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| A Way to Beat Illegal Drugs |
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Posted by FoM on April 17, 2000 at 07:48:06 PT By Barry R. McCaffrey Source: Washington Post 
The danger of illegal drugs was first brought home to me during the Vietnam War. It was a time when drug use among American troops rose alarmingly. Marijuana and heroin were widely available in Southeast Asia, and use of such drugs under combat conditions proved lethal or disabling for many soldiers.
Back in the United States, illegal drugs and alcohol abuse increasingly plagued the military and the rest of society. In the 1970s, drug use in the service was estimated to be between 30 and 50 percent. Yet, by the time our armed forces were victorious in the Persian Gulf War, less than one percent of military personnel tested positive for drugs. We had all but eliminated the problem. We did it through education, drug testing, treatment, leadership and sensible law enforcement. That's why I am optimistic about the chances of cutting illegal drug use in the greater society. Unlike world hunger, racism and other intractable social crises, drug abuse can be turned around in a relatively short time through collective efforts and determination. In fact, it has decreased in the United States by more than half since hitting a peak in 1979. Left unchecked, illegal drugs could cost this country a half-million deaths and a trillion dollars over the next decade. Criminal organizations that traffic in drugs threaten democratic governance, the rule of law, economic stability and human rights in many nations. The international community's growing maturity in understanding the scope of this problem is helping dissolve the myth that the U.S. market is the sole engine driving global drug trade. In fact, the United States makes up just a small fraction of the world's consumers. Even with the relatively high price Americans are willing to pay for illegal drugs, our citizens account for only 10 to 15 percent of the more than $400 billion spent on drugs around the world every year. From my perspective, the struggle against illegal drugs is not a "war." Misplaced battle imagery leads people to expect a conclusive victory. Wars have an end, but drug education--like all schooling--is a continuous process. To reduce the demand for drugs, prevention must be ongoing. Addicted individuals are to be helped, not defeated. They must be held accountable for their actions and offered drug treatment to help change destructive behavior. Cancer, rather than war, is the more appropriate metaphor for the nation's drug problem. The key to reducing both is prevention coupled with treatment and research. Slashing drug-use rates will require a sustained effort to change individual and social attitudes. It also will demand fundamental shifts in the way our public health and criminal justice systems deal with chronic addicts. We cannot arrest our way out of the problem. Neither can we make unrealistic promises to solve the drug problem in just a few years or rid the world of drugs entirely. We must be serious and get organized with long-term prevention and treatment programs that work. The government's response is only a small part of the national effort to counter illegal drugs. The drug problem is in essence a collection of local epidemics that can best be addressed at the community level by coalitions of parents, coaches, health professionals and teachers. Our children are most influenced by people they love and admire, rather than by rock stars, celebrities and other remote figures. An adult involved with mentoring can change a child's life. Much of the work that needs to be done against drug dependence will take place within the criminal justice system. Drug courts are able to offer treatment in lieu of prison for nonviolent offenders. Drug treatment must be married to legal coercion if America's 5 million hard-core users are to be stopped from ruining their lives at great cost to our country in terms of overcrowded courts and prisons, spiraling health-care costs and violent criminal behavior. Strict law enforcement, combined with humane and intelligent policy, is the answer to the enormous public safety problem posed by drug dependence. The indirect campaign to legalize drugs has tried to manipulate the issues of "medical marijuana" and "harm reduction." This approach should offend America's sense of integrity. The welfare of children must come first. Reducing drug abuse is in our country's most fundamental interest. I have seen a lot of destruction and suffering in U.S. combat operations. Nothing, however, exceeds the chaos caused by young Americans who drift into the spiral of chronic addiction. The writer is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Monday , April 17, 2000 ; A21 Related Articles On Barry McCaffrey Aid Colombia http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/list/McCaffrey.shtml http://google.com/search?lc=&num=10&q=cannabisnews+McCaffrey+site:cannabisnews.com Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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Comment #18 posted by carol on May 17, 2001 at 17:23:26 PT:
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| I just wanted to ask a question. How long does marijuna stay in the fatty tissues? I would like to know for the urine test. Thanks Carol [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #17 posted by Rainbow on April 18, 2000 at 19:49:20 PT |
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Comment #16 posted by kaptinemo on April 18, 2000 at 17:28:33 PT:
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So, you want to test the entire country, Barry? What makes you think they'll all line up like good little soldiers and pee on command? I was in the military, too... and haven't forgotten my lessons. You taught me very well, Barry. All about 'lawful orders'. About 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic'. About how, as Patrick Henry put it, we sometimes have to nourish the tree of liberty with our life's blood. But ol' Patrick said nothing about pee-pee. In fact, the Founders would all be shocked at what's going on; the seismic activity from all of them turning in their graves must have earthquake watchers thinking the much anticipated Great Eastern Quake is coming.
What you are proposing, Barry-me-lad, is tantamount to the elimination of the very Constitution both of us swore to protect. You have now removed the last shred of pretense to any legitimacy you claimed. It was your kind that declared me and mine the enemy in this war.
How's this for a novel bit of 'civil disobediance': Think of it; you go to the testing station, and when they reach for it... you pour it on the floor and walk out, telling them they can keep the sample, you don't need it anymore. What can they do? They *have* asked for it; you *gave* it to them. But just not the way they wanted it.
In the old days, when you wanted to insult somebody, you threw your drink in their face. I'm not a drinker. But I have something else I can use. Something that normally I give no thought at all to discarding. Because, like any sane, normal person, I deem it to have no value, whatsoever. But in the sick and twisted world of the antis, it has assumed a value that only a depraved fetishist would grant it.
So, Barry, are you still sure you want my urine?
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Comment #15 posted by Kanabys on April 18, 2000 at 10:46:38 PT:
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Comment #14 posted by mungojelly on April 18, 2000 at 10:03:56 PT:
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| Comment #13 posted by observer on April 17, 2000 at 22:25:20 PT |
McCaffery:
Drug treatment must be married to legal coercion
Communist Reeducation Camp:
``Another feature emphasized during the early stage
of reeducation, but continued throughout one's
imprisonment, is confession of one's alleged
misdeeds in the past. In a March 1981 memorandum to
Amnesty International, the Hanoi government said "in
all cases of people being sent to re-education camps,
the competent Vietnamese authorities have established
files recording the criminal acts committed by the
people concerned."(26) These files were established
through the mandatory confessions and
denunciation of others.
Such "confessions" provide the government with
a retroactive justification of its decision to
imprison hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese in the
camps. It can point out, as it did to Amnesty
International, that the prisoners themselves had
confessed to committing crimes. Of course, such
reasoning is unlikely to convince many people outside
of the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party,
but in any case the situation provides much
opportunity for false confessions by the
prisoners in order to satisfy their captors, as well
as more ill-treatment of the prisoners in order to
produce the "confessions".
All prisoners in the camps are required to write
confessions, no matter how trivial their
alleged crimes might be. Mail clerks, for example,
were told that they were guilty of aiding the "puppet
war machinery" through circulating the mail, while
religious chaplains were found guilty of providing
spiritual comfort and encouragement to the enemy
troops.(27) A reserve military officer who taught
Vietnamese literature in high school was told that he
had "misled a whole generation of innocent
children."(28)
Besides confessing such "crimes", prisoners had to
write their autobiography and disclose their
financial assets as described by a former prisoner:
"You had to write the story of your life, including
your father, grandfather and children, describing
their fortunes, how everyone died, what they owned,
including television, radio, camera. New ones had to
be written twice each month, both in re-education and
in prison. If they found you had left something out
that you had included earlier, you were in trouble.
You would have to write new confessions many
times each day. Each confession was about 20
pages handwritten."(29) Following the written
confessions were the public confessions
in which prisoners would confess their "crimes"
before the camp authorities and other prisoners.
Prisoners were encouraged to criticize each other's
confessions, said a former prisoner, which was
"very effective in getting us to hate each other."
The more "crimes" a prisoner confessed, the more he
is praised as "progressive" by camp authorities.
The incessant demand for confessions places
much pressure on the prisoners, leading to insanity
in some cases. A former prisoner who had previously
been a medical doctor said he saw "many cases --
screaming, yelling people." Despite his medical
experience, he was not allowed to treat them.(30)
The purpose of these confessions has not only
been to produce a sense of guilt in the prisoners and
to establish files on them, but also to get the
prisoners to denounce other former soldiers and
government officials who had not yet reported for re-
education. The government has been very concerned
about the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who
have not yet reported.''
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney/Vietnam-Reeducation-Camps-1982
Substance Abuse Treatment:
``In Tim's case the remedy cost him nearly $14,000
for a three week treatment, plus $880 for the
interventionist, not to mention what it cost his ego.
As a patient, he was repeatedly told that the first
step to his getting better would be his declaration:
I am an alcoholic. For the sinner to be saved, the
sinner must first admit he is a sinner.To refuse to
do so is proof the sick one is "in denial" and
without grace. The only way to prove you are not in
denial is to admit you are an alcoholic. Does this
remind anyone of the tactics of witchhunters? This is
only phase one. The next phase, public
confession, is reminiscent of a totalitarian
gulag: each inmate must declare before the others how
they degraded themselves and betrayed their humanity
through substance abuse. The point, I suppose, is to
get the substance abuser to believe he or she is
hopelessly addicted or diabolically possessed (or
both) and can be helped only by abandoning oneself to
God and other medical divinities. On what scientific
basis is this hogwash based? . . .''
http://www.skepdic.com/sat.html
| Comment #12 posted by observer on April 17, 2000 at 22:24:28 PT |
Stanton Peele:
``The lack of demonstrated efficacy of AA and its
continued dominance in American treatment is a social
phenomenon well worth analyzing on its own. AA
appeals to American religious fundamentalism, as
expressed in its nineteenth century revivalistic
style involving public confession, contrition,
and restitution. The success of AA is a tribute both
to its appeal to fundamental tenets of American
culture and to the skills of Marty Mann and
subsequent gifted AA marketers. The morality tale of
the repentant sinner who used to enjoy drinking and
intoxication but who now recognizes the folly of his
ways and the need for abstinence will always be a
sure seller in the United States.
Likewise, this tale will market well as drug
treatment expands. The marijuana smoker or cocaine
user who used to enjoy the high life but who now sees
the error of his ways, affirming the correctness of
his sober and abstemious brethren, will soon dominate
drug treatment (as it already shows signs of doing)
the way it does alcohol treatment. William Bennett
and succeeding drug tsars, drug education
specialists, and U.S. presidents are always on the
lookout for such spokespeople for the cause of
treatment. An expansion in treatment is not gauged in
terms of its efficacy, but in terms of how well it
supports moral entrepreneurs in presenting their
visions of drug use.''
http://www.peele.net/lib/treatment.html
The Inquisition, circa 1280
`` . . .The next day he visited them and, binding
himself with a terrible oath, said, "Unless you
confess to me that you are heretics, may God
do thus and so to me if I don't kill all of you right
here with a variety of tortures and torments. If, as
I ask, you do confess to me that you do or did
err in something or other, I'll give you a light
penance and set you free immediately." The brothers
replied that he should not ask them to say something
that wasn't true. Telling such a wicked lie would
cause death to their souls and offense to God. The
furious inquisitor selected one of them who seemed
more fervent than the others and was a priest, and
ordered that he be tortured. The torturer entered
with his assistants and tied the prisoner's hands
behind his back. Then he had him raised up by means
of a pulley attached to the roof of the house, which
was very high. After the prisoner had hung there for
an hour the rope was released suddenly. The idea was
that, broken by the intense pain, he would be
defeated and confess that he had once been a
heretic. After he had been raised and suddenly
dropped many times they asked whether he would
confess that he was or had been a heretic.''
http://www.torture-museum.com/papal-inquisition.htm
Typical U.S. Gulag, circa 2000
``Two of them were about my size and the third was
about 20 pounds and 6 inches smaller. They asked who
I was and what I was in for. I told them and then one
of them asked if I had ever been ******. I said "no
and I wasn't planning on it "he said "we're going to
**** you". l was filled with fear like I had never
felt before. I swung at him with a left hook and as
he blocked it his partner swung and hit me in the
face knocking me to the floor. One of them grabbed me
by the hair and slammed my face into the concrete
knocking me out.
When I woke I was on my stomach, my pants had been
pulled off, my legs were spread wide apart with one
guy sitting on each leg and the other guy laying on
my back. The guy on top was slapping me awake and
said I want you to feel this. He proceeded to [...deleted]''
Stop Prisoner Rape: Survivors' Stories
http://www.spr.org/docs/memories.html
| Comment #11 posted by Freedom on April 17, 2000 at 22:19:25 PT |
Screw you, Barry. The people are all too aware of who is doing the manipulating, and that is why we have 73% public support on MMJ. Even better, have some guts, and stop avoiding interviews where journalists wish to ask you the direct questions you know will blow the bubble of your prohibitionist propaganda.
Try this. Keep your word, and do what the IOM Report recomended you should do, and allow medical use of marijuana in n-1 trials for individuals in need.
You lie to children to try and manipulate their decision-making process, you accomplish the result of destroying adult's credibility, and you have the nerve to complain about our push for medical marijuana? Fraud.
Get ready for many losses this fall, as you reap what your lies have sown for drug policy.
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Comment #10 posted by John R. Bills on April 17, 2000 at 18:29:55 PT:
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| Comment #9 posted by freedom fighter on April 17, 2000 at 17:58:06 PT |
Next day, Barry the King was still not satisfied! He delcared " The scourge of humanility is still here!" Anyone with a name like Stoned ought to be stoned promptly! says the King.
The five dwarfs looked @ Stoned and said,"You were a gateway to the worse shit out there". They promptly stoned Stoned to death!.
Puffed said the King,"Addict has to go." Give him an overdose!
The four dwarfs asked the King how they may get the DRUG so they may overdose the Addict. King gave his permission to fly to Colombia and buy some Herion so that Addict may overdosed. He was buried along his buddies.
The King next day, started smelling around sniffing around and said "Oh gawd, Bong and the Fat Joint stinks this room up so bad." "Hey Whitey, go and do your job and clean the stink out for if we do not do that our children will suffer!"
Whitey the dwarf did a heil seig goose stepping before he promptly shot Bong and the Fat Joint.
Kind Bud asked Whitey the dwarf," Oh dear, How are we gonna grow some Kind Buds??". With that, Whitey the dwarf shot him promptly and said," Barry the King said, you cannot grow your king buds anymore!"
Whitey the Dwarf and Barry McCaffery lived a happy life together!
Fight Nazi!
Long Live the Freedom!
| Comment #8 posted by MikeEEEEE on April 17, 2000 at 17:51:26 PT |
Hope you're monitorng this barry. Notice I spelled your name with a small b you bozo. Who's the bigger bozo, you or the people who actually pay you? What a score for you barry, you're retired, the little extra money helps.
barry, you're a brain dead puppet for the corporation.
Amerika loves to take property away, then excuse it by saying you're saving our children. I think the proper way to say it should be your saving some money taking it away from the poor kids parents.
Hey guys, I made my peace, enjoy the bozos for the next few years. Shit always stinks, remember that the next time these bozos talk.
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Comment #7 posted by Damian on April 17, 2000 at 12:57:51 PT:
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| Comment #6 posted by legalizeit on April 17, 2000 at 12:19:08 PT |
>Left unchecked, illegal drugs could cost this country a half-million deaths and a trillion dollars over the next decade
Legal drugs cause well over a half-million deaths EACH YEAR!! The failed drug war, if trends continue, will require less than half a decade to reach the trillion-dollar mark, with nothing to show for it.
> Strict law enforcement, combined with humane and intelligent policy
Must be a policy other than yours, which is neither the slightest bit humane nor the slightest bit intelligent.
>The welfare of children must come first.
Here we go with the CHILLDRUUN again... let's throw millions in jail because of CHILLDRUUN.... your laws make drugs far more accessible to children than legalization would...
>Reducing drug abuse is in our country's most fundamental interest.
He only says that because his livelihood depends on it.
>I have seen a lot of destruction and suffering in U.S. combat operations. Nothing, however, exceeds the chaos caused by young Americans who drift into the spiral of chronic addiction.
What an insensitive idiot! How can he compare somebody with a treatable disease to the horrors of war? (Besides, his definition of "addiction" includes responsible marijuana smokers and excludes alcoholics.) People handicapped from war and those with dead relatives killed by war should be outraged and disgusted by this insensitive and blasphemous statement. But then again, hearing this from one who has repeatedly killed without remorse and bragged about it doesn't surprise me in the least.
As for the cancer metaphor, the war on drugs is the worst cancer acting on our society. How many people's lives are ruined by:
-forfeiture laws (though thankfully that may change soon);
-unreasonable no-knock searches and seizures, and countless other cases of paramilitary (er, police) brutality;
-near-compulsory drug testing (take our drug test or forget the job you desperately need);
-loved ones jailed for years for growing or using a plant;
-robbery and other crimes related to drug prices made higher by inflation;
-people killed/maimed by turf wars, many related to the underground drug trade;
-media corrupted and coerced into putting propaganda into their shows and articles;
-sick and dying made to suffer because the best medicine for them is illegal.
That is just a start - now let's look at positive benefits of the drug war:
- nothing!!!
| Comment #5 posted by observer on April 17, 2000 at 10:38:18 PT |
Fascists and Nazis are forever demonizing various Enemies of ze State as "cancer" --
``... extermination of racially "inferior" or "damaging"
groups. Slavs, Gypsies, and Africans were considered
racially inferior to a supposed race of German Aryans -
a race that the Nazi ideologues believed to be weakened
by what they called "the Jewish cancer."
-- Eugenics and Racial Mass Murder
http://www.colby.edu/personal/rmscheck/GermanyE4.html
''...the kind of depersonalization and debasement
Ian Kershaw notes that would allow the transformation
of Jews from beast to vermin and finally cancer.
Bauman writes, "Only in modern, 'scientific', racist
form, the age-old repellence of the Jews has been
articulated as an exercise in sanitation; only with
the modern reincarnation of Jew-hatred have the Jews
been charged with . . . an immanent flaw that cannot
be separated from its carriers. . . . Cancer, vermin,
or weed cannot repent. . . . By the nature of their
evil they have to be exterminated" ''
http://ecumene.org/SHOAH/shofar.htm
| Comment #4 posted by dddd on April 17, 2000 at 10:16:51 PT |
If we are to seriously look into this "war",that has now become a "cancer",then the whole thing becomes even stranger,and spookier.
If this was a "war",to begin with,what happened?Is this some subtle way of admitting defeat,or a standoff?
I think hearing this "warpig",label this a cancer is way more chilling than being an opponent in a "war".
To make this new "cancer" statement could be seen as bad or good.If we are to compare it to cancer,then we are talking about something for which there is no known "cure".Everything that has been tried,hasnt worked.But on the dark side,this would seem to imply that more radical experimental "cures",will be justified to "help" the victims of this undefined and nebulous scourge.
This article is one of the best grand masterpieces of CRAP we've seen yet.Truly fertile ground for further commentary.
I cant believe statements like;"Slashing drug-use rates will require
a sustained effort to change individual and social attitudes."...WHAT!...is it just me,or is this statement from the"Czar",an Orwellianesque wild bizzarrity from the outer limits of the twilight zone?How does one go about changing an "attitude"?
Let's just hope this strangeness is part of the apparent and obvious dimentia that will lead to the erradication of the "mother of all cancers",which is the malignant,and dreaded ONDCP strain,for which there is very little funding to find a cure.They dont even make any medication to treat that sucker.They were pinning there hopes on million or so for research,but they decided to put the money into a new helicopter ,with the "death from above poisin herbacide broadcaster option"package.Which they need to liberally saturate the crops of the villians who are making americans do drugs.
Of course ,,all herbacides to be used in this eradication effort,are completely harmless to anything else.A little known fact for any treehuggers out there,is that the dea/ondcp spent over $85.00 testing this herbacide,which is said to be way safer than agent orange....Mr McCaffrey did not respond when asked if he would agree to having his residence saturated with this safe chemical.
Most peculiar.......indeed.....dddd
But why waste our time discussing such trivial things,when we are faced with such important and relevant issues as the Elian Gonzales situation.......................I almost cant hack it..........dddd
| Comment #3 posted by observer on April 17, 2000 at 10:12:37 PT |
No thanks to the nanny state. The totalitarian plans McCzar and cohorts have cooked up are for total control. Mandantory testing for all: forced treatment or prison for marijuana smokers (i.e. "America's 5 million hard-core users"). The old bait and switch: sensationalized accounts of cocaine, meth and heroin addiction are used to see a police state and coerced "treatment" used against politcally incorrect marijuana users.
Just say "No" to the totalitarian nightmares of this goose-stepping de-facto fascist. Americans want returned to them traditional freedoms that all adults once shared, not more concentration camps and communist-style re-education centers that McCaffery asserts are the final solution to the "crisis" of "drugs". McCaffery's police-state plans may a control-freak bureaucrat's wet dream, true: yet to adult Americans who love traditional American freedoms, McCaffery's plans look like more big government totalitarian tyranny. No thanks to more jails/forced-treatment for marijuana smokers.
More on the McCaffery track record with the truth, here:
http://www.csdp.org/ads/pinocchio.htm
http://www.csdp.org/ads/dutch.htm
http://www.csdp.org/ads/media.htm
http://www.csdp.org/ads/troubled.htm
http://www.csdp.org/ads/resign.htm
| Comment #2 posted by rainbow on April 17, 2000 at 09:57:27 PT |
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Comment #1 posted by Alexandre Oeming on April 17, 2000 at 09:40:06 PT:
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*sarcasm on*
Yup. If this goon is really serious about defeating his "cancer", i know a great way to go. Take a long look at that second little item called "drug testing". Let's just eliminate the 4th Amendment and conduct regular drug tests (hair, urine, DNA, whatever) on EVERYBODY! MJ is such a "plague" on our populace that we have assume adults cannot handle themselves with it and have to treat them like children, so let's just expound on the principle and wipe out the scourge! If everyone is required by law to be tested, oh, let's say, bi-weekly, and if they fail their test are jailed in with the whitecoats who will then "cure" them ("education" and "treatment"), MJ use can be curtailed immensely! Repeat offenders can be shot or stoned (no pun intended) and we can write it off as "sensible law enforcement". If this idiot is really so proud of how the military works and thinks we can all look to his killing squads for lessons on everyday citizen life, let's become a police state and get it over with! At least then, we can stop lying to ourselves about how much we really idolize banana republics because we'll be one! Seig heil!
*sarcasm off*
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