Drugs Winning War on Drugs
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For South America's leftist leaders as well as edgy entrepreneurs, coke is a signifier of defiance. Peruvians have a long history of chewing coca leaves and using the plant for other traditional purposes, but now their government promotes coca products partly as a way to resist U.S. pressure to eradicate coca. And in pledging $1 million to fund two coca food-processing factories in Bolivia, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez must be delighted to have found yet another way to poke a stick in the eye of "el Diablo."
The Fake Real Thing
"It was always the plan to let negative publicity move us forward," says Jamey Kirby, the man behind Cocaine, an energy drink recently launched in the United States
The Real Real Thing
Coca toffees from Peru contain coca alkaloids, a mild form of the active ingredient in cocaine. Peruvian companies also produce coca cookies, energy bars, honey, and soda.
"I insist that [coca leaf] can be consumed directly and elegantly in salad."
-Peruvian president Alan Garcia, December 2006.
Peru is the world's No. 2 cocaine producer
How to Kill a Rainforest, for $4,975 Tax Dollars an Acre
—Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell
After six years and billions of dollars, Plan Colombia—the United States’ ambitious program of aerial spraying aimed at wiping out Colombia’s illegal coca harvest—has succeeded mostly in pushing coca growing into new areas.
Worse, data from the U.N. show that Plan Colombia has failed to significantly reduce the country’s cocaine output, and on the streets of the United States, blow is cheaper than before the spraying began.
Coca sprayed since 2000 | 1.8 million acres (nearly the size of Yellowstone Park) |
Retail price of Roundup herbicide needed to cover that area | $91 million |
Amount paid to Dyncorp to oversee eradication in 2005 | $174 million |
Coca cultivation in 2000 | 337,000 to 404,000 acres |
Coca cultivation in 2005 | 212,500 to 356,000 acres |
Area of primary forest replaced by coca fields since 2000 | 241,000 acres |
Percentage of coca detected in 2005 that was found in areas where coca had not grown previously | 44% |
Percentage of area sprayed in the coca-rich district of Putumayo that actually contained legal crops or forest | 40% |
Change in U.S. street price of cocaine from 2000 to 2005 | -29% |
"The fight for coca symbolizes our fight for freedom. Coca growers will continue to grow coca. There will never be zero coca." –Bolivian president and former cocalero Evo Morales, February 2006. Bolivia is the world’s No. 3 cocaine producer
Photo: Charlie Nucci (Candy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVkk6fH2u0Y
*sigh*
now if I could just convince 'em to play in Toronto...
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The Thieves of Virtue: legislating morality undermines representative government.
http://thiscanadian.typepad.com/thi s_canadian/2008/03/the-thieves-of.html
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National Association for the Advancement and Advocacy of Addicts, Inc.
Re: Drugs Winning War on Drugs , http://www.motherjones.com/news/out front/2007/03/drugs_winning_the_war_on_drugs.html
It's not that drugs are winning the war on drugs but that people are losing it. The unwinnable (fact) drug war is a lose-lose proposition for all people yet it persists and grows day by day, year by year. Why is this? Because of hate, hate as old as the bible which says alcoholism is an abomination and alcoholics are bad people. Our entire belief system and political system for dealing with addictions and addictors (all addictors from drugs to addictive behaviors) is based on this moral paradigm. In fact, the so-called experts in the field of addiction, ASAM and NIDA (under Nora Volkow) will tell you their theory of addiction causation is the hijacked brain hypothesis (Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97 ) which says addiction is caused by two things: 1) a conscious, willful, and voluntary (immoral) decision to use the drug, then 2) the drug changes the brain (hijacks the brain's reward system) into an addicted brain. This stated theory is no different from the historical belief of addiction causation for the last 2000 years. It merely couches it in what Leshner and Volkow say is science. The drug war is a policy derived from this theory. Thus, as long as this theory is believed, the drug war is inevitable because it only makes sense to criminalize drugs and drug addicts, the immoral causes of willful immoral addictions.
The only problem here is that the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) is a lie. One needs to suspend rational thinking to believe this theory because all the real science of addiction causation shows this theory is wrong. Read my paper on the science of addiction causation at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . Hiroi's paper, "Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma, embedded within my paper, also goes step by step through the disproof of the HBH, the plasticity theory. The conclusion of this paper says, “A majority of substance users do not develop addiction to nicotine, alcohol, or opiates. Currently available plasticity-based models (model 1.) of addiction do not adequately account for the limited prevalence of addiction among chronic substance users and the presence of pre-existing, comorbid traits. The genetic model (Model 2) of addiction predicts that addiction is more likely to develop after initial substance use in individuals with genetic susceptibility, which is also associated with comorbid traits in some (Gdc), but not all cases (Gd). Model 2 [Hypoism] highlights the need for a new direction in addiction research as well as new treatment strategies.” Thus, the real science of addiction causation shows addiction is caused by involuntary, unconscious, and unwillful genetics, exactly the opposite of the HBH. Despite knowing this paper (she cited it in one of her own papers), Volkow still claims the HBH is the correct theory. It is this wrong theory that the drug war is based on. Thus, the drug war is based on a lie, a fraudulent theory. That is why the drug war is unwinnable, it's based on a wrong theory. The public knows nothing about this and is therefore being misled by one of Time Magazines's 100 most influential people in this country. This nonsense has been going on for the past hundred years but now it is officially the responsibility of NIDA whose chief is a political appointee and who testifies about all this to the Congress under oath.
My book, Hypoic's Handbook, and the above web article, discusses all this and shows what we should be doing to effectively deal with drugs and addictions. For anything to change and any progress to be made in addictions the public needs to know about the real science behind addictions and its implications on public policy.
"Love is an action not a feeling.
Integrity is an action not a thought.
Anything less is too little." ---
Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.
Author of Hypoic's Handbook - The Hypoism Paradigm of Addiction.
http://www.hypoism.com
President and founder of The National Association for the Advancement and Advocacy of Addicts, Inc. (N4A), a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization of addicts for addicts offering free educational and legal services to discriminated against and abused addicts of all varieties, "substances" and "behavioral," and their families.
http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/the nationalassociationfortheadvan cementandadvocacyofaddicts/
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