...then I don't know what is.
I know this is probably a bit old, but I find myself still chuckling over it. Portland, Maine is going to vote on ending marijuana prohibition in their city and, as is their right, the anti-prohibitionists put up advertisements raising awareness of the facts and persuading people to vote in favor of legalization--and instead of just putting up their own prohibitionist ads full of lies, as has been their tradition for forty years, they tried to force the ads to be taken down.
Is that rich or what?
The fact is, the anti-legalization crowd no longer has any weapons. Their arguments were based from day one on lies and fear and ignorance, and as the population begins to lose their ignorance about drugs and therefore lose their fear, the lies no longer have any power. The pro-legalization side is getting their message out, and the pro-legalization message has the benefit of not only being new and different, but effective and based on fact and science. The pro-legalization side is not only well-informed but well-connected with one another and can easily combat lies from our opponents over our networks. Former prohibitionists like CNN's Dr. Sanjay are switching sides, adding even more credibility to those who oppose the Drug War and its many failures.
Let's face it. At this point, posting more lies we've already heard and seen debunked about the "dangers" of marijuana are not going to work anymore. And spreading lies about what various pro-legalization bills will do to hurt marijuana users and businesses (such as those that helped them win Prop 19 in California in 2010) will not work anymore either.
They have been reduced to throwing a temper tantrum and demanding that our side no longer be allowed to speak. And they got shot down, as they should have.
It is definitely a sweet thing to think about, that they have so little left with which to fight us that they must resort to trying to strongarm us into silence. It shows not only how much they are losing, but how much they actually know it. They know that in ten years' time we will all be pissing on the grave of the failed Drug War and their undeserved money train, and they can almost taste it, it's so close and so very inevitable.
I feel like Cartman at the end of "Scott Tenorman Must Die", don't you? I can't wait to taste their tears of unfathomable sadness, the tears of Drug War profiteers who now have to go out and find real jobs--in a world that will show them no sympathy for all the years they violated our flesh and terrorized our population and destroyed the futures of our children. I personally hope that every person who worked in a Drug War profiteering company is entirely unemployable when this war ends. Poetic justice.
Have I said that before on this blog, or was that in a comment on NORML? Well, I don't care. It bears repeating.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
False Dichotomy and Witch Hunt Tactics in Practice
Okay, this is sick. This one North Jersey District is wanting to implement random drug testing, which is hugely opposed by the majority of students and no small number of parents. Now studies have shown routinely that drug testing does not discourage drug use among either students or workers in the workplace and, in fact, increases hard drug use, but for some reason those facts elude a number of the fucking liars who stood up to support this violation of the kids.
BTW, the only reason schools are trying to push drug testing across the board is to try and acclimate students to violations from future employers and, in my own opinion, to make some desperate prohibitionist last-stand. I think they are trying to force this issue because in some part of their tiny authoritarian minds they think "if we can stop marijuana users from using, they will immediately become prohibitionists and we can turn the vote that is inevitably going to destroy the failed Drug War and all our profits!" It won't work, but it's not like authoritarians are smart or anything.
Anyway, the prohibitionists who favor the a priori criminalization of all citizens because of some completely baseless and unscientific intuitive "knowledge" that drug testing will "dissuade" drug use despite all reliable studies showing that it will definitely not dissuade drug use, are sinking to some incredible lows. They are exaggerating statistics when they aren't outright lying about them, for example. But what I want to talk about is this practice of False Dichotomy and the Witch Hunt, both favorites of the pro-drug testing Drug Warriors.
You will notice the dirty underhanded ad hominems being thrown in the way of any parents who dare to oppose drug testing by calling them "parents who smoke pot with their kids" and telling people around town that opponents of drug testing "support and encourage teen drug use". Now neither one is true. The opponents of drug testing are opposing it because it is an unacceptably invasive violation of basic civil rights in the name of a failed authoritarian cause, the Drug War. They oppose it because it does not fix the problem at all and studies have shown that it actually exacerbates the problem. They oppose it because it usurps their authority over their own children and pre-criminalizes their children, putting them in an early mindset that they are all, as citizens of the United States, guilty until "proven" innocent by an inaccurate and unreliable method of criminal investigation and physical violation, and that no matter how many tests they pass they will always at any moment be required to "prove" themselves again and will never be exonerated for these crimes they did not commit and of which they were a priori convicted.
But notice what the drug testing liars are doing: they are pushing a false dichotomy, the same one on which drug testing first took off, namely, "If you are not with me, you are against me." They are pushing the idea that anyone who opposes drug testing could only be opposing it because they are, themselves, drug users and want to promote drug use. They are pushing the idea that there is absolutely no other possible reason someone could oppose drug testing, and pretending that the position of "no, I'm not in favor of drug addiction but this method is not only ineffective but counter-productive and there are better methods that are also not humiliating, insulting, and criminalizing".
Personally, I think everyone who supports drug testing with these arguments should be charged with slander, because that is what it is. But what is more is that it is a method for creating fear in the minds of people who oppose them. They are trying to make opponents of drug testing afraid to speak out for fear of being branded as users themselves, much as the witch hunters of old made people afraid to speak out against their methods for fear of finding themselves on the rack, and much as the Communist witch-hunters made people afraid to speak out against the extreme persecution of the Red Scare for fear of being called a Communist themselves and being wrung out to dry.
The False Dichotomy can exist on its own, but no Witch Hunt can really exist without this fallacy of logic and thought. The False Dichotomy is one of the most important weapons in the bags of angry authoritarian cowards everywhere, particularly the ones who are liars like these pro-drug testing parents are. You will notice that no one on the side of legalization and the side of opposing drug testing has to resort to these underhanded tactics to get their point across....because we have the facts on our side, both the scientific, the logical, and the ethical. The pro-drug testing side has nothing but lies and fear, and when push comes to shove they push the False Dichotomy even harder than before. Because in the end, it's all they know how to do. When your position is based on fear and lies and was so from day one, you eventually find the ground crumbles under your feet and leaves you with nothing to stand on. They could possibly grab the rope we throw, the rope being all the facts, and admit they were wrong and be pulled to safety, but no. They will spew their hateful fearmongering lies and their slander of their opponents right to their death, because authoritarian idiots are nothing if not terminally proud.
I say let 'em die. The world would be a better place without them. And it will be. I'd like to send all those pro-drug testing parents a pack of adult diapers with a note encouraging them to save them for use on that day when marijuana is fully legalized, the federal enforcement (both the DEA and the schedule) disintegrate, and the country is finally on a reason and science-based drug policy focused on the public health issue it really is, and these parents and their ilk will no longer have the opportunity to stuff their metaphoric finger up the urethras of other people in the name of some cowardly ill-formed authoritarian notion of "safety" and "security". Because when that day comes, I imagine these stupid putrid cowards will be pissing themselves with fear--even as the statistics for drug use actually plummet like they did in Portugal.
For example, this excerpt is promising:
POOR Julie Gleason, you lying little monster. Wah-freaking-wah. You know that is not true. The only people who have been forced to keep mum for forty years are the people on our side of the equation. Now that people are seeing the truth behind your precious failed Drug War and its myriad failed methods like drug testing, you pretend that your numbers are greater than they are.
Oh, you don't like speaking when people are glaring at you? Try being an opponent of drug testing like me for the last thirty years and see what it's like having people assume you are a drug addict or that you must be a dealer who supports drug use, having people treat you literally like an outcast, having to fear speaking out because you might be targeted by your employer as a drug user and lose your fucking job. Try having an entire nation think that is perfectly sane and fair that your employer targets you, that it "makes sense" that only a drug user would ever oppose drug testing. Try having an entire nation of people ready to murder you for not supporting drug testing and believing you don't deserve to work or eat if you don't support drug testing. I would take "20 people behind you glaring at you" at a PTA meeting in a heartbeat. You don't know how good you have it, and that's because your kind has controlled this discussion for forty years, suppressed information that showed you are wrong, and demonized anyone who spoke out.
Your day is going to come to an end. Enjoy your tantrum. It won't do you any good.
And may I say to Jason Baretz and his family: You guys are heroes, and keep on fighting the good fight. Don't let the liars like Schettino and Fable discourage you. They are losing and they know it. They are doubling down on the only methods they have ever had on their side: fear, lies, and demonization, and it's not working anymore like it did for them in the eighties. Like the prohibitionists who tried to forcibly prevent the legalization groups from advertising publicly about the legalization issue in Portland, Maine, they will be shot down. Our momentum is rising, and they know they cannot stand against it. Keep going and always remember you are real American heroes.
BTW, the only reason schools are trying to push drug testing across the board is to try and acclimate students to violations from future employers and, in my own opinion, to make some desperate prohibitionist last-stand. I think they are trying to force this issue because in some part of their tiny authoritarian minds they think "if we can stop marijuana users from using, they will immediately become prohibitionists and we can turn the vote that is inevitably going to destroy the failed Drug War and all our profits!" It won't work, but it's not like authoritarians are smart or anything.
Anyway, the prohibitionists who favor the a priori criminalization of all citizens because of some completely baseless and unscientific intuitive "knowledge" that drug testing will "dissuade" drug use despite all reliable studies showing that it will definitely not dissuade drug use, are sinking to some incredible lows. They are exaggerating statistics when they aren't outright lying about them, for example. But what I want to talk about is this practice of False Dichotomy and the Witch Hunt, both favorites of the pro-drug testing Drug Warriors.
You will notice the dirty underhanded ad hominems being thrown in the way of any parents who dare to oppose drug testing by calling them "parents who smoke pot with their kids" and telling people around town that opponents of drug testing "support and encourage teen drug use". Now neither one is true. The opponents of drug testing are opposing it because it is an unacceptably invasive violation of basic civil rights in the name of a failed authoritarian cause, the Drug War. They oppose it because it does not fix the problem at all and studies have shown that it actually exacerbates the problem. They oppose it because it usurps their authority over their own children and pre-criminalizes their children, putting them in an early mindset that they are all, as citizens of the United States, guilty until "proven" innocent by an inaccurate and unreliable method of criminal investigation and physical violation, and that no matter how many tests they pass they will always at any moment be required to "prove" themselves again and will never be exonerated for these crimes they did not commit and of which they were a priori convicted.
But notice what the drug testing liars are doing: they are pushing a false dichotomy, the same one on which drug testing first took off, namely, "If you are not with me, you are against me." They are pushing the idea that anyone who opposes drug testing could only be opposing it because they are, themselves, drug users and want to promote drug use. They are pushing the idea that there is absolutely no other possible reason someone could oppose drug testing, and pretending that the position of "no, I'm not in favor of drug addiction but this method is not only ineffective but counter-productive and there are better methods that are also not humiliating, insulting, and criminalizing".
Personally, I think everyone who supports drug testing with these arguments should be charged with slander, because that is what it is. But what is more is that it is a method for creating fear in the minds of people who oppose them. They are trying to make opponents of drug testing afraid to speak out for fear of being branded as users themselves, much as the witch hunters of old made people afraid to speak out against their methods for fear of finding themselves on the rack, and much as the Communist witch-hunters made people afraid to speak out against the extreme persecution of the Red Scare for fear of being called a Communist themselves and being wrung out to dry.
The False Dichotomy can exist on its own, but no Witch Hunt can really exist without this fallacy of logic and thought. The False Dichotomy is one of the most important weapons in the bags of angry authoritarian cowards everywhere, particularly the ones who are liars like these pro-drug testing parents are. You will notice that no one on the side of legalization and the side of opposing drug testing has to resort to these underhanded tactics to get their point across....because we have the facts on our side, both the scientific, the logical, and the ethical. The pro-drug testing side has nothing but lies and fear, and when push comes to shove they push the False Dichotomy even harder than before. Because in the end, it's all they know how to do. When your position is based on fear and lies and was so from day one, you eventually find the ground crumbles under your feet and leaves you with nothing to stand on. They could possibly grab the rope we throw, the rope being all the facts, and admit they were wrong and be pulled to safety, but no. They will spew their hateful fearmongering lies and their slander of their opponents right to their death, because authoritarian idiots are nothing if not terminally proud.
I say let 'em die. The world would be a better place without them. And it will be. I'd like to send all those pro-drug testing parents a pack of adult diapers with a note encouraging them to save them for use on that day when marijuana is fully legalized, the federal enforcement (both the DEA and the schedule) disintegrate, and the country is finally on a reason and science-based drug policy focused on the public health issue it really is, and these parents and their ilk will no longer have the opportunity to stuff their metaphoric finger up the urethras of other people in the name of some cowardly ill-formed authoritarian notion of "safety" and "security". Because when that day comes, I imagine these stupid putrid cowards will be pissing themselves with fear--even as the statistics for drug use actually plummet like they did in Portugal.
For example, this excerpt is promising:
The Northern Valley school board meeting on Sept. 23 drew more than 70 students and parents. Only a small number publicly supported testing, and more than a dozen spoke against it, to applause and cheers. A proponent of testing, Julie Gleason, said she thought other supporters mostly kept mum because they did not want to be condemned.
“Believe me, it’s not that easy to speak when you have 20 people behind you glaring at you,” she said.
POOR Julie Gleason, you lying little monster. Wah-freaking-wah. You know that is not true. The only people who have been forced to keep mum for forty years are the people on our side of the equation. Now that people are seeing the truth behind your precious failed Drug War and its myriad failed methods like drug testing, you pretend that your numbers are greater than they are.
Oh, you don't like speaking when people are glaring at you? Try being an opponent of drug testing like me for the last thirty years and see what it's like having people assume you are a drug addict or that you must be a dealer who supports drug use, having people treat you literally like an outcast, having to fear speaking out because you might be targeted by your employer as a drug user and lose your fucking job. Try having an entire nation think that is perfectly sane and fair that your employer targets you, that it "makes sense" that only a drug user would ever oppose drug testing. Try having an entire nation of people ready to murder you for not supporting drug testing and believing you don't deserve to work or eat if you don't support drug testing. I would take "20 people behind you glaring at you" at a PTA meeting in a heartbeat. You don't know how good you have it, and that's because your kind has controlled this discussion for forty years, suppressed information that showed you are wrong, and demonized anyone who spoke out.
Your day is going to come to an end. Enjoy your tantrum. It won't do you any good.
And may I say to Jason Baretz and his family: You guys are heroes, and keep on fighting the good fight. Don't let the liars like Schettino and Fable discourage you. They are losing and they know it. They are doubling down on the only methods they have ever had on their side: fear, lies, and demonization, and it's not working anymore like it did for them in the eighties. Like the prohibitionists who tried to forcibly prevent the legalization groups from advertising publicly about the legalization issue in Portland, Maine, they will be shot down. Our momentum is rising, and they know they cannot stand against it. Keep going and always remember you are real American heroes.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Where o where have all the drug users gone?
Remember how they forced everyone on public assistance in Florida to take a drug test as a precondition of receiving said assistance, based on the premise that everyone on public assistance must be on drugs because after all about 98% of all working people are drug testing six ways from Sunday? And then it turned out that only 2% came up positive?
Where are all the drug users then? Seriously, if drug testing is as accurate as the drug testing industry claims and most misinformed Americans assume, then we should have seen a 98% positive rate and not a 2% rate, since the workplaces are nearly totally saturated with piss testing. That is a logical prediction based on the assumption that drug testing is accurate and that it prevents drug users from finding work. If those assumptions were actually true, we should have seen a much different result from that governmental violation of the less fortunate.
Why is this so invisible to people? Why is this extremely logical conclusion completely eluding people? If drug testing is accurate and is pretty much universally practiced across the board, then it stands to reason that all the drug users must be unemployed (though how they'd be expected to afford their drugs is beyond me). If 98% of welfare recipients are not on drugs, based on the results of the drug tests and the assumption that such tests are accurate and reliable, then where are the drug users?
It is fairly clear from the evidence that either the numbers of drug users in the country are wrong or that drug testing is inaccurate and unreliable. Either we don't really have a drug problem in this country at all and the statistics are exaggerated or just outright fabricated, or drug testing is a scam.
So here is my challenge to all you benighted people who actually believe in the efficacy of drug testing: I want you to find these drug users and present them to the world. I want to know where they are all hiding since, assuming drug testing works, they can't be in the workforce and they can't be on welfare or public assistance. So where are they?
I'd like a non-convoluted answer to that, but I don't think you have one to give me. Because charlatans are based on fabrications and fast talk, with neither fact nor logic to back them up.
Your day is coming to an end within the next ten years, right about when you can no longer pad your numbers with marijuana users and your scam is exposed for what it is. I hope you bastards in the drug testing industry are saving your pennies for your inevitable unemployment--or incarceration, depending on how involved you turn out to be when they finally seize the drug testing industry's records and discover the corruption you've been engaging in for the last thirty years.
Have fun.
Where are all the drug users then? Seriously, if drug testing is as accurate as the drug testing industry claims and most misinformed Americans assume, then we should have seen a 98% positive rate and not a 2% rate, since the workplaces are nearly totally saturated with piss testing. That is a logical prediction based on the assumption that drug testing is accurate and that it prevents drug users from finding work. If those assumptions were actually true, we should have seen a much different result from that governmental violation of the less fortunate.
Why is this so invisible to people? Why is this extremely logical conclusion completely eluding people? If drug testing is accurate and is pretty much universally practiced across the board, then it stands to reason that all the drug users must be unemployed (though how they'd be expected to afford their drugs is beyond me). If 98% of welfare recipients are not on drugs, based on the results of the drug tests and the assumption that such tests are accurate and reliable, then where are the drug users?
It is fairly clear from the evidence that either the numbers of drug users in the country are wrong or that drug testing is inaccurate and unreliable. Either we don't really have a drug problem in this country at all and the statistics are exaggerated or just outright fabricated, or drug testing is a scam.
So here is my challenge to all you benighted people who actually believe in the efficacy of drug testing: I want you to find these drug users and present them to the world. I want to know where they are all hiding since, assuming drug testing works, they can't be in the workforce and they can't be on welfare or public assistance. So where are they?
I'd like a non-convoluted answer to that, but I don't think you have one to give me. Because charlatans are based on fabrications and fast talk, with neither fact nor logic to back them up.
Your day is coming to an end within the next ten years, right about when you can no longer pad your numbers with marijuana users and your scam is exposed for what it is. I hope you bastards in the drug testing industry are saving your pennies for your inevitable unemployment--or incarceration, depending on how involved you turn out to be when they finally seize the drug testing industry's records and discover the corruption you've been engaging in for the last thirty years.
Have fun.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
How long do they think they can last?
Unfortunately I was delayed in posting due to getting sick, and I might be a bit delayed this week because I'll supporting a friend who was wrongfully fired by a dishonest employer (and I'm still getting over this cold or flu or whatever it is).
That said, I do have a few words about some recent developments on the failed Drug War front...
After all the great news about the great progress made in the area of legalization by NORML, the DPA and the MPP, I was stunned to hear that the US Supreme Court is going to uphold the baseless scheduling of marijuana as having "no medical utility or adequate safety". This despite a myriad of studies showing definitively that marijuana has many valuable medical benefits and uses, as well as being infinitely safer than alcohol or tobacco. This on the heels of the news that Texas, long held up as the most backward right-wing authoritarian state in the country, has a 58% majority supporting full legalization of marijuana.
Who do these charlatans in the DEA and the Supreme Court think they're fooling with their lies? And how long do they think they can keep this charade up? I know, I know, as we all do, that the only reason they're upholding this decision and the lies on which it is based is because they are bought-and-paid-for commodities of a variety of Drug War profiteers, but they can't believe they're going to win this. Even many Southern states, normally a haven for backwards policies, are putting out majorities in favor of legalization, and the government has decreed that they will not interfere with state legalization, which is going to create one hell of a burst of legalization success across the board--after all, a lot of the arguments I've heard against legalization even from pro-legalization people is that if we legalize we're inviting some federal police state in our communities, and this eliminates that concern. This country is going to go green so fast it'll make the DEA, the Supreme Court and all the Drug War profiteers' heads spin like tops. And efforts at drug law reform to reflect the reality of drug addiction being a public health issue and not a law enforcement issue in other, wiser countries than ours is going to prove time and time again to the population that the Drug War doesn't work, not just for marijuana but for anything. And new studies about the "hard" drugs like cocaine are showing that a lot of what we believe about the harmful nature of those drugs is based on lies and propaganda or skewed data (deliberate or just based on scientific incompetence)--not that those drugs are great, but that the vast majority of people simply do not have the terrible addiction reactions that we have been trained to believe are standard.
When are you bastards going to give in? I know you're riding your dishonest money train, but how long do you think it's going to last at this point, with this sort of trend towards the people learning the truth about your lies? Just like with voodoo, fraud doesn't work when people know the facts and cease to believe in it anymore. At some point you'll have to give in and admit you were wrong (even if you won't admit you were engaging in treason, propagating lies that harmed the population while empowering the drug lords to harm us as well, while you and our enemies both profited off of our pain.)
Well, it'll happen. You will eventually reschedule marijuana out of schedule 1, and for the same reason you crooks are falling over yourselves to reform drug law, eliminate mandatory minimums, etc, and touting decriminalization as the "ideal" solution when only years ago you wouldn't even consider any of these things and considered them non-negotiable. You will be trying in vain to compromise with us in order to maintain the schedule itself, just like you are trying in vain to compromise with us by granting us the half-measures we had been requesting years ago, hoping that we'll settle for decriminalization and just shut up and let you continue your little moneymaking scam.
In a few years you will be racing to reschedule marijuana and will be calling it the "ideal" solution in a vain attempt to protect your job security. And we will laugh in your face, because when that happens it will only be because you are on the verge of losing your entire scheduling system. And you know it.
Enjoy your temporary victory for now, Drug War scum. You won't have it for long.
That said, I do have a few words about some recent developments on the failed Drug War front...
After all the great news about the great progress made in the area of legalization by NORML, the DPA and the MPP, I was stunned to hear that the US Supreme Court is going to uphold the baseless scheduling of marijuana as having "no medical utility or adequate safety". This despite a myriad of studies showing definitively that marijuana has many valuable medical benefits and uses, as well as being infinitely safer than alcohol or tobacco. This on the heels of the news that Texas, long held up as the most backward right-wing authoritarian state in the country, has a 58% majority supporting full legalization of marijuana.
Who do these charlatans in the DEA and the Supreme Court think they're fooling with their lies? And how long do they think they can keep this charade up? I know, I know, as we all do, that the only reason they're upholding this decision and the lies on which it is based is because they are bought-and-paid-for commodities of a variety of Drug War profiteers, but they can't believe they're going to win this. Even many Southern states, normally a haven for backwards policies, are putting out majorities in favor of legalization, and the government has decreed that they will not interfere with state legalization, which is going to create one hell of a burst of legalization success across the board--after all, a lot of the arguments I've heard against legalization even from pro-legalization people is that if we legalize we're inviting some federal police state in our communities, and this eliminates that concern. This country is going to go green so fast it'll make the DEA, the Supreme Court and all the Drug War profiteers' heads spin like tops. And efforts at drug law reform to reflect the reality of drug addiction being a public health issue and not a law enforcement issue in other, wiser countries than ours is going to prove time and time again to the population that the Drug War doesn't work, not just for marijuana but for anything. And new studies about the "hard" drugs like cocaine are showing that a lot of what we believe about the harmful nature of those drugs is based on lies and propaganda or skewed data (deliberate or just based on scientific incompetence)--not that those drugs are great, but that the vast majority of people simply do not have the terrible addiction reactions that we have been trained to believe are standard.
When are you bastards going to give in? I know you're riding your dishonest money train, but how long do you think it's going to last at this point, with this sort of trend towards the people learning the truth about your lies? Just like with voodoo, fraud doesn't work when people know the facts and cease to believe in it anymore. At some point you'll have to give in and admit you were wrong (even if you won't admit you were engaging in treason, propagating lies that harmed the population while empowering the drug lords to harm us as well, while you and our enemies both profited off of our pain.)
Well, it'll happen. You will eventually reschedule marijuana out of schedule 1, and for the same reason you crooks are falling over yourselves to reform drug law, eliminate mandatory minimums, etc, and touting decriminalization as the "ideal" solution when only years ago you wouldn't even consider any of these things and considered them non-negotiable. You will be trying in vain to compromise with us in order to maintain the schedule itself, just like you are trying in vain to compromise with us by granting us the half-measures we had been requesting years ago, hoping that we'll settle for decriminalization and just shut up and let you continue your little moneymaking scam.
In a few years you will be racing to reschedule marijuana and will be calling it the "ideal" solution in a vain attempt to protect your job security. And we will laugh in your face, because when that happens it will only be because you are on the verge of losing your entire scheduling system. And you know it.
Enjoy your temporary victory for now, Drug War scum. You won't have it for long.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Uncanny resemblance....
Short post here, but have you watched the Ken Burns documentary about Prohibition? I have. Twice. And I was struck both times at how similar everything about Prohibition was to our current battle against Prohibition II.
Chapter 1: Prohibitionists get their way, through pushing lies about alcohol and riding on the waves of moral panic and public ignorance. They also push programs to indoctrinate schoolchildren with their lies demonizing alcohol as some kind of devil juice that will damn you with a single sip.
Chapter 2: Prohibition is in full swing, and is being enforced with draconian laws that often bulldoze right over the Constitutional rights of the citizens. As it fails, the efforts at enforcement become increasingly draconian. Organized crime gets involved in making and selling liquor. No matter how many jackboots the government sics on the public, liquor fails to disappear, and innocent lives are destroyed for nothing.
Chapter 3: Prohibition is an incredible failure and the people have finally realized it. Even many of the very Prohibitionists who lied through their teeth to get Prohibition passed have now been forced to admit it is a failure and has actually exacerbated the problem they wanted to eliminate, and these former Prohibitionists get behind the effort to repeal their once-cherished authoritarian law.
It is exciting to realize that we are actually in Chapter 3. For example, former Prohibitionists are now supporting legalization efforts, like Dr. Sanjay Gupta changing his tune and recanting all his mistakes in supporting marijuana prohibition. Not to mention the various Prohibitionist political entities I mentioned in my last post who have been backpedaling so fast about drug law reform they're tripping over their own feet--and yes, this is mostly in an effort to placate us by throwing us a meager fragment of bone from the steak they once swore we'd never get a piece of, but they were forced to do so against their will due to overwhelming and ever-increasing support for legalization.
Now if Prohibition II could be repealed as fast as Prohibition I, that would really make me smile, but unfortunately Prohibition II has seventy years of profiteering behind it to make our country stumble as much as possible on the path toward doing what's right. Why is it so easy for this country to make mistakes and so hard for it to fix those mistakes?
Chapter 1: Prohibitionists get their way, through pushing lies about alcohol and riding on the waves of moral panic and public ignorance. They also push programs to indoctrinate schoolchildren with their lies demonizing alcohol as some kind of devil juice that will damn you with a single sip.
Chapter 2: Prohibition is in full swing, and is being enforced with draconian laws that often bulldoze right over the Constitutional rights of the citizens. As it fails, the efforts at enforcement become increasingly draconian. Organized crime gets involved in making and selling liquor. No matter how many jackboots the government sics on the public, liquor fails to disappear, and innocent lives are destroyed for nothing.
Chapter 3: Prohibition is an incredible failure and the people have finally realized it. Even many of the very Prohibitionists who lied through their teeth to get Prohibition passed have now been forced to admit it is a failure and has actually exacerbated the problem they wanted to eliminate, and these former Prohibitionists get behind the effort to repeal their once-cherished authoritarian law.
It is exciting to realize that we are actually in Chapter 3. For example, former Prohibitionists are now supporting legalization efforts, like Dr. Sanjay Gupta changing his tune and recanting all his mistakes in supporting marijuana prohibition. Not to mention the various Prohibitionist political entities I mentioned in my last post who have been backpedaling so fast about drug law reform they're tripping over their own feet--and yes, this is mostly in an effort to placate us by throwing us a meager fragment of bone from the steak they once swore we'd never get a piece of, but they were forced to do so against their will due to overwhelming and ever-increasing support for legalization.
Now if Prohibition II could be repealed as fast as Prohibition I, that would really make me smile, but unfortunately Prohibition II has seventy years of profiteering behind it to make our country stumble as much as possible on the path toward doing what's right. Why is it so easy for this country to make mistakes and so hard for it to fix those mistakes?
Friday, September 27, 2013
Do they really think we can be so easily placated?
Is it my imagination or have the various political people and
forces that have, previously, championed the failed (and unjust) Drug
War been backpedaling rather speedily since the recent government
decision not to interfere with state legalization laws? Some days it
seems, from reading the NORML, DPA and MPP blogs, that the only thing
that seems to be happening faster than legalization measures going on
ballots (both medical and full) is various measures to loosen MMJ
restrictions, decriminalize, and/or soften draconian and racist
drug-enforcement and sentencing policies and laws—many coming from
supposedly hardline prohibitionists like Chris Christie of New York,
who once took the POV of “no way, no how, not gonna happen you
filthy stoners” to actually signing legislation to lift the
three-strain restriction on growers and even make vital medication
available to small children who need it.
Now many people on our side are still pouting about this because they realize (and correctly) that many of these don't go nearly far enough to give we, the people, what we actually want. They feel these efforts are nothing more than an attempt to create the illusion that our leaders give even half a damn about doing what the people want or doing what is right regarding the drug issue. And they are absolutely right.
But what they don't realize is that this is a good thing.
Think about it: no more than a year or two ago, prior to the historic votes in Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, these very people laughed in the face of reforming drug laws or decriminalizing marijuana and called it a “pipe dream” (suggesting that the only reason anyone could oppose the status quo of the failed Drug War was not because of it's massive failure on both factual and moral levels but because those people were clearly “stoners” trying to “protect their illegal habit” and, by extension, trying to reinforce the myth that the Drug War was totally working and that there was no logical reason to oppose the methods of the Drug Warriors, entirely by ad hominem assault—or is it a red herring—but either way it was a logical fallacy).
Now, since the successful legalization votes in two states simultaneously, there has been serious talk about drug law reform and decriminalization being an “ideal” solution to our problems with the failed Drug War. By the Drug Warriors! Some of it has even been acted on! And especially since the historic government decision to not interfere with state legalizaiton efforts, it seems that every day I'm hearing about another area where some staunch anti-marijuana nut is green-lighting various half-measures that they thought went “too far” only years ago—like decriminalization, removing mandatory minimum sentencing, removing the huge and racist crack/cocaine disparity, and loosening many excessively tight regulations on medical marijuana access.
Why? They don't seem to be wanting to admit that marijuana is not a dangerous narcotic. They still want to maintain the fraudulent DEA drug scheduling. They still maintain all the former lies about marijuana, as well as all other illicit drugs, even as they begin to allow some grudging access to them in areas that they once considered out of the question. And it's true that even as they make these grudging half-measure concessions they are upping many of their tyrannical and unconstitutional Drug War enforcement methods—such as pushing drug testing incentives in every state that hasn't legalized in any way, and continuing their unjust raids of medical marijuana dispensaries. Why do they even bother?
Well, isn't it obvious? They know they are losing. They know that at some point in the future they will have to bite the bullet, throw in the towel, and drop their precious—and profitable—Drug War. They know they have lost the support of the public, they know the facts have finally come out about their failures and their corruptions, and that they will never again regain the glory days of Reefer Madness propaganda-fueled public ignorance and moral panic. They know there is no way back.
Yes, they are dragging their feet. But the thing is...they're still moving. The momentum of the full-legalization movement has gotten so strong and gotten so much of the population on board that they have been forced to agree to the minute half-measures we were pushing for decades ago, half-measures they had once claimed they would never, under any circumstances, consider. They are trying to negotiate with we, the people, in the hopes of preserving their unearned and undeserved profit and power by giving us some of the smaller demands we've been making since the beginning.
I do think they hope to slow us down this way. Perhaps they believe that the majority of the legalization movement will drop off once they reform a few draconian laws a bit. Perhaps they think that we will accept decriminalization as a reasonable and acceptable compromise. Perhaps they believe that most pro-legalization citizens don't really want legalization and can be bought-off by these grudging little concessions. But they cannot slow us down. They cannot cut us down. And there will be no compromise.
Perhaps they misunderstand the numbers. The numbers are not just one homogenous mass of people who generally don't support the draconian Drug War and its focus on marijuana, ranging from namby pamby “let's just reform a couple laws” and “let's just decriminalize” to the “let sick people get the medicine they need” to the full on “evil stoners” who support full-legalization. These statistics differentiate between these views. The majority isn't just for decriminalization, or for medical marijuana, with a thin stoner fringe that can be easily squashed. There is now a solid majority in most states for FULL legalization.
Or do they understand these numbers and still believe they can fight them? Their other actions suggest this, such as the ramping up of drug testing in states that are still foundering in the dark (despite a majority support for MJ legalization) like Ohio. Do they think that by stopping marijuana users from using they can somehow change those MJ users' minds about legalization and turn the clock back to Reefer Madness levels of ignorance and panic? (I wouldn't expect them to actually consider the fact that 60% to 70% of the American public—the number that support legalization—are not, in fact, stoners, because when your entire career has been built on fraud, ignorance and panic, facts are your sworn enemy.) Do they think that by making medical marijuana available to sick people they can eliminate our momentum by eliminating the most obvious of our moral arguments? After all, prior to the increasing public awareness of the myriad of medical benefits of marijuana it was the prohibitionists who had the heavy-duty emotional smokescreen argument (look at this drug user/former drug user/drug user's family/ etc, how could you not support our Drug War, by not supporting us you are turning your back on these addicts and their families and consigning millions of other people to a lifetime of addiction!), and now we have a much better one, not only emotionally gripping but supported by actual facts, unlike their claims that the Drug War is of any use in fighting addiction or helps addicts in any way rather than simply incarcerating them in private for-profit jails. Do they think that by making a few minute concessions they can distract or placate us enough to slow us down, or peel away enough of our support to perhaps pounce once we lose momentum?
I do think that part of it is that they hope to distract us. They will not distract us.
I do think that part of this is they hope to placate us. They will not placate us.
I do think that part of this is so they can slow us down. They will not slow us down.
We will not lose momentum, and the Drug Warriors big chance to pounce will never come. And I think that part of them knows this, even as they waste their time with these tiny little retreats. Those tiny little retreats will become bigger retreats, and exponentially so now, until there is no more ground they can give up and they are forced to admit their loss whether they like it or not.
So don't pout when they concede, my brothers and sisters in arms! Celebrate! Keep up the fight and don't let your guard down, but definitely celebrate because every concession is another inch of ground those Drug War bastards have been forced to give up. We are winning, and our victory is not only inevitable, is coming soon. And they can feel defeat closing on them. Their concessions are minimal and pathetic and nowhere near enough, but for the first time in forty years they are finally admitting on some level that they are being defeated, and this is evidenced by the fact that they have given any ground at all to us, that they actually are feeling forced to concede ground that was once, not too long ago, non-negotiable. We will increase our efforts and they will give more ground. They will continue to retreat until there is nowhere left to run and their precious Drug War and all its profiteering industries are dead and gone, a footnote in the history books about one of America's greatest domestic blunders.
I'm going to piss on their graves when that day comes. I hope you'll all join me.
Now many people on our side are still pouting about this because they realize (and correctly) that many of these don't go nearly far enough to give we, the people, what we actually want. They feel these efforts are nothing more than an attempt to create the illusion that our leaders give even half a damn about doing what the people want or doing what is right regarding the drug issue. And they are absolutely right.
But what they don't realize is that this is a good thing.
Think about it: no more than a year or two ago, prior to the historic votes in Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, these very people laughed in the face of reforming drug laws or decriminalizing marijuana and called it a “pipe dream” (suggesting that the only reason anyone could oppose the status quo of the failed Drug War was not because of it's massive failure on both factual and moral levels but because those people were clearly “stoners” trying to “protect their illegal habit” and, by extension, trying to reinforce the myth that the Drug War was totally working and that there was no logical reason to oppose the methods of the Drug Warriors, entirely by ad hominem assault—or is it a red herring—but either way it was a logical fallacy).
Now, since the successful legalization votes in two states simultaneously, there has been serious talk about drug law reform and decriminalization being an “ideal” solution to our problems with the failed Drug War. By the Drug Warriors! Some of it has even been acted on! And especially since the historic government decision to not interfere with state legalizaiton efforts, it seems that every day I'm hearing about another area where some staunch anti-marijuana nut is green-lighting various half-measures that they thought went “too far” only years ago—like decriminalization, removing mandatory minimum sentencing, removing the huge and racist crack/cocaine disparity, and loosening many excessively tight regulations on medical marijuana access.
Why? They don't seem to be wanting to admit that marijuana is not a dangerous narcotic. They still want to maintain the fraudulent DEA drug scheduling. They still maintain all the former lies about marijuana, as well as all other illicit drugs, even as they begin to allow some grudging access to them in areas that they once considered out of the question. And it's true that even as they make these grudging half-measure concessions they are upping many of their tyrannical and unconstitutional Drug War enforcement methods—such as pushing drug testing incentives in every state that hasn't legalized in any way, and continuing their unjust raids of medical marijuana dispensaries. Why do they even bother?
Well, isn't it obvious? They know they are losing. They know that at some point in the future they will have to bite the bullet, throw in the towel, and drop their precious—and profitable—Drug War. They know they have lost the support of the public, they know the facts have finally come out about their failures and their corruptions, and that they will never again regain the glory days of Reefer Madness propaganda-fueled public ignorance and moral panic. They know there is no way back.
Yes, they are dragging their feet. But the thing is...they're still moving. The momentum of the full-legalization movement has gotten so strong and gotten so much of the population on board that they have been forced to agree to the minute half-measures we were pushing for decades ago, half-measures they had once claimed they would never, under any circumstances, consider. They are trying to negotiate with we, the people, in the hopes of preserving their unearned and undeserved profit and power by giving us some of the smaller demands we've been making since the beginning.
I do think they hope to slow us down this way. Perhaps they believe that the majority of the legalization movement will drop off once they reform a few draconian laws a bit. Perhaps they think that we will accept decriminalization as a reasonable and acceptable compromise. Perhaps they believe that most pro-legalization citizens don't really want legalization and can be bought-off by these grudging little concessions. But they cannot slow us down. They cannot cut us down. And there will be no compromise.
Perhaps they misunderstand the numbers. The numbers are not just one homogenous mass of people who generally don't support the draconian Drug War and its focus on marijuana, ranging from namby pamby “let's just reform a couple laws” and “let's just decriminalize” to the “let sick people get the medicine they need” to the full on “evil stoners” who support full-legalization. These statistics differentiate between these views. The majority isn't just for decriminalization, or for medical marijuana, with a thin stoner fringe that can be easily squashed. There is now a solid majority in most states for FULL legalization.
Or do they understand these numbers and still believe they can fight them? Their other actions suggest this, such as the ramping up of drug testing in states that are still foundering in the dark (despite a majority support for MJ legalization) like Ohio. Do they think that by stopping marijuana users from using they can somehow change those MJ users' minds about legalization and turn the clock back to Reefer Madness levels of ignorance and panic? (I wouldn't expect them to actually consider the fact that 60% to 70% of the American public—the number that support legalization—are not, in fact, stoners, because when your entire career has been built on fraud, ignorance and panic, facts are your sworn enemy.) Do they think that by making medical marijuana available to sick people they can eliminate our momentum by eliminating the most obvious of our moral arguments? After all, prior to the increasing public awareness of the myriad of medical benefits of marijuana it was the prohibitionists who had the heavy-duty emotional smokescreen argument (look at this drug user/former drug user/drug user's family/ etc, how could you not support our Drug War, by not supporting us you are turning your back on these addicts and their families and consigning millions of other people to a lifetime of addiction!), and now we have a much better one, not only emotionally gripping but supported by actual facts, unlike their claims that the Drug War is of any use in fighting addiction or helps addicts in any way rather than simply incarcerating them in private for-profit jails. Do they think that by making a few minute concessions they can distract or placate us enough to slow us down, or peel away enough of our support to perhaps pounce once we lose momentum?
I do think that part of it is that they hope to distract us. They will not distract us.
I do think that part of this is they hope to placate us. They will not placate us.
I do think that part of this is so they can slow us down. They will not slow us down.
We will not lose momentum, and the Drug Warriors big chance to pounce will never come. And I think that part of them knows this, even as they waste their time with these tiny little retreats. Those tiny little retreats will become bigger retreats, and exponentially so now, until there is no more ground they can give up and they are forced to admit their loss whether they like it or not.
So don't pout when they concede, my brothers and sisters in arms! Celebrate! Keep up the fight and don't let your guard down, but definitely celebrate because every concession is another inch of ground those Drug War bastards have been forced to give up. We are winning, and our victory is not only inevitable, is coming soon. And they can feel defeat closing on them. Their concessions are minimal and pathetic and nowhere near enough, but for the first time in forty years they are finally admitting on some level that they are being defeated, and this is evidenced by the fact that they have given any ground at all to us, that they actually are feeling forced to concede ground that was once, not too long ago, non-negotiable. We will increase our efforts and they will give more ground. They will continue to retreat until there is nowhere left to run and their precious Drug War and all its profiteering industries are dead and gone, a footnote in the history books about one of America's greatest domestic blunders.
I'm going to piss on their graves when that day comes. I hope you'll all join me.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Drug War/Drug Testing in Pop Culture Part 2: Sly Cooper: Band of Thieves
Remember the PS2 game "Sly Cooper"?
I not only remember it, I still play it. In particular, the best game IMO, which was the second one "Sly Cooper: Band of Thieves". It was amazing fun, with an interesting storyline, fun story-based challenges, and best of all, the optional challenge of finding 30 "clue" bottles in every overall open-ended chapter environment. Plus you could just wander around and pick the pockets of the various guards if you wanted and build up some loot to use later--or just because you want to go around playing a game where you run around on your own terms and pick pockets as you please with no particular goal, whatever you like.
But there was one thing about it that both irks me and makes me laugh, and that is the Drug War element of the plot. It's clear that the game-producers really wanted to have some kind of gritty drug-trade-based storyline but couldn't do it directly because, despite the fact that it's a game about a master thief and his thieving buddies who come in constant contact with criminal villainous types, it's-also a cartoony and light-hearted game directed at children. Enter "spice".
You see, one constantly recurring theme in the plot was this plant-based substance known as "spice", that is clearly a euphemism for drugs. Presumably some kind of really hard drug, since at some point they directly refer to this plant as causing "insane violent rages" in those who use it, and the only people who still believe that about marijuana are the chowder-heads who still think "Reefer Madness" was fair and accurate. I swear, every time any character uttered this coy euphemism--with the comical levels of melodramatic doom usually reserved for vaudeville--my late brother and I would fall about laughing our guts out. (Yes, I know that there is supposed to be some kind of drug called "spice" now, but I think this pre-dated it, or at least pre-dated widespread awareness of it, otherwise why would they use the word as a euphemism to make it acceptable for children?)
And seriously, who ever took a drug where the only result was "insane violent rage"? Even alcohol which is legal and, depending on the circumstances and user, can make a person violent, is not imbibed strictly for its violence-inducing properties. Any "insane violent rages" induced by any drug are a side-effect, and I've never heard of a drug where it was an inevitability or else you wouldn't have to pretend to need to drug test to find people who were using--they'd all already be in jail for assault! I rather suspect that the same thing is at work here that is at work at all "anti-drug" messages aimed at children--to take one negative result of a particular kind of drug use, extrapolate from that to all users, and present this to the children as the single and solitary result of taking any drug--and, by extension, the single and solitary reason anyone takes drugs. Because if you told them the real reason people end up trying drugs INCLUDING alcohol (which is the "high"), you might intrigue them enough to want to try it.
And since you're presenting all illicit drugs in this category and in this light, at some point the kids will try marijuana, they will know the older generation has lied through their teeth about it, and assume at that point that maybe cocaine or heroine or some harder drug is equally harmless.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy this game and play it every year or so. (Ironically enough, its particularly fun when you're buzzed on some rum or vodka--you can just pick pockets for hours and if you get caught, you don't care, you're running and laughing, and I can only imagine how it might be to play it after a puff of MJ!) But every time I play it I can't help but look forward to the day when Drug War references like this will be looked at as a quaint and curious relic of one of the mistakes of the older generations, the way old Prohibition I propaganda is regarded today.
That will be sweet. Let's make it happen, people!
I not only remember it, I still play it. In particular, the best game IMO, which was the second one "Sly Cooper: Band of Thieves". It was amazing fun, with an interesting storyline, fun story-based challenges, and best of all, the optional challenge of finding 30 "clue" bottles in every overall open-ended chapter environment. Plus you could just wander around and pick the pockets of the various guards if you wanted and build up some loot to use later--or just because you want to go around playing a game where you run around on your own terms and pick pockets as you please with no particular goal, whatever you like.
But there was one thing about it that both irks me and makes me laugh, and that is the Drug War element of the plot. It's clear that the game-producers really wanted to have some kind of gritty drug-trade-based storyline but couldn't do it directly because, despite the fact that it's a game about a master thief and his thieving buddies who come in constant contact with criminal villainous types, it's-also a cartoony and light-hearted game directed at children. Enter "spice".
You see, one constantly recurring theme in the plot was this plant-based substance known as "spice", that is clearly a euphemism for drugs. Presumably some kind of really hard drug, since at some point they directly refer to this plant as causing "insane violent rages" in those who use it, and the only people who still believe that about marijuana are the chowder-heads who still think "Reefer Madness" was fair and accurate. I swear, every time any character uttered this coy euphemism--with the comical levels of melodramatic doom usually reserved for vaudeville--my late brother and I would fall about laughing our guts out. (Yes, I know that there is supposed to be some kind of drug called "spice" now, but I think this pre-dated it, or at least pre-dated widespread awareness of it, otherwise why would they use the word as a euphemism to make it acceptable for children?)
And seriously, who ever took a drug where the only result was "insane violent rage"? Even alcohol which is legal and, depending on the circumstances and user, can make a person violent, is not imbibed strictly for its violence-inducing properties. Any "insane violent rages" induced by any drug are a side-effect, and I've never heard of a drug where it was an inevitability or else you wouldn't have to pretend to need to drug test to find people who were using--they'd all already be in jail for assault! I rather suspect that the same thing is at work here that is at work at all "anti-drug" messages aimed at children--to take one negative result of a particular kind of drug use, extrapolate from that to all users, and present this to the children as the single and solitary result of taking any drug--and, by extension, the single and solitary reason anyone takes drugs. Because if you told them the real reason people end up trying drugs INCLUDING alcohol (which is the "high"), you might intrigue them enough to want to try it.
And since you're presenting all illicit drugs in this category and in this light, at some point the kids will try marijuana, they will know the older generation has lied through their teeth about it, and assume at that point that maybe cocaine or heroine or some harder drug is equally harmless.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy this game and play it every year or so. (Ironically enough, its particularly fun when you're buzzed on some rum or vodka--you can just pick pockets for hours and if you get caught, you don't care, you're running and laughing, and I can only imagine how it might be to play it after a puff of MJ!) But every time I play it I can't help but look forward to the day when Drug War references like this will be looked at as a quaint and curious relic of one of the mistakes of the older generations, the way old Prohibition I propaganda is regarded today.
That will be sweet. Let's make it happen, people!
Friday, September 20, 2013
Opposing the Drug War and having fun!
Here's something funny: a Nostalgia Critic review of old Drug War PSA's! It's amazing how FAIL all of them are, especially the one that with the mixed message, where it sounds like a pro-drug use PSA instead. "Drugs drugs drugs--hooray!" I rather think that people who support the Drug War deliberately avoid knowing any and all actual information about drugs and instead just take the often-fraudulent snippets from various "drugs 'r' bad, m'kay" speeches they've heard from supposed "authorities" (mostly people who stand to directly profit from the Drug War) and feel that is more than enough knowledge of the subject to be able to adequately discuss it with...well anyone, but especially children. It's like they have no idea the actual cause and/or scope of the drug problem, and figure throwing a lot of pop culture at the problem will do what years upon years of increasingly militaristic enforcement have failed at and, as with the anti-drug programs at schools, they end up producing something that will do the exact opposite of what they intended. It's almost as if you need to know what you're talking about to successfully discuss an issue! Amazing! Who would have thunk it?
Why is it when people are selling a lie like the Drug War, they fail so spectacularly? From the active liars and profiteers at the top of the Drug War to the well-meaning but misinformed peons on our level, there is always so much unintentional hilarity produced by these people. At least, I look forward to the day when it genuinely will be an unintentionally hilarious relic of our benighted past instead of a reminder of a war on the American public that has destroyed countless lives and may continue for another ten years before the stake can finally be driven into its heart.
But there I go again, getting dark. Time to smile!
(Linked above for anyone who can't see embedded video.)
Why is it when people are selling a lie like the Drug War, they fail so spectacularly? From the active liars and profiteers at the top of the Drug War to the well-meaning but misinformed peons on our level, there is always so much unintentional hilarity produced by these people. At least, I look forward to the day when it genuinely will be an unintentionally hilarious relic of our benighted past instead of a reminder of a war on the American public that has destroyed countless lives and may continue for another ten years before the stake can finally be driven into its heart.
But there I go again, getting dark. Time to smile!
(Linked above for anyone who can't see embedded video.)
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Marijuana use leads to biblical flooding disasters!
Did you hear about the crazy flooding that's gone on in Colorado, within days of the feds saying they won't challenge the legalization efforts in the states?
I'm seriously surprised the Drug War proponents haven't seized on this yet, as a "direct" result of marijuana use/legalization. They've been doing so much outright lying about the inevitable legalization of marijuana that this wouldn't be totally out of character for them.
After all, they seriously expect us to believe that we'll return to their scam Drug War and all it's various ineffective and militaristic universal-criminalization methods once we see the "terrible toll" legal MJ will supposedly cause. Including a claim that we'll see more traffic accidents, despite the fact that studies have shown that states with legal medical MJ have no more or less traffic accidents but far less FATAL traffic accidents than in places where it's entirely illegal. And they seriously expect us to believe their fearmongering lies, as if we are of the same mind as the people of the "Reefer Madness" generation who actually believe to this day the lies in that "documentary".
Why not go all the way with this, Drug War Profiteers? You're already lying without a hint of shame to a country that knows you're lying. You're already generating all manner of outright untruths in a futile attempt to regain what you had in the glory days of old, before the public knew you were liars and crooks and charlatans. Why not try and blame this on the marijuana legalization efforts and try to use that loophole the feds left to jump in and neutralize the will of the people in Colorado--and then Washington and then any other states that have the audacity to come between you and your ill-gotten profit? Hell, try the religious angle ("God is angry that you made marijuana legal--He created that plant specifically so the Godly could use it to criminalize those who defy them...or have the wrong color skin, of course.")
I really am surprised I haven't heard any attempts to tie this into the legalization effort. I wouldn't put it past the Drug Warriors, given their many dishonest little tantrums they've been having since the 2012 election.
I'm seriously surprised the Drug War proponents haven't seized on this yet, as a "direct" result of marijuana use/legalization. They've been doing so much outright lying about the inevitable legalization of marijuana that this wouldn't be totally out of character for them.
After all, they seriously expect us to believe that we'll return to their scam Drug War and all it's various ineffective and militaristic universal-criminalization methods once we see the "terrible toll" legal MJ will supposedly cause. Including a claim that we'll see more traffic accidents, despite the fact that studies have shown that states with legal medical MJ have no more or less traffic accidents but far less FATAL traffic accidents than in places where it's entirely illegal. And they seriously expect us to believe their fearmongering lies, as if we are of the same mind as the people of the "Reefer Madness" generation who actually believe to this day the lies in that "documentary".
Why not go all the way with this, Drug War Profiteers? You're already lying without a hint of shame to a country that knows you're lying. You're already generating all manner of outright untruths in a futile attempt to regain what you had in the glory days of old, before the public knew you were liars and crooks and charlatans. Why not try and blame this on the marijuana legalization efforts and try to use that loophole the feds left to jump in and neutralize the will of the people in Colorado--and then Washington and then any other states that have the audacity to come between you and your ill-gotten profit? Hell, try the religious angle ("God is angry that you made marijuana legal--He created that plant specifically so the Godly could use it to criminalize those who defy them...or have the wrong color skin, of course.")
I really am surprised I haven't heard any attempts to tie this into the legalization effort. I wouldn't put it past the Drug Warriors, given their many dishonest little tantrums they've been having since the 2012 election.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Why has no one made this connection yet? (The REAL "gateway" involved in marijuana)
I just had a thought.
It's already been established time and time again that companies that drug test their employees have lower rates of productivity (unless you want to go by the biased Marlboro-style industry-funded research that always states that always conclude that drug testing is the best thing ever to happen to American business). The mechanism for this is usually worker morale, that employees who feel respected, valued and trusted by their employers do superior work to employees in companies where they are treated with contempt by the management (to the point of having no physical privacy rights, being openly called criminals and being forced to subject themselves to constant humiliating and invasive physical searches to "prove" their innocence only to have to prove it again the next day if the employer demands it.) I am not denying this either; the fact that employer respect correlates to worker morale correlates to higher productivity is also well-established, as is the fact that people perform poorly when subjected to constant surveillance.
But here's what I was thinking today.
It's been established (again, by all the non-biased research) that people who smoke marijuana tend to be more productive than people who do not. And now it's been established (again, by all non-biased research) that companies that drug test have fewer marijuana users but a hell of a lot more cocaine users. As my late brother once told me, he thought I was mad and that drug testing was an important part of ensuring workplace safety and productivity, right up until he started working at a warehouse with a robust "your piss and your body is company property subject to constant surveillance" policy and found himself for the first time constantly surrounded by glassy-eyed co-workers who were clearly in the grip of some hard drug like cocaine while working on the heavy machinery. Drug testing programs target marijuana primarily, as that is the only drug they have more than the most forlorn hope of ever catching, since the hard drugs clean out of the system within a day or two, metabolites and all, and so marijuana accounts for about 98% of all positive tests--which means if your company tests for four drugs and marijuana, a common policy layout, they will have to catch 200 drug users to net one positive for every non-marijuana drug, and the other 196 users will be marijuana users. Which means that catching hard drug users with suspicionless drug tests is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Which means both that marijuana users are increasingly being pushed into using harder drugs that are more difficult to catch AND that cocaine/heroine/hard drug users, including those who will come to work under the influence, have a better chance of getting hired to begin with and staying employed than people who smoke harmless marijuana responsibly off the clock no differently than someone having a cold beer at home.
So why has no one put these ideas together logically? Why has no one added this evidence of drug testing driving up hard drug usage rates as a possible reason that companies that do not drug test have higher productivity rates? Not to crowd out the psychological evidence that workers who feel respected, valued and trusted do better work and that that will have a significant effect on the productivity of a company, but it's becoming clear that drug testing programs are making hard drug users more employable than marijuana users and, in this way, prodding a lot of incredibly productive marijuana users into using harder drugs that are actually harmful and addictive.
Once again, any elements of marijauna that could make it a "gateway" to other more harmful drugs are a direct result of the failed Drug War and it's methods and have nothing to do with any inherent properties of this amazing plant. This, of course, has been observed, but for some reason the role of drug testing in this has been overlooked. The Drug War and its various dishonest profiteers, especially in the drug testing industry, have been responsible for creating the problem they pretend to be solving, and then sell us more fraudulent "solutions" that, far worse than mere ineffectual snake oil or placebo, actually make the problem much bigger.
Drug testing is the REAL "gateway drug". Legalize marijuana, eliminate the various failed Drug War techniques like drug testing, and see how much better things get. It will happen, and they know it, which is why we're seeing these tantrums. I look forward to pissing on the grave of the drug testing industry, an industry that it turns out is directly responsible for millions of harmless marijuana users becoming addicted to hard drugs and, in some cases, going to an early grave. I look forward to that industry meeting its end, and it will not be missed.
It's already been established time and time again that companies that drug test their employees have lower rates of productivity (unless you want to go by the biased Marlboro-style industry-funded research that always states that always conclude that drug testing is the best thing ever to happen to American business). The mechanism for this is usually worker morale, that employees who feel respected, valued and trusted by their employers do superior work to employees in companies where they are treated with contempt by the management (to the point of having no physical privacy rights, being openly called criminals and being forced to subject themselves to constant humiliating and invasive physical searches to "prove" their innocence only to have to prove it again the next day if the employer demands it.) I am not denying this either; the fact that employer respect correlates to worker morale correlates to higher productivity is also well-established, as is the fact that people perform poorly when subjected to constant surveillance.
But here's what I was thinking today.
It's been established (again, by all the non-biased research) that people who smoke marijuana tend to be more productive than people who do not. And now it's been established (again, by all non-biased research) that companies that drug test have fewer marijuana users but a hell of a lot more cocaine users. As my late brother once told me, he thought I was mad and that drug testing was an important part of ensuring workplace safety and productivity, right up until he started working at a warehouse with a robust "your piss and your body is company property subject to constant surveillance" policy and found himself for the first time constantly surrounded by glassy-eyed co-workers who were clearly in the grip of some hard drug like cocaine while working on the heavy machinery. Drug testing programs target marijuana primarily, as that is the only drug they have more than the most forlorn hope of ever catching, since the hard drugs clean out of the system within a day or two, metabolites and all, and so marijuana accounts for about 98% of all positive tests--which means if your company tests for four drugs and marijuana, a common policy layout, they will have to catch 200 drug users to net one positive for every non-marijuana drug, and the other 196 users will be marijuana users. Which means that catching hard drug users with suspicionless drug tests is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Which means both that marijuana users are increasingly being pushed into using harder drugs that are more difficult to catch AND that cocaine/heroine/hard drug users, including those who will come to work under the influence, have a better chance of getting hired to begin with and staying employed than people who smoke harmless marijuana responsibly off the clock no differently than someone having a cold beer at home.
So why has no one put these ideas together logically? Why has no one added this evidence of drug testing driving up hard drug usage rates as a possible reason that companies that do not drug test have higher productivity rates? Not to crowd out the psychological evidence that workers who feel respected, valued and trusted do better work and that that will have a significant effect on the productivity of a company, but it's becoming clear that drug testing programs are making hard drug users more employable than marijuana users and, in this way, prodding a lot of incredibly productive marijuana users into using harder drugs that are actually harmful and addictive.
Once again, any elements of marijauna that could make it a "gateway" to other more harmful drugs are a direct result of the failed Drug War and it's methods and have nothing to do with any inherent properties of this amazing plant. This, of course, has been observed, but for some reason the role of drug testing in this has been overlooked. The Drug War and its various dishonest profiteers, especially in the drug testing industry, have been responsible for creating the problem they pretend to be solving, and then sell us more fraudulent "solutions" that, far worse than mere ineffectual snake oil or placebo, actually make the problem much bigger.
Drug testing is the REAL "gateway drug". Legalize marijuana, eliminate the various failed Drug War techniques like drug testing, and see how much better things get. It will happen, and they know it, which is why we're seeing these tantrums. I look forward to pissing on the grave of the drug testing industry, an industry that it turns out is directly responsible for millions of harmless marijuana users becoming addicted to hard drugs and, in some cases, going to an early grave. I look forward to that industry meeting its end, and it will not be missed.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Drug Testing's Liars Part 1: The Shameless Liar
Allow me to introduce you to
Susan Ramsden. She's one of Drug Testing's Liars and, believe me, she is shameless.
From “Drug Testing’s NegativeResults”
(may require free signup, but it's worth it):
“The drug-testing industry generally treats these reports with scorn. It advises doubters, in effect, to value the drug testers’ experiences on the front lines above dry, abstract studies and, above all, to consider just who is making the arguments against them. Susan Ramsden, a forensic toxicologist who is founder and president of Comprehensive Medical Center, a drug-testing service in Sacramento, California, says that whatever the national statistics happen to show, she does business in what she believes to be the illegal amphetamine production and consumption capital of the world, parts of Northern California."If I go into warehouses, small construction companies or temp agencies that use day labor, we’ll have as high as a 30 percent positive drug rate," Ramsden says. "When I get a call from a business owner, saying, ‘Oh my God, I just was told we have a problem,’ or ‘I’ve just found some drugs,’ I’ve sometimes found 100 percent of his employees positive for amphetamines."
What a liar! You seriously
expect me to not only ignore what the actual data shows in favor of
your “stories from the front line” anecdotes (after years of
spreading false data to promote your dishonest trade and encouraging
people to look at “the facts” about drug testing, now you want
people to ignore them because the actual facts are starting to
emerge), but to believe that you not only found “100 percent of
employees” testing positive at all, but that they all test positive
for the EXACT SAME DRUG? Despite the fact that the vast majority of
illicit drug users are using marijuana and the fact that the majority
of positive drug tests are for marijuana, not to mention that there
are plenty of other illicit drugs, you expect anyone to believe that
your supposed anecdotal 100% result was entirely homogenous?
And THEN you expect us to believe
you’ve had that result MULTIPLE TIMES?
Listen, Susie, I know your entire
industry has been based on lies, deliberately skewed data, moral
panic and public ignorance, but I can't help but feel that you are
now being dishonest to yourself, if you can say those things with a
straight face and expect anyone to believe you. I know your entire
industry is based on ignorance of the facts, but ignorance is not
stupidity. You, like the rest of the liars in the drug testing
industry, seem to have gotten complacent and seem to have conflated
those two ideas (stupidity and ignorance) as if they were
interchangable, but they are not. You seem to have forgotten that
public support, or at least acceptance, of your industry is based on
the public simply not knowing the facts (ignorance) and not based on
the public being mindless mouth-breathing simpletons who would stick
their head in the toilet if you told them there was magic world of
marshmallows in there (stupid). You seem to have forgotten that you
have to strike that delicate balance of vague lies based on
deliberately skewed data to maintain your scam. You've gotten so
careless, thinking yourself untouchable, that you are now bleating
obvious untruths that anyone with a modicum of logic could unravel in
an instant. (Seriously, I've run your story by various people who
all opened their eyes wide in amazement and pronounced your “I've
found 100 percent workforce on a single hard drug more than once!”
story to be clear, abject bullshit.
Everyone knows that there is
exactly ZERO chance that any workforce would turn out 100% positive
drug test results, either once or multiple times, and there is
exactly ZERO chance that even if it managed to happen even once,
against all odds, that every single individual would be getting high
on the same substance, and it's even less likely that it would be a
hard drug (as hard drug use is directly correlated with having a drug
testing program, while MJ users are more prevalent in companies that
respect their workers' physical privacy and human rights—and
companies that don't drug test also have higher productivity rates,
another thing that unbiased—ie: not bought and paid for by your
dishonest lying industry—has shown time and time again, not to
mention the fact that marijuana use dwarfs all other drug use in this
country). Not to mention the fact that a company that had a
workforce with 100% addiction rates for hard drugs would not have
lasted long enough for you to ply your dark trade on their employees'
flesh. And there is ZERO chance that, even if it happened once against all odds, it would happen more than once, much less the multiple times you so coyly suggest.
And again, I can't emphasize this
enough, observe how the drug testing industry has changed its colors
in such a way that shows they are a scam and they know it. When they
were deliberately skewing the data and cooking the statistics and
lying outright in their bought-and-paid-for Marlboro-style “studies”
and “research”, they wanted you to pay attention to the so-called
“dry abstract studies”--but now that people are becoming aware
that all the legitimate research—the actual science—is in fact
showing your industry not only doesn't work but actually causes
increased rates of hard drug use, you want to try and hand-wave that
away and pretend it doesn't matter, because you have “experiences”
that totally disprove “whatever the statistics say”. Sure, the
accepted statistics only count when they're propping up your
fraudulent industry and putting money in your pocket.
And then there is the sheer unmitigated gall that her kind has to say "consider just who is
making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" when this can happen:
The drug screens used by most companies are not reliable. These tests yield false positive results at least 10 percent, and possibly as much as 30 percent, of the time. Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.[ACLU Briefing Paper No. 5: Drug Testing in the Workplace]
You have a lot of nerve to expect us to believe your spin anymore. You people, you forensic scientist drug testing shills, know you're peddling snake oil and, like Romney in a closed-door meeting of rich American aristocrats feeling he can speak freely, you admit to each other in private what you would never admit to John or Jane American. I can't think of a better definition of charlatan than that.
It's true, though. People need to consider the source. Only rather than "consider just who is
making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" they need to instead "consider just who is
making the arguments IN FAVOR OF [the drug testing industry]". There, FIFY. Because the biggest and most damaging falsehoods are coming from evil corporate shills like you, who stand to lose billions if people knew the facts about the Drug War profiteering scam you've been running on our bodies for over thirty years. Those of us arguing against you are honest, decent, hardworking citizens who value our civil and human rights, including our right to privacy--especially our right to our intimate bodily privacy, and the only thing we stand to gain by arguing against your kind is the restoration of those rights--and what's more, we have the facts on our side. No amount of demonizing opponents of drug testing as "mindless addicts protecting their illegal habit" is going to save your industry from what is coming, when you have nothing but air-spun untruths to back up your claims. Air-spun untruths that come from a single disreputable source, at that (purchased "scientific" data).
Look, I’m not “calling” you
a con artist per se, but you are certainly using the same techniques that a
con artist uses. I am calling you a damned liar though. You, Susan
Ramsden, are a liar and a loser, like all your colleagues in the drug
testing industry, and your kind is on its way out now that people are
starting to see past your lies. Legalization will be the final nail in your industry's coffin, and you know it. I hope you enjoyed your ill-gotten
undeserved and unearned profit and power while it lasted, liar. You should be ashamed to lie the way you do, and the fact that you don't seem to be ashamed is a testimony to your low character. Yourkind
will not be missed.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Drug War/Drug Testing in Popular Culture Part 1: The Ghostbusters Game
Let me tell you something about me. I love The Ghostbusters. I love Ghostbusters big time. Ray is my favorite, and Egon is probably next--a big factor of that is probably because Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis created it, and also because Dan Akroyd is hot, shut up. And I have played the game through several times and am finally trying for the "Are You A God" achievement for the first time--while Bioshock Infinite sits half-played on my shelf. I just can't get sick of anything Ghostbusters. Believe me, I've tried.
Which is why one line in the Civil War Exhibit section of the Museum level is like nails on a chalkboard down my spine every time I hear it. If you've played it, you probably know what I'm talking about. It's that line, shouted by Winston while you and the Ghostbusters bust an ongoing ghostly Civil War battle, that goes, "It couldn't have been the American Revolutionary War, could it? Or the War of Roses. Even the War on Drugs! It had to be THIS one!"
HA HA HA HA HA HA...oh, no wait. That's not funny. At least, it isn't if you're aware of the fact that the War on Drugs is effectively the most recent continuation of the values of the South in the Civil War, and possibly the most successful attempt to return to those halcyon days of enslavement of black people for white profit. And to put those words into the mouth of Winston, a black man living in New York City, where blacks and latinos make up about 45% of the city's drug users but represent over 80% of drug incarcerations due to various racist applications of Drug War policies such as the recently neutralized (here's hoping) "Stop and Frisk" laws, where minority schoolchildren are funneled into the prison system in the "School to Prison pipeline" in an effort to ensure that as many minorities as possible will enter adulthood with criminal records that will guarantee their futures as career prisoners, where those prisoners are then put in prison, often private for-profit prisons wherein prisoner labor is used for commercial profit...well, words simply don't exist to sufficiently express my disgust.
The War on Drugs is an enabling policy of modern day slavery on modern day plantations. It is a return to the days when predominantly black labor is used to enrich predominantly white people--the fact that this time, there are a few white faces in the sea of human livestock means nothing, as the rich white Drug War supporters are more than happy to throw a few of their own on the grenade if they can get rich,but the primary target is minorities, because it's easier to get people to ignore the pain of people who look different from the majority, especially if you can use misinformation about drugs and tie it to misinformation about minorities to convince that majority that "those people" are just suffering their "just deserts" for being so evil. The Drug War is a thinly veiled modern-day extension of the institution of slavery from the Civil War, and to have a black character, suggest that this newer institution, wherein people who exist today are currently suffering, is preferable to the Civil War and nineteenth century southern slavery which, as terrible and unconscionable and utterly wrong as it was, is over--and to have him express this preference in such a way that it is suggested that the two are mutually exclusive, unconnected to one another, and that the former is not the continuation of the latter--well, that is the kind of thing a privileged and sheltered white idiot would say. Or a privileged and sheltered token black person. In either case, someone who is entirely ignorant of the facts. Or a complete traitor who doesn't care because their own private gravy train is set. It's exactly the kind of dumbshit thing I would have said many years ago before I stopped assuming I knew what was going on and actually bothered to shut up and listen and learn. I'm not proud of that, but I did learn, and a lot of other people need to do likewise in this country. Believe me, it's not as hard as they say it is to admit you were wrong, America! Especially when you can do something to fix your mistakes!
Please, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, please don't make me think that Winston is not just a Token Black Guy but a conservative Republican Token Black Guy toboot--a total sellout and a tool. And please don't make me think that, failing that, Winston is somehow ignorant of how the majority of the toll of the failed Drug War has fallen on minorities, especially black Americans, and how it is nothing more than a front for racist economic and social policies? You spent so much time developing your three white guys to the point where a single episode of The Real Ghostbusters told me more about WHO Winston was as a person than two whole Ghostbusters movies, and now you're starting to give him a bit more development--even making him an educated man rather than the "help"!--and you have to ruin it by making him say something boneheaded and ignorant--or dare I say it, reeking of white privilege--like this?
Pretty please with sugar on top?
Which is why one line in the Civil War Exhibit section of the Museum level is like nails on a chalkboard down my spine every time I hear it. If you've played it, you probably know what I'm talking about. It's that line, shouted by Winston while you and the Ghostbusters bust an ongoing ghostly Civil War battle, that goes, "It couldn't have been the American Revolutionary War, could it? Or the War of Roses. Even the War on Drugs! It had to be THIS one!"
HA HA HA HA HA HA...oh, no wait. That's not funny. At least, it isn't if you're aware of the fact that the War on Drugs is effectively the most recent continuation of the values of the South in the Civil War, and possibly the most successful attempt to return to those halcyon days of enslavement of black people for white profit. And to put those words into the mouth of Winston, a black man living in New York City, where blacks and latinos make up about 45% of the city's drug users but represent over 80% of drug incarcerations due to various racist applications of Drug War policies such as the recently neutralized (here's hoping) "Stop and Frisk" laws, where minority schoolchildren are funneled into the prison system in the "School to Prison pipeline" in an effort to ensure that as many minorities as possible will enter adulthood with criminal records that will guarantee their futures as career prisoners, where those prisoners are then put in prison, often private for-profit prisons wherein prisoner labor is used for commercial profit...well, words simply don't exist to sufficiently express my disgust.
The War on Drugs is an enabling policy of modern day slavery on modern day plantations. It is a return to the days when predominantly black labor is used to enrich predominantly white people--the fact that this time, there are a few white faces in the sea of human livestock means nothing, as the rich white Drug War supporters are more than happy to throw a few of their own on the grenade if they can get rich,but the primary target is minorities, because it's easier to get people to ignore the pain of people who look different from the majority, especially if you can use misinformation about drugs and tie it to misinformation about minorities to convince that majority that "those people" are just suffering their "just deserts" for being so evil. The Drug War is a thinly veiled modern-day extension of the institution of slavery from the Civil War, and to have a black character, suggest that this newer institution, wherein people who exist today are currently suffering, is preferable to the Civil War and nineteenth century southern slavery which, as terrible and unconscionable and utterly wrong as it was, is over--and to have him express this preference in such a way that it is suggested that the two are mutually exclusive, unconnected to one another, and that the former is not the continuation of the latter--well, that is the kind of thing a privileged and sheltered white idiot would say. Or a privileged and sheltered token black person. In either case, someone who is entirely ignorant of the facts. Or a complete traitor who doesn't care because their own private gravy train is set. It's exactly the kind of dumbshit thing I would have said many years ago before I stopped assuming I knew what was going on and actually bothered to shut up and listen and learn. I'm not proud of that, but I did learn, and a lot of other people need to do likewise in this country. Believe me, it's not as hard as they say it is to admit you were wrong, America! Especially when you can do something to fix your mistakes!
Please, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, please don't make me think that Winston is not just a Token Black Guy but a conservative Republican Token Black Guy toboot--a total sellout and a tool. And please don't make me think that, failing that, Winston is somehow ignorant of how the majority of the toll of the failed Drug War has fallen on minorities, especially black Americans, and how it is nothing more than a front for racist economic and social policies? You spent so much time developing your three white guys to the point where a single episode of The Real Ghostbusters told me more about WHO Winston was as a person than two whole Ghostbusters movies, and now you're starting to give him a bit more development--even making him an educated man rather than the "help"!--and you have to ruin it by making him say something boneheaded and ignorant--or dare I say it, reeking of white privilege--like this?
Pretty please with sugar on top?
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Isn't it cute how hypocritical the failure Drug Warriors are?
Well, it would be if they hadn't destroyed so many lives and denied so many people vital medicine.
Politifact verified The Marijuana Policy Project's ad about marijuana being less toxic than alcohol (of course, with a dishonest little qualifier that they're "mostly" right--we've come so far, and yet some idiots still can't bring themselves to admit the pro-legalization side is right even when they're admitting that very thing, so they add little qualifiers to make it sound like it's still one of those "jury's out" deals).
And the dishonest asses at the National Institute on Drug Abuse had a little tantrum. How delightful. Go ahead and read the link. See if you can spot the Drug War hypocrisy.
Yup, the same liars who told us for THIRTY YEARS OR MORE that marijuana was "one of the most dangerous drugs in the world" and insisted over and over that it was totally worse than alcohol AND cigarettes put together....are now saying that to compare alcohol and marijuana is to compare apples to oranges. And how interesting that this little revelation has come just as a majority of people have seen through their lies and discovered the overwhelming evidence that no, marijuana is not a dangerous drug and yes, it is objectively less toxic and dangerous than alcohol. How much do you want to bet that if prohibition wasn't on the brink of collapse, marijuana and alcohol would still be totally comparable?
But yes, National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana and alcohol do have different effects on people. And the effects of marijuana have been proven by all unbiased (ie: not paid for/conducted by dishonest Drug War profiteers like you) scientific evidence to be less dangerous than alcohol by a wide margin. And this was the truth even over the last thirty years or so of this atrocity called the Drug War, while liars like you were lying about marijuana being much more dangerous than alcohol.
Keep whining, by all means. Keep lying too. You and your kind are finished and you know it. Every whining little untruth that comes out of your mouths, every prohibitionist tantrum you throw, is going to make your inevitable destruction more satisfying to those of us on the right side of morality, science, and history. So keep flapping your lips. It won't do you any good at this point.
We're going to piss on your grave with great relish--as much relish as you have had making us piss in a cup all these years. It's only too bad we can't piss on your face too.
Politifact verified The Marijuana Policy Project's ad about marijuana being less toxic than alcohol (of course, with a dishonest little qualifier that they're "mostly" right--we've come so far, and yet some idiots still can't bring themselves to admit the pro-legalization side is right even when they're admitting that very thing, so they add little qualifiers to make it sound like it's still one of those "jury's out" deals).
And the dishonest asses at the National Institute on Drug Abuse had a little tantrum. How delightful. Go ahead and read the link. See if you can spot the Drug War hypocrisy.
Yup, the same liars who told us for THIRTY YEARS OR MORE that marijuana was "one of the most dangerous drugs in the world" and insisted over and over that it was totally worse than alcohol AND cigarettes put together....are now saying that to compare alcohol and marijuana is to compare apples to oranges. And how interesting that this little revelation has come just as a majority of people have seen through their lies and discovered the overwhelming evidence that no, marijuana is not a dangerous drug and yes, it is objectively less toxic and dangerous than alcohol. How much do you want to bet that if prohibition wasn't on the brink of collapse, marijuana and alcohol would still be totally comparable?
But yes, National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana and alcohol do have different effects on people. And the effects of marijuana have been proven by all unbiased (ie: not paid for/conducted by dishonest Drug War profiteers like you) scientific evidence to be less dangerous than alcohol by a wide margin. And this was the truth even over the last thirty years or so of this atrocity called the Drug War, while liars like you were lying about marijuana being much more dangerous than alcohol.
Keep whining, by all means. Keep lying too. You and your kind are finished and you know it. Every whining little untruth that comes out of your mouths, every prohibitionist tantrum you throw, is going to make your inevitable destruction more satisfying to those of us on the right side of morality, science, and history. So keep flapping your lips. It won't do you any good at this point.
We're going to piss on your grave with great relish--as much relish as you have had making us piss in a cup all these years. It's only too bad we can't piss on your face too.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Drug War hypocrites are hypocritical
Here's a quick thought about another aspect of drug testing and the failed Drug War: these wonderful laws that make it illegal to sell any product or information that might "undermine" a workplace drug testing program. And yet, for some reason, home drug tests are still okay to be sold anywhere, despite the fact that they are most commonly used by drug users to pre-test themselves and their flushing efforts in preparation for a drug test.
Why do you think that is? Well, it's definitely an outright admission of guilt. Either they are admitting that the home drug tests are even more inaccurate than the lab-based versions (which is true too) so they don't feel a user would get any help out of it or, supposing for the sake of argument that home drug tests are accurate and reliable, they are admitting that the Drug War at this point is genuinely nothing more than a way to protect certain dishonest Drug War profiteer corporations' financial interests, that this "criminalize all sale of products that could help one pass a drug test" is bullshit in that vein, and that they have no interest, either with the Drug War or with drug testing or with this "protect drug testing's claimed-but-never-proven integrity" law, in actually solving any part of the drug problem.
Because if we eighty-sixed the law-enforcement route and started treating the drug problem like the public health issue it is, and stopped treating users like monsters and treating all citizens as a priori convicted criminals with no recourse against the surveillance state, a lot of authoritarians and authoritarian-propping charlatan businesses would be out of work.
Too bad, I say. Let them fall.
Why do you think that is? Well, it's definitely an outright admission of guilt. Either they are admitting that the home drug tests are even more inaccurate than the lab-based versions (which is true too) so they don't feel a user would get any help out of it or, supposing for the sake of argument that home drug tests are accurate and reliable, they are admitting that the Drug War at this point is genuinely nothing more than a way to protect certain dishonest Drug War profiteer corporations' financial interests, that this "criminalize all sale of products that could help one pass a drug test" is bullshit in that vein, and that they have no interest, either with the Drug War or with drug testing or with this "protect drug testing's claimed-but-never-proven integrity" law, in actually solving any part of the drug problem.
Because if we eighty-sixed the law-enforcement route and started treating the drug problem like the public health issue it is, and stopped treating users like monsters and treating all citizens as a priori convicted criminals with no recourse against the surveillance state, a lot of authoritarians and authoritarian-propping charlatan businesses would be out of work.
Too bad, I say. Let them fall.
Monday, August 26, 2013
What the movie "Compliance" tells us about drug testing
Have you seen this “Compliance” movie yet? It’s based on a
true story about some creep who would call up various low-wage
workplaces, mostly fast-food, pretending to be a cop and got managers
(and in this case, the manager’s fiancé) to strip-search female
employees, starting off with a claim that a customer was accusing
said employee of theft (that she reached into the customer’s purse
on the counter and stole money out of it) then claiming that in
reality they were “under investigation” regarding “drug
crimes”, and that they were simply too busy at that particular
employee’s apartment searching for drugs to come and take her into
custody and search her themselves. It’s an interesting insight
into the mentality of the common person to bend to the commands of
authority, almost a live-in-the-wild confirmation of the findings of
the Milgram experiment.
I’ve heard people express surprise that anyone could fall for such a ruse or that this could even be real. What surprises me, though, is that this should surprise anyone at all. This is a major flaw in human psychology, as evidenced by Milgram, but it’s also an inevitable result of our failed Drug War and in particular an inevitable result of drug testing culture.
Now be honest, we begin our employment relationship with an employer insult to our integrity and an outright statement of distrust—a direct accusation, in fact an a priori conviction, of criminal activity, of committing a drug crime. Apropos of nothing, with zero cause to suspect you of such behavior, they assume before the fact that you are a drug user and they convict you without evidence or a trial. The employer then insists that you must exonerate yourself of these a priori criminal convictions before they will hire you—not that it will afford you an ounce of trust or respect, of course. And the biggest insult is that to exonerate ourselves, they demand we submit to a highly unreliable and incredibly privacy-invading search and seizure of highly intimate bodily fluids and trust them—devoid of any legal recourse on our part and devoid of any government oversight or regulation of the testing company-- effectively expecting us to afford them a gargantuan amount of trust in response to their overt declaration of distrust toward us. Even as they distrust and disrespect us and tell us so to our faces by asking for a drug test without suspicion, they expect us to trust them to not use our specimen for anything other than the stated purpose and not to, say, screen us for protected conditions like diabetes, pregnancy, or heart problems they don't want on their insurance. And remember, they expect us to trust them absolutely to behave properly even as they receive zero oversight from the law, have zero accountability for their actions regarding drug testing, and can do as they please.
What I'm saying is that drug testing culture has created an automatic master/slave relationship between employer and employee. The employer begins the relationship by demanding a drug test without cause—essentially telling the potential hire that the company is worthy of utmost trust and respect and that the employee is worthy only of distrust, disrespect, and abject contempt, and is little more than a criminal by default until they “prove” themselves innocent of any crime.
This becomes even worse when the company in question commits random drug testing on their employees, because that takes the initial pre-employment drug testing insult and extends it to the entire duration of employment. In that case, you are now perpetually a criminal in the eyes of your employer, deserving of neither trust nor respect, and you must submit your intimate sample to them and trust them with that sample infinitely more than they trust you. And moreover, you will NEVER, as long as you work there, be able to exonerate yourself on any level. No matter how many times you submissively urinate for them, you will always continue to be a convicted criminal subject to invasive search and seizure, you will always be untrustworthy and beneath your company's contempt while your company demands constant godlike trust and infinite surveillance over your body and life as the sole method to ensure that you are being “good”. You will never be exonerated, you will never be worth of trust or respect, you will always be a filthy criminal in the eyes of your employer as long as you work there. It's no wonder that random drug testing causes lower productivity rates. Even people who support drug testing or don't think about it one way or another know subconsciously that these things are true, and it's hard to want to work very hard for an employer who holds you in open contempt and believes your flesh is company property and not your own.
Which brings us to “Compliance” again. Finding a non-drug testing company in Ohio (where the film was set and the original incident occurred) has become like finding a needle in a haystack, and even if you're just saying “do you want fries with that” you're expected to piss on command for the “honor”. Even in companies that don't drug test, the pro-drug testing mentality and culture (and the witch-hunt mentality that goes hand-in-hand with it), there is always knowledge that your employer has that idea that you are probably a drug user, that your employer is being bombarded with drug testing industry propaganda without any challenging points of view to show what a load it is, that your employer is being told the lie that not drug testing means that their entire workforce is made entirely of drug users by definition, that your employer is looking at you cockeyed every day suspecting you of criminal activity because of that propaganda, that adversarial relationship with your employer and the fact that at any moment your company might give in to the evil and jump on the privacy-invading wagon.
So, given those facts, given the high likelihood that this girl was forced by that manager to piss in a cup before being hired, why is it surprising that that manager or any manager would force that employee to strip when ordered to do so by a voice on the phone claiming to have authority over them? And why is it surprising that that employee submitted to that treatment, after having already submitted to a practice that creates an undeniable subconscious understanding that even what you have between your legs is not your own but is corporate property to be searched at the corporation's whim? Few people even know their rights anymore, either regarding the government or their employer. Far from being surprising, the was actually the inevitable result of the mentality of drug testing that has gripped this benighted country throughout the drug war.
Don't believe me? Well, notice that when the manager begins to doubt and ask some questions, what does the police impersonator say? Well, he tells her the “real” reason he's having her strip-search her employee isn't just some random claim of theft from an unidentified customer, it's because she's involved in DRUGS. And at that point, you see the manager's face harden and she no longer has any questions, any doubt, or any mercy or sympathy for her now-naked subordinate. This treatment no longer seems out-of-line or unreasonable—because before she hired this girl, without a single hint that this girl could be involved in drugs, she likely forced this girl to pull down her pants and provide her with an intimate sample from the inside of her body to “prove” she wasn't, so it sounds reasonable to her unreasoning drug-testing culture brain that, having a confirmed conviction by the word of an unverified police officer on the phone, that she should be asked to strip-search this “drug user”. The moment he brought up “we're investigating her for drugs”, she was his pawn and this girl became the clear enemy, deserving of neither dignity nor respect, and as for rights...well, it was well-established in both manager's and employee's minds upon the pre-employment drug test that the employee has no rights, especially where drugs are concerned.
Now think about that. Really consider that.
ALL HE HAD TO DO TO QUELL HER DOUBTS AND SILENCE HER QUESTIONS AND OBTAIN HER TOTAL OBEDIENCE IN EFFECTIVELY RAPING THIS GIRL WAS TO INVOKE THE DRUG BOOGEY-MAN!
That should make your blood run cold. If it doesn't, you are too far gone to see how far gone this country is, and you are part of the problem.
I’ve heard people express surprise that anyone could fall for such a ruse or that this could even be real. What surprises me, though, is that this should surprise anyone at all. This is a major flaw in human psychology, as evidenced by Milgram, but it’s also an inevitable result of our failed Drug War and in particular an inevitable result of drug testing culture.
Now be honest, we begin our employment relationship with an employer insult to our integrity and an outright statement of distrust—a direct accusation, in fact an a priori conviction, of criminal activity, of committing a drug crime. Apropos of nothing, with zero cause to suspect you of such behavior, they assume before the fact that you are a drug user and they convict you without evidence or a trial. The employer then insists that you must exonerate yourself of these a priori criminal convictions before they will hire you—not that it will afford you an ounce of trust or respect, of course. And the biggest insult is that to exonerate ourselves, they demand we submit to a highly unreliable and incredibly privacy-invading search and seizure of highly intimate bodily fluids and trust them—devoid of any legal recourse on our part and devoid of any government oversight or regulation of the testing company-- effectively expecting us to afford them a gargantuan amount of trust in response to their overt declaration of distrust toward us. Even as they distrust and disrespect us and tell us so to our faces by asking for a drug test without suspicion, they expect us to trust them to not use our specimen for anything other than the stated purpose and not to, say, screen us for protected conditions like diabetes, pregnancy, or heart problems they don't want on their insurance. And remember, they expect us to trust them absolutely to behave properly even as they receive zero oversight from the law, have zero accountability for their actions regarding drug testing, and can do as they please.
What I'm saying is that drug testing culture has created an automatic master/slave relationship between employer and employee. The employer begins the relationship by demanding a drug test without cause—essentially telling the potential hire that the company is worthy of utmost trust and respect and that the employee is worthy only of distrust, disrespect, and abject contempt, and is little more than a criminal by default until they “prove” themselves innocent of any crime.
This becomes even worse when the company in question commits random drug testing on their employees, because that takes the initial pre-employment drug testing insult and extends it to the entire duration of employment. In that case, you are now perpetually a criminal in the eyes of your employer, deserving of neither trust nor respect, and you must submit your intimate sample to them and trust them with that sample infinitely more than they trust you. And moreover, you will NEVER, as long as you work there, be able to exonerate yourself on any level. No matter how many times you submissively urinate for them, you will always continue to be a convicted criminal subject to invasive search and seizure, you will always be untrustworthy and beneath your company's contempt while your company demands constant godlike trust and infinite surveillance over your body and life as the sole method to ensure that you are being “good”. You will never be exonerated, you will never be worth of trust or respect, you will always be a filthy criminal in the eyes of your employer as long as you work there. It's no wonder that random drug testing causes lower productivity rates. Even people who support drug testing or don't think about it one way or another know subconsciously that these things are true, and it's hard to want to work very hard for an employer who holds you in open contempt and believes your flesh is company property and not your own.
Which brings us to “Compliance” again. Finding a non-drug testing company in Ohio (where the film was set and the original incident occurred) has become like finding a needle in a haystack, and even if you're just saying “do you want fries with that” you're expected to piss on command for the “honor”. Even in companies that don't drug test, the pro-drug testing mentality and culture (and the witch-hunt mentality that goes hand-in-hand with it), there is always knowledge that your employer has that idea that you are probably a drug user, that your employer is being bombarded with drug testing industry propaganda without any challenging points of view to show what a load it is, that your employer is being told the lie that not drug testing means that their entire workforce is made entirely of drug users by definition, that your employer is looking at you cockeyed every day suspecting you of criminal activity because of that propaganda, that adversarial relationship with your employer and the fact that at any moment your company might give in to the evil and jump on the privacy-invading wagon.
So, given those facts, given the high likelihood that this girl was forced by that manager to piss in a cup before being hired, why is it surprising that that manager or any manager would force that employee to strip when ordered to do so by a voice on the phone claiming to have authority over them? And why is it surprising that that employee submitted to that treatment, after having already submitted to a practice that creates an undeniable subconscious understanding that even what you have between your legs is not your own but is corporate property to be searched at the corporation's whim? Few people even know their rights anymore, either regarding the government or their employer. Far from being surprising, the was actually the inevitable result of the mentality of drug testing that has gripped this benighted country throughout the drug war.
Don't believe me? Well, notice that when the manager begins to doubt and ask some questions, what does the police impersonator say? Well, he tells her the “real” reason he's having her strip-search her employee isn't just some random claim of theft from an unidentified customer, it's because she's involved in DRUGS. And at that point, you see the manager's face harden and she no longer has any questions, any doubt, or any mercy or sympathy for her now-naked subordinate. This treatment no longer seems out-of-line or unreasonable—because before she hired this girl, without a single hint that this girl could be involved in drugs, she likely forced this girl to pull down her pants and provide her with an intimate sample from the inside of her body to “prove” she wasn't, so it sounds reasonable to her unreasoning drug-testing culture brain that, having a confirmed conviction by the word of an unverified police officer on the phone, that she should be asked to strip-search this “drug user”. The moment he brought up “we're investigating her for drugs”, she was his pawn and this girl became the clear enemy, deserving of neither dignity nor respect, and as for rights...well, it was well-established in both manager's and employee's minds upon the pre-employment drug test that the employee has no rights, especially where drugs are concerned.
Now think about that. Really consider that.
ALL HE HAD TO DO TO QUELL HER DOUBTS AND SILENCE HER QUESTIONS AND OBTAIN HER TOTAL OBEDIENCE IN EFFECTIVELY RAPING THIS GIRL WAS TO INVOKE THE DRUG BOOGEY-MAN!
That should make your blood run cold. If it doesn't, you are too far gone to see how far gone this country is, and you are part of the problem.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Here is the basic text for four of my planned printable handouts
for use in raising awareness about this shady business practice. Any
suggestions for additions or wording would be appreciated,as would
any suggestions for new concepts! Also, if anyone else has graphic
design ability and the resources to do so and would like to help out,
I'd be glad to post what you come up with.
Handout 1:
Did you know...?
...98% of all positive drug tests are for marijuana?
...drug testing has never once passed peer review?
...drug testing does not test for impairment or for the presence of the actual drug?
...drug testing does not differentiate between casual use and abuse?
...up to 30% of all positive tests are false and can cost you your job?
...the only studies showing positive benefits for drug testing were conducted and/or paid for by the drug testing industry?
...drug testing has been shown to lower marijuana use while increasing addiction rates to hard drugs?
...drug testing can (and has) been used to screen people for protected health conditions like pregnancy?
Handout 2:
Character: If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!
TEXT 1: NOT TRUE.
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Handout 3:
TEXT 1: “Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.” --ACLU Briefing: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 2: If they have no faith in their own product, why should you?
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Handout 4:
TEXT 1: Can you really trust your employer to use your specimen honestly?
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Handout 1:
Did you know...?
...98% of all positive drug tests are for marijuana?
...drug testing has never once passed peer review?
...drug testing does not test for impairment or for the presence of the actual drug?
...drug testing does not differentiate between casual use and abuse?
...up to 30% of all positive tests are false and can cost you your job?
...the only studies showing positive benefits for drug testing were conducted and/or paid for by the drug testing industry?
...drug testing has been shown to lower marijuana use while increasing addiction rates to hard drugs?
...drug testing can (and has) been used to screen people for protected health conditions like pregnancy?
Handout 2:
Character: If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!
TEXT 1: NOT TRUE.
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Handout 3:
TEXT 1: “Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.” --ACLU Briefing: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 2: If they have no faith in their own product, why should you?
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Handout 4:
TEXT 1: Can you really trust your employer to use your specimen honestly?
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
A Modest Proposal regarding Workplace Whipping Programs
It’s already been established up and down that drug testing
does not increase productivity—quite the opposite, in fact—but right now I’m
going to assume for argument’s sake that it does increase productivity. Then I would like to ask this question of
those who still believe this testing industry lie: What of it?
Seriously, just because something increases productivity
does not mean it is something the boss should be allowed to do. And to illustrate this, I would like to
submit that we should return to the days when employers could use corporal
punishment on their employees, ranging from paddlings and canings all the way
up to floggings. Yes, at one point in
history this was accepted practice, and I’m not talking about slavery! There was a time in history where you could
cane and/or whip your employees for any number of infractions, including some
rather minor ones. And since the
pro-drug testing side is not coming from a position of actual peer-reviewed
research and evidence, we’re going to assume that flogging one’s employees will
raise their productivity level—because, like drug testing, it is intuitively “true”,
isn’t it? Like drug testing, it just “makes
sense” that employees will be much more productive if the consequence for getting
a customer complaint or not making their quota or breaking any company rules
would be getting a certain number of lashes on their back or their butt rather
than just a neutered little verbal or written warning. That is the spurious evidence-free reasoning
that was used (and is still used) to enforce drug testing into the workplace,
so it’s fair play to use it for corporate corporal punishment on employees. In this exercise, we’re not going to test the
efficacy of Workplace Whipping programs on productivity or safety, we’re just
going to explode them into the workplace using arguments that appeal to common
intuitive thought, just like the drug testing industry did in the eighties.
(And don’t get me started on how the drug testing industry
deliberately skewed, distorted, and otherwise lied about the “data” they did
get by doing this, because I’m not going to derail my own post. But it’s an interesting history—go to the “Helpful
Links” post helpfully linked on the sidebar to read all about it.)
Corporate CEOs, business-owners, managers, lend me your
ears! Imagine how fast your workers
could be moving to make your products, stock your shelves, clean your
bathrooms, or cook your food with the proper motivation! Imagine how servile they would be to
customers if they knew a displeased customer would result in physical pain and
humiliation! Imagine not only higher
productivity but a better safety record, since you could also use this to
enforce safety rules and punish anyone who is failing to follow those safe
workplace policies! Imagine how much
could get done if your employees were afraid to speak to one another, for fear
of a lashing! Even better than ending
their non-productive fraternization, your workers would find it virtually
impossible to unionize or organize against you!
And since we’re increasing the power of the employer to govern the
employee’s private life outside of work…well, you see where this is going.
And, as with the arguments for allowing employers to drug
test their employees, you can also justify it based on the “at-will” employment
laws—if you don’t like bending over for a caning for being five minutes late, or
talking a little too long with a co-worker, or missing your quota by one piece,
or just because your boss doesn’t like your beliefs, politics, or your face,
you can always just go to some other employer who doesn’t whip his employees. That
is, until they all end up doing it and your level of control is limited to
whose hand holds the whip over your shoulders (just as your only control
regarding drug testing now is who is holding the cup between your legs as if
they own what’s in your pants), because all the companies are being given the
scaremongering speech from the whip companies that if they don’t adopt a
pro-whipping disciplinary policy then all the “lazy” and “non-productive”
workers will hide out in their companies and bleed them dry. Because the only reason someone could have a
problem with being flogged or caned by their boss as a disciplinary measure is
if they are lazy, non-productive workers, and there is literally no other
reason one might object to such a policy.
Just like anyone who opposes drug testing must, by
necessity, be a drug user, because there is absolutely no other logical reason
someone would object to handing an employer or potential employer (who is, by
right of demanding a no-cause drug test, starting your relationship off with a
show of obscene distrust and calling you an a
priori criminal) a sampler platter of intimate bodily fluids and be
expected to trust them to use those fluids ONLY for the stated purpose despite there being almost no regulations or oversight on such activities* (effectively
demanding a greater trust than the one they have denied to you, by the way.) Just like anyone who is concerned about being
observed while providing a sample must by necessity be a user, because there is
no possible logical reason anyone could object to having someone squat down and
stare at their bare genitalia as they urinate unless they were planning to adulterate
the sample, right? No possible reason to
object to that unless you’re a user trying to pull something! The only thing a Proper Honest Upstanding
Non-Drug-Using Citizen would do when told to pull down their pants and display
their bare genitals for a total stranger while urinating is to say “Yes, Sir
(or Ma’am) and start unzipping those pants!
(What scares me is that so many people have been brainwashed into genuinely
thinking this very thing. This needs to
change, and it will.)
And no, you have no leg to stand on trying to say “well, you
see, flogging is disfiguring and drug testing isn’t, so you can’t do it”
because we don’t have to flog. We could
instead use a paddling or a caning, as mentioned above, which is not
disfiguring, any welts or bruises will heal without scarring, and for crying
out loud so many benighted individuals support that exact same punishment for
errant children and teenagers on the grounds that it’s incredibly effective and
totally “not abusive”. If it's not too abusive for children, then it's not to abusive for adult workers.
So what are we all waiting for? If productivity is the only argument we need
to justify a personal violation of the employee’s body by the employer,
reinforced by the “at-will” employment law, why don’t we add the cat o’ nine
tails to the specimen jar in our toolbox of employee management? Let’s adopt workplace whipping policies
across the board, and start a “slacker-free workplace”!
Let’s face it, you can’t support drug testing policies and
make any serious arguments against workplace whipping policies. The only reason anyone would try is that they
don’t like the idea of being whipped as a disciplinary measure in the workplace
but they have been acclimated to the idea of pissing in a cup for an employer
after drug testing has been enforced for thirty years and counting. You’re just used to drug testing and haven’t
really given it any serious thought before (unless you’re one of those
profiteers who works for the drug testing industry, in which case you’re
something else, but this post isn’t about dishonest charlatans like you, so I’ll
hold back the stream of abuse. You’re
welcome.)
And I would invite anyone who doubts that I could possibly
be a non-user for the above ignorant reasons to imagine they actually live that
world they don’t like as described above, a world where nearly every single
solitary employer has a Workplace Whipping policy and part of the "Slacker-Free Workplace Program", a world where they can be
given a number of lashes for failing to
meet quota at work by any amount or any number of other offenses, where this
practice is supported, encouraged, and even taxpayer subsidized by government “Slackers
Don’t Work” programs, where all the evidence showing this is a good business
practice has been conducted by or paid for by whip and cane companies (or
companies that provide whipping and caning services for companies) while all the unbiased evidence showing it to be ineffective and unreliable goes ignored, and where
anyone who objects for any reason is immediately considered to be a lazy
non-productive worker who is only objecting so they can protect their lifestyle
of workplace sloth—and is therefore considered a prime candidate for the whip,
regardless of how hard they actually work or how great their actual work record
is.
Then you will know my pain.
*From the ACLU link: "In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine
samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for
pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent."
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