Jay Lauren's
Happy America’s birthday, readers! Welcome back to my series of articles on a personal favorite topic: the assholes who would like to stop you and I from enjoying legal cannabis. Many of us have wondered exactly who the political opponents of cannabis are and what their problem is, but not all of us enjoy the readership or the editorial leeway to get profanity-laced (and deeply stupid) answers out to the people.
Housekeeping: Based on my past research on the above topic, I have implemented a completely objective and totally impartial 5-part test to determine whether or not a given subject of the month is, in scientific terms, an “asshole”. If a subject is found to meet any 3 of the 5 criteria: Lying, Hypocrisy, Racism, Bloody-handedness, and Money, you can rest assured that they are a shithead buttface asshole. You may also note that because I am lazy, I have messed around with the templating of the series to orient my writing on the above test. More formatting, less words! That means more space for pictures. Hooray! And lastly, there will be no more potty-mouthing comment-jokes about our subjects. That was in poor taste, and they cut most of the ones I really liked.
For your consideration this month; NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which Wikipedia calls “a United States federal-government research institute whose mission is to ‘lead the Nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction.’”
1. Lying?
In May of 1974, NIDA was established under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Old heads will recognize that this means NIDA was created under the auspices of the Richard Nixon administration. Richard Nixon, potential Zodiac Killer, should be seen as the godfather of the “War on Drugs” movement as it exists today in American politics. In the words of Jeff Ehrlichman, Nixon’s counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs to Harper’s Magazine: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities [...] We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
“Tricky Dick” Nixon: “[...] if they get the idea you’re just a bunch of do-gooders that are going to come out with a quote ‘soft on marijuana’ report, that’ll destroy it, right off the bat. I think there’s a need to come out with a report that is totally oblivious to some obvious differences between marijuana and other drugs, other dangerous drugs, there are differences.”
2. Hypocrisy?
NIDA’s shitty science is responsible for the DEA Schedule 1 status of cannabis, under which the federal government considers cannabis to have “no currently accepted medical treatment use in the U.S.” and “a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.’’ At the same time, NIDA has a federal government-granted monopoly on the study and production of medical marijuana for research purposes, which it has regularly used to deny access to actual, legitimate researchers whose results it cannot control. And they limit and tightly regulate their “research” on some shit-ass seedy old schwag that they grow at Ole Miss of all places. Ole Miss can’t even play football honestly. NIDA would have you believe that the better, more potent medicinal cannabis readily available now is so dangerous that it cannot even be studied. Compare: the bullshit all of these self-righteous old men used to chain-smoke when they were young in pursuit of a hazey, fleeting almost-buzz. Why bother to do actual research? Go Rebels!
3. Racism?
It has previously been established that essentially all cannabis-prohibition rhetoric and policy in the United States is firmly rooted in a racist history, and frequently still employed today in pursuit of racist goals. The shitheads may deny that their aims are racist, but they would prefer to ignore that their impact is unequivocally so. And if all of that sounds like nonsense to you, then pop that MAGA hat off for a second and try this google search on for size: “Nixon White House tapes”. Then check out “Southern strategy”. Try reading The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Sound like Fake News? Go fuck yourself.
4. Bloodiness?
NIDA’s primary legacy has been to enable the federal government’s policy of violent crackdowns on drug-users, with one brief interruption, for the past 45 years. Law Enforcement has used this mandate to harass, beat, arrest, and frequently outright kill users of cannabis and other substances without any sort of sober scientific rationale to explain why this policy makes sense. At the same time, the massive black market for drugs created by this useless Drug War has fueled real, no-shit gang wars and insurrections in most of Central America and in other “Countries of Origin” around the world as suppliers fight it out for a piece of the Dream. The War on Drugs has been no more effective than the war in Afghanistan (where we have conveniently turned a blind eye to ‘friendly’ production of opium poppies), at an estimated taxpayer bill of $1 trillion to date. Have you ever injured yourself at work? Your tax money ensures that you are a victim too.
5. Money?
In 2016, NIDA’s annual budget was $1.01 billion. Readers, we are all aware that you or I could just as easily grow shit weed and lie to the cops about stuff. I have personally done both. I have also been beaten up with those big-ass flashlights with the saw blade thing on the end of them. I will do NIDA’s entire job myself for one year for a mere million dollars, and pass the savings on to you.
Verdict: 5/5. Shitheads.
Join us next month for another sensitive, tactful, and completely objective analysis of the life and legacy of Mr. Jeff Sessions, career politician lately employed by the United States federal government.
