war on drugs

via this share:

@ChiAppleseed

ICYMI last week, this video abt the failed War on Drugs by @dreamhampton, @mollycrabapple, Jay Z is worth your time: nytimes.com/2016/09/15/opi…

86 – reagan doubled down on war on drugs

incarceration rates double up..

45 yrs later.. rates of drug use as high as when nixon declared war on drugs

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The War on Drugs” is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade. This initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the UN have made illegal. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by United States President Richard Nixon—the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control—during which he declared drug abuse “public enemy number one”. That message to the Congress included text about devoting more federal resources to the “prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted”, but that part did not receive the same public attention as the term “war on drugs”. However, two years even prior to this, Nixon had formally declared a “war on drugs” that would be directed toward eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. Today, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, estimates that the United States spends $51 billion annually on these initiatives

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Carl Hart

Gabor Maté

Russell Brand

Johann Hari

addiction

Bryan Stevenson

Matt Tabbai – divide

Bruce Alexander – rat park ness

et al

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Myrto Tilianaki (@MyrtoTilianaki) tweeted at 4:30 AM – 2 Mar 2017 :

Inside the Philippines’ “war on drugs” – how @hrw’s @bouckap tracked police killing squads on streets of Manila https://t.co/vbfpz3uxCY https://t.co/cLW1zxd6BX (http://twitter.com/MyrtoTilianaki/status/837263731973373952?s=17)

More than 7,000 people have been killed in the Philippines’ bloody “war on drugs.”…effectively a war on the urban poor that could amount to crimes against humanity.

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At one point as many as 35 people were being gunned down in Manila every night.

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These are very heavily policed neighborhoods, and it’s simply impossible for a group of masked armed men to go around, night after night, without being picked up by the police. So that really was our strongest clue that all of these killings are being carried out by, or in cooperation with, the police.

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The most common drug in the country, especially among the poor, is methamphetamine, which is known locally as shabu. Meth use is roughly equivalent to that in the United States. But Duterte has created this myth of a country descending into a lethal drug crisis and has advocated mass extrajudicial violence against “drug lords” as the only solution to this false crisis. Yet the vast majority of those killed are very poor urban slum dwellers

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Duterte’s populist base applauds the mass killings as reducing crime. He tries to scare people about drug problems and then portrays himself as the only solution. Like many populists, he’s built this myth around himself as a champion of the poor, but actually he comes from a very powerful political dynasty. Many Filipinos we met told us they had no idea innocent people were being killed in the anti-drug campaign until their own relative got killed. The mother of one victim told me: “We voted for Duterte, and now he’s declaring war on us – he’s killing us like chickens.”

Many of the 32 victims whose killings we investigated for our report were occasional methamphetamine users, as it gives them energy to be able to work long hours. And a few sold drugs to make ends meet. But women and children have been victims, too.

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We’re talking about people so poor they can’t even afford decent meals, let alone buy a gun. In several instances we got eyewitness accounts about police planting evidence.

64,000 deaths by overdose which is a bit more than from terrorism.

Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) tweeted at 8:16 AM on Sun, Sep 23, 2018:
* Number of Americans killed in Vietnam War (1955-1975): 58,193
* Number of Americans who died from HIV/AIDS in the most fatal year (1995): 41,699
* Number of Americans who died in 2017 from drug overdoses: 72,287
* Highest death rates: West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
(https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1043866618290475008?s=03)