The Dirty Little Billion Dollar Secret

Wolfie, I once heard that politicians were just people who were too lazy to work and too nervous to steal. Taxes are just another form of robbery. Most career politicians have never done an honest days work in their lives, so it's no wonder that they cannot understand the plight of those of us that don't have the silver spoon of a government job.

And I'm not bad mouthing all those slaves who work in civil service. Heck, I pity you folks. My problem is the boys at the top who get to make all the laws you have to try to carry out.

Originally posted by YIAWETA
The real bs is the War on Drugs itself. US tax dollars fund part the global distribution of drugs. Skull and Bones was founded by the Russell Trust which was established from it's control of the world's opium market. And just for the record'cartels don't die or fade away'.The periodic bust that gets big media attention are of the suppliers who are freelancing to avoid the vig. Merely ask yourself, "Why, with an ongoing US military presence in Afghanistan, is poppy/opium production reaching record levels?". The creation of the Drug Czar by Bush 41 in the 80's wasn't about a war 'on' drugs, he was the Czar of the drug cartel. You've got to stand on your head sometimes to see the inverted realities we've been sold.


[edit on 26-4-2007 by YIAWETA]

great reply, I would just like to add that the CIA is the biggest drug mover...
iran contra affair...drug smuggling and the behind the scenes movement of money is not just organized crime its also organized politics

[edit on 26-4-2007 by junglelord]

The CIA, and others, are organizations, therefore by definition, they fit the label of organized crime. And though there must be those in the field who pilfer and steal, the law of averages being just, it is the leadership in high places who call the tune. Our nation has too long suffered the harm of having thugs in places of power.

Psychedelics should never be illegal.

If all you have is regular conciousness and asleep consciousness...you can't really go far.

But if you have awake, asleap and psilocybin--well you can start to map out a much more dimensionally-rich map of reality.

It's been proven time and time again that psychedelics are actually the opposite of addicting. You tend to use them in smaller quantities less often over time.

All hail '___', the endogenous chemical in our brains that the DEA/Goverment deems "illegal". We are all guilty of "holding" this illegal chemical that is produced naturally in our pineal gland.

It's illegal, but yet it exists naturally in our bodies in measurable quantities to justify imprisonment.

Things to chew on.

Originally posted by NGC2736
texan, what is the solution then? Shoot all the people who use drugs? (Unless the never inhaled, that is.) Should we go on spending more and more money on what is not working? When do we say that we're on the wrong path? We've fought this war six times longer than the American Civil War, with at least as many casualties, and at many times the monetary costs.

Of course not. Legalize it, subsidize it, tax it.

Have you ever been to a cotton field? Cotton destroys the soil, and if you get deep out in the patch you can see how red the sky gets during the spring. Have you ever seen it rain mud? Big, red mud drops falling from the sky. This is what cotton has done to our soil.

Hemp, on the other hand, doesn't do this. You don't have to rotate crops like with cotton, and you can use the entire plant (unlike cotton).

You ever been around a cotton gin while it was running? I know at least 10 people personally who have lost hands in a gin. The dust is so bad, entire towns have to hospitalize their children/elderly for respiratory ailments.

Hemp? Not quite the same. It replaces most of what it takes from the soil. The seed makes wonderful oils, the leaves are edible (and worth a fortune), and the stalks can make some of the strongest, cheapest, most lasting fibers that we currently can make.

Why kill drug users? That is a horrible idea. Sure, junkies are a blight on society....but we are in this together (as a civilization). We are the sum of our individual parts. I say legalize and tax. Tax is a good way to generate revenue and relieve income tax burdens on the lower 1/3.

Did anyone look around and search a bit on their own? I purposely waited to post some links. This is your war folks, and in the end you have to put some effort into it for things to ever change. I'm sure from the response so far that many of you did just that.

Have we lost our minds in this country? Why would we allow the police so much abusive power as the following. The police stop a man in a rented car and look for drugs, but none are found. However,$124,700.00 is found. The man explains why he had the money, and since there is no evidence that the man had committed a crime the police have to turn him loose. But they keep the cash by arresting IT!
United States v $124,700 in U S Currency
458 F 3rd 822 (8th Cir. 2006)

I'm not making this up. They arrested the money. They never did even prosecute the man, because they admitted they had no evidence he broke any law. But, the drug dogs alerted on the cash, and that was enough. And since the law does not require as much proof when used against property as a person, they won. They kept the money.

The laws to confiscate is out of control You've got it, and they want it, and since the 'law' is their's to decide, they get it. How's that for American freedoms? Are you still 100% sure this war on drugs is a good thing ?

Need more to change your mind, or maybe make your blood boil? Then read some more.

www.citizensagainstprohabition.org

www.drugpolicy.org/homepage.cfm

www.leap.cc

www.csdp.org/publicservice

www.drugsense.org/

www.fear.org/

That last one is a load of fun.

take a look and tell me if all this looks good to you. Sure, I'll say it first, these sites are biased. Just like we are here. So dig around and use the same kind of common sense that you do here at ATS. Then tell me what is wrong in America.

Originally posted by NGC2736
The CIA, and others, are organizations, therefore by definition, they fit the label of organized crime. And though there must be those in the field who pilfer and steal, the law of averages being just, it is the leadership in high places who call the tune. Our nation has too long suffered the harm of having thugs in places of power.

the CIA is behind almost every drug sale in the world, from my understanding. that is what Vietnam was all about, and i bet it is behind Afghanistan.

The problem is, the sheeple are starting to wise up and the old measures don't work as well as they used to.

Sorry Texan, I misunderstood. I think that's the way to go myself, at least unless someone has a better idea.

And I too know about cotton. I'm even old enough to remember pickin' it the old fashion way, by hand. Now I live north of the Red River, but I remember those days well.

I'll read your posts more closely. ( I could always blame it on my wife distracting me, but she's here and your there, so I'll take my chances on you accepting it as a mistake. She hits hard.)

It's always been about supply and demand. And it's always been the middleman that makes almost all the profit. One old farm boy to another, does a farmer get even close to a fair price out of his grain when bread is selling for two dollars o loaf? I would guess the farmers part of that is less than ten cents.

This war on drugs is the same, some poor farmer trying to make a cash crop, and it's all the people in between who get rich and he gets pennies on the dollar.

I have always thought that keeping certain drugs illegal and legalizing some(like pot, mushrooms,even some psychadellics) is the way to go. I'll use pot for now. Other than the harm it does to your lungs(if you smoke it) it has no other adverse affects on the body. It has a tonne of medical benefits and HEMP is one of the greatest plants god has ever created with so many uses.

Drug use will never be "Cured". There will always be people that are unhappy in life for some reason and want to escape and there are the other people who enjoy the effects of drug use. It's hypocritical of governments to condone the use of alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs which are all dangerous and addictive to some. I must admit I'm a slave to the nicotine man.

The war on drugs is useless. It won't solve anything and continue to throw potloads of money away. I live in British Columbia, Canada the home of "BC BUD" and pot is technically our largest agricultural crop worth anywhere from $4 Billion to $6 Billion a year. Start regulating and taxing that and that's a lot of money in the government coffers.

It's basically legal here in Canada. You might get a fine if your caught with 7 grams or less. Here in Vancouver people smoke it out in public and are not arrested by the cops.

I'm not a drug user and yet I agree marijuana would be fine legalized, but other drugs such as coc aine should remain illegal...nonetheless I think we need to stop wasting so much money on this ridiculous so called effort against drugs. Anyone know if the pharmecutical companies have any -investments- in the 'war on drugs' business?

Originally posted by NGC2736
Sorry Texan, I misunderstood. I think that's the way to go myself, at least unless someone has a better idea.

And I too know about cotton. I'm even old enough to remember pickin' it the old fashion way, by hand. Now I live north of the Red River, but I remember those days well.

I'll read your posts more closely. ( I could always blame it on my wife distracting me, but she's here and your there, so I'll take my chances on you accepting it as a mistake.

She hits hard.)

no need. i like peace....but type and talk passionately. My boss laughs at me quite a bit when I am trying to break through his inability to understand me. It is amazing how math and logic still are ignored by otherwise smart people. But that is a different topic.

I would be interested to see statistics on number incarcerated for drug crimes, broken out by crime. Raw data is always best...i can parse and analyze myself. I could search, but i bet one of you already have it. This is a researchers paradise at ATS.

I would also point out that the negative impacts to GDP due to lost worker productivity should also be considered. In my job, i always start looking for accountability with the managers, not the "front liners". Does that make sense? It may or may not be the policies, but i tell my peeps that it is there job to execute the policies successfully. Failing to do that is failing to manage. The policies are just the rules/parameters you "play the game within". Our government is the same. They should be held accountable to results, not excuses.

One more thought...the "arresting the money" story. I have heard this. Two thoughts: easy revenue generated for small municipalities that want extra money without bond election; and, this is a great way to force our monies into the banking system, where they can track our purchases/income as well as control world finance. Keep it all virtual and you don't even have to bother printing bills, much less stockpile gold.

I would say, rather than legalize things or stop the war on drugs, make it a serious war on drugs. Up the ante (punishment,) and the risk gets too high for all the small time pushers to take. If it's really going to be a war, well, wars kill people. They don't slap them on the wrist.

For those of you comparing it to alcohol, the first thing to remember is, alcohol is, compared to most narcotics, not as addictive, potent, or as likely to effect others. And for the ways alcohol usage does compare, those are things that need to be eliminated. This country currently is nearly at an epidemic state of alcohol abuse among the 15-25 yr old crowd. The majority of whom are consuming it illegally. Again...up the ante, or let it all go to hell. This half-assed "you've been bad" BS only undermines the integrity of the law.

To the poster that was commenting about children having easier access to drugs if they were legal, I remember reading a study a while back that questioned many children in a variety of areas under the age of 18.

All of them said that it was easier for them to get hold of marijuana than it was for them to get hold of alcohol. That's right, the illegal drugs are more accessible than the legal ones.

I'm in my 20s. A vast vast majority of the people in and around my age group use either marijuana, or prescription drugs such as xanex, valium, klonipins, vicodin or other similar substances on a regular basis.

It's here, it's common. It's not even particularly frowned upon - one of my managers at work will often comment to me on "needing to get out of here and go home and smoke a blunt"..

I don't do drugs. It simply doesn't appeal to someone who likes being in control and enjoys what her brain can do. The only really appealing drugs to me are hallucinogens, but not appealing enough for me to risk trying them given the current state of the law. Rarely, I'll have a drink or two, but I don't smoke, either.

Do I think drugs should be legalized? In the case of marijuana, definitely. It's here, it's not going away, there are far more benefits to legalizing it than there are negatives - not the least of which is reducing the number of criminals in our society, including people like a good friend of mine who suffers from a degenerative joint condition, similar to arthritis, but worse. For many years he could not get doctors to understand the level of pain he suffered, and turned to illegal drugs with no alternative, just to be able to function on a level that allowed him to work - he's now fully disabled with a decent doctor, finally, but essentially if he'd been caught, he would have been classified as a criminal. Intense physical pain = criminal. There are clearly many situations where marijuana is beneficial, not harmful, and legalization would bring with it the ability to study the effects of the drug in the open. Similarly, the effects of psychedelics and other drugs in therapy, for example. Or how about in religion? www.erowid.org...

Regardless of your moral standpoint on drug use, it is clear that the current tactics do not work. Why keep throwing good money after bad? Scrap the war on drugs, put money into educational and social programs that perhaps would rescue people from the hell of addiction, treat the cause, not the problem if there's an issue with it.

By forcing people underground, criminalizing them, you exacerbate problems, not solve them.

I've experienced some rough things with regards to drugs. I've watched someone I loved go a long way down the road of crack addiction. I've watched them go through rehab. Steal, lie, cheat, all for that next hit. Heart attack, stroke.

Addiction is a need in your soul for completion, escape, that can't be met in other ways, that you're fundamentally unable to grasp in a healthy way. While some drugs are more addictive than others, have a higher chemical dependency curve, I think at the root of the problem, is not the drug, but something else. It's a symptom, an attempt at self medication and cure. I think the incidence of addiction, therefore, wouldn't really go up with legalization. I think a slight increase in availability would perhaps increase statistics negligibly, but overall, most people are aware, even as a teenager, of the 'level' of drugs. Legalization would simply mean more accessibility to help, less criminals, less cost to society as a whole.

At the end of the day, too, does your body belong to you? Or to your government?

Nice posts everyone. It is good to see so much thought has gone into the replies. I am impressed by the fact that most people are so aware that our very freedoms are being challenged here.

Firstly, I must give each of you an apology. Somehow, I put the links up incorrectly. I came back to my computer this morning and on a whim, tried to use one, and they did not work. I can only offer as an excuse that I am a senior citizen who only took up the computer lees than six months ago and am self taught. (So it's my teacher's fault. that I'm so dumb.)

laiguana, as a first step, pot alone makes sense. But at some near point we need to get the government out of this war all together.

Saturnine_Sweet,so you want to make the war bigger? O.K. But that means a G.I. on every corner, with his rifle loaded. We'll just change the name of of a few towns while we're at it. How about changing L.A. to La Baghdad? And New York to New Singapore? But before we do that, why not visit these places on your own first and get a taste of what it will be like.

Everyone rants and raves about the soon to be takeover of the NWO. Folks, it's happening as we speak. This war on drugs is bringing in exactly that, a police state. And all the time, our leaders grin and tell us how they are doing it for our own good. Each new law that protects us from ourselves is another step down that road.

There isn't going to be any big battles where sides are lined up and bugles sounded. No one will at some point hoist their flag aloft and be the winner. This is one front on a battle for the right to be free, and it's being fought in near silence. If freedom loses, it will be with a whimper, and not with a bang.

Inannamute, for someone with mute as part of your name, you speak so clearly. All I can add is that I wish everyone saw so well the truth of this matter.

Originally posted by saturnine_sweet
I would say, rather than legalize things or stop the war on drugs, make it a serious war on drugs. Up the ante (punishment,) and the risk gets too high for all the small time pushers to take. If it's really going to be a war, well, wars kill people. They don't slap them on the wrist.

Your position is that we should kill drug users and pushers? And this is because you believe the punishments arent harsh enough for drug users?

External Source
Oklahoma, for example, has what are overall probably the harshest pot penalties in the United States. Possession of any amount (such as the residue of a joint) can bring up to a year in jail and a $500 fine. A second offense (a second bust for the residue of a joint) warrants two years to life and a $20,000 fine. Possession of paraphernalia (say, a single rolling paper) is punishable by a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Four years to life imprisonment is mandated for sale or delivery of under 25 pounds, and the minimum penalty increases with larger quantities. Punishments are doubled for sale to a minor or within 1,000 feet of a school. And, as in several other states, you can have your driver's license suspended as penalty even if you're not driving while nabbed.

InSpiteOf]Source
id say thats pretty harsh already.

For those of you comparing it to alcohol, the first thing to remember is, alcohol is, compared to most narcotics, not as addictive, potent, or as likely to effect others.

Firstly alcoholism is a very real and very serious issue. Alcohol can be severly addicting and have long lasting withdrawl symptoms.source
and some of them even cross link with opiate withdrawl symptoms source

Again...up the ante, or let it all go to hell. This half-assed "you've been bad" BS only undermines the integrity of the law.

Im not really sure what to say to this. There are really no slap on the wrist charges when it comes to drugs in the US. most cases come with jail time.





[edit on 27-4-2007 by

[edit on 27-4-2007 by InSpiteOf]

All drugs should be legal.

Prescription drugs still would need to prescribed by a doctor, recreational use drugs should be prescribed by a licensed drug therapist. They would go in detail about the drugs specific effects risk rate etc and then you would get a prescription and be able to purchase x amount.

Meanwhile they would log your information into the crime database.

The police should be catching and stopping and preventing crimes, such as theft, murder, assualt, sales of stolen property, driving under the influence etc.

As long as the "drug" user is not commiting a crime against another person or property then what is the crime ???

A drug addicted wacko goes in and robs a liquer store he is guilty of the crime of robbery, assualt with deadly weapon, possession of a weapon by a drug user etc. Whatever his personal motovation for the crime is irrelevant, the fact that he has no money due to spending it on drugs is only a casual relationship and the resulting decision for the individual to rob the store was his personal choice to break the law regarding theft, robbery assualt against property that he does not own.

Un licensed trade for sale or purchase should also be legal. This would redce the street price dramatically as everyone in their brother would try to sling weed initially.

The sale to minor sjould remain a federal crime, thus individuals selling "drugs" to persons under 18 should have big time punishment, arrest etc.

All sales of "drugs" shall be documented date/ user's ID # amount and money collected.

Should the street seller be questioned by the police they must show their log book and give a digital copy of the log to the authorities.

All purchasers must do the same, logging their purchases etc including the sellers ID.

Should a user be questioned and in possession of undocumented "controlled" substances e having no log book but being in possession then they would be breaking the federal drug possession law, etc

Free market would wipe out the huge drug trade profits.

So you have an increase in addicts, they will burn themselves out of society over time. Those incarcerated for crimes resulting in robbery assualt etc to another person will rot in jail drug free and typically die from self abuse or medical trauma due to withdrawls.

Those arrested for crimes resulting in failure to properly document or log drug activity would have minimal penalties and could return to their lives rather quickly to pay off their fines.

That is a society I would like to live in

robertfenix, some good ideas there. Thats what I'm talking about. People reaching and voicing ideas that are an alternative to a failed attempt to change human nature.

Many on this thread ought to get involved with those organizations that I have already mentioned and help this movement grow.

Without involvement, there will be no change. We can't take many more years of the current police state attitude here in America, as well as other counties. It must be stopped.

This goes beyond drugs and drug laws.

First of all, i will once again point out that i live at the cross roads of the drug trade. You guys in Ohio smoking weed? I likely came through my town on the way out. We feed almost all the non-homegrown pot through the two highways in my town that connect the east coast to the west coast, and canada to mexico. I see a lot of drugs, drug users, drug dealers....epidemic cannot describe what Meth is. Here coc aine is cheap and easy to find, crack is easier. But meth is so cheap, so easy to make/find, crack is a drug of yesterday. Not even anyone selling it anymore, really. Only ones using coke are the old mexican folks around here.

No, i don't use any of it. I am a father and a call cente rmanager. But i have lived here a long time, know a lot of people, and am not stupid.

But we are talking about Pot, mostly. Doesn't anyone realize that legalizing pot solves many, many problems? It is a silver bullet! Hempseed oil is very, very versatile. Hemp (the stalks and fibers) make wonderful clothing. The leaves are among the oldest medicines ever, showing over 5,000 years of documented, safe use. It will grow nearly anywhere. I have seen a pot plant growing from a small pile of dirt on the side of a solid rock mountain. It will grow ANYWHERE. You rarely have to water it, it will provide some level of productivity no matter how bad the weather gets. You can plant multiple harvests yearly in the south, and don't have to dump tons of nitrogen and phosphorous on the soil to make it grow.

Cotton? You have to spray tons of chemicals to keep the boll weevils out. you should Google Boll Weevil Eradication. Look how much money we spend trying to kill these bugs that eat cotton.

Any of you ever have mud rain down on you? Cotton completely leaches the soil of virtually all nutrients. You should drive out to the cotton patches in West Texas. Sometimes, when i drive through Stanton, Tx the dirt is so bad you can't see more than 10 feet in front of you. This year i got to pull an older gentleman out of a burning van after he wrecked on I-20 and rolled his van. It has been a horrible year for wrecks on that stretch of road. Some of it due to the extreme ice storm of January, but mostly due to the sand storms. Stanton sits in the middle of a HUGE array of cotton fields and pumpjacks.

Subsidies...that is another headache. Many in the world consider our cotton subsidies to be illegal trade practices, actually, and it is part of what drives the deep resentment of our nation. Read this article, then google it if you want. The WTO calls it illegal.

ayjw.org...

They are driving small time farmers out of business at the rate of 330 per week, while subsidizing the bloated, large scale corporate farmers to the tune of 3.2 billion annually (add another 1.6 billion in export credits). All the whiel costing west african nation 200million a year in lost revenues from the driven down prices from our trade practices.

www.commondreams.org...

So, how much does cotton add to our loss? We have a true problem with the drug war. It is holding us back in so many ways, and is part of the problem with our current "War on Terror".

This is all tied in together. Why are we in Afghanistan? Why did we keep Russia out with so much effort? I woulda thought Cuba would have been more worth the effort, but we didn't exert it? Why were we in Vietnam? Could the opium supply have anything to do with it? I bet that is why we went after Noriega, and defended Greneda with such ferocity. Chavez doesn't have coke, so he isn't as valuable and we let him sit down there and run his mouth.

The rabbit hole is deep. And every single day i see the results of our failed and unethical policies. The wonderful ability of our government to spin the facts and present a facade behind our nefarious behaviors keeps the sheeple at bay

Originally posted by saturnine_sweet
I would say, rather than legalize things or stop the war on drugs, make it a serious war on drugs. Up the ante (punishment,) and the risk gets too high for all the small time pushers to take. If it's really going to be a war, well, wars kill people. They don't slap them on the wrist.

You must think drug users are pretty bad people to want to destroy lives like that.

I personally smoke about a gram a day. I am young (22) but I am not your stereotypical "pothead". I live on my own, have a full time office manager position and am about to get a promotion. If drugs are so harmful to people and society then how come I can lead a perfectly normal life. For some reason since I smoke pot, people seem to think that I don't have my life straight or that I need it because I have an addictive personality or any of that bull#.

For those of you comparing it to alcohol, the first thing to remember is, alcohol is, compared to most narcotics, not as addictive, potent, or as likely to effect others. And for the ways alcohol usage does compare, those are things that need to be eliminated. This country currently is nearly at an epidemic state of alcohol abuse among the 15-25 yr old crowd. The majority of whom are consuming it illegally. Again...up the ante, or let it all go to hell. This half-assed "you've been bad" BS only undermines the integrity of the law.

Alcohol does more damage then any other drug. Part of it is because it IS legal and readily available. Mostly it is because it is poisonous and completely destroys your consiousness. Drugs like marijuana and psychedelics are quite the opposite. When is the last time you heard of anyone overdosing on a psychedelic. The only claim can be '___', and I personally know someone who went insane for a few months by taking about 100x the normal dose (100x!!!!!!!) and he is fine today, it just took some time to wear off. Hard narcotics like coc aine and heroin are more harmful in this instance, but for the most part people know this. Being bad for your health should be reason enough to not do these things but obviously it doesn't stop people who want it.

My point is this - making it illegal, sadly, doesn't solve anything no matter how bad it is.


I am my own person and I have every F#(&!N right to put whatever the F#(K I want in my own body. There is no penalty in the world that would make me change my mind about what I want to do with my life. If I want to work my 9-5 and come home and relax with a joint that is my damn business. Don't try and tell me all the reasons why it is bad. If I think it's good for me then who are you to tell me otherwise. Yea lung cancer kills people, we all know smoking is harmful. You know what else is harmful? STRESS. Yes there are many ways to deal with stress, you don't need to say it. Mines pot, get over it. I'm not insane, antisocial, or a forgetful airhead. The mainstream and government views on this are WRONG, if you look at alot of topics on here you will find that they are wrong about that too, is it some surprise?

Well its past time for me to leave work and I have some smoking to take care of and I don't care who knows it.