ONCE opiates enter a society and become an epidemic as is the case in the US, they are hard to stop.
Money from users fuels the supply of the opiates and the consequent addiction to the drugs by the users fuels the demand.
Even the law is undermined by an opiate addict who cares for nothing but a fix to cure the harsh withdrawal effects. The most effective way to fight these opiates is to not use them at all and to keep them out of your community.
For China to end its opium addiction phase, it took them almost a century from the time they began fighting against the British to outlaw opium in their land. The Communist government of China had to conduct public executions by way of shooting opium users in the head just 60 years ago.
Today the penalty of using, dealing or growing opiates in China is death by firing squad after two years on death row, whether the victim is a foreigner or Chinese. These were the stringent measures that curbed the opium problem which had plagued China for so long and similarly harsh measures are now being used by the US against its people, particularly blacks, in a supposed attempt to diminish the use of drugs.
Is the US government and law enforcement genuinely concerned about the use of hard drugs when there is evidence that suggests thorough US involvement in the production and distribution of opiates like morphine and heroin from Central Asia to the rest of the world? Why then does the US impose harsh measures of long-term imprisonment and killing often during the arrest of opium users and dealers?
The answer is elite deviance; this is when the higher-ups use their positions for personal gain and thus deviating from their duties to honestly serve the people. Once people in high positions begin to trade in harmful but yet profitable drugs like opium, they have to appear to be doing something to fix the problems, while they carry on their illegal business in secrecy.
It is important to note that until 1914 there were no restrictions to any drug use the world over. In 1906 the US began to require the listing of ingredients on all foods and medicines because until then, hard drugs like morphine were sold in patent medicines. So many consumers were addicts without even knowing it.
Apart from opiates, the US government has also been behind the cocaine epidemic in many ways. Cocaine has plagued the world in much the same way as the opiates we have discussed before. It is one of the mostly used and most addictive hard drugs in the world today. Originally, the leaves of the coca plant, which is indigenous to South America, were chewed and sucked by the ancient Americans and its effects were stimulating, but not deadly at all as was opium, when eaten moderately.
In 1850 an Italian doctor began using coca leaves to treat pain, insomnia and so on. Within 10 years, a German called Albert Leeman isolated the psychoactive components of the coca leaves to form cocaine. Vin Mariani sold coca wine and it was heavily used, creating the base for an addict population in the US.
After the unpopularity of alcohol in that era, John Pemberton concocted a non-alcoholic health drink containing cocaine and was used to cure headaches, pain, cough, exhaustion, depression and morphine addiction among other things. Asa Chandler bought Pemberton’s formula and with it he made the refreshment drink Coca Cola. The first coca cola drink actually contained cocaine and was as popular then as it is today.
One of the attributes of cocaine is the rebirth of its addiction and craving in the child of the cocaine addict, particularly in the mother. A strain of cocaine called crack, which is basically cocaine cooked down to its base, is guaranteed to cause addiction in the child of a mother who was using crack during pregnancy. The addict children are called crack babies and they were widespread among the black communities of the US since the 1980s.
The reason the US chose to ban the use of drugs was never its effects on the users, but was more to do with racial prejudice against minority groups. The use of alcohol was once banned among the blacks of the south states of the US in the mid-1800s because whites were fearful of rebellion from drunken blacks.
In that period, a whiteman called Dr Hamilton Wright suggested that cocaine be given to black dock workers in order to work longer hours without fatigue. Thus for a long time blacks were disallowed to use alcohol and encouraged to use cocaine.
In the 1870s, opiates were banned in the Chinese community which was involved in the building of railway systems in the US. The banning of opiates was not in response to its effects, but was brought about through fear that the Chinese would use opium smoking to lure white women to their lounges and prostitute them.
In the early 1900s, marijuana or cannabis was banned from migrant Mexicans and blacks because whites thought it made them too confident. In 1901, Henry Lodge banned the sale of liquor and opiates amongst all ‘uncivilised races’. By uncivilised races, Lodge meant non-white races including blacks, Mexicans, Chinese and Australian blacks whom whites call Aborigines.
In this period, the blacks of the South who had been turned into cocaine users were being accused of foul play against whites whilst under the influence of cocaine. Law enforcement personnel began requesting larger ammunition to kill what whites termed ‘cocaine crazed Negros’. The racial fears of drug effects on blacks also led to the public lynching of countless blacks in the South.
In 1914, the Harrison act was enacted. It was very racially prejudiced for it entailed a crackdown on minority groups, for using opiates and cocaine. The whites of the South had accused the free blacks of being fearless of whites and going after white women whilst under the influence of cocaine.
In the 1970s, under the Nixon regime, the US imposed an all-out war on drugs against its own people, particularly blacks who were historically set up to be an addict community.
How is it that with all the US high tech security, millions of tonnes of already processed opiate drugs enter the US successfully, but yet the victims of their war on drugs are mostly the final users and dealers? The US rarely goes after plantations worldwide and if they do, they certainly do not destroy the opium and coca plants. On the contrary, the US actively takes over control of the production and trade of the plants as is the case in Central Asia and South America.
The US has found a way to make money from controlling opium trade worldwide, and also fighting the war on drugs in its domestic area. Because of the illegal nature of hard drugs, the US profits from tax- payers’ money which is allocated to fighting drugs in the country. The prisons are built on tax-payers’ money and the prison personnel are paid from tax money too.
There are now prisons with limited space to save on costs, thus inmates are locked up for as many as 23 hours a day, every day, and given an hour to exercise. Bunk beds, and shift systems are all efforts by the mostly white prison owners to retain the tax-payer revenue. After all, their business is housing supposed criminals who were rejected by society, so why should they be sympathetic towards inmates?