The excellent Maia Szalavitz takes on Project Sam: The New Weed Whackers
In fact, I can’t really get my head around why people who have suffered addiction would support criminalization—especially people like Kennedy whose top talking point is that addiction is a disease. For one, isn’t the very fact that they themselves got addicted evidence of the failure of current drug policy? If prohibition worked as prevention, illegal drug addicts wouldn’t have a story of their own to tell.
Second, if arresting and incarcerating users is essential to effective treatment, why argue that addiction is a disease? No one says we should arrest diabetics for failing to take their insulin or heart patients who don’t exercise. Nor is anyone calling for jailing obese people caught within 500 feet of a McDonald’s or criminalizing the possession of non-diet soda, despite New Yorkers’ complaints about Mayor Bloomberg’s “nanny state.”
I know we’ve already pretty thoroughly dismantled Sabet and Kennedy’s efforts here, but it’s still nice to see this particular take-down.
I’ll sooner accept advice about having a happy sex life from celibate priests than I would accept counsel about avoiding drug addiction from a scion of the perennially drug-addled Kennedy clan or a taxpayer-funded, officially imprimatured mendicant.
I keep looking for that little blond-haired girl in the blue and white dress. Last I saw her, she was chasing a rabbit with a watch. She’s had experience in dealing with fatuous crazies like these escapees from Wonderland, and I am in need of a consultant…
Maia Szalavitz does such a great job making these absurdities apparent to John and Susie Q. Public.
Why no pandemic of schizophrenics, mentally ill, stoned drivers, even as pot use went way, way, way up?
If addiction is a disease, why do we treat people by putting them in jail?
These are great questions to ask the American people.
Does anybody know if Sabet was promoting his thoughtful reasonable “third way”, before the enthusiasm for the drug war collapsed?
Actually, that goes back to here. The ship began to noticeably sink, with the first ever Republican-proposed cuts to the ONDCP Budget. The rats started to get nervous and look for the life-rafts around then…
Thanks for that, kap. I had no idea Sabet has been saying about the same thing for six or seven years now.
sabet was using straw men even back then with his “strict prohibition/ lax legalization” dicotomy. i m sure he doesnt regard alcohols legal status as lax but when applied to cannabis it has all sorts of dog whistles about laid back lazy stoners and hippies. gets his base in line. he really is a nasty little fascist.
Thank you El Kapitan
Kennedy, at two years in, is in early recovery and his thinking is typical of the black and white values of many at this stage. Sadly, for at least a decade, people like Andrea Bathwell and Kevin Sabet have exploited the 12 Step commitment to abstinence as a useful tool in the drug war. Of course, in this elitist society, Kennedy was never going to go to jail as a result of his own addiction so proposing the continuation of incarceration for drug consumption was never a threat to him. Lets hope he grows out of this hypocrisy before too many of his fellow addicts face consequences he will never have to deal with.
“Of course, in this elitist society, Kennedy was never going to go to jail as a result of his own addiction so proposing the continuation of incarceration for drug consumption was never a threat to him.”
That right there hits the nail squarely on the head.
Maybe we should urge the panel to only refer treatment of said drug user only when they’ve wrecked their car a second time in D.C. or after the second time one abandons an expensive fishing boat. You’d think Kevin would have more respect for the Prohibition Cause than to get a piece of Tuna like Kennedy on board . . . that’s like getting some Ugandan dictator to be featured on the ‘We are the World’ music video for African peace. Who wants to make a bet that prohibs will start appointing their pets to hold various Prohib offices . . . it worked for Caligula’s horse?
Kevin: “Mittens, why should drug users be forced into treatment?â€
Mittens: “Meowâ€
Kevin: “My thoughts exactly Mittens –you cannot escape reason and logicâ€
Mittens: Meow (translation- “schmuck”)
“…But I don’t WANT to go among mad people” Kaptain Remarked
“Oh you can’t help that,” Said the Cheshire Pat, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” Said Kap’n
“You must be,” Said the Pat “Or you wouldn’t have come here…”
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jaberwock, my son,
The teeth that bite, the claws that catch,
Beware the Jubjub bird,
And shun the frumious bandersnatch.
Lewis Carrol at his best, and this nonce poem makes more sense than all of the drug warriors put together.
We’ve all heard the phrase, “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
This is a g-d-n lie.
In the country of the blind, some of the blind are armed with chainsaws, and they don’t care how many of their own they maim and kill in order to silence the one-eyed man from telling them the truth. And nothing proves this better than the DrugWar.
For decades, reformers have been the ‘one-eyed man’, trying to inject rationality into an inherently irrational situation, and all too often wind up chopped to pieces, legally and otherwise, for their pains. Just ask someone like Loretta Nall about that. For opining in a local rag about the pointlessness of the DrugWar, the ‘blind’ came after her with their legal ‘chainsaws’. The same with Marc Emery and a host of others, mostly unknown, who experienced the same.
Fortunately, most of the ‘blind’ are dying off, and are being replaced with more ‘one-eyed men’. Hence our latest progress. But there will always be a danger from the residual, leftover willfully ‘blind’, until there’s enough ‘one-eyed men’ to disarm them via the ballot box.
a brave lass that Loretta…
Fixed your typo kaptin. You said:
You meant to say:
I’m very sad to learn that Loretta had some problems with the jackboots due to her advocacy. I’ve never met her in person but it’s not hard to see that she’s good people from what she’s written and said publicly. Let’s not forget to mention that because she’s in Alabama that she’s a dictionary picture example of chutzpah.
…I know we’ve already pretty thoroughly dismantled Sabet and Kennedy’s efforts here, but it’s still nice to see this particular take-down.
Oh yeah, that was superb! Thanks for posting it, Pete.
And yes, thorough as it’s been and continues to be as others chime in, we all need to keep it up. We can’t afford to let the prohibitionists dominate the conversation. Maia’s right that there is a back-door effort under way by the prohibs to re-criminalize under the guise of compulsory “treatment”.
The resistance really has grown, hasn’t it? Funny how that works. Now we have people competing to see who can lay the reason smack down on the prohibs the best.
I’m enjoying it more than UFC.