Drugs (or the ones that are still illegal, anyway) Update!

Here's a chart I found rather interesting.  Surely the lot of you have read my posts on the legalization of drugs in our country.  No credit is given, because the credit is right on the image.  If you ever had a doubt about legalizing ALL drugs, like Paraguay, here's the chart for you.  NOTE:  Remember, this study was done in the U.K.  And, alcohol tops this list of damaging drugs...but then you have to remember that, of course, alcohol WOULD do the most damage to others and the user, mostly because it is, indeed, legal.  Still...makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Drugs (The ones that remain illegal, of course) and Prostitution

Yup.  Drugs.  AMERICA'S DEADLY SIN.  Prostitution.  Another such sin.

Wait though...Hold the phone.  Are these actual sins America, or are they sins because we continue to illegalize them, despite our unsuccessful efforts to elmininate them both?  Before you pidgeon-hole me as a perverted drug-addict trying to vie to get these indulgences legalized, read and consider this post, and the contents thereof.  Our sin, America might just be the centuries-old war that we wage with these issues, rather than the issues themselves.

With the legalization of Marijuana for medicinal purposes here in my state, I feel its time to address this issue as a whole.  And while we're at it, let's talk about prostitution as well.  I feel it's very important that we discuss both of these things together, mostly because, not only do they tend to overlap each other in a lot of ways, but also because I believe that the same solution to both issues would work miracles.

I'd like to begin with prostitution, only because it's the oldest profession, and therefore deserves the "Pole Position".  Prostitution has been around since the dinosaurs, yet it's one of those things we continue to fight, against all reason, and the problem continues to be heavily debated, morally shunned, and yet it's as rampant as ever, regardless of the law, and how much we try to do away with it.

Let's be clear that I'm not a big fan of money for sex, play for pay, or any of the other wonderful expressions we've come to associate with this.  I don't foresee a need for a "Chicken Ranch" in every state, nor do I believe that women should ever get to the point where they feel they have to degrade themselves to pay the bills.  If we actually had a decent economy and a good number of jobs available at reasonable, as well as current pay wages for living on, I'm sure the lure of easy money from prostitution (or drugs for that matter) wouldn't nearly be as bright.

As long as we're talking about prostitution itself, let's stir in the "professions" of escorts, strippers, and massage parlor "therapists".  Oh, and let's not forget about certain dating sites; all international in nature. Sites like Russian Brides, Indonesian Cupid, and Latinamerican Cupid.  I mention these in the same breath as prostitution, because these sites seem to only serve a single purpose.  After looking around for a bit, these sites more resemble international brothels, more than international dating sites. Each of the girls portrayed in these sites look like supermodels dressed in very nice, sexually appealing clothes to boot.  Strangely enough, these women all speak English very well, and all like to start their conversations out with things like "Hey, you like to have sex?  or "Do you enjoy a woman who knows how to give oral?"  Regardless of their ages, they all appear to be perfect, and begin almost immediately (figuratively) batting their eyes and bombarding you with their sexy phrases, which sound oh so rehearsed and fake and are typed in very perfect English.

And so they CON American men into believing that they can, eseentially, "purchase", for a nominal fee, a prostitute of their very own, upon paying first to have them shipped out and over to us from over the seas and oceans.  Because of our neglect and absense of worldwide internet regulation or law, this happens on a good portion of international dating sites.  See my article on Internet Regulation, also in this Blog.

And what happens, once these perfectlly portrayed prostitutes arrive here?  Let's see if you can guess, just based on this picture:

I really like this particular sign, because if you Google the exact phrases "Russian Brides", "Oriental Brides" and "Latino Brides?"  The first words you see each time are "Mail Order Russian Brides", etc.  If this picture doesn't beat you over the head as to what happened here, or isn't very obvious to you, let me explain.

This picture actually came to me as a polaroid, where over and under it, a woman had written on it what a powerful message this was.  She felt empathy with these women, and applauded their words.

What this woman, and, I'm sure, other women don't realize, is that this is part of a very elaborate hoax, aimed at American men for the purpose of bringing them out of their poverty and joblessness over to America, where they can marry, then divorce American men and then live out their changed situations as our citizens.

Picture this scenario.  I'm sure that each of these women, all presented on the same Russian, Oriental, or Latina sites, probably are all friends, or at the very least all know about each other.  Quite possibly, the management of these sites hire these girls using the lure of such key phrases of "Our bad economy" and "lack of jobs", along with others like "Foolish/Gullible/Sex-starved American Men" and "Fat Wallets" or "Big Money", then telling them that once they get there, and play the part for a time, they can call each other, band together, and get out of the situations they're in by tricking equally gullible American women into believing that they're suffering at the hands of men who thought they were buying sex slaves.  Shame on our American men for thinking such a thing!!  C'mon ladies, the only reason they believed this is because they were beguiled into believing this was what they were getting!!

So, essentially, this is the way of things.  First, they seduce and con the men to bring them over to our country and marry them.  Then, after giving their men what they want for a while, they find or contact others of their "company" that they were shipped over with, and band together to make themselves look like victims, befriending American women and presentings themselves as wronged and abused, to gain their sympathy, and get our help to free themselves from the very thing they presented themselves to be to begin with.  Oh, and as long as they're already here, and married; therefore already American citizens per se, they get a better life HERE instead of where they were, where there was only misery and poverty, and they were forced to marry rich men who made them into their slaves; third world countries like Indonesia; South American Latino areas like Columbia; Russian economic ruins such as the Ukraine.  This is where a majority of these women come from on these sites.  They now can proceed, unfettered, as independent American citizens, to take more of our jobs, money, and welfare away from us.

Strip clubs are becoming the elite clubs of "as legal as you can ride the the line of, get as close to having sex as you are legally able, and get as much if not more money than prostitution".  The timeline of Burlesque, to Go-Go, to Strip clubs has seen the complete disappearance of ALL required clothing to work in these places.  Now, you can get NO CLOTHES, but only if the club you enter doesn't sell alcohol.  They get around that law by allowing their customers to bring in their own.  Nice.  Have you ladies heard what these women are getting for private dances and Gold card club sessions?  Even in Iowa, where I live, it costs you $300 to take these women into a non-interrupted area of the club...for 30 minutes of dancing for your men, totally nude.  After 30 minutes of the way they grind against you back in these rooms, if you didn't have sex, you sure as hell felt like you did.

Massage parlors, although not as prominent where I'm from, often take you as far as you decide to take the conversation.  Often, after the introduction of sex from the client, girls will reluctantly "give-in" and go where you want to.  If they don't, there's a ton of Craigslist ads where girls who are "message professionals" are more than plentiful, and they make house calls.

OK, that's probably more than enough.  Let's not roll over on escorts, which we all know are just very highly paid prostitutes anyway.

To flip the coin here, I do, however, emphasize with the plight of women as part of our economic instability, America.  Because of the continuing downslide of the number of jobs available, and at totally un-livable minimum wages, that $100-$300 or more dollars possible to be raked in daily can look pretty darn tempting. I realize that, given the flashy show of easy money, that women tend to believe, with the proper men giving out this kind of crap, that all they have going for them is their bodies, either as seductive dancers, or as great lays.  There are men out there that specialize in talking to these girls, not-withstanding a fair number of full grown women, into being strippers or prostitutes, willingly.

And if that doesn't work? There's always kidnapping and drugging them when they're young, making them into sexual zombies, hooked on what they're introduced to, and made to believe, through rehearsed propaganda and regular beatings, that in this life this is all they'll ever be good for.

I have also a special place in my heart for the woman that says "I gotta do what I gotta do", usually because she's a single mother with three kids...she'll take up prostitution or stripping to take care of business, or pay for her education, because she realizes that, because of the way her body looks, or because they feel about their strength in the bedroom, that this might just be the best thing they got going for them.  You've seen them.  I know I've seen a lot of them.  They look just like another one of the crowd.  The difference though, is that they either have a picture of their kids hanging on the mirror they use backstage at the club they work in, or when you really take a minute to talk to the prostitute you just picked up, she has a paperback copy of the Grapes of Wrath in her purse, and instead of talking about what sexual thing you'd like to do, talks instead about news headlines and the weather.  It's because of THESE women that I implore you, America, to consider the following.

When I was in Europe, back in the last of the 70's and the beginning of the 80's, I was impressed by not only how open the Europeans were about sex, but that they had catered to prostitution as a legal and respectable profession.  This really only makes sense.  Just like marijuana, which I feel has been long overdue to be legal, the benefits of legal prostitution long outweigh the negative implications.

Just like our budding medical marijuana business, prostitution is handled pretty much the same way in Europe.  It's government regulated, and protection used to deter VD is MANDATORY, as are regular health check-ups etc.  And, just like the marijuana business, the government makes their cut off of it.  Disease is almost non-existent because of this, and the male population is allowed, morally, to get their "ya-yas" out without condemnation.

It's been argued, (as well as statistically proven in many cases), that the legalization of prostitution cuts down massively on sex crimes of all natures:  rape, incest, child abuse, etc.  Down too goes the cost of the unbelievable amount of manpower required to suppress it in urban neighborhoods.

I believe this suppression of drug-related crime because of legalization, to be true of the marijuana industry as well...and of ALL drugs.  I say legalize 'em all.  Do a Paraguay.  The numbers over the last 10 years speak for themselves.  Offer help instead of punishment.  What's more, you take all the fun out of it for people as well, meaning less people will take it up, let alone get addicted to them.  When they adopted the law back in 2001, there were 2000 new cases of HIV every...single...year.  That figure is down 17%, a rather significant reduction, I'd say.  The number of people seeking assistance with their drug problem has more than tripled.  The use of any kind of drug among 13-15 yr. olds has decreased, as has the court load for drug-related crimes.

Crime would decrease big time.  The drug lords would no longer rely on America to make their biggest payloads, thereby cutting down on their presence here.  Users, at the least the ones that have the biggest problems and refuse to get treatment for it, would eventually die out, and a smarter generation would take their place.  I can't express enough how making all drugs legal would take all the fun out of drugs..the thrill of going against the grain would be gone.  I know that the only reason I'm as hooked on cigarettes like I am, is because smoking was rebellious...it totally went against what your parents had in mind for you, so makes it look like the thing to do if you want to show them what for.  This makes it something to put on the list when you're young...and then it hooks you in the process.  If you make these things legal, even for teens, they wouldn't be so hard-pressed to try them.  Same thing applies to all addictive substances.  And like prostitution, look at all of the money we spend on drug enforcement.  Money better spent on other things, believe that.

My stand on this is simple.  Marijuana and cocaine aren't drugs.  They're plants.  Opiates emanate from the poppy plant.  Original "trips" were taken and derived from mushrooms and peyote. These things were nature's offerings, long before we ever knew what they were or what they would do to our minds.  It's humans that turn them into, and then abuse these gifts of nature.  Then, for whatever reason, we turn them into something humiliating, all because we observe the users of these drugs having way too good of a time with them.  If, one day, we made drugs legal?  Then we made chocolate illegal?  There'd be a huge market in selling illegal chocolate that would easily equal drugs.  If you make it illegal, you're going to have a national epidemic of it in the black market and on the streets.  And everyone would be shooting up chocolate and filling up recovery units for the same stupid reasons we do drugs now.  Give everyone the option to do things freely, concerning drugs and prostitution, and it wouldn't differ greatly from the old and time-honored "kid in a candy store" theory.  They'll go crazy for a while, then it will taper off.  Like anything made with sugar, everything gets old fast if you keep the store open 24/7.  And finally, of course, think of all the revenue you bring in to the state.  If you can't surpress it or get rid of it? Choose instead to regulate it, get money from it, and get our country out of debt!!...Worked for Gambling, didn't it?  'nuff said.

Day #4 - Drugs

Sure thing.  You knew it was coming.  What else could it be?

But here's something you DIDN'T know.  I have absolutely no intention to lecture you on the same five major drugs we've been beating down since the invention of the snuff-box.  As a matter of fact, I really don't intend to discuss drugs and the evils thereof...at all.  What I do intend to do is talk about are our attitudes where drugs are concerned, and what we're wanting to accomplish as opposed to the good those things are doing.  That's where the real problem lies.

You see, the thing I really love about America is just how absolutely two-faced people can be.  Parents especially.  Dad starts on you about the evils of Marijuana while he smokes his fifth cigarette in an hour and blows the smoke right into your face.  Mom gets on you about sniffing coke while she inhales a glass of straight vodka and pops a Valium.  But those aren't my REAL favorites.  No, my absolute favorites are all linked to the government.  Cigarette companies continue to flourish in our nation, while the government is campaigning and encouraging law and legislation to get us to quit.  They fight the "War on Drugs", yet leave the border wide open to Mexican immigrants (the direction a lot of our drugs come into the country.)  They jail, where they should be offering treatment.  But my number one favorite is that they completely cater to and fund every single pharmaceutical company in America, and hold almost no one responsible in these companies, when the drugs they produce harm, or even kill people.

Nothing, however, says it better than this cartoon that was sent to me once:

Ain't it the truth.  But I'm afraid I have to leave the pharmaceuticals to "Day 16".  That's something I'd like to cover then.

So we're back.  Let's go over our history with drugs, shall we?

In the 1800's, opiates were widely used and distributed as medicinal cure-alls and not regulated whatsoever. It was when these drugs were finally regularly abused that they became an issue and laws were passed.

In the 1950's, there were cases of marijuana use, but most of it was kept hush-hush.  When the 60's came, however, and well into the early to mid -70's, it was used a lot more, and people that had never tried it before were giving in.  Since they couldn't beat it or get the government to take it nearly as seriously as the more damaging ones, they resorted to dubbing it the "Gateway Drug"...the one that people start with, then supposedly move right on to the more serious ones.  *Personal Note*:  I don't see marijuana as the gateway drug...NICOTINE is more the case.  If you have no issues smoking cigarettes, then you usually end up trying marijuana as well.  It's about the smoking, not marijuana or it's effects.  At least not before you try it, anyway.

Cocaine, another biggie, went the same course.  Just about everybody snorted coke in the 70's...heck it was actually COOL!!  Then crack came along and messed that up.  Now it's embarrassing to say you've even tried it, and if you're stuck on it, well, you're just lost.

And of course, then came meth.  What fun.  All I have to say on that is, it's produced more wrecked homes than any of its predecessors.

Whether it's cigarettes, joints, pills, drinking, acid, opiates, meth; none of it ever starts out as something we want to take with us to the grave.  But there's always a reason that anyone, of any age, generally begins doing any of these things...and of those, there are only two, in my opinion that make any sense or would hold water with me, if I was the Judge of my own court.  One is peer pressure.  The other is rebellion.  Peer pressure, for most in their teens, is extremely difficult to overcome...or at least it used to be in my day and age.  I'm sure the same applies today, but just in a different fashion.  The most prevalent reason to me, though, is the rebellion concept.  It's all about rebelling in your teens.  Against your parents, against society, against the times, against what's happening in the world out there, and most of all, against the law.  Actually, all authority.  And the best way we figure to do that is to try all those things that we're not supposed to do...sex, drinking, smoking, drugs, etc.  We want to show THEM!!  We want to express, in our naive little ways, that we're adults, and we can make our own decisions and handle them.

Or maybe we want to upset our parents or authority figures on purpose.  We want to hurt them like they hurt us.  So we do the things they asked, lectured or ordered us NOT to do.  What we DON'T count on however, is the addiction to these things after we try them.  Then, when we turn to the people we love for help, they turn their backs on us, and you feel ashamed and depressed.  Pretty soon it becomes all you know, and you turn to doing things you would never have done before to get what you need.  And because you're so set on the reward, you mess up and get caught.  Then here's where we do wrong America.  When that person is caught, we don't try to help.  We slap them in irons and ship 'em off to the nearest prison.  Then after a few years, doing wrong and being in jail is all they know.  A good deal of serious addicts become life-long residents of our prison system.

OK, so how do we do things differently?  More effectively?  Well, that remains to be seen.  The war on drugs has been long, arduous, costly, trying, and, essentially, unsuccessful.  Every time we chop a head off of the monster that is smuggling, two grow back in its place.  Arrest a dealer?  Same deal.  We're turning our wheels here America.  What we're doing is evidently not working, and if it is, it's not working well.  It's time we come up with a better solution.

My thoughts on the matter are, education first, and legalization.  Not just of marijuana.  Of ALL drugs.  When we cut off the ingredients needed for production of a drug (which, like in the case of meth, are all everyday ingredients for the most part), raise the term served in jail, etc., all you're doing is causing new and novel ideas for getting high that are still legal.  Kids are turning to cough syrup, taking pills in excess...anything.  It was like marijuana's synthetic replacement, K-2.  Someone out there, one day, wanted a marijuana taste and effect that you could have that wasn't on the law books as being illegal, as yet.  Why?  C'mon you rocket scientists....marijuana was ILLEGAL!  K-2 is killing people, but if marijuana had been legal?  It would have NEVER EXISTED, and your kids would be kickin' it to this day.

You can't take the world we've had available to us before those things were abused, all off the shelves just because it's used to make drugs or use them to get high.  What happens when you take these items off the market (or regulate them...a big pain in the hiney-ho), is, they find an alternative ingredient or find something else to make into the needed high.  It's a lot like putting everything up 3 ft. when your son/daughter learns to walk.  It really doesn't solve the problem, it only puts it out of reach until they grow another foot.  Pretty soon, we'll have to lock everything up.  It's really ridiculous to do this America.  This is how drugs like meth came into existence!!  If Johnny Law hadn't been right there to slap handcuffs on you for the last drug you did, then someone else wouldn't have tried to mix battery acid and anhydrous and make it into a new drug to get high on.

Here's the deal everybody.  Everything you make illegal, or add stiffer fines to the law breakers concerning said illegal substance, it becomes rebellious to do it...thereby making it more attractive to try.  And once one of your peers try it, well, you do it too, just to stay cool.  Next thing you know, you're selling your car to get more and wondering what happened.  It doesn't have to be this way.  If you take out the no-no's, it tends to have the same affect as reverse psychology.  If it's not cool, or if it's not rebellious to do it (or against the law), then it takes all the fun out of it.  I'm positive, as sure as I'm sitting here, that if I hadn't stopped and thought "Boy, my mom's gonna HATE this!!" and smiled at the thought, that I wouldn't even have tried cigarettes, and I wouldn't be hooked on them today.  I even remember every time that she caught me with cigarettes and threw them away, giving me the longest lecture on the subject.  Every time that happened, I went out and bought more, privately knowing it would make her even madder and more adamant that I quit.  Next thing you know, I'm hooked, and I can't put them down.  I've tried to quit 4 or 5 times now, to no avail.

The only difference, really, between cigarettes and liquor and the myriad of other drugs out there, is that they're legal.  And they tried to make drinking an offense...and you see what happened.  It turned the same way our baddy drugs do today.  The mafia got involved, and crime rose, attempting to get illegal liquor back out there for the Americans already into it.  How do you think cartels came into existence?  BECAUSE cocaine and marijuana are ILLEGAL.  Legalize them, and you put the kingpins out of business, just like the repeal of prohibition put an end to the liquor crime wave.  Best of all, with my plan...you make everything legal.  All the addicts that refuse to get help and abuse the hell out of them die off, and a new smarter generation that's been exposed to the bad side of drugs in public (like in Paraguay) will never try them in the first place.

And speaking of Paraguay, how'd that go?  Well, after 10 years, it's going quite well, really.  the move towards help and recovery has tripled, and the new user number is dropping more all the time (teens, of course).  They took all the fun out of doing and trying them.  New cases of AIDS, the entire reason for Paraguay's radical shift in the war on drugs, dropped 17% in ten years.  Our cost to constantly keep drugs away from America is costing us tons of money and taxes, and is accomplishing NOTHING.  And jailing the offenders has more than doubled in the last 2 decades.  These people aren't learning anything, and neither are the ones that are still free.  It's all about the money.  For the customer, it's all about the thrill.  Take the thrill away, take away the threat of jail, make it available at your local shops, and pretty soon those guys are going to go out of business and choose college instead and live for an additional 20-30 years.  Think about it.  :-)