A Living Magazine - Day 232 - Homecoming - Charlotte: The Maine Problem

Overslept again! I didn't know why I wasn't hearing my watch alarm. I thought maybe that it was going off during my highest REM period. I'd been waking up about twice a night. The first time was usually around 2:00 a.m. to pee. And the next time was usually around 4:00 to turn over--a tricky business if I didn't want the sleeping bag zipper to split. I could usually fall back asleep, since the alarm would still be two hours away. But, as I approach morning, I dream more frequently. And as we've seen, I have pretty strong dreams; dreams I sometimes have a hard time waking from.

Whatever the reason, I was late. Twilight - that time when the stars disappear but the sun isn't up yet - re-colorizes the landscape, adding quite a bit of orange to my tent as it sat against the dull browns of the woods. Most cars that went by were far enough below the bank on the side of the road to miss seeing me. But, occasionally a school bus would go by and I could just imagine the sleepy kids with their heads propped up against the window, seeing the bum in the woods.

Nevertheless, I got packed up and out without being seen at the roadside, made my ever-colder daily commute to Starbucks...

Hell's flames were sounding pretty nice on this frigid morning.

Lately I have been distracted by the behavior of the governor of my home state of Maine, Paul LePage. Beside just being an embarrassment to the state, he has a coalition of conservative ideologues behind him who - even though they know he's wrong on many issues - follow him, because they believe they have no choice. Republicans would often rather slam their fingers in a car door than side with a Democrat. And independents are not a big enough force in Maine to be taken seriously by either side.

Unlike the Pacific Coast, Maine politics is still lost in the erroneous and outdated stereotypes for "drugs" and "drug crime." LePage is using this ignorance (especially the misinformation and unnecessary fear about opioids) to push through even more draconian drug enforcement legislation (see the newly proposed "Drug War" measure: "An Act To Resolve Inconsistencies in the Drug Laws"). And because both parties apparently have no answers for more important issues--and they are many and manifold -they are proposing and debating this "drug" subject that has very little to do with reality.

I wanted to work out my own thoughts about all of this, and published the following article at Facebook. There is so much misunderstanding over such terms as "crime" and "drugs"; Maine people still see these as memes that are roughly equivalent to each other. It is logically backwards thinking and socially retarded policy. So, here is what I've come up with, expanded and better-linked than the post at Facebook. Maybe people in other states are facing similar situations. Let me know in the comments section if you want!  

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THE MAINE PROBLEM

Maine's crime rate has been going down steadily and rapidly. It dropped 9.1% between 2013 and 2014--that is an enormous amount, by the way. Violent and petty crime is down. But when so-called "illegal drugs" are taken into account, "crime" has actually gone up. But is this really crime? My statistics come from this Portland Press Herald article: "Maine sees crime rate fall by 9%, but troubling rise in illegal drugs: Gov. LePage criticizes the Democratic-controlled Legislature for not passing his proposal to combat opioid use"

The above article demonstrates many examples for the following essay. Specifically, that (1) it focuses on drug use as a crime, (2) it highlights specific numbers for categories about the types of non-drug crime that have been reduced...

Last year in Maine, violent crimes such as rape, murder and aggravated assault remained at 1 incident per 1,000 people in the state, just one-quarter the national average. 

The most dramatic declines were in arsons, from 226 in 2012 to 140 last year, a drop of 38 percent; and in robberies, from 421 reported cases in 2012 to 335 reported last year, a drop of 20 percent. 

Aggravated assault was the only crime that increased, from 803 in 2012 to 943 last year, a 17.4 percent increase, according to the state. 

Nine fewer rapes were reported to police, a decline of 2.4 percent.

But, (3) it give no specifics about the supposed increase in drug crime...

Also troubling, officials said, is the continued role of illegal drugs in the state. 

Through the first five months of 2014, drug offenses have increased significantly, said Morris, who attributed it to an influx of drug dealers from out of state. 

“Drugs continue to be the one issue that drives Maine’s crime,” said Morris, who said drug distributors are operating in nearly every county, selling crack cocaine, heroin and oxycodone. “Make no mistake. They are organized and ruthless. They are entrepreneurs who are here to make money no matter how.”

Talk about bias? Even if it is unintentional by the paper, it is still spin and unscholarly. Just examining this last blockquote, we see drug "offenses" are naturally thought of as "troubling." Why? Because we've been told that drugs are "bad"; by using them you are "offending" (breaking the law).

Now, we saw the very carefully gathered numbers for non-drug crime, and we are given the time span for which this improvement occurred--one year (2013-2014). That's great! But what actual numbers are we given for "drug offenses"? Only the "first five months of 2014." Why? Where are the numbers from 2013, during the same period as the improvements in other crime?

Furthermore, what ARE those numbers for the first five months? All we're told is that they "increased significantly," by Public Safety Commissioner, John E. Morris, who was "appointed Public Safety Commissioner by Governor LePage and sworn into office on January 27, 2011." Anyone who thinks Morris is an objective commissioner trying to do what's right in a position that supposedly "serves the people by protecting their lives, rights, and property," and this "...is accomplished through criminal justice, law enforcement, fire safety, emergency response services, safety education and code enforcement," is being boondoggled. Who better to promote the governor's drug war agenda, by announcing what a "problem" the state has with "drug offenses" than the governor's own appointed commissioner; one who doesn't even give numbers for his assertions?

The media - being the jelly-spined, Henny Penny of social issues, driving stereotypes and making the news rather than reporting it - didn't ask for these numbers. To do so would have shown that the apples of real crime have nothing to do with the oranges of drug use (so-often called, "abuse").

And Morris' claim that "Drugs continue to be the one issue that drives Maine’s crime,” is blatantly hyperbolic, inaccurate, unproven and highly prejudicial. It makes Maine seem like a dangerous, drug-infested land permeated by "organized and ruthless...entrepreneurs who are here to make money no matter how." Hearing the numbers would have pulled the wind right out of the sails of that statement, but both the administration and the media can't benefit from these scare tactics if the fear is shown to be fictional.

By contrast, and to the Press Herald's credit, there is mention of a much more serious and terribly pernicious issue in Maine--sexual assault...

However, the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault noted that the decline represents only the cases that were reported to law enforcement. 

“Approximately 13,000 Mainers experience sexual violence each year, but in 2013, only 359 rapes and attempted rapes were reported,” said Cara Courchesne, a spokeswoman for the coalition. “Clearly, that’s a huge gap.”

This is where we stand with chalk in hand, but are unable to draw the line. Legalizing cannabis (for example) and regulating it like alcohol would bring the "drug offenses" number down. But, that isn't what is being focused on. [I think it is interesting to note that the Wi-Fi system here at the Harris Teeter Market where I am working would not let me open the Regulate Maine website; all part of the information blindness game. But people with more freedom should still be able to go their site by clicking the link in the last sentence.]

It is opioids (heroin mostly), and prescription medications like oxycontin that Maine legislators and the governor are focusing on. Like many other states, Maine came down hard on doctors who prescribe pain killers. So hard, in fact, that doctors are now afraid to prescribe pain medication for legitimate pain sufferers. There is a onion of multi-layered red tape that a patient and in pain, and his/her doctor, must negotiate in order to get opiate (natural and/or synthetic) medication.

Who designed the parameters of this vetting process? The American Medical Association? The Food and Drug Administration? The National Institute of Health? Was there any health-related expert involved in this denial of pain medication to legitimate sufferers?

Of course not. It is a DEA controlled system. Doctors are ultimately overseen by this destructive and failed, Nixon-era department. Doctors who know medicine and health needs are superseded in authority by the DEA, which has no medical experience and is a law enforcement organization.

Legalizing cannabis would give some of these sufferers a way to control pain and not be linked to the opioid issue. But there are kinds of pain that cannabis just can't tackle. And with the ever-stricter control over pain medication, these folks are being thrown under the bus by Maine's government; kicked there by the jackboot, goose-stepping, non-leadership of Governor Paul LePage.

An effort to impeach the governor - who has been the laughing stock of the nation for his stupid comments and stubborn ideological stances - has failed (never went to vote, yet 52 Democrats signed it). He isn't going anywhere. We must put up with this governor for the rest of his term which will expire in two years (2018).

What I want to say has less to do with Maine DEA policy and LePage's ignorant ideology, than with the ignorance of Maine citizens about drugs in general and why they should re-educate themselves about drug prohibition and why it is inhuman and destructive. People just accept what they were told in school and figure that if the media focuses on the problem it must be important; neither of which is true anymore.

Let's look at heroin. The reason why heroin use is increasing in Maine is because prescription medications have become less available from physicians and therefore to the black market (due to DEA oversight, as mentioned above). This always happens. Take the pills away, or manufacture them with safeguards against crushing and snorting or injecting, and heroin makes a big comeback.

Problem is, the illegality of heroin is what makes it dangerous, not the substance itself. Here is an excerpt from NIDA's (National Institute of Drug Abuse) own report about why heroin is so dangerous...

"Heroin abuse, like prescription opioid abuse, is dangerous both because of the drug’s addictiveness and because of the high risk for overdosing. In the case of heroin, this danger is compounded by the lack of control over the purity of the drug injected and its possible contamination with other drugs (such as fentanyl, a very potent prescription opioid that is also abused by itself). All of these factors increase the risk for overdosing, since the user can never be sure of the amount of the active drug (or drugs) being taken. In 2010, there were 2,789 fatal heroin overdoses, approximately a 50 percent increase over the relatively constant level seen during the early 2000s. What was once almost exclusively an urban problem is spreading to small towns and suburbs. In addition, the abuse of an opioid like heroin, which is typically injected intravenously, is also linked to the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis (especially Hepatitis C), sexually-transmitted infections, and other blood-borne diseases, mostly through the sharing of contaminated drug paraphernalia but also through the risky sexual behavior that drug abuse may engender."

My Summary...

1. "lack of control over the purity of the drug"
2. "possible contamination with other drugs"
3. "the user can never be sure of the amount of the active drug (or drugs) being taken"
4. "linked to the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis (especially Hepatitis C), sexually-transmitted infections, and other blood-borne diseases"

These four points from only one paragraph of the NIDA's report given to Congress on May 14, 2014, presented by Nora D. Volkow, M.D. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, are not risks because of the substances at all, but because of the criminalization of them. These four factors would not be an issue with oxycontin (for example) because its manufacture is strictly controlled and regulated--it is legal. On the other hand, black tar heroin (for example) is probably the most unreliable of any substance to actually BE what it is sold as.

Folks may say that number 4 above could happen with crushed and injected oxycontin (through the sharing of contaminated needles), but that risk only exists because backwards and puritanical policies will not allow organizations to hand out brand new and clean needles. More prohibition that kills.

Heroin (or diamorphine, which is the generic and prescription name) - as a pure substance, measured and taken correctly - is not toxic (morphine alone is a toxin), ten times more powerful than morphine (meaning less is needed), and if dosed responsibly with a clean needle, can be taken indefinitely with little to no risk of building tolerance, overdosing, poisoning, disease infection, or any question as to its adulteration with other drugs. This has been proven in England and Holland. People who were street addicts and have lost the ability to process the body's endogenous opioid-like endorphins can maintain a perfectly normal life under a regimen such as I have just described. And, they get clean needles to use for free.

Unfortunately, because of the reputation of heroin in the US, less euphoric drugs have been used to "treat" heroin users in so-called "Opioid Replacement Therapy"; requiring former users to legally use methadone--as dangerous a drug to stop taking as heroin.

In other words, you get less high and go through just as much pain and suffering to quit methadone as heroin--maybe more. This is but another non-logical and political overruling of what is medically sound in favor of what is politically correct and exclusively overseen by law enforcement, not health experts.  

Why can't Americans also benefit from such programs as England, where legal heroin clinics for addicts is actually cutting crime? Well, that's a much bigger and multi-tentacled subject having to do with over fifty years of "drug" propaganda, misinformation, skewed medical studies, and brainwashed populations.

Suffice it to say though, if all drugs were legalized, manufactured by reputable labs, regulated, taxed and distributed under the watchful care of doctors cooperating with the government rather than being slaves to it - instead of being illegal, manufactured by dirty labs (dust mites have been found in spoon-boiled, injected heroin), unregulated for purity, and making money for killers and criminal organizations - the small percentage of opioid users (which has never exceeded 2% of the population) would not die anymore. Simple.

But Americans (Mainers apparently especially) are both skeptical of new information and afraid to check up on it themselves. They are so settled in their own addiction to conventional and traditional information, that it threatens their world view to be told their thinking is wrong. It is even less likely that they will do the research themselves necessary to learn the truth of the matter for the same reason (if not out of simple laziness)--it is threatening to realize they have been wrong.

We have all been told that if drugs like heroin were legal, the problems of so-called "addiction" (another sticky term, loaded with memes and misinformation) would "spread." Yet, historically this has not been the case. Only a very small number of people are ever uncontrollably attracted to opioids. I myself have tried various forms of opioids and simply not been interested in them. It wasn't because I was afraid of habituation, nor that I didn't like the effects, but just that they didn't give me what I personally was looking for--mind expansion. I just didn't want to feel that good all the time, without being creative and learning new things. To me, just sitting around on my ass feeling good was not an adequate enough reason to imbibe. Over 90% of all people have their own reasons for not using "feel good" substances.

Some more skewed statistics (asterisks) that are spun to support agendas, not the truth--with my comments after (in blue)...

* Data collected by the National Institute on Drug Abuse show as many as 4.2 million Americans reported using heroin at least once in their lives. Of this number, an estimated 23 percent become addicted to the drug. 

Less than 1 in 4 people who try heroin become addicted. Habituation to heroin is not a foregone conclusion. 

* In 2009, the abuse of prescription painkiller drugs accounted for more than 475,000 emergency room visits. This number represents a twofold increase in drug-related emergency room visits since 2005. 

These weren't deaths, they were emergency room visits. That is 0.016% of the population. 

* As of 2010, opiate addiction statistics show over 12 million Americans reported using prescription pain medications for non-medical purposes without having obtained an actual prescription. 

This is not them becoming habituated; it is only showing use. This is recreational use. And according to NA and AA, any recreational use IS EQUAL TO "abuse." That is what we have been led to believe. Feeling good by using a substance that doesn't hurt you if done correctly and moderately is blanketed as "abuse." 

* In 2010, an estimated two million people reported abusing prescription pain medication for the first time within the previous 12 month period. This number amounts to 5,500 people a day abusing prescription pain meds for the first time. 

This says they tried these medications once ("the first time"). There is no indication they ever used them again. So, technically there could also be 5,500 a day who never use them again, which negates the propagandistic implication that 5,500 new people are being introduced to these substances a day. Who cares, if they don't continue using? 

[Source: addiction.com]

Drug recovery programs are big business. All of these things that are made to appear so altruistic are kinds of spin; playing on five decades of scaring the American people about less dangerous substances than the government itself sanctions as "legal," like alcohol and cigarettes.

So, back to Maine. Why are illegal drugs that affect less than 2% of the population being so highly focused on? Why is their increased use considered an increase in "crime"? Why are "drug dealers" so evil that they are to be taken out and shot in the street or beheaded in public (Paul LePage's suggestions)? What makes all of this drug selling, buying and taking so incredibly demonic and something that needs to be at the very very top of everyone's list of priorities?

Ideological power, money allocation, and law enforcement control are the answers to those questions.

To give some perspective, a report at maine.gov (dubiously titled "Fact Sheet - Drug Related Deaths" - see how "drug" is used without disambiguation in the title?) says that 86% of all alcohol and drug related deaths were due to alcohol consumption (not other drugs). And of those non-alcohol deaths, only a handful were opioid related.

So why aren't we shooting bar owners on site or ramping up penalties, or closing down liquor stores? Well, remember, we tried that as a nation in the failed attempt to prohibit alcohol (1920 to 1933). Now that once-prohibited substance brings in huge amounts of tax revenue for Maine.

As sheeple, we Americans have been philosophically led by Harry Anslinger (who demonized cannabis), Richard Nixon (who started the "war on drugs") and Nancy Reagan (who launched the "just say no" debacle) to think that drugs other than the state-sanctioned alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sugar, transfat, red meat and television are different--that a psychoactive drug prohibition program works.

But, as I've said, all it really works for is the promotion of ideological power (only President Carter was brave enough to try to decriminalize cannabis nationwide, but failed--the rest of the presidents just played along with Nixon's policies), money allocation (an absolutely astounding 51+ BILLION of our dollars is spent annually to "combat illegal drugs"!), and law enforcement control (as mentioned, the DEA has control over things it doesn't even know anything about, like doctors and healthcare concerns).

These are what rule public policy when it comes to social control over the masses--over YOU and ME. If we were to go on facts alone, alcohol is ruining lives at more than ten times the rate of all other drugs. Let's look at the real American preventable death statistics...

Even firearms beat out drug abuse.

So, my point is not to demonize alcohol too (no thing should ever be blamed--people's behavior is to blame), but rather to treat all drugs as health issues, not legal issues. Supposedly, that is what we do with alcohol.

But still, wishy-washy Mainers sit and scratch their heads about whether to legalize cannabis (something no one has ever died from, when used by itself)? The media makes it seem like "drugs" are the biggest issue in Maine, by trumpeting the efforts of the state government to deal with this "illegal drug" problem the state has.

Well as you've noticed, I say we should legalize ALL drugs - starting with cannabis - and by default no more "Black drug dealers will come up to the state and impregnate White girls" (a LePage claim), tax money will become available for treatment--since drugs have nothing to do with criminality by default; only when they are colored with bias and misinformation, no more money will go to the DEA--doctors will be free to practice as they see fit and not be pressured by ideological and political forces, and - as I saw in Oregon and Washington State - the freedom to use cannabis recreationally will lessen alcohol use and related violence. The most amazing thing I saw in Spokane, Washington (for example) was how little everything else was affected by cannabis legalization and retail sales. People were just happier and richer. I never saw cannabis being used in public and no big cannabis culture has grown up there. In fact, children are now less likely to try cannabis, since all of the mystique and naughtiness has been removed by legalizing it.

But in Maine, there they are - all those nasty drugs - being equated with immorality (that is why they were originally prohibited). Violence and dirtiness, home wreckers, family destroyers... have become the t-shirt slogans of politicians like LePage, back-up and pumped out like oxygen by the media to a public that in turn thinks it is suffocating because this relatively minor issue has been spoon fed on these illogical arguments and inaccuracies for generations; so long they don't ever remember a time without "drugs are bad" and "just say no."

I do not ignore that fact that Maine is very progressive in some places. Portland and South Portland have legalized cannabis--the only cities in prohibition states to have done so. If this weren't the case, I would feel no hope at all for Maine. We just need to take that final step...

There are a hundred other things happening to Maine and the nation that are far more serious, destructive, expensive, violent and deeply rooted than opioid drug use--or even drug use in general.

The focus on it is a shell game; a distraction; as a smoke screen that politicians can use to remain popular, law enforcement can use to remain funded, and the public can use to feel like something is being done in society to improve it, when actually nothing of the sort at all is happening.

Please, Mainers, THINK FOR YOURSELVES. Consider that voting for the legalization of cannabis this fall can be the first step to untying the knots that bind up the state's money, energy and governmental ignorance. And, whether it passes or not, keep your minds keep your minds keen to the real junk-peddling, self-serving politicians, no matter whom they are. But especially, be mindful of all ideological agendas that have very little to do with the reality or your own life needs and happiness.

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After working at Harris Teeter and then the library, I headed back to my sleep spot. The batteries in my camera were dead, so I wasn't able to take anymore pictures on this day. The temperature was due to fall even lower in the coming days and nights here in Charlotte and I needed to reexamine my plan for dealing with that. Sleep came on as I contemplated all of this.

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