Police State - also Racist

[Crissa]

So someone wondered at the US.

We have a preoccupation with drugs. Some are legal, some aren't.

A drug is legal if it:
Has a huge local industry (alcohol, tobacco, vitamins)
Is expensive (pharmaceuticals)
Makes you feel bad (really, that's in the laws)
Only treats but not cures a symptom (methadone)

The schedules - that's what they call the lists of drugs which are and aren't legal or potentially) - are supposed to be based upon science. But instead, they're based upon economics. They have 'Potential for abuse' and 'potential for addiction' listed, but that doesn't stop pharmaceutical companies from making new painkillers that are just as addictive as before but just now more expensive and possibly harmful to the body.

Another thing they use is the commerce clause - that's how the feds have any power, really, civil rights or commerce - and anything that can or does flow across state bounds becomes their territory. At some point, they got a ruling that any drug could be grown and that affects the price everywhere therefore it's a crop and federal territory.

So... Most criminals in the US system are non-violent offenders on drug charges.

If you get arrested, they will try to get you for dealing. Things like 'Did you offer someone a toke' or 'do you have enough for more than one dose' are enough for that.

If you have paraphernalia - anything from smoking pipes to food preparation weights to drinking water can be called that and grabbed up to charge additional people around you. It doesn't matter if they ingested anything or not.

If they manage that, they can take the place you were found (your house or apartment? They'll auction off anything inside. Your car? They'll auction off that.). It doesn't matter if you had permission of the owners of the house/car etc you were found in, they'll take it.

There are special laws making certain drugs - or certain combinations of charges - specially heinous. That's why there's more minorities in jail. Did they have meth? Bingo. Did they have crack? Double Bingo. Did they have a group that could be considered a gang? Bingo. There's an initiative on the California Ballot this time to add more 'gang-related' items to the list. It's sure to pass, and it's sure to catch only Hispanics and send them to jail for... Well, just being associated with low-lifes in their neighborhood.

Also... Anything that can be scary, like psychedelics? Instantly bad under our system. And yet, some are legal, some are not. Because the only ones that are illegal are the ones that have been found with some minority - natives, hippies, blacks - the ones that haven't been? Not. And some plants are illegal, and have been destroyed, even though they used to range widely across the content, while others still roam free.

Oh, and if a drug is new, because of the laws, it's not illegal - yet. Those movies about new formulas and stuff? That sorta exists. But not because it would make anyone more money. It doesn't. If a pill doesn't contain a known chemical, they can't test for it. LSD, for instance, isn't taken in a large enough dose to detect n the body. So they weight the material it came on instead. And many psychedelics aren't illegal because they haven't been involved with some parents' association yet.

And no, I'm not telling which is which. Because writing that down might get fbmf in trouble. You can look on your own.

But our laws have nothing to do with why people take drugs or really even which drugs are taken... They're based upon who took the drugs. The same amount of pure cocaine vs a vial of crack? The guy holding the crack gets 5x the sentence. Who takes crack? Not the rich guy.

-Crissa

[Neeeek]

A couple corrections.

Another thing they use is the commerce clause - that's how the feds have any power, really, civil rights or commerce - and anything that can or does flow across state bounds becomes their territory. At some point, they got a ruling that any drug could be grown and that affects the price everywhere therefore it's a crop and federal territory.

This actually had nothing to do with drugs. The case in question involved someone growing crops (corn, IIRC) for personal consumption. It's also the case that stopped striking down New Deal laws as unconstitutional. It also applies to drug cases, and is the reason that medical marijuana users in CA can be arrested by federal agents, but it wasn't initially exercised or decided on anything related to a drug issue. That application didn't come up until Nixon about 30 years later.

The same amount of pure cocaine vs a vial of crack? The guy holding the crack gets 5x the sentence. Who takes crack? Not the rich guy.

That's not actually true. Each 1 gram of crack is treated like 100 grams of cocaine. This, combined with mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses (which, by the way, even the conservative judges hate), means having a tiny amount of crack sends you to jail for a very, very long time.

[Crissa]

Neeek is correct. That's what I intended to get across, anyhow.

-Crissa

[Surgo]

Is expensive (pharmaceuticals)

I daresay cocaine is fairly expensive.

Unless you mean expensive to develop? If a scientist working for a pharmaceutical company got something right on the first try (not bashing scientists here, this is just the way it works) and required no prior efforts in research, the drug would be totally legal.

Or do you mean expensive to test? There's pretty obvious reasons that things end up being expensive to test.

[JonSetanta]

Surgo, come to the DC/Baltimore area.
Ask any bum.
Cocain is expensive, I suspect mostly due to the massive brutal crackdown (fufufu) on drug trade in this area.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Crissa also forgot to mention one very important thing:

If the police seize your property due to a drug related arrest, you don't get it back. Even if the judges throws out the case, or you are found innocent, they keep your shit.

You "can" get it back, but involves a non-refundable $10,000 payment (0r 10% of the property, whichever is more), and you have to go to a hearing to get your shit back.

[Crissa]

You can get it back without paying, but it involves expensive lawyers.

And Pornography? There are guys in jail now for selling comic books to another adult in a brown paper bag, displaying no names or pictures, because there was a school within 1000m of the shop.

Escort services... Our cities and feds are constantly trolling them for arrests. The standard is to arrest the women involved and not the men. Misogynist as well as racist. Those paying money might get charged with soliciting - if someone other than the one giving the service takes the money, that's a felony. But the john's crime doesn't change.

The right-wing doesn't want drug addicts or diabetics getting clean needles, either. Or unmarried people getting contraception or contraception training. Or young women or men being taught how sex and pregnancy works. Or paying for young women's pre-natal or children's healthcare. Or letting people access abortions. Or contraceptive medicines - see recent attempt b the Bush administration to change all contraceptives into 'types of abortion'.

It's really fucked up, yes.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

You can get it back without paying, but it involves expensive lawyers.

That goes without saying, you can get away with all sorts of shit if you have a sufficiently expensive lawyer. I just didn't consider it because most people aren't going to be able to afford one expensive enough to do that.

[Koumei]

Urk, that makes me feel sick.

Well, that or the cream bun I just had, or possibly the caffeine withdrawal from thinking detoxing is a good idea. But it's disgusting anyway.

And not in the least bit surprising. I hope your next president can at least fix a few things up.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Penn and Teller had a great piece discussing drugs in the USA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEyKAzXqVkA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbI6HbOSTgE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leg3_gcE3p8

---

One important idea not yet addressed is how the War on Drugs functions on a worldwide scale. As has been shown throughout history, prohibition does not curb either supply or demand. It simply creates criminals (the users, and the suppliers). So on a national scale, you get Al Capone and today's drug pushers.

Of course, since the politicians/big business in the USA have chosen prohibition, they force it on the rest of the world. As a result, prohibition has spread across the world, compounding the problem. As a direct result, criminals and terrorists use the income gained from the drug trade to fund their activities. The entire problem of Opium funding terrorists in Afghanistan was created by the USA's worldwide prohibition campaign. That avenue of funding for terrorists would completely disappear if the USA simply made drugs legal, taxed, and supplied through traditional government-monitored business organizations. But that is not the case.

See, this is how we do things

... in AMERICA!

[Calibron]

Was this really news to anyone here? This is a serious question by the way, not snarkiness.

[Crissa]

Apparently it was news to Koumei.

-Crissa

[Optimator]

You can get it back without paying, but it involves expensive lawyers.

That goes without saying, you can get away with all sorts of shit if you have a sufficiently expensive lawyer.

That reminds me of my friend's dad. He worked for some company where he peruses over a structure's blueprints and estimates the amount of steel required and how much it'll cost. His company did a job for Disney, and instead of paying them when the work was done they didn't pay and hired lawyers instead to fuck them over. The lawyers were cheaper than the work, so they went that way.

[JonSetanta]

And Pornography? There are guys in jail now for selling comic books to another adult in a brown paper bag, displaying no names or pictures, because there was a school within 1000m of the shop.

A porn shop near me was burned to the ground overnight at least a year ago.
Local police suspect arson but no evidence has been found... or investigated.

We live in a mostly Conservative white Protestant area partially infected with extremist Baptist churches.
Various religious groups had been campaigning against a similar porn shop (also visible from the highway, nestled between roadside food service and car dealerships) in the district south-east from here; that other shop is still to this day assaulted by attempted acts of vandalism and some protests but it's still there.
These are the ONLY porn shops in this county, outside of Baltimore city limits (which, of course, has plenty.. as well as palmistry and fortune telling shops right up to the county line, because psychic readings for money are illegal in my county)

Ironic, my girlfriend and I had just shopped in the burnt one a month before it went down.
It was a good store.

[Koumei]

Oh, most of it wasn't news - I know a lot about the failed War on Drugs, and it does piss me off that I generally can't get decent pain relief without ignoring the instructions on the box and poisoning my liver, all because your fuckwit presidents think drugs are bad.

Frank, when you're a doctor, you really should visit here for a bit and write me some scripts for oxy.

[Prak]

Escort services... Our cities and feds are constantly trolling them for arrests. The standard is to arrest the women involved and not the men. Misogynist as well as racist. Those paying money might get charged with soliciting - if someone other than the one giving the service takes the money, that's a felony. But the john's crime doesn't change.

I wouldn't say it's mysogynistic, or racist. It's the trade that's illegal, not taking them up on the offer. When the police catch a man offering sex for money, he's probably arrested for the same crime as a woman, and his client, man or woman, probably gets slapped with solicitation, if anything. I doubt it's racist. There may be a higher incidence of minority prostitution arrests than caucasian, but ever think that maybe minority prostitutes are more common than caucasian? Hell, if you just want to look at White vrs. Non-White, we whites are outnumbered, both world wide, and here at home, I believe.

The right-wing doesn't want drug addicts or diabetics getting clean needles, either. Or unmarried people getting contraception or contraception training. Or young women or men being taught how sex and pregnancy works. Or paying for young women's pre-natal or children's healthcare. Or letting people access abortions. Or contraceptive medicines - see recent attempt b the Bush administration to change all contraceptives into 'types of abortion'.

It's really fucked up, yes.

-Crissa

That's not technically the right wing, merely there current most visible figure head, although I'll admit that a sizable majority do wish those things.

[Prak]

And Pornography? There are guys in jail now for selling comic books to another adult in a brown paper bag, displaying no names or pictures, because there was a school within 1000m of the shop.

A porn shop near me was burned to the ground overnight at least a year ago.
Local police suspect arson but no evidence has been found... or investigated.

We live in a mostly Conservative white Protestant area partially infected with extremist Baptist churches.
Various religious groups had been campaigning against a similar porn shop (also visible from the highway, nestled between roadside food service and car dealerships) in the district south-east from here; that other shop is still to this day assaulted by attempted acts of vandalism and some protests but it's still there.
These are the ONLY porn shops in this county, outside of Baltimore city limits (which, of course, has plenty.. as well as palmistry and fortune telling shops right up to the county line, because psychic readings for money are illegal in my county)

Ironic, my girlfriend and I had just shopped in the burnt one a month before it went down.
It was a good store.

That's all fucking moronic... I'd be on the police's asses about the porn shop as
1)someone who would like to own their own store and not worry about it getting burned down
2)someone who considers himself an artist and what happened to be institutionalized censorship
3)someone who enjoys sex and porn

...also, 4) someone who could find within himself the determination to get the number for internal affairs, and possibly other forms of law enforcement, such as the FBI on the police's backs to at the very least, make things uncomfortable for them...

I'd also probably ask the guy who owns the surviving porn shop if he's thought about hiring some form of security...

[ckafrica]

Escort services... Our cities and feds are constantly trolling them for arrests. The standard is to arrest the women involved and not the men. Misogynist as well as racist. Those paying money might get charged with soliciting - if someone other than the one giving the service takes the money, that's a felony. But the john's crime doesn't change.

The problem with arguing that johns should be arrested also is that it would also mean that people buying drugs should be pursued as vigorously (And where I stand, drug users should not be criminally liable for what the do with their own bodies).

While I truly believe women should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies (all people should) but claiming that the end user of a service is some way more responsible than those providing it seems a slippery slope. It might be like saying we wouldn't have drug dealers if we just threw all the drug users into prison.

Ultimately it would be nice if governments would just let us take care of ourselves and stop trying to be big brother, be it drugs or prostitution.

[Neeeek]

I'd also probably ask the guy who owns the surviving porn shop if he's thought about hiring some form of security...

Depending on the types of attacks, I'd be wondering if he might want to spread some rumors of retaliation.

[Crissa]

Why shouldn't you pursue people who buy an illegal product as much as those who sell an illegal product?

That just leaves the situation where the police choose when to call it selling when they want to, rather than when it is appropriate. Share a toke? Intent to sell. Have more than one? Intent to sell. Etc.

Johns are more responsible for the violence/money related to the industry, so why shouldn't they be held to a similar, or greater standard? Put a madame in jail and nothing has been stopped. Put a john in jail and the 'crime' can't and won't happen one less time.

That's like saying you should ignore the cheaters in a game.

-Crissa

[Prak]

No, see, what should happen is that we should be watching our fucking cops more closely! Who watches the watchmen, and all that. If a cop decided to arrest me for "intent to sell" because I shared a toke, the whole fucking legal system would hear me yelling about it. If I got arrested for purchasing a service which is, specifically, illegal to provide, not purchase, I'd be yelling even louder. We need to watch the people who watch us.

It is said that "A society of sheep must, in time, beget a government of wolves" and that is what has happened, we are sheep who are guarded by wolves, and the wolves partake of the feast we continuously set forth. We must put forth our shepards and rams so as to domesticate those ravenous beasts and keep them in line while they keep us in line. I have a friend in the police, several of my family members were police, I have nothing against the police, but they need to be watched, and by an atheist so the blue religion doesn't cloud judgement.

[JonSetanta]

Prak: I think the owner gave up, or maybe has plans for later but nothing was announced.

[RandomCasualty2]

But our laws have nothing to do with why people take drugs or really even which drugs are taken... They're based upon who took the drugs. The same amount of pure cocaine vs a vial of crack? The guy holding the crack gets 5x the sentence. Who takes crack? Not the rich guy.

Though that actually makes sense to target poor people more harshly for drug possession. Mostly because the problem with drugs isn't that people are taking drugs. The problem is that people will steal shit and commit other crimes (possibly violent) to get the money to buy drugs. Rich people just aren't likely to do that, while poor people are.

[Koumei]

Why not just charge them for those other crimes instead, then?

And of course, that's just another reason why it's better to make drugs legal and affordable. Or for a person to make sure they're only addicted to something cheap (examples: caffeine, codeine, alcohol).

Incidentally, I have a newfound respect for the pain meds I occasionally became short-term addicted to: their withdrawal is so much easier than caffeine. I pretty much failed to detox, what with the vomiting and everything.

[RandomCasualty2]

Why not just charge them for those other crimes instead, then?

Because that's a lot harder than drug possession. It's easy to charge people with drug possession, because it requires minimal evidence (officer found drugs in the guy's possession). Compared to say convicting someone on burglary or armed robbery, which requires setting up a police line-up, unreliable eyewitness testimony and tracking the suspect in the first place.

Drug related convictions on the other hand are pretty easy, especially when the guy doesn't have the money for a good lawyer.