Glenn Greenwald is having a look at Steve Jobs and how illegal drugs ruined his life.
It’s fascinating to juxtapose America’s reverence for Steve Jobs’ accomplishments and its draconian drug policy with this, from the New York Times‘ obituary of Jobs:
[Jobs] told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.
Unlike many people who have enjoyed success, Jobs is not saying that he was able to succeed despite his illegal drug use; he’s saying his success is in part — in substantial part — because of those illegal drugs (he added that Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once”). These quotes (first published by a New York Times reporter) have been around for some time but have been only rarely discussed in the recent hagiographies of Jobs: a notable omission given that he himself praised those experiences as an integral part of his identity and one of the most important things he ever did.
I’d trade all the burnouts and drop outs who couldn’t handle their drugs for another Steve Jobs. Maybe we could get 20 more like him.
In short, the deceit at the heart of America’s barbaric drug policy — that these substances are such unadulterated evils that adults should be put in cages for voluntarily using them — is more glaring than ever. In light of his comments about LSD, it’s rather difficult to reconcile America’s adoration for Steve Jobs with its ongoing obsession with prosecuting and imprisoning millions of citizens (mostly poor and minorities) for doing what Jobs, Obama, George W. Bush, Michael Phelps and millions of others have done.
It is all about connections. And Black people for the most part ain’t got none. So guess who is going to jail? Clue – not white folks (very much).
Jobs’ praise for his LSD use is what I kept returning to as I read about the Obama DOJ’s heinous new policy to use the full force of criminal prosecutions against medical marijuana dispensaries in California. In October, 2009, I enthusiastically praised Eric Holder and the DOJ for appearing to fulfill Obama’s campaign promise by refraining from prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries in compliance with state law (a “rare instance of unadulterated good news from Washington,” I gushed). As I wrote:
Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing.
Yet now, U.S. Attorneys in California will expend substantial law enforcement resources to persecute medical marijuana dispensaries that sell to consenting adults even though those transactions have been legalized by the voters of California and 16 other states (to see what a complete reversal this is of everything Obama and Holder previously said on this subject, see here).
The article goes on at length discussing our All American Drug Prohibition. And finishes with this update:
UPDATE: In The Los Angeles Times today, a former Deputy Chief of the L.A.P.D. details how drug prohibition “has cost our country more than $1 trillion in cash and much more in immeasurable social harm”; “the damage that came from the prohibition of alcohol pales in comparison to the harm wrought by drug prohibition“; and “that ending today’s prohibition on drugs — starting with marijuana — would do more to hurt the [drug] cartels than any level of law enforcement skill or dedication ever can.”
Ah but think about all the government functionaries out of a job. And America out of Jobs.
H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
14 responses to “Dopers Are Ruining The Country”
I find your take on this strange for two reasons.
First, LSD has been one of our few victories in the War on Drugs. Forty-five years ago, it seemed almost inevitable that LSD would become as widespread as alcohol. Instead, it’s been virtually eliminated. Why do you want to throw away a major victory?
Second, I notice you have a “Stacked and Packed” calendar ad on your webpage. If you have your way on drugs, we will have millions of new stoners, all of them deadset on taking away your guns. And they will be successful. We almost lost our guns in the late Nineties, remember, with far less stoners to beef up the antigun side.
Keeping drugs out of the hands of those who could greatly profit by their use is a victory? By what standard?
A little blog I did a while back. There is a link to a movie with a sheriff discussing the uselessness of prohibition. Guns And Weed – The Road To Freedom
I believe in liberty. It is unfortunate that not all my allies share my views on that subject. I believe liberty is indivisible. Guns and weed.
BTW LSD went away because of psylocybin culture. Grow your own beats the chemistry lab.
See I really believe in small government. And you need big government to run a prohibition regime.
DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT
Outside of Hendrix and maybe George Clinton, the American black community has zero relation to the psychedelic culture. Hispanics/Native Americans have a loose connection to peyote vis a vis the larger drug culture. That’s it. So stuff your patronizing “Black people for the most part ain’t got none” bullshit about LSD. White people are to blame/credit with drugs that are mostly made in laboratories. Methamphetamine is another example of that.
model,
Uh. If you read what I actually wrote I was referring to political clout when I said:
“Black people for the most part ain’t got none”
As I recall quite a few Blacks (you left out the Chambers Bros. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHfB63ln1Ig ) were part of the counter culture back in the day. Of course that was Bezerkeley cira ’67. I have no idea what the rest of the country was like. More than a few of my best buds were Black back then.
[…] commenter at my post Dopers Are Ruining The Country misconstrued something I had written. Which got me looking for music by the Chambers Bros. I found […]
I believe liberty is indivisible. Guns and weed.
What you believe is wrong. There are plenty of freedoms we have, and plenty we do not have. We do not have the freedom to molest children, and we do have the freedom to speak, print, broadcast or bear arms.
If anything is “indivisible,” it is not freedom but sin. You will very rarely find someone who spends all his time smoking pot (sloth) who does not also support redistribution (avarice and envy). Nor will you ever find stoners who are not also sexually promiscuous (lust). And over time, they either overdose or find new bad habits (gluttony). They are generally violent (wrath). [I can hear you disagreeing here, “Stoners are mellow.” Sure they are mellow–when they’re stoned. Take them off it for thirty seconds and they become Charles Manson.] And of course they think they have envisioned the solutions to all the world’s problems (pride).
Note: you don’t have to be religious to believe in sin. So please spare me the “you’re a creationist” B.S.
You are explicitly saying the state should enforce your religious morality at gunpoint, even on those that don’t subscribe to it. That’s some fine company you’re keeping.
In fact model,
My #2 son and I were discussing it in an offhand way this past evening and when I made a remark about the black vs white drug incarceration rate he jumped in with “because they have no political power”.
If all you have left is religion all you have left is a lost cause.
Some morality changes with the times: coffee drinking say. Some doesn’t – murder fer instance. Which category do you think pot smoking falls in?
I hate going to war against Obama with people like Ken, who is the Progressive Right.
Not a conservative thought in his head.
Neo-Puritans
dr.kill –
I hate going to war against Obama with people like Ken,
Amen to that, and isn’t it a pisser?
[…] Dopers Are Ruining The Country […]
I suspect that if pot were legalized, most stoners (even the gun-grabbing contingent) would stop voting.
That might explain why some Democratic politicians have been such energetic Drug Warriors.