New Title For The Drug "War"

Hey, I read a lot on this site, but don't really post too often. I was thinking about how the US declared a war on drugs, and this got me thinking about how in a real war there are only two sides, however in this there is just one side participating, the government. This got me thinking about how describing it as a war just misrepresents the facts so I went about trying to find a better term and it dawned on me the perfect word is genocide. Below is a post from my blog i just started talking about how the war on drugs is really a genocide. I know it's a little long, but I'd greatly appreciate any comments ranging in topic from grammer and spelling, to fromatting, to the actual arguements in the post. Thanks in advance to anyone who reads it and/or replies.

Oh and the address is Thoughts if you want to read my blog, this is my first post on the blog and I'm planning on doing much more at irregular intervals

First Post


Hello, and welcome to my blog. I'd like to do a little background on the address of this blog before i begin, which will hopefully give you a sense of the content of the blog. As you know by going to the website, the address is Thoughts. The reason I decided to call it this was because people in drug forums (by the way I use drugs and think they can be very beneficial to people) use the acronym SWIM or Someone Who Isn't Me to refer to what they were doing so they can try and protect themselves and the site from government persecution, and the fact that people can't talk about something that is usually important to them (at least important enough to do, usually on multiple occasions, and then write about online.)

My first topic for this blog, which can be pretty easily guessed by the paragraph above, is drugs. Namely the genocide committed by the American government as we speak and by many others around the world toward members of the drug culture. Now I know most people will probably be wondering 'What genocide?' and this stems from a couple things, the first is that many people really don't understand what genocide is, and the other is that while some may question the war on drugs when it comes cannabis, only a small minority really question the war on drugs at all. Most people just accept it as a fact of life, or believe the propaganda that it is necessary.

Now the first definition comes from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and this I think gives the best definition, although the American legal definition and international legal definition are a little different, and really it's helpful to look at both. The definition is~ geno-cide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. While the international legal definition (according to The international legal definition of genocide - Prevent Genocide International) is copied below along with key definitions the site provides.

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide. "

Key definitions-
A national group means a set of individuals whose identity is defined by a common country of nationality or national origin.

An ethnic group is a set of individuals whose identity is defined by common cultural traditions, language or heritage.

A racial group means a set of individuals whose identity is defined by physical characteristics.

A religious group is a set of individuals whose identity is defined by common religious creeds, beliefs, doctrines, practices, or rituals.


The main difference between the two definitions (besides the fact that one sets international law) is the lack of cultural groups and the addition of religious groups to the groups protected. The reason I included both was because while it may be hard to charge members of the United States government for genocide, it is much easier for it to be explained in terms of the English language, not law.

The easiest way to go about this is to first establish drug users as one of the 4 groups. In the non-legal sense this would very easilly fall under cultural group because there is a definite drug culture. Once it is established that they are a member of a cultural group, the next step is to see if a government is trying to deliberately and systematicaly destroy this group. Well, this is fairly easy as the government set up many laws to try and take away the drugs that necesitate the drug culture, and punish those involved in the growing/production, distrobution, and use of these drugs to discourage those punished from returning to their life in the drug culture and to prevent others from ever joining.

Now if we go through the same process to see if there is an act of genocide being commited under the legal definition we would have to substitute either ethnic or religious group. Ethnic group could be used because there is a common cultural tradition between members of the drug culture, going back to the hippies and Timothy Leary, and then stretching much farther back to indigenous cultures that are still around today and others, that through genocide or adoption of other values, no longer exist.

The drug culture could also fall under religious groups as there are many religious groups who use drugs as sacramants, which the U.S. government has outlawed despite the supposed belief in religious freedom. Neither of these fit as well as cultural groups, but they do fit well enough to make a case that genocide is being commited. So now that we have established that members of the drug culture are part of a protected group under international law we have to see if acts of genocide as defined by the law are being commited. The acts of genocide being commited are (b), (c), and (e) of Article 2 (see above for exact definition).

Causing serious bodily or mental harm is fulfilled through the arrest and imprisonment of members of the drug culture, and while violence by the government is not always used, there is always the threat of it, and the use of violence on some occasions. Mental harm is clearly from the imprisonment, which takes the members of the drug culture from their family, friends, and communtiy.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part is fulfilled again by the laws making the drugs necessary for a drug culture to exist, adn imprisoning those involved in the drug culture to prevent them from returning to the drug culture, as well as discouraging others from joining the drug culture. And finally the forcible transferring of children from one group to another is fulfilled by the government, through social services, removing children from the custody if the parents are in jail, or users of illegal drugs.

While obviously the arguement has to go into much more depth, I hope I conveyed the basic framework of the arguement so you can begin to see the genocide taking place right under your nose, possibly with your consent.

 

Yeah, it is a bit extreme, and really you never could try anyone for it, and honestly I don't think trying anyone would really help the situation. The main reason I wrote it was to try and show how wrong the war on drugs is and how wrong the thinking going into it is. It just seems like they are controlling the message of the drug war, and having people think its just another law, when it really is a completely different ball game. Also I did speech and debate and high school and have always had fun trying to approach arguments from different angles.