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Can’t help but ascribe the bulk of this problem to the dogma that getting a buzz on is sinful and must be prohibited. People clearly love to get altered, they’ll defy whatever law to do so, and some of these extracts can lay a hook in you that’s damn hard to shake. People will pay, sad but true. Best to bring the stuff within the law, regulate it tightly, tax it, cut off addiction-fueled revenues from black-marketeers who won’t hesitate to murder or sell to kids to maintain billion dollar margins. But in the end, an adult should be assumed to own his or her own body, so if they insist on taking the risks I’d rather they be able to dose up without funding mafias or paramilitaries. If they hurt someone while high or feed it to minors, prosecute. If they’re wrecked at work, especially if public safety relies on their sobriety, fire them and, perhaps, also prosecute. But criminalizing the act of getting high seems only to have benefitted the bad guys.
Posted by Kuya on Dec 10, 2004 at 2:06 AM
Not to suggest that FARC itself, or the other killers, will suddenly dissolve in the absence of drug revenues. As for that cycle of violence, honestly, it appears to have its own momentum and I don’t know what it would take to break it. But at the moment they’ve got a river of money flowing to them. Perhaps that at least can be stemmed.
Posted by Kuya on Dec 10, 2004 at 2:10 AM
anyone looking for a good source of information on the issue of the drug war would do well to check out http://www.mapinc.org/. The part I find most outrageous about this whole “drug war” is loss of Constitutional rights. It scares me more than anything else. Even terrorism. It is terrorism from within.I am not advocating drug abuse but when the cure is worse than the ill everyone should be concerned. I am much more in fear of roadblocks, drug dogs and storm troopers in schools, and no knock warrants than I am of drug dealers selling meth and totin AKs. This is above all else a raging example of all we have lost in this country not just lost but wrested away from us in the name of “safety”. Zero tolerance, piss tests to work at menial-minimum wage jobs, asset forfiture, kids turning in their parents for a little of the green . Wrong house raids, innocent people being killed by the dealers and the cops. The fourth ammendment bent over and sodomized by people sworn to uphold the constitution from SCOTUS on down to the cop on the street. This is like Pol Pot and Hitler getting a job with the ACLU. This war for almost 100 years was a turning point in our democracy. reading the genesis of this war from the pure food and drug act to Bush just visiting Columbia last week is a sad and frightening chapter in our history.
Posted by redstate on Dec 13, 2004 at 9:56 AM
It is good to know that at least 2 other people have written about this and agree that this “war on terrorists” is actually a reason to suspend the Constitutional rights of citizens. The US govt likes to have us in a state of war all the time, it then gives them more powers over citizen rights, and allows them to act “expediently and in the name of safety”. This is a farse, and the US govt is guilty of countless war crimes against humanity. Te govt gets around many problems by granting corporations with money to do the dirty work, so that the politicians look squeaky clean. The drug war is a war on drug users, thats all. I agree with Kuya, which is a persons right to use any substance in his body that he wishes, and as long as there is no harm to others, then that is his right to ingest that substance, whatever it is, pot, cocaine, LSD, rat poison, arsenic. That is my God granted right.
Posted by Mark on Dec 14, 2004 at 7:18 AM
The Drug war is just a pretext for intervention in Columbia though. For example the chemicals used to manufacture cocaine are imported from the States yet the USAF isn’t bombing american factories making the stuff.
Posted by Geroqu on Dec 14, 2004 at 9:17 AM
What a slanted and misinformed article by Ana Carrigan. If Colombia has been through 40 years of violent insurgency, why should the US government not help out?
It is made abundantly clear to campesinos out in the countryside that to grow coca is against the law. If you grow coca, it’ll be sprayed. So…don’t grow coca. If poor farmers out in the rest of the world can subsist without
resorting to illegal crops, why can’t Colombians?
As for US special forces guarding the oil pipeline, that is incorrect on the author’s part. Those US guys are training Colombian soldiers to competently defend their national infrastructure against guerrillas.
Who is the most guilty of murder, terrorism, and intimidation: the FARC, the ELN, or the AUC? Based on what I know, all three are
more or less equally guilty. Thats why the US
government condemns all three.
Does the article claim that the Colombian Army’s securing major highways only benefits the upper and middle classes? Hah!
I’ve been on those roads plenty of times, and they are full of farm to market trucks and
campesino-packed buses. Which very directly benefit from an open national highway system.
I understand that statistics in the war on drugs can be ambiguous, misleading, and less than fully accurate. But from what I have seen,
heard, and experienced in Colombia, I have full confidence in the national agencies charged with
our national interests, and how best to help the Colombians.
Posted by Don on Dec 14, 2004 at 10:38 AM
I do not have a totally informed opinion of Columbia’s problems.but I do know this that the drug war is W-R-O-N-G. I just feel so bad for those campesinos that they must suffer so terribly.
on the issue of illegal crops I do however know something . for many generations coca was used without ill effect by the people of Columbia. Es no droga es comida was the accepted view of coca.
Harvard University under the guidance of the most influential ethnobotanist of all time Richard Evan Schultes did the most extensive study of Coca in the South American highlands and found that even daily consumption of Coca in it’s raw form (chewing a paste of the leaves with a little lime to release and boost the alkoloids responsible for the cocas effect) is not bad for health either mental or physical. The pre-emminent work on this is by Wade Davis( an apprentice and student of Dr. Schultes) called One River and is a most excellent read
Posted by redstate on Dec 14, 2004 at 2:11 PM
HOw can you even begin to think that the national agencies of america, are in our best interest and that it is the best way to help colombians??!? it is because of the American corporate,therefore military intervention that the guerillas defy the government (which is just as corrupt and just as involved in the drug traffiking if not more than the FARC) except that it is legal for the governemtn to do so, because the world police (USA) is on their side. No one has anything to gain from plan colombia except the filthy rich, American investors, but nn colombian citizen will see any real results as far as poverty and crime rates are concerned, the only colombian gaining anythnig from this is Lil’ Bush Uribe. I do admit some of Uribes policies have been succesful, but there is a reason why the people voted against the referendum. and until a president comes along that truly demands for the COLOMBIAN people and not US capitalist investors, then colombia will remain no better than it is now, but of course it is not in the best interest of the “american people” or better yet, a handful of white, corporate owners that rule the american political system and therefore the greater part of the so called “thrid world”...consequently, not giving way for a truly remakrable colombian leader to arise, unless he bows down to the red white and blue flag. and its stripes that like bars hold us all back.
Posted by Jon on Dec 14, 2004 at 2:20 PM
the war on terror is simply a war of control. the word terrorist has changed its meaning from one who terrorises people of the world to anyone who dissagrees with U.S. The U.S. and U.K. are now labeling almost any criminal a terrorist even if you dissagree with govt policies your a terrorist. The govt see the war on terror as a means of funding these columbian esscapades and others by telling there people who “ellected” them that they are fighting terrorists. all because of the chaos brought by 9/11 but i ask you this who has proffited from those lives the most bin laden or the west
Posted by sam on Dec 15, 2004 at 1:33 AM
wouldnt it be a better idea to destroy all of the drugs??? then there will be no one getting high and the bad guys cant make money.
Posted by matt on Dec 15, 2004 at 10:55 AM
try in do destroy all the drugs would be like saying confiscate all the guns- Impossible. Just like self defense is a natural impulse so are persuing altered states of conciousness. People will always get high and legalizing everything and abolishing the DEA & ATF would overnight change the whole equation. Until the turn of the last century with the pure food& drug act our rights to control our own bodies has eroded. Addicts out of control were a miniscule part of the population. There were other much more insidious reasons for these laws. I could go on for hours about this but before I bore anybody I just say that I am not at druggie but and I believe in the most part for the rule of law but in this case the laws are wrong.
Posted by redstate on Dec 15, 2004 at 7:28 PM
There’s an interesting theory in anthropology that suggests psychoactive plants and fungi as contributors to the beginnings of mystical feelings and religious awe. I’m imagining one of our ape-ish ancestors eating a mushroom, herb, or cactus and becoming captivated by trippy visions; certainly lots of long-standing religious forms use psychoactives in their worship rites. Even modern monkeys are known to let fruit rot on the ground to let it ferment a bit so they can get a buzz from the little bit of alcohol content (no worshipping there, likely just a simian party). Even teetotaler cultures like caffeine. Prohibition makes a crime of something that isn’t a crime, to paraphrase Abe Lincoln.
As for weapons, I wouldn’t mind seeing a class-action lawsuit against a manufacturer of, say, landmines or water-well toxification weapons, similar to the anti-tobacco suits today. The first few tries would not succeed, of course, but it would set a precedent.
Posted by Kuya on Dec 15, 2004 at 10:59 PM
I may be wrong, but I read somewhere that Columbia’s soil is unusually poor and thus unsuitable for other crops. This article (I think it was in US News) had multiple accounts from farmers who would like to grow other, ‘legit’ crops, but cannot. Also, this article noted that towns in FARC-controlled areas were sometimes better off than ‘free’ ones (low/no crime, etc).
Posted by Andy on Jan 10, 2005 at 2:18 PM
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Reader Comments
Can’t help but ascribe the bulk of this problem to the dogma that getting a buzz on is sinful and must be prohibited. People clearly love to get altered, they’ll defy whatever law to do so, and some of these extracts can lay a hook in you that’s damn hard to shake. People will pay, sad but true. Best to bring the stuff within the law, regulate it tightly, tax it, cut off addiction-fueled revenues from black-marketeers who won’t hesitate to murder or sell to kids to maintain billion dollar margins. But in the end, an adult should be assumed to own his or her own body, so if they insist on taking the risks I’d rather they be able to dose up without funding mafias or paramilitaries. If they hurt someone while high or feed it to minors, prosecute. If they’re wrecked at work, especially if public safety relies on their sobriety, fire them and, perhaps, also prosecute. But criminalizing the act of getting high seems only to have benefitted the bad guys.
Not to suggest that FARC itself, or the other killers, will suddenly dissolve in the absence of drug revenues. As for that cycle of violence, honestly, it appears to have its own momentum and I don’t know what it would take to break it. But at the moment they’ve got a river of money flowing to them. Perhaps that at least can be stemmed.
anyone looking for a good source of information on the issue of the drug war would do well to check out http://www.mapinc.org/. The part I find most outrageous about this whole “drug war” is loss of Constitutional rights. It scares me more than anything else. Even terrorism. It is terrorism from within.I am not advocating drug abuse but when the cure is worse than the ill everyone should be concerned. I am much more in fear of roadblocks, drug dogs and storm troopers in schools, and no knock warrants than I am of drug dealers selling meth and totin AKs. This is above all else a raging example of all we have lost in this country not just lost but wrested away from us in the name of “safety”. Zero tolerance, piss tests to work at menial-minimum wage jobs, asset forfiture, kids turning in their parents for a little of the green . Wrong house raids, innocent people being killed by the dealers and the cops. The fourth ammendment bent over and sodomized by people sworn to uphold the constitution from SCOTUS on down to the cop on the street. This is like Pol Pot and Hitler getting a job with the ACLU. This war for almost 100 years was a turning point in our democracy. reading the genesis of this war from the pure food and drug act to Bush just visiting Columbia last week is a sad and frightening chapter in our history.
It is good to know that at least 2 other people have written about this and agree that this “war on terrorists” is actually a reason to suspend the Constitutional rights of citizens. The US govt likes to have us in a state of war all the time, it then gives them more powers over citizen rights, and allows them to act “expediently and in the name of safety”. This is a farse, and the US govt is guilty of countless war crimes against humanity. Te govt gets around many problems by granting corporations with money to do the dirty work, so that the politicians look squeaky clean. The drug war is a war on drug users, thats all. I agree with Kuya, which is a persons right to use any substance in his body that he wishes, and as long as there is no harm to others, then that is his right to ingest that substance, whatever it is, pot, cocaine, LSD, rat poison, arsenic. That is my God granted right.
The Drug war is just a pretext for intervention in Columbia though. For example the chemicals used to manufacture cocaine are imported from the States yet the USAF isn’t bombing american factories making the stuff.
What a slanted and misinformed article by Ana Carrigan. If Colombia has been through 40 years of violent insurgency, why should the US government not help out?
It is made abundantly clear to campesinos out in the countryside that to grow coca is against the law. If you grow coca, it’ll be sprayed. So…don’t grow coca. If poor farmers out in the rest of the world can subsist without
resorting to illegal crops, why can’t Colombians?
As for US special forces guarding the oil pipeline, that is incorrect on the author’s part. Those US guys are training Colombian soldiers to competently defend their national infrastructure against guerrillas.
Who is the most guilty of murder, terrorism, and intimidation: the FARC, the ELN, or the AUC? Based on what I know, all three are
more or less equally guilty. Thats why the US
government condemns all three.
Does the article claim that the Colombian Army’s securing major highways only benefits the upper and middle classes? Hah!
I’ve been on those roads plenty of times, and they are full of farm to market trucks and
campesino-packed buses. Which very directly benefit from an open national highway system.
I understand that statistics in the war on drugs can be ambiguous, misleading, and less than fully accurate. But from what I have seen,
heard, and experienced in Colombia, I have full confidence in the national agencies charged with
our national interests, and how best to help the Colombians.
I do not have a totally informed opinion of Columbia’s problems.but I do know this that the drug war is W-R-O-N-G. I just feel so bad for those campesinos that they must suffer so terribly.
on the issue of illegal crops I do however know something . for many generations coca was used without ill effect by the people of Columbia. Es no droga es comida was the accepted view of coca.
Harvard University under the guidance of the most influential ethnobotanist of all time Richard Evan Schultes did the most extensive study of Coca in the South American highlands and found that even daily consumption of Coca in it’s raw form (chewing a paste of the leaves with a little lime to release and boost the alkoloids responsible for the cocas effect) is not bad for health either mental or physical. The pre-emminent work on this is by Wade Davis( an apprentice and student of Dr. Schultes) called One River and is a most excellent read
HOw can you even begin to think that the national agencies of america, are in our best interest and that it is the best way to help colombians??!? it is because of the American corporate,therefore military intervention that the guerillas defy the government (which is just as corrupt and just as involved in the drug traffiking if not more than the FARC) except that it is legal for the governemtn to do so, because the world police (USA) is on their side. No one has anything to gain from plan colombia except the filthy rich, American investors, but nn colombian citizen will see any real results as far as poverty and crime rates are concerned, the only colombian gaining anythnig from this is Lil’ Bush Uribe. I do admit some of Uribes policies have been succesful, but there is a reason why the people voted against the referendum. and until a president comes along that truly demands for the COLOMBIAN people and not US capitalist investors, then colombia will remain no better than it is now, but of course it is not in the best interest of the “american people” or better yet, a handful of white, corporate owners that rule the american political system and therefore the greater part of the so called “thrid world”...consequently, not giving way for a truly remakrable colombian leader to arise, unless he bows down to the red white and blue flag. and its stripes that like bars hold us all back.
the war on terror is simply a war of control. the word terrorist has changed its meaning from one who terrorises people of the world to anyone who dissagrees with U.S. The U.S. and U.K. are now labeling almost any criminal a terrorist even if you dissagree with govt policies your a terrorist. The govt see the war on terror as a means of funding these columbian esscapades and others by telling there people who “ellected” them that they are fighting terrorists. all because of the chaos brought by 9/11 but i ask you this who has proffited from those lives the most bin laden or the west
wouldnt it be a better idea to destroy all of the drugs??? then there will be no one getting high and the bad guys cant make money.
try in do destroy all the drugs would be like saying confiscate all the guns- Impossible. Just like self defense is a natural impulse so are persuing altered states of conciousness. People will always get high and legalizing everything and abolishing the DEA & ATF would overnight change the whole equation. Until the turn of the last century with the pure food& drug act our rights to control our own bodies has eroded. Addicts out of control were a miniscule part of the population. There were other much more insidious reasons for these laws. I could go on for hours about this but before I bore anybody I just say that I am not at druggie but and I believe in the most part for the rule of law but in this case the laws are wrong.
There’s an interesting theory in anthropology that suggests psychoactive plants and fungi as contributors to the beginnings of mystical feelings and religious awe. I’m imagining one of our ape-ish ancestors eating a mushroom, herb, or cactus and becoming captivated by trippy visions; certainly lots of long-standing religious forms use psychoactives in their worship rites. Even modern monkeys are known to let fruit rot on the ground to let it ferment a bit so they can get a buzz from the little bit of alcohol content (no worshipping there, likely just a simian party). Even teetotaler cultures like caffeine. Prohibition makes a crime of something that isn’t a crime, to paraphrase Abe Lincoln.
As for weapons, I wouldn’t mind seeing a class-action lawsuit against a manufacturer of, say, landmines or water-well toxification weapons, similar to the anti-tobacco suits today. The first few tries would not succeed, of course, but it would set a precedent.
I may be wrong, but I read somewhere that Columbia’s soil is unusually poor and thus unsuitable for other crops. This article (I think it was in US News) had multiple accounts from farmers who would like to grow other, ‘legit’ crops, but cannot. Also, this article noted that towns in FARC-controlled areas were sometimes better off than ‘free’ ones (low/no crime, etc).
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