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Milk: The Gateway Drug
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Some drug warrior pwnage.
34 Responses to “Milk: The Gateway Drug”
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Trying to inject logic into the drug war debate.
Hmm.
Let me know how that works.
I’m beginning to believe that the only hope for a sane society in America lies in its utter financial ruin.
Starve the State.
“Remember when our country had a drug war, so we declared a war on drugs, and now you can’t buy drugs anymore?”
I definitely smoked pot before drinking beer. I didn’t have any friends who could get me alcohol.
I saw this video this morning, and it is still giving me a smile.
I had truly believed all the States Representatives were naive when it came to drugs, but Tennessean Steve Cohen has changed my view.
I love when he takes him to task on the successes stats. Then slams him with the started on milk, then went to beer, then went to bourbon then marijuana.
I personally started with go-carts, then went to cars, moved to tractors, then monster trucks, and now I’m hooked on 18 wheelers, but I keep getting this urge to try a locomotive.
When I was a kid, I used to argue with my mom about legalization of marijuana (she was for, I was against; obviously she was right, as with most things). She thought “gateway” theories were absurd, and this was exactly her argument: everyone who uses hard drugs probably drank milk, too.
Now watching the movie Milk might be a gateway to all sorts of terrible things, like boys smooching in DuPont Circle and maybe even gay marriage! But drinking milk and smoking pot, probably equally harmless.
#2 should read “Remember when our country had a drug problem, so we declared a war on drugs, and now you can’t buy drugs anymore?” My own fault for not proofing.
Luckily, Cynical, that ruin is closer than you might think.
“But….but…butbutbut…we need to protect people’s children because they can’t do it themselves!! But….but….butbutbutbut….we have to protect adults from drugs because they can’t make their own life decisions! While we’re at it, we should just assign people’s jobs and living quarters to them. They can’t decide that stuff without fucking it up, either”.
I can’t get the video to play here. Can anyone tell me the name of the video so I can find it on CNN?
how about this neglected piece of logic:
FBI: “have you ever talked to a parent who has lost a child to drugs? …”
REALITY: “have you ever thought about the parents who had thier kids thrown in jail for the Drug War?”
the “lets-throw-the-kids-in-prison-because-we-care” crap has GOT to go.
Got it. That’s really good. Nice to see someone take on an LEO on this issue and not be afraid to challeneg his BS. Seachange!
Great vid. Glad to see him throw out the whole gateway theory.
This whole theory that the war on drugs is to protect people who are the victims of drugs is such a facrce. If it were true, possession would never have been a crime. Only dealing. You don’t protect a kid from harm buy arresting him and throwing him in jail.
Of course, they know that. They just do not give a rat’s ass about protecting anybody but the gigantic war machine they have created and need to keep funded so they don’t have to go out and find other real jobs.
Ad campaign:
Weed. It does a body good.
I thought this was going to be about Raw Milk.
Nice exchange, there.
The main thing that worries me is that after Prohibition was repealed they had a lot of Treasury agents sitting around with nothing to do. Then we got the Firearms Act of 1934 and now we have the BATF doing their thing as a kind of unintended consequence. They just went from one kind of prohibition to another.
I’m not against repealing drug laws but I think it’s time to bring back an idea used by the Greeks, among others. We should set up foriegn colonies using ex drug “soldiers” and mercenaries. England is probably a good fit for authoritarians.
Forget milk, take it to the source, the very root of the problem.
Breastmilk is the real gateway drug. And those poor kids on formula are really in trouble.
Or should be going after amniotic fluid?
Big props to Rep. Cohen for bringing up the racist history behind marijuana prohibition.
Anybody know anything about this Rep. Cohen?
He sounds unusually well informed for a politician.
It’s always nice to see the absurdities of the drug warriors laid bare.
Pinandpuller, what you’ve said is a good bit of insight. When a bona fide war is over, the troops come home and get jobs in civilian life. Some even become cops. But, do you know what is the one big difference here that allows that? There is no soldiers union.
When the “War on Drugs” is over, we may very well have surplus police, and prison guards, too. But they won’t be absorbed into the non-law enforcement sector of the economy. Why would they want to? Instead, they’ll just use their lobbying pull to get some other racket going.
I think you’re right on the solution, too. The safest thing to do is to draft them and send them somewhere else. Of course, Heaven help the rest of the world.
If someone could set up arranged living quarters for me with Semla Hayek I could live with it.
But let me come clean first. I wasn’t too impressed with milk myself. By the time I was in gradeschool I’d already had a few tastes of various kinds of soda so it wasn’t long before I had tried lemonade. I know it was a sin, so manufactured, laden with sugar & additives, and for a while widely available by fountain machine everywhere. But then I tried hard lemonade shortly before they criminalized it. I was stunned. Lost. Am I so bad for minding my own business while I smoke a cig and hang out playing cards? A big BBQ or weekend party just isn’t the same without it.
I still sneak a lil every once in a while. Just a taste, I don’t want much. Mostly it just helps that extra lame days when you can’t seem to shake the feeling everybody is lying about everything even if it doesn’t matter, hypocrites everywhere. But I’m not too worried. Every other person seems to have a stash somewhere, they ain’t going anywhere. If I had a greener thumb I’d probably grow lemons myself. Likely when I retire, I’ll have time on my hands and plenty of likeminded friends. Now, if I could only get them to VOTE we could make some real progess.
[...] Embedded video from CNN Video Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen is revealed to have an enlightened attitude about marijuana in this exchange with drug war dinosaur Robert Mueller. The tired-looking FBI director seems to be reciting his false arguments like a pull-string puppet. (Via The Agitator) [...]
“Luckily, Cynical, that ruin is closer than you might think.
To wit, Boyd:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090522/ap_on_re_us/us_california_day_of_reckoning
California faces its day of fiscal reckoning
“Former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, a Democrat who has joined a group seeking to change the state’s budget system, said too many services that used to be performed by local governments have been taken over by the state because of a landmark 1978 ballot measure that drastically limited property tax revenue. Hertzberg said the programs, and the money, need to be sent back to counties and cities.
“The real problem of California is that we need to bring government closer to the people, so that the role of the state is much narrower. We need to focus on big-picture stuff,” he said.”
Decentralization is the answer. But don’t stop at the county and city level.
Bring it on down to the individual level.
Political equality.
Anarchism.
@ #9: I was having issues getting it to play, but when I opened it in its own frame I was able to enable the flash player (I surf with flashblock and noscript)
It started with milk. Oh, yes, they warned me, but I didn’t listen!
From milk, to butter on my toast. Every morning. And then butter on the bread rolls in the evening.
Soon, it was cream in the coffee. (Yeah, I should have used non-dairy creamer, but I was hooked already.)
Then, whipping cream on the desserts. I was sliding fast. On to milkshakes, the bigger the better.
And the final humiliation when my girlfriend caught me with a two-scoop double Ben & Jerry’s cone!
My gawd, the milk cartel has ruined my life.
Hey! An Agitator post that made me smile instead of getting me all… well, agitated.
Little bits of hope go a long way these days.
[...] Embedded video from CNN Video Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen is revealed to have an enlightened attitude about marijuana in this exchange with drug war dinosaur Robert Mueller. The tired-looking FBI director seems to be reciting his false arguments like a pull-string puppet. (Via The Agitator) [...]
[...] H/T: The Agitator [...]
I know alot of Mom’s who have lost their kids to drugs. They have been serving long sentences at Walnut Grove Maximum Juvenile Facility in Mississippi. Yea, they’ve lost their kids alright. Most were taken out while still in high school, tried as adults, convicted and sent to prison where the parents live within a gulag system that is unconsionable. I know, I help kids make phone calls to their Mom’s because the phone calls are so expensive Mom’s can’t afford to accept them from the facility. Visitation is 3 hours twice per month and Mom’s travel across the state for a 3 hour visit. By the time they get through security, it’s a 2 hour visit. When gas was $4/gallon, visitation was prohibitive. Canteen, phone and special packages gouge the kids Mom’s who have lost them to drugs but just want them to have a pack of Ramen Noodles. The MDOC no longer accepts money orders (.43 cents) to the Canteen and now have to pay between $4-$6 to deposit money in their accounts via phone, internet or walk-in cash payments. There are 100,000 inmates in Mississippi, that’s a huge amount of money being made by Cyber Correctional Services, another fringe company making a haul on the War on Drugs and our kids safety. Kickbacks are given to the State and facilities. I’ve had kids tell me they do more drugs in Walnut Grove than they ever did on the outside. Guards bring it in, it’s a supplemental income matching their lousy pay. It’s like Lord of the Flies in that place. Kids with no prior criminal record (60% of kids in prison had no prior record) are acting and thinking like criminals because that is how you survive in prison. Plenty of Mom’s have lost their kids to drugs and it all started with milk. But now their teeth are rotten because they never see a dentist and state issue toothpaste has no Flouride. But yea, really, it’s for the kid’s own good, and the prison industry and the prison guard lobby and all the fringe companies who capitalize on the poor Mom’s who have lost their kids to drugs. Such a pity, how sad.
I just let a kid from the grove call his Mom on my account because she couldn’t afford the collect call. She asked me if I had a son there, and I said no. She said oh, well I don’t want to be nosey, but I wanted to thank you from one Mom to another. She said she had other kid inmate’s Mom’s do the same thing and she always wants to thank the Mom. The kids were locked down on Mother’s Day so there were no phone calls home that day. Yea, asshole, lots of Mom’s have lost their kids to drugs.
From some of the case histories I have collected this is what I’ve found. Before the kid ended up in prison for drugs, he was also going to school, working, playing sports and generally doing what teenagers do. The kid got caught with drugs and went to prison, usually on some bogus plea deal to avoid the maximum given as punishment by a judge for having the audicity to waste the courts time going to trial (that’s a no-no). And because they can’t fight the state, and truthfully are guilty of some minor drug offense.
Once shipped off to prison, the kid has nothing to do all day. Now drugs do become the main focus, selling and using. Kids now make drugs and cards their full time occupation, as well as fighting and watching Jerry Springer and BET. Learning how to survive criminally in prison where they are deprived of everything normal and necessary is the goal and the only way to be safe. So the kid has gone from receational using and small time dealing (mainly to get their’s free) to spending all day with nothing to do except hope to score a bag of weed to ward off insanity, boredom and depression.
C.O.s bring in a $50 bag which the inmate breaks down and sells for $300 to other inmates (and the officer gets a kickback). Of course, drug tests are administered regularly, so if an inmate doesn’t pass the “piss test” as they call it, he goes to the hole for “behavior modification” (there are numerous ways to pass the test, after all, these kids pride themselves on being convicts). The “hole” consists of 23 hour lockdown in isolation, no phone, canteen or visitation privileges, shower every 3 days and no socialization; it can last up to 6 months or however long the MDOC thinks is necessary for “behaviour modification”. The hole is just another thing the kids learn to endure, but has no lasting affect. Usually a beating precedes the hole or a mace attack if the inmate resists.
Drugs are a way of life at Walnut Grove condoned by the guards who play the corruption game that engulfs the facility. A joint goes for $6 and takes the place of “life” because there is no life there. The war on drugs continues in the prisons where Mom’s lose their kids even further, for their own good of course.
There’s that damn “gateway” argument again. It seems they always throw that out there when they’re losing, as if it’s their ace in the hole.
Pam, thank you for your posts, I copied them, went to the email page of each of my federal “representatives” and sent it to each of them. I really wish I had the power to snap my fingers and make each and every prohibitionist instantly trade places with those incarcerated under these unconstitutional drug “laws”. That would be true justice, something we haven’t seen in this nation for decades.
excellent Windy, thanks for grabbing the bull by the horns and doing something.
One of the kids I know was recruited by a friends Mom and was selling small amounts of pot mainly to get his free. He was 16 years old, a sophomore in high school. Him and his twin brother ended up pleaing 8 years on a mandatory drug charge of 15 years. He got out after 4 on ERS and new non-violent drug laws in Mississippi due to prison overcrowding. A sophomore in high school facing 15 years in prison (including time at Parchman) doing 8 in a maximum security juvenile PRISON where survival is the name of the game.
Now he’s out. Covered in tattoos, a felony record and probation hanging over his head, no driver’s license, and a bitter attitude, he was dropped off at the Tupelo bus station after a 10 jaunt to Birmingham, AL because the facility put him on the wrong bus. By the time he got to Tupelo 10 hours later the station was closed. His mom was never notified by the facility he was on his way home. He got someone to let him use their cell phone to call her at 10pm to pick him up at the station. He had on clothes 3 sizes too big from the good will. He feels like an outsider, judged harshly by society and has grown a very cynical attitude against society. He’s very smart and has kept journals and written manuscripts that are very, very good. He’s an artist as well. The only work he has found is working in a tattoo parlor. It’s something. His twin is still incarcerated as he didn’t do too well in there. Although he is the only inmate in the history of Walnut Grove to get his barbers license. He is an excellent barbour, I’ve seen his work. He can taper like a mutha f*cker and CO’s as well as the warden wants him to cut their hair. Maybe he has a future, although he’s white. Kids will survive in spite of the mean, cruel and harsh laws created by a supposed humane society. Ha!
[...] independent voters the message is clear. Outside of a handful of politicians, these kinds of “tough on crime” laws are fully embraced by [...]