The recent death of the Actor Hoffman has solicited recent
comment on the insanity of the so called war on drugs which more than any other
cause has in fact promoted the industry into every corner of the globe.
I have never been tempted by any part of drug game and still
investigate plausible protocols. There
are now seriously promising approaches that demand serious clinical research and
a flexible mind. The field is becoming hugely
attractive as we go forward. Yet I am quite
happy to await useful results that are well understood.
We have seen clear empirical proofs that there are superior
systems of drug management. Public sentiment
is swinging firmly over to the total end of any form a criminal prohibition
whatsoever. The politicians are dipping
their toes in the waters.
Okay Texas. How about
a blanket pardon for all possession of marijuana convictions now? That tap dance was far too sweet.
Graham Hancock posted:
Existing drug laws are insane, destructive and vile
and cause great damage to individuals and to society. It is time that the
wicked and evil enterprise we have come to know as the "War on
Drugs", but that is really a war on people, was brought to an end before
there are any more casualties. It is time for the jingoistic boobies who call
for stiffer criminal penalties against drug users to shut up and mind their own
business before they cause any more needless misery and harm.
Two important stories here with food for thought. The first, by Russell Brand, is on the tragic and unnecessary death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who Brand rightly identifies as a casualty of the war on drugs:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/06/russell-brand-philip-seymour-hoffman-drug-laws?CMP=fb_ot
Meanwhile as a sign of positive changes underway in the world despite the worst efforts of the drug warriors, Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for legalising cannabis:
http://rt.com/news/uruguay-nobel-mujica-marijuana-849/
Mujica won't win of course -- these days the prize is reserved for people like Barack Obama who make no contribution to global peace, tolerance or understanding at all, but the very fact Mujica has been nominated will send a signal with meaning and power that we do have the choice, if we only have the courage to exercise it, to make a better world.
Thanks to Thomas Jesperson for drawing my attention to the story about Philip Seymour Hoffman, and to Annie Tompkins for the link to the Jose Mujica story.
Russell Brand: Philip Seymour Hoffman is another
victim of extremely stupid drug laws
In Hoffman's domestic or sex life there is no
undiscovered riddle – the man was a drug addict and, thanks to our drug laws,
his death inevitable
The
Guardian, Thursday 6 February 2014 15.05 GMT
Philip Seymour Hoffman's death was not on the bill.
If it'd been the sacrifice of Miley Cyrus or Justin
Bieber, that we are invited to anticipate daily, we could delight in the
Faustian justice of the righteous dispatch of a fast-living, sequin-spattered
denizen of eMpTyV. We are tacitly instructed to await their demise with
necrophilic sanctimony. When the end comes, they screech on Fox and TMZ, it
will be deserved. The Mail provokes indignation, luridly baiting us with the
sidebar that scrolls from the headline down to hell.
But Philip Seymour Hoffman? A middle-aged man, a
credible and decorated actor, the industrious and unglamorous artisan of
Broadway and serious cinema? The disease of addiction recognises none of
these distinctions. Whilst routinely described as tragic, Hoffman's death
is insufficiently sad to be left un-supplemented in the mandatory posthumous
scramble for salacious garnish; we will now be subjected to mourn-ography
posing as analysis. I can assure you that there is no as yet undiscovered
riddle in his domestic life or sex life, the man was a drug addict and his
death inevitable.
A troubling component of this sad loss is the complete absence
of hedonism. Like a lot of drug addicts, probably most, who "go over",
Hoffman was alone when he died. This is an inescapably bleak circumstance.
When we reflect on Bieber's Louis Vuitton embossed, Lamborghini cortege it is
easy to equate addiction with indulgence and immorality. The great actor dying
alone denies us this required narrative prang.
The reason I am so non-judgmental of Hoffman or
Bieber and so condemnatory of the pop cultural tinsel that adorns the reporting
around them is that I am a drug addict in recovery, so like any drug addict I
know exactly how Hoffman felt when he "went back out".
In spite of his life seeming superficially great, in spite of all the praise
and accolades, in spite of all the loving friends and family, there is a
predominant voice in the mind of an addict that supersedes all reason and that
voice wants you dead. This voice is the unrelenting echo of an unfulfillable
void.
Addiction is a mental illness around which there is
a great deal of confusion, which is hugely exacerbated by the laws that
criminalise drug addicts.
If drugs are illegal people who use drugs are
criminals. We have set our moral compass on this erroneous premise, and we have
strayed so far off course that the landscape we now inhabit provides us with no
solutions and greatly increases the problem.
This is an important moment in history; we know that prohibition does not work. We
know that the people who devise drug laws are out of touch and have no idea how
to reach a solution. Do they even have the inclination? The fact is their
methods are so gallingly ineffective that it is difficult not to deduce that
they are deliberately creating the worst imaginable circumstances to maximise
the harm caused by substance misuse.
People are going to use drugs; no self-respecting
drug addict is even remotely deterred by prohibition. What prohibition achieves
is an unregulated, criminal-controlled, sprawling, global mob-economy, where
drug users, their families and society at large are all exposed to the worst
conceivable version of this regrettably unavoidable problem.
Countries like Portugal and Switzerland that have introduced progressive and tolerant
drug laws have seen crime plummet and drug-related deaths significantly reduced. We know
this. We know this system doesn't
work – and yet we prop it up with ignorance and indifference. Why? Wisdom
is acting on knowledge. Now we are aware that our drug laws aren't working and
that alternatives are yielding positive results, why are we not acting?
Tradition? Prejudice? Extreme stupidity? The answer is all three. Change is
hard, apathy is easy, tradition is the narcotic of our rulers. The people who
are most severely affected by drug prohibition are dispensable, politically
irrelevant people. Poor people. Addiction affects all of us but the poorest pay
the biggest price.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's death is a reminder,
though, that addiction is indiscriminate. That it is sad, irrational and hard
to understand. What it also clearly demonstrates is that we are a culture that
does not know how to treat its addicts. Would Hoffman have died if this
disease were not so enmeshed in stigma? If we weren't invited to believe that
people who suffer from addiction deserve to suffer? Would he have OD'd if drugs
were regulated, controlled and professionally administered? Most importantly,
if we insisted as a society that what is required for people who suffer from
this condition is an environment of support, tolerance and understanding.
The troubling message behind Philip Seymour
Hoffman's death, which we all feel without articulating, is that it was
unnecessary and we know that something could be done. We also know what that
something is and yet, for some traditional, prejudicial, stupid reason we don't
do it.
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