I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies would also be desolate if they lost their supply of opiates. However, i’m sure they were legally cultivating the poppy, not going through poor, desperate farmers.
Hahahaha Karla, can somebody please tell me where these legal poppy fields are, because a little old lady in my neck of the woods got busted for having a “pretty poppy” (just one) featured in the home garden tour that turned out to have unacceptable narcotic levels. But I digress. I wonder if we turned back the clock and made narcotics and other drugs have less stigma, would we have more competition and hence less drug lords/cartels/taliban compounds? I don’t know but the national addiction average was a lot less when people could still order their works in a pretty box from the Sears Holiday Edition Catalog…just sayin…
I keep wondering how it can be that a cultivated plant for which the poverty stricken farmers are threatened beaten and killed for producing, somehow manages to make a transition from evil to beneficial; depending on whose chemical lab it goes through. The same metamorphosis is seen in the streets; it’s a threat to society if placed in a grubby little drug dealers hands; it’s life saving if handled by the pharmaceutical companies.
One lousy plant? Exactly how much opium did the blue meanies think could be extracted from a single flower? In fact, how could they even be certain that little old lady knew how to extract opium; and in the even bigger picture, exactly how many flowers would that little old lady have to grow to (chemically) produce a single gram of heroin?
I don’t think we could ever completely remove the stigma of drugs, no matter how far back in time we went. Undeniably, there are people with addictive personalities. Whatever drug they take, they will end up abusing. The family members and friends effected by the drug user will always blame the drug, not the user, believing if somehow the drug was locked away where it never could be found, there will be no more problems. It doesn’t work that way, of course. An addictive personality simply trades one addiction for another; a heroin addict is switched to the legal-with-prescription methadone, an alcoholic resorts to mouthwash and cough syrup. I think the hyperactive drug use would be alleviated if people would quit thinking the pharmaceutical companies are temples and the doctors who cheerfully prescribe them are priests.
The whole problem is this retarded “war on drugs” that kicked off in the Nixon era – he couldn’t have the hippies repressed on ideological grounds (as that would have been a constitutional violation too big even for him to mask), so he targeted the behavior most commonly associated with his ideological rivals (drug use). It’s been over 40 years since this policy was enacted and what has the result been? An ever-increasing amount of taxpayer dollars spent on tracking down and punishing drug dealers and users alike while rates of drug abuse continue to rise and massive drug cartels form in Third-world nations and grow rich from exporting their forbidden fruits to our nation.
This whole policy was poorly thought out to begin with, yet the government is still strongly commited to enforcing it (“change” my ass, mr. president!) – further evidence that our political class is completely out of touch with reality.
I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies would also be desolate if they lost their supply of opiates. However, i’m sure they were legally cultivating the poppy, not going through poor, desperate farmers.
Hahahaha Karla, can somebody please tell me where these legal poppy fields are, because a little old lady in my neck of the woods got busted for having a “pretty poppy” (just one) featured in the home garden tour that turned out to have unacceptable narcotic levels. But I digress. I wonder if we turned back the clock and made narcotics and other drugs have less stigma, would we have more competition and hence less drug lords/cartels/taliban compounds? I don’t know but the national addiction average was a lot less when people could still order their works in a pretty box from the Sears Holiday Edition Catalog…just sayin…
I keep wondering how it can be that a cultivated plant for which the poverty stricken farmers are threatened beaten and killed for producing, somehow manages to make a transition from evil to beneficial; depending on whose chemical lab it goes through. The same metamorphosis is seen in the streets; it’s a threat to society if placed in a grubby little drug dealers hands; it’s life saving if handled by the pharmaceutical companies.
One lousy plant? Exactly how much opium did the blue meanies think could be extracted from a single flower? In fact, how could they even be certain that little old lady knew how to extract opium; and in the even bigger picture, exactly how many flowers would that little old lady have to grow to (chemically) produce a single gram of heroin?
I don’t think we could ever completely remove the stigma of drugs, no matter how far back in time we went. Undeniably, there are people with addictive personalities. Whatever drug they take, they will end up abusing. The family members and friends effected by the drug user will always blame the drug, not the user, believing if somehow the drug was locked away where it never could be found, there will be no more problems. It doesn’t work that way, of course. An addictive personality simply trades one addiction for another; a heroin addict is switched to the legal-with-prescription methadone, an alcoholic resorts to mouthwash and cough syrup. I think the hyperactive drug use would be alleviated if people would quit thinking the pharmaceutical companies are temples and the doctors who cheerfully prescribe them are priests.
The whole problem is this retarded “war on drugs” that kicked off in the Nixon era – he couldn’t have the hippies repressed on ideological grounds (as that would have been a constitutional violation too big even for him to mask), so he targeted the behavior most commonly associated with his ideological rivals (drug use). It’s been over 40 years since this policy was enacted and what has the result been? An ever-increasing amount of taxpayer dollars spent on tracking down and punishing drug dealers and users alike while rates of drug abuse continue to rise and massive drug cartels form in Third-world nations and grow rich from exporting their forbidden fruits to our nation.
This whole policy was poorly thought out to begin with, yet the government is still strongly commited to enforcing it (“change” my ass, mr. president!) – further evidence that our political class is completely out of touch with reality.