Drugs The Only Thing That Pisses Me Off More Than the War on Drugs…
posted by April 15 at 10:45 AM
on…is the mindless glorification of the War on Drugs. Gee, I wonder how many people involved with the conception, production, and promotion of this new show on Spike—let’s not even talk about Spike’s typical viewers—have used drugs themselves?
Your front row seat to the most dangerous job on the street? Try your front row seat to the most the most unnecessary job on the street. Want to protect these saintly DEA agents from harm? Legalize drugs, tax the shit out of ‘em, and reassign these DEA agents to the jaywalking beat.
Oh, and here’s the bottom half of the poster—which shows a huge number of DEA agents rushing into a house in what I presume is an urban area:
By my count there are ten armed DEA agents breaking rushing into that house—all with their great big guns drawn. Cops raid the wrong house so frequently that the LAPD has a full-time carpenter that does nothing but repair doors torn off their hinges when the police raid the wrong house. And as Dominic wrote on Slog last week…
During no-knock drug raids, innocent bystanders are shot and killed, like this one-year-old baby and his mom; cops are killed, like this officer raiding a house for marijuana that turned out to be maple trees; and other times, as in this story, a suspect who could have been apprehended without gunfire is left dead.Some might say that this armed raid was justified because Aguillard allegedly pulled a gun. But he pulled his gun because armed strangers were breaking down his door. Law-abiding people would do that, too.
Yes, Spike, “every deal can turn deadly”—but not just for the cops. Here’s hoping that Spike will have the guts to show the police blowing the head off a year-old baby if their camera crews should happen to capture that on video. They wouldn’t, of course, as that piece of tape would expose the “heroic DEA agents, dastardly drug dealers” angle that Spike is peddling for the fraud that it is.
Comments
Bullshit. Sales taxes are regressive.
reason #287 to hate spike tv
Hey Dan, do you read the articles you link to?
Yes, the LAPD has a guy on staff who fixes doors when they raid the wrong house. You know how many he did in 2007?
"Last year, Jenkins fixed eight doors damaged in such incidents -- up from four the year before. "
So yeah, you're pretty much wrong on your whole, "LAPD has a full-time carpenter that does nothing but repair doors torn off their hinges when the police raid the wrong house."
Unless the carpenter takes 6.5 weeks to repair a door.
Another Easy Target exposed by Dan "Pick on an Easy Target" Savage. Another journalistic great from the Department of Stating the Obvious.
Hey Dan, I hear republicans suck and hate gays too! Why not tell us about that in another scoop! Moron.
It's not the repairing of the doors that's the tricky part, it's cleaning all the baby brains off them.
watch
http://www.americandrugwar.com/
i thought it was interesting reading this, and your last post about the violent approach the dea often takes for drug busts.
it's interesting that bursting with guns causes potential problems for such a small crime. in this newsweek article, i read the following:
Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for Texas troopers and the Department of Public Safety, added, "We have been trying very hard to be sensitive to the folks at the ranch … trying to be sensitive to their concerns about their holy places. So we have been much more diplomatic with them than we typically are when we are serving any other search warrant."
it's too bad the dea cannot take a similar approach.
I heard about this show on Howard Stern from the producer of it.
Al Roker. Yes, that Al Roker. That, in and of itself, should put any viewer on notice.
Al Roker is the executive producer of this show. Way to go Al.
beat ya to it.
Am currently in New York City, where there's a sculpture of anti-colonial activist Lin Zexu which doesn't mention a thing about his opposition to the British empire, saying only that he was a pioneer in the war on drugs in the 19th century. Barf.
In the only commercial for this show I've seen, they're preparing to bust "an international Ecstasy ring." I damn near died laughing. Good thing they're out there, protecting the enamel of kids' teeth and preventing them from getting all huggy.
Does Dan know that not all drugs are equal?
Can Gomez cite a drug more dangerous than the drug war? How well are those drug laws working, Gomez? Are they keeping the drugs away from kids, allowing us to treat addicts, giving people accurate information to avoid substance abuse?
Does Gomez know that the issue is obscene police overreaction in raids based on unreliable and agenda-driven informants, and the complete deference the courts show to those raids and nearly all actions that occur in them?
Pot doesn't need to be "equal" to heroin for armed men stampeding in the door based on the words of a informant with a serious conflict of interest to be troublesome, not least because we're making trash tv about how cool the DEA is.
drug raids gone bad is what angers you about the drug war? fucking fuck!
"Gone bad"? Even when the state says they went right, they're often pretty bad.
And it's related to the general erosion of 4th Amendment rights due to the drug war, so yes, drug raids are one part of what angers me about the drug war. You?
I love it that that fat fuck Al Roker is doing this show.
I hear it on good authority that one of the most popular places to get a good cup of coffee, etc in Amsterdam is called the Rokerie. Roker == Rauchen == Smoking.
Do you do meth, heroin or cocaine, Dominic? Since you've established we're going to discuss this issue using only fallacious remarks, I might as well cut to the chase. You cut right to the hostile chase when discussing this issue so quickly that I have to wonder exactly what drugs you do.
I guess Dan and Dominic wouldn't mind if someone opened a meth lab next door to them after legalization.
RIGHT NOW someone could open a meth lab next door to you. If drugs were legalized, they could be zoned (to keep them away from houses) and subjected to safety standards (so that they didn't explode all the time).
Anybody who wants to can buy meth, heroin, and cocaine, so the fact that they are "bad drugs" doesn't justify the drug war in any way.
I've been to 2 heroin funerals for close friends, and have lost at least 6 or 7 other friends to junk that I can think of off the top of my head.
I have two friends who had to give up blow after having heart trouble, and countless more who pissed away instruments, cars, jobs, relationships and treasure while they were doing it. Meth wasn't real prevalent in my social circles back in the 80's and 90's, but it definitely seems like powerfully nasty stuff that trashes the lives of a lot of people who take it up.
That said, all of the preceding drugs should be decriminalized.
Drugs (particularly the hard stuff) certainly hurt a lot of people, but the criminality that arises from prohibition magnifies that harm tenfold (at least).
Legalize everything - it can't get worse.
Ever since the decriminalization of pot, the easy availability of gay marriage, and the strengthening of privacy rights in Canada ...
well, ever since then ...
their GDP went up, crime went down, they live longer, they're happier, and they have fewer murders.
Hmmm.
Maybe we should take the DEA and airdrop them on Iran wholesale, with no return tickets?
Then they can deal with them, and we can be like Canada ... and live 10-20 years longer than we do now.
just before i die i'm going to move to canada.
So many smart people out there who see the war on drugs for the ridiculous scam that it is, and yet the media push it like it's the only thing that will save us. Makes me cry sometimes.
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