If they want a real pricey item, they should ship Saffron, Radish.^http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/01/spice-hunting-saffron-how-to-use-guide.html^The climate of Afghanistan is supposedly very good for the growing of saffron, but it is a much more labor intensive plant than opium.^The war on drugs is a war on Americans and too many of those profiting from this war are outside of our borders. In the late 1970s, five NYC hospitals were mentioned in an issue of Reader’s Digest because well over 50% of their ER intake was drug related. Users having bad reactions, sellers beaten or shot by competitors, or good citizens attacked in and/or out of their homes by users desperate for something to steal and sell in order to buy more drugs. Heroin was the drug causing the most problem then, but within a few years, cocaine, crack, and other physically and psychologically addictive drugs were competing with heroin and opium. We can now add prescription drugs, methamphetamines, and others to the mix. Marijuana is not the threat to mind, body, and spirit that the aforementioned drugs present. It is less of a “gateway drug” than alcohol, and has numerous beneficial uses ranging from the treatment of PTS, to increasing the appetites and pain control in cancer patients, to reducing the number of seizures in children, and is not part of the following suggestion.There could be a benefit to making the use of the more addictive and harmful drugs legal if used under medical supervision. “Patients” could be admitted to hospitals that are already seeing much of their losses come from treating addicts and the victims of addicts. The addict could receive counseling and would be required to give information that would enable family members to find and visit the ‘patient’. Addicts would not have to attack homes or citizens in order to steal for their drug money, and drugs taken from pushers could be tested and used by hospitals if safe.But the real benefit from having these self destructive personalities in one place is education. Starting at middle school, field trips could walk through the hospital where at risk teens could look through one way glass and see for themselves the “joy” of being high. They could talk to addicts who are trying to come clean in this controlled environment and have something to think about on that day when a person offers them a drug at school or on the streets of their neighborhood. The costs would initially be high, with security for the hospitals themselves being the most costly as drug dealers seek to regain the upper hand. However, the Reader’s Digest article addressed the high cost to hospitals, the police departments, and the victims of drug addicts and their costs and if this program was properly managed and enacted, with a very short time, the costs overall would begin to drop.This is an outline of an idea and would need a great deal of effort to make it a real solution, but in the absence of any other solution than incarceration within unfriendly prisons, prisons that train addicts to be better at crime and more dangerous to the population, it could be a good start.@ Braindead08 - Is it corruption to make a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical corporations head of the FDA as happened in 2006? Is it corrupt to allow lobbyists for drug makers to draft legislation a politician then submits for votes, sometimes without review?I think so, but Washington DC seems less certain.It is a good question, Mr. Einstein… and quite relative to the discussion.Respectfully,C.
If they want a real pricey item, they should ship Saffron, Radish.^http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/01/spice-hunting-saffron-how-to-use-guide.html^The climate of Afghanistan is supposedly very good for the growing of saffron, but it is a much more labor intensive plant than opium.^The war on drugs is a war on Americans and too many of those profiting from this war are outside of our borders. In the late 1970s, five NYC hospitals were mentioned in an issue of Reader’s Digest because well over 50% of their ER intake was drug related. Users having bad reactions, sellers beaten or shot by competitors, or good citizens attacked in and/or out of their homes by users desperate for something to steal and sell in order to buy more drugs. Heroin was the drug causing the most problem then, but within a few years, cocaine, crack, and other physically and psychologically addictive drugs were competing with heroin and opium. We can now add prescription drugs, methamphetamines, and others to the mix. Marijuana is not the threat to mind, body, and spirit that the aforementioned drugs present. It is less of a “gateway drug” than alcohol, and has numerous beneficial uses ranging from the treatment of PTS, to increasing the appetites and pain control in cancer patients, to reducing the number of seizures in children, and is not part of the following suggestion.There could be a benefit to making the use of the more addictive and harmful drugs legal if used under medical supervision. “Patients” could be admitted to hospitals that are already seeing much of their losses come from treating addicts and the victims of addicts. The addict could receive counseling and would be required to give information that would enable family members to find and visit the ‘patient’. Addicts would not have to attack homes or citizens in order to steal for their drug money, and drugs taken from pushers could be tested and used by hospitals if safe.But the real benefit from having these self destructive personalities in one place is education. Starting at middle school, field trips could walk through the hospital where at risk teens could look through one way glass and see for themselves the “joy” of being high. They could talk to addicts who are trying to come clean in this controlled environment and have something to think about on that day when a person offers them a drug at school or on the streets of their neighborhood. The costs would initially be high, with security for the hospitals themselves being the most costly as drug dealers seek to regain the upper hand. However, the Reader’s Digest article addressed the high cost to hospitals, the police departments, and the victims of drug addicts and their costs and if this program was properly managed and enacted, with a very short time, the costs overall would begin to drop.This is an outline of an idea and would need a great deal of effort to make it a real solution, but in the absence of any other solution than incarceration within unfriendly prisons, prisons that train addicts to be better at crime and more dangerous to the population, it could be a good start.@ Braindead08 - Is it corruption to make a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical corporations head of the FDA as happened in 2006? Is it corrupt to allow lobbyists for drug makers to draft legislation a politician then submits for votes, sometimes without review?I think so, but Washington DC seems less certain.It is a good question, Mr. Einstein… and quite relative to the discussion.Respectfully,C.