Lies and myths about opiates, yet another scam

[Nielsio]

Lies and Myths About Opiates
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/cousins1.html

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Addiction or choice?

Dalrymple’s case is that there is an almost universally held, conventional view about heroin addiction that is wrong in almost every particular but nevertheless is maintained in the face of countervailing evidence for various self-serving reasons.

His heretical position is as follows: It is not actually particularly easy to become an addict by using heroin – it takes some effort over a period of time. Being an addict is not primarily a medical issue, but rather a spiritual or psychological one, because withdrawal is actually not a particularly hard, drawn-out, or hazardous, process. (It is equivalent in terms of physical discomfort to a mild case of flu, at most, and holds no physical dangers.)

Those who want to stop taking heroin simply do so (and many do), and if they continue to want not to take heroin they have no difficulty in abstaining from its use. Those who relapse are simply the ones who seek its recreational (or escapist) benefits. The received opinion that heroin withdrawal is a nightmarish process, impossible for most without assistance, is simply a lie, perpetrated by addicts themselves, who seek justification for their own lack of willpower and dramatization of their condition, or to inveigle people in authority into supplying them with the drugs they want.

The lie is willfully maintained by those whose employment and status depend on the fiction that addiction is a medical condition and by those who don’t wish to appear unempathetic to people society designates as “victims.” The false view of heroin addiction rests on a long and highly influential Western literary tradition, stretching from Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge down to Irvine Welsh and Melvin Burgess today. In addition to the false view of addiction, this tradition carries the equally false and equally self-serving romantic nonsense that drug use leads to artistic inspiration or insight. Heroin addiction does not “cause crime.” Rather, the kind of people who are addicts (at any rate, the ones Dalrymple has encountered) are predisposed to criminality anyway.

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War on drugs scam

The state can exist because people believe that it's needed.

In the case of drugs, huge amounts of money is transfered from the taxpayer to all the state people who keep themselves busy with this 'problem'. Police, army, lawmakers, politicians, lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, prisonguards, and a ton of private (special) interests who supply these people with products (prisons, guns, suits, cars, motorcycles, security cameras, state buildings, etc) and services (consultants, financial services, training, interior decorators, gardeners, etc).

People don't want the war on drugs. How do we know? If all families in the United States were sent a cheque of $2000 each year, that they could pay if they wanted to, then the whole thing would last about a week tops, and drugs would quickly seize being made illegal.

But within the state and tax structure that now exists, the myth mentioned at the top of the page needs to be put forward (in schools, advertisements, talk shows, movies, books, newspapers, party line thumping professors, etc), otherwise the scam could never be pulled off. And because of all the interests involved in the tax spending, the only way that this state activity in this area could ever diminish is through absolute non-acceptence of the general public. To the point of revolt, or if the body of politics and bureaucrats can find a way to putting the end of the drugs scam into their own personal advantage.

But that ofcourse is very very dangerous. And all the workings of the state as it has evolved will always work against people getting into power who oppose these things. No, the role of public figures and positions of power is always to further these interests. That's what they're there for.



Some Wikipedia snippage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade
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U.S. Government involvement

The U.S. government is the most vocal opponent of the drug industry and it has set the de facto international standards regarding the legality and illegality of different drugs. Despite the US government's official position against the drug trade, US government agents and assets have been implicated in the drug trade. [6] [7] [8]

Oliver North and Barry Seal were caught and investigated during the Iran-Contra scandal, implicated in the use of the drug trade as a secret source of funding for the USA's support of the Contras. Page 41 of the December 1988 Kerry report to the US senate [9] states that "indeed senior US policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contra's funding problem".

Highly decorated US military Special Forces veteran, Colonel Bo Gritz (retired) has accused the USA of collaborating with and supporting Manuel Noriega in his drug trafficking operations. In his book Called To Serve, Gritz details his role as a key US Government employee tasked with protecting the USA's relationship with Noriega.

Additionally, the Venezuelan news media seems to give considerable attention to exposing CIA connections to the drug trade, especially when those operations pass through Venezuela. In contrast, the mainstream American news media tends to avoid publishing such information until after the Venezulan and European news agencies have already made the information widely known outside the US.[citation needed]

Counter to its official goals, the US has been known to attempt to suppress research on drug usage. For example, in 1995 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) announced in a press release the publication of the results of the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken. However, a decision in the World Health Assembly banned the publication of the study. In the sixth meeting of the B committee the US representative threatened that "If WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed". This led to the decision to discontinue publication. A part of the study has been recuperated[1]. Available are profiles of cocaine use in 20 countries.

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[BCPVP]

Here's a show the History Channel did on illegal drugs and how they got that way (this is part 2 IIRC, which is about opiates). There's two more episodes also:
Amphetamines
Cocaine and Crack

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People don't want the war on drugs. How do we know? If all families in the United States were sent a cheque of $2000 each year, that they could pay if they wanted to, then the whole thing would last about a week tops, and drugs would quickly seize being made illegal.

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That sounds like quite an exaggeration. I think most people want the war on drugs for various reasons and giving them $2K wouldn't do much to overturn that. Other than this point, good post.

[Nielsio]

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People don't want the war on drugs. How do we know? If all families in the United States were sent a cheque of $2000 each year, that they could pay if they wanted to, then the whole thing would last about a week tops, and drugs would quickly seize being made illegal.

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That sounds like quite an exaggeration. I think most people want the war on drugs for various reasons and giving them $2K wouldn't do much to overturn that. Other than this point, good post.

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This is what I meant: if individual families want to support the 'war', then they can choose to pay $2000 for it (the idea is that your will is translated in paying for things or not paying for them; how else can your opinion be worth anything if you have to pay for things either way?). I've used this example before, but for foreign wars of aggression (but then $20K per month).

[BCPVP]

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People don't want the war on drugs. How do we know? If all families in the United States were sent a cheque of $2000 each year, that they could pay if they wanted to, then the whole thing would last about a week tops, and drugs would quickly seize being made illegal.

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That sounds like quite an exaggeration. I think most people want the war on drugs for various reasons and giving them $2K wouldn't do much to overturn that. Other than this point, good post.

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This is what I meant: if individual families want to support the 'war', then they can choose to pay $2000 for it (the idea is that your will is translated in paying for things or not paying for them; how else can your opinion be worth anything if you have to pay for things either way?). I've used this example before, but for foreign wars of aggression (but then $20K per month).

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Ah, I see. I misunderstood. Carry on.

[bobman0330]

My aunt used to be a prison nurse, and she told me that whenever heroin addicts were brought in, they would leave them in the cells to get through it because there was no physical danger. But heavy alcoholics had to go to the infirmary because they might die of withdrawal.

[HeavilyArmed]

While most libertarian arguments are compelling, they tend to ignore the externalities of things like legal drugs and there are many. Personal liberty is not a universal trump.

For many years I thought that drug legalization was so obvious (at least to a daily user) as to be beyond argument. Now, not so much. It seems clear to me that all of society takes a hit, though the individual effects tend to be small. Deviancy is defined downward, something that must be fought.

[Nielsio]

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While most libertarian arguments are compelling, they tend to ignore the externalities of things like legal drugs and there are many. Personal liberty is not a universal trump.

For many years I thought that drug legalization was so obvious (at least to a daily user) as to be beyond argument. Now, not so much. It seems clear to me that all of society takes a hit, though the individual effects tend to be small. Deviancy is defined downward, something that must be fought.

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Do you have anything clear to say about the scam or not?

[hmkpoker]

What people don't realize is that heroin is not nearly as bad as they're told it is. Most individuals, when exposed to a hard opiates, don't turn into addicts. It's really only people with genetic predispositions to addictive behavior, and it so happens that those are the most likely individuals to try heroin, who then become highlighted in D.A.R.E. classes to brainwash people against them (so we see a disproportionately large number of people becoming addicted).

The fear that ending the War on Drugs will cause society to fall apart is demonstrably ridiculous. Right now, nearly every middle school kid in America is readily aware of the fact that they can very easily, legally and cheaply obtain toluene or benzene fumes that produce euphoria. These "drugs" produce a high that is addictive, and is inseparable from the nerve damage they produce, and are high candidates to kill the child in one sniff. The reason is because the actual dangers of the drug itself are a greater deterrent to using them than the legal penalties. That's why everyone isn't addicted to DXM right now.

The only reason the War on Drugs exists is so Merck and Pfizer can enjoy a 10,000% markup on the products protected by their tax-funded monopoly. In a free market, your oxycontin wouldn't cost any more than your advil, and no child would be killing himself by huffing glue.

[Skidoo]

The war on drugs is a fraud, so government should be abolished?

[bobman0330]

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The only reason the War on Drugs exists is so Merck and Pfizer can enjoy a 10,000% markup on the products protected by their tax-funded monopoly.

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