SP0020 – World Crisis “War on Drugs”

 

War on Drugs

By Juan Chamero, from Caece University at Buenos Aires, Argentine, June 16^th 2009

Subject: Crime, Drugs, Addictions, Human Health, Crime organized,

Info Source 1: Drugs Won the War, by Nicholas D. Kristoff, NYT, Published June 13, 2009

This year marks the 40^th  anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

 “We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

 Main Consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

 Note 1: Take into consideration that these entries are “semantic pills”, tiny pieces of meaning to be eventually connected by Knowledge Creation algorithms.

Note 2: The War on Drugs is a prohibition campaign undertaken by the United States government with the assistance of participating countries, intended to reduce the illegal drug trade – to curb supply and diminish demand for specific psychoactive substances deemed immoral, harmful, dangerous, or undesirable. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances. The term was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1969,[1] and his choice of words was probably based on the War on Poverty, announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

Complementary sources

• Info source 2: War on Drugs, and Drug Cartels, from Wikipedia;
• Info source 3: Drugs Portal from Interpol, Office on Drugs, from United Nations,
• Info source 3: Drug Statistics, from drug-rehabs.org, More statistics, from Worldmeter.info;
• Info source 4: “The Argentine” Paco, from Wikipedia

 

Something about the use of the word “war”:

 The phrase “War on Drugs” has been condemned as being propaganda to justify military or paramilitary operations under the guise of a noble cause.

This form of language was previously used in Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty”, and later by George W. Bush’s “War on Terrorism”. The word “war” is used to invoke a state of emergency, although the target and methods of the campaign is largely unlike that of a regular war.

Like the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs is a true war, waged by the US government against its own people.

 

 Note 3: This pill is a warning-advise to be as objective as possible when pieces are connected.

 

Major drugs:

•  Alcohol
• Caffeine
• Cannabis
• Cocaine
• Ecstasy
• Heroin
• LSD
• Meth
• Mushrooms
• Tobacco

  

Alcohol Consumption Map, from WHO

 Note 4: Taking a glance to credible major drugs mappings we may acquaint that Alcohol is a dominant factor and addictions pattern generation.

 

 Some alcohol statistics

• Alcohol is involved in 50% of all driving fatalities.
• Over 15 million Americans are dependent on alcohol. 500,000 are between the age of 9 and 12.
• Americans spend over $90 billion dollars total on alcohol each year.
• An average American may consume over 25 gallons of beer, 2 gallons of wine, and 1.5 gallons of distilled spirits each year.
• Pregnant women who drink are feeding alcohol to their babies. Unfortunately the underdeveloped liver of the baby can only burn alcohol at half the rate of its mother, so the alcohol stays in the baby’s system twice as long.
• Each year students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol, more then they spend on soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee, or books combined.
• 6.6% of employees in full time jobs report heavy drinking, defined as drinking five or more drinks per occasion on five or more days in the past 30 days.
• The highest percentage of heavy drinkers (12.2%) is found among unemployed adults between the age of 26 to 34
• Up to 40% of all industrial fatalities and 47% of industrial injuries can be linked to alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
• In 2000, almost 7 million persons age 12 to 20 was a binge drinker; that is about one in five persons under the legal drinking age was a binge drinker.
• The 2001 survey shows 25 million (one in ten) Americans surveyed reported driving under the influence of alcohol. This report is nearly three million more than the previous year. Among young adults age 18 to 25 years, almost 23% drove under the influence of alcohol.
• Drunk driving is proving to be even deadlier then what we previously know. The latest death statistics released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), using a new method of calculation show that 17,488 people were killed in alcohol related traffic accidents last year. This report represents nearly 800 more people where killed than the previous year.
• Alcohol is the number 1 drug problem in America.
• 43% of Americans have been exposed to alcoholism in their families.
• Nearly one out of 4 Americans admitted to general hospitals have alcohol problems or are undiagnosed alcoholics being diagnosed for alcohol related consequences.
• Four in ten criminal offenders report alcohol as a factor in violence.
• Among spouse violence victims, three out of four incidents were reported to have involved alcohol use by the offender.

Drug Cartels

—— “Included in the list of government officials and officers on the Cali Cartel payroll were a reported 5,000 taxi drivers. The taxi drivers would allow the cartel to know who was arriving in the city and when, as well as where they were staying. By having numerous taxi drivers on the payroll, the cartel was able to monitor the movements of officials and dignitaries. It is reported by Time Magazine, in 1991, DEA and U.S. Customs Service (now ICE) agents were monitoring a shipment being offloaded in Miami, only to find out later that the DEA agents were the target of Cali surveillance at the same time” . …..

                    

Mexico Cartels Map, from Stratfor.com

 

 

Border transparency from people promoting the “Big Fence”

 

Note 5: This textual-graphic semantic pill shows us that illegal drug activities pervade our daily life all over the world.  

 

Paco: The drug for the very poor people

 It is a low cost street drug elaborated on the residual chemical cocaine process –until recent considered as waste- treated with kerosene and sulphuric acid and occasionally chlorophorm, ether or potassium carbonate. It is extremely toxic and additive transforming people, most of them young and children, in “dead alive” because their external aspect. The smaller dose costs less than 35 cents of a dollar.

 It appeared as an underground criminal business in the Emergency Villages that surrounded Buenos Aires city when the 2001 Financial Collapse that suddenly impoverish this rich South American nation. Now it is estimated that only in Argentine are 500,000 children addict to it!.    

Its cycle from euphoria to “disphoria” is too fast – one to 6 minutes- and its feedback accelerate the harm effects on health and dependence.

 The Province of Buenos Aires, the largest Argentine State recently warns about its consumption because it may cause brain dead in less than 6 months. Economically and only in Argentina it moves 400 million dollars annually and its use is spreading all over the South American Region.

 

Comment: These pills are knowledge ingredients that trigger our mind about something “bad” within us as a whole because its reach, volume, harm, danger, diversity, and expansion. No doubt it may destroy us because it is evenly distributed no matter the variables used to potentially discriminate our intents of focusing somewhere. Could we tame it in a near future?. Could we restrict its expansion keeping it within very specific and agreed limits?. Will be enforced to engage in war against it -at large people like us!- in order to beat it starting a “Zero Tolerance” era?. Is this social syndrome a fatal consequence of our somehow intrinsic growing limitations?. Has it a close correlation with poverty and injustice?. There are too much questions without clear and consensual answers. However in the meantime somehow and both ethically and compassionately will be enforced to limit its destructive expansion?.   .