Not News to those in the "Know"

[antony]

But pretty relevent regarding the basic exports of Afghanistan.
Found the article on blulight.

Lets discuss around a couple drinks, shall we?


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1142463013358

this site's nice too

http://www.senliscouncil.net/

[ontario_opiophile]

Interesting. Afghan farmers should be allowed to cultivate opium legally. The world can never have enough opium so why not just let them do their thing. They seem to be pretty good at it so why not turn it into a legal industry that everyone can profit from. The poverty in Afghanistan is just unreal. It's unbelievable. It is probably the poorest country in the world. I think it actually is. Why not let them into the worlds legal opium market?

[antony]

the best part of it is after the americans took over the country they went to different parts of the country, and tried to show the Afghanis how to cultivate coliflower (being its biggest export), but the ratio of price to weight of the coli to the poppy is like ten to one.

One pound of cali is like ten cents at the trading level, where raw poppy is $100 for one pound.

I don't know, Im not good with remembering shit I researched a long time ago. But the benifits of coliflower to poppy for the farmers is nil.

[jacky]

seeing as how morphine and codeine are already approved across the world as legitimate painkillers the next step would be for people to be able to grow their own, similiar to medical cannabis.

plus a few feilds for His Lord Shiva.........

And I think ANY country should have the right to raise its own opium crops for internal medical/religious use. I am pretty sure the decleration of human rights issued by the UN is written that such a thing could be construed as beneficial.

[Opiyum]

It mentioned something about the United States processing what a number of other countries grew... It didnt go into any detail and it reminded me of a dream I've had for some time now. Which basically involves me stumbling across a government owned poppy field e.g. Pharma,Mylan,Watson etc.. and I've always wondered if that was how it worked...if any of these major pharmy companys have large fields of poppys growing somewhere off a random interstate. I'm extra curious because both Mylan and Watson Labs have plants in my area.

[antony]

It mentioned something about the United States processing what a number of other countries grew... It didnt go into any detail and it reminded me of a dream I've had for some time now. Which basically involves me stumbling across a government owned poppy field e.g. Pharma,Mylan,Watson etc.. and I've always wondered if that was how it worked...if any of these major pharmy companys have large fields of poppys growing somewhere off a random interstate. I'm extra curious because both Mylan and Watson Labs have plants in my area.

you maybe right, but if thats how it's done i think i would be done in a guarded warehouse(like the bees in the X-Files movie), but i was on the Watson website yesterday looking for a job;) and they import the stems and pieces.

[jacky]

much of the worlds opiate supply is grown in Tasmania. I think after that it is Turkey and some european nations that rank next to tasmania.

perhaps we should arrange an opiophile convention in tasmania some day.?

[antony]

hells yeah! if not for the poppy reason, its supposed to be beautiful there. watch out for those tazmanian devils there tho. just watched a doc. on those little things. fuckin creepy. their scream just creeps the shit out of me tho. but the landscape is supposedly magnificent!

[antony]

Well, if theres a downfall of abundunt poppy plants, this would probably be it.:( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2094546,00.html

[Opiyum]

I like the idea of the outing and its weird you mention that because just today at work I was thinking about how a group of opiophiles could get organized(if thats even possible) and save up some money to purchase a plot of land somewhere where cultivation and use are legal. We could have our own little commune in which we grow our own food, build and maintain our own shelters, develop our own rituals, crochet, play Bachi Ball day and night and lastly let the land support our habits. The possiblities are endless and we could do it in the name of Opium and all opiates alike. Strive to show the world that an "addicted people can exist and function in a "Golden Rule" sort of mannor. This is my dream and any comments and or suggestions to further this dream along into a reality would be much appreciated.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way a hippie. Not that I dont like hippies but I can see how my dream could be misconstreued into hippie rhetoric.

In relation to that article all I can say is, in my opinion, those problems wouldnt have occured if it werent for the capitilistic ways of the opium trade.

Lastly Something thats also been on my mind. It's commonly said that opiates drove themselves into illegalization. That is to say that they demonized themselves.
I would disagree and say that the manor in which they were distributed meaning the profiteers made illegalization inevitable. I cant remember his name but it was a frenchman who singled out the morphine alkaloid, and a few years after its birth he witnessed his wifes overdose. The inherant danger was obvious. So I find it very hard to believe that Dreser and Bayer would assume that heroin which created the same effects only more intense was less of a threat. Yet they introduce it as cough syrup and send it to housewifes with hypes in the mail. In my opinion this ws a group of people or corporatish entity who saw a market that they knew wouldnt last, and it didnt last because of....Neglegence no...inexperience no...not enough reguilations no... pure fucking greed.

Thats my rant and I think it was a good one...I'd really like to discuss this topic more i.e. hear your opinions/constructive critisism, am I looking at this wrong...I always find it hard to debate this topic at all due to my bias opinion. History of opiates is one topic I actually do know well as opposed to chemistry.

Im special and so are you...

[siggy]

I think that it was a matter of "fear of the unkown", of the "foreign" - since the Chinese railroad laborers did opium, it became a "foreign devil vice" - liquor was/is the acceptable American way to get fucked-up and anything else is "dope"...Funny, my old man always spoke of "dope" as being something akin to child molestation in degree of perversity - of course he loved his beer and bourbon and all 3 of his kids have some form of trauma scars because of his wild mood swings due to his drinking. Having suffered a broken back in the navy, he would tell us on countless occasions that the "doctors told me I could take pills and be on dope the rest of my life or I could just take a drink now and then if my back got to hurting me". Of course, there wasn't a day that went by that his back wasn't killing him, so he had a ready excuse. But I've always thought he and we kids and my mother would probably have been better off had he been a "doper" rather than being a drinker with unpredictable behavior. Well, Daddy, guess what? I drink and I do dope - and I like it. But I want to stop the drinking.

[Opiyum]

First off hope your pops doin okay. Second its kinda funny because in its early stages in the US morphine and Heroin were both prescribed for alcoholism. They knew then that dopers were far more tolerable than a drunk which I'm sure your aware of. So here we have opiates on the uprise(in the wrong way unfortunatley) and peoples opinion of alcohol going south.Also I dont think there was an acceptable way to get inebriated then. The black and white propaganda we all know so well didnt come about till after the Harrison Tax then Act. Its hard to imagine the world or our lifestyle pre-Harrison Act.

As far as fear of the unknown the chinese didnt introduce opium to us in the least. It was here well before they began immigrating in droves.
Although,
The first drug law passed in the US was in Chinatown New York and it banned possesion and use of opium and dens alike. Why?
Because the white women were being lured into these dens of inequity and god knows what those slanty eyed freaks did to them "right cowboy?"
So in a way I see that maybe your onto something because it really began with racism which is derived from fear, and it was that first step or ammendment which told people what they could or couln't put in their body that gave birth to this war on drugs. I think greed and fear are old friends though.

We're getting somewhere.

Concurrently they passed laws in chinatown banning carrying buckets of water on poles. So it wasnt the drug so much as the people and the culture where the drug war found its roots? Joe Banker gets to pursue his new hobby of shooting the purest of pure H in his cookie cutter home under a blood stained cross while someone whos culture has been partakeing in opium use for a millenia is cut off. Thats the price of living on our fabulous soil I guess.

WOW! Hypocracy in America...unheard of.

I think the eventual outright illegalization of H was due in part to our leaders being weirded out by the fact that their people(us) could possibly indulge in the same things as these foreigners. I dont see how they got the idea that our nation would fall because of this drug. Great civilzations were built on opium. They began falling from it when bureucracy stepped in. No? Alexander the great wouldnt have been so...if werent for ole Papy.

Remember
"No fighting in the war room"

[antony]

First off hope your pops doin okay. Second its kinda funny because in its early stages in the US morphine and Heroin were both prescribed for alcoholism. They knew then that dopers were far more tolerable than a drunk which I'm sure your aware of. So here we have opiates on the uprise(in the wrong way unfortunatley) and peoples opinion of alcohol going south.Also I dont think there was an acceptable way to get inebriated then. The black and white propaganda we all know so well didnt come about till after the Harrison Tax then Act. Its hard to imagine the world or our lifestyle pre-Harrison Act.

As far as fear of the unknown the chinese didnt introduce opium to us in the least. It was here well before they began immigrating in droves.
Although,
The first drug law passed in the US was in Chinatown New York and it banned possesion and use of opium and dens alike. Why?
Because the white women were being lured into these dens of inequity and god knows what those slanty eyed freaks did to them "right cowboy?"
So in a way I see that maybe your onto something because it really began with racism which is derived from fear, and it was that first step or ammendment which told people what they could or couln't put in their body that gave birth to this war on drugs. I think greed and fear are old friends though.

We're getting somewhere.

Concurrently they passed laws in chinatown banning carrying buckets of water on poles. So it wasnt the drug so much as the people and the culture where the drug war found its roots? Joe Banker gets to pursue his new hobby of shooting the purest of pure H in his cookie cutter home under a blood stained cross while someone whos culture has been partakeing in opium use for a millenia is cut off. Thats the price of living on our fabulous soil I guess.

WOW! Hypocracy in America...unheard of.

I think the eventual outright illegalization of H was due in part to our leaders being weirded out by the fact that their people(us) could possibly indulge in the same things as these foreigners. I dont see how they got the idea that our nation would fall because of this drug. Great civilzations were built on opium. They began falling from it when bureucracy stepped in. No? Alexander the great wouldnt have been so...if werent for ole Papy.

Remember
"No fighting in the war room"


While I agree with you on some of this, and maybe "Great Civilzations were built on opium" but, the vices that come with it brought them down. When the Chinese were coming to lower Manhattan ie Five Points, the Bowery, there was a lot of prejudice. But when they started opening their opium houses, the Europeans progressivly started to spend much of their money and time there, when they should have been at work and with their families. Back then there was no Welfare, nor Housing Authority. So, if a family lost a father, or their apartment, they were FUCKED. The government was very Laissez Faire, and could give two fucks about most of its citizens european, african, or asian. It was only the temperance movement from the churches that lobbied to put a stop to Alcohol and Opium.
Also, laws from town to town varied on alcohol laws depending what ethinic group founded the town. The towns started by Quakers were ALWAYS dry, and vices were especially criminal. German and Irish towns allowed the sale of alcohol, but the hours/days varied. And so did the Congressmen they represented.
Now for large cities like NY/Chicago, the Aldermans would represent the neighborhoods in the city hall. And in the Five Points, and much of lower Manhattan, and in Chicago still today, the Aldermans tend to get votes from who they represent (which is good), but political machines start up, and they get financed usually from the start by the vices in their neighborhood. How do you think the Outfit in Chicago got so powerful, as to get fucking JFK elected?
So if a representation starts pumping in cash to a official, who do you think hes going to represent?
Thats when the Feds step in. They'll either arrest or illegalize people or vices that are becoming the backbone of the local economy/or influencing the state or federal gov't to were nothing can get done.
Vices like prostitution, gambling, drugs and alcohol would be legal if people could do them responsibly, and while getting work done, properly raising their childeren, and unfortunatley, that doesn't usually happen.

Read the article posted abovehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2094546,00.html, and as much as I LOVE opiates, it's not as simple as "fucking gov't always trying to fuck me"

Class dismissed

PS: Let me know if anyone wants a bibliography. some of these history books i read don't belong in school!

And another thing...when heroin was legal, I read on one of the links here, and people became addicted and evenatually lost their jobs, they would go to the local junk yards, take the scrap metal and sell it to support their habit...they became the first "junkies"

[Opiyum]

Correction first off...The first drug law was in Shang Hai Chinatown in San Fran...dont want to be giving false info. Second I use to, with a friend of mine who was in construction, rip copper out of condemed houses for cash. It wasnt till after that that I realized the origin of the name Junky...

As far as the topic at hand you mentioned responsibility...and I think thats the heart of what I'm trying to say. I think basically that it's the system put in place now that creates the well known irresponsible behaviors...the seeking behaviors I think they call it. A drug that was once very social, before illegailzation, now has to be kept secret from loved ones, work etc.. This creates the singled out, I'm on my own, nobody understands me, mentallity in so many addicts...no? In its hayday here in the US, from founding to 1925, the irresponsible behavior wasnt quite as pronounced. The father leaving the family thing is no good and probably happened but I dont think it was of epidemic proportions and the opium itself probably wasnt the cause of the distance in the relationship. Regardless the system flaw , the crucial element, then was the capitalist element. Vested interests. The ability to take advantage. The British did it to the Chinese hence the Opium wars and we did it to ourselves.
Also the records show that it was in many cases the pilllars of the community that were addicts, judges, doctors, the sheriff,etc..It's somewhere in the thousands of doctors who were arrested after the final stage of the Harrison act when heroin and such werent allowed to be prescribed for maintenence purposes.

I dont think it was necessarily the "government" that had much of anything to do with where we are today. It was more a natural response to the "peoples" incompetence with it. Which is a result I guess of a lack of education. WHat do they say about hind sight?

Theres no end in sight that I can see to this so all can say is that I think somewhere on another planet there is a whole race of beings who werent so concerend with getting the better of their fellow man...being, and it was this element that allowed...allows them to move forward fearlessly and die painlessly.

Dont get me wrong though its more the human race that I'm discouraged with as a whole than the Government.

[siggy]

Amen to that brother! We is the guvment, the guvment sucks, so by definition, "we" suck. Tho here as of late, I'm happy to see an increase, or increased visibility, with the anti-war movement, but most of us are not concerned one way or the other: "Ssshhh, don't talk to me about Iraqi women and children being slaughtered in our name, I'm trying to watch American Idol".

[antony]

A drug that was once very social, before illegailzation, now has to be kept secret from loved ones, work etc..

Just because something is social, doesn't make it a standard of society. I know of many "social clubs" that many bad deeds are planned out.
I don't mean to make it like I'm attacking you or making seem like I'm trying to act smarter than you Opiyum, I'm not that type of guy, but what I'm trying to get at, is that the government doesn't go around illegalizing everything just because it doesn't like something. You said it yourself
Also the records show that it was in many cases the pilllars of the community that were addicts, judges, doctors, the sheriff,etc

The government steps in when the errosion of civilization becomes apparent. If judges, docs, the sherriff are known junkies, don't you think hes motivated by his supply and if that person would do whatever it took to keep his supply high and prices low, or free?
Thats corruption.

Be clear that I'm in no way trying to say any two words about todays presidential administration and how they are pricks, but making sense of todays drug laws from where they originated.
You can clearly see today what happens when drugs infiltrate goverenments.
Biggest example: Pablo Escobar and Colombia. He bought the fucking gov't there.

[Opiyum]

The government steps in when the errosion of civilization becomes apparent. If judges, docs, the sherriff are known junkies, don't you think hes motivated by his supply and if that person would do whatever it took to keep his supply high and prices low, or free?
Thats corruption.

No offense taken whatsoever this is healty, informative and enlightening for me. I hope you could maybe say the same. I think maybe I'm slowly becoming what is considered an Anarchist or at least an anarchistic ideology fits into my arguement because where this all started was with my idea that it is the combination of capitalism and drugs that creates the inevitable end that we have come to. Im sure its been said before but I thought of it on my own now so that s all that matters... with capitalism comes corruption and these people(me included) I'm frustrated with are the victim of that corruption, but if we willing take part then I guess we would all be sadists.

At this point we know how each other feels and I think the problem is one of us is talking realistically(you) and one is fantastical(me).

The next question from somebody to me would be, "How wouldchange it? What would you do differently?"

Answer: I dont know how in the least bit to bring happiness to the masses. The only thing that would work but once again not realistic is a reversion to hunter gatherer type living. A more community based world.

I think at this point your probably disgusted with me and if your not you should be.

[antony]

Not disgusted in the least. In fact I used to think basically just like you. Let people do what they want, no matter how foul, and let god sort them out. I used to be pretty far to the right, and in my opionion small minded, but when I started to try to see things through other peoples eyes, I got a better understanding (at least i think so) of how people tend to think. This was one of my main motivations of joining this site. to hear what the "scum" think. I don't think anyone here is scum, if i did i would be too.
But all in all, I think conversations like this are very good to hear what people think and both parties can learn, and thats the best way of growing in your head.

Excuse me, I gonna go throw up now...I just actually read what I just wrote.;)

[Opiyum]

All in all that was the first good discussion Ive had here in the short time I've been here and the last thing I would call you is narrow minded or Myopic(been wanting to use that word for a while) your seem like a pretty righteous dude and I feel like I've made a true Friend.

Cue that audience aauuuuggghhh... sound.

Okay now I'm going to vomit.

[Opiyum]

Having thought about it for a while; I realized that when you mentioned the Euros were spending more time and money in the dens with the Chinese that this was kind of a testament to opiums ability to bring people of different races, colors and creeds together. I'm trying right now to think of something else that has this power...? With those three differences that normally, at least this day in age and I'm pretty sure since the beginings of mankind, polarize people its pretty hard to think of one thing. Does something have to be a "standard of society" for the social implications to be considered beneficial. As far as "bad deeds" I think the worst thing that took place in a opium den was, other than a few freak happenings, someone getting robbed while they were passed out. So someone gets taught a lesson thats all. Furthermore if a woman got raped or somebody murdered it was probably by the hands of a drunk junkie. I find it hard to imagine opium smokers were sitting around, getting high and making plans to rob a bank or whatever else. Even if some unspeakable crimes were commited I can only see one reason.
Someone was trying to capitalize on somebody else's weakness. Why would anyone think twice about it....Free Enterprise right?

If I'm beating a dead horse let me know, but I think I posed some good questions?

[antony]

I think back then the main reason that people laying around all day fucked up upsetted people was the fact they were laying around all day. They're breaking one or two of the Ten Commandments. You have to remember that religion back then was the driving force behind much of society.
Secondly, why wouldn't people be planning armed robberies? People do it all the time to feed their habits.
And it wasn't like the europeans and asians were hanging out in the dens getting along. The Chinese sold their product to whoever wanted it. I think racism was pretty prelevent.

[blackdog]

whatchoo talkinbout willis??????????????