Image by Mr Jaded via FlickrRace and the ‘war on drugs‘ were so inextricably linked as to be indistinguishable, US lawyer and executive director of Break the Chains, Deborah Peterson Small, told delegates at Release’s Drugs, race and discrimination conference in London. ‘You could even say “what’s drugs got to do with it?”‘ she said. ‘A lot of the conversation we have around drugs is not around drugs. It’s around social control and maintaining the status quo – we’re not having the real conversation.’
Drug policy was partly driven by public fear of crime, much of which was stoked by a media largely no longer there to keep the public informed, but to serve the interests of the large corporations that owned it, she said. This fear was then used as an excuse by governments to implement ineffectual drug policies. ‘The “war on drugs” has become a proxy for dealing with other issues,’ she said. ‘Are we really engaged in a war on drugs, or are we using it as a way of addressing issues in society that we haven’t figured out how to deal with yet?’ / http://www.drinkanddrugs.net/features/oct0608/whats_drugs_got_to_do_with_it.pdf
Image via Wikipedia…. perhaps this insight at this time explains why and crucially at election time, neither National “get tough on crime’ and Labour ‘eyes wide shut’ or the minor parties, including the Greens will not discuss the politics of pot (or any other drug) unless it is preconditioned with the prohibitionist rider ‘that use = abuse’, there are harms, and that drugs = crime. Yet the harms of alcohol and tobacco are never held to the same zero tolerance account. Whose interest is this serving? Consider…..
“A cross the many policy responses to drugs in society, the war on drugs ethos, its legislative instruments, and their enforcement has become a significant driver of drug harms. Through its mass criminalisation of users, its abdication of market control to unregulated criminal profiteers, and creation of a vast anarchic and violent criminal economy, prohibition, whatever its original intentions, has become a policy of harm maximisation, in both public health and criminal justice spheres.” /Danny Kushlick / http://www.drinkanddrugs.net/features/oct0608/in_pursuit_of_truth.pdfImage via Wikipedia‘I think there’s a good reason why the propaganda system works this way. It recognises that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it’s important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them. Correspondingly, the other side of the coin is that it’s extremely important to try to bring out the truth about these matters, as best we can.’ / Noam Chomsky, Interview in ‘The Chomsky Reader‘
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›
Spokesperson on Climate Change, Environment and Associate ‘Shadow’ Law And Order.
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