|
The first Saturday of April brings a special day and a wonderful cast of characters to Ann Arbor. This is Volume 2 of making portraits in Michigan’s largest open air drug market, Hash Bash. Also it was my Birthday this week, the final year of my Twenties.
Here is what I would like: Decriminalize all drugs! Doing so would reduce the violence and subjugation that reigns over an unregulated market and reduce the risk for those who will inevitably choose to imbibe. If you are skeptical, I would recommend listening to this podcast by Dr. Carl Hart.
Destroy big pharmaceutical companies who put profits over people! Just this week Johnson & Johnson reached an $8.9 billion settlement this week because their talc baby powder causes cancer. Here is a list of major settlements. These companies routinely violate the False Claims Act and overcharge the American consumer who already has the most expensive medical costs in the world. Most drugs are developed with taxpayer dollars while these companies rake in billions, privatization of healthcare is unethical.
De-stigmatize addiction, people need treatment, not punishment. This is a community effort to keep our people together and functioning as their best selves. Being clean is not going to work for everyone, we must accept this, and work within the margins and in an individualized way to support each other.
Destroy the prison industrial complex. The United States, for all our talk of freedom, has the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world, Two Million souls. Drug offenses account for 44% of all federal incarcerations. This is no accident, those responsible for starting the “war on drugs” told us exactly what their motivations really were…
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? 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.” ~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon Bastards…
Anyways, tell someone you love them today and enjoy every sandwich. -niki
|
