Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label War on Drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War on Drugs. Show all posts
Mick Hall ✒ on 50 Years Of Failure Since The 1971 Misuse Of Drugs Act Was Passed Into Law.

We only need to look at the rise in registered heroin addicts and those on synthetic opioids to understand this. In 1969 there were approximately 1,400 registered heroin addicts in the UK. Today the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands. So, how did we get here and how do we correct the errors of the past?

Until the late 1960s the UK had some of the most liberal drug laws in the world which were based on a simple fact that people will always take narcotics, whether it's for pleasure or to take the rough edges off life. Thus, it was understood that a small minority would become addicts and they were treated sympathetically. Their GPs prescribed their drug of choice weekly or monthly and the addicts were expected to work and just get on with their lives.

There was no psycho-babble back then about the causes of addiction. It was taken as read that some users would inevitably fall by the wayside. The law, imprisonment and ruined lives were never on the agenda.

After a MSM generated shit storm in the late 1960s / early70s about young working class people taking drugs, mainly purple hearts when clubbing, in 1971 the British government introduced new legislation which they claimed would stamp out illegal drugs for ever. Apart for a cut and tuck here and there, it's still on the statute book, the benchmark for how the UK deals with illegal drugs.

Once criminal elements realised there was no legal way heroin addicts could get a legal supply, they quickly moved into this lucrative trade. This wasn't unpredictable as the British government had the failure of alcohol prohibition in the USA staring them in the face.

The way heroin addicts were treated after the act was passed into law went from the sublime to the ridiculous. They were demonised, criminalised, sent to jail, and adulterated drug use became the norm in the UK.

Whatever one's view on legalising and regulating all illicit drugs, and if it's done in an orderly way, then I'm for it. The way addicts have been treated by the state over the last 50 years is an abomination, and it has less to do with the drugs they take and everything to do with the 1971 legislation which has failed them miserably. The war on drugs is an infantile exercise which no government can win, no matter how harshly they try. It's time for a change.

Today there are 50 MPs who support changing the law on drugs and well done to them. But that still leaves 600 who are too cowardly or stupid to put their heads above the parapet and vote the current legislation down.

As Simon Jenkins wrote in a recent article:

There is no longer any debate. Fifty years of British failure and years of foreign efforts at reform show only one thing: that the criminal law is counterproductive. It is game, set and match to reform. Yet terror of any change seems to grip politicians in power. The can is carried by those on the frontline – the police, prison officers, doctors and social workers. Modern democracy is driven not by evidence but by fear. We all know that, sooner or later, the dangers of drug abuse must be tamed, as we try to tame the dangers of alcohol and gambling. But in Britain we must wait for foreigners to show us the way. This is not about facts but about courage.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

50 Years Of Failure On Drugs

Mick Hall ✒ After US president Richard Nixon declared in 1971 drug abuse was to be his public enemy number one the term ‘the war on drugs’ was taken up by the MSM and one of the most infantile and counterproductive wars ever waged began.

Given when the US shits the bed, the rest of the world has to lie in it, after a bit of arm twisting most of the governments in the western world queued up to join the colours. 

When you take into account politicians behaving like idiots doesn’t come cheap. The costs to taxpayers and victims of the war on drugs have become enormous, the USA alone is currently spending upwards of $60 billion annually on a war it knows it cannot win.

Across the world governments have wasted trillions and what is the end result? There are more drugs on the streets today than there were in 1971. The oligarchs who control the illicit international drug trade rarely get prosecuted. It’s the same for the Banksters and Lawyers who wash their ill gotten gains - and street dealers are replaced within hours of being lifted by the police.

Countless lives have been ruined, not only because the drugs may be adulterated with potentially harmful substances but the fact that they’re illegal.

Prisons are bursting at the seams with people who are incarcerated for drug offences, the majority of whom would never have seen the inside of a jail if illicit drugs had been legalised and regulated. The police run around like blue-arse flies crashing down doors and arresting people on the street for drugs which are much less harmful than alcohol which is legal.

Despite all this the overwhelming majority of senior politicians still support the war on drugs. As to the minority of those who take elicit drugs and become addicts, they’re regarded by governments, most doctors and the MSM as bad, mad or sad.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Throughout history, rightly or wrongly, people have always taken narcotics and used cannabis. There is nothing new about it. When compared with the situation today in the first half of the 20th century Britain had an enlightened way to deal with addicts which was considered to be amongst the most progressive in the world. Those who became addicted to narcotics like heroin were treated by GP’s with a weekly or monthly prescription adequate for their needs until they decided to withdraw or not. During this time they were expected to get on with their lives and most did successfully. This treatment was not dissimilar to how some forms of diabetes are treated today, i.e. an injection daily.*

However there are rays of light which are changing this situation. After a radical government in Uruguay became the first country to explicitly legalise cannabis in 2015, other countries have followed, including 15 US states and the sky hasn’t fallen in.

Oregon went a step further and made history when it recently passed the first state law in the US to decriminalise possession of all illicit drugs including heroin, cocaine and LSD. The measure backed by criminal justice reform groups is aimed at diverting people from jails and prisons by treating possession as a citation and expanding access to free treatment and recovery.

Sadly the UK government is still in the Stone Age and refuses to depart from the infantile and failed ‘war on drugs’ until they get a green light from the US federal government which is not forthcoming.

Even the tens of thousands of people in the UK with conditions as wide-ranging as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain and depression have been denied prescriptions for cannabis despite the drug for medical conditions having been legal for more than two years. The only option for these patients has been to go to private doctors to obtain private prescriptions, but this can cost them hundreds of pounds a month and the overwhelming majority of them cannot afford it.

If common sense eventually prevails and illicit drugs are legalised and regulated, what happened in the USA when Alcohol prohibition ended will be replicated and big business will eventually manufacture, legally, Cannabis and other illicit drugs which will be brought and sold like any other commodities. I will conclude with an Albert Einstein quote which describes the war on drugs perfectly:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again but expecting different results.

* Whilst some addicts receive a NHS Methadone liquid prescription as a substitute for heroin, it’s treatment by numbers by the government as the Psychiatrists (which itself is revealing), who signed the prescription are unable to set the prescribing limit for individual addicts.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.



One Of The Most Infantile And Counterproductive Wars

Frankie McKillen, writing from first hand observation, gives his take on the drugs problem in Belfast.
The phoney drug war. A war Irish Republican's are simply dealing with the fall out from, a war miles away, a war they didn't start, ask for, need and have nothing to gain from.

This piece started out as a comment in my head to Patrick Donohue's piece on TPQ and grew partly because of a Sky News interview. The original comment was along the lines, “ I still think is is very well written, fact checked, but the title I didn't like. I find it misleading.” Maybe that was deliberate. I can't buy into argument that..”it is time for Republicans to rethink their destructive war on drugs”.. Short version in the space between my ears is … The drug war is a war Irish Republicans didn't start, play little part in, fund and if they are involved in a drug war then why don't the maths (body count) add up showing Irish Republicans in a drug war.

A few day ago I was in a friends house, having a spliff and a coffee talking football. Sky News was on and a report about how opioid addiction has doubled since 2001, flashed across the screen. While I was listening to my friend, I half listened to a Professor or Doctor being interviewed about opioid addiction. He explained he is an opioid addict and knows if he takes an extra one or three now and then, he is buzzing. But has enough discipline and medical knowledge to stop himself going over the edge. He also talked about how everyone has to seriously look at how we have arrived at this mess. He was asking questions and offering solutions, similar to how France weaned a generation from heroin in the 1980's & 90's.

Allow me to take you down a rabbit hole for a paragraph or three...

As conspiratorial some of this may sound, all I know is my mind is sound. Most reports on the rise of drug related deaths like the Sky News report use 1999-2001 as a cut off point. We all know where we were on the 11th Sept. 2001. What about the day before? The day when the other Donald told the world that there is 2.3 trillion missing. The following day there was 9/11 and the rest is history. This is a conversation of what 2.3 trillion looks like today. As Alfred McCoy from the Guardian points out, 16 yrs later and 1 trillion spent of western intervention Afghanistan is officially the worlds first narco state. And according to wiki, in 2007 the heroin wholesale was worth $64 billion to the US market. Most coming from Afghan but some across the Mexican border.

In 2012 when every news channel was talking about wars on terror, Netflix was showing the first few episodes of Narcos and how two DEA agents took down Pablo on a roof top. At the same time HSBC was quietly laundering not only EL Chapos drug money they quietly cleaned billions for other cartels as well and the whole cabal was on board until they became too greedy and sloppy or both. They got caught laundering 365 billion of narco dollars. No one will ever know how much they got away with. Ed Vulliany who a wrote a great piece in the Guardian said, HSBC's apology treats everyone with contempt. What partly got Ed rightly pissed off was after being put on "5 yrs banking probation'' for being caught laundering untold billions of narco dollars and only being fined $1.9 Billion. HSBC simply said “Lets draw a line under it and move on." And everyone done just that and acted if nothing had happened.

My take goes like this … Just after Iran-Contra was exposed, a few Mexicans moved in to fill the void and HSBC happily continued to launder South American narco dollars like nothing had happened. Because the Mexicans didn't give the cabal their cut in a brown enveloped like the old Cali cartel would, the cabal got pissed off and basically put EL Chapo on a show trial as an example to anyone else who refuses to pay.. And then someone in the cabal done some maths and they all decided the best way to recover their loses from HSBC's links to El Chapo,& Co. was to have another phoney war, away from prying eyes and they chose Afghanistan, The cabal soon discovered even with the cost of the war on terror factored in, they were still making money and as an added bonus heroin was cheaper and better grade in Afghanistan than Chapo's.

Back to reality...

Today when I read reports how getting heroin in Belfast is as easy as getting cigarettes. Knowing what I know about wars on terror, it doesn't shock me that not only heroin but others drugs are readily available at the end of phone app in Belfast. The thing that shocked me the most being back on the island is the sheer amount of drugs available per head. If Belfast had the same population as London or New York then the UN would have stepped in a long time ago. The populations between the six counties and Birmingham are more or less the same between 1.7-8 million people each. If the same numbers of drug related deaths were on the streets of Birmingham, Westminster would be forced to cancel Brexit talks and have a COBRA meeting and find out WTF is happening in Britain's 2nd largest city.

When I lived in a hostel on the Sandy Row (for a little over 2 yrs), I saw up close how very real the problem is, how it affects families, how staff deal with finding a dead body in room, watching young men waste their lives on drugs. I have seen young men for reasons I still can't fathom, take a handful of prescription drugs that they were not prescribed to get 'a buzz'' …. I watched scores of kids aged 18 to young men in their early 30's on crash trolleys, hooked to drips heading straight to A&E on a Friday at 8pm. And then have a coffee with the same people on the Saturday afternoon, sometimes you could bump into them at 8am and they would have little to no recollection of what they said or didn't say or do. They all swear it is their last 'blow out' etc. And the following Tuesday they are trading xanax bars, diazepam pills and strips of pregabalin like a commodity broker trades in other minerals I guess. I have seen staff members give whoever naloxone to save a life, trying to buy breathing space until over stretched paramedics who are dealing with Belfast's addiction problem, especially weekends arrive.

My reality is after watching news reports on Sky or the BBC about the rise of heroin, opioids and local headlines about a Republican war on drugs ... I step back and look at the war on drugs, do some basic maths like … fifteen drug related deaths and only one with an Irish Republican connection. Irish Republicans are not involved in a drug war. They are dealing with a drug problem that affects all communities on this island.

One of the first heads in the hostel I sparked up a friendship of sorts was also the first of 15 drug related deaths of people who passed through the place I counted. I stopped counting when I moved on. I believe all the deaths were preventable. The heads name is Wolfie Holmes and not Wilfie as the piece says. The two people who wrote the tributes, Wolfie is probably turning in his grave knowing everyone who read the piece, thinks they were his friends. Wolfie wouldn't piss on either of them. He had no respect for them. I am with Wolfie. They are nasty people.

Wolfie was the person who broke the ice. He was a very funny man, with great tales he loved telling. It was my first Monday/Tuesday evening, we were having a roll up in the court yard, and he'd been watching me all weekend trying to figure out who I was, I didn't look like 'a normal hostel head'. We started chatting and he began telling me he had a younger brother called Martin who was a big Elvis fan. The story goes one day Martin, walked into a hair dresser, somewhere between the Glens of Antrim and north of Ballymena and told the hair dresser “I want to look like Elvis”. So she dyed his hair black and a short time later Martin walked out with a duck tail hair cut. His mother went ballistic. From all accounts, Martin didn't care and Wolfie thought Martin was a legend for having the balls to dress like Elvis in a small town.

I don't know the full story but Martin committed suicide, I think he drowned. I got to know Wolfie a little over the last 6 weeks-2mths of his life, we got drunk several time, stuck our fingers up at the world together. Then one Monday evening he got evicted from the hostel, forced to sleep rough and a little over a week later in Sept 2016 , Wolfie was found in a heap in a car park. Shortly after Wolfie was found dead I moved rooms to 317 to have a better wifi signal.

It took William Hamilton to be found dead in room 316 in March 2017 before the hostel changed their policy and procedure on checking the 'well being' of all residents. I remember William arriving, only his 'stay' wasn't as long as Wolfie's. I didn't speak much to him. That was down to William being 'zombied' for most of the time. As a rule of thumb, some heads would be having a coffee and a roll up in the court yard between 8-9am and some others heads would put what looked like a handful of smarties into their mouths. I have seen young men defy every law of science that I was taught in school, due to the amount of pills I have seen some of them swallow. William was found dead very shortly after he arrived. His final 10 days - two weeks on this rock were sorry to see. He was just out of prison, no support from the system. And failed by the system. The staff in the hostel (most cases) are not trained to deal with the mental health issues that William had (and countless others have) But I guess it was 'out of sight out of mind'. And somewhere between Friday evening and Saturday brunch in March 2017 he went to room 316, took what became his last fix and on Monday morning a member of staff found Williams body. My understanding is he slipped into a trance and smashed part of his face on a sink in the room and it wasn't a pretty sight. And he lay there lifeless all weekend.

Another person who was a resident in the hostel for short time was Ray Johnston. I got to know Ray from passing each other in the canteen and playing pool. He was there 6-8 weeks at the end of 2017.. He mostly talked about his family and Celtic football club. Every now and then he would rap 317 ask me for a spliff or sometimes he would throw me a bud or two of weed. One day Ray walked into the pool room and said he was moving back to his girl friends, shook my hand and went on his travels. Then at the end of Jan 2018 he phoned me to say he got a place in west Belfast and invited me up for a beer and catch up., show off his house. A few weeks later I tuned into Radio Ulster one morning to find out the previous evening Ray was murdered in front of his family.

A few days before Christmas 2018 a resident in the the hostel got news that his daughter had died from a heroin over dose. While he was burying his 22/23 yr old daughter, a young man (never found out his name) in his late 20's give or take arrived. It was 21st December, hostel was quiet, I went to grab a coffee in the canteen, when I seen a male member of staff save his life. When the paramedics arrived he had come round a little and they took him to hospital and pumped his stomach out. The following evening around 7.30pm I watched the same member of staff administered naloxone to the same young man in almost the same chair as the previous evening and when the paramedics arrived he was all but brain dead. A few days later doctors turned off his life support. I didn't get his name. For the 24hrs he was there, he is the worst case of addiction I have ever seen. He became the 14th needless death and as I said by the time I left I had mentally chalked up 15 people like Wolfie, William, Ray. I am convinced they were all preventable.

While I wouldn't wish for anyone to receive a punishment beating, never mind a six pack,  my opinion has changed after sharing living space with Patrick. Patrick, that is what he called himself in the hostel is one the of victims of a republican shooting. And today I understand better why some people feel they have no choice but to knee cap certain heads. I have no sympathy for him, after breathing the same air as Patrick for several months. I will put it this way, it couldn't have happened to a 'nicer person'. He has no respect for anyone, slimy, nasty piece of work. People such as Patrick should be put on an isolated island to prevent them from breeding and fed bread and water until they die.

The best Republicans can do, and to a large extent are doing in a war they have no real part in (the maths don't add up), a war they clearly didn't start, is try and limit the damage drugs are having on their communities and manage problems that arrive on their 'door step' be it a drugged out persistent joy rider, a drugged out persistent house burglar to a dealer who was flagged to them ' and everything in between, by offering them solutions to change their ways so they don't end up like their friend who was found dead in an up turned car or semi-decapitated in a car wrapped around a tree. Or found dead, lying half naked in a Burger King toilet, covered in vomit with a needle sticking from their arm by a parent and their kids on any given weekend. Or being reminded the lucky ones may have got out alive but paid a price too: they can't kick a football with their kids anymore because bullets are still lodged in their knees from the last punishment shooting ...


➽Frankie McKillen is a North Belfast Rockabilly and free spirit who for many years lived in Paris.

A Needle Sticking From Their Arm

Mick Hall @ Organized Rage through the prism of the a book review by Martin Powell discusses the war on drugs and argues that:
To Continue With The War Against Drugs Is Insane

Good Cop, Bad War

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)