TheAgitator.com
This Ought to Honk You Off
Friday, April 23rd, 2004This kind of thing pisses me off more than when SWAT thugs get the wrong address, beat down the wrong door, and shoot the wrong guy.
Jesus. What has it come to when we throw cripples and the infirmed in jail for trying to ease their fucking pain? Here’s hoping John Ashcroft and like drug warriors find themselves stricken with a condition that bring immense, unrelenting pain. And here’s hoping their own damned laws come back to bite them in the ass. And let’s have Jeb Bush get the same illness.
Cruel? Yeah. Probably. But so is handcuffing terminally ill seniors to their beds while federal agents confiscate their medicinal marijuana. So is throwing paraplegics in prision for drug trafficking — when all they’re after is a little relief.
What country is this?
I forget sometimes.
In Jim Gray’s book about the drug war, he cited a pretty interesting statistic. Basically, the US has more people per capita in prison than China. If that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does.
I’m still wavering on the drug legalizing stuff, but it has to be asked: Is marijuana the ONLY pain reliever out there?
James,
A very reasonable question.
It (marijuana) is one of very few pain relievers that is 1) efficacious for a number of types of pain, 2) doesn’t have all the nasty side effects of opiates, such as GI problems, respiratory depression, and occasionally death, and 3) has virtually no known ill effects on your liver with prolonged use.
It’s also a godsend for people who need to maintain an appetite following chemo or major surgery (someone very close to me has benefited this way).
Plus, with smoking, patients can easily titrate their dose to ease their discomfort without becoming profoundly intoxicated if they do not choose to be. Not easy to do with morphine, or even Marinol (FDA-approved THC in pill form).
Marijuana isn’t a cure for anything, but it’s a damn good palliative.
Ok, but there really is NO alternative with similar effects? Anyone out there up on the latest medical drugs?
I purely ask for the sake of avoiding breaking the law. I don’t really want to argue about moral or long-term damage issues of using marijuana.
James –
The guy in the story I linked to got 25 years for “trafficking” Percocet, not marijuana.
Brian Hawkins-
Damn fool, d’you go to weed college or somthin’?
- Dave Chapelle on Half Baked
Travis–
Ha! Love that movie…
To answer your question…yeah, sorta. Pharmacology’s my minor in grad school.
James–
I can’t think of anything…that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything, but I think if there was, we’d probably all be hearing about it.
Don’t you love how Republicans/conservatives love to say how they’re supportive of states rights, but when a state passes a law they don’t like (medical marijuana in 9 states), they send in the feds or try to re-write federal legislation?
“The guy in the story I linked to got 25 years for “trafficking” Percocet, not marijuana.”
I realize that, I was just talking about legal alternatives to marijuana. Sorry if I didn’t stick with the story.
The original does sound like a BS excuse to send someone to jail.
There’s more in that story than just the one patient jailed for insising on his right to a jury trial. How many doctors did this guy have to see before concluding that his only option was to forge scripts? And how many other pain patients in Florida (w/ an aging population) just have to suffer because the doctors are afraid to treat pain patients?
This is a widespread problem. The presumption is that these strict controls on prescription drugs that can be enjoyable to some must be preventing some tragedies. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think they’re causing much tragedy and preventing none.
I’ve been living with pain for 10yrs from cervical spinal fusion of 3 vertebrae. I have every pain drug known to man, everything from pot to morphine (all obtained legally, by the way…legally in California anyway). When I was investigating pot for pain, I asked my neurosurgeon what he thought of medical pot for pain,He said he would not have a problem with using it for TERMINAL patients, but certainly not for someone like me, who could still function w/ other drugs like morphine. Well, I HATE morphine, but it does remove the pain, but with serious side effects. Pot moderately removes the pain but definitely helps with sleep and appetite. I now use morphine rarely and pot daily and it works for ME.
The core question is: why do so many people in both political parties think I, and society, would be better off if I was sent to in prison for using pot? Can ANYONE explain this to me?
By the way, I’m no hippie-dipstick. I’m a 60yr old professional and have never committed a crime in my life.
meek
Ginger, you are absolutely right … the medical field (mainly because of out of control laywers) has become a volatile work environment for doctors and a lot of them are getting out. The quality of doctors diminishes too. I can’t even imagine how much shit we’d be in for if Socialized medicine was created?! We’d have no good doctors left to take care of anyone.
Meek,
your case is why I never say I’m completely against legalizing marijuana. In my opinion, you can’t compare someone seeking pain relief to a drug smuggler or some kid ‘just looking for his next high’. It’s definitely ‘apples to oranges’ ….
James D
Unfortunately that “kid” looking for his next high may well wind up in prison. What needs to also be answered : is sending the kid to prison better or worse for him than getting high?
I guess what I’ve learned about this pot/pain issue is that using prison as an alleged answer to drug addiction is just completely wrong. Having the criminal justice system involved in our health care is irrational. Seeing a DEA number on my drug prescriptions really pisses me off. Sending a kid off to prison for possession of “certain” drugs is equally insane.
Having been more or less personally dragged into the drug war world, I’ve become a rabid leagalizer. The more I study the issue, the more insane the drug war seems.
…in my opinion, anyway…
meek
That’s a fair argument Meek. The problem is that like all ‘drags’ on society, what will it end up costing ME? The choices are: Sending someone to prison for ‘getting high’ (taxes for prisons, prison space, etc) OR letting them get high all they want then ruin their lives and live off the government (welfare, etc). If I truly had faith in our country to refuse to take care of people who screw up their own lives (which it never has in the past - usually rewards them) then I’d be all for legalizing marijuana for all. Hell, all drugs in that case. If someone wants to stay in their house and do heroin all day … fine by me. Just don’t expect to get any of my money and stay out of a vehicle while they’re high.
Actually, we won’t have to support the folks who get high all they want. After they lose their day jobs, they can legally sell drugs and support their habit.
James, I agree, if someone uses heroin in the privacy of their own homes. Or even in bars and the like, I couldn’t care less. Let’s look at the downsides of legalization:
1. Someone could get all fucked up and become a vegetable. (or otherwise harm themselves)
2. Someone could drive while fucked up and fuck up someone else. (Or otherwise harm someone else).
3. People might start to use drugs to become fucked up.
Point 1: Hang gliding is dangerous but it’s legal
Point 2: It’s already illegal to neglegently harm someone else
Point 3: People use drugs anyhow
This War is not a War on DRUGS. It’s a war against our own people our own friends and our own families. One cannot wage war against drugs. Just as we cannot wage war on poverty, or terrorism. We can only wage war against people. In this “War”. It’s our own people we are detroying.
If cost is going to be the issue, then it’s easy: treatment is 1/3 the cost of incarceration. Considering the billions spent by the feds and each individual states, the cost of the drug war is truly enormous. I can’t believe there’s not a better, cheaper way to handle the drug issue. I don’t pretend to have “the ” answer, but I’m convinced we’re doing it exactly wrong.
meek
That sounds like a fine idea Meek, but do you FORCE the people to go? … wouldn’t that be basically prison too? And then what do you do if they go right back to it?
I guess what I’m getting at is the old adage “you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves”. There’s plenty of homeless people who CHOSE to be there. When people try to ‘make a difference’ and help them, they refuse help a lot of the time (maybe just out of pride, who knows).
I’m just saying that whatever solution we come up with should cover all grounds.
We don’t force alcoholics and tobacco addicts into treatment… well alcoholics must go when they’ve caused some kind of a problem or broke the law. What happens to addicts that go into treatment and fail? They start over. I certainly subscribe to the concept of personal responsibility.
Forced treatment = Stalinist reeducation. Take a look at the front page of Radley’s blog here. There’s a funny story about Mel Sembler’s penis pump. There’s a dark side to that story. It really isn’t about a penis pump, it really is about child abuse. I know about it cause I spent my last two years as a minor in Sembler’s Straight, Inc. before I was legally able to just walk away w/ the clothes on my back.
These are the crazy bastards who make keep the drug war going. Everybody in politics thinks they want a professional area drug taskforce. But if you just look at the actual results of area drug taskforces all over the country, you’ll immediately see that they don’t do any good at all.
We hear all this speculation about all the horrible things that might happen w/o prohibition. But there is no need to speculate. We have plenty of historical info about what a world w/o prohibition would look like.
Consider that opiates, cocaine and their synthetic equivalents are the big trouble, addictive drugs. They were broadly available in many forms at low cost w/o a RX until the Harrison Narcotics act, which was sold to Congress as merely a regulatory/taxing scheme. We had NO drug crime, no drug gangs, no significant drug problems in this country aside from personal medical issues which most people and their doctors were able to either resolve or manage.
Or compare legal alcohol to illegal alcohol. No doubt, alcohol can be a dangerous drug. But people don’t go around shooting eachother over it like they did in the roaring `20’s.
James, don’t you know that we already have socialized medicine? How else would you describe the situation we’re in where my neighbor can do everything in their power short of eating lead to kill themselves and I still have to pay for their medical care w/ a 1000% or so markup due to the legislated monopoly in medicine?
Just lately, I’ve been dealing w/ a lot of medical professionals. You’re dead on correct, it’s amazing they’re able to get any patient care done in between compliance tasks.
“The problem is that like all ‘drags’ on society, what will it end up costing ME?” - James
That’s a scary reason to put people in prison. Just because they cost you money????
Yeah, Ginger .. it definitely sucks.
Dave, you misunderstood me I guess. What I was saying is: a) I agree the current system sucks and b) whatever we do should put personal responsibility as #1. I just think that since I’ll end up having to pay for someone else’s ’screw up’ anyway, I should get to choose the cheapest method.
I never said ‘put people in prison so I can save money’.
JamesD
It’s hard to touch the subject of the drug war without hostile remarks. But once the light goes on,in reference to the idiocy of our drug policies, frustration in getting other’s to understand is almost too much to handle. The subject is as volatile as the abortion issue.
meek
I don’t know if anything is as volatile as the abortion issue.
James, you said:
“OR letting them get high all they want”
There’s your problem right there - there is no LET. Neither you, nor any of the laws, actually prohibit anyone from getting as high as they want whenever they want. You don’t have that much control over anyone else’s life. I’m not saying you don’t have a RIGHT to, I’m saying you just plain don’t. It’s hubris to think otherwise. You might as well try to leap over a tall building.
So the real question is: should we LET cops actively try to destroy the lives of people who are not doing any harm to anyone else? How many people become a drain on society not from drug use, but from prohibition? Prohibition forces people to become a drain on society by taking away almost every opportunity to better themselves.
It’s a lot easier for a pothead to say
“screw it, I want a higher income instead of a higher high - it’s time I cut down/quit to improve my quality of life”
as a free man than to try to do so from jail.
And demonizing those who don’t get caught (which is 99.9999% of users out there) doesn’t exactly encourage them to become productive members of society.
So if you and people like you would just lay off of those who wish to experience life differently, we’d all be a lot happier and productive.
For the record, titus, I was speaking as if I were the police in that case … not me personally. But thanks for jumping all over me regardless …
People are inherently self-destructive. You just can’t stop that.