When it comes to the politics and culture of drugs, we are indeed special—or at least dramatically different from the rest of the Western world. Too often, however, we are special for the wrong reasons.
Americans are more likely to try illegal drugs than anyone else in the world, according to global survey data from the World Health Organization.A higher percentage of Americans have tried marijuana than the Dutch. A higher percentage of Americans have tried Cocaine than the Colombians. America apparently has a higher percentage of people who are high than any other country. And a higher percentage of people incarcerated for drug-related crimes.
Everything is different in America, including drug usage and addiction.
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When it comes to the politics and culture of drugs, we are indeed special—or at least dramatically different from the rest of the Western world. Too often, however, we are special for the wrong reasons.
As opposed to all those occasions when we're special for the right reasons, one is left to suppose.
01. We Try More Drugs Than Anyone Else
That's probably because 1) drugs are expensive & 2) Americans have more disposable income.
For a large part of the world, alcohol is the recreational drug of choice, and, as the article points out, we're way down the list on alcohol.
Everything is different because there's more money, more free time, and more freedom than anywhere else so higher highs and lower lows.
It's not a surprise that free people would make use of mood-altering practices, but that they would continue to once the results start robbing you of your freedom. I have no problem with people getting high on whatever, in fact I often really enjoy such company, but when it starts making your decision for you, then you have installed your own personal dictator. Slay them bitches as soon as they raise their controlling heads.
And America was founded on the promise of "... the pursuit of happiness!"
Drug usage is a terrible problem.
Personally I think it should be legalized. It would end most of the crime problems and violence that plagues so many urban areas. Legalize it and tax it.
If somebody wants to use drugs they are going to do it. No matter what you do. It's a shame but it's true.
I think part of the problem is that America has at times glorified the drug culture. Look at the rock stars who have become addicts, some of whom have allegedly recovered.
Heck, Cheech and Chong movies made weed use both hip and funny. Tommy Chong later spent time in a federal prison on drug-related charges.
The other problem is the drugs are everywhere. In America, even in green, leafy suburbs drugs are easily available. Heck, in the county where I live some high schools are now drug testing athletes for heroin and cocaine, something many parents asked for after a few high school kids died of heroin overdoses.
Pot legalization is just the first part of the move to legalize everything.
Just as pot is a gateway to harder drugs ....the legalization of pot is the gateway to the legalization of harder drugs.
Personally I think it should be legalized. It would end most of the crime problems and violence that plagues so many urban areas
I disagree. Legalized drugs means that more addicted users (who will not be hired by any business because of their addictions) will have to commit more crimes to find more money to pay for their drug use.
It's a hard fact.
But Darwin must be served.
Legalized drugs will make it easier to keep a handle on those who use it. They can subsidize the hapless drug addicts until they die from their drug use.
There will be a black market and crime just as their is in cigarettes. But it will be a hell of lot less than what goes on now.
It would be hard cruel medicine. But it could work.
It is coming. The pot legalization was just the first step.
Interesting post. On the money as well, based upon my own observations. My opinion, keep it all against the law. I fought the law a few times and I won...that is not a permanent status. Yanowhadahmeen?
I've saved as a text file the rest of what I thought I'd say...because it embarrasses me a bit and maybe it isn't needed.
Meanwhile tobacco addicts are forced to indulge their habit in the cold wet outside,so they can be shamed properly.
One of the reasons why I respect religious people is some of them actually make the effort to offer people a workable alternative to recreational drugs.
I think part of the problem is that America has at times glorified the drug culture.
It ain't just drug use that gets glorified.
Bad influences abound.
Ampersand...I am an ex-smoker (lung cancer convinced me to quit) but I agree with you...no reason to not have smoking areas in bars and other recreational places. Fucking A certain it was the 55 years of Camels and Winstons, at 3 packs per day, that got me, not some second hand crap from Dudley Do-Right's Newports or whatevah :-)) Just saying....
BTW...when I quit all the non-smokers and ex-smokers told me I'd soon lose the urge to smoke, the craving, etc. They are ALL FUCKING LIARS.
Two years plus now and not a day goes by I don't reach up to my left shirt pocket, not a day goes by that I don't think about how much I enjoyed smoking. It's like fucking 20 something women...in my 70's that don't happen often either! :-))
OTSS? Only the strong survive? Nope.
Hard drug addicts don't generally pay taxes. The money they do have goes to fund their addiction. So, end result: little tax benefit + expanded illegal market but with increased War on Drugs interdiction efforts (gotta protect that government revenue stream, such as it is) = more misery, more wasted lives, more wasted money. Crisis! A government solution will be presented and all the addicts and the rest of the idiocracy will vote for it. Addiction is a disease! These poor people need their medicine! Then the rest of us will have to pay for the heroin and coke and meth forever.
I quit smoking 10+ years ago. The heavy withdrawal symptoms lasted about six months. The urge to light up,maybe 3 years.
My Dad is 94 and still chain smokes.
Wadda ya gonna do?
About a year ago I was waiting to pay for my gas. The woman ahead of me asked for a carton of cigarettes.
The clerk says that'll be fifty dollars. I actually yelped,like Maynard G. Krebs.
The tax money is from the industries that sell the drugs not from the addled losers who take them. There will plenty dabblers. If it messess up their lives...tough shit.
We can only hope that letting them have legal drugs will let them kill themselves faster with less collateral damage of kids being shot in drug related drive-bys.
Harsh and cruel but effective. Darwin must be served.
I believe in freedom. You should be free to kill yourself with drugs if you like that kind of stuff. If you do you are just a loser and good riddance.
Just as you should be free to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.
Someone told me the feeling you get with nicotine withdrawal is the same as when you lose your best friend.
I started taking Saint John's Wort to get over the depression. In my case it really helped.
People should be free to fail, spectacularly if they so desire. Just not at my expense.
Personally I think it should be legalized. It would end most of the crime problems and violence that plagues so many urban areas. Legalize it and tax it.
I was inclining that way, until I heard how full-bore cheerleader NPR went for Colorado and now Washington's "marijuana industry". The way they're going on, you'd think it was the second coming of Silicon Valley.
Trooper said....
We can only hope that letting them have legal drugs will let them kill themselves faster with less collateral damage of kids being shot in drug related drive-bys.
Maybe that's the answer...let them kill themselves off.
Or just find them and shoot them in the skull with a .45 ACP and be kind.
Amartel said ...
People should be free to fail, spectacularly if they so desire. Just not at my expense.
Amen.
And not on my block either.
Haz, at 1:37 nailed it.
AllenS...yes, Haz did. Sad isn't it?
I am ashamed that I cannot explain my first reaction to the photo accompanying this post. It is simple: just shoot the mf'r, put "it" out of "its" misery.
Oh, boo hoo...BLAM!
PS: I've hauled enough addicts and drunks to the VA hospital... my sympathy has been used up. None left. BLAM!
Aridog, it's a heart breaker.
Stopping an addiction is easy. Just fucking stop it.
Stop!
Banging on about how hard addictions to quit is is part of the addiction. Stop it, I said.
It is actually much harder to keep up an addiction than it is to simply stop it.
You had to make sure you always had a cigarette, always had back up cigarettes. The planning alone is effort.
You had to have matches or a lighter to go with that. Always had to plan for having a lighter. Planning for both cigarettes and lighter. That is actually quite difficult to do.
You always had to make sure there is an ashtray around. "Pardon me sir, do yo have an ashtray? Is there an ashtray around here somewhere?"
Cigarette, ligher or match, ashtray, planning, planning, planning, consuming so much of your day.
Plus you had to make sure you have cash for those things. Or your card with you. Jesus Christ the effort put into smoking is incredible.
Stopping however goes like this: schwiiiiiiing -- done. Just like that.
So what if you keep reaching for your front pocket whenever you seat yourself and buckle up. schwiiiiiiiing -- gone. Just like that. No more planning. No more burnt upholstery. No more burnt clothes. No more smelling like shit. No more foul breath. No more coughing. No more bringing up phlegm. No more smoker's voice. No more being a stinky outcast.
And when you do quit, that world ends. That whole world ends for you. You are transported to a different planet altogether, one where nobody smokes. And when you see somebody smoking it's like, holy shit, people still do that? How odd. Don't they know that world ended? Apparently not.
Yesterday a man asked me for a cigarette and I'm all, "What?"
I'm thinking to myself, "Is he fucking kidding me?" See? Even my private thinky-thoughts have fucking Tourette's.
And he had the worst complexion too. Oi. But that was booze, mostly. Red pitted nose, the whole bit.
I considered buying him a pack of cigarettes, just to be stupid, just to be evil, just to hasten his imminent end. Just to join in the no-class street-unwise dummkopfery.
Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, huck ptewey, call me an am-balance, get me to the V.A. cough, cough, cough, hack, ugh, huck, huck- ptewy. *ping*
Pot is not a gateway drug. That's nonsense.
My parents had more drugs around the house than you can believe. In every cabinet in every bathroom, in other rooms besides, whole drawers full.
Photos of mum after her hysterectomy show a woman with darkened mad-woman eyes. Jesus, they're frightening. A different person altogether. She apparently had every aliment known, and she didn't throw away old drugs either. They were like a drug collection. When dad assembled his drugs, mum would automatically assemble her drugs to demonstrate she is not to be outdone. It was ridiculous. And then they asked me in intonations of deep concern, "Chip, do you use drugs?"
Some additional information....I live in a 100% suburban county. Not much poverty, some pockets of high wealth, but otherwise mostly middle class. My wife taught in a nearby high school for 40+ years.
We are seeing a shocking number of deaths due to heroin. And an equally shocking amount of cocaine/crack addiction. All of the EMT rigs in our county are now supplied with Narcan to treat overdoses.
The local police and county sheriff say the same thing: Teens are prescribed pain relievers because of athletic injuries, then become addicted to them, especially to oxycontin. Oxy is expensive and relatively difficult to get, so the user is introduced to heroin, which is cheaper and readily available.
Some low-level seller of heroine drives into the city and meets a dealer, then returns to the 'burbs with enough for some local users. It happens weekly, sometimes several time each week. Then someone dies, and everyone clams up lest the supply comes to an end.
One of my wife's close friends was shocked when her 18 year old son's friends called her one night from an ER to tell her that her son has overdosed. He lived. His family spent all their retirement money and a good deal more to pay for a year at an inpatient rehab facility. Heroine is damn near impossible to kick.
They found out that he started taking oxy when he was 16. He was buying it from friends, stealing it form other friends. buying it form a local banker, from a restaurant owner, from a school guidance counselor, and so on. That became too expensive, so he started using heroin. He had kept his addiction hidden for nearly a year. Close family, and so on, but the parents just had no idea. Until he missed death by a few minutes.
I understand the whole libertarian thing - just let them use drugs and Darwin and God will sort it out. I think that's bullshit.
We have laws against driving drunk so that the drinker/driver will not harm others or himself. If you think the drug users should be able to buy and use drugs without consequence (other than death), you's also have to libertarian enough to abolish drunk driving laws, right? Let people use what they want to use, then go driving. If something happens, hey, Darwin.
Until it happens to someone you know and love.
Haz, I live about 40-50 miles from the Twin Cities (MN) and we have a bunch of young people ODing on heroin around here.
It's hard to believe. Pot smoking, sure, drinking too much, sure, but HEROIN? It's hard for me to comprehend this desire that young people have for this drug.
WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY KILL THEM.
Allen - Heroin damages the brains dopamine receptors AT THE FIRST USE causing the brain to become instantly addicted. The bodily addiction soon follows.
And the first dose isn't usually delivered by injection - usually it's just snorted, the way ground-up oxy is snorted.
And as we post our comments, the open borders are allowing into the US thousands of gangbangers, mostly drug dealers.
Fucking politicians.
I'll tell you what bothers me - that is faux graffiti which uses all upper case letters save the "i". That's just bogus.
Glad I could get that off my chest. Now where did I leave my crack pipe?
The Darwin thing isn't that good an idea because people reproduce before they die.
Sixty, in my regular printing I usually use the small i when using all capitals...that's how I roll.
When I was young, I tried all the available drugs with the exceptions of LSD and heroin. I thought that there might be a pharmaceutical cure for the sorrows of young Werther. No such luck. Amphetamines were kind of fun, but that was mostly because they enhanced and prolonged the pleasurable sensations of being drunk. I never worried too much about drugs. I thought hard liquor had my number. It was a family tradition. My father, his father, and an uncle drank themselves to death so I figured it was just a matter of time before I hit skid row.. I certainly had a taste for hard liquor, and I'm not famous for my character and self control, but, even so, the etoh addiction switch misfired in my case. It looks like I'll go to my death as a teetotaler. I spent my life dodging an abyss that wasn't even a pothole.
I deleted an earlier comment of mine that might have given context, but will make the observation that some observations here are, well, mired in the 1600's. REAL drug education, of which I have witnessed little in the past 66 years, would shed light. But we shan't see that, ever, for a multitude of reasons.
It's a small front in a moralistic war, drugs. I'm more worried about why people pull a certain voting lever, even those who have the ability to know better... just like a 'drug user' seeking a fix.
I had a friend who was more a party animal than an addict. He was a smoker who occasionally mixed placidyl and liquor. It wasn't even a fire. His cigarette caused the mattress to smolder, and he died of smoke inhalation. When you fool around with drugs and liquor, you don't have to be an addict to die young. Just a certain amount of bad luck will do it.
I don't know why that double posted.
William, good for you. Seriously.
Amphetamines could have been my demise, great shit. But I recognized it as such and after a week said to hell with this, wanted nothing to do with something that controlled me.
Alcohol not so much, but at least I don't beat my wife, as history would have predicted.
Armchair pious bullshit disturbs me... though it is a necessity I realize.
Those are interesting statistics, but why?
Modern America is dedicated to the satisfaction of every animal urge without limits.
Fewer and fewer people have a raison d'être other than that, a life no better than dogs with wallets.
Higher callings, duty, honor, integrity, family pride, etc, all such reason s are now cast aside in favor of checking off the seven deadly sins as frequently as possible.
We've become Soviet drunks, but with more options for the deadening.
Trying to be nice, but y'all do not get it about cocaine and what-ever. Period.
Amphetamines were my enemy, and no amount of of resistance would make a difference. Coked sucked, but Benzedrine was king ... and still would be if I had not broken the chain. You have no idea how driven amphetamines can makeyou.
Or not. Good fucking luck!
Or...what the flip anyway, yipee!
Cannabis should be legal and regulated like booze. The War on Drugs, an abject failure and quixotic endeavor should be ended. We need to work on the demand side, not the supply side. I worked in a maximum security Federal Prison. There are no 4th amendment rights in prison. Well, you could get any drug you wanted for a price. Where there is demand there WILL ALWAYS be supply. The Drug War was govt. bureaucrats competing to stop the most ruthless capitalists on the planet. No contest.
Haz, Great post and commenters, great thread. In my youth I did everything but heroin. I would not do it again, but I do not regret it either. LSD had the most profound effect even though I only did it 8-10 times. This may sound weird, but my first trip was on mescaline. I became obsessed w/ time. What I thought was an hour was a minute. However, I came out of it w/ an amazing awareness of time. I do not wear a watch, I rarely look @ time on my cell phone, and NEVER need an alarm clock. And, I'm talking about having to get up @ 4am to do a surveillance. I don't know the exact time, although I do hit it on the button occasionally. But, I can almost always be accurate within 5 minutes.
Ari, Bennies were very available in my college years. Docs would prescribe them like docs did oxy until recently. We had this old doc who was a really nice guy. You go into him, tell him you're going to school, married w/ a kid, and working. He would write you an RX every time.
Quaaludes were an epidemic in the 70's. They were incredible. The DEA went to the manufacturer and convinced them to stop making them and to not sell the active ingredient to anyone. The rumor is they told the company they would have the FDA expedite new drugs for them in the future. No more Ludes! Fast forward to this century. Crystal meth is a scourge. The DEA goes to the drug companies and ask them to take ephedrine off the market. Well, ephedrine is the active ingredient in cold meds. The manufacturers told the DEA to go shit in their hats.
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