Introduction  (from the book “Peoples, drugs and serpents”, D.Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones). 

Many evils are not evils                                                                                                                        

They are only in the heads

Of those who think them

They are again doing as they usually do.

They come accusing, chasing, attacking.

They believe they own the truth.

Actually, they have no idea of what they are talking about, but they say it

with arrogance.

At other times they tortured and burned witches that cured the ills of the poor.

Today they are more sophisticated, but still they continue abusing, imprisoning, killing.

They have managed to outlaw the old medicines, ban the most sacred plants, cut our ties with nature and with Mother Earth.

They are the witch hunters.

They are generally well-dressed people who earn good salaries for their

mission of harassment.

They have well-equipped offices and drive expensive vehicles.

They come in various professions. Some are priests, some cops, and a good

number are engaged in politics in order to approve laws that authorize them to violate other people’s freedoms.

In fact, the witch hunters can be anything, behind their false masks of serious and honorable people they hide the lowest instincts.

In the depths of their souls they do not love anyone. Not even themselves.

Maybe because they know very well the content of their dark recesses.

Their targets are young people, women, all humans who disagree, leftists,

homosexuals, single mothers, and especially those who dare to explore the

depths of their own awareness.

They spend millions to pursue whoever refuses to obey their unhealthy

orders They spread propaganda by all means at their disposal, which are many.

They present erroneous data at their convenience.

They persecute farmers planting because they know, and stigmatize the

urban poor because they consume what they want.

The witch hunters are not many.

But they are placed in positions of power that allow them to organize and

execute their arbitrariness.

What is it that can lead some humans to consecrate their existence to seek

sins of others within a moral where the best things in life are sins?

Why someone can spend so much energy and effort in causing damage to a

lot of good, harmless and poor people?

Maybe it’s excessive desire for power. The need for some individuals to try

to control their fellow citizens to make up for their own insecurity.

Whatever the cause, this is a heritage that accompanies us for a long time.

At other epochs alienating deviations were contained through permanent and intimate relationships that communities had with the sacred plants.

Today the master plants, the ones that generate visions, are unknown or

stigmatized by the authorities and hierarchies.

Their attitudes are based on ignorance and hypocrisy.

In disrespect to the wisdom contained in the complexity of nature.

We must do everything possible to clarify things, to shed light, to discover

the truth.

We must defend the freedom to be ourselves. To consume the plants we

want. To travel into space and return each night of ecstasy and ceremony without asking anyone’s permission.

Fighting for the freedom to believe and to be in a framework of respect for

all rights.

We want this planet to be a society without hunters or victims. A world where humans can be brothers and sisters of each other and feel a part of nature, together with other organisms, plants or animals, who have joined us in our existential journey into the future.

The Witch Hunters

                                          

«If the government were to prescribe our medicines and our diet, our bodies would be in such a dire state as our souls after so many centuries  of censorship.» Thomas Jefferson  

From the early days when the dominator societies were imposed, six or seven millennia ago, those in power decided to attack all those who by their thoughts, attitudes or activities could threaten the cultural and political foundations of their dominance.

The main objectives of these persecutory campaigns were those individuals or communities that kept alive the practice of ceremonial ingestion of plants and substances that promoted modified states of consciousness.

With this authoritarian point of view, any plant or medicine could be considered undesirable. At different times, various customs or practices were persecuted under various excuses or accusations.

In Greece there were several periods and places where the ecstasy practices were outlawed. This situation is well spelled out in the Bacchae of the Euripides tragedy. It tells the story of a king of Thebes, Pentheus, who decided to pursue the Dionysian wine cults. According to Euripides, this harassment policy achieved the opposite result to that intended. Most of the Theban women put aside their family and civic duties and took to live a dissipated life in the forest, with coiled snakes that licked their cheeks, and suckle mountain goats and wild cubs.

The elders of Thebes, Cadmus and Tiresias, proposed to recognize the God-plant as an essential element of human nature. However, Pentheus ignored them, and in the name of health and public decorum, decided to ban ceremonies, promising to «hunt» the offending people in the mountains and enclose them in iron nets for them to leave these criminal ‘orgies’. He threatened to behead the young foreigner who incited young women to vice, 

 «They say that a foreigner has arrived, which in  his lovely dark eyes has the charms of ause of Aphrodite and spends his days and nights providing bacchanalian feasts to the young girls.  If I have him in this house I will separate the neck of the trunk. Isn’t he worth of this horrible hanging with fury and rage, no matter who is the foreigner?»  

Euripides ironic comments about this «stranger» capable of such powers of conviction, a strange «sissy»  that has an incredible sexual magnetism that attracts women, and wonders how it is possible to ‘imprison’ a plant that grows in open fields, « a renovated fruit of Mother Earth. «

Dionysian celebrations in Rome were very important in the third and second centuries b.c.e..  Finally, in year 186 b.c.e. the Roman Senate banned in all Italy i the participants in this rituals, many of them women, were persecuted and imprisoned.

It was supposed at the time that the consuls who proposed the measure   came to «learn» about this «moral plague» that had invaded the peninsula, the night orgiastic mysteries. The defendants were convicted ipso facto. Armed pickets were installed at various points and at the gates of the city.For the first time, Roma closed the doors but not to control the entry, but to keep people out. They piled up prisoners in the dungeons.

In the city there was panic, people trying to escape, many committed suicide. At the end about seven thousand people were executed by knife or crucifixion (5% of the population of the city).

Various Greco-Latin and ancient oriental mysteric religious systems were a form of rebellion against the imperial authoritarianism imposing by force their religion on the conquered territories. In addition to the aforementioned Dionysian or Bacchic rituals, other beliefs that had great influence in the early Christian communities were the Orphic ceremonial, the cults of Isis (of Egyptian origin), the Mithras (from Persia) and and Attis Mysteries (cults of the Great Mother originated in Phrygia).  (to be continued). (to be continued).

From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Antón, Piriguazu Ediciones.

Contemporary alienation, time for change

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

“Diets are privileged spaces
to work on ourselves. “ 1

No culture on earth has been so deeply alienated from the natural surroundings as the industrial-consumerist contemporary world.
Despite the growing crisis, and the irreconcilable contradictions between the strategies and resources, advance continues toward catastrophe with complete indifference.
We must recognize the depth of our historical dilemma as a species.
If we allow the authorities of political, economic and pseudoscience deciding where to continue or not legitimately focusing human curiosity, we will continue to frustrate our potential possibilities.
Authoritarian restrictions and tutorials to the imagination are degrading and grotesque.
Governments interfere in the diet, intrude into what things people can eat and which ones are forbidden.
They restrict research on psychoactive substances, which could provide valuable psychological and medical approaches, preventing also their religious and spiritual use.
They are suppressing religious sensibility, the spiritual links that are based on the relationship between plants and humans that existed long before the advent of  “history”.
It is time to have an honest reappraisal of the true costs and benefits of using such plants against the costs and benefits of non-use.

The global culture is in danger of succumbing to an effort to exclude the problem of their own lack of awareness through a military and police arbitrary and cruel terrorism against users and producers of certain substances that have been classified as “drugs”.
This attitude is based on misinformation and historical ignorance.
Deeply rooted prejudices explain why industrial and consumer mind suddenly gets anxious and repressive against “drugs” .
Changes in consciousness that induce strong substances irrevocably reveal that mental life of human beings have physical bases. In that sense, psychoactive drugs face the principle of inviolability and special status of the soul which has been imposed by the “Christian” ideology and similar religious paradigms for over two millennia.
Sacred plants and their psychosocial effects are also facing the modern idea of ​​the ego, its inviolability and control structures.
The ego is terrified to see dissolved its borders with the world. This explains the suppression of the feminine, which is our carnal bond with nature and the distant past, the deep prejudice that prevents us from assessing correctly the strange, exotic, and irrational terror of transcendental experiences.
In short, encounters with psychoactive plants put into question all the paradigmatic vision of the society of domination.
For that reason, they cannot be allowed.
They must be eliminated, stigmatized.
They symbolize the worst subversion, the subversion produced by the truth and knowledge when they light up inside the consciousness.
They have to imprison all who dare to defy the base of the system.
Global culture, self-intoxicated by poisonous byproducts of technology is the unhappy heiress of a very old persecutory attitude.
The belief ot elites that altering consciousness through plants is somehow wrong, and perversely antisocial.
In short, the suppression of shamanic knowledge, with its insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, is robbing us of the meaning of life and is making us enemies of the planet, of ourselves and of our descendants.
The rulers, the witch hunters are killing the matriarchal wisdom, and in it, the final truth that defines us: our essential condition of natural beings.
It is time for change.
  1 Ref. Rosa Giove, “Discovering the squaring of the circle, ikono from A‘; Takiwasi Magazine Year 3 No. 5, September 1997.
Danilo Anton, Peoples, Drugs and Serpents, Piriguazu Ediciones 

Drugs, hallucinogens, narcotics, stupefacients: a very inaccurate and arbitrary terminology: 

D,Anton

One of the main problems regarding drugs is the inadequate and arbitrary use of the terminology, which is a demonstration of the widespread ignorance that exists in this subject.

In contemporary culture the use of the word "hallucinogens" referring to all psychoactive plants is widespread. However, most of the compounds normally classified as (illegal) drugs ARE NOT hallucinogens.

Another word commonly used refering to psyhoactive substances is "narcotics" . This term is not accurate either. Many products thar are consideered “illegal drugs” have an effect which is precisely the opposite. It is the case of cocaine, which, as we know, is a stimulant of the central nervous system and IT IS NOT narcotic at all. Derived words like narcotraficker, narco-gangs or narco-criminals. concerning the illegal marketing of cocaine, are equally inadequate.

Another commonly used term, with a rather vague meaning, is “stupefacient" (substances that cause stupor). The word "stupor" means “numbness, insensitivity”. From that point of view we can say that there are many drugs that produce "stupor" in that sense, but most of them can be legally consumed.

The term "drug" is also very general and inadequate to describe illegal compounds. Botanical pharmacology calls “drug” simply the part of the plant that is consumed with pharmacological purposes. In a generic sense drug is used for substances having biological effects on the body the characteristics and intensity of which vary depending on the substnce itself, the dose and the person receiving it According to the dose, a “drug”may be "medicine" or "poison". In fact, any substance is nott medicine or poisons, only the dose is.

As for the quality of "addictive" attributed to certain banned substances, it is totally inappropriate. Many of the illegal "drugs" are not addictive, whereas there are a large number of legal products producing strong addictions.

In short, the vocabulary of prohibition is consistently vague and contradictory. The only reasons that determine the designation of a substance as an illicit drug are historical and cultural in nature and concern to irrational dogmatic qualifications promoted by sectors beyond scientific logic.

In fact, to refer to the issue objectively, it will be required to name accurately the psychoactive substances presently considered as “drugs” as well as the relativity of their uses and effects. Only in this way the conceptual precision required will be achieved to address the issue in a reasonable and scientific manner.

D.Anton

Canada Legalizes Medicinal Cocaine

About two years ago Canada approved the legalization of medicinal cocaine.  Justin Trudeau, who was one of the proponents of the Drug Policy Modernization Act (DPMA) now is the Prime Minister of Canada and will promote the legalization of medicinal cannabis and cocaine, and probably also their controlled consumption.  These are small steps to eliminate the harmful prohibitionist policies that have been irrationally implemented worldwide.  D.A.

This note was published in  The Daily Currant on January 6, 2014. 

FacebookT
Canada Legalizes Medicinal Cocaineitter

Canada became the first Western country to legalize the medicinal use of cocaine today.

In a close 158-150 vote the House of Commons passed the Drug Policy Modernization Act (DPMA) ,which allows doctors to prescribe the drug to treat various medical ailments.

The Public Health Agency of Canada recommended passage of the bill, arguing that cocaine has a long tradition of medical use that modern science has unfairly ignored. It especially made the case that the powerful stimulant is useful for treating mental health disorders.

“Depression is no match for cocaine,"says Minister of Health Rona Ambrose. "A few milligrams can help overcome the lows in an individual's daily life. We also find cocaine works twice as effectively as mainstream pharmaceutical drugs in treating ADHD.

“Obviously, it also helps enormously with glaucoma, back pain, acne and plenty of other everyday health issues. A patient will have to see his or her doctor to get the prescription. The dosage reevaluated each month so the patient’s health can be monitored. The process will be very professional.”
Good Powder

Canada has long been known for its progressive drug policy, with the country pioneering medical marijuana and needle exchange programs in the 2000s.

However, in recent years the nation has fallen behind countries like Uruguay and U.S. states like Washington and Colorado, which have all fully legalized cannabis for recreational use.

"This puts us back on the map," says Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who supported the government's legislation. "We used to be the coolest place in North America. But nowadays if you want to get loaded and go skiing you go to Aspen, not Whistler. That needs to change."

Canadian citizens have mixed opinions on the legislation, however.  “I don’t know what to think about it yet. We’ll have to see what happens. All I know is we have the best democracy in the world and the people wanted it,” said Greg Clarke, self proclaimed sixth cousin to National Hockey League Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke.

Winnipeg Police Chief Devon Clunis told the Winnipeg Sun that his police force will be prepared.

“We expect a little more fist fights but more focused drinking," he said. "We can handle it.”

With the average winter temperature in Winnipeg being −20 °C (−5 °F) the Chief is also excited to have a cocaine prescription during the cold, dark, and long winter months. “A little pick-me up in the morning is just what the doctor ordered.”

For popular travel destination cities like Montreal they plan on seeing a boost in tourism.

“We imagine more U.S. teenagers traveling to Canada. They already come up to enjoy our legal drinking age ranging 18-19 years, not like the conservative twenty-one in the States,” said the head of the Canadian Tourism Commission, Greg Klassen. “We predict an increase in hotel stays and bar revenue. We might see a slight slip in restaurant revenue because we all know it’s hard to do blow and then eat.”

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, for his part, lauded passage of the bill.

“Now people can get off my fat stinking ass,” he proclaimed to a crowded food court at the Eaton Centre. "Obesity is a disease and cocaine is the cure."
Blame Canada...

Canada's move to legalize cocaine is in direct violation of its commitments under United Nations drug control treaties, and will likely upset nations still committed to the failed War on Drugs.

“We don’t know what the hell the Canucks are thinking,"  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters from ABC News. "How can they think legalizing cocaine is going to help anything? Medicinal? Give me a break. Maybe they're just angry that all their hockey teams are dog-shit recently. Up really is down and down is up in Canada.”

There is also mounting concern from the U.S. Border Patrol about trafficking into the U.S.

“We already have tons of marijuana coming down from Canada every day. We don’t want to see more coke coming this way. We didn’t let Mexico pass any real drug reform laws, so I don’t see why we can’t bully Canada the same way,” said Border Patrol Agent Dolph Ziggler.

“It’s about protecting our children. Let them stick to Adderall and Ritalin,” adds Betty S. Sembler, chairwoman of Drug Free America “We will fight tooth and nail to have the law reversed. Think of the children, think of the goddamn children!”
http://dailycurrant.com/2014/01/06/canada-legalizes-medicinal-cocaine-3/
For more information we reccommend the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", D.Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.

Ancient plants forbidden

Prohibitionist wave of the Twentieth Century
D.Anton
The «witch hunt» of consumers of psychoactive substances, resumed in the United States during the period commonly called «Prohibition». During that time, which lasted from about 1915 to 1932, the government tried to restrict the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

By limiting or prohibiting the production and marketing of liquors, a crackdown was carried out that led to the emergence of organized groups dedicated themselves to meet the alcohol demands of the population by any means.
These bands kept the state itself in check for several years, until the ban was lifted.
At the same time, the world central societies in Europe and North America concentrated their energies on pursuing internal ideological opponents.
A racist and authoritarian fever invaded Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain, and then spread to the United States under the McCarthy campaign. As a result the resources were concentrated expanding the police jurisdiction and power  for several decades to come.
Once it was found that the alleged subversive enemy had reduced its influence, particularly after the fall of the «Eastern Bloc», the elites of the central countries, particularly the United States, set about finding a new target for their «idle» repressive forces.
Again, as in the times of the Holy Office, they found it in the production, trafficking and consumption of certain psychoactive substances.
In that way several psychoactive plants and compounds were banned and stigmatized, among them, poppy, opium and its derivatives, cannabis (marijuana), coca and cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and many other compounds, with the property of modifying the state of consciousness of individuals..
The new witch hunters barricaded themselves behind government and police offices, travelled in jets and helicopters, had almost unlimited budgets and virtually assured impunity.

Meanwhile, many ordinary people, people who just wanted to satisfy their demands of those substances, some of them ancient and sacred, were forced to  obtain them from «illegal» sources risking persecution and arrest.
The old logic of the Inquisition still continues, but now with a more subtle propaganda and plentiful means.
From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.

Does illegality promote drug consumption? The curse of prohibitionism
Danilo Anton
The demons created by the industrial society are killing their own inventors.
Trafficking and consumption of illicit substances have spread like wildfire throughout the industrialized world. No corner in the so called “rich countries” is free from this evil.
Of little use are international police efforts, the imagination of consumers, traders and producers always seem to be one step ahead of the repressive efforts of the authorities.
As repression deepens, the price of “drugs” increases to consumers, rising economic incentives to produce and sell it.
Long term success in the repression of consumption is very difficult, perhaps impossible. Potential consumers are many. All individuals in the society can, in a particular context, become addicted to drugs.
This happens even within the repressive forces themselves, among political decision makers or policy makers, and, of course, within their families and social circles.
In a society that favors hedonistic values, the last escape are psychoactive drugs. The rich have the money to buy them.Although drugs are expensive, there will be always people willing to pay exorbitant sums to procure  the banned substance. The poor do not have the money to obtain the goods easily. For that reason they are driven to secure the same by other means. Repression of drug production and consumption fuels crime.
Traffickers, who are forced to confront the powers of the states, must create their own devices to counter the repressive action. Multifaceted and international criminal organizations, private armies appear. The drug money floods and “contaminate” all fields of the economy and of society.
Political, professional, military and business people are involved in this traffic.
Favored by globalization, money laundering produced by drugs has become an important element in the global economy. There is no political will or actual interest in financial institutions to exercise any significant control.

In many cases, the alleged fight against drugs, has a double standard, there is no real provision for the trafficking and consumption, and the drug war is used as an excuse to achieve other political ends, such as to repress social movements, peasant rebellions, grassroots guerrilla warfare, etc.
Farmers in poor countries find in the agricultural production of prohibited plants a source of income that can not be achieved with other crops.
These farmers are very vulnerable to repression. In general, they are not organized to confront police and military forces, and are easy victims of the repressive operations, burning and confiscation of crops, poisoning defoliants, arrest, abuse and killing of the repressive forces at the service of Governments and international economic interests.
Global authorities insist in combating poor farmers in some of the most isolated and underprivileged regions.
They use all the possible political, economic and military resources.
In this unequal struggle the poor pay the most expensive price. Traffickers have operating bases and hideouts, planes, helicopters and a lot of money. Peasant producers, however, can not escape, their only recourse is the land and the will to plant. Because of their vulnerability they are subject to arbitrariness and abuse.  In these countries corrupt governments, spurred by the imperial and transnational pressure, are combating theirs own citizens without offering other viable alternatives.

 From:"Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Are drugs an essential part of human diet?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

“Diets are privileged spaces
to work on ourselves “ 1

No culture on earth has been so deeply alienated from the natural surroundings as the industrial-consumerist contemporary world.
Despite the growing crisis, and the irreconcilable contradictions between the strategies and resources, advance continues toward catastrophe with complete indifference.
We must recognize the depth of our historical dilemma as a species.

If we allow the authorities of political, economic and pseudoscience deciding where to continue or not legitimately focusing human curiosity, we will continue to frustrate our potential possibilities.
Authoritarian restrictions and tutorials to the imagination are degrading and grotesque.
Governments interfere in the diet, intrude into what things people can eat and which ones are forbidden.
They restrict research on psychoactive substances, which could provide valuable psychological and medical approaches, preventing also their religious and spiritual use.
They are suppressing religious sensibility, the spiritual links that are based on the relationship between plants and humans that existed long before the advent of  “history”.
It is time to have an honest reappraisal of the true costs and benefits of using such plants against the costs and benefits of non-use.
 The global culture is in danger of succumbing to an effort to exclude the problem of their own lack of awareness through a military and police arbitrary and cruel terrorism against users and producers of certain substances that have been classified as “drugs”.
This attitude is based on misinformation and historical ignorance.
Deeply rooted prejudices explain why industrial and consumer mind suddenly gets anxious and repressive against “drugs” .
Changes in consciousness that induce strong substances irrevocably reveal that mental life of human beings have physical bases. In that sense, psychoactive drugs face the principle of inviolability and special status of the soul which has been imposed by the “Christian” ideology and similar religious paradigms for over two millennia.
Sacred plants and their psychosocial effects are also facing the modern idea of ​​the ego, its inviolability and control structures.

The ego is terrified to see dissolved its borders with the world. This explains the suppression of the feminine, which is our carnal bond with nature and the distant past, the deep prejudice that prevents us from assessing correctly the strange, exotic, and irrational terror of transcendental experiences.
In short, encounters with psychoactive plants put into question all the paradigmatic vision of the society of domination.
For that reason, they cannot be allowed.
They must be eliminated, stigmatized.
They symbolize the worst subversion, the subversion produced by the truth and knowledge when they light up inside the consciousness.
They have to imprison all who dare to defy the base of the system.
Global culture, self-intoxicated by poisonous byproducts of technology is the unhappy heiress of a very old persecutory attitude.
The belief ot elites that altering consciousness through plants is somehow wrong, and perversely antisocial.

In short, the suppression of shamanic knowledge, with its insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, is robbing us of the meaning of life and is making us enemies of the planet, of ourselves and of our descendants.
The rulers, the witch hunters are killing the matriarchal wisdom, and in it, the final truth that defines us: our essential condition of natural beings.
It is time for change.
 1 Ref. Rosa Giove, “Discovering the squaring of the circle, ikono from A ‘; Takiwasi Magazine Year 3 No. 5, September 1997.
From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.

Marihuana fake legality

Legalization of cannabis in Uruguay

The legalization of cannabis in Uruguay is having problems for their application. There are many aspects that need to be solved. Whoever produces cannabis and sell it, even if it is very little may end in jail for several months. 

There are judges and some police authorities that interpret the law in their own way. And there are still many prejudices. A lot needs to be done to properly apply President Mujica's initiative. The following article describes the problems arising from the inadequate application of the Cannabis Legalization Law.

http://druglawreform.info/en/publications/systems-overload/item/874-drug-laws-and-prisons-in-uruguay

Drug Laws and Prisons in Uruguay

Systems Overload: Drug Laws and Prisons in Latin America

Uruguay has one of the most advanced drug policies on the continent. In Uruguay, the law does not criminalize drug use or possession of drugs for personal use. In addition, in recent years its national drug policies have prioritized the prosecution of medium and large-scale traffickers rather than focusing resources and energy on small-time dealers who are easily replaced. This country study examines the scope of the legislation, the policies developed and how the normative and policy frameworks find expression in Uruguay’s prison system, with a special focus on the population incarcerated for drug-related offenses.

Much like other Southern Cone countries, Uruguay has historically served as a transit country for controlled substances on their way to Europe. An important change in the use of controlled substances, associated with their availability on the drug market, has taken place over the last fifteen years in southern Latin America, especially in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.

As an indirect effect of international interdiction policies, and as a result of other factors that are yet to be well understood, laboratories producing cocaine hydrochloride began to appear in the Southern Cone countries. “Paco”, a substance whose origin can still not be determined with certainty, began to appear in drug markets in these countries.

In Uruguay, the law does not criminalize drug use or possession for personal consumption. In recent years, Uruguayan national drug policies have focused on specific directives, for both police and judicial personnel, aimed at prioritizing the repression of medium and large traffickers, and not at small-scale drug dealers. The impact of these directives in terms of drug policies cannot yet be fully evaluated. Nonetheless, a prison crisis persists in Uruguay in which ever larger numbers of youths, and other vulnerable sectors of society, situated at the lowest levels of the drug-trafficking chain are entering the prison system.

As revealed in the Uruguay chapter of the research study Systems Overload: Drug Laws and Prisons in Latin America, most of the police drug seizure operations confiscate only 10 grams of drugs or less, usually marihuana. In other words, although the policy guidelines recommend focusing operations on middle and large-scale drug traffickers, most of the operations actually deal with cases of possession where quantities of substances are close to the limit defined as possession for use. And in trafficking cases, they usually relate to small-scale dealing. (Consult the study for these and more statistics.)

“The fact that most of the drug seizure operations are to confiscate 10 grams or less, usually of marijuana, is a waste of police and judicial resources,” says Giorgina Garibotto, researcher for the Uruguay chapter. “The country’s recent drug policy objective – to get the police to target middle and large-scale drug traffickers – has yet to be realized in practice.”

The case of cocaine base paste (PBC) is worth a special mention because although specific guidelines exist to prioritize tackling points of sale of this substance, it can be seen that in 258 cases only two grams or less of PBC were confiscated. This brings up the question of whether it is actually the traffickers of this substance who are being detained, or merely the most vulnerable users.

The percentage of the population imprisoned for drug related crimes (11 percent) is still low compared to other crimes and compared to other Latin American countries. However, the justice system and prison systems are plagued by delays in issuing sentences, insufficient use of alternative penalties, and its abuse of preventive detention.

“Those who are put on trial for 10 grams of drugs or less should be candidates for alternative sanctions, and under no circumstances should they be sent to high security prisons,” states Garibotto. “In many cases, the use of alternative penalties is a better option, as imprisonment has a profoundly negative impact on the lives of these young people and their families.”

The prisoners interviewed for this study described some of these negative impacts. For example, in one case a 21-year-old student told how he decided to plant seven cannabis plants in his plant nursery and acknowledged that he committed the crime of selling small amounts of marijuana to some people he knew. This young man explained that one day the house was raided and both he and his father were arrested. Now, he regrets that he has to serve a sentence of 2 years and 4 months for the sale and production of marijuana, and that his father, who was months away from retirement, was given an 8 month sentence for production, causing him to lose his income. The marihuana, plants, and seeds the police found in his house didn’t amount to more than 10 grams (in total).

“This case makes one question whether this young man received a proportionate and appropriate sentence for the crime he committed,” says Garibotto. “Cases like this contribute to overloading the prison system without a clear justification.”

Uruguay has the second highest prison population rate in Latin America, a rate that continues to rise. In 2009 the situation of overcrowding had reached a level of 138 percent occupancy. One of the prisoners interviewed, for example, shares a three-person cell with seven other men. During 2010, the new government increased the Ministry of the Interior’s budget and a significant part of this will go to improving and strengthening the prison system.

Why is marijuana illegal? (almost everywhere)

Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.  The actual story shows a much different picture. Those who voted on the legal fate of this plant never had the facts, but were dependent on information supplied by those who had a specific agenda to deceive lawmakers. You’ll see below that the very first federal vote to prohibit marijuana was based entirely on a documented lie on the floor of the Senate.

You’ll also see that the history of marijuana’s criminalization is filled with:

• Racism
• Fear
• Protection of Corporate Profits
• Yellow Journalism
• Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
• Personal Career Advancement and Greed

These are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.

Background

For most of human history, marijuana has been completely legal. It’s not a recently discovered plant, nor is it a long-standing law. Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it’s been in use. Its known uses go back further than 7,000 B.C. and it was legal as recently as when Ronald Reagan was a boy. The marijuana (hemp) plant, of course, has an incredible number of uses. The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp, and over the centuries the plant was used for food, incense, cloth, rope, and much more. This adds to some of the confusion over its introduction in the United States, as the plant was well known from the early 1600’s, but did not reach public awareness as a recreational drug until the early 1900’s. America’s first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. It was a law “ordering” all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. There were several other “must grow” laws over the next 200 years (you could be jailed for not growing hemp during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767), and during most of that time, hemp was legal tender (you could even pay your taxes with hemp — try that today!) Hemp was such a critical crop for a number of purposes (including essential war requirements – rope, etc.) that the government went out of its way to encourage growth.  The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp “plantations” (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton.

The Mexican Connection

In the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing’s army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce. One of the “differences” seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them, and it was through this that California apparently passed the first state marijuana law, outlawing “preparations of hemp, or loco weed.” However, one of the first state laws outlawing marijuana may have been influenced, not just by Mexicans using the drug, but, oddly enough, because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church’s reaction to this may have contributed to the state’s marijuana law. 

(Note: the source for this speculation is from articles by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law at USC Law School in a paper for the Virginia Law Review, and a speech to the California Judges Association (sourced below). Mormon blogger Ardis Parshall disputes this.)

Reference:                 http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

The prohibitionist wave of the Twentieth century

D.Anton

The "witch hunt", referring to users of psychoactive substances, resumed in the United States during the period commonly called "Prohibition". During that time, which lasted from about 1915 to 1932, the authorities tried to restrict the consumption of alcohol. By limiting or prohibiting the production and marketing of liquors, the repression led to the emergence of organized groups dedicated to meet the demands of those people who wanted to obtain the substances by any means. These bands kept the government in check for several years, until the ban was repealed.

At the same time, central societies concentrated their energies on pursuing internal ideological opponents. The anticommunist fever that invaded Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain of Francoism, and then spread to the United States with the McCarthyite phenomenon, were the priority of the police forces for several decades.

Once it was found that the alleged subversive enemy had reduced its influence, particularly after the fall of the "Eastern Bloc", the elites of the central countries, particularly the United States, set about finding a new target to take their "idle" repressive forces.

Again, as in the times of the Holy Office, they found it in the production, trafficking and consumption of certain psychoactive substances.

So they several plants and their derivatives were banned and stigmatized: poppy, opium, morphine, heroine, marijuana, coca and cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and many other natural substances or synthetic substances which had the property of modifying the state of consciousness.

The new witch hunters were barricaded behind government and police offices, had great powers, could use jets and helicopters, had almost unlimited budgets and virtually assured impunity.

Meanwhile, many ordinary people, people who just wanted to satisfy their demands to modify their states of consciousness, have been forced to dispense with the forbidden substances, or obtain the "illegally" risking persecution and arrest.

The old logic of the Inquisition still continues, but now with a more subtle propaganda and many more material means.

From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.+

What is a "drug"?

Danilo Antón

Questions  of terminology

  Claiming that drugs kill is as foolish as saying 
that water drowns or drugs illuminate

One of the main problems in the drugs issues is the inadequate and arbitrary use of terminology. It shows the widespread ignorance that exists in this field.

In contemporary culture the word "hallucinogen" is used referring to all psychoactive plants. In fact, most of the compounds classified as illegal are not hallucinogens.

Another term frequently used is “narcotic". Paradoxically this expression applies to many substances whose effect is precisely the opposite, such as cocaine, which as we know is a central nervous system stimulant. Derived words as "narco" referred to smugglers or marketing of cocaine, are equally inadequate.

Another commonly used term, of rather vague meaning, is “stupefacients” (substances that cause stupor). The word "stupor" has two main meanings: a) astonishment b) numbness, insensitivity. From that point of view we can say that there are many drugs that produce "stupor" in either way, most of which can be legally used.

The very term "drug" is also quite general and inadequate to describe illegal compounds. Botanical drug pharmacology called “drug” simply the part of the plant used¹⁰. In a generic sense drug is a substance having biological effects on the body whose characteristics and intensity vary with the dose. In the first case it could also be called "medicine" and in the second case "poison". In fact, substances are not poison or medicines, only the dose are.

As for the quality of "addictive" attributed to certain banned substances, it is totally inappropriate. Many of the illegal "drugs" are not addictive, whereas there are a number of legal products that produce strong addictions.

In short, the vocabulary of prohibition is consistently vague and contradictory. The only reasons that determine the designation of a substance as an illicit drug are historical and cultural in nature and relate to irrational dogmatic qualifications promoted without any scientific basis.

In fact, to refer to this issue objectively, it is required to consider the relativity of the uses and effects of various psychoactive substances. Only in this way the conceptual precision required will be achieved in a reasonable manner.

Risk plants

With moderate consumption most psychoactive plants that are relatively harmless, but there are many others whose improper use may involve risks of negative side effects.

However, even the riskiest plants can be used safely if there is a traditional, usually ceremonial, harmonious and appropriate framework.

Unfortunately, prevailing prohibitionist societies have eliminated balanced ceremonial use of psychoactive plants and instead developed distorted consumption, both in terms of substance preparation and the social conditions in which they are used.

Paradoxically the most significant psychoactive plants, those whose use was a fundamental pillar of human societies were gradually eradicated from the global culture. Often they were banned and stigmatized..

In everyday reality, present humans, descendants of primates that fed on psychoactive substances, still need this type of food to nourish their minds, but they do not have them because the system has outlawed their consumption. Humans experience this absence as if they lack something that is difficult to identify, and individuals trying to fill that void tend to use substances that mimic the effects of the original principles, but that normally don't have the combination of elements and the social and natural environment necessary to ensure their ancestral effects.

The artificiality of nature is also expressed in the processes of industrialization and trivialization of the Master Plants: cocaine, morphine, heroin, LSD, distilled alcohol, are all substances arising from the individual need that is not met by the socially approved diets. The same system that represses the ancient substances is the same that create the new sinthetic ones. In a twisted logic, the global civilization generates its own demons, which then become its worst enemies.

While unsuccessfully pursuing these synthetic compounds, the global police system is raging in a relentless fight against the Master Plants, plant that dilute the ego and create a social and ethical environment of cooperation.

To better carry out their economic purposes industrial society promoted the substitution of banned substances for other products with properties more adjusted to the egocentric and aggressive nature of the dominant global society.

From the book "Drugs, Peoples and Serpents", Danilo Antón, ¨Piriguazú Ediciones.