YOu’re right about the titles given to articles by people other than the
author…sensationalistic, attention getting, extreme, what supposedly “sells,”
and so on...
On Aug 31, 2015, at 2:16 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The author, Johan Hari, wrote a book, Chasing The Scream: The First and Last
Days of the War On Drugs. I heard him talk about the book on Democracy Now,
and the book is on Audible. I was very impressed with what he said and if I
were using Audible, I would have gotten the book. Unfortunately, it isn't on
Bookshare. The New York Times reviewer didn't like the book because it
doesn't fit within the reviewer's knowledge of drug addiction and drug
policy. As to the title of the article, very often, articles on Alternet are
given rather extreme titles. Sometimes, a title will turn me off and I won't
read the article. Occasionally, when I try an article with an obnoxious
title, I discover that the article is really informative and nothing like
the title.
Miriam
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman
Humel
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 12:03 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Everything We Think We Know About Drug
Violence Is Wrong
Abdulah and all,
I haven't read the article yet, and I'm not sure I am going to.I have to say
that I'm really put off by the title.doesn't anyone but me find the title a
little inflammatory, a little paternalistic, a little condescending, a
little presumptuous, a little self-aggrandizing, and a little insulting, to
name a few?
*Everything* we (and by that, *we* know the author means *you*) think we
know about drug violence is *wrong*.
Come on now...
On Aug 31, 2015, at 8:53 AM, abdulah aga <abdulahhasic@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
