Please Take This With a Grain of Salt (or two)
The first half of this post will be an assessment of mine about the drug associations of America, which should be as hopefully thought-provoking as my racism posts. The other half will be my own personal take on the "War on Drugs", which will probably make Richard Belzer shit a solid gold brick if he ever reads it.
Ahem,
The drug policies America seems to exercise are done for a primarily pre-emptive reason than anything else. Here in Montana, if you are caught with a large enough quantity (and "large" is a misnomer right there) you can get sentenced to life in prison without parole. That means that technically, you can commit infanticide and still stand a chance of getting out before senility sets in; not the same with marijuana. Like Tommy Chong, they want to "set an example" to other people who may get the idea of trying the substance that they're better off not doing it.
It's very similar to the "free will" concept of religion: "Oh you can CHOOSE to use free will for your own purposes and not for Me...but if you know what's good for you"...that sort of thing.
There is plenty of evidence, most of it collected by the federal government's OWN research branches to indicate that marijuana is probably the LEAST harmful narcotic indulged by humans for recreation; in fact, the primary threat comes from smoking it, and inhaling carbon dioxide. Research has indicated that the human brain possesses neurotransmitters called cannibanoid and nicotine receptors that allow the chemicals to act psychoactively on the mind (I wish I could remember the names, but there were so many degrees of sub-categories in which they existed I had to write them down). The psychoactive results of marijuana intake are sedating and euphoric, as opposed to violent, belligerent and often nauseating reactions with alcohol.
The "gateway drug" theory is only partial bullshit. The way I see it, marijuana can have an addictive effect if you have a dependent personality. For example, we know from addiction research that the body adjusts to narcotic substances, which is why heroin users never get the same high as they did the first time when their bodies weren't ready. Certain people, myself included, have the behavioral properties to indulge in things so frequently that they become inured to the drug's effect, and pursue more powerful substances to bring them to the next level. But this doesn't seem to effect everybody, only certain individuals. It is likely due to a combination of genetic traits and psychological wiring...but science still has to find out the particulars.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that virtually every aspect of human stupidity has its roots in cultural or social foundations. Marijuana only became illegal in the States sometime around the 1940s and 1950s (the exact date went the way of my notebooks--M.I.A.), around the time that racial tensions started getting increasingly heavy. At the time, it was the recerational drug of choice for Blacks and Hispanics, probably due to the fact that marijuana naturally grew in the Southern hemisphere, where the migrations of indigenous peoples brought it stateside through Mexico.
The recreational drug of choice in European cultures was spirits, or alcoholic beverages. European culture eventually became American WHITE culture, and we already know how both felt about Africans and Hispanics. So when the race riots began, the prevalence of marijuana possession among arrested ethnic rioters lent to the belief that it was causing "those people" to get out of hand. Never mind the fact that alcohol was causing white people to act even worse than their second-class citizens, or that the real scourge in the underworld was heroin, marijuana was the culprit to them. And when preliminary testing revealed its psychotropic properties, the coffin was sealed.
The demonizing of it really took hold during the 50s, when square America feared that it's clean-cut white kids would take up the habit of smoking "************-weed" and the educational films we make fun of today became a staple. Later, it was discovered that economic straits, rather than marijuana was the cause of Black and Hispanic unrest...but by then, too much of the national political structure depended on that problem to fix it.
There's also the theory that Howard Hughes instigated its prohibition beacause he was afraid that hemp would threaten his paper industry, which is a bit of a stretch, but when you consider how auto makers bought out and dismantled the public transit system of Los Angeles to sell more steel and rubber products in the late 40's...you never know.
There is an excellent book called Smoke & Mirrors by Dan Baum that details this emergence in beautiful detail...although it's been several years since I've read it.
Now here's my personal take on things.
The "War on Drugs" has been a disaster because it is all political. Within the last 50 years, the poltics of America have become a much more pure example of American bias. Leaders are chosen because of their track records; we PICK leaders by how much they represent the ideal of American values...not by how effective or insightful they may be. The War on Drugs is a cash cow for both Republican and Democratic parties alike.
Think about it: the amount of deaths resulting from marijuana consumption could probably fit on a pamphlet or a brochure. The amount of deaths as a result of alcohol consumption (alone) could fit in a filing cabinet the size of Alaska. Yet alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. This is more than likely a result of the influence of Euro-centric (a.k.a. "white") culture on national politics...think of how much influence alcohol has on European culture and social interaction and you may get an idea.
By 1930, the government figured out that its 10-year Volstead Act was a bust because making alcohol illegal didn't stop people from drinking it or illegally selling it, it just got more people arrested and cost more money. The same is true with the ban on marijuana...but even after 50 years, the government is still insisting that it is doing the "right" thing, just as the Temperance Unions did before Prohibition. But today it's for different reasons.
Think of how many people are employed by the DEA. Think of how many programs and under-the-counter deals the government may have with the governments of under-developed countries on drug trafficking. Think of how marijuana profits dwarf the legal American earning wage. And also, think about how many votes polticians get by fighting the "War on Drugs"; all those arrests need prisons to house the inamtes...that means lucrative contracting deals with construction companies to stimulate local AND personal enconomic growth. Now imagine what would happen if marijuana just STOPPED being illegal...that's a LOT of money and jobs and votes lost. The federal and local governments got a good thing going with illegal weed...lots of programs to bring in finance.
In a sense, it's probably a good thing that weed is illegal. If it WAS legal, it would have to be licensed, taxed, and worst of all, MANUFACTURED. Remember what happened with tobacco when it started being mass produced? The crops had to be sprayed with nictoine to kill the beetles and the industry chemicals got into the finished product...at least now weed is homegrown with no chemicals...the government might change that for its own gain.
Finally, the "War" on drugs gets me. A war has casualties; firefights; destruction; conflict. I don't see gunfights between DEA agents and cartels on the waterfronts with AK-47's and RPGs; I don't see mass graves being dug for dead drug dealers or blood running waist-deep in the sewers. THAT's a war...and until they want to fight it that way, call this what it is...a "campaign" against drugs.
Besides, if we can wage war on and invade Iraq under questionable reasons, then we should be able to do the same to Columbia for REAL reasons: the documented evidence of the drug trade from Columbia to the U.S. and the legitimate threat it poses to us.
Phew! That's it for me....your guys' turn.
