« An American Anomaly | Main | The Drug War as an Indicator of Human "Progress" »
March 27, 2013
The Evolution and Implications of a Modern Tragedy
The first unexpected revelation of my ad-hoc study of Proposition 215 applicants was that many had been raised by single mothers or had childhoods otherwise deprived of supportive parenting from their biological fathers. That observation only became apparent after I entered their data into a relational database in 2003 in preparation for a talk I was asked to give at the 2004 meeting of Patients Out of Time, a cannabis-friendly volunteer organization.Another important revelation is that only 295 (4.25%) of the 6900 Californians now in my data base were born before the 30% increase in live births that marked the abrupt onset of America's Baby Boom immediately following War Two. What now appears to be emerging when data from California's Proposition 215 applicants is considered in conjunction with heretofore suppressed evidence of "marijuana's" enormous popularity is a broad outline of how a huge modern folly, the global "war on drugs," evolved from the combination of a singular demographic event and two unfortunate pieces of US legislation enacted thirty-two years apart.
The key elements were, in sequence:
1) The 1937 "Marijuana" Tax Act
2) The end of the Second World War in August 1945
3)The 1946-1964 Baby Boom
4)The 1965 conviction and 30 year sentence of LSD guru Timothy Leary after he was arrested for possession of cannabis when trying to re-enter the US at Laredo, Texas.
5)The 1969 Warren Court Leary decision unexpectedly striking down the MTA
6)The scientifically uninformed Controlled Substances Act offered by the Nixon Administration in 1970 to "correct the deficiencies in the MTA.
7)The subsequent development of a series of violent illegal drug markets in troubled nations around the world, along with various cynical attempts by US government agencies to exploit those markets for political ends.
8)The passive acceptance, by American media, of both Nixon's refusal to act on the Shafer commission's recommendations on "Marijuana" and its failure to question the woeful record of the "War on Drugs" that followed.
At each step along the way, enough embarrassing deficiencies have been exhibited by people in responsible positions to suggest our overpopulated planet will be hard put to find either the political or financial wherewithal to solve its self-created drug problems, not to mention its more pressing issues with climate change or the nations that see nuclear weapons as essential to their survival.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at March 27, 2013 09:49 PM