"Diamond is so intent on dispelling the Myth of the Peaceful Savage–the idea that before civilization all people were “peaceful and gentle”–that he has replaced it with an equally absurd idea, the Myth of the Savage Savage. According to this view, before the emergence of centralized governments backed up by professional armies, our ancestors were mired in a Hobbesian war of all against all [...] “Civilized” states have also waged wars against other states, erupted into civil wars and slaughtered their own citizens. Look at the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, and all the great wars and genocides of the Twentieth Century, which killed hundreds of millions of people." - Horgan J, Jared Diamond, Please Stop Propagating Myth of the Savage Savage!
"What allows newspapers to over-report, say, the deaths of young people taking MDMA and under-report aspirin overdoses, is the legal framework and government policy that has declared a range of substances, including MDMA, illegal. Governments have been concerned with the regulation of 'drugs', and the penalization of transgressions, for nearly a century. Reluctant at first, the authorities in the UK as elsewhere have now taken on the fight against the drug peril as one of the core functions of government. It is in the US, however, where these efforts have been called 'a war on drugs', and have initiated an expansion of the powers and the punitive apparatus of the state that is without parallel in the history of the modern democracies. In countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia, where 'traffickers' are executed with a chilling regularity, the 'drug war' allows for government to signal their vision of what constitutes a proper society, to underscore what constitutes the authority and the function of the state, and how dissent is dealt with [...].
Many 'experts' close their eyes to the colossal collateral damage effected by 30 years of drug wars. Lives ruined by imprisonment, lives lost to the hangmen, and families devastated by the incarceration of the breadwinner are never factored into the tally. Yet we need to focus not only on the impact of drug production and use, but also on the role of policy and practice. All costs need to be listed for global analysis" - Klein A., Drugs and the World
Iecitēju kontekstā ar B.Obamas izteikumiem par marihuānu (uzzināju pie user dooora). Tā ir politiska pozīcija un skaidrs, ka ASV prezidenta viedoklis tiks ilgi apspriests un izmantots dažādu politisku mērķu sasniegšanai. Zīmīgi, ka New Yorker tekstā viņš neatbild uz jautājumu, vai marihuāna, viņaprāt, ir mazāk kaitīga par alkoholu. Tā nav kaitīgāka, viņš saka: "I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol." Bet daudzi mediji un sociālo tīklu lietotāji to interpretē kā salīdzinājumu 'par labu' marihuānai. Jebkurā gadījumā, par vielu tematiku mēs vēl dzirdēsim daudz.
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