Carl Hart has an outstanding piece in The Nation: How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy
He talks about some of the early demonization:
The author, a distinguished physician, wrote: “[The Negro fiend] imagines that he hears people taunting and abusing him, and this often incites homicidal attacks upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.†And he continued, “the deadly accuracy of the cocaine user has become axiomatic in Southern police circles…. the record of the ‘cocaine nigger’ near Asheville who dropped five men dead in their tracks using only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is sufficiently convincing.â€
Cocaine, in other words, made black men uniquely murderous and better marksmen. But that wasn’t all. It also produced “a resistance to the ‘knock down’ effects of fatal wounds. Bullets fired into vital parts that would drop a sane man in his tracks, fail to check the ‘fiend.’â€
Hart goes on to talk about how this racism wasn’t limited to days gone by, but has continued as an integral part of our drug war all the way to today.
This, of course, is no surprise to regulars here, but it’s good to see this piece in The Nation as a reminder.
Lately, I’ve seen some commentary online that seems to be attempting to say that legalization in general is bad for African-Americans, and that the fact that the majority of people in the legalization movement are white is proof of self-interest. However, we know that the racism that has been involved in the drug war has also served to feed the circular desire for “law and order” that fuels prohibition in the inner cities.
David Simon has a lot to say about it.
Lost in a symptom: The Nation on marijuana reform
http://tinyurl.com/kbmqe2d
“But the least that people of goodwill can do is to stop pretending that forward movement on marijuana alone is anything less than an accommodation with an existing war of social control that is being waged disproportionately on the urban poor and is utilizing the prohibitions against harder drugs for the greater share of its incarcerative dynamic. Marijuana is not the core reason for our crowded prisons, and the reform of marijuana laws is, at best, triage for a failed and dystopic system that will be given another lease on life once the politically relevant portion of white America is given a pass. Removing weed from the overall equation will, in the end, consign increasingly-isolated poor people of color to the brutalities of the drug war for the foreseeable future. The game will still be the game for them, and a cruel and rigged game it will remain.”
I also recommend listening to David at “The Festival of Dangerous Idea’s” http://youtu.be/DNttT7hDKsk
The drug war has to end, not just marijuana. Legalizing cannabis is a damn good start.
I’ve always said that ending cannabis prohibition was the first step in regaining freedoms stolen under false pretense, and that the job won’t end until all of drug prohibition is consigned to History’s slag-heap of bad ideas that should never have been attempted.
I have served in non-profit organizations whose greatest resource was not money, as they had little, but people with the smarts, the guts, the drive and the willingness to try to make things better.
It is such people, regardless of race, creed, color, etc. who are the ones that truly do make a difference, although you may never hear of them, as they’re too busy doing their jobs to engage in self-promotion. They are the true Sons of Martha…to which most of Society doesn’t even know it owes a debt.
I have often wondered what heights we as a country could have reached if this country had not denied itself the brains and talents of so many who, instead, have had their lives destroyed by the DrugWar Particularly our minorities, who have even more reason than most to work for positive change, having been on the sharp end of the stick for so long.
Just as this country can no longer afford the DrugWar fiscally, it, even more so, cannot afford the moral blight that the DrugWar represents, for at its’ heart it is corrosive to the concept of ‘equal justice for all’, which has become a sardonic joke, a phrase only honestly uttered anymore by the hopelessly naive.
If we wish to survive the kinds of changes that may be in the works for us, we must end the madness now, while we still can. To delay is to compound the error…and magnify the potential destruction to society if we fail.
Just a bunch of racist liars, cheats and scoundrels.
HARRY ANSLINGER’S GORE FILE
THE REEFER MADNESS ERA CHAPTER 10.2
Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage
Calvina Fay Prohibition Inc.
A Drug Warmongers Toll on Americans
Thank you Miss Rosa
✔The Racist Ganjawar
✔Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and MMJ Prohibition
✔Nixon’s Drug War –
Re-Inventing Jim Crow, Targeting The Counter Culture
✔JIM CROW 2012
✔The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment & Linx
✔Using the drug war to keep blacks from voting
✔Another Win For Civil Rights
✔Scientist: Trayvon Martin’s Marijuana Use
Had Nothing to Do with the Night He Died
✔White Supremacy: Its Source and Uses
No racism here!
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UUwsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=z8kEAAAAIBAJ&dq=cocaine&pg=5957%2C747051
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10D16F63D5913738DDDA00A94D1405B838DF1D3
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F5061FFC355414728DDDAA0894D9415B828CF1D3
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14F7345F13738DDDA10894DA405B848DF1D3
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00740.x/abstract
I know the number of blacks arrested for drugs is proportional higher but an interview with a LEAP member that was Black and he was on a Narcotics squad in one of the major cities,,it was the first or second time I actually saw a former police officer say on television “the war on drugs is morally wrong,,he said every night they would suit up and head for the hood and make busts,,he finally asked the squad commander why they never made drug busts on the other side of the tracks because the law seemed to be targeting too large a hit on just one or two neighborhoods and the squad commander told him”it has little to do with racism and a lot to do with the housing projects were economical targets,,his commander told him that they had found out,,arrest a person from a housing project and the narcotics squad would make the arrest and 99% of the time they were not involved with the case any longer,,the public defender(plea bargaining agent)but if they went across the tracks those people hire lawyers and change laws.busting the hood was more job security than racism.
After studying the statistics he realized that every large city was doing the same thing.
From the government grants site:
“” often times government agencies are not eligible to apply for corporate and foundation grants.””
Corporate and foundation grants allows the prison unions,rehab organizations,pharmaceutical corporations and banks to,through the government grants program,directly fund the war on marijuana and can target marijuana users by funding eradication and educational programs. to start fearing marijuana from an early age,,if they had not told us so many outrageous lies generating that fear it might have worked better,,but we had other sources of information that told us they were lieing because even with the little knowledge we could find and at an early age we realized death was more dangerous than anything they were telling us,,and IIRC they used to claim marijuana caused deaths,,that ended shortly after the internet became pictures and words instead of just words and numbers and started picking up popularity and the price on PCs became more affordable for more middle class families could afford and the desire to keep up with the Joneses became the order of the day.
“”The top five foundations that provide crime prevention grants are Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, New York Community Trust, San Francisco Foundation, and California Community Foundation””
A “properly” conducted search of who runs those foundations and finances them would be interesting.
The one thing I rationalized from the LEAP member was that if the explanation convinced a Black police officer the targeting of the projects was not racial targeting or he would not have continued doing it so long.
That is how I see it Vern.
PS,,I did not trust LEAP when they started up because I thought it was a government sneak attack to draw us in and bust us.
Pete can u elaborate on the whole legalization is bad for blacks. What are the people saying this claiming
kleiman and sabet have said that because alchol and tobacco target black neighborhoods with advertising, a “Big Marijuana” will do likewise. therefore superheroes like sabet have to step in to defend these poor benighted folks. paternalism leading to authoritarianism. they also imply blacks are more prone to addiction than whites.
From Jacob Sullum;
“…In any event, Obama offers, as a possible reason why legalization might be worse than prohibition, that legalization would allow “big corporations†with big ad budgets to sell marijuana. I know that anti-pot activists like Kevin Sabet think we should all be terrified by that prospect, but it sounds pretty good to me. My life is a lot better in many respects thanks to big corporations with big ad budgets, and if I don’t like what they’re selling, I can always say no. The scary connotations of “Big Marijuana†are based on a critique of capitalism that denies consumer sovereignty, portraying people as incapable of judging their own interests or resisting come-ons for stuff they don’t want. I don’t buy it.”
Full article;
http://tinyurl.com/jw37wxf
strayan gave a pretty good example of the basic argument above:
Of course, modern-day prohibitionists like Sabet have tweaked the rhetoric a bit to make the racism behind their position slightly less overt.
Who is this, really? It couldn’t be THE Kevin Sabet and THE Patrick Kennedy, could it? Why would those two come here and spread this drivel? Of course it’s not them, they are too intelligent to do such a stupid, wasteful thing. No, it must be someone who is pretending to be them. That’s it. Someone who wants to make them look even stupider than they already do. Someone who understands their tactics and arguments well enough to do a good imitation of them. Unfortunately for them, their cover is blown. This could not be Sabet and Kennedy for if it was them, they wouldn’t be making unsubstantiated claims without citing one shred of evidence, as these imposters did in the first and second paragraph. Actually, there is not one shred of substantiation in the entire article. In the third para, these imposters wrote conjecturally about a supposed dystopian future with cannabis stores everywhere in the ‘hood and none in the lily-white suburbs, and about supposed harms, medical interventions and costs which will accrue to the poor parts of society when cannabis is legal. No where do they cite any research or writings of any authority to back up their hypotheses. These frauds must be trying to make Sabet and Kennedy look even more inane and stupid than they already look. If I were Sabet or Kennedy I would be siccing my lawyer on these phonies to salvage my ‘good name’.
I think our couch is one of the best sources of information not only from drug law reform but anything from trapping pesky squirrels to taking pictures to cooking,preparing and using marijuana for recreational or medical.
So I ask now,,because I live in TX I have no doctors,especially at my health provider the VA I can see to get advice and treatment for my problem,.
I noticed that my thinking processes are getting on shaky ground,,it is getting very hard to write logical arguments without multiple editings and I still miss stuff soooo,,thinking it could be too much marijuana,especially since I started growing some of the MMJ strains,might be calling for a “tolerance break”.
After 10 days,the problem became worse,,not better,,looking at my news article postings I can see a pattern developing of rambling and losing track of my thinking processes and missing too many opportunities of using words properly to make a point and not passion like a good friend told me to do,,I don’t seem to be able do it anymore,,I cannot dismiss the anger and the passion and help our cause,,and I will not become the crazy uncle at our table and harm all the efforts so many people have spent decades working on,,so I will not be joining you an the carpet bombing missions any more.
After my 10 days of abstinence the thinking processes were getting worse not better and I don’t have enough marijuana and can’t afford even one dose of hash oil,,high THC or high cbd’s to attack the problem using every treatment method for all the possible issues that could be causing it.
I am going to the VA clinic and tell them I am having thinking problems and get a cap scan so will know more soon,,I have no pains,headaches and such but something is going on so I am removing myself before I hurt more than I help.
When I find out the cause,if I find out I will be able to search out the proper treatment,,I hope.
I will still be here and you guys can tell me to shut up and I won;]’t get angry at the couch for it because I know why you did it,,when I no longer realize why you did it I will be passing my reform crusader’s cape to you ya’ll to put on the wall behind the couch,,we gotta cover up all those light spots where old posters and pictures hung for years with something.
All this brings up another point about marijuana users and alcoholics,,I took myself off driving OTR because I realized I was endangering innocent people,,I am quitting public crusading because I will not harm innocent people,,alcoholics LOVE hurting innocent people.
I have reread this 7 times and I guarantee there will be multiple mistakes and I won’t edit them so you can see what a problem it becomes when sites don’t allow editing.
We’re all getting older, y’know? I know I have to pay much closer attention to editing than I used to. Hope your noggin’s OK. You seem fine from my point of view, but I know nothing of the effort required to get your thoughts onto these pages, beyond what you’ve just described.
Take yourself out of the comment debates elsewhere if you feel you should, but I’m hoping you’ll continue to make the effort here for a good long time. As far as I’m concerned, the quality of your commentary remains in the upper echelon among an impressive group of top-notch peers.
There’s nothing wrong with taking time off from these discussions. As liberating as it is for all of us to wage these battles in our own ways, it’s also stressful at the same time. We see an obvious need for change, but stare in disbelief that the war on some drugs just drags on. It’s wearing and exhausting.
It’s wise for you to seek medical attention for whatever your condition might be. I hope it all turns out for the best for you. Take care.
By the way, my brain has always functioned a little oddly. There are certain words I constantly need to look up the meaning of, even though I’ve looked them up numerous times before. But I can recite every last word of the theme song for the Beverly Hillbillies (I haven’t seen an episode in decades). Mine is not due to age, my wires have always been a little screwy ;).
Clay, I have to edit fifty times, too. (in the course of typing the first sentence I did it twice)I do it much more when I work in too much of a hurry. And I have to re-read, each time I make a correction, or my tenses and such get confused. So you’re not alone. (Three corrections to that last, simple sentence)
If you really are having difficulty, it’s important that you get checked out, but to me it just looks like you finish your thought and post, but are forgetting to re-read for continuity first… anyway, I hope you continue to post, and I hope you get a clean bill of health from the VA.
http://www.marijuana.com/threads/tx-understanding-the-marijuana-advocate.261341/
I didn’t have too one or two proof readings and edits and I turned this out in 30 minutes after two years of self education being the headline news moderator at the site.
It still has mistakes but not like now.
When asked by Senator Johnson to submit my testimony in regards to legalizing pot in Oklahoma, I spent a week and a half writing 2 and a half pages.
I had to sound different from what I normally post here without totally negating my anger in regards to vets being given pills and booze by the VA and Feds.
Keep up the good work couch. I do plan on teaching my children about how relevant you guys are in the pursuit of liberty.
No matter how much you edit, you can still miss something. Some people rationalize by using the excuse that every great writer needs a good editor. I find I edit better if I view the same piece using different states of consciousness, or edit over a period of time, or at separated times. Mood and distractions have an effect. Brain exercises are good. I often read all day long, so my brain is forced to keep up with the content I impose on it. Food supplements are good. Vitamin B12, fish oil, etc. The VA can do a lot of tests that weren’t available a short time ago. I expect they’ll have you up and blogging in no time. Cheers.
You never finish editing, you just run out of time.
I find I edit better if I view the same piece using different states of consciousness, or edit over a period of time, or at separated times.
Truly! Editing my own work is far harder than doing it for others but easier when I give it some seperation between writing and editing.
Clay, my dad was dead from Alzheimer’s at 74. I’m 62. I know how the years roll by… I think a grievous error my dad made was to disengage from tasks that required thinking. He played way too much cards and watched too much TV.
I try and fill my time with tasks that have my mind working. I can’t tell you what a blessing having Miss Appleseed drop into my life has been. At the end of this year we’re going to self-publish a small book of our work (Miss A is at her best nude) and talk a bit about the artist-muse relationship. But beyond my art I have always had a cause. A practice I plan to keep up until I can’t. And when I can’t I’ll know it’s time to go sit under a tree and fall asleep for good.
We’re all with you Clay. You’ve a virtual companionship here that walks with ya.
don’t sweat the small stuff, clay. i’m 66 and i forget things all the time. so i learn new stuff to replace what i forgot.
I don’t mind the things I have forgotten as much I mind that when I am talking too myself he does’t know the answer either
I do not think we forget anything. I think of the brain as an organic computer (with vastly more storage capacity), the older we get the more information has been input into that organic computer, and the more information is in storage the longer it takes to find the right file and retrieve it. Simple but works for me.
Of course diseases of the brain, like Alzheimer’s can destroy files (starting with the most recent and working backwards), unfortunately. Not much we can do about that, currently, but (hopefully not too far into the future) there will be a remedy, someday.
PS, I have a knack for editing so if you want a second opinion, I’d be happy to look it over. You could message me via FB.
Yet the drug laws contribute as to why many white folk are lead to believe that a black man dressed as 2Pac or Old Dirty are thugs who will or might harm us. In small town white America, black folk are more likely to be pulled over and searched . . . more so if they want to wear clothing popularized by rap music. In small town white America, there is anger when one says “OK to do Black History month, but a white History month is racist” so it creates ripples in society amongst the small town white populace who cannot see that drug laws further harmed the black community to the extent that African American Pride and Black History month is merely self preservation. I was not angered or shocked when musician Lil’ Wayne walked on the American flag in his music video . . . I say Bravo and well played. In this country, to not spit on the flag or not let it touch the ground nor walk on it is a huge disrespect to the flag. Showing aggression to the flag is one way of loving it with a full patriotic heart.
And our drug laws are efficient at killing non-whites in many nations because of what drug money can do i.e. Burma, Mexico, Columbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, etc. I just hope my coworkers from India don’t dislike me because my nation’s DEA attacked the city of Mumbai in 2008.
I realize profiling gives them targets,,the proof of my statement is that people of ANY color in prison that could hire their own attorney,,even an inexperienced lawyer,versus having to use a public defender is a statistic I have never found,,if the percentages for all races are the same then the cause is an economical issue with racial profiling influencing increasing the numbers of minorities in prison..if the most busts of all races are within one or two neighborhoods in large cities it is the neighborhoods targeted for economical reasons,,the hood or bean city.
True when it comes to economics making it harder for them to hire a good lawyer or to come from an affluent part of town or family that would negate some of the charges or sentencing. I believe the war on drugs drove in the dealers, which drove out a lot of the opportunity in said impoverished areas . . . that the war on drugs increased poverty, thus making them further victims outside of just race, but victims of socioeconomic discrimination. A black man whose father was in jail for drugs is less likely to get the kind of parenting that would lead to a better education and job . . . one incarcerated generation parenting another incarcerated generation and so forth would only lead to further economic disparities. The Drug Black Market would lower economic potential and investment opportunities in areas called ghettoes or ‘bean’ cities as you call them . . . Edward D. Jones abhors the Bloods and Crips, which is why a lot of good businesses cannot be found in those areas and gangs love drug money.
I like the way you make me think Clay.
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I can’t even come up with any words. There are people who think this possible!
Mom, 31, dies from marijuana overdose
Believed mother-of-3 suffered heart attack triggered cannabis toxicity
Had she not had cannabis in her system, she might have suffered a bit more and maybe even died earlier.
Was she taught the benefits of hemp seed as a meal? I try to eat hemp seed everyday for their omegas. Maybe a lack of cannabis seed enabled her to die at such a young age.
Half a joint at night led to her being “killed by the level of the drug in her blood, an inquest heard.”
This coroner should be fired for gross incompetence for allowing such a verdict to stand.
.
.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened in Great Britain. When I read the article I triple checked before posting to make sure that this wasn’t just a re-run of a past incident. Presuming that the Coroner’s conclusion is kicked to the curb for being bullshit, it won’t be the first time for that either. As hard as it is to believe the prohibitionists in Great Britain are even more out of their minds than our domestic lunatics.
Wow, you know I just checked the date to make sure it wasn’t a re-run. I just realized that I should do some digging to see if it was the same coroner that tried this same stunt in 2006(?).
Same same. I find that if I write in the heat of emotion the outcome is too full of venom. If I wait a bit, cool off, cogitate and really think before I write, I have no problem to put together a great letter. I find those to be the ones editors select for publication. Venom sounds good at first however the reader is often put off by it and misses the important part, the message. I also need to revise, rewrite etc. a lot of the time. It seems like it’s because the computer makes it so easy that I don’t worry as much about my structure at first, I just concentrate on getting my ideas down, then reorganize them. The ability to write correctly the first time is a relic of the typewriter and carbon paper era. If you made a mistake then it was difficult to correct, whereas now it is easy. Through this process, my thoughts on the subject matters are clarified as well as the letter being better written and more palatable to ‘straight’ readers, and therefore more persuasive. I look on this as a proper adaptation to new conditions, not loss of ability in the old ones. Of course, like all old farts, I could be deluding myself, or it may have something to do with the fact that the older I get the better I was.
I do it similarly, sometimes it’ll take me all day to write a 200 word LTE (that’s the word limit imposed by my local paper which also wants me to pay to read the letters and any comments on them, I have to take month long breaks in order to see them for free again, damn annoying).
I have been slowly writing my life story and adding scans of photos and articles pertinent to the times of my life. Recently I purchased Dragon, Naturally Speaking (a version which actually works with Vista, finally; the first one I bought when this computer was still young, didn’t, $99 out the window as they would not refund my money even though they had informed me it would work before I agreed to purchase it). It has made the job of writing the stories of my life easier, I dictate then a day later go back and read and sometimes I have to edit and sometimes I do not. I’m taking my time with it because I expect to live at least another 20-25 years, but I do hope to have it completed before I die, for my progeny. I haven’t written a LTE since I got it up and running but it should make that job easier, too. I also don’t use it in comments, though I may give that a try, too. Most of my errors are because I get the fingers of one hand moving faster than the fingers of the other so I get letters out of order.
Conservatives say legalization is bad for African-Americans because they envision a society dominated by a Protestant ethic and a spirit of capitalism befitting the conservative’s archaic, constricted and path-worn worldview.
The belief juxtaposes a superstition and a racial prejudice: that marijuana makes people indolent, and that blacks are already too indolent by nature. Perhaps this attitude influences the focus of law enforcement on black communities. Serve and protect is just serving and protecting corporatists, or culture warriors, or racists, or authoritarians…. The theory explains much. The CIA’s flooding of South Central LA with cocaine/crack in the 1980s not only criminalizes a minority, but it’s believed coke will create more energetic types of criminals and criminality. Add guns to the brew, bring it to a boil, and voila, genocidal gang warfare erupts.
Corrupt and dysfunctional governments often ensure their continuation by pitting disenfranchised people against one another. It’s been a tool of kings and tyrants throughout history. Howard Zinn, in his celebrated epic A People’s History of the United States, notes that early American poor whites were pitted against poor blacks/slaves via government encouraged racism and prejudice in order to produce less powerful, individual, divided groups; groups often suffering from time consuming, internecine conflicts of their own. Differences in rural and urban politics and culture have been manipulated by American politicians for at least two centuries as a means of splintering society into groups whom capitalists, bureaucrats and politicians can more easily exploit for political and capital gain.
When people say legalization in general is bad for African-Americans, what they really mean is it’s bad for dysfunctional governments and politicians who want to continue forever by profiting from the simplicity of human exploitation.
As for marijuana, every human and animal on the planet should have the inherent right to enjoy its herbal benefits, and that goes for all herbs or mushrooms on Schedule I.
Figured out how to get more people to comment at articles using my words,,let them argue with the with the prohibitchs
How could Eric Holder have a pot problem when the DEA works for him,,he can get any strain in the world to smoke,,and little Sinola coke to chase it with..
America does not have a marijuana problem ,we can find marijuana in ANY town in America,,our government forces us to buy it from criminals when we would rather buy pot from an American farmer.
Ps,, above not posted at article,,comments open first one that gets there posts it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-02/eric-holder-s-pot-problem.html
It would be more appropriate to have named the ONDCP the ONNDCP”,,,Office of the National No Drug Control Policy
whose up to writing an application for a federal grant for our group,,we have all sworn no children will ever get any marijuana we can get ahold of,,there should be some kind of federal tit for us too.
R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Seymour_Hoffman
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dead at age 46 USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/1eKOhJL
He was good in Cold Mountain,,a really good Civil War movie,,that never shows any real battle scenes,,the most people on screen never goes beyond 2 dozen actors for about 2 minutes,,and that is the scene Huffman gets killed in.
Completely OT, but looking at the Superbowl scores, I wouldn’t be surprised if the prohibitionist parasites blame the losing team on cannabis (or the very least early initiative of selling it).
The Bronco’s bodies are acclimated to playing a mile high but it was illegal at sea level.
It already being said in comments on some posts on FB.
Haven’t look on FB, but one opinion piece came out already http://www.bustle.com/articles/14401-super-bowl-2014-the-broncos-are-losing-because-of-marijuana-says-these-people
Hopefully, this doesn’t catch steam.
In order to assert that you have to pretend that marijuana was not just as readily available before. When was cannabis hard to find in either of the two legal States? I haven’t seen a “drought” up here in Washington State for twenty years….
America does not have a marijuana problem,,we can find marijuana in ANY town in America.
Same with Canada, eh?
Fantastic commentary over at ABC: The one prohibitionist get’s his piece in, only to get trampled on by Alison and the others.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/week-marijuana-legalization-22335243
Dr. Richard Besser, Pierre Thomas, Alison Holcomb, and Ricardo Baca
To me it looked as if all four were in agreement that pot will be legal, only expressing some concerns, which is natural when change is in the wind. Good to see no rampant prohibitches present. A real rational discussion, and polite too. No ad hominem attacks, few red herrings, a real treat.