. Even now, it is normal medical practice for emergency personnel to administer when summoned to the scene of an overdose. Naloxone is only in prescription, so overdose victims regardless lack access to it. S2082 seeks to expand access by providing protection from civil and criminal liability to medical professionals who prescribe the drug and laypeople who administer it. Overdose deaths are a serious issue in New Jersey. This is a great policy since it can prevent human overdose all over the state of New Jersey. Senator Joseph Vitale, the sponsor of the bill in the Senate, says "Drug overdose continues to be the leading cause of accidental death in New Jersey. Each year it surpasses the number of deaths caused by automobile accidents and guns. Expanding access to naloxone will allow this medication to reach its full public health potential and will be an important part of New Jersey's comprehensive efforts to address drug abuse." Patty DiRenzo of Blackwood lost her son, Salvatore, to an overdose when he was 26 years old. "Sal was a beautiful soul who unfortunately struggled with addiction. If the people he was using with on the night he died had access to naloxone, he might still be alive today. Instead, my son was left alone to die. It's extremely important to have policies like this one in place, so that other families are spared the grief that mine has endured." The Opioid Antidote and Overdose Prevention Act has tons of support from a wide spectrum of public health organizations, treatment providers, and advocacy groups like the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence—NJ, the New Jersey State Nurses Association, the National Association of Social Workers—New Jersey, Integrity House, the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry, Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, etc.

Marijuana

My brothers debate me on this issue, because my brothers are more progressive or militant than me on some issues. Yet, I am more progressive than my brothers on this issue or the War on Drugs in general. For a while now, I do now believe in medical marijuana and I believe in ending the War on Drugs in a strong, comprehensive fashion. Of course, I don't believe that children should utilize dangerous drugs recreationally at all from cocaine to meth. A child is still growing physically and physiologically. Such drugs as studies prove can damage a child's potential to be strong, healthy human beings, especially in the long term. I never believe in anyone using drugs for recreational purposes at all. Yet, I believe in executing treatment for those with addiction issues not massive imprisonment for nonviolent drug addicts. The vast majority of Americans according to polls now agree with medical marijuana that is reasonable without extremism. Still, I reject the fear mongering about marijuana. Marijuana's effects are less harmful than those of most other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. According to the Federal Institute of Medicine study in 1999, fewer than 10 percent of those who try marijuana ever meet the clinical criteria for dependence. They found that while 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users do. According to federal data, marijuana treatment admissions referred by the criminal justice system rose from 48 percent in 1992 to 58 percent in 2006. Just 45 percent of marijuana admissions met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for marijuana dependence. More than a third hadn't used marijuana in the 30 days prior to admission for treatment. Marijuana has been shown to be effective in reducing the nausea induced by cancer chemotherapy, stimulating appetite in AIDS patients, and reducing intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma. There is also appreciable evidence that marijuana reduces muscle spasticity in patients with neurological disorders. So, marijuana is less harmful and less addiction than alcohol, meth, tobacco and cocaine. ....

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We know that the War on Drugs have been a huge detriment to our society. It is a war on humanity, because lives have been ruined by the War on Drugs. Even folks like Mike Ruppert, Cynthia McKinney, and the late Gary Webb have exposed the truth that the CIA has been instrumental in the drug trade. California Congresswoman Maxine Water took trips into nations like Nicaragua to investigate the situation. She found and document how some in the CIA are involved in drug trafficking. For example, the CIA provided covert funds for the Kuomintang or the KMT forces that were loyal to General Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT were fighting the Chinese communists under Mao Zedong. Since the CIA wanted to support the KMT, the CIA helped the KMT to smuggle opium from China and Burma to Bangkok, Thailand. The CIA provided airplanes owned by one of the front businesses called Air America. The Kerry Committee report was released on April 13, 1989. It concluded that members of the U.S. State Department provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking. The elements of the Contras themselves knowingly got financial and material assistance from drug traffickers according to the Kerry Committee report. The Drug War was declared by President Richard Nixon back in June 17, 1971. Even before that time, we had alcohol prohibition. It was a failure since violent crime and the murder rate rose 50% between 1919 and 1933, peaking at 9.7 murders per 100,000 populations in 1933, when the country finally decided enough was enough. Alcohol prohibition was gone before the end of WWII. Now, we know that Ron Paul's Austrian libertarianism is nothing more than a repackaging of the neo-Milton Friedman Chicago School of Economics neo-feudalism. So, just because I disagree strongly with the Drug War, doesn't mean that I am a libertarian like Ron Paul. I am an economic progressive. It is a historical fact that USA economy grew greatly when there was a progressive economy. The oligarchs have sponsored libertarian/neo-liberal economic views for centuries. The robber barons and the slaveholders followed massive free trade philosophies indeed. For profit prisons is corporate corruption at its finest. The War on Drugs is directly linked to the prison industrial complex, because the prison system is reliant on criminals to be placed into them for a profit basically. More folks in prison will cause more money sent into the prison industrial complex. This is fully exposed in the 2002 book entitled, "Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation." Draconian drug laws like the Rockefeller laws in NYC are just as harsh as the three strikes laws of California. Some Rockefeller laws can potentially cause a person to experience 25 or even 40 years to life for just selling cocaine. There are those with 10 years for mere possession of cocaine as well. A minority of crime is violence relates while most crime is done by either drug offenses or other forms of criminal activities. It is unfair to allow nonviolent offenders to be in jail in the same realm as rapists, murderers, and corporate crocks. The war on Drugs can cause fathers to be absent from their families and neighborhoods and including mothers too. More mothers are in prisons in increasingly shocking numbers. For mere marijuana possession, individual lives have been ruined with felonies in real life. This is not some fantasy. This is real. We need drug treatment and healing for those who are experience drug addiction. It is wrong for federal agencies to make it difficult for farmers to grow and market industrial hemp. Hemp that is industrialized ought to be made legal. As for the Second Amendment, I believe in civil liberties. I believe that innocent, law abiding citizens should never be restricted of the right to bear arms at any circumstance. That is my view and I will not back down from it at all. It is very hypocritical for anyone to lecture about gun disarmament when they ignore the government's role in using weapons to kill men, women, and children in Vietnam, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, places in Africa, and throughout the Earth. What we need is to end the war on terror and not scapegoat innocent humanity for massive, evil massacres in America. The fake liberals talk about guns, but they want the First Amendment to be violated with the Fairness Doctrine and some of them agree with the NATO war crimes in Libya. I am opposed to military war crimes and police brutality too when they use guns in an inappropriate way. Even the vast majority of Americans favor medical marijuana. We don't jail those with alcohol addiction or those with cigarette addiction. Therefore, those with drug addiction of any drug who is nonviolent ought not to be jailed at all.

The Drug War has been waged in poor communities, especially poor communities of color when people of color are not more likely to sell drugs than the white community. The Drug War never dealt with drug addiction or drug abuse strongly, but reactionary politics (from the Southern Strategy, etc.) as a means to scapegoat the poor plus minorities. This act harmed many of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement as well.

 

Conclusion


One of the biggest lies from the establishment is that we do not have tyrannical laws and everything is okay. The truth is the opposite of that lie indeed. The truth is that we have tyrannical laws on the books now from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act. These laws existed for a long time even before the days of Nixon. Power is readily centralized under the oligarchy. This oligarchy uses military and police power to dominate human beings mentally and physically. From police brutality to the usage of sound weapons against peacefully protesters in Pittsburgh years ago, these acts define extreme, unjustified, and abhorrent police state power. The National Defense Authorization Act or the NDAA makes huge leaps on who can be arrested and detained in the world. Some may be blind to the truth, but we know about the cartel capitalistic clique that is increasing its militaristic imperialism operations. Military suicide rates have skyrocketed in recent years. The Chief of the U.S. Central Command once said that: "...It's fun to kill people..." His name is Marine Corps General James. N. Mattis. He served as a lieutenant colonel in Operation Desert Storm back in 1991, he commanded the first ground troops that went into southern Afghanistan after the 2001 invasion of that country. He led Marines in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In April of 2004 he headed up the first US assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah and helped plan the siege later that year that destroyed the city and killed thousands of its residents. In a speech to Task Force Ripper during Desert Storm, he reportedly said, 'It's the mission of every Marine in the battalion to send one dead Iraqi home to Mama." This is the mentality of many of these egotistical members of the military industrial complex. Also, the government has used informants to illegally spy on fellow citizens for decades. Just look at COINTELPRO to witness the proof of that. War has been used to build up defense armaments and many wars have been fabricated from the start from the Gulf of Tonkin to the yellow cake claims shown in the United Nations. Many wars developed in human history as a contrived process wherefore political and economic purposes are used by those in power. War is a great means of mobilization of profit and it killed millions before including now in our present modern age. When wars come about, many of the elite don't directly participate in the front lines of it. That is why JP Morgan, Jay Gould, James Fisk, William Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, and Andrew Mellon (some of the most powerful men of the 19th century) bought their way of out of the draft during the Civil War. Today, the American Empire is still potent and powerful. The war on terrorism is costing us 6 trillion dollars. Israel's reactionary government (as opposed to geniunely sincere, peaceful Israelis and Palestinians that want real peace in the Middle East. The elite is our enemy not Jewish human beings or Arabic human beings at all) is giving billions of U.S. dollars over many decades, even in military aid. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other reactionary governments in the Middle East (that brutally suppress the human rights of its citizens) receive millions of dollars form us as well. These nations are Western allies. This problem existed long before President Barack Obama was in office, so I want to make that perfectly clear. ....


While I do admire the great family love in the White House, but I will have to keep it real as a man. Not everything are daffodils and rainbows. The Federal Reserve is still not made responsibility for their heavy influence on the economic stagnation that we witness. We have more than 47 million Americans on food stamps. According to the United States Census Bureau, more than 146 million Ameicans are either poor or low income at this point. We have the same unemployment rate as in January 2009, but the unemployment has decreased and jobs have grown. So, I want to make that clear. We have lost more than 300,000 education jobs. Ben Bernanke and other Wall Street oligarchs are responsible for this situaton indeed. Yet, the Tea Party blames economic progressivism for this reality, which is wrong and ignorant. The reason is that Wall Street has record profits and we have huge loopholes in the world. The New Deal isn't responsible for our circumstances, but the decades long policies of globalization, Wall Street hoarding wealth, and other economic regressive policies transpiring in American society. How are corporate profits soaring has to do with the validation of Austrian economics. It doesn't regardless of what Peter Schiff, John Stossel, or what others say. For over three decades, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the super rich, which increased the economic inequality of the world, not just in America. Meanwhile, we shold do something about these things. I have no issue with speaking the truth to power and making the White House accountable for its actions. Yet, we need to have the responsibility as well to improve conditions in our own communities. It can be setting up independent programs to fight poverty, it can be mentorships, it can be unique ways to fight against the scourge of crime, and it can be inspiring especially the younger generation to continue their eyes being focused on the prize (like previous generations have done). We owe a huge debt of gratitude to what our forefathers and our foremothers gave in the cause of liberty and justice. Yet, the struggle continues and our journey isn't over yet. Therefore, it is up to us in the younger generation to carry that bright torch that older human beings have spread. When we shine our light, we can defeat discrimination and any form of social or economic injustices. We can win, but we must fight evil to make sure that righteousness is avaliable in the land. We must advance goodness.

By Timothy