A truly outstanding piece by Tony O’Neill: Why Good Parents Should Support Drug Legalization
As an ex-junkie, I know how harmful addiction is. As a father, I want to protect my daughter from harm. Making all drugs legal will help.
It’s a powerful piece that’s direct and to the point. It’s not only a message to parents, but to the community that deals with addiction and that has too often lined up on the side of harm. And he has no patience for the nonsense that comes from the Drug Czar and SAM.
The addiction community’s number one priority has to be convincing the powers that be to end drug prohibition. Only when drug use is classified as a medical rather than a legal issue can resources finally be focused on helping to solve, not worsen, our problems.
Drugs are either illegal or they’re not. Drug users are either criminals or they’re not. There is no “third way,“ and “compassionate prohibition†is an oxymoron. We have a moral imperative to speak out.
I feel that a lot of parents are hearing our mantra about regulating marijuana and allowing LEO to concentrate on the people selling our children drugs while putting marijuana in retail sites that check an ID.
It carries the same reasoning for any drug and is the only way to take control of the market from the criminals and banks.
speaking of criminals and banks… saw a headline that says the top 7% actually profited handsomely since 2008… the other 93% of us not so much.
Sadly, a parent not supporting full blown drug legalization has automatically supported organized crime, terrorism, war and recession.
The government, (Reagan, I think), told the world that marijuana was the most dangerous drug in the country, and then you come to find out that it’s never killed anyone.
If we could just deal with what is generally known, not what can be twisted to sound dangerous, wouldn’t life get a whole lot simpler?
The whole WOD thing derailed so long ago, it’s time for the prohibs to ‘Get over It,’ and do what reduces harm, instead of hoping that in just one more year they’ll turn the tide, or whatever. Get – over – it!
Prohibition has caused so much more in the way of harm that the drugs themselves, and if it hasn’t worked in forty plus years – witness the drug trade in prisons for example: if you can’t keep drugs out of prisons, what chance do you realistically have in the real world – how can it possibly work in the next year or few? Nothing supports that unlikelihood, and the accelerating decay rate of such support is refreshing and remarkable.
We’re living in the end times my friends.
Ain’t it grand!
To harm reduction, in all of its various possible forms!
They that have the medicine make the rules. Or not.
Drugs are power. They’re like any commodity. Big Pharma wants to corner the market on drugs, technically an illegality if silver futures and the Hunt brothers are considered a useful legal analogy.
Grow your own drugs, as Mahatma Gandhi said about harvesting domestically produced salt in India. Spin your own hemp. Self-sustainability is a natural human right. The opposition cannot win if we act as individuals.
I have been increasingly convinced that “overgrow the government” should be taken up by opiophiles and chronic pain patients in addition to cannabis consumers. Poppies have the advantage of already being grown all over the country right under the noses of most drug warriors, ignorant that most ornamental poppies do indeed produce morphine-containing opium. Opium is cheaper than oxycontin and has additional appeal to naturalists and the organic food (and maybe medicine?) movement. Plus if you smoke opium you don’t have to wait 40 minutes for some relief.
Oh wow. Finally an ex-junkie who gets it. I’m so sick of addicts who go through rehab and then becomes tools for prohibition. Usually it comes from celebrities, and let’s face it there is a two-tiered system for treating addiction in this country. If you have money and your drug of choice comes from a “Dr. Feelgood” you go to some cushy rehab that serves lobster and keeps you well medicated. If you’re some poor bastard who frequents street pharmacists it’s the old cold turkey “treatment” followed by a lengthy stay of forced abstinence in America’s finest “correctional” institutions.
Thanks to years of drug war propaganda Americans are scared to death of drugs and especially addiction. Even the scariest of addictions, heroin, would be a whole lot less so if we as a society handled chemical addictions in anything approaching a rational way. Implementing some simple harm reduction measures could profoundly change addicts’ lives for the better. After global opiate prohibition was instituted the UK approached it in a very sensible way following the recommendations of the Rolleston Commission in 1926. Of course the UK screwed all that up in the 60’s. It was one thing if someone’s kindly grandmother got used to her morphine, but if her long-haired hippy grandson started smoking black market heroin, got addicted and then wanted free smack on the government dole…well that was another story. Prohibition has never been about drugs, but rather ingroup-outgroup politics (us vs. them). How else do you explain the differential status of the highly toxic and addictive drugs tobacco and alcohol?
Anyway back to the article, yes its true the best thing parents could do for their kids is to legalize all drugs in some form or another. We have to break the profit motive from the black market, when cartels are powerful enough to topple governments something is very wrong.
There are a number of addicts out there who seem to thing prohibition is the only thing standing between them and a fatal overdose. Unless you are actively trying to kill yourself, I think the opposite is true. The lack of regulated dosages, sterile injections and complete absense of information pertaining to using drugs safely (harm reduction) all contribute to accidental overdoses. If all else fails addicts will just have to learn to regulate their intake to avoid OD in the same way tobacco and alcohol addicts do.
People seem to believe that drugs cause addiction, and more access to drugs would cause more addiction. NIDA beats this drum over and over, but it is simply not true. Most users of even the supposedly highly addictive drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine do not go on to use them in a way we call addictive. Addiction is not a property of drugs, but of people. Rates of addiction, or even how addiction is defined (if even recognized), differs from society to society and changes with time. Even if addiction did modestly increase, it would be an acceptable trade-off for reducing the harms of prohibition.
Really an excellent article.
today the san diego county sheriff and dea busted a mmj dispensary in downtown san diego. so a lot of people are without a source of medicine. http://www.10news.com/news/authorities-raid-downtown-pot-dispensary-9-cultivation-sites-in-north-county
Completely off topic but important:
http://tokesignals.com/san-diego-city-council-rejects-mayors-medical-marijuana-proposal/
FTA:
However, despite the directive from Council President Gloria to the council to discuss the proposal put forth by Mayor Filner, Councilmember Marti Emerald immediately put forth a motion to disregard the mayor’s proposal without any discussion of its provisions and to instead resurrect the near-ban proposal put forth by the council, and repealed through voter referendum, in 2011.
Despite the primary criticism of the repealed ordinance, echoed by many speakers at the council meeting — that this repealed ordinance constituted a near ban — Councilmember Emerald also suggested further restrictions to the 2011 ordinance, including an additional 100 foot buffer from all residences, not found in the original 2011 ordinance.
Councilmember Lightner seconded the proposal to disregard the Mayor’s proposal in favor of the Council’s failed 2011 ordinance.
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Man talk about two hot button issues among the Ignorati. They’re going to be beside themselves with stupidity when they hear about this:
Supreme Court Rules Minor Marijuana Crimes Not Grounds For Deportation
Who in the world would have thought that even possible?!? Quick, notify a prohibitionist, the dike has sprung yet another leak and the ones there already have all of their fingers plugging all of the others.
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Looks like more ‘not saying anything about WA and CO’ bullshit.
Excellent article! That one’s going in my arsenal.
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Breaking news in Colorado: Zonker Harris wants to be a licensed producer under A-64.
Will the Colorado authorities attempt to demonize and/or engage him in a debate the way California authorities did in 1996 vis a vis the Compassionate Use Act? Stay tuned…
The prohibs are still reeling over the lack of sky pieces on the ground in Colorado and Washington state. They tried to tie the 420 shooting to cannabis but some LEO stated it was gang-related and THAT puff of wind left their sails. While the majority say “Free it,” the “governments” of the land still show, quite obviously, that they only support the minority. People should take note and make some changes. I still vote in local elections up there. A right I won’t give up. Listening, Mr. Filner?
“”They tried to tie the 420 shooting to cannabis but some LEO stated it was gang-related and THAT puff of wind left their sails.””
It not only removed the wind from their sail but puts them into a headwind,,sailors will understand that problem,,it underwriter the need to remove marijuana from the street gangs inventory and at the same time free up police resources to target gangs and violent crimes instead of spending millions of hours a month across this country arresting and prosecuting marijuana users.
hey this was an absolutely critical article. Somewhat off topic though i apologize, after reading the article i found myself really needing to attempt to get ahold of the writer, Mr. Tony O’Neill to speak with him or hope to speak with him/get his feedback/opinion/experience on a personal matter. I tried navigating the site to find some contact info to no avail. When I thought I’d found a way to follow him on Twitter via the Fix, it ended up just being a link to following The Fix it’self, not the writer. If anybody would be able to help me out here getting a way to send a direct message or email to the author, could you please contact me at junkie@diacetylmorphine.net
thanks