Drug war horror stories to boil your blood
The War on Some Drugs is as unwinnable and destructive as all the other wars on abstract nouns. Who needs terrorists to rip America apart when you've got drug warriors killing off, imprisioning and shunning its innocents?
.In Seattle, a fifty-six-year old man died last Thursday after being refused a liver transplant because he had followed his doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C. From the Associated Press story:Link (via Making Light)His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class…
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.
At some, people who use “illicit substances”—including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it—are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months.
The cruelty and stupidity of this beggars belief. This patient did not need “drug treatment.” He was already undergoing drug treatment. Nor did he need to get “clean.” He was already clean. It’s the drug war that’s dirty. (H/t: John Leone.)
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Just the sort of thing a new president could change almost instantly-- but I can guarantee you that whoever is elected, she/he won't have the guts and will already be thinking about the second term-- you know, the "greater good."
I don't know how this is going to change because it's not simply irrational fear that real knowledge can overcome, it's all about who benefits from the criminalization of drugs.
@michaelannb
Presidents doesn't make laws, they only signs the ones that are presented to them that haven't hit the 2/3rds majority.
It’s such an easy political score, your local politician is fighting the good war on drugs and keeping your children safe! Man this kind of story just makes me want to puke.
Alcohol is way more distractive than pot. I enjoy the smell and for the most part the company I have found around pot.
The tax revenue that this country could enjoy from pot would pay off our war debt and more, and you could have the major tobacco industries selling it nationwide in a matter of months. All that needs to be pacified is the Budwisers, and Millers of the country, but as soon as they realize that you can advertise how good a nice cold beer goes with a bong hit it would be game on.
Pot is not a crime, we are being oppressed.
One glorious day I will be free to put whatever I want into my body and my body into whatever I want.
Perhaps someone needs to tell the University of Washington Medical Center committee that after a liver transplant, he'll be taking many drugs with much more serious side effects and dependency issues than cannabis: Extremely potent synthetic opiates, corticosteroids and other immunosuppressants, etc.
And of course, problematic drug users belong in rehab, not prison.
Davin, the day there is no government to subjugate us in any way.
The War on Some Drugs is as unwinnable and destructive as all the other wars on abstract nouns.
Depends on what it's true purpose is. The war on crack succeeded very well in disenfranchising large swaths of the black community and yet over looked the use of powder cocaine. Used primarily by whites.
The war on drugs also feeds a huge industry on both the enforcement end and the recovery end. Our prisons are filled to overflowing with young, poor blacks who will never again be able to vote, hold a job or even rent an apartment.
I have no illusions about drug use. It isn't glamorous and not even particularly fun. But we need some sanity. My vote would be not for legalizing certain drugs, but I'd agree to medicalizing them.
But I ain't holding my breath. America is insane. In fact, near as I can tell, all of mankind is stark raving mad.
Radley Balko and Reason also cover these events pretty regularly.
Everything in the Tim Garon story is valid, and it is truly tragic. But there's a wrinkle the linked story leaves out, that was mentioned when his case came out while he was still alive.
"Many doctors agree that using marijuana — smoking it, especially — is out of the question post-transplant. The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold found in marijuana and tobacco." (Associated Press, April 26)
That AP story also mentions that insurers won't pay for the transplant without pot abstention. So don't think that getting hospitals to allow transplants to medical marijuana users will solve the problem. That's the easy part. You might not even need a lawyer to get that to happen.
The immortal Bill Hicks described the "war" on drugs best.
Here's the link:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Yfe0_g6z7c&feature=related
My second year of college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks I lived in some student apartments on campus with three roommates. Late one night when all my roommates were sleeping a deranged man stormed into the unlocked back door and started screaming "Home! Home! Home!" I honestly don't know if he was drunk or mentally ill, or what, but he definitely looked more like the villain in a slasher movie than one of my fellow students. Fortunately I was able to scare him away by shouting at him to leave. I quickly locked him out and luckily he was gone for good. (Hopefully he found his real "home!", because I remember it was about -40 F that night.
But to get to the point...I did not feel comfortable calling the campus police about this matter as I should have because my place smelled like pot (which helps me to sleep). I could not risk losing all of my financial aid, which I would have if I had received a drug conviction. (Convicted rapists or murderers in the US may receive financial aid for college, not drug offenders).
#9 POSTED BY ELLE P , MAY 12, 2008 11:18 PM
"That AP story also mentions that insurers won't pay for the transplant without pot abstention."
That's the real issue. And it's the main reason why the U.S. healthcare system stinks to hell. Anyone who has dealt with insurance and medical issues can tell you this kind of stuff happens more often than one can believe.
For example—and not to go into much detail—when my dad was near death a routine blood test revealed that he might have colon cancer. Here's the deal: His chances of surviving what he was going through to begin with were slim at best. But because of that blood test, the doctor was insistent that they do an endoscope "to make sure all bases are covered." My family had to scream at this guy about how @%#& idiotic it was to put an elderly man through such a test and stress out what remainder of his life was left. Even if the colon cancer was severe it was an irrelevant factor to his larger health picture which was bleak to begin with. It would have not saved him.
But...
Then there was the implication—which never ended up being real—that if the family did not agree to such a stupid test, the insurance company might refuse any further treatment to make the remainder of his life more bearable.
Even if the insurance company has no issues, the work-a-day healthcare worker who doesn't know any better will always err on the side of limiting doctor/hospital liability. That's what's sick. The atmosphere of healthcare and insurance in the U.S. is so nit-picky that your practically guaranteed to deal with nightmares like this.
I truly hope whoever gets elected in 2009 passes law and enforces regulations to end this utter mess.
elle p:
yes, that's an interesting wrinkle. i doubt the insurers hold tobacco smokers to the same standards, ultimately, however, this little wrinkle is irrelevant...
aspergillus testing can be done, of course. i'm told that there are in fact medical marijuana clubs or co-ops or whatever that do this already, as HIV patients are also suceptible. again it comes down to the drug war, and if marijuana were legal and medicalized properly, this man would have had a much better chance at survival.
jeffea1:
i seem to recall several years back that some in congress had succeeded in removing the question from the FAFSA forms. technically you still can be denied financial aid because of it, but they no longer ask the question.
Yeah I'm so happy to live in Netherlands and Germany. This is just UNTHINKABLE here.
Especially the case of the liverpatient.
UNTHINKABLE!
Cory, you disappoint me. The drug war is tragic whether or not middle class white people can identify with "innocent victims" or not. This is nothing more than the -ization of the drug war, which has been devestating Black and hispanic communities for so long that it hurts. These individuals are no less innocent than the apparently harmless white victims of this story.
Making this palpatable to white people by making it seem close to home, as though they could be victims, is not the path forward. This is the kind of thinking that made Cindy Sheehan a cause celebre (and ultimately killed the antiwar movement). The war on drugs has been a disaster regardless of whether mainstream America can identify with its victims. Pandering to the people who are part of the problem will get us nowhere. Be part of the solution, recognize who got us in this mess (the kind of people to whom you are appealing).
and
Hmm, there seem to be odd posting issues. The -ization was supposed to say Ryan White-ization.
I don't know what the and was standing in for. But given an and, I'll say this.
And the bottom line is this: if people didn't see the war on drugs as something to worry about until it affected them, our goal should be to disenfranchise them and not get them on our side, as they are not any part of a long-term solution.
I will never, ever trust the judgment of ANY government that makes marijuana use in the privacy of your own home a crime while at the same time keeps public alcohol consumption perfectly legal.
It's completely absurd and any person who supports such a double-standard is an imbecile not worthy enough to spit on (or barf on after drinking too much alcohol).
If I was Gawd, I would time it so a drunk driver slams into the next group of assholes who wants to keep the partaking of pot (especially medical pot) a crime. That would be brutal justice.
Sorry for speaking so violently, but I haven't had any pot lately... just too much beer.
"a suburban San Diego housewife who will spend the next 20 years in jail because she was peripherally involved in a heroin deal while she was in college in 1975"
The important thing is to send a message to the youth of today.
And that message, apparently, is: "we're a cold, heartless and unforgiving society".
If that doesn't make people want to stay off drugs, I don't know what will!
One glorious day I will be free to put whatever I want into my body and my body into whatever I want.
That's an incredibly idiotic thing to say. First the "my body into whatever I want"-part: do you really mean that, or are you just trying to come up with a clever catch-phrase? Think about what that means, being allowed to have sex with anyone you want at any time. Think about kids, and about people that don't want to have sex with you. Think before you speak.
And of course the government should regulate some drugs; having heroin and cocaine cheap and easily available to everyone would incredibly destructive to thousands and thousands of lives, even whole societies. The death toll would be unimaginable. The government needs to regulate some drugs, otherwise society can't function.
Some drug enforcement and enforcement of sexual practices is absolutely necessary, the tricky bit is figuring out where the line goes. Obviously, in these cases, they've failed. That doesn't mean we should abandon the whole thing altogether. So stop staying stupid shit just because it sounds catchy, it demeans you and the whole discussion.
What ever people want to put into their bodies is fine with me.
Just don't then get behind the wheel is all i ask.
All drugs effect people in different ways, some will smoke a number, eat and go to bed.
Others will be pulling billies* 'til their head caves in.
It's the varying addiction response.
I have friends in Melbourne who are no different in their heroin use to the junkies in the lane ways, but they don't "need" it, they want it.
The research should be into how to control addiction rather than policing individual substances
Oskar (#21 at his point), I'm gonna have to step up here and let you know that you sound like a nutcase. Read your first paragraph--as clever as you feel, I reckon you've got your mind set on sex with kids, subject be damned.
Next two paragraphs are equally paranoid, but your first paragraph sings...it sings...(pic of Pedo-Bear)...
People should put whatever they want into their bodies if a)they are informed about the risks and
b)their doing so neither endangers others nor causes costs others have to pay for. And the trouble is that drugs do cost society in terms of health care, care of damaged children of addicts, dangerous driving and other actions that hurt innocent people.
It wouldn't matter if the addicts simply killed themselves.
Incidentally, the war in Afghanistan resulted in a huge increase in heroin for the west. And just google: CIA is the biggest drug dealer. The government is being duplicitous.
"a suburban San Diego housewife who will spend the next 20 years in jail because she was peripherally involved in a heroin deal while she was in college in 1975"
uh... peripherally involved? Supposedly moving nearly a quarter key a week, and busting out of federal prison then living under a false identity for 30 years, more like. Just because she's a pretty rich white lady doesn't mean she wasn't a mid level heroin dealer that only obtained freedom through a jailbreak. And I'm sorry, but equating marijuana and heroin is ridiculous - heroin is highly addictive and deeply destructive - marijuana is, quite simply, not. Making heroin as innocent as marijuana is simply the obverse of the WAR ON DRUGS tactic of equating marijuana with the gravity of heroin.
Heroin actually has few physical down sides apart from constipation.
People shoot heroin because thay are after more from less, most would smoke it.
Addiction is the bit that destroys people and communities.
If we can find a cure for the addiction regardless of the substance then i think all drugs should be allowed.
That includes booze & fags.
I'm as opposed to the war on some drugs as anybody (I think even heroin and cocaine should be legal), but here's the thing about the liver transplant case: there's a shortage of transplantable organs, and the fact that this guy didn't get a liver means that somebody else did.
If there's anything about this case to get angry about, it's the fact that we don't allow live organ donors to be financially compensated, which would help alleviate the shortage of transplantable organs.
The surprising thing about this article and the blogs blogging it is the fact that this is nearly nothing in comparison to the decades of abuse our government has made against political minorities, which a couple people have already pointed out. Here, this is the main problem with the war on drugs:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/
Highlights:
~Blacks are arrested and imprisoned for drug-related crimes at a much higher rate than whites, although whites commit more drug offenses:
-A black man is 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than a white man.
-A black woman is five times more likely to go to jail than a white woman.
Hilarious satire about this: "The Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual." Available at bookstores everywhere. The department's motto: We are marching proudly backwards to the future. Rule on medical marijuana: "Death fosters decency by building character. Sick folks who use medical marijuana to avoid some of the negative aspects of death are sending the wrong message to young Homelanders. They are saying when the going gets tough, it's OK to use drugs."
Something tells me that this post was skipped over as uninteresting by all the people who commented "I get around this by not breaking the law, you silly turkeys!" on the talking-to-cops Instructable.
Someone explain to me what the government or any sort of government based 'war on drugs' has to do with this? It sounds to me like this was a private hospital that created its own criteria for performing transplants, influenced by a private insurance company that set the conditions for what it will pay for.
That the government fosters a negative attitude towards drug use is one (stupid) thing, but I'll totally support a privately run corporation or business' right to manage their own property and choose when or to whom to distribute their services. Just as I would support the right of you and I choosing a different hospital or insurer based on whatever criteria each of us feels is important.
The way I see it, a government mandate that hospitals be _required_ to act in cases similar to this would be just as immoral as a government mandated prohibition on drugs and drug use. Leave the government out of it, let your dollars do the talking.
For anyone deluded that this isn't a black-vs.-white thing -- think about the furor at San Diego State. Those parents are screaming about "treatment" and "prevention" for their children. Strangely the whole "punish" thing is not so prevalent. Why hasn't the FBI just done a tour of colleges before, San Diego State-style and bust scores of white kids across the country? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
"a suburban San Diego housewife who will spend the next 20 years in jail because she was peripherally involved in a heroin deal while she was in college in 1975"
The important thing is to send a message to the youth of today.
And that message, apparently, is: "we're a cold, heartless and unforgiving society".
===========
Letting her off the hook sends a different message: "If you're a pretty white lady, we'll overlook the fact that you were a heroin dealer and escaped convict."
She was on work release after serving only one year. That tells me that they trusted her and that she would probably get out early with good behavior. If she had served her sentence, she would have been out of prison a long time ago. That having been said, I'm glad she kept her nose clean and I don't think she should serve any more time. She'll be able to write a book and cash in.
Go back to work, go back to watching tv, go back to listening to music. No one is going to do anything about it, so why worry? Oh, yeah, the horror has become our entertainment. Any more sordid tales? I can't get enough.
We live in a semi-police state defined by a prison industrial complex. It wouldn't be so insidious if it didn't have a profound effect on the psychology of ordinary people who, by their attitudes, keep the whole thing humming along.
Drugs, by and large are not harmful to people. From the standpoint of government, they are dangerous because they undermine the bullshit of industrial society. 100 years ago everyone did cocaine, cannabis, or some kind of opiate--presidents, industrial leaders, housewives, babies.
Drugs are liberating, and thus subversive.
Rarely have I seen a cogent or coherent argument for the legalizatin of drugs. Everyone seems to miss the important point, namely, that you own your body, and the government does not have sufficient warrant to impose upon your rights of ownership on the basis that they are doing so in your interest.
One reason I despise liberals is that this was an argument for the legalization of abortion ("Our bodies, our lives."). They really didn't care that much about the underclasses being devastated by the bullshit drug war. The last real victory of the left was about 40 years ago when is secured the right for women to abort their unborn children.
People wonder why toxic conservative ideology has succeeded so well. Maybe it has something to do with the fact it appeals to normal people. The Left on the other hand is:
You have the right to kill yourself
You have the right to kill your unborn child
You have the right to have gay sex
etc.
Basically things that are irrelevant to most people.
I digress. If abortion was important during the 60's, and the philosophical undergirding was that government has no right to dictate to us what we can and can't do with our bodies, why shouldn't be just as morally outraged by the goddamed drug war (or, more accurately, the war on the poor?)
Basically things that are irrelevant to most people.
If by most people you mean only straight men who never develop terminal illnesses, you might want to revisit your math. There were 50,000,000 abortions in the US between 1973 and 2007.
I agree; the war on drugs is failure. People who can take care of drugs at home without affecting the community as a whole, should be able to do so. For the destructive druggies, we establish separate communities.
Another one for the list:
a friend, recently slain, due to her attempts to cooperate with Police coercion to become an informant. Working with the police, might they have been expected to protect her from those they set her up to meet?
Following link for local news story:
http://tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/NEWS01/805110330&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
You need to look at the drug war for what it is. Not some complicated scheme to disenfranchise inner-city blacks. It's about money.
There is a cottage industry built around interdiction,enforcement,and treatment. That legalistic side goes hand in hand with the illicit side. If the herb was legalized tomorrow, how would it affect the DEA? the Coast Guard? or your local drug task force unit? or your local treatment center? If it's legal and it's not a problem for my job why would I need treatment? What percentage of drug raids would end? no more seized cars or property. I think they'd all lose a jobs and some funding. If the drug war ended tomorrow, what are you going to do with all those out-of-work DEA agents? send them to the IRS? If drug convictions go down per capita could that result in a reduction in forces for a police department that justified hiring more officers based on drug offenses? Is it possible that just legalizing could lighten the load on our overburdened courts and corrections, so they could deal with real criminals? If the herb is legal, what happens to the price? It goes down. Do dealers and producers want to be cut completely out of the action by cheap legal producers? Of course not. So who benefits from legalization? Have you ever seen a government program reach it's goal and end? Why would work yourself out of job? I contend that enforcement and treatment have just as much to lose as producers and suppliers and as long as there's money to be made on both ends of the spectrum, there will be no end
Mark E, I think you've got it exactly wrong. The War On Some Drugs is perpetuated because, in part, the white, middle-class voters who hold a big chunk of political power in this country see the dark-skinned underclass as a threatening enemy, and the war as a way of fighting that enemy. If they start to see the war as something that hurts themselves, their kids, their friends and co-workers, they might be moved to end it.
How about all the alcoholic beverage companies that used to contribute money to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) before the PDFA recognized a conflict of interest (wow, it took them a while to figure that one out).
Why beer and liquor makers think people who enjoy pot can't also enjoy alcohol escapes me. Oh yeah, all they really care about is their bottom line...
Criminal law and its savage penalties should be reserved for those with criminal intent, ie intent to harm, not "criminal intent" so-called ie intent to break regulations/rules. Don't matter what the rules aim at if the first part is unfulfilled in the instant case.
The recreational drug fueled confusion of Criminal (intending to cause harm) and criminal (breaking arbitrary rules) is itself Criminal, and brings the whole social edifice of Justice into disrepute.
As is evident from the whole tenor of this Thread [and the whole "Govt. is Useless" crap.(Big biz or big gov? I vote the latter, sans War on Individuals.)]
Big biz or big gov?
There's a difference?
My husband works in liver transplant as a research coordinator. Every week he's part of the meeting to decide who will get a liver and who won't. He's also the one who takes the calls from panic-stricken people around the country looking for a shorter list. The majority of liver transplant candidates have a history of substance abuse and hospitals have to do everything possible to make sure they are not wasting a precious chance at life on someone who is still hooked. This isn't about the drug wars. The truth is there just aren't enough livers. Unfortunately, a lot of people die waiting for an organ, even the ones who never used medical marijuana. And God help those without insurance.
Please!!!! check the box for organ donor when you renew your driver's license.
I can't figure out what Pyros #35 is advocating, exactly. Is there a position there that I'm failing to understand?
I am usually pretty good at finding the assertion underneath the language but this one defeats me.
I believe that it's intended to make us feel guilty for existing.
Warondrugs Industry is just an industry like any other. people have to earn and eat. It's the lying and hypocrisy that's evil.
http://www.drugfree.org/
Partnership for a drug free america.
Funded by big tobacco.
Nuff said.
Drugs are just a distraction. Keep it up and you fall further behind.
Some of the most common illegal drugs taken by people for addiction are cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, PCP, marijuana, caffeine, methadone, oxycontin, etc. These harmful substances are banned in most of the countries but people are still getting drugs.
http://www.drugrehabscenters.com/
Isn't there better things to pass laws about?