williams@kirk.dec.com (John Williams DTN 223-2163) (09/12/86)
Has anyone considered the possibility that the war on drugs is being staged as a diversion from real government issues like increased military spending? The amount of propaganda I've read in the past two weeks is enough to flood the conscious stream of the average ignorant american. I have yet to see any accurate analysis of the problem. I think it's a diversion, a chance to make the american collective conscious focus on a problem other than the ones the government should be concentrating on, and a chance to obtain more authority. It would be ridiculous to consider this anything less than a political manuever. Most of the problems associated with drugs are due to fact that they are illegal. Again, I resent that the government sees fit to protect me from myself. Their efforts would be better spent documenting the effects of drugs *ACCURATELY*. The current propaganda is such a wave of distortion it makes me want to puke. Reagan is a buffoon. I can't believe what I'm seeing. If this administration weren't so real, it would be a comedy of errors. I guess this means trouble in River City, that's with a capital T, which rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool. Dirty Pool. John Williams decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-kirk!williams PS. Just another case of profiteering in law enforcement. PSS. I do not use illegal drugs.
falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) (09/13/86)
> Has anyone considered the possibility that the war on drugs is being > staged as a diversion from real government issues like increased > military spending? The amount of propaganda I've read in the past two > weeks is enough to flood the conscious stream of the average ignorant > american. I have yet to see any accurate analysis of the problem. > > I think it's a diversion, a chance to make the american collective > conscious focus on a problem other than the ones the government > should be concentrating on, and a chance to obtain more authority. > It would be ridiculous to consider this anything less than a political > manuever. Most of the problems associated with drugs are due to fact > that they are illegal. > > Again, I resent that the government sees fit to protect me from > myself. Their efforts would be better spent documenting the effects > of drugs *ACCURATELY*. The current propaganda is such a wave of > distortion it makes me want to puke. Reagan is a buffoon. I can't > believe what I'm seeing. If this administration weren't so real, it > would be a comedy of errors. > > I guess this means trouble in River City, that's with a capital T, > which rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool. Dirty Pool. > > John Williams > > decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-kirk!williams > > PS. Just another case of profiteering in law enforcement. > > PSS. I do not use illegal drugs. I think all of these observations are true. What I find most disturbing of all is that (in California at least) the government is CONFISCATING land used to grow marijuana. That sounds awfully draconian to me. It reminds me of how the church used to expand its wealth during the Inquisition; by confiscating the property of heretics. A lot of well-to-do but politically weak people were tried for heresy in those days. What also bothers me is the media reports on how dangerous drugs are. They give you all sorts of death rates, and violent crime statistics and so forth, but if you look at them in any detail, you see that these come about *because* of the illegality of drugs. The crimes are almost exclusively due to the "underground" nature of drug dealing. A dealer who gets ripped off can't go to the law for redress, so he resorts to violence instead. This was demonstrated quite well during prohibition which gave us the worst crime wave in history. When prohibition was repealed, the problem vanished as quickly as it had been generated. The government uses a kind of circular logic here. They make drugs illegal, anybody who does drugs is suddenly a criminal, and the government gets to justify it's repression by saying "look at all the crime this drug causes". Now, there are some drugs that *deserve* to be outlawed, at least to sell. I refer to the *very* adicting and debilitating ones such as Heroin etc. I'm not even sure I disagree with the new unbelievably harsh sentences for people who push in schoolyards. But some drugs are so completely harmless that to make them illegal is political repression, pure and simple. In the Child's Garden of Grass, the authors say that alcohol is the official State Drug and marijuana isn't. That about sums it up right there. Marijuana is by *far* the less harmful of the two (alcohol is a neurotoxin, it can cause permanent brain damage, death from overdose, permanent liver damage and is highly addicting). Marijuana laws are nothing more or less than persecution of people who's lifestyles and politics are offensive to conservative lawmakers. p.s. I'm forwarding this to net.rec.drugs and talk.politics.misc. Followups should go there. -- -ed falk, sun microsystems falk@sun.com sun!falk
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (09/15/86)
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist a few months ago had an interesting point on this. The article argued that Reagan was using issues like drugs (that is, issues "no one could argue with") to subtly turn common criminal issues into issues of National Security (eg. Reagan's argument that the fact that drugs are coming across our borders indicates that we have national security problems, the recent interdiction into Bolivia, etc.) With this he has been transferring what we traditionally consider domestic police responsibilities to the military. It is not the first administration that has ventured into this sort of dabbling, in fact it's fairly common (one could argue that Vietnam was this sort of extrapolation, we never declared war.) Of course, that doesn't make it any less disturbing. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. -Barry Shein, Boston University
bobm@rtech.UUCP (Bob Mcqueer) (09/15/86)
> p.s. I'm forwarding this to net.rec.drugs and talk.politics.misc. Followups > should go there. My apologies for continuing in net.general, but this is a topic I would like to see aired on the net. Trouble is, net.rec.drugs hasn't had any news in it here for months. I think several sites, including someone upstream of us, killed this group. talk.politics.misc doesn't exist according to our active file. I guess this is a plea to those sites that squelched net.rec.drugs to view it as a misnamed net.drugs&society rather than net.have-you-done-this- stuff? though there will undoubtedly be elements of both in any discussions arising there. I know net.rec.drugs was raked across the coals ad-nauseum a few months back, and I don't like the thought that I'm triggering another round of it, but I do think that in light of current events it is appropriate for there to be SOME newsgroup for discussion of the interaction of society with various illegal AND legal conciousness-altering substances. BTW, MY followups are directed to net.news.group -- Bob McQueer {amdahl, sun, mtxinu, hoptoad, cpsc6a}!rtech!bobm
abc@brl-smoke.ARPA (Brint Cooper ) (09/16/86)
Please keep this discussion in net.general. Some of us work at sites
funded by public money. At such sites, groups like net.rec..xxx and
talk.xxx are filtered from the users because they are not relevant to
our "official" duties. Yet, many of us may be the first targets of the
latest witch hunt, the likes of which the country may not have seen
since the activity of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy. The group
net.general may be the only way we can discuss how we can protect
ourselves from careless or erroneously performed lab studies and other
attacks on us.
--
Brint Cooper
ARPA: abc@brl.arpa
UUCP: ...{seismo,unc,decvax,cbosgd}!brl-smoke!abcanderson@uwmacc.UUCP (Jess Anderson) (09/21/86)
> In article <937@tekig4.UUCP> maxg@tekig4.UUCP (Max Guernsey) writes: > >In article <7222@sun.uucp> falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) writes: > >>Now, there are some drugs that *deserve* to be outlawed, [...] > >>I refer to the *very* addicting [...] Heroin etc. > [virtues of heroin vs morphine as analgesic edited out] > Heroin is said [...] > to be about as addictive as nicotine [...]. Until the advent of crack, I believe nicotine has had the (I think, deserved) reputation of being the *most* addictive substance known. According to "Licit and Illicit Drugs," published a number of years ago by Consumer's Union (hardly junkies themselves :-), most people who become nicotine addicts (here speaking of smokers, not dippers) are addicted by the third cigaret. BTW, I believe the drug discussion merits its own talk group, as it will become a major focus in the months and years ahead. I'd like it not to get lost amid the other political, legal, social, and medical topics. Also BTW, I cast one vote for total legalization of *all* substances, an appropriate government-sponsored system of nonthreatening clinics, an appropriate tax-supported system of honest and open drug research (distinct and with an obviously different purpose from the pharmaceut- icals industry), a tax-supported, full-disclosure drug education and awareness system, a long-term social development program that seeks to minimize substance abuse by addressing contributing social/economic factors, a conscious, deliberate effort as an matter of public policy to maintain the cost of all drugs at a price that makes it unprofitable (price supports from the public purse as needed) for organized crime to be involved, and I believe all of this can very easily be paid for by a minor reduction in enforcement budgets. In short, people have always used substances that affect their consciousnesses, and I believe they always will. We should promote the safer ways of doing so, tell our people the truth, put crime out of business by underbidding them, and divert the funds now used for (utterly fruitless) drug enforcement be used to defray most if not all of the associated costs. -- ==ARPA:====================anderson@unix.macc.wisc.edu===Jess Anderson====== | (Please use ARPA if you can.) MACC | | UUCP: {harvard,seismo,topaz, 1210 W. Dayton | | akgua,allegra,ihnp4,usbvax}!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson Madison, WI 53706 | | BITNET: anderson@wiscmacc 608/263-6988 | ==The sage acts without choosing.=========(Chuang Tsu)======================
jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) (09/22/86)
Excuse the followup to net.general. In article <3874@brl-smoke.ARPA> abc@brl.arpa (Brint Cooper) writes: >Please keep this discussion in net.general. Some of us work at sites >funded by public money. At such sites, groups like net.rec..xxx and >talk.xxx are filtered from the users because they are not relevant to >our "official" duties. Net.general is not a catch-all - it is intended as a forum for items of interest to the ENTIRE user community. If you WERE to choose a newsgroup for this purpose, net.misc might serve better. In any case, if a site chooses not to carry a particular newsgroup - that is their prerogative, and you are free to seek employment elsewhere. Please do NOT clutter up newsgroups that you CAN receive with inapproprate junk: The whole point of the newsgroup system is to allow users to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to discussions that they are (un)interested in. Would you prefer it if your employer chose not to receive "net.general" anymore because of the volume of "drug related" traffic?! If you want to discuss a topic, and your site does not receive the approprate group, either 1. start a mailing list, 2. petition your employer, or 3. subscribe to compuserve (or any other pay Bulletin Board service) that allows any access you want (since you are paying for it).
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (09/29/86)
From: 6106728@PUCC.BITNET (Keith Mancus) > I strongly recommend ignoring anything said by the Bulletin of the Atomic >Scientists (as far as I know there are no REAL scientists on the bulletin). I presume "as far as I know" is meant to cover complete ignorance. I read among the Sponsors: Hans Bethe, S. Chandrasekhar, Linus Pauling, Jerome B. Wiesner among others. The 5/86 issue has articles by James W. Cronin (Nobel Prize, Physics, 1980) and a column by Victor F. Weisskopf (Institute Professor of Physics, emeritus, at MIT, former Director General of CERN.) The 8-9/86 has articles by Michael McCally, professor of clinical medicine, U. Chicago, Herbert Abrams, professor of radiology, Stanford University (and a member-in-residence of the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control.) I believe it is you who has been discredited. -Barry Shein, Boston University