As the article said, most of the violence is from the people who sell the
drugs. When we had alcohol prohibition in this country, there was violence
among the people who were selling the alcohol illegally. The difference is
that white middle and upper class people did not support alcohol
prohibition, while they do support drug prohibition.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of abdulah aga
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 8:53 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Everything We Think We Know About Drug
Violence Is Wrong
hi
I wander would we have still
have wiolence?
Alkohol is not like drogs,
drogs use mor time pro day, and much expencive:
but for drogs wen people don't have many then they are
wiolence so on and so on.
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 9:22 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Everything We Think We Know About Drug Violence
Is Wrong
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Everything We Think
We Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong
________________________________________
Everything We Think We Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong By Johann Hari [1]
/ AlterNet [2] August 24, 2015 Rosalio Reta was at summer camp, like all the
other American teenagers his age. He was a short Texan fifteen-year old with
spiky hair, nicknamed "Bart"
because he looks like a less yellow Bart Simpson, and loves to skateboard.
He was also into the Power Rangers, alternative pop, and Nintendo 64,
especially The Mask of Zelda and Donkey Kong.
At camp in this particular year, he was learning useful skills, ones he will
remember for the rest of his life. Only at this camp, you don't learn how to
canoe, or sing in a chorus, or make a log fire. You learn how to kill.
When I met him, he was 23, but he could still describe the techniques he
learned here and later. Take beheading, for example. "There's times I've
seen it they've done it with a saw," he told me through the prison glass.
"Blood everywhere. When they start going they hit the jugular and -" he
clicks his fingers - "[it's] everywhere. They put the head right there. The
head still moves, makes faces and everything. I think the nerves, you can
see inside, the bone, everything's moving. It's like they've got worms. I've
seen it move, when it's on the ground. If he's making a screaming face, it
stays like that sometimes. Sometimes it slacks off."
I have been thinking a lot about Rosalio as I read the media's coverage of
"drug-related violence."
At the moment, it is widely believed in the US that what the media calls
"drug-related violence" has a simple cause: a person uses drugs, goes crazy,
and attacks somebody. That is what your media is telling you is happening
all over the country.
I used to believe that too. But then I went on a 30,000-mile journey across
a dozen countries to investigate the war on drugs for my book 'Chasing The
Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs'. I spent a lot of time
with Chino Hardin, a transgendered former crack dealer in Brownsville,
Brooklyn, and I met Rosalio through thick reinforced glass. (You can listen
to my interviews with them here. [3] I spoke to the leading academic experts
on this, and pored over their research. And it turns out almost everything
we have been told about drug-related violence is wrong.
Professor Paul Goldstein decided to look at every killing described as a
"drug-related murder" in New York City in 1986, and he found something
striking. It turned out 7.5 percent occurred after somebody took drugs and
acted irrationally - the story the media presents as the whole picture. A
further 2 percent were the result of addicts trying to steal to feed their
habit and it going wrong. And all the rest - the vast and overwhelming
majority - had a very different cause: one that has nothing to do with drug
use at all.
The best way to understand it - and I was taught this by Chino, as he
tutored me in the world of crack-dealing - is to imagine you wanted, as soon
as you finish reading this article, to steal some vodka. You go to your
local liquor store. You put it under your jacket. And if they catch you,
they call the cops, and the cops will take you away. So that liquor store
doesn't need to be violent, or intimidating - they are backed with the power
and force of the law to protect their property rights.
Now imagine you wanted to steal, not vodka, but (say) cannabis, or cocaine.
If the guy in your neighborhood who sells them catches you, obviously, he
can't call the cops - they'd arrest him. So he has to fight you. He has to
protect his property rights with violence. Now, obviously, he doesn't want
to be having a fight like that every day - so he has to establish a
reputation for being so violent that nobody will dare to fuck with you. The
best way to do that is to be terrifying, and to establish your reputation
with a few theatrical acts of aggression.
As a dealer, you establish your patch against other dealers by force and
terror, and you maintain your patch by force and terror. You don't just hurt
other dealers - you hurt cops, and any civilians who get caught in the
cross-fire. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman calculated
this dynamic causes an extra 10,000 killings every year in the US.
These killings have nothing to do with drugs - they are entirely to do with
prohibition. Al Capone wasn't getting drunk and shooting people up; the St
Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago, at the height of alcohol prohibition,
wasn't carried out by alcoholics. He was killing people to protect his
product in a prohibited market. When alcohol prohibition ended, all that
violence ended. Ask yourself: where are the violent alcohol-dealers today?
Does the head of Smirnoff go and shoot the head of Heinneken in the face? Of
course not. It's not the alcohol that has changed. It's the decision to stop
banning it, and so to take it back from armed criminal gangs, and give it to
licensed and regulated legal sellers. If milk was banned, and people still
wanted milk, exactly the same process would take place.
This is what is causing the majority of the drug-related violence in the US.
The killings that are rocking Chicago - the city Al Capone dominated under
the last great wave of prohibition - are just one example, and a huge number
of people are being caught in the cross-fire. To pluck just one example:
Hadiya Pendleton was a 15-year old cheerleader who performed at President
Obama's inauguration, and was shot by a dealer aiming at another dealer. [4]
This is terrible enough in the US. It is even more horrific in Northern
Mexico, where I went for the book, and where Rosalio butchered or beheaded
around 70 people, between the ages of 13 and 17. He was sent to his summer
camp by one of the deadliest cartels - the Zetas. These gangs control the
massive drug trade that runs through the country to supply the US and
Europe, and they have simply taken over great swathes of the country. As a
result, more than 100,000 people have been killed - for exactly the same
reasons the small-time dealer in Kalgoorie was cut up. [5]While Donald Trump
shrieks about the border being insecure, he fails to see that the single
biggest cause of violence along the border is a policy imposed by the US on
the rest of the world.
This violence can be ended, if we make a better choice.
How can I be so sure? I studied the evidence from the US: it only started
once the trade was criminalized, and transferred to criminals. And - even
more crucially - I went to the countries that have moved beyond the drug
war. For example, I went to Switzerland, where heroin has been made legal
for addicts, who get it from clinics. The most detailed academic study, by
Professor Ambrose Uchtenhagen, found 55% fewer vehicle thefts and 80% fewer
muggings and burglaries, and a fall in crime that was - as the study puts it
- "almost immediate."
Do you know how many violent heroin dealers there are now in Switzerland?
None. They don't exist.
There were no violent drug-dealers before the war on drugs; and there are no
violent drug dealers after the war on drugs.
But some people worry, totally understandably - wouldn't there be a big
increase in drug use, and therefore the (much smaller, but real) violent
crime rate among users? I too was worried about this. But I went to
Portugal, where they decriminalized all drugs - and transferred all the
money they used to spend on punishing users and addicts, into helping them
to turn their lives around instead. Injecting drug use fell by 50 percent,
and crimes caused by addicts are significantly down.
When you end the drug war, you can reduce the small amount of violence
caused by drug users, and end the huge amount of violence caused by drug
dealers.
I stared at Rosalio through thick reinforced glass in a prison in rural
Texas. He will be released - if he makes it that long - when he is in this
mid-80s, six decades from now. I keep wondering: by the time he feels the
sun on his face, will the war he fought and killed for still be raging
across the world - or will we have chosen a sane path, at last?
This article draws on material from Johann Hari's New York Times best-seller
'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs'; other
articles published elsewhere have also drawn on this material. To find out
why it is the only book to ever be praised by everyone from Bill maher to
Elton John to Glenn Greenwald, go to www.chasingthescream.com [6] or to
www.facebook.com/chasingthescream [7] You can follow Johann on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/johannhari101 [8]
Johann Hari's New York Times best-selling book 'Chasing The Scream: The
First and Last Days of the War on Drugs' is published by Bloomsbury as a
hardback, ebook and audiobook. To find out where to buy it, to take a quiz
to see how much you know about addiction, and to watch Johann discussing the
book, click here [6]. To be kept up to date on this issue, you can 'like'
the book's Facebook page here [9] and follow Johann on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/johannhari101 [8].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [10]
[11]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/everything-we-think-we-know-about-drug-violence-wron
g
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/johann-hari
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://chasingthescream.com/interviews-2/
[4]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/31/girl-performed-obama-inuagurati
on-shot
[5]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/07/mass-grave-mexico-drug-
war-killing-children
[6] http://www.chasingthescream.com
[7] http://www.facebook.com/chasingthescream
[8] http://www.twitter.com/johannhari101
[9] https://www.facebook.com/chasingthescream
[10] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Everything We Think We
Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong [11] http://www.alternet.org/ [12]
http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Everything We Think
We Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong
Everything We Think We Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong By Johann Hari [1]
/ AlterNet [2] August 24, 2015 Rosalio Reta was at summer camp, like all the
other American teenagers his age. He was a short Texan fifteen-year old with
spiky hair, nicknamed "Bart"
because he looks like a less yellow Bart Simpson, and loves to skateboard.
He was also into the Power Rangers, alternative pop, and Nintendo 64,
especially The Mask of Zelda and Donkey Kong.
At camp in this particular year, he was learning useful skills, ones he will
remember for the rest of his life. Only at this camp, you don't learn how to
canoe, or sing in a chorus, or make a log fire. You learn how to kill.
When I met him, he was 23, but he could still describe the techniques he
learned here and later. Take beheading, for example. "There's times I've
seen it they've done it with a saw," he told me through the prison glass.
"Blood everywhere. When they start going they hit the jugular and -" he
clicks his fingers - "[it's] everywhere. They put the head right there. The
head still moves, makes faces and everything. I think the nerves, you can
see inside, the bone, everything's moving. It's like they've got worms. I've
seen it move, when it's on the ground. If he's making a screaming face, it
stays like that sometimes. Sometimes it slacks off."
I have been thinking a lot about Rosalio as I read the media's coverage of
"drug-related violence."
At the moment, it is widely believed in the US that what the media calls
"drug-related violence" has a simple cause: a person uses drugs, goes crazy,
and attacks somebody. That is what your media is telling you is happening
all over the country.
I used to believe that too. But then I went on a 30,000-mile journey across
a dozen countries to investigate the war on drugs for my book 'Chasing The
Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs'. I spent a lot of time
with Chino Hardin, a transgendered former crack dealer in Brownsville,
Brooklyn, and I met Rosalio through thick reinforced glass. (You can listen
to my interviews with them here. [3] I spoke to the leading academic experts
on this, and pored over their research. And it turns out almost everything
we have been told about drug-related violence is wrong.
Professor Paul Goldstein decided to look at every killing described as a
"drug-related murder" in New York City in 1986, and he found something
striking. It turned out 7.5 percent occurred after somebody took drugs and
acted irrationally - the story the media presents as the whole picture. A
further 2 percent were the result of addicts trying to steal to feed their
habit and it going wrong. And all the rest - the vast and overwhelming
majority - had a very different cause: one that has nothing to do with drug
use at all.
The best way to understand it - and I was taught this by Chino, as he
tutored me in the world of crack-dealing - is to imagine you wanted, as soon
as you finish reading this article, to steal some vodka. You go to your
local liquor store. You put it under your jacket. And if they catch you,
they call the cops, and the cops will take you away. So that liquor store
doesn't need to be violent, or intimidating - they are backed with the power
and force of the law to protect their property rights.
Now imagine you wanted to steal, not vodka, but (say) cannabis, or cocaine.
If the guy in your neighborhood who sells them catches you, obviously, he
can't call the cops - they'd arrest him. So he has to fight you. He has to
protect his property rights with violence. Now, obviously, he doesn't want
to be having a fight like that every day - so he has to establish a
reputation for being so violent that nobody will dare to fuck with you. The
best way to do that is to be terrifying, and to establish your reputation
with a few theatrical acts of aggression.
As a dealer, you establish your patch against other dealers by force and
terror, and you maintain your patch by force and terror. You don't just hurt
other dealers - you hurt cops, and any civilians who get caught in the
cross-fire. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman calculated
this dynamic causes an extra 10,000 killings every year in the US.
These killings have nothing to do with drugs - they are entirely to do with
prohibition. Al Capone wasn't getting drunk and shooting people up; the St
Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago, at the height of alcohol prohibition,
wasn't carried out by alcoholics. He was killing people to protect his
product in a prohibited market. When alcohol prohibition ended, all that
violence ended. Ask yourself: where are the violent alcohol-dealers today?
Does the head of Smirnoff go and shoot the head of Heinneken in the face? Of
course not. It's not the alcohol that has changed. It's the decision to stop
banning it, and so to take it back from armed criminal gangs, and give it to
licensed and regulated legal sellers. If milk was banned, and people still
wanted milk, exactly the same process would take place.
This is what is causing the majority of the drug-related violence in the US.
The killings that are rocking Chicago - the city Al Capone dominated under
the last great wave of prohibition - are just one example, and a huge number
of people are being caught in the cross-fire. To pluck just one example:
Hadiya Pendleton was a 15-year old cheerleader who performed at President
Obama's inauguration, and was shot by a dealer aiming at another dealer. [4]
This is terrible enough in the US. It is even more horrific in Northern
Mexico, where I went for the book, and where Rosalio butchered or beheaded
around 70 people, between the ages of 13 and 17. He was sent to his summer
camp by one of the deadliest cartels - the Zetas. These gangs control the
massive drug trade that runs through the country to supply the US and
Europe, and they have simply taken over great swathes of the country. As a
result, more than 100,000 people have been killed - for exactly the same
reasons the small-time dealer in Kalgoorie was cut up. [5]While Donald Trump
shrieks about the border being insecure, he fails to see that the single
biggest cause of violence along the border is a policy imposed by the US on
the rest of the world.
This violence can be ended, if we make a better choice.
How can I be so sure? I studied the evidence from the US: it only started
once the trade was criminalized, and transferred to criminals. And - even
more crucially - I went to the countries that have moved beyond the drug
war. For example, I went to Switzerland, where heroin has been made legal
for addicts, who get it from clinics. The most detailed academic study, by
Professor Ambrose Uchtenhagen, found 55% fewer vehicle thefts and 80% fewer
muggings and burglaries, and a fall in crime that was - as the study puts it
- "almost immediate."
Do you know how many violent heroin dealers there are now in Switzerland?
None. They don't exist.
There were no violent drug-dealers before the war on drugs; and there are no
violent drug dealers after the war on drugs.
But some people worry, totally understandably - wouldn't there be a big
increase in drug use, and therefore the (much smaller, but real) violent
crime rate among users? I too was worried about this. But I went to
Portugal, where they decriminalized all drugs - and transferred all the
money they used to spend on punishing users and addicts, into helping them
to turn their lives around instead. Injecting drug use fell by 50 percent,
and crimes caused by addicts are significantly down.
When you end the drug war, you can reduce the small amount of violence
caused by drug users, and end the huge amount of violence caused by drug
dealers.
I stared at Rosalio through thick reinforced glass in a prison in rural
Texas. He will be released - if he makes it that long - when he is in this
mid-80s, six decades from now. I keep wondering: by the time he feels the
sun on his face, will the war he fought and killed for still be raging
across the world - or will we have chosen a sane path, at last?
This article draws on material from Johann Hari's New York Times best-seller
'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs'; other
articles published elsewhere have also drawn on this material. To find out
why it is the only book to ever be praised by everyone from Bill maher to
Elton John to Glenn Greenwald, go to www.chasingthescream.com [6] or to
www.facebook.com/chasingthescream [7] You can follow Johann on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/johannhari101 [8] Johann Hari's New York Times best-selling
book 'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs' is
published by Bloomsbury as a hardback, ebook and audiobook. To find out
where to buy it, to take a quiz to see how much you know about addiction,
and to watch Johann discussing the book, click here [6]. To be kept up to
date on this issue, you can 'like'
the book's Facebook page here [9] and follow Johann on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/johannhari101 [8].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [10] Error!
Hyperlink reference not valid.[11]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/everything-we-think-we-know-about-drug-violence-wron
g
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/johann-hari
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://chasingthescream.com/interviews-2/
[4]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/31/girl-performed-obama-inuagurati
on-shot
[5]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/07/mass-grave-mexico-drug-
war-killing-children
[6] http://www.chasingthescream.com
[7] http://www.facebook.com/chasingthescream
[8] http://www.twitter.com/johannhari101
[9] https://www.facebook.com/chasingthescream
[10] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Everything We Think We
Know About Drug Violence Is Wrong [11] http://www.alternet.org/ [12]
http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
