Pubdate: Tue, 03 Feb 2015
Source: Townsville Bulletin, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2015 The North Queensland Newspaper Company Pty Ltd
Contact:  http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3758
Author: Valerie Harding

NO EASY FIX IN DRUG WAR

GRUMPY4810, referring to your text about law enforcement "bleating on 
that they had wiped out the drug trade in 1940 but 75 years on it's 
the same". Give the hardworking police their due, Grumpy dear.

Stone Age Man got a millennia headlong start when he discovered how 
to numb the fears and hardship of his/ her life, by brewing beer and 
the habit has stuck.

When they finally migrated to the Euphrates Valley they cultivated 
grapes and now wine is big business and so are his fears and hardships.

Thus he began to experiment with narcotics while his religious 
rituals became more elaborate, his sacrifices more "refined" and his 
shamans, priests and gods to worship the choice of addiction  more powerful.

All drugs are poisons, thus all have side effects. For tens of 
thousands of years the central eastern Asians chewed betelnut as a 
stimulant and to heighten awareness though its side effect is bright 
red gums and teeth and sometimes cancer. Over the millennia hemp has 
been put to thousands of practical uses, including, in biblical 
times, the most healing of all oils.

But as a drug, marijuana may mask the user's problems while 
destroying brain cells, memory, physical co-ordination, sense of time 
and much worse.

For over 8000 years Native Americans have used the cactus peyote or 
mescaline in their religious ceremonies for its intense hallucinogenic power.

The North American Indians never dreamt that the tobacco they smoked 
in their peace pipes would one day become the health wrecker it is now.

And nor did the ancient Mayans realise that their custom of chewing 
coca leaf, would end in crack cocaine addicts' severe depression, so 
severe he will commit murder to get his next fix.

Not even royalty has been left out of this never-ending escape from 
reality. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs mixed blue lotus root with 
alcohol for an ecstasy-like high. The ancient Sumerians first smoked 
opium in 3400BC.

But let's fast forward to the Opium Wars that Britain inflicted on 
China in her attempt to gain access to China's riches.

Britain, with her superior navy, waged two wars against the Chinese 
and forced Emperor Daoguang to open all ports to trade in opium. 
Overpowered, China's 2500- year-old civilisation collapsed  half its 
300 million people opium addicts, yet still Man hasn't learned how 
lethal drugs are.

In 1923 Beria, chief of Russian secret police, lectured leading 
Russian psychiatrists on "brainwashing, the gentle art of 
psychopolitics", urging them to infiltrate American law courts and 
schools; to disrupt justice and ethics, popularise drugs and free 
love, destroy the family and enslave the Western civilisation by the 
lethal power of toxic drugs.

Ninety-five years on law enforcement is engaged in a gargantuan 
battle. I can only cheer them on.

VALERIE HARDING,

Kirwan.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom