OK, I have to make myself clear. I am not a conspiracy theorist. The opioid crisis is not a government conspiracy. It is a by product of bad policy on the border, a listless medical community that did not check facts, a corrupt pharmaceutical, corrupt doctors and a depressed population going through a struggling economy.

No Alex Jones here. As a matter of fact, This post has little to do with the opioid crisis because the government did not expect it and do not know how to fix it. We will talk about it because I do wonder why no one is doing anything about it. And this is where the Alex Jones within me will come out.

This is going to be another post about Brave New World, the novel written by Aldous Huxley in 1931. As we talked about last week, they way the government controls their people is by making sure they are constantly either working or in a state of pleasure. One of the ways they keep pleasure happy is through the drug Soma. This mythical drug fills the user with temporary pleasure, probably much like the drugs of today, but will leave the user unaffected when they come down from the high. That way they can work unimpeded.

This is the second parallel that really stands out from the book. Drugs in our society have been embraced and I don’t think that’s a good thing. I am probably the only libertarian in the world that does not believe in drug legalization and I have some personal and logical reasons why. I’m sure not everyone who reads this will agree with me.

So let’s talk about drugs!

 

Marijuana

For the past few decades, there has been a real push to legalize marijuana. I don’t go a day on Twitter without some democratic politician pushing for the legalization of marijuana. The push for legalization started out benign enough. There were a fringe group of stoners who wanted to drug legalized. Their simple reason was that the drug was safer than alcohol (it’s not) and alcohol is legal. I’ll get into that stupid argument later. But this push was never taken seriously. Most people did not see the drug as good and it never was really put on a ballot.

Then it became understood that marijuana did have medicinal purposes. And there are some good properties in marijuana that could serve a purpose. There are two main components of weed that are found to be good: THC and CBD. According to drugabuse.gov, THC can increase appetite and reduce nausea. This is one of the reasons cancer patients will use nausea during treatment. It also decreases pain, swelling and redness and will deal with muscle control problems. CBD is a cannabinoid that will not give someone that high people are aware of. It has been known to control epileptic seizures and treating mental illness and addiction. Scientists are studying the effects of the hundred different cannbinoids that are within marijuana and there is a lot of promise for diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS. Cannbinoids are produced by the brain. The high that an individual has after a hard workout is the release of endorphins and cannibinoids.

So as marijuana became more accepted as a medicine and legalized for medicinal purposes within some states, shops began popping up. All a person needed to do was be seen by a doctor who would then give that person a medical marijuana card. Here’s where thing: you didn’t need to have cancer or AIDS to get a medical marijuana card. Most doctors at the time would not support the distribution of medical marijuana because it is still illegal federally and not all the studies were in proving its benefits. So the shops would hire their own doctor. He/she would give a quick exam, hear the complaint and, without doubt, give a card. People who had anxiety, sore muscles and joints, loss of creativity and insomnia could get a card. I’m pretty sure those are not the types of illnesses or diseases the states with thinking about when legalizing medical marijuana.

But this did something to our society. It brought pot out of the closet and into the light. Getting caught with pot did not mean an arrest or even a ticket. It started becoming more accepted and easier to get. Even drug dealers had problems competing with the medical marijuana industry. Slowly but surely, pot was becoming mainstream and users were beginning to become vocal about legalization.

 

The Arguments

The pro-legalization lobby have a lot of arguments. This is from ProCon.org.

• The first is that pot is safer than alcohol or tobacco and has a lot of benefits for the user.
• Legalizing would give the government a better way to regulate it and make the quality safer.
• Pot can be taxed bring billions of dollars for government programs.
• Pot is far less addictive than other drugs and is not a gateway drug to other, more dangerous drugs.
• It will lead to less teenage use.
• DUI arrests may actually lower.
• Marijuana enforcement is racist because it impacts minorities more than white neighborhoods.
• Crime will go down.
• A majority of Americans support legalization

Everyone of these is garbage. So let me go over these:

• Pot is not safer than either. In fact, there are studies say the opposite. It is bad for those who have not had their prefrontal cortex developed (kids) and there are studies that show that mental function can be impaired and can actually lower IQ points. While smoking, actually burns hotter than cigarettes meaning it has just as much chance of causing cancer.
• Pot is not safer, it has gotten stronger. New studies have found that the hybrid that is today’s pot can have up to 70% THC. Studies say the see a correlation between smoking pot and depression, loss of memory and even some psychological problems.
• Pot can indeed bring in billions of dollars but at what cost? Other things that come with pot legalization including unemployment, health problems, homelessness, addiction and other metal disabilities. Seems those billions collected might be going to those problems.
• Pot is far less addictive than other drugs including alcohol. That’s just not true. Pot addiction is definitely real and it is a gateway drug, meaning the user may try other harder drugs in the future. I have personal experience with this.
• To say it will lead to less teenage use is just idiotic and makes no sense. Over 75% of student drink alcohol. They do because it’s legal and available. It’s unreasonable to believe that kids will smoke less when it is more available.
• DUI arrests may actually lower is also a weird argument. Bot because it’s false but because we really don’t have a good way to measure if someone is driving under the influence of pot. Pot stays in one’s system a log longer than alcohol. So it is very common to get a positive test but not be sure if a casual user actually smoke that day.
• Breaking the law is breaking the law, even if one is black. Saying that more of a race gets popped for weed and that’s racist is just an argument about shaming. Don’t fall for it.
• As far as crime going down, sure it will. If we legalized murder, crime would go down lower. In San Francisco, they made breaking in cars a infraction. The culprit only gets a ticket. And, now, San Francisco says that their crime rate is down. This is just a lazy argument.
• It’s true: a majority of Americans do support legalization. But that doesn’t make it right. A lot of Americans support free healthcare, that’s not going to be good. A lot of Americans support free college, that would be a disaster. Just because a lot of people are for something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

I am going to throw three more reasons why pot should have been kept illegal.

The first is personal. My son died because of drugs. The drug he started with was marijuana. It wasn’t even alcohol. He then started getting into cocaine, the Oxycontin and, finally, heroin and meth. But it wasn’t just him who suffered. He hung out with a lot of friends who were suffering from the same disease. I don’t know what happened to them but, I know, I didn’t see any of them at his funeral. I wasn’t angry. I just wondered where they were now.

Something I am asked all the time is: You’re a Libertarian. Aren’t you suppose to be for drug legalization? As a Libertarian, we believe that if something does not impede on other people or society, it should be legal. Drug legalization does impede on other people and society as a whole. One who depends on drugs steals, lies, ruins families. I would say that is the very definition of affecting other people. Drug user typically have to get clean, have to deal with the police and the courts, have health problems they typically can’t pay for. They end up unemployed, maybe homeless, depending on social services to survive. That is the very definition of affecting society. I’m being more of a Libertarian by being against drug legalization than those that are for it.

Here’s a question for you. What’s going to happen when we realize we made a mistake and want to, I guess the term is, re-ban the drug? Well, cigarettes were never an option. Too many people smoke and the cigarette companies have a powerful lobby. Alcohol was banned through Prohibition. But the drug we call alcohol was to ingrained into our society. It was impossible to get rid of it. So much so, there is a Constitutional amendment that says they screwed up.

Finally, the worst possible scenario. The Colorado legislature has just passed the legalization of magic mushrooms. The link is below. That means we are now legalizing harder drugs. When id cocaine coming. How about heroin. How about meth. Yeah, mushrooms aren’t as bad as those drugs. But it is harder than pot. I know. I quit mushrooms because of the side effects. We need to stop this train before we legalize everything. And it’s going to be so hard to go back.

 

So, About Brave New World?

There are only three things that Brave New World needs from its citizens. Obey, enjoy and work. Obey and work is beat into the citizens from conception and birth…er…hatching. Pleasure is a tough one. Huxley came up with only two things that could keep people happy: sex and drugs.

Sex is awesome but drugs last longer.

Next time you’re on Twitter and you see some democrat screaming about legalizing drugs, ask them what good will it bring. They’ll never answer and some hippie will call you a Nazi (which makes no sense). Just remember this, the dumbing-down of America is necessary. It’s the only way to kill the reason that the left keeps pushing.

I was going to write about the opioid crisis but I decided that deserves its own podcast. But I will tell you one thing. This is the conspiracy thing. Why haven’t we solved this crisis yes? Why isn’t anything being done? Why haven’t we stopped drugs from crossing the border? And who is in charge for creating laws that will lock up the border, preventing opioids from coming into this country?

Think about it. See the 3-D picture.

 

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References:

www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/13/denvers-magic-mushroom-vote-moves-drug-legalization-beyond-marijuana/

marijuana.procon.org/

www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana

disa.com/map-of-marijuana-legality-by-state

drugabuse.com/voices-from-both-sides-of-the-medical-marijuana-debate/

www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana-medicine