As promised, here's another episode of Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way - an excellent documentary being aired by The History Channel (THC). This episode focuses on the history of marijuana and methamphetamine, while the one I posted on Sunday focuses on cocaine.
You won't learn this stuff in DARE, kiddos:
Note: This clip is 44 minutes long. Get comfortable.
Stay tuned for the episode on heroin and other opiates.
3 comments:
i don't think you watched this whole clip. during the last four minutes, the soundtrack gets messed up. it's kind of trippy, but you can't really get what everyone is saying. at least on my computer. tdreads
I guess THC also shortened the attention span of whoever posted this.
The main problem I have had with this series is the fact that it oh-so-lightly touches down like a butterfly (when it ought to come down like the proverbial 'ton of bricks') on the racial aspects of the War on Drugs.
This 'war' was first directed against Asians (mainly the Chinese) and African-Americans courtesy of their stereotypically perceived drugs of choice, respectively, opium and cocaine , with the Hispanics tacked on with cannabis prohibition later.
That an economic motivation existed (one that mirrors much of the present anti-immigration sentiment today) cannot be denied. The fear that an economically marginalized minority willing to work for lower wages would cause a drop in living standards amongst White workers was the supposed 'legitimate' reason for the laws. But there has always existed, historically verifiable with a little research, an ugly racially prejudiced rationale behind drug prohibition: based upon a few simpleminded assumptions that if, for example, opium were removed from legal sale, the addicted 'heathen Chinee' would leave America. Removing avenues of legal consumption of cocaine would return 'uppity n****rs' to their 'rightful' place as the American lumpenproletariat. Ditto for Mexicans.
The racially bigoted origins of the DrugWar have been long forgotten, yet are the very foundation of the laws today. The present day drug laws are like a house built upon on a long-forgotten and quietly stewing landfill; nobody told the present owners of the house the landfill was there. The people who built the house are long dead. A few records are left to find, but few know where to look. The new owners haven't a clue as to what's underneath it. They just assumed things have always been this way.
Someday the ground gives way and the house settles into a toxic quagmire. That's where we are now. But to clean up the mess, we must first discover how it got that way. This series doesn't go far enough in dealing with the potentially racially explosive aspects of that.
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