The program was about education. But it was also about surveillance.

  • MarxMadness
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    9 months ago

    That’s just flat-out untrue about coke, not even an argument. Like DARE, the fact that you’re wrong on that and lumping it in with scarier-sounding drugs shows (at minimum) you aren’t actually knowledgeable about these drugs and their effects.

    Even with those scarier-sounding drugs, there’s research suggesting they’re more demonized than destructive:

    Dr. Carl L. Hart, Ziff Professor at Columbia University and former chair of the Department of Psychology, is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the effects of so-called recreational drugs on the human mind and body. Dr. Hart is open about the fact that he uses drugs himself, in a happy balance with the rest of his full and productive life as a researcher and professor, husband, father, and friend. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue definitively that the criminalization and demonization of drug use–not drugs themselves–have been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country’s enduring structural racism.

    Dr. Hart did not always have this view. He came of age in one of Miami’s most troubled neighborhoods at a time when many ills were being laid at the door of crack cocaine. His initial work as a researcher was aimed at proving that drug use caused bad outcomes. But one problem kept cropping up: the evidence from his research did not support his hypothesis. From inside the massively well-funded research arm of the American war on drugs, he saw how the facts did not support the ideology. The truth was dismissed and distorted in order to keep fear and outrage stoked, the funds rolling in, and Black and brown bodies behind bars.

    Drug Use for Grown-Ups will be controversial, to be sure: the propaganda war, Dr. Hart argues, has been tremendously effective. Imagine if the only subject of any discussion about driving automobiles was fatal car crashes. Drug Use for Grown-Ups offers a radically different vision: when used responsibly, drugs can enrich and enhance our lives. We have a long way to go, but the vital conversation this book will generate is an extraordinarily important step.

    • ComradeSalad
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      9 months ago

      Ok? I never said that the propaganda was true. All the woes of the world do not come from crack cocaine, but if you think crack is a perfectly safe and wonderful drug, then you are insane.

      Also of course I would lump them into the same category, and I do have experience with them, that why I say that.

      • MarxMadness
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        9 months ago

        You put coke as an example of a drug that “even doing safety once will absolutely ruin your life.” That is word-for-word DARE propaganda.

        The research cited above suggests putting even heroin or crack in that category is a stretch. I’m going to put a lot more weight on that than on anyone’s anecdotes.

        • ComradeSalad
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          9 months ago

          Imagine going to bat for heroin and crack cocaine.

          Also what anecdotes? You accused me of not knowing what I was saying, to which I said I did and you quickly moved your goalposts.

          I have put people in bodybags. Guess what a lot of them were on? Heroin. Crack. Meth. Unlaced stuff too. The laced stuff is a one way death sentence anyway.

          I have seen people utterly rot away with heroin, and become a different person in less then 3 months. Then those people either go through utter hell for months during recovery, or they die. Do you you think weed makes people stab their friends and loved ones so they can get more? No. But heroin or crack will do that.

          “It’s only once though bro! It’s perfectly safe!”

          • relay
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            9 months ago

            maybe just have a society that is just not so terrible that they’d do a shit ton of drugs and OD rather than have to face living in a shit society.

            People do drugs as a way to cope with terrible living conditions. If life is worth living I don’t think people will need to take so many drugs.