“Coca’s a traditional crop for the Indians,” she said. “It’s a holy plant.” said Moreno.

SO WHAT! I don’t care, that statement means no more than the sales tax in NY is 8.25%. If it means anything it is that the Indians have a religion and it is just as superstitious as any of the other primitive ways of people including Islam, Judaism and Christianity. There is no god and we need to get over rationalizing due to religion. One persons holy plant is someone else’s devil.

On a more serious note drugs should be legalized but no help for addicts, let them die in the streets. If you want to ruin you life don’t expect me to help you out. It will be bad enough when society has to pay to bury you.

Well, I believe that it is a holy plant for some, and a devil to others.Everyone has their addictions and no one should be proscuted for it.For some its movies, others its food, some its smoking cigs, some its smoking mary.The people with the bad addictions like coke, heroin and other hard core mind altering drugs should get treated for it as if it is a disease because its awful to think that someone should have to do time in prision for having a disease.

a disease that is self-inflicted and self-controlled cannot be considered a disease.

If I give myself Hepatitis C by using a contaminated needle I have a disease called Hepatitis C. In some ways this is self inflicted, but still a disease. Much progress has been made in the mental health field to describe drug addictions as “diseases” or a “behavioral health disorder”.

Just like anything else there are pros and cons to any issue, and the crime reduction associated with legalized drugs would be a huge benefit. There are also negatives, like the direct and collateral damage addictions cause. This may assist the Mexican government in their efforts to stop trafficking. Drugs are one of the only means of employment along the Mexican border, the people are poor to the point of not having many choices in order to make a living. By removing the profit associated with illegal trafficking, I predict, it would reduce the violence along the Mexican border. It may cause an increase in the number of illegal immigrants due to a reduction in the money received from the drug trade.

There is a great deal of misconstrued information about Drug Use Education,which hasn’t just resulted from President Obama’s indecisive direction on drug policy, although that’s part of it. You have to realize that for the last 40 years, Americans have been living in the vortex of a war that has been blasted out in every direction from television programs like the Shield to everyday sitcoms; from the media to personal life. Even our president today and, yes, even drug dealers have a stunted perception of drugs.

When the majority of Americans think about psychoactive “drugs”, they don’t think of them as life-saving tools. They think of them as cheap pleasure trips, dangerous and addictive substances, escape mechanisms, and deadly poisons. Many, like President Nixon, totally misunderstand the point behind drugs.

It amuses me when I hear Christians talking or read their ideas about what Jesus Christ would have done in our culture. They forget that Christ equated psychoactive substances to His blood, and the food to His body. Whether you believe Jesus was God or just an ordinary human being, the whole point of the last supper was to tell people that the fruits of the Earth are to be enjoyed by humanity. And if you are a follower of Christ you must believe that everyone has the right to the gifts that give us life.

Our philosophies about drugs today come from our myopic engagement with them. For some, that means ready about another drug bust in the newspaper, or being approached by a homeless person with a mental disorder who may ever have used a drug in his or her life. Many others become acquainted with drugs directly or indirectly when they or a loved one is confronted by a friend who drives their curiosity. Others obtain them through psychiatric means. Many people think of street drugs as different from those dispensed by pharmacies. There is not all that much difference, except that it is much more difficult to decide what constitutes a dose of a street drug. But with the knowledge most people have today about drugs, it’s hard to determine if they are administering abusive (excessive) amounts. Abusing drugs repetitvely (addiction) is always an invitation to dependency, in which being without them produces physiological and psychological changes that can be harmful and even deadly.

Just because someone has used / abused drugs, doesn’t make them an expert either. Antithetically, reformed drug users are perhaps the worst people to turn to for information about drugs. It’s like inviting a reformed alcoholic to a wine tasting seminar because you want their “expert” opinion. The have one and you already know about it, so why would you even ask them. Which is something that drug users never consider when they elect a president. The fact that Bill Clinton didn’t inhale is immediaely frightening. He was in denial, just like George Bush who was using drugs while in the White House. Then there is Barack Obama who boasted throughout his campaign about his drug experiences when what we really wanted to know is how he would handle the drug expericences of everyone else in the nation besides him.

When it comes to understanding drugs, Americans may use and abuse the most, but we are one of the least educated countries in the world. Our deficiency costs us plenty. Every time we visit a physician a chemical substance is prescribed or administered otherwise, nothing was really accomplished as most Americans see it. Yet, ask any American about the drugs we take and about 75% won’t be able to tell you much more than what it’s for. They won’t be able to tell you how it works, very few will be able to list most side effects, that is, unless they’ve experienced it.

It’s important to remember here that the illicit drug trade is well and thriving, even though anyone who tells you that “recreational” drug use is at an all time low is probably correct. That’s primarily due to the aging Boomer population that once thought they were using drugs for sport, but now these drugs are helping them overcome real problems that their healthcare plan doesn’t cover. It might interest you to know that it is quite common for an HIV/AIDS survivor from before the days of anti-retroviral therapy were drawn to crystal methamphetamine and other psycho-stimulants. It was no accident. Amphetamines, particularly methamphetamine, energizes the body, increasing the flow of blood, and therefore stimulating the production of CD4 T-Cells that are attacked by HIV-1. The reason for the enormous growth rate of methamphetamine has little to do with dependency. Many people have discovered that taking a stimulatant actually diminishes the symptoms of a common headcold and other more serious diseases because it causes the body to produce more immunities that kill viruses, bacteria, and other foreign parasites, naturally. I’ve met more cancer survivors given months to live who have overcome their battle by administering low doses of methamphetamine than cancer survivors who underwent chemotherapy which directly attacks the tumor, but also harms the body.

Today, the hottest craze is medical marijuana which has been a blessing to patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer. The pain associated with cancer recovery can be so tremendous that all some patients want to do is to end their lives. No matter what type of opiate these people take, they continue to feel an incredible amount of nausea and stomach cramps. It is absolutely amazing what just a little bit of marijuana has done for these patients. Our most prolific pharamcologists can’t even provide a precise explanation as to what occurs. And, of course, unlike an opiate, cannabis is not physicially addictive. To say that marijuana is safer than alcohol is a gross understatement. It is almost impossible to build a tolerance to pot. With just one sip of alcohol, the body immediately starts developing a tolerance. In some that tolerance levels off; in others it keeps requiring more booze to get the effect. Alcohol can be extremely dangerous because it can take a long time before the user feels an effect.

Nicotine is another legal drug. The way a user inhales a cigarette either stimulates or relaxes him or her. It is an automatic response, and the user is unaware of it. The problem with cigarettes is that too many people smoke them indoors and the gases left behind in the air have a plasticating effect on delicate lung tissue. This so-called “second hand smoke” is more lethal than the primary drags. It might interest you to know that the oldest person ever to live, Jean Clament, smoked cigarettes until she was 117 years old. A year later she went back to smoking and died at the age of 122, but not from lung cancer.

In January 2008, I joined the Obama campaign to generate an interest in Drug Use Education. I must say, I didn’t do a very good job. However, not only was I unable to meet with the president, I couldn’t get closer than a conference call to his top campaign leaders like Davide Plouffe and David Axelrod. It was one of the most closely guarded campaigns I’ve ever been involved with and I date my involvment with presidential campaigns to the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter when I was just 16. There was so much fear that Obama might be assassinated or the object of a terrorist threat that it was impossible to arrange a meeting with not only him, but Joe Biden, Valerie Jarret and key people on his staff. It was a very closed campaign and a very closed administration.

During the Primaries, there was a vital interest in generating new drug policy as the president — then a Senator — contemplated his promising “Being Smart on Drugs” speech that sounded like he was sold on the idea of ending the war on drugs… until he started spouting off about increasing the DEA. While the “Being Smart on Drugs” strategy pulled the Obama campaign ahead of the Clinton campaign on the issue of drug policy, Obama campaign leaders engaged in a great deal of side-stepping because they felt that an African-American president would not be well-received if the first thing he did was to tackle this issue in the face of an economic recession.

I felt it was a big mistake then, and see clearly that it has been an even bigger mistake than I had imagined, particularly as countries outside the U.S. are light years ahead of the U.S. on this issue and it shows.

Had the president been better informed and better prepared, I believe he might have taken action that would have bolstered his first term. Instead, the continuation of the WOD has seemed to many like quick-dry cement and it will get worse before it gets better.

Drug Use Education (DUE) is best explained as a human rights endeavor. the DUE Process Inititative I launched in 2006 is not just about illicit drugs, needle exchange programs, and medical marijuana. It’s about healthcare, education, justice, and building the infrastructure of drug policy for tomorrow that will enable everyone to have the knowledge, discipline, and trust to access medications without relying on physicians.

Today, millions of Americans who require a controlled substance to overcome medical disorders are unable to find a provider to write a prescription. As a result, many of these Americans have become disabled and are driven by health educators to seek out illicit substances, thus, fueling the drug trade. We know today that the oppressive war on drugs (WOD) did not result in deterring drug use; actually, it exacerbated drug abuse which leads to addiction and dependency. The ugliness of the WOD can be measured by the number of Americans who endure anti-drug disorder (ADD2) that can be measured as some arbitrary period of time in which there is a delay until the individual decides to use drugs. By no means did the WOD ever deter someone from using a drug. The “frying pan” commercials on television are just one example. I’ve met more young people who tell me that their first experience with drugs resulted after watching the TV commercial depicting a woman smashing a kitchen full of dishes than any other single experience. One of them was a 12-year-old boy from a middle class family who purposely scouted out someone from his neighhood after viewing the commercial.

The idea behind Drug Use Education is not new. It surfaced in the U.S. during the Eisenhower administration by the Democrats and although Ike seemed to think it was a good idea, Ike’s VP, Richard Nixon apparently and obviously refused to take part in promoting it. In case you don’t remember Nixon, fear and ignorance were his friends and homosexuality, dope, and immorality were his enemies. There’s some evidence that Nixon felt there was an association between marijuana and gay sex. It’s too bad that Nixon didn’t focus more on immorality, maybe Watergate might have never happened.

One thing we know for sure is that had Robert Kennedy survived and won the 1968 presidential election, Drug Use Education would inevitably be part of American life today and at the very least 1.5 million lives might have been spared worldwide during the past 38 years. Not just drug ODs but the carnage that resulted in SWAT raids in which many innocent people have been slaughtered, local drug busts, and citizens in foreign nations… drug cartels… etc. Patients today would know more about healthcare and be able to enjoy a provider-patient partnership that’s been displaced by mistrust as the DEA targets physicians. There would be no such thing as the DEA which resulted from Nixonian paranoia. AIDS would most likely not be a pandemic. Crime would be dramatically diminished, and illicit street drugs would have long ago vanished, replaced by legal drugs.

If we started K12 students on DUE back in the early 1970s, our education and healthcare systems might never have plummeted in the ranks among other UN natios as they have. I’m convinced that we would have succeeded at preventing drug abuse.

How do we know all this?

Because the plan for the original model of DUE was taken from President Lyndon Johnson’s plan for automotive safety featuring driver education programs in high schools that had a phenomenal impact on driver safety along with stringent safety guidelines imposed by the government on automobile manufacturers and road/highway engineering contractors.

What President Richard Nixon did was to repackage Prohibition under the WOD, strategically using the word “war” that appealed to the WWII generation who embraced the WOD because they wanted to feel that sense of victory, which is, incidentlly the last major war effort that America claimed victory.

Of all U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon, President Barack Obama is the only president who is out of step with the majority of the public on the drug policy issue. If for no other reason, the reason why all Americans need to be involved in Drug Use Education (DUE) is because it can at least tell the voting public how their “reformed” drug using president is going to react on not only drug policy issues, but on healthcare issues as well.

For further information please visit my website:
http://www.DrugUseEducation.org
you can email me at richard@druguseeducation.org

Richard Gicomeng
Executive Director
DUE Process Initiative

Hey Richard, your post is well written and you raise some excellent points. I would have omitted the paragraph about Religion, and I don’t agree with your assessment of the last supper. Otherwise it seems good.

Your mention of addiction appears to imply that the only negative aspects of addiction to drugs are the results of the withdrawal symptoms when the drug is removed. Is that your perspective?

I appreciate your comments, Firegazer, and I agree religion has no place here as it is and should be a personal experience. I apologize for that. Also, because I tend to write spontaneously I could use an editor. I find that when I start editing myself, I often lose continuity, which is one of the reasons why I never authored a book.

With regard to addiction, there are obviously many negative aspects that one can derive from any type of compulsive behavior. I’m sorry if I seemed misleading, but there is a big difference between someone who uses their drug of choice and someone who abuses their drug of choice. Abuse leads to addiction which has cost, social, and health implications. Educating the public to USE drugs prevents ABUSE; stopping ABUSE also stops ADDICTION and DEPENDENCY. By legalizing drugs, the U.S. Government has a much better chance of gaining control.