| Theory |
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"Left" Prohibitionism -- Dreams of Redemption June 19, 2004 by RedStar2000 |
There was a debate among the old Greek philosophers about the definition of a "good government"...in which some argued that what made a government "good" were actions that compelled the citizenry to "be good".
A most pernicious notion...and one that still survives in the Leninist-Maoist paradigm.
Thus this collection which, despite distractions, sharply attacks modern secular prohibitionism.
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quote:
I don't know what the RCP's line on this is, but I remember Avakian in his recently released speech made a point that in a new socialist society people wouldn't want to do these drugs and therefore straight up prohibition (in the sense of burning down speakeasies etc) wouldn't be necessary.
It sure is easy to "solve problems" verbally, isn't it?
Just say "people won't want to do that" (whatever it is you dislike) and, like magic, they'll stop.
Sure they will.
Especially since Avakian's socialism remains a class society with all that is implied in that.
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I would think that the mass production and distribution of the most harmful drugs would be illegalized...coca, poppies and marijuana and other drugs and crops perhaps including tobacco and coffee to one degree or another.
Damn! The RCP has converted to Mormonism!
You are going to halt mass production of marijuana, tobacco, and coffee?
You will never have state power, of course, but if you ever did and tried something this wacko, your "DoP" would be over in 72 hours or less!
Probably less.
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Looking at the harmful effects that tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs have wreaked upon people in contemporary society, how do you feel about the abolition of the production and distribution of these toxins in a socialist society that seeks progress?
Won't happen...ever.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 11, 2004
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quote:
Why won't it happen?
First, because in any form of class society, including the RCP's version of socialism, how well you live depends on how much money you have or can obtain.
Since people can make money by supplying people with "illegal drugs", they will do so. This is especially true towards the bottom of the social pyramid...though the real "king-pins" will likely be found in high party positions or other lofty occupations where their behavior goes essentially unquestioned.
Secondly, I don't have to remind you that humans have sought and enjoyed intoxication not only for all of recorded history but even in late pre-literate times. Pots have been discovered with the residues of wine and beer and dated to c.7000BCE.
I don't have a number for the estimated population of alcohol or coffee drinkers in the U.S. now, but I recall estimates of 25-30 million marijuana smokers and 40-50 million cigarette smokers.
Want to crack down on all these folks?
Go ahead and try. Just give me a second to get out of the way of the very large and very angry mob of people who wish to inflict grievous bodily harm on you.
It's kind of fascinating in a sick way to see people who want to make a revolution apply themselves to neo-puritanical idiocies that would turn "socialism" into a truly enormous prison camp.
Have you folks learned nothing from "the war on drugs"?
(Note, by the way, that the "speakeasy" has returned! In U.S. cities where tobacco smoking has been outlawed in bars and restaurants, people with decent-sized apartments are opening illegal "mini-bars" where people can come and drink and smoke freely. They can make a tax-free living doing this. Will the "opium den" be next?)
A society that made a genuine effort to abolish wage-slavery, classes, etc. might well see a marked reduction in the consumption of various drugs...but efforts at prohibition are always catastrophic failures.
When I was in Cuba during the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, I was "officially" informed that "the revolution" had "eliminated" both prostitution and the drug trade. One of my traveling companions went out that evening in Havana and found both within a half-hour's walk of our hotel.
Like I say, it won't happen...ever!
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 13, 2004
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quote:
Where on Earth did you get the idea that the RCP wants to illegalize coffee and tea?
From this...
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In shutting down mass production, for instance of coca, the main way it would be done would be through agricultural reform. Making it possible and desirable for people to grow other crops and in a different set of economic relations, for instance in agricultural communes. Same with poppies and marijuana and other drugs and crops perhaps including tobacco and coffee to one degree or another.
--emphasis added.
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I personally think that, as Chairman Avakian pointed out, prohibition of substances most likely won't be necessary because the material basis for people wishing to use hard drugs will - for the most part - be gone.
Oh? Won't there still be wage-labor, money, markets, etc.? Won't people still be compelled to work or go hungry? Doesn't that mean, for a large number, that they will still work shitty jobs for low pay out of necessity?
Isn't that a recipe for alienation...and "drug abuse"?
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I think we have much to learn from how China wiped out drug addiction...
I don't think they really "wiped it out"...though perhaps they were able to drive it very far underground.
It should have been quite easy to bring opium into southern and western China from Burma and Afghanistan respectively...and likely is even easier now. Poorly paid border guards are notoriously susceptible to bribes...I see no reason for China to be an exception.
Probably what did reduce opium use in China was (1) lack of personal mobility -- it was difficult for people to travel from one part of China to another without a shitload of permits; and (2) the practice of neighborhood surveillance -- something that actually goes back to the old Chinese Empire.
The first reason would make moving "the product" awkward -- documents would have to be stolen or forged...something very difficult for what was still a mostly illiterate population.
And the second would make life difficult for the regular user...time and privacy to "get high" would have been hard to come by.
This is another example of the "disconnect" between Maoist practice and advanced capitalist countries. We don't have "a tradition" of neighborhood surveillance and, in fact, deeply resent official intrusion into our personal lives. On the other hand, we do have a growing "tradition" of personal privacy...we link it to a sense of our own autonomy -- something very "un-Chinese".
The present ruling class, through use of "terrorist goblins", can frighten many people into being willing to temporarily give up their privacy...but there's definitely a substantial body of opinion in favor of letting the Patriot Act expire on schedule, for example, while Patriot Act II appears to be "dead in the water".
Or consider many people's reactions to "spy-ware"...they can't wait to download a program to get that crap off their systems.
The linked article doesn't mention this, but it also occurs to me that the Chinese had an argument that would not be available to a "western" Maoist party.
Opium addiction was imposed on the Chinese by British imperialism...the British fought two (maybe three) wars with the old Chinese Empire to compel China to allow the import of British opium (grown in India).
Thus, giving up the use of opium could be portrayed as a patriotic act...a clear rejection of an imperialist humiliation.
I don't know if they used such an argument, but they could have. The RCP and other "western" Maoist parties can't. Not even the CIA has ever had the power to "make" people use drugs. People in the "west" like drugs...they use them all the time. Legal or illegal, traditional or fresh out of an underground lab, we think "feeling good" is a human right. We are all believers in "better living through chemistry".
Except, maybe, the Mormons.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 14, 2004
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quote:
Not only didn't "the RCP" say that, but he didn't either. And more, suddenly the RCP is religious moralists like the semi-fascist mormons.
This is called false logic -- verdicts announced based on false premises.
No, it is called humorous exaggeration for the purpose of making an underlying point.
I never expected you (or anyone) to take seriously the idea that the RCP "has converted to Mormonism" (an American protestant sect that prohibits alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea to its followers).
The underlying point of the joke is, of course, the well-known neo-puritanical current found in many currents of American Leninism.
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What ever happened to facts and principled examination of people's real views?
What ever happened to a sense of humor?
Can you only laugh when I joke about someone other than the RCP?
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Based on what? Based on what investigation do you "think" that?
In fact China had the world's largest addict population when the revolution happened -- literally millions and tens of millions.
Quickly, within a few years, this was abolished through mass mobilizations. This is not speculation. There is no one who denies this, and many many studies that confirm it.
I did not dispute the contention that opium addiction in China was greatly reduced...though I doubt that "mass mobilization" had much to do with it and offered a couple of alternative possible explanations.
What you seem to think is that if the Chinese Government made a claim...it "must" be "true".
What would it mean to "investigate" this question? Did the Chinese Government give 500,000,000 people (or more) a monthly urine test...just to make sure nobody was sneaking a pipe?
You know as well as I that what really happened is that the public presence of opium addiction was ended, drugs became scarce and very expensive (except in border areas), etc.
China was not on Mars; Chinese people are not space aliens. When the claim is made that "China abolished opium addiction", I react with the same skepticism that I would to any "wild claim" that cannot possibly be literally true.
Had the Chinese (and you) made a more realistic statement -- perhaps something along the lines of "China has achieved a 90% reduction in the number of opium addicts" -- I would be willing to entertain the idea as not beyond the bounds of reason...though I would still, of course, rule out their tactics as inapplicable to "western" countries.
But, as with Bob Avakian, you guys show a marked tendency to go "over the top" when discussing what was actually accomplished in China.
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Corruption in socialist China was absent -- startlingly so. Every visitor and observer (of any political complexion) commented on this, and how this was a stark exception to the rest of Asia.
Let's just say I have read otherwise. As I understand it, if you as an ordinary citizen needed to transact any business with officialdom, the custom was to bring a carton or two of cigarettes as a "gift" to the official in question. If the official cooperation you needed was serious and involved a number of bureaucrats, you were expected to finance a banquet with 6 to 12 courses.
Your contention (and your sources) are also self-contradictory: the rise of the revisionists in China -- which had to have taken a substantial period of time -- would inevitably have involved corruption.
It did under Khrushchev; why wouldn't it have in China?
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...this is taking anti-communist assumptions as a platform (assume this or that without investigation), and then recklessly building "logical" structures of what "should" then have been the case.
No, it is making assumptions on the basis of a materialist approach to reality.
Corruption was endemic in Asia and China under the KMT was outstanding in that regard.
Now, you assert that "it just stopped" after 1949. This is another example of your "over the top" claims; if you had said that it was "much reduced", who would argue with you except real anti-communists?
There certainly was a heavily idealistic component of Mao's version of Leninism ("serve the people" and all that). I have no reason to doubt that most of the CPC cadre took those ideals very seriously and were not corrupt...at least initially.
But all?
Then consider the material basis of the "capitalist-roaders"...what could the origin of those views be if not privilege and attendant corruption?
Have you ever heard the appellation applied to the sons and daughters of high party officials in China? red prince/red princess.
To be fair, I heard this one after Mao died...but I would be surprised if the title was not conferred quite a bit earlier.
China was not "heaven".
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 14, 2004
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quote:
Redstar, your defense is absurd. "I was just joking".
It's the truth, so help me Marx!
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Isn't that what everyone says when they're caught saying something stupid?
My experience on the internet is less than two years. But for what that's worth, the answer to your question is no. People who make a habit of saying stupid things are quite serious about it and go right on saying even more stupid things.
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I also couldn't help but notice how tortured your quote of what I said was. It makes one wonder whether you quote everyone so incorrectly.
I did not change the content of your views; I only omitted what I considered superfluous to your central point. I was and am not interested in how "humane" you intend to be towards drug users or small farmers; the central point is that you want to outlaw production of substances that you disapprove of. Note that I did include your hedge..."to some degree".
You have no legitimate complaint.
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...and then liken RCP and I to Mormons I take it as an insult not a joke.
Good grief! It was not meant literally!
Look at all the less than complimentary things that are said about me on this board...and no one is joking, either. Do I get all righteous and indignant about it? Do I complain that I'm being "insulted"?
I shrug it off and move on. It's the way political message boards are.
Get used to it.
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If people in this country want coffee after the revolution, in my opinion, they can either grow it themselves or with their communities or they can help the world revolution and try to change the way these luxuries are produced and distributed.
I suppose that it might be possible to genetically modify the coffee plant so that it would grow in temperate climates.
The consequence of this would be, of course, that the farmers who grow it now would have little choice but to return to subsistence farming.
Are you ok with that? I have no position one way or the other; whatever the farmers want to do is fine with me. If they want to stop growing "cash crops" for export to the imperialist countries when they are no longer imperialist, that's ok with me. If they don't want to stop, then I would suggest that we barter high-tech goodies in exchange. We won't have money anymore...but they will presumably still be developing their own capitalist systems, so we have to have something to offer them if we want that coffee, coke, sugar, opium, etc.
The question of economic relations between a communist part of the world and the part that's still capitalist is a complicated one. Barter seems like the simplest solution, but there may be others.
Nevertheless, all of that departs from the central subject of this thread: prohibition.
Are people "for it" or "against it"?
You seem to be for it!
And my criticisms of that position remain unanswered.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 14, 2004
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quote:
But I do think we will (and must) end the social nightmares that are burdens on the people (and obviously heroin is one, while coffee is not).
Ok, why is heroin a "social nightmare"?
I used to know three heroin addicts pretty well. As long as they could get their drug, they functioned just as we do; they had jobs, paid their rent, engaged socially with other people, read books, etc. They self-administered a "maintenance dose" during the work-week and only used a larger dose ("got high") on the weekends.
Of course, all three of them came to a "bad end"; one was arrested and the other two were "caught" in a random drug test and fired.
I lost track of them after that...chances are all three ended up on the street or worse.
My question is: was it heroin that made their lives a "social nightmare" or was it prohibition?
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We won't end addiction by having some new "socialist narcs".
How else? The Chinese made use of a traditional system of elaborate neighborhood and workplace surveillance...but you've not argued against my contention that this would not be tolerated in the "west".
It's certainly within the realm of possibility that you could eliminate the production of "natural" narcotics...but what of the increasing number of drugs that people can make in their kitchen with a few simple chemicals, not to mention "underground labs"?
Certainly, you could "buy out" all the small-time dealers (or most of them) and temporarily dry up the supply of the drug you wanted to eliminate. And you can shoot whatever "big time" importers/dealers that you can catch. But what then?
Frankly, I think, despite your best intentions, that you would end up creating "socialist narcs" and a lot of them.
And you would still fail to "wipe out addiction".
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Corruption was absent -- in a way that everyone noticed. In a way that is rare in history, and unique on the planet. Petty corruption (bribing cops and border guards) but also macro corruption (buying top officials etc.)
Notice your phrasing? "Rare in history" and "unique on the planet"? You are so eager to portray China as "another world" that you actually imply, if read literally, that such was the case.
My hypothesis is a simple one: class societies are inherently corrupt. Some more than others, of course, but always corrupt to some degree.
Only with the abolition of wage-labor, money, markets, etc., is the material basis for corruption truly eliminated.
I've already expressed my willingness to accept the statement that, for a while, both corruption and drug addiction was much reduced. That's plausible.
What you assert -- total elimination -- is not plausible. And the fact that you can summon "10,000 authorities" to say that "no, this time it's really true" does not matter to me in the least.
When confronted with "over the top" claims, I share the reaction of the old British utilitarian: "when I am told that Jesus rose from the dead, two things occur to me. The first is that I have never known a man to rise from the dead; the second is that I've often known men to lie."
Or be mistaken, of course.
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And it is wrong to ASSUME (as Redstar did for example) that there MUST HAVE BEEN massive corruption of borderguards and drug trafficking.
And now it's my turn to complain of mis-quotation. Search my posts for any reference to "massive corruption" of border guards or "massive" drug trading under Mao...and you will search in vain.
I'm sure there was some of both...though much less than under the KMT.
Why isn't that "good enough"? Why the insistence that drugs and corruption were "eliminated"?
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Either there was or there wasn't...
No, either there was a lot or there was just some.
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The materialist remarks "Harry is a good dude." And the cynic responds: "I don't know Harry, but everyone is an asshole, so I doubt Harry is a good dude."
Actually, it's much closer to 1. All humans die; 2. Harry is a human; 3. Therefore Harry will die.
I do not argue that "everyone is an asshole". What I assert is that class society "brings out the asshole" in people...the material advantages gained by "assholistic behavior" are real.
Moral injunctions to refrain from "assholistic behavior", be they religious or secular, are not without consequence. Perhaps in China, they were more significant than in many places, at least for a time.
And, in fact, most people are not "assholes" most of the time. Class society is an "unnatural environment" for us...a 5,000 year experiment in social organization that has gone horribly wrong. Moral injunctions are an effort to "correct" the results of class society...but they never work for any significant period of time.
Material reality prevails.
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Well, capitalism was not restored through corruption.
I didn't say that; I said that revisionism has a material basis and asked you what that basis could be if not privilege and attendant corruption?
Are you suggesting that the revisionists "didn't know what they were doing" and restored capitalism "by mistake"?
Or through sheer perfidy?
Again, I'm struck by how a-historical your arguments are. Mao died "and darkness fell".
Come on! What happened in China developed over a lengthy period of time...like everything else in history. And it had material roots...like everything else in history.
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However in a metaphorical sense, socialism is so radically different fro capitalism -- that there are real wonders and (forgive me) "miracles" that take place. "Miracles" in the sense that they are so unimaginable under capitalism that they seem magical when you discover that they happened under socialism.
Wonders, miracles, and magic. What did the old "church father" write? "I believe because it is absurd".
Back in the 1930s, people wrote this kind of sentimental prose about the USSR -- "I have seen the future and it works", etc.
Only in the last decade or two have realistic accounts appeared, detailing both the positives and the negatives of the Russian experience. Perhaps in another few decades, similar works will appear with regard to Mao's China: here were the good things that really made a positive difference, and here were the negative things that subverted and ultimately destroyed Mao's experiment.
Who knows? By that time people may be ready to "lay heaven to rest" once and for all.
I can hope!
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"Thanks to Mao Tsetung Thought, Crippled Children Run Again."
However the problem with it was NOT that it was factually wrong...
Yes, and "Jesus" also "made the lame walk and the blind see".
Some folks will believe anything.
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Now Redstar does not believe in socialism -- he does not think life really changes.
True. How could it? It's still a form of class society.
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No one is saying that some old backward element in some village may not still be distilling a little opium and (in a largely individual and limited way) feeding a personal habit.
Not much of a concession to reality there...but one takes what one can get.
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It is a remarkable story of just how socialism starts us on the communist road, and how the masses (with revolutionary leadership) can "perform miracles, liberate themselves and start to forge a whole new world."
No, it doesn't start us "on the communist road". It's a detour that leads us back to capitalism.
That's what actually happened.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 15, 2004
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quote:
You think the central point is that I want to illegalize substances that I don't approve of, but is that my point? Well actually it's not...When I say that the most harmful drugs would probably be illegal, I don't see anything wrong with that; apparently it is too authoritarian of me to think that crack, heroin, speed, etc. production should cease...
So it is your "central point" and you are a prohibitionist.
And yes, by the way, I think you are "too authoritarian"...that (once again) the measures that you will find yourself compelled to introduce will turn out to be very much like what we have now.
Granted you will be more humane -- treatment instead of prison for drug addicts; material incentives for small farmers not to grow whatever it is you disapprove of instead of poison sprayed from helicopters, etc.
Those humane steps might very well serve to reduce addiction (to the drugs you specify) by a considerable amount.
They won't eliminate it.
So if your goal is "elimination", sterner measures will be required. You will end up hiring ex-DEA thugs...or training your own.
To no avail except for the manufacture of far greater human misery than the drugs you deplore.
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Now I don't see how anyone can consider themselves a Marxist and believe wholeheartedly that drug addiction as we know it today cannot be changed, that it is somehow a part of human nature.
Well, Marxists look at history as it really is. As I noted, people have sought methods of intoxication for all of recorded history and as well for late pre-literate times.
I don't think there's very much in the way of scientifically reliable information about "human nature" (or even if there is such a thing)...so I have no idea whether the use of drugs is "inherent and unalterable".
I do know that the drugs that people like attach themselves to specific receptors in brain cells and generate, as a by-product, the release of chemicals that we consciously interpret as pleasurable. And it's a very rare human that doesn't like pleasure.
Accordingly, the pattern of drug use might change with changes in technology (or degree of puritanical repression). But I fully expect humans to be using and enjoying drugs of some kind for as long as the species exists.
Just as I expect there will always be people deploring this "sinful self-indulgence". They'll be hypocrits too...damning the drugs that they don't like while defending the drugs that they themselves prefer.
It's an old, old story...but it very much needs a new ending.
Let all drugs be freely and widely available; let treatment for those who want to quit be likewise freely and widely available; let there be equal rights for "junkies"; let there be wide-spread accurate information about all drugs...both their positive and negative aspects; and then let the people decide what they'd like to use and how much of it.
Oh yeah...naturally private capitalists would not be permitted to engage in this enterprise (or hopefully any other). If your new society is socialist, then you pick up whatever you want at the nationalized drug store chain; if communist (as I prefer), then producers will give it to you for the asking.
No narcs, no huge prison camps, no sweat.
And may a good time be had by all!
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 16, 2004
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There's not much of a war on drugs going on, mate.
A war on drugs would be attacking the large scale distributors and manufacturers of narcotics. That's not happening. The US threatens sanctions against any country trying to limit drug consumption, as they currently are with Ireland.
Wha?
I don't have the faintest idea what you could possibly be talking about.
What sanctions has the U.S. imposed on Ireland for "restricting drug use"? Is this some kind of petty trade dispute?
The last I heard, some 40% of the people in prison in the U.S. (800,000 or more) are serving time for "drug crimes" and even violent criminals are being released early to make room for more.
The DEA thugs have the same legal status here as the Gestapo in the Third Reich...they can do anything (yes, including murder) and get away with it! They've done it!
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you really sound like you live on another planet!
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But it's a fair point that prohibition was not the terrible nightmare they usually claim and actually had some positive effects.
Yes, it gave us all the "benefits" of ...organized crime!
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My point was that there are drugs that are harmful...
Has the idea of "informed consent" ever crossed your mind? The "harm" that we may do to ourselves by our choice of chemicals is none of your damn business!
A "socialist narc" is worthy of the same fate as a capitalist narc -- a dance at the end of a short rope!
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You have a tendency to selectively find the arguments which you find the weakest (and sometimes misquote and take them out of context to make them weaker) while ignoring the totality of an argument or at least those aspects which you have no defense against.
Here is a suggested solution to your problem: don't make weak arguments!
You think I've been "unfair" with you, "mis-quoted" you, "taken your statements out of context", etc.
Too bad! I am not obligated to "play fair" with prohibitionists.
I think your viewpoint is thoroughly reactionary and I respond to it in the same way I would respond to any fascist position.
You apparently envision "socialism" as a society which treats the working class as small children to be "protected" (by you) from "dangerous pleasures" with the threat or use of violence by a state apparatus controlled by you.
No way!
Oh yeah, posting two lengthy paragraphs of assertions that "I don't know what I'm talking about" does not constitute a refutation of my views. I've been mistaken before and I surely will make mistakes in the future...but just saying I'm wrong doesn't cut it.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 17, 2004
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Here is the best work on the subject of prohibition that I've ever run across...
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: the Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter McWilliams, Los Angeles, Prelude Press, c1993, ISBN #0931580536.
It is both scholarly and a masterful polemic against the racism, Christian fundamentalism, and junk "science" that lie beneath the "war on drugs".
If you're near a large public library, they should have it.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 18, 2004
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Has the idea that the drug trade, and drug addiction is not merely a personal question ever crossed your mind?
What's the point of this question? That drugs are a social phenomenon is not something any sensible person would contest.
Nevertheless, an individual chooses to use or not use a particular drug...unless a repressive regime has chosen "for" him/her by making the drug illegal, very expensive and difficult to obtain, or using violence or the threat of violence against him/her if s/he is "caught" using or in possession of the drug.
When the DEA thugs kick your door in at 4:00 am, that's as "personal" as it gets!
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Do you realize that drug addiction in the ghetto for instance is not simply the act of a couple of individuals, but how they relate to an entire system which gives them no hope, no jobs, but plenty of drugs, and then cops to manipulate them (themselves selling drugs, and protecting certain dealers) and oppress them.
Yes, I am well aware of these matters...but people still decide whether or not they wish to be involved. Most people in the ghetto are not heroin addicts; many prefer religion (far worse, in my opinion).
That socialism would abolish the oppressive conditions in the ghettos -- and perhaps the ghettos as well -- might well serve all by themselves to drastically reduce drug addiction in these groups. I would, of course, fully support such changes.
Indeed, the generally "hopeful" initial outlook of a new social order, even if it was still a form of class society, would probably temporarily reduce drug addiction even if nothing else were done. Well and good.
But you are not happy with reduction...you've set your goal as elimination.
The consequences of such a goal are obvious!
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But even in the suburbs drug addiction ruins lives, and I've seen it over and over. It is not fundamentally about "fun".
Is it the addiction that "ruins lives"...or is it the prohibition?
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And I have rarely known anyone who was "informed" about the drugs they were doing both as a general thing like say what kind of drug is marijuana, what does it do, what are its effects, negative and positive, and more specifically like is there anything in this pot, who grew it, who transported it, etc. The same with almost every drug out there, from LSD to Crack. Most people don't read up on these things so that they have "informed consent" before they do them.
How could they? Where would they find unbiased information? In the present climate in the United States, basic research on drugs is virtually impossible.
What we have here instead is a group of "scientists" who begin with the goal of finding more "bad things" about drugs and -- surprise! -- they "find" them!
So people proceed by personal "trial and error"; they exchange anecdotal evidence; etc. They inform themselves "as best they can". They try a given drug a few times and, if they like the way it makes them feel, they continue using it. If they don't like the way it makes them feel, they simply stop. Perhaps that's "undialectical", but at least it gives them something to rely on other than the self-righteous moralizing of the prohibitionists.
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Once again corruption and vice, including narcotics, flourished with the participation of China's Nationalist officials.
It didn't flourish under Japanese occupation?
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During the civil war, one visitor commented that "in five months of travel in the communist areas I found not the slightest trace of opium in any form."
Do you invite strangers to a gathering where you will be using an illegal drug? Do you think Chinese people are "stupid"?
This is exactly what I pointed out in an earlier post: what the Maoists did was eliminate the public presence of opium addiction. You couldn't buy it openly on the streets anymore; there were no public "opium dens", etc.
Just as alcohol was publicly eliminated in the U.S. during prohibition...no bars or saloons open to the general public, no bottles of booze in the grocery store, no liquor stores.
But people still drank!
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The campaign against cultivation extended to the most remote areas of China, and poppy growers were persuaded to produce other crops.
Yes, a rifle is a good persuader...in fact, it's an argument that is very difficult to dispute.
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Penalties against drug merchants were ruthlessly enforced by a government that had no economic or political obligations to those engaged in the trade.
Yes, this sounds very plausible. Other capitalists after 1949 were treated very leniently...but "evil" drug merchants were ruthlessly suppressed.
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According to a high Hong Kong customs official, since 1949 there have been no seizures of opium coming from mainland China.
Of course not. Again, as I suggested, China became an importer of opium, not an exporter.
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Instead, Southeast Asia has more than filled the gap left by China, particularly in terms of supplying heroin for the U.S. market.
No doubt...but I'm still not convinced that China itself did not import at least some opium from the "Golden Triangle".
quote:
By the end of 1951 the New China News Agency announced that the drug problem had been 'fundamentally wiped out' in northern China (which had been liberated first). Southern China, which included many opium-growing areas, took another year or so.
"Fundamentally wiped out"? Ok, let's get picky. How many opium addicts were still smoking (when they could get it) after addiction was "fundamentally wiped out"?
You don't know the answer to that question, do you? I don't either. And, in fact, no one does.
But the "New China News Agency" is, to you, a "source of unimpeachable truth".
I'm a little more skeptical.
quote:
And the development of a new SOCIALIST economy meant that it was possible to provide jobs and eliminate the poverty that forced people into the drug trade.
Did it eliminate the poverty? Or did it just eliminate the opportunity to escape poverty by choosing to engage in drug trading?
Or was it a really complicated situation where many people got one of those new jobs and still did a little drug-dealing on the side? That's not uncommon for American workers, by the way...I've seen it with my own eyes.
Modern wages don't buy that so-called "middle class standard-of-living" any more and you can only run up so much plastic debt...so why not sell some weed or some pills to your friends to cover the "income gap"?
Certainly the fact that some neo-puritan will label you "petite bourgeois" if not downright "lumpen" is not going to stop you!
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 18, 2004
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