In the rehab capital of America, addicts are bought, sold, and stolen for their insurance policies, and many women are coerced into sex. […]
The people targeting them are variously called “marketers,†“body brokers,†and even “junkie hunters.†They know addicts better than anyone (and many used to be addicts themselves). They spot kids dragging suitcases along the road and ask them if they need a place to go. […]
In South Florida’s Delray Beach, home to hundreds of rehab facilities and halfway houses, scams abound to profit off of addicts and their insurance policies. The recent uptick in addicts adds energy to the hurricane, but the biggest driving force for the fraud is Obamacare and the 2008 Parity Act, which together give everyone access to private insurance that’s legally bound to pay for rehab. “Marketers†act like headhunters, picking up addicts when they’re down, then bringing them to rehab centers and halfway houses for a fee — usually about $500 per head.
While state and federal prison statistics show a recent decline in the number of Americans who are behind bars, there are still roughly 5 million people under correctional supervision. Many more are in rehab and mental-health hospitals, while hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are shuffled through detention centers – potentially big markets for private facilities. So the correctional industry is diversifying. “The scope of how big this is hasn’t even been anywhere near made clear,†says Caroline Isaacs, who closely tracks the private-prison industry for the American Friends Service Committee, an advocacy group that opposes corrections privatization. […]
Though the services may be evolving, the concerns remain much the same. As with many for-profit entities, the top priority is the bottom line, which is often at odds with the purpose of community corrections. Rehabilitation – whether in a prison or half-way house – is not typically in the operator’s best interest, because that means fewer clients.
The Ganjawar is a Product Sold by D.E.A.th to Profit Fascist’ – 01/07/03
3.19.16 From the gigo I always thought 911 was a diversion. Since the 99 protests in Seattle continued in DC. All about the IMF and the targets of the protest were the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The two symbols of corruption greed and the start of the downsizing of the middle class.
Clinton’s NAFTA/GATT outsourcing jobs and siding with Souder in bastardizing the Higher Education Act. Created to assist lower income students with college tuition assistance. Giving an outlet in the poverty stricken areas. Getting larger ever since. With a cheap labor pool the size of a Great Lake. More division from the people who are the only answer to the NY-DC dysfunction
Multinational Neocon corporations profit has replaced necessity to the point of creating criminals out of the unemployed and homeless. Koch makes $35k/y and tax is paid on that for each head in a cage. More than minimum wage pays back in tax or spends. The incentives for profit over everything makes this the schedule#1 highly addictive narcotic with no medicinal value and a menace to the entire society.
The protest in Seattle leading up to 911 was in the news and bringing the conversation to the table. 911 put a damper on that. It also ended any investigation into the Labor Day Stand off and Massacre at Rainbow Farm. As it unfolded there were many questions still left unanswered by the same Neocons crossing the aisle to push the agenda to Iraq and Afghanistan. When most of the terrorists were Saudi Arabian.
Bush has been behind the scenes since Eisenhower and Nixon as his VP. Spawn out of Prescott laundering money for Hitler. With many corporations and media praising Mussolini. So profit is again the “end” to all of the various “means”. From the cold war inciting people to hate people or do your duty to fight for a country in a civil war no one ever heard of. As police actions, not declared wars. No non profit status as declared wars. “means” to the end. The trillion wasted in Iraq wasn’t wasted to Halliburton or Cheney.
Or their fracking, exempting them from the clean air and water acts. Like exporting the nations veggies and fruits with our water. So a dozen corporations can profit, in a drought. Creating prohibitions for the safety of the people over and over and it always has someone pulling the strings making profits on the prohibition. That is the motive. The drama and propaganda are “means” or tools to keep the machine running.
We were lulled into a privilege in their words, but only compared to the inexcusable conditions we have implemented to exploit so called 3rd world countries. To be comfortable. So at the end of the day the bulk of slave wages and conditions are less overhead while undercutting prices. We like the discounts but seldom care how they do it. Every slow moving item on sale is made up by raising prices for everyone on popular items. Same as 10x more profits in ER care than preventive, So they shut down clinics for everyone, due to a small percent having abortions. The Pro Life My Ass bunch never bringing up the Monsatan pesticidal abortions of the pre-babies throughout the bible belt cotton crops. 90 million pounds a year making people sick so the patriots can buy more legal drugs to treat it.
Keeping covert actions subsidized by fines and tax on prohibition “means”. Walter’s Philanthropy Roundtable laundering corporate tax write off money for drug propaganda groups, underground campaign financing to funding Iran Contra and Guatamala Cuba Iran and Bin Laden when it was beneficial, when they were resisting the USSR. Funding Sadamn when he opposed Iran. Using Noreaga to bring the coke to Clinton’s Arkansas when the boy guv teamed with his nemisis in BJgate, Asaa Hutchinson, DA of Western Ark, the landing spot.
Taking copper by digging up land in spite of the owner of the land without mineral rights. Same as fracking or drilling oil. Bringing tar from Canada to export through a pipeline leaking guk thicker than Bunker C. Oil replacing farmers home distilled ethanol from crop remnants. The entire reason for the 18th amendment. Not one person was arrested for drinking in the entire 13 years until Rockefeller had his “gasoline stations” infrastructure set up. Exactly the same thing a few years later with the 37 Marihuana Tax Ax.
This isn’t opinion. Its raw data the government “means” to the end created. Then logically putting it together leaving more questions than answers and just disregarded out of sight out of mind. Like the opposition of the AMA to remove cannabis for medicinal use. Hearst headlines started with demonizing liquor and a bakers decade later his admittance that the Nobel Experiment failed. The funding of the Women’s Christian Temperance League who opposed prohibition for the same reasons Hearst printed.
It doesn’t matter what these proverbial used car salesmen say. Only the results. That might seem futuristic, and it is. Until the past catches up. At the end of the day Amendment XXI was enacted the only change to life in general was farmers could no longer distill their own tractor and heating fuel. Henry Ford Model T had 3 modes of fueling. Crude gas, kerosine and ethanol alcohol. Hemp tax and rules hoops to jump through made Ford’s car from fiber cost prohibitive. Now cars are made of other country’s Hemp while corporate farming fossil fools pesticides making people sick for fat pharma to treat but never cure or prevent their ailments.
A trillion spent on the Ganjawar went into the Neocon Prohibitionists pockets the same as the Howard Hughes copter pockets from Nam or Dyncorps profits on the cold war. Now the middle class is feeling the pangs of the poor and bigotry on stoners and people of color. Or women or genders or religions or left handed red haired step children. How can anyone argue with a living wage, yet they do. How can anyone think it is any of their business if a sick person smokes some pot to feel better, but they do. They even point guns at them and wrestle patients to the floor and society says its not my problem.
Morals, scruples and ethics or random acts of kindness, homegrown pot and regulations – take away Neocon profits. Polio was the last disease cured. It killed the bottom line for leg brace manufacturers. That is the bottom line of Carnegie US Steel and the Cattlemen’s Association. What was first to be yelled from the rafters after the BP spill? Concern for the fish or people living there? Drill Baby Drill. Same mindsets holding on to shit practices for profit in spite of the harm they do unto others.
CEO’s earning 300% more than the workers, importing foreign labor with TPP and outsourcing with prison labor and under the table prohibition profits. That’s the way the Neoconstitution is written.
Profits are a higher priority that bigotry, then bigotry is less. Green gets Black through more doors than civil rights acts. I remember integration, I don’t remember much about it because it was elsewhere. The headlines were all about integration by busing and the fights and riots in the city. Out of sight out of mind. At the end of the day it was more than just race. Its still a tool used to segregate stoners from society, with urine testing and court gag orders and mandatory minimums and 3 strikes laws segregating drug offenses from the justice system of a speedy and fair trial.
Jury nullification is used more than not when the cops are being tried. When cannabist’s use it past tragedies are brought up about lynch mobs going free. Neglecting to mention there were victims of lynch mobs, not legalizing cannabis. So it all falls on profits and the laws making them legal to pillage in spite of reality and the harms it brings.
That’s us getting too comfortable and letting the termites eat the main beams away. Now we either get off of our collective duffs or let it crash. The trillions in tax goes somewhere. To mega corporations and foreign industries or domestic industries and local Cannabis jobs. Jobs drilling oil in the mid east or jobs processing hemp plastic, protein and pants in most towns and rural areas. Jobs bombing villages or jobs replacing lead pipes and crude plastic packaging that won’t biodegrade but is collecting as a large island in the ocean. Killing the plankton. Breaking into bits becoming part of the food chain.
Nukes can not be insured because the damage would be beyond coverage, so there is a kitty the major power corporations chipped into. People serving time for possessing what many politicians possessed and look at legal Fukushima. One only has to question how censoring information about cannabis reducing brain tumors is not treasonous and a human rights issue. How many Americans have died while research funding is banned since 1974.
How can the Obama government let Reagan’s flat out lie stand, about brain damage by suffocating monkey’s. Or the deception of NIDA and the DEA. I’ve ask for many years, is this that difficult to comprehend? Or is it just fear of speaking out or up? So much pride in the status quo ignorance they have to crawl into denialism, as a drunk into a bottle. Can we be so naive to believe someone wouldn’t intentionally do harm for money, and laws are measured and checks and balances guarantee laws are fair and just before implementing. The 30 million arrested and cut off of the HEA and fired or jailed for possessing a substance only illegal due to more lies and gossip. Arbitrary and Capricious has been determined by the courts to apply to the DEA and its OK. That is their job. Maintain the profits of prohibition.
The experts sited and hired by the media to spew falsehoods and unsubstantiated predictions of gloom in the future. That never pans out when they repeat the same gossip of the past. These physician experts with debts from student loans and equipment purchases to start a practice. Get their shingles by not questioning their teachers. To reach the goal of big bucks and easy living they don’t ask why none of the 273 Medical Schools in the US have a Department of the Endocannabinoid Sciences. No distinguished professors heading up the nonexistent department. Silence over a ban on brain tumor research doesn’t raise an eyebrow.
The physician chosen by Obama to be the Surgeon General Sanjay Gupta admits the DEA fear mongering and false testimony and the reality of cannabis as medicine. Several Physicians have broken the “rules”. Weil’s Hemp Oil article or Jack Herer’s Emperor brought the conversation back. A handful of Physicians have been educating themselves and promoting Cannabis. More are seeing results and having less to say in opposition. But it is the same as the majority of people agreeing to stop the prohibition while any cannabis reform is stalled or ignored by Congress. Who ya gonna call? If the people don’t lead, the leaders will follow the money.
The Drug War Gravy Train By Daniel Forbes
157 Medical Schools
CND and a call for harm reduction…. but we’ll probably get the usual, profitable harm increase instead.
“It’s hard to watch ideology triumph over science. And it’s unbelievable that UN member states are likely to recommit to another ineffective and dangerous policy on drugs when it is put before them in New York next month, at the first UN general assembly special session on drugs.”
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/21/end-hiv-drug-users-drug-free-world-harm-reduction
Also, David Nutt on the poppers ban: “an attack on pleasure.”
http://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/poppers-ban-veiled-attack-on-pleasure
I believe the Delray Beach tanks list a Boca Raton address to suggest a toney recovery experience and it’s an office. Like Pax Prentiss’ Malibu “I’m right and AA is wrong” treatment spiel.
I believe the Delray Beach tanks list a Boca Raton address to suggest a toney recovery experience and it’s an office, like Pax Prentiss’ Malibu treatment spiel.
Also, I nominate Pax as the punchable face of prohibition. (DeNiro’s Goodfellas snarl, “Ya got all the money for those fuckin’ commercials!”)
This is big: U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Referee State Disputes Over Marijuana
http://tinyurl.com/hqa85et
“The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a lawsuit filed by two of Colorado’s neighboring states over its legalization of marijuana.”
Good thing NE and OK have solved their violent crime problems, since they now have to devote so much of their limited resources to stopping and searching cars coming in from CO. I’m sure such law enforcement priorities make the folks in those states feel a lot safer.
Oklahoma is $1 Billion in the red. Their Governor’s daughter (not bad looking either) just got kicked out of her trailer, which was parked on the Capital Mansion grounds (not joking). The Sooner folks were footing her electric and water bill too. I wonder why they haven’t attempted a lawsuit on Mexico’s government for not stopping the drugs flowing north to Oklahoma–or even bringing a suit to the Texas Highways and Roads authority for keeping drug trafficking routs opened? If Texas would simply outlaw the use of all their roads and then destroy them, there would be a slight reduction in illegal drugs flowing north. A few years ago, a major Mexican Drug Cartel had over 500 horses confiscated from Oklahoma.
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I haven’t got enough words in my brain to articulate the magnitude of this event to cannabis law reform. Oh wait, maybe I do. It’s actually close to Colorado and Washington repealing on Election Day 2012. I could be wrong but it seems to me that the sycophants of prohibition thought that the Supremacy Clause really did mean that the Feds could make it go away once Mr. Obama left office. If they don’t believe that today’s SCOTUS ruling obviates the Supremacy Clause at least WRT cannabis law reform I’ll eat my tin foil hat! We’ve just gotten rid of that albatross around our collective neck unless I miss my guess. No, the ruling doesn’t actually have to defang the Supremacy Clause. It’s what the typical outsider believes happened. I’ve haven’t really seen very many prohibitionists who bothered with facts in their “reasoning” process.
Why do I think the perception is so important? Because I think that it will give a substantial number of voters permission to vote in favor of our ballot initiative. That it will give that same permission to a significant percent of State legislators to vote in favor of cannabis law reform. It’s a whole new ball game.
The problem with denigrating your opponent in a debate with remarks which call into question their parentage and intelligence is that it can get mighty tedious when they kick your ass to the curb in court and at the ballot box.
🙂
It doesn’t end with exploiting addicts, or the use of private prisons. Federal prisoners, especially their families, still feel the commercial sector sting despite a recent order from the FCC capping rates for prison telephone calls:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to Prison, Inc.,
So we can exploit the druggies behind our prison doors.â€
―(with apologies to Emma Lazarus)
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I am definitely going to vote for Gary Johnson on Election Day.
Vote for any candidate who is serious about ending the drug war. If Sanders loses the primary, Johnson has got to be the man, if only to show the strength of public opinion on this issue (not to mention the lack of any democratic choice in a probable Clinton/Trump match up).
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Living in Maryland I’m almost certain to have the luxury of knowing that my vote for POTUS will be meaningless to the result of the election. This State will almost certainly go to the Democratic nominee. Because I’m not worried about the election’s outcome I get to vote for the candidate who best matches my perception of a POTUS.
There’s no chance in heck that I’ll vote for Ms. Clinton, and only slightly more likelihood that I would vote for Mr. Sanders. I might have voted for Hillary in 2008. But it would have been a vote for her as a way to get Mr. Clinton back in office. Since I believe that Mr. Clinton now has problem with drinking alcohol and doesn’t want Ms. Clinton to be elected the point is moot. I certainly didn’t appreciate the job he did until after he was gone.
Quite frankly among the three that might possibly be sworn in on January 20th I’d rather see Mr. Trump taking the oath. At this point it is what I expect. Please, I’ve heard all the arguments from my left handed friends and think those arguments short sighted arguments from the general to the specific. The underlying reason I think that he’s going to win is because he isn’t a damn politician. Trying to paint him with the the typical short comings of Republican politicians just isn’t very smart. If we trade him the tax dollars from legal pot for building his stupid wall I’d wager we have the Executive Order de-scheduling cannabis in hand before Groundhog Day 2017. My only question is whether they’ll be smart enough to realize that the stupid wall is going to have to extend at least 100 feet below the surface or the whole thing will just be a boondoggle.
I’m not arguing any of my assertions. I understand that most if not all of the people who might read this screed don’t agree with my opinion. We’ll see who is correct and who isn’t in the fullness of time.
Duncan, I have a similar situation in California in being able to vote my heart instead of my head.
I don’t care who people vote for as long as they vote. I like your comment because it’s the kind of “thinking-out-loud” stuff we should all feel free to write. Self-censorship sucks.
Thumbs up. (If I tried using the happy face emoticon I think my computer might die from shock)
ADDICTS FOR SALE – wow I’ve been waiting for this article to come out since 2011 which is to say when I myself was involved in the domino game going on down there from West Palm Beach to Delrey Beach. It’s digusting. I just had to say something but I haven’t even done my wake up yet
The Medical Marijuana Mess A prescription for fixing a broken policy
by John Hudak at Brookings Institute
http://tinyurl.com/jtc9ohv
“The U.S. government has funded research that helped cure some of the world’s most devastating diseases. With medical marijuana, the U.S. government’s prohibition doesn’t cure patients; it keeps them sick. And it also keeps them in ignorance.” …
… “Federal marijuana policy is contradictory and unsustainable. It has consequences for state and local governments, business owners, doctors, patients, and families. Marijuana prohibition was designed to criminalize the illicit drug trade, but it has victimized innocent Americans” …
“It is time for government to transform medical marijuana policy into a system that is rational, functional, consistent, and informed by science—not politics.”
If we want to have sensible marijuana policy in this country we must demand that our leaders in Washington stop dragging their feet and do what they are there for: design policy that supports the will of the majority of the American population and stop the wholesale fleecing of Americans that are powerless and ill.
Nixon official: real reason for the drug war was to criminalize black people and hippies
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon
life-is-hell-after-narcan
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/life-is-hell-after-narcan-heroin-s-miracle-cure.html
The World Comes Together, as The War on Drugs Tears Nations Apart
http://volteface.me/war-on-drugs-un/