PROHIBITION / ANTI-PROHIBITION

My friend Patrick White said something to me in 1991 that has stayed with me all these years:

You wake up in the morning and you think you have a plan and you know what you are going to do. But the truth is you don't know who you are going to meet, or what is going to happen to you. Anything can happen.

Today was one of those days. I ended up debating Bill Gallagher, executive director of Run Drugs Out of Town. He's an interesting guy. When he posts he sounds so reasonable but when I look at his site or read his newsletter, I can't figure out how we ended up in the same places. Here's what I said to Bill today:

Bill wrote:

If you are proposing that in order to bring about positive change all the negatives must first be exposed and eliminated I suspect you will live a life of complete frustration. Yes the mistakes should be identified and corrected but in a democracy opinions vary as to which are mistakes.

I reply: That's what I don't get about you Bill. You talk on this list like a reasonable person who agrees that the War is wrongheaded. But I go to your site and that's not what I see at all. It's a repository for WOD.gov propaganda.

As for the name Run Drugs Out of Town Run it is catchy and often attracts people who want something different than I aim for. Bottom line is that it is about prevention especially primary prevention with children.

Again, I see your primary methods of prevention as promoting the prohibition, not necessarily making informed choices.

Then there is the question of violating your rights. For someone who advocates democracy you seem to not recognize that the laws are a product of that democracy. I am not saying that the laws are always right but when they are not, as much as you may want to work to change them you are still legally bound by them.

However, when the elected representatives are bought and paid for by corporate interests and no longer reflect the will of the people, then the people must band together and use what weapons they have. They do not have the deep pockets of the corporate lobby so they can only organize their numbers and raise their collective voice in protest. Civil disobedience is never a first choice but sometimes it's the only way to turn up the volume for a cause.

I agree that going on the basic premise in the Declaration of Independence we do have a right to pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately when ones pursuit of happiness inteferes with another's we have a problem.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Are you saying that anti-prohibition is impacting negatively on your happiness?

Thus is the beauty of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It allows us to disagree and at the same time have free access to ideas and information. I filter out hundreds of items to find those most relevant to what we want..

Unfortunately on your site I only see one point of view. I think it's well done but I don't find it balanced in it's content.

Now for me and what I believe. I agree that the drug war is a total failure. Why we didn't learn that in 1933 is beyond me. We have wasted too much money, manpower and lives trying to eliminate substances, by one estimate up to $400 billion a year. I believe we would be better served to decriminalize everything and save $200+ Billion a year on the war and imprisonment. It is absurd to have someone in prison serving more time for possession than another is for murder.

Is there a place on your site where you say this?

I believe that all substances should be regulated by the FDA (wouldn't it be nice to see that agency operate efficiently and honestly?). That agency formed by a democratically elected congress was charged with protecting the public. 90,000 a year die from prescription problems, imagine where we would be without their protection. For that matter more people die from aspirin than from illegal drugs.

I don't get your point here either. This IS where we are under FDA protection. People are dying from drug complications because of politically rather than scientifically based approvals.

I appreciate your point of view Bill, but I'm not at all clear about what you're trying to do. I look at your work and it does not look like someone working for allowing kids to make an informed choice, it looks like solving what you perceive to be the problem by removing the choice.

You're right about one thing though. That's the beauty of democracy. We can both be a little right without either of us being completely wrong.

peace,

LA Stone

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THE LOGIC OF SPAM

I also spent an hour on line today looking at hair follicle testing sites. Checked my office email an hour after that and I had a spam from this site selling cannabis oil perfume.

Now I understand how they target you, but how the hell did they find me so fast? This is the first time I've ever been pitched for cannabis goods and I get Liafax and a number of drug related legal newsletters there.

I'm convinced it's because I ended up on a lot of how to beat your drug test sites and they flagged me there somehow. I think they should get their money back though. The spam was for a perfume that proclaimed, if you were blindfolded - you wouldn't be able to tell whether you were smelling Kaya or standing next to a live plant.

Now if I was on that site because I was trying to beat a drug test, what reason could I possibly have to want to smell like pot? Wasted marketing but it provided a funny end to an insane day.

By the way, there's a lot of buzz about shampoos that can beat the test. Some claim a 2 percent fail rate. You get better hits if you use testing, not tests.

It's all good.

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