Drugs on the movies

The media has an effect on our decisions, we tend to do stuff that is portrayed in movies and TV shows. For example if a person watches Fast and Furious he might imitate what the racers in the movie do and will speed. So when a movie shows lots of violence and drug use, it might make some people think that using drugs is cool and might use them. I separate movies with drug content into two different categories: Drug trafficking movies and movies of people who smoke marijuana (usually are comedies).

Some examples of drug trafficking movies are Blow and Maria Full of Grace. Blow is about an American who starts out selling marijuana to reach his idea of the “American dream” but gets sent to jail where he meets a Colombian insider who connects him with Pablo Escobar and starts dealing cocaine. This movie portrays the glamorous lives that drug lords have; however, it doesn’t last forever. Maria Full of Grace is a movie about a girl that decides to smuggle cocaine into the United States by swallowing it and using her stomach as a carrier. The movie goes through all of what she has to do to not get caught, but at the end her friend who was also smuggling cocaine died when the cocaine spilled in her stomach.

Some examples of comedies are Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. Knocked up is about a pothead who impregnates a woman at a party while they were both drunk, she looks for him and tries to include him in most of the decisions about the baby. She finds out he smokes marijuana and has no job, the whole nine months are a hilarious adventure. Pineapple express is about a pothead who witnessed a murder and his drug supplier; they both go on an adventure when they are chased in order for them to not talk about the murder. These movies are hilarious, but may give people the idea that smoking marijuana is fun.

There are many more movies that contain drug content and sadly some of them might give viewers the wrong idea about using or selling drugs.

A Reflection and Analysis of the Blog

Throughout the whole month I kept updating this blog which main focus was to find the best solution about the war on drugs. My initial hypothesis was along the lines of this article, which talks about legalizing all drugs in order to end the drug wars, which consequently would end the homicides of innocent people. Another upside was that if drugs were legalized the government could tax them and make millions of dollars out of it, which could be used to improve health care and education. However as I kept researching I realized I was wrong! The solution is not to give into the criminals who produce and smuggle the drugs, the solution is to not go out and fight them. What I mean is that the best thing is to end the war on drugs, but since marijuana is the most used illicit drug and has no deadly effects on the body it can be legalized and regulated.

So my new solution is to legalize marijuana, and as we all know this has been a topic of discussion for over more than three decades. One of the initiatives was filed by Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee. Lee helped push a tax on the city’s medical marijuana that was supported by more than 80% of the votes. He says that marijuana can be taxed and sold just like alcohol and cigarettes are that is something that I completely agree with.

Just to make this clear I don’t smoke marijuana or have ever tried it. And the reason why I believe this solution will work is because both sides end up winning, one side gets their drug legalized and the other side knows that it is only marijuana which won’t create major problems in society.

There are some groups that support marijuana legalization such as NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), whose mission is to move public opinion sufficiently to achieve the repeal of marijuana prohibition so that the responsible use of marijuana by adults is no longer subject to penalty. This was also one of my major concerns and it is that many people get ridiculously long jail sentences because of possession of marijuana. Since 1990 nearly 5.9 million people have been arrested on marijuana charges. 88% of the charges were just for simple possession of marijuana and the remaining 12% of charges were categorized as dealing or manufacturing. But if it is legalized people won’t have to worry about it and their lives won’t be ruined by having done time. A chocking fact a found was that in 2000 marijuana arrests exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Another group that is in favor of the legalization of marijuana is LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). One of the things that caught my attention the most about their website was that they have a picture of Al Capone and of Pablo Escobar, with the saying “same problem…same solution.” LEAP is made up of members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who speak about the failures of the existing drug policies. They say that the policies have failed to effectively address the problems of drug abuse, the problems of addiction, and the problems of crime caused by the existence of a criminal black market in drugs. Now I think about this group and I think is very ironic that the people who are supposed to be enforcing the prohibition, are actually against it. But then again I agree with them and the fact that even policemen believe marijuana should be legalized just makes me feel more confident about my solution.

Another group which supports my solution is DrugSense. But unlike LEAP and NORML, DrugSense’ goal is to provide accurate information about the drug policy in order to raise awareness of the extreme damage being caused to the United States and the world by our current flawed and failed "War on Drugs." They aim to inform the public of the existence of rational alternatives to the drug war, and to help organize citizens to bring about needed reforms. This group is great because it relates to the second part of my solution, which is to end the war on drugs.

Lastly I found what could be use as a “mold” to follow which is Amsterdam once marijuana is legalized. In Holland is technically against the law to possess marijuana, but it doesn’t matter since this law is not enforced. There are many coffee shops were people can go and buy a personal amount of marijuana and smoke it. As long as a person doesn’t smoke in public the police don’t do anything, but since people know that they have the freedom to smoke in cafés, they don’t risk being caught outside smoking. I believe that if we follow this example there would not be a need for war on drugs and people can enjoy smoking marijuana without going to excesses.

Lastly I found a list of politicians and famous people who smoke or smoked marijuana and it didn’t affect them at all. As far as politicians go the ones in favor of legalizing marijuana are from California, such as Jim Gray a superior court judge. And as for famous people the main person who demonstrated that marijuana didn’t even affect his performance when he was competing during the Olympics. Michael Phelps after winning 14 gold medals was caught smoking out of a pipe, and then he had to apologize. But if you ask me I don’t see why he had to apologize, he proves that marijuana doesn’t affect us in our physique or mentality the only thing it does is gives the person a feeling of euphoria and temporary care free feeling. And as for more politicians the head of state Barrack Obama, admitted that had smoked marijuana and so did Bill Clinton. There is a complete list of about 200 celebrities who smoke marijuana in this website.

During this month I grew as a person and as a thinker, I learned that my hypothesis is not always right and that sometimes I am not well informed when I create hypothesis which means that there is room for error. I believe my biggest growth was that I had to admit that I was completely wrong, but I did not agree with just leaving the situation as it is, no, I came up with a new solution that has proof of working in other places of the world and that it is backed up by many organizations and public personalities.

Annotated Links

Before starting this blog I knew some stuff about the drug war and the effects of drugs and based on that knowledge I created a hypothesis. In order to become more knowledgeable about this topic I had to research it and by doing this I came across various websites that were very informational and helped me make my arguments stronger, also it helped me view the other side of the issue.

Since marijuana is the most used illicit drug in the world I had to get information about it. This website gives a lot of information about marijuana that is very easy to read and understand. It talks about what marijuana is, how it affects us, the dangers of using it, how is used, and the impact it has on our minds and bodies. This site even discusses about marijuana used for medicinal purposes which is something that many people don’t think about.

Since my initial hypothesis was that every single drug should be legalized found, I searched for a website that shared my same beliefs and this website was one of the most helpful ones that I found. This is probably one of the most useful links, because it talks about the number of people who have died from drug related situations and gives the solution to legalize everything. It’s great because it not only gives ideas, but it uses numbers and facts to back up their arguments. The numbers it gives are not only based on the numbers of deaths, but also in the amount of money the government can make if drugs are legalized and taxed.

Even though we all know about YouTube and how we can watch funny videos, I used it to find information. Not many people use this site when researching but I found it to be very helpful. There are many videos in this site that are very useful, and sometimes when you don’t feel like reading you can just watch a video and learn something new. As you have seen some of my posts have a video or at the bottom you can find a series of videos related to Pablo Escobar, all of those videos come from YouTube.

This website is great because it has a lot of articles about the Mexican Drug war. It gives an estimate of how many people have died in Mexico since President Calderon declared war on drugs, and an up to date list of articles that talk about the drug war. These articles which are more than a hundred are helpful because they are more in depth and vivid; they describe each incident that happens in Mexico, from what a senator said to a killing of more than ten people in a single incident.

As I needed to understand both sides of the issue I needed a site that would argue the pros and cons of the legalization of drugs. This site was perfect for what I needed. It is a very long essay but is easy to read and it gives many good reasons of why it should be legalized, from safety to economic reasons. However, it also gives good reasons of why is a bad idea to legalize them, such as health issues. It goes really in depth especially in the economic sense.

Lastly, the site that affected my position towards this topic is http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/05/world/main610293.shtml. This is an article from 2004 that talks about how the Colombian government was rethinking the law it passed ten years before regarding the legalization of a personal amount of cocaine and marijuana. This article talks about the effects that the legalization had on the country, which is why it affected my view drastically.

If you feel like you want to read more in depth about this topic, feel free to follow any of the listed links, which are the ones that I found most helpful.

Drug use in Vietnam

Yesterday I was in my anthropology class and we were talking about the effects that the Vietnam War had on the Hmong society. The thing that caught my attention was that the professor said that during the war, the United States had a problem with soldiers getting addicted to heroin, since that region was a major producer of opium which is used to make heroin. I thought it was interesting and decided to make a post about it, to show even the people who enforce the law can also fall the temptation of drugs.

I found that in 1971two senators reported that about 15% of the US soldiers serving in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. In order to cope with the problem the armed forces gave soldiers two options, one was that if a soldier was found with illicit drugs they went to court martial and then they were given dishonorable discharge; the second option was to voluntarily seek help and they were offered amnesty and treatment. The problem was so huge that more than 1000 soldiers were being sent back to the United States each DAY. President Nixon was worried that there were going to be so many drug addicts coming in, that he didn’t know what to do. Dr. Jaffe from the University of Chicago came up with a plan, which Nixon put into effect in less than six weeks. The plan suggested drug tests of the soldiers, and if traces of drug use were found instead of giving them court martial they were to be given treatment.

If this doesn’t surprise you, then I don’t know what will.

On some of my previous posts I said that instead of sentencing people to jail for using drugs, they should be given treatment or sent to rehabilitation centers; well, as you can see a professor from the University of Chicago feels the same way and I am pretty sure many of you believe that treatment is a better way to deal with drug abuse.

So what if nothing is done about the Drug Problem?

For the last month or so I have been blogging about if drugs should be legalized or if they should remain illegal but the war on drugs should seize. However, there is also the possibility that nothing will change, and drugs will continue to be illegal while the government fights against drug lords. This means that the number of lives that are being lost because of the drug war will continue increasing. 20 years ago the alarming number of casualties happened in Colombia, but since 2006 more than ten thousand people have lost their lives in Mexico. This will also mean that the numbers of people who use drugs won’t decrease, a research study showed that about 1 in 5 people had used drugs at least once, and 46% of the people between ages 18 and 21 admitted to have use them. I found this article, which supports my vision of what will happen in the future if drugs are still illegal. It predicts that by 2020 the number of drug addicts will double, it also points out that the reason why older people use drugs is because of emotional problems such as the deaths of friends and relatives. One last thing is the issue of sentencing people who were found with possession of illicit drugs. In this site there are sentences of people who were found with an illicit drug. Most of the people were sentenced to more than a year or two in jail and then to at least 2 years of probation, some even got monetary fined. If this continues, jails are going to be full of drug users who are arrested for small possessions of illicit drugs and sentenced to long periods of time.

To sum it all up, if this problem is not resolved there will be more deaths caused by the drug war, more drug addicts, and more people in jail.

Rehabilitation: The way to save the lives of Addicts

Some drugs such as marijuana are not as addictive as other drugs such as cocaine. However, many people say that marijuana is not addicting at all and they say they can stop smoking at any time; nonetheless they still use it because of the feeling of high that marijuana gives. On the other hand we know for a fact that cocaine is addictive, once you try it is almost impossible not to get addicted.

To stop the use and production of drugs the government declared war on drugs, however that does not help the people who already use it. The ideal is for all people to stop using drugs, but that won’t happen because people who are addicted to drugs will suffer from withdrawal and it will be difficult for them to stop. The way to help drug addicts is by taking them to a rehabilitation center; where doctors and specialists try to get people off the addiction, make them functional and valuable for society again. Even though there is an extensive amount of data about the effectiveness of the treatments used at rehabilitation centers, many people believe that the methods use don’t work. People believe that because they have unrealistic expectations and want to be cured quickly; but since an addiction is a chronic disorder, the ultimate goal is to never use drugs again which often requires sustained and repeated treatment episodes.

I believe that if instead of sentencing people for possession or consumption of drugs, they were sent to rehabilitation centers more lives would be saved, in the sense that once they leave rehabilitation they can go back to society unlike right now that when a person gets out of jail they go back to selling and using drugs.

Deaths and Health problems caused by Drug abuse:

I have focused in a previous post on the deaths caused by the war on drugs and everything related to the drug cartels, but today I am analyzing the other end of the issue, the deaths and health issues of actually consuming drugs.

Marijuana:

Marijuana causes moods swings, hallucinations and affects a person’s coordination, it also affects the lungs causing cough, wheezing and frequent colds. As a person uses more marijuana it becomes psychologically dependent on it.

Cocaine:

Cocaine stimulates the central nervous system and gives a rush of strength and power, with a high lasting as long as thirty minutes. Cocaine use has serious health effects; even first time teen users can stop breathing or have fatal heart attacks. If cocaine is snorted, then a hole can create in the lining of the nose. It is one of the strongest drugs so is highly addictive, so addictive that after the first use the person can become physically and psychologically dependent making it tough for the user to quit.

Amphetamines:

This drug is actually in a sense different, because it is legal if used for a medical purpose. Amphetamines can only be obtained by prescription but still people especially teens find a way to get it. Amphetamines make people feel alert and energized, but they cause headaches, sleeplessness and blurred vision. They can also cause hallucinations and paranoia. Amphetamines are psychologically addictive and people can experience withdrawal such as mood problems and anxiety.

http://www.teendrugabuse.us/teendruguse.html

Heroin:

I will be brief about heroin since my last post is about heroin. Heroin causes serious health problems, including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, and diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis when injected with a needle. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins and liver or kidney disease.

Some Statistics of death per year in the US:

Cocaine kills about 2500

Heroin kills about 2000

Marijuana kills none!

Now that there is more information on what some types of drugs do to the users, do you believe is better to legalize them and let these problems and statistics increase? Or keep drugs illegal and let the number of deaths and problems caused by the war on drugs keep increasing?