Another victim
Of the war on drugs
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare -
--Sun. Tzu. "The Art of War"
Philip Seymour Hoffman was a victim of the war on drugs. Instead of treating opioid addiction as a health problem, we choose to handle it as a crime. It is well known and commonly reported that addicts turn to heroin as prescription opioid supplies dry up in government driven crack downs. Huge government subsidies given to for-profit prisons, gun manufacturers and law enforcement, only to be plowed back through lobbyists into the hands of lawmakers. Needless to say there is little incentive to change the current system by any of them.
Many local law enforcement agencies have themselves become dependent on the flow of property and cash that they are permitted to seize from drug activity. This has led in many cases to the corruption of local departments, who illegally seize private property of the innocent, under financial pressures when drug crimes decrease. See : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation-july-dec13-assets_08-19/.
Many local law enforcement agencies have themselves become dependent on the flow of property and cash that they are permitted to seize from drug activity. This has led in many cases to the corruption of local departments, who illegally seize private property of the innocent, under financial pressures when drug crimes decrease. See : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation-july-dec13-assets_08-19/.
There was methadone found in Hoffman's apartment, so he was apparently trying to get clean. He went through rehab successfully and stayed clean for many years. The likely cause of his relapse were prescription medications that insidiously overtook his better judgement. What happened next happens to many: drugs lead to loss of control, making his addiction harder to hide from doctors, who feared prosecution for overprescribing pain meds. As the scripts that he could obviously afford became scarce, he turned back to an unclean, unregulated street drug that caused his death. It is sad to consider that this very common chain of events could have been interrupted at several points, if treatment in this country didn't take a back seat to criminal punishment and the press of the drug war.
Ironically, the enforcement of drug laws has a long history of outright contempt for public health and welfare. In the 1970's, the DEA sprayed marijuana cultivated in Mexico with Paraquat, an herbicide known to cause health problems in U.S. drug users. Going back as far as Prohibition, the government intentionally poisoned liquor with wood alcohol (so called denatured alcohol) even though they knew it was blinding, crippling and killing tens of thousands of people each year.
Ironically, the enforcement of drug laws has a long history of outright contempt for public health and welfare. In the 1970's, the DEA sprayed marijuana cultivated in Mexico with Paraquat, an herbicide known to cause health problems in U.S. drug users. Going back as far as Prohibition, the government intentionally poisoned liquor with wood alcohol (so called denatured alcohol) even though they knew it was blinding, crippling and killing tens of thousands of people each year.
Dr. Charles Norris, medical examiner and father of modern forensics said when he found the cause of the dramatic rise in methanol deaths in New York City:
"The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol..."[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible." http://sites.inventiveworkshop.com/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States.html
The gruesome details of wood alcohol poisoning were well known, and it was even argued that the people who continued to drink it and were poisoned would serve as a deterrent to others. In "The Poisoner's Handbook" it says:
"As methanol breaks down inside the body, it produces formaldehyde, and then formic acid. This destroys the optic nerve. Vision blurs, and blindness closes in. Meanwhile, the victim suffers acute nausea, then seizures, and descends into a coma." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/poisoners-transcript/?flavour=mobile
Methanol poisoning takes days to kill, as it is only slowly metabolized by the liver. They drank, got drunk, sobered up, then got sick and died.
Recently in the news there is an eery reminder of how impotent our government is to protect the health of its citizens when monied interests are involved. Along the Elk river near Charleston, WV. A spill of MCMH which regulators were unable by law to prevent, rendered the entire water supply of the state capitol undrinkable for weeks. State agencies then declared the crisis over and the water safe, bowing to pressure from businesses forced to close. Looking for anything to give them some political cover, they went with a report stating that the contaminant was, like methanol, breaking down into formaldehyde. The state restored the drinking ban only after continued hospitalizations, and outcry. Abandoning responsibility, the state said "individuals had to decide for themselves if the water was safe to use."
While the attention of the public pauses briefly to eulogize the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, it is incumbent upon us to remember that he is only one of many thousands, who have similarly passed; cruelly, needlessly, and far, far too soon. Let us reflect on their deaths, and how we cultivate the murderous profiteering we blithely tolerate in the War on Drugs.
Recently in the news there is an eery reminder of how impotent our government is to protect the health of its citizens when monied interests are involved. Along the Elk river near Charleston, WV. A spill of MCMH which regulators were unable by law to prevent, rendered the entire water supply of the state capitol undrinkable for weeks. State agencies then declared the crisis over and the water safe, bowing to pressure from businesses forced to close. Looking for anything to give them some political cover, they went with a report stating that the contaminant was, like methanol, breaking down into formaldehyde. The state restored the drinking ban only after continued hospitalizations, and outcry. Abandoning responsibility, the state said "individuals had to decide for themselves if the water was safe to use."
While the attention of the public pauses briefly to eulogize the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, it is incumbent upon us to remember that he is only one of many thousands, who have similarly passed; cruelly, needlessly, and far, far too soon. Let us reflect on their deaths, and how we cultivate the murderous profiteering we blithely tolerate in the War on Drugs.
