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War on drugs do not aim at reducing drug trasfic nor drug use. We all know it has never been effective anywhere for any drug.
We also know that treating drug as a medical problem is the best way to reduce both use and traffic.
War on drugs are just a way to force dealers to become more professional, and avoid “freelance” ones. War on drugs are a pure win for drugs, from their start.
And to feed the prison industrial complex, of course.
workers at the charge of public expenses, working for the benefits of private companies 😍
Ugh, that’s dystopian.
Don’t worry, it can’t become true…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
I see it as a direct continuation of:
Slavery->Sharecropping and Jim Crow->mass incarceration
Slavery never ended. The name just changed to be more polite, with a fig leaf of freedom and free will. Additionally we realized two things:
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It’s more economical to hold slaves in large central facilities than dispersed.
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The best way to fight abolitionism is to convince the populace that the slaves deserve it.
You see it as an extension of slavery because that’s exactly what happened.
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Yup they wanted to get “those people” off the streets.
The war on drugs is an excuse to criminalize being black, poor, or some other flavor of undesirable. Then the police round you up for drugs and put you in prison. Then the three strikes laws came and if it was the third time they got you, it was a felony and you got even more prison time. Add private prisons into the mix and you get judges being bribed to pipeline people into prison, along with prosecutors and police incentivized in other ways to put people in prison and the result is the American prison system, with a higher percentage of incarceration than any other nation in the world. Yes, including the ‘repressive’ states like China and Russia.
I was a regular dabber for years when I quit cold turkey in anticipation of drug tests during job applications. I was completely sober for 8 months and when I got hired without a drug test I was so mad. I was expecting more drastic changes during sobriety but the only thing I noticed was the return of dreams. I hadn’t really noticed their absence during my decades of cannabis use but while sober they were much more vivid and outlandish than I remember them being. They’ve since disappeared again once I resumed dabbing shortly after starting work.
I quit vaping wax recently because I was tired of goldfish brain and, on top of my memory returning, the most noticeable shift was the return of dreams.
I actually dreamed that I ate an edible and freaked out, only to realize I was in a dream. It’s the closest I’ve come to lucid dreaming in a very long time.
https://youtu.be/iCzZM_Sw754?t=140
This is me too. Being a software engineer and a daily smoker for over 10 years was not doing me any favors lol
Sooo vivid. Like too vivid. Like scarringly vivid. Be careful easing off the pot, that’s all I’ll say.
I was also taking prozac when I was easing off weed. I had a zombie Apocalypse and meth addict dad, they were very vivid and frightening. I asked my psychologist abt it and she added a different med, they didn’t work. I felt less depressed and anxious so I came off Prozac and smoking again. No more dreams, that I can remember.
the only thing I noticed was the return of dreams
Same thing happened to me. I quit wake-and-baking about five and a half years ago because I felt it had just taken over too much of my life. Shortly afterward I became a school bus driver, which requires an initial drug screening and then you’re subject to random tests thereafter. I’m a little pissed that I’ve never been selected for the random test, which means I could have been happily puffing away for the last five years.
The dreams are insanely weird and happen every time I sleep, even just a short nap. Most of the dreams are about me messing up driving a school bus and losing my job; one dream was me driving through high school hallways with kids scattering in all directions while thinking I really shouldn’t be doing this. I never dreamed at all when I was smoking.
War on Drugs: Drugs win.
War on Poverty: Poverty wins.
War on Terrorism: USA and Israel join Terrorism.
Where I live, they already had frozen hirings.
My company is hiring and I don’t think we drug test at all. If anybody in Los Angeles wants to make sheet metal, PM me.
Dam you’re cool, real equitable help. GL in life and I hope you win.
Those stupid tests only catch people for smoking weed on their own time.
Thank white conservatives. No, really. It was maybe twenty years ago we were first hearing about this because so many young white men in conservative areas were doing opioids that the local employers had to give up. Once enough conservative weed smokers were voting, that started to legalize and be commonly used. Drivers for the conservative drug turn includes the war on terror and the failures of the VA, and the war on affordable healthcare and social services. Before that, the war on drugs was on the record as being aimed at Mexicans, blacks, and liberals. Also teenagers, but I don’t recall any federal government politicians saying that one out loud.
Fuck the DEA and the FDA and any assholes trying to ban kratom (and honestly most drugs for the matter. My body, my choice). I have been successfully using it for pain and anxiety relief for years without any issues, but because of stupid fear mongering and idiots selling it at every gas station, many people’s lives will be ruined if people turn to hard drugs that will actually get you killed if it’s ever banned. I’ll be out of work and never get back on my feet if they ban it… I hate american healthcare so fucking much.
Sorry if this was a little off-topic I just needed to vent a bit. It just pisses me off and has made me hate the war on drugs even more. It’s all about money and controlling our bodies. If the US government were looking out for your best health interests, they would have made basic fucking healthcare free for their citizens.
It pays minimum wage with the barest benefits legally possible, with an inexperienced manager who thinks a boss should be a inconsistent tyrant. And it’s offered through a website that is far more interested in scraping whatever data it can find than actually matching people with jobs.
But yeah, it’s the drug testing that’s the issue.
I mean, you’d have to be on something to take a job like that.
Welp I guess this is one thing where ai can’t replace , living test subject, yikes.
they replaced it with AI/ATS screening, so no its not any better.
I’m glad I’m on the winning team
I’ve never understood the fight. How could no drugs ever hope to beat yes drugs?
And now the no-drugs caused the import of weird extremily strong synthetic drugs which kills millions. Also it enabled Perdue to sell legal opiods. While legal drugs would let people use XTC, MDMA, LSD, Ketamine, Cocaine. Which would get some addicted, sure. But these drugs are child’s play compared to crack, meth, fentanyl, Oxycontin and all the weird shit from China.
Let’s go drukqs!
Yeah mine is not you can be (and are) randomly pinged at any time to go pee in a cup and blow in a tube because they would really really rather that people not be zonked out on the job and make some horrific decision that could impact safety. Sometimes people fail the random tests and get canned but it’s more common for people coming in to test hot and never get started. Good paying jobs but I guess people figure drugs and/or not having to hold back from alcohol on your duty week are better
I don’t even bother studying for drug tests anymore. If they care about weed and mushrooms then I’ll work elsewhere.
Yea safety, but what the fuck does the things I do in my free time have to do with work? Are the bosses also testing for alcohol and drugs? How do we know they aren’t doing drugs that metabolize faster than can be tested? You want me to not do drugs pay me on my off time as well if not get bent and I won’t work there
Power plant can hypothetically shut down for a problem any given moment and need people called in in the dark of night to get it back up ASAP so in this case they were explicitly clear that you do get dragged in at off hours and had better not be imbibing anything that would impair you during your duty week since that’s factored into the job.
They still do it in healthcare. I can’t imagine the absolute fiasco that would happen if a doc does a knee replacement on the left knee when they were supposed to do it on the right and turns out he pops positive.
I also worked in construction for a short time and had a machine operator damage an existing building. He went straight to be tested and I don’t even remember if I saw him onsite again
Yeah if there was a major screw-up fitness for duty was one of the first things they did along with taking statements of people who were there
We’ve had a sign posted at work saying “We are proud to be a drug-free workplace. All new and current employees are subject to drug testing at any time.”
Not. Once. Not even when Jimmy came in to work each evening with the smell of weed wafting off of him. I could probably lay rails on my work table right in front of the security camera and hit one each hour and nothing would happen.
Sure, but that’s not what the policies are for. If/when someone gets injured on the job the policy is standardly they require you to take a drug test then. If you fail you were breaking policy and the injury is deemed your fault, thus taking all responsibility of paying you workers comp off the table. Happens every day across the U.S. (that said I believe you can fight it, as you aren’t always automatically eliminated if you fail the drug test, you will have an up hill battle though)
For weed, get a medical card, if you can afford it. Usually even in recreational states you can get one and then they can’t fire you for it.
Edit: Citation requested, this applies to some states in the us, but, not all.
[CITATION NEEDED.]
Citation? I’m confused, for what? Clearly I’m missing something because 24 people agree with you lol
Can you provide any citation that a company can’t fire you if you have a medical card? AFAIK that’s not true. As I understand it, It’s still illegal under federal law, and there is no concept of marijuana as medicine in federal law.
Citation added. To be honest I was repeating what was told to me. I looked into it more and it seems that it depends on what state in the US you are in, not all states will protect you. Appreciate you questioning me, I learned something.
You can have a prescription for opiates too.
Doesn’t make it OK to be high at a job where that impairment puts you and others in danger.
That being said, there’s no test for THC that has a narrow enough time window to tell if someone is currently intoxicated. Blood tests are the closest at 6h, but blood levels aren’t correlated with intoxication.
I never said it did. I agree its better to use at home after work. Some people have a beer I have a j, shouldnt be drinking at work either. I didnt know they can precisely test for opioids like that.
I live in a state with recreational marijuana, but my current employer’s policies specifically prohibit even medical marijuana, and I had to do a pre-employment drug test. Looking for a better job, but I’ve exhausted unemployment and all my savings, so it pays the bills for now.
Is that not protected under anti-disability discrimination legislation in the US?
I’m on medical cannabis in the UK, while our system is not set up for it at all if an employer took umbrage with it for a non-operational reason (such as operating heavy machinery vs being on it at all) that’d be a fairly open and shut disability discrimination case. Same as if you fired an employee for being on tramadol or similar.
Absolutely not protected in the US. They can and will fire you.
Christ, how does that work with your doctors being way more keen to prescribe narcotics than ours then? Is it literally a case of follow your doctor’s orders or your boss’s? That’s fucked up.
Side note update for you, thanks to the Sacklers and the hell on earth they visited on us via profiteering lying about the opiates they invented, now there’s actually a gigantic back swing and it’s WAY more difficult to be prescribed strong pain relief, even when badly needed. Count on us to always come up with the worst possible response to a problem, I guess.
Prescribed narcotics would be OK as long as related doctor or company restrictions on operating heavy equipment or such were complied with. But in the US marijuana is still federally illegal. The feds usually don’t seek out prosecutions where states have legalized at the state level, but banks won’t accept business accounts if marijuana is sold because of the federal illegality, and businesses involving heavy machinery generally also still feel the legal risk of explicitly allowing marijuana use is too high.
Weed is only legalized by states here, it’s still federally illegal
Yeah, federally it’s classified as “no medicinal benefits with high potential for abuse”, aka schedule 1. This is why I can sue (or even get the government to sue on my behalf) an employer for firing me when my prescribed amphetamines trip a drug test, but the government can mandate employers that work with it to fire anyone who fails a cannabis test regardless of prescription status.
Biden was in the process of rescheduling cannabis, and honestly I’ve got issues with the whole scheduling system considering that it says cannabis and acid are worse than heroin and forces opiates and adhd meds into the same regulatory box despite abuse of them looking more like proper use of the other.
Oh that sucks, I completely understand though. You do what you need to do to pay the bills. I had a driving job like that, which makes sense.
I worked at a factory in the rural south the year (2022) they quietly did away with marijuana testing, even for spot violations. Turns out the standard reasoning, “the insurance company says,” doesn’t really matter… they didn’t care and allowed a 9-panel to be used in all testing matters.
The unofficial reason I heard is, they go through the same workers on rotation, the good employees get hired back and forth. Drunks are chaotic, tweakers introduce drugs and are chaotic. Stoners are quiet and show up on time, and cause 0% of the fights, and tend to come with less of a rap sheet for terroristic threats and domestics.
They almost tripped over themselves to look the other way on my stonership…
Yeah I remember when my factory hired a young woman to head HR shortly after weed was legalized where I lived and she immediately got to ensuring we wouldn’t be punished for smoking. The stoners are rarely a problem, and you really don’t want to lose a bunch of people just because their mild drug of choice is fat soluble instead of water soluble
It does amuse me how I’ve had doctors and employers drug test me which only pushed me from weed to acid
Meanwhile I worked at one company in Colorado that didn’t test for marijuana at all when I got hired, I specifically asked. Then 6 months later hired some lady from Utah and they started testing all new employees for marijuana and threatening drug tests whenever something happened. Marijuana having been legal in the state for like 15 years at that point.
“Drug-free workplace” policy language is also a requirement for a lot of government contracts in the US
