A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

(FRAZER CHRONICLE)

(All the News That Nobody Else Will Print)

With all the crap that’s going on around the world, almost forgotten is the United States war on drugs and the legalization of pot in some states. Hell, mid-term elections are less than six weeks off and I have yet to see a candidate expound on the drug problems in their district, state, or on the federal level. They’re still drug busts…..right?

 

With an almost total lack of effort by the media to cover any activity with regards to drug enforcement, it makes one guess that maybe the drug war is over…..and the straights won. I kid, I know that our drug enforcement agencies are still hard at work, I suppose that it’s a bad time right now to report on any drug use, I guess the officials and the media are waiting for both high school and college students to get settled in, and kind of have a routine before pot parties are raided and under aged drinkers will be hassled once again.

 

I knew that Afghanistan has been the world’s major producer of opium at least since the early 1990s and experts peg this year’s crop to be of the highest ever. Of course there’s a murky connection alluded too between the C.I.A. and these poppy growing farmers. The case for these allegiances can be defined in one single word…..money.

 

“The beginning of the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Forces from Afghanistan, the political instability in the country and a number of other factors make it a probability that the situation may drastically deteriorate in the near future.” This is a quote from Viktor Ivanov, Director of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service at a conference of anti-drug agencies from Caspian states.

 

According to the Russian official, drug production in Afghanistan has now reached “a historic high,” with more than 250,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of opium poppy, 150,000 acres that have been cultivated for cannabis, and Viktor Ivanov added that as many as 4,000,000 Afghans are involved in the illegal drug industry in the country.

 

Ivanov labeled Afghanistan as a “direct threat to international peace and security,” as the country has recently become “a truly planetary center for drug production.” There are eight million drug addicts in Russia and over 1.5 million of them use Afghan heroin.

 

In the United States, which has a population of 318,827,000 there are an estimated 12.5 million people addicted to illegal substances. Russia with its population less than half the size of the U.S. has a per capita drug problem that exceeds the U.S.

 

 WHERE THE WORLD’S WORSE DRUG ABUSERS LIVE

People usually think that the United States would have the world’s worst drug abusers and it might lead some to figure that that would be correct if one watches the evening news, but there are actually much more severely addicted people in the world besides the U.S. in fact there are seven countries that have it bad when it comes to drug abuse.

 

As mentioned, Russia, Iran (heroin addiction), Afghanistan (heroin addiction), United States (not a producer, but among the world’s top users), Great Britain (world’s highest overdose rate, and the number one user of hard drugs, cocaine and heroin).

 

There are, in addition to the above, countries with huge numbers of abusers, France (prescription pill abuse), Brazil (Oxi, Oxidado, or rust), and Canada (runaway pot use). With the exception of both Afghanistan and Iran, these are developed countries with established drug treatment programs, and stringent controlled substance laws.  

 

Ivanov laments of the turmoil in the Ukraine and how drug traffickers have facilitated illegal drug transit through the country, thus allowing the flow of methadone into Russia. He also touches on the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States. “The political leadership of the U.S. has sanctioned me and banned me from entering the Ukraine, thus putting an end to the Russian-America working group on drugs, which actively operated for over five years and of which I was a co-chair from the Russian side,” he said.

 

“I don’t know what the motivation was, but it clearly wasn’t the interests of the American people, as Russia and the U.S. conducted large-scale joint operations to prevent shipments of cocaine from South America to the U.S.

 

DRUGS WITH HIGH POTENTIAL FOR ABUSE

I can’t say too much about drug abuse, I abused alcohol in my youth, so in a way I kind of understand why somebody might abuse a controlled substance. That said I will have to admit that I have an abiding hatred for drugs drug use, drug pushers, and drug suppliers. I think that drugs and dependency rip away at the fabric of our society.

 

I’ve used pot a handful of times, and although the high that I got was a hell-of-a lot better than getting drunk, the euphoric high wasn’t the same as alcohol, it made me paranoid, and I sure as hell didn’t need that…..plus it was illegal.

 

The list of what is called schedule 1 drugs is extensive with 150 headings and over 1000 derivatives listed. I don’t pretend to be a drug expert, and I’ve never met a drug expert, but I’ve sure met a whole host of drug users and abusers, and they mostly swear by whatever their choice of drug is.

 

I’m not sure why the United States through their sanctioning process quit cooperating with Ivanov, the Russian drug guy…..but I have an idea. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might want to get their hands on some of the illicit for their own devious use…..like bribing, selling to pad operating expenses, and to keep entire sects of people under the oppression of abuse.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!