Post by addisona on Nov 23, 2022 12:13:27 GMT
“The police and they justice, they laughing while they bust us. You got to get down; take a good half-pound and smoke it all around.”
— War
I guess the nationally syndicated conservative columnists who have jumped en masse off the Trump bandwagon like fleas from a dead dog after the general election think we don’t note the sudden change in their once unshakable faith in the former president, a change many more cynical people might call hypocrisy.
— War
I guess the nationally syndicated conservative columnists who have jumped en masse off the Trump bandwagon like fleas from a dead dog after the general election think we don’t note the sudden change in their once unshakable faith in the former president, a change many more cynical people might call hypocrisy.
One of the most egregious, Michael Reagan (whose column runs in this newspaper), decided he’d stop criticizing everything President Biden does and blame Trump for the less-than-stellar showing by Republicans in an election that he’d boldly — and wrongly — predicted would be an overwhelming GOP victory. Poor Reagan was so shaken, he — after taking his regular swipes at Biden and then condemning Trump — decided to write about something other than politics, an unheard-of development.
He chose the fentanyl crisis, which is indeed a plague on America. But, of course, his attempt to make it political came off as little more than his attempt to blame the deadly drug crisis on Democrats. (Oddly enough, he didn’t spend much ink ... well, no ink at all, actually ... talking about how some Senators wanted to impeach then-President Ronald Reagan for trading weapons for drug money to supply Central American rebels ... Ooops.)
Any person in his right mind would indeed call for our leaders to do something — anything! — to combat the fentanyl crisis, which was responsible for a large percentage of the 109,000 drug-related deaths (according to the CDC) in this country in 2022 and is so potentially deadly just touching a miniscule amount could end a life. However, just like all other attempts to stop such a drug is the misguided belief by our leaders that they can strong-arm offenders to a degree that the drugs will magically disappear.
It’s as if they don’t get that this just doesn’t work.
He chose the fentanyl crisis, which is indeed a plague on America. But, of course, his attempt to make it political came off as little more than his attempt to blame the deadly drug crisis on Democrats. (Oddly enough, he didn’t spend much ink ... well, no ink at all, actually ... talking about how some Senators wanted to impeach then-President Ronald Reagan for trading weapons for drug money to supply Central American rebels ... Ooops.)
Any person in his right mind would indeed call for our leaders to do something — anything! — to combat the fentanyl crisis, which was responsible for a large percentage of the 109,000 drug-related deaths (according to the CDC) in this country in 2022 and is so potentially deadly just touching a miniscule amount could end a life. However, just like all other attempts to stop such a drug is the misguided belief by our leaders that they can strong-arm offenders to a degree that the drugs will magically disappear.
It’s as if they don’t get that this just doesn’t work.
From our government’s attempt to wipe out Mexican poppy fields by burning them — they came back — to locking up millions of men and women on small marijuana possession charges (most of them black), to the laughable “Just Say No” campaign that Ronald Reagan championed, attempts to win the “war on drugs” has been a dismal failure.
Like President Reagan, Michael Reagan — politically, of course — tried to point an all-encompassing finger at some perceived boogey man, in his case the Mexican cartels, as the cause of the American drug crisis. Unable to let go completely of his oft-battered theme, the columnist laments the fact that the failure (by Democrats) to complete Trump’s ill-conceived wall (that the Mexicans were going to pay for) and Biden’s bungled attempts to handle the “border crisis” were allowing fentanyl to become its own epidemic.
What Reagan didn’t say, and what tough-on-drugs Washington bureaucrats would never admit, is that we need to look closer to home if we want to place blame for the American drug crisis. In fact, we need look no farther than our own neighborhoods. Because, even if we hate to admit it, the American fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, ice, crack and every other kind of illicit drug crisis we face is an American problem.
There’s this fact of life in the retail business: If there is no demand for the product you’re supplying, the product will dry up and blow away. For a time, people were so anxious to get the latest Beanie Babies, for instance, they’d pay hundreds of dollars for a $5 plushie. (Sadly, most of the people who created this craze either didn’t have children or wouldn’t let their kids play with the toys when they bought them, bringing to mind drivin’ n cryin’s “A toy never played with is not a toy at all.”)
No, the drug crisis in this country has been created not by the suppliers, but by the demand for their products. Some of those staunchest, toughest-talking anti-drug officials are getting their own taste of the sales or are driving up the demand for the product by their own usage. The cartels would go broke without them and others who find they can’t make it in life without these illicit drugs.
The whole sordid thing reminds me of that old saying that — while it sounds facetious, it’s absolutely true: “We’ve been fighting the war on drugs for decades. When will we realize ... the drugs won.”