TRUTH AND LIES IN AMERICA'S "DRUG WAR"

WHILE MILLIONS GO TO PRISON FOR ILLEGAL DRUG USE

INDUSTRIES MAKE RECORD PROFITS PUSHING LEGAL DRUGS ONTO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

drug hysteria

It is important to begin the conversation about "the war on drugs" with a clarification of truth and lies. There is no "war on drugs" in America today, quite the contrary; there is an enormous corporate funded campaign to push drugs onto the American people. The use and abuse of legal drugs like alcohol and pharmaceutical pills is a booming business. What there has been for the last century is an economic power struggle among drug pushers.

Prohibition was the first "drug war" so to speak, and was pushed by religious extremists via the Temperance Movement, which advocated complete abstinence from alcohol. There is a connection here between religious lunacy and the so called war on drugs. But as we know today, the prohibition was a complete disaster.

The second major prohibition was launched in the 1930's under Roosevelt to ban hemp and marijuana. There were huge economic interests involved in this struggle. By banning hemp, a competitor to the oil and petrochemical industries was eliminated. This was an effective means of putting competition out of business.

In the 1960's there was a major counter cultural revolution in America. This had many positive effects: an awareness about the environment, open discussions about sex and an understanding of the religious delusions in America. Yet there was also a fair amount of drug overdose and death. Soon, one type of excess lead to another. The excesses of the 1960's lead to a campaign to bring back "traditional values" in America. Along with this campaign was the "war against drugs," which was launched under Nixon. This was funded by some industries to put their competitors out of business. This set up a competition between the legal drug pushers and the other drugs like marijuana, LSD, etc.

So this was not a war on drugs, but a war on drug industries that had failed to make the proper political pay off in Washington.

This is a historical pattern of American industry that is common among many big businesses, such as the cable television industry for example. If regular Joe American wanted to set up his own cable company, he would go to jail, because the cable television industry has set up a franchise system that protects itself. This is a legacy of crony capitalism that goes all the way back to the founding of America, where the big railroad and mining industries received huge grants from the theft of Native American lands.

Getting back to the so called "drug war," it has been a colossal failure. America now has the biggest prison population in the world - with 2 million people incarcerated. The U.S. government has spent over $1 trillion to keep illegal drugs off the street and even this has been unsuccessful. People are using illegal drugs at approximately the same rate they were when the "drug war" began.

What has increased however is the use and abuse of legal drugs. The reality is that America hasn't launched a war on drugs at all. Quite the contrary, there is a massive campaign on the part of the pharmaceutical industries to drug the American people. There has been an upsurge in the number of American adults and children taking legal drugs, which we will discuss more below.

Rather than being a war on drugs, this is a political manipulation of the drug market for the interests of powerful economic industries.

IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, AMERICA IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST JAILER

prison population

Source: Roy Walmsley, International Centre for Prison Studies, “World Prison Population List (8th edition),” January 2009.

ONE DRUG CARTEL GETS TO SELL THEIR DRUGS LEGALLY

WHILE ANOTHER GETS LOCKED UP

While millions go to jail for using or selling illegal drugs, the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have made $711 billion from 2003-2012 in selling their drugs. Six of these companies are headquartered in the United States. The irony of this situation however, is that a majority of the drug overdoses in America have been from pharmaceutical drugs rather than illegal substances. In 2011, 55% of the drug overdose related deaths were related to the misuse of pharmaceutical drugs. Drug overdose on these pills among the American population has increased dramatically - there has been an increase of overdose by 118% since 1992 (CDC).

MEDICATED NATION

america's drug addiction

According to the New York Times, one in five Americans take at least one psychiatric medication, and one in four suffers from mental illness. Mental illness is becoming a growing problem in America. Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion a year in lost earnings (NAMI). Mood disorders such as depression are also the third most common cause of hospitalization in the U.S. for adults between the ages of 18-44 (NAMI). Yet the trouble with the mental health industry is that the study of the brain is still a relatively new area. Also, most of the drugs created are becoming copy cats of one another, since few new breakthroughs have been made in the development of psychiatric drugs. The New York Times is even calling this a "dry pipeline" for the psychiatric drug industry.

THE FORCED DRUGGING OF AMERICA'S YOUTH

The sale of pharmaceutical drugs isn't just limited to adults though. The forced drugging of children is becoming a booming industry. According to the Huffington Post, 2.5 million American children are having their ADHD symptoms treated with Ritalin, which is a 1600% increase from the 1970's. The other alarming fact to consider here is that the drug Ritalin has a lot of similarities to cocaine in terms of chemical structure and function. In fact, children who are taken off of Ritalin in adulthood are more likely to use and abuse cocaine. Since a child's brain is still growing and developing, taking Ritalin during childhood has the capacity to cause permanent changes in a person's brain structure. According to the University of Utah Genetics Center, some of the children who take Ritalin may be more likely to develop depression as adults. Their brains may become more desensitized to natural rewards like food, romance and social interaction, which increase their chances of developing depression.

Despite these alarming facts, America is still addicted to medicating its youth. In fact, 90% of the world's Ritalin is used in the United States (ADD Treatment Center)

MEDICATION AND MURDER

Another shocking reality is the fact that a large number of the mass shootings in the last 20 years were committed by people who had been on at least one psychiatric drug in their lifetime (Natural News). According to CCHR, at least 34 school shootings/or school related acts of violence have been committed by people withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.

ALCOHOL AS THE TOP KILLER DRUG

Pharmaceutical drugs aren't America's only legal drug that gets abused however. Another highly abused legal drug amongst Americans is alcohol. According to CBS, more than 30% of Americans have abused alcohol or have suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives. Also, nearly 88,000 people die in America from Alcohol related deaths each year (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). When considering the direct cause of death, alcohol killed more people in 2010 than all illegal drugs combined.

DEATHS CAUSED DIRECTLY FROM DRUG USE IN 2010

(Homicides and indirect causes of death not included)

chart of drug deaths in the United States 2010

(Source: Drugwarfacts.com)

So it is time to face some hard truths in exposing the lies over the state of medicated and drugged up America. Should more than a million Americans be locked away for the possession of illegal drugs, while many more die from the use of legal, pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol? The trillion dollar war on illegal drugs has been a failure. People are using illegal drugs at the same rate that they were before the drug war began, and abusing legal drugs at far higher rates. Maybe it is time that we start paying more attention to the legal drugs that are being pedaled in America's pharmacies and hospitals, and start asking some tough questions about the pharmaceutical industry - the legal drug lords who are making billions in the latest "drug war."

RELEVANT LINKS

MENTAL ILLNESS IN AMERICA

America's State of Mind: Medco Report (PDF)

Mental Illness Fact Sheet (PDF)

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs (New York Times, 8-19-13)

Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation: “Guinea Pigs for the Drugmakers” (Global Research, 5-28-14)

7 Drugs Whose Dangerous Risks Emerged Only After Big Pharma Made Its Money (Alternet, 1-2-14)

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans Take Prescription Drugs, Mayo Clinic, Olmsted Medical Center Find (News Network, 6-19-13)

Rising painkiller addiction shows damage from drugmakers’ role in shaping medical opinion (The Washington Post, 12-30-12)

My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life. (Washington Post, 10-15-12)

The hidden costs of over prescribing drugs (Aljazeera, 8-24-12)