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May 18, 2014
Why Nixon's Drug War remains such a deadly Hoax
1) The Controlled Substances Act, which became both American and UN drug policy in 1970 claims to be about Public Health, but is really about punishment; its major support comes from police, lawyers and Judges, all of whom are mandated by the same law to combat "drug crime" and empowered by it to create new drug crime by deciding which substances can be added to– or removed from– "Schedule One."Thus the CSA gave the DEA, a law enforcement agency, total power over the creation of illegal drug markets.
2) The CSA also dictated the official algorithm for punishing use or possession of designated "drugs of abuse." It's very revealing that the first such drugs ("substances") placed on Schedule One in 1970 were "marijuana" (cannabis), psilocybin, and LSD. That’s almost certainly because his most pressing need in 1969 was to enhance the power of federal law over the vocal young people who were then demanding that he abandon the war in Vietnam he had been attempting to win by his secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia. His Controlled Substances Act was– and still is– based on pure rhetoric. There had never been any proper clinical studies of cannabis since those done by Dr.Wm. O'Shaughnessy on oral “gunjah” in India during the 1830s. We also don’t know of any studies of smoked cannabis done by O'Shaughnessy. The first such use was reported by French troops who learned to smoke cannabis in Egypt.
3) Whether he realized it or not, Nixon had pulled a Hitler by using the power of the state to assert a law without any basis in fact. In Hitler's case, it was his insistence (via the Numemberg laws) that Jewry is an enemy of every state and must be destroyed. In Nixon's law, the false premise is that the effects of certain "substances" are so evil, they cannot be tolerated by any society.
To accomplish his goals, Hitler created a special police force, the SS.
Nixon did the same when he created the DEA a special drug police force, to enforce his CSA.
The comparison is not facetious. Whenever a false belief becomes a ruling paradigm by law, a new opportunity for authoritarian abuse under cover of “justice” is created. Nixon's CSA was brilliant; it asserted the "right" of police agencies to create one new illegal market after another. All that was needed was a new product with enough appeal to command a premium from a vulnerable population. Crack is a perfect example: the growing underground appeal of inhaled cocaine had been established by Richard Pryor's famous "hair on fire" moment. The problem was that ether extraction of cocaine produces a product that is simply too expensive and dangerous for mass consumption. Those problems were solved by the discovery that heating bicarbonate of soda with powdered cocaine in a microwave produces a drug that can be smoked safely and will reach the brain just as quickly as the more expensive and more dangerous product requiring ether extraction. An added bonus was that the enhanced potency produced by smoking allowed the sale of smaller aliquots (doses) thus enhancing profits; it was like selling Chateaubriande by the forkful: the whole steak becomes even more profitable.
The threat that "marijuana" currently represents to Nixon's police hegemony is that cannabis really is medicine . In fact it's so safe and effective that it's almost too good to be true, a characteristic that has allowed the DEA and NIDA– its sister agency – to obfuscate the truth, at least temporarily. In that endeavor, they have been ably assisted by Psychiatry and Psychology. the medical handmaidens of Nixon's police. Not to mention "pot docs" with more avarice than intellectual curiosity.
Doctor Tom
Nixon did the same when he created the DEA a special drug police force, to enforce his CSA.
The comparison is not facetious. Whenever a false belief becomes a ruling paradigm by law, a new opportunity for authoritarian abuse under cover of “justice” is created. Nixon's CSA was brilliant; it asserted the "right" of police agencies to create one new illegal market after another. All that was needed was a new product with enough appeal to command a premium from a vulnerable population. Crack is a perfect example: the growing underground appeal of inhaled cocaine had been established by Richard Pryor's famous "hair on fire" moment. The problem was that ether extraction of cocaine produces a product that is simply too expensive and dangerous for mass consumption. Those problems were solved by the discovery that heating bicarbonate of soda with powdered cocaine in a microwave produces a drug that can be smoked safely and will reach the brain just as quickly as the more expensive and more dangerous product requiring ether extraction. An added bonus was that the enhanced potency produced by smoking allowed the sale of smaller aliquots (doses) thus enhancing profits; it was like selling Chateaubriande by the forkful: the whole steak becomes even more profitable.
The threat that "marijuana" currently represents to Nixon's police hegemony is that cannabis really is medicine . In fact it's so safe and effective that it's almost too good to be true, a characteristic that has allowed the DEA and NIDA– its sister agency – to obfuscate the truth, at least temporarily. In that endeavor, they have been ably assisted by Psychiatry and Psychology. the medical handmaidens of Nixon's police. Not to mention "pot docs" with more avarice than intellectual curiosity.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at May 18, 2014 12:59 AM