“Enjoy looking over your shoulder, constantly wondering if today’s the day we come for you. Enjoy trying to sleep tonight, wondering if tonight’s the night our SWAT team blows your front door off the hinges. We are coming for you.”
This sounds like something from an ‘80s action movie. But that’s an actual quote from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Tavares, Florida.
Sheriff Grinnell delivered this message last month while flanked by four combat-ready officers wearing ski masks. It looks like someone from ISIS directed it. You can watch the bizarre video here.
Grinnell’s message was aimed at local drug dealers. You see, Lake County has a serious opioid problem. And like many other places in the US, it’s fighting its drug problem as if it were a war.
After I watched it, I called up Casey Research founder Doug Casey to get his take on the opioid crisis. Below is a transcript of our conversation. We hope you enjoy it.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Justin: Doug, what do you make of the opioid crisis?
Doug: The news cycle seems to be emphasizing the use of opioids at the moment. Now, these are almost all legal prescription drugs, not illegally smuggled heroin and morphine, as was the case in The French Connection. People get their doctors to prescribe opioids for pain. Of course, pain is not something that you can prove. So it’s legitimate for doctors to prescribe these things. After a while the patient may develop a chemical dependency.
This gets into why people become addicted. I’m of the opinion that all kinds of addictions, not just the opioids in question, but addictions to cocaine, meth, other kinds of narcotics, alcohol, or anything else are basically because of pain.
But it’s not necessarily physical pain. It’s psychological pain, which may be even more important. And psychological pain means that people want to check out of reality. So as the economy gets worse—and I think it will get much, much worse in the near future—you can expect levels of addiction to skyrocket, not to go down.
Addiction is a bad habit, but it’s nobody else’s business. From an ethical point of view, your primary possession is your own body. If you don’t own it, and have a right to do whatever you want with it, then you in fact have no rights at all. That’s why the drug war itself is criminal, and morally insane.
The efforts of dangerous idiots like Sheriff Grinnell are counterproductive. If they confiscate a ton of drugs, that just drives up the market price for those that remain. And increases the profits of dealers, drawing more dealers into the business. And encouraging addicts who can’t afford the higher prices to turn to crime in order to support their habit. That’s entirely apart from increasing the level of violence in society, corrupting the police, and lots of other negative fallout.
I’m always amazed by the immense hypocrisy and stupidity of the drug warriors, as well.
For instance, Rush Limbaugh has always been a major drug warrior. He’s actually said on his show that junkies should be executed because they’re such a danger. And then, what do you know? Turns out that he was an oxycodone junkie. Just like the major crusaders against homosexuality—mirabile dictu—turn out to be closet queers themselves half the time. Like Larry Craig, the Republican Senator who claimed he just had a “wide stance” in a public men’s room.
These people seem driven to make laws against the very things they most fear in themselves.
Justin: What’s fueling this crisis?
Doug: Well, many of these opioids are being paid for by Medicaid and Medicare. So the government’s actually paying for the drug boom.
And it’s especially perverse because drugs were a non-problem before the Harrison Act, which was passed in 1914. The act basically made all opium and coca derivatives illegal in the US. Before that there were very few people that were addicted to narcotics, even though narcotics were available to anybody at the local corner drugstore. Addicts were looked down on as suffering from a moral failure, but there was no more profit in heroin than in aspirin. So there were no cartels or drug gangs.
What we’re dealing with isn’t a medical problem, it’s a psychological, even a spiritual, problem. And a legal problem, because self-righteous busybodies keep passing laws—with very severe penalties—regulating what people can or can’t do with their own bodies. It’s part of the general degradation of civilization that I’ve been putting my finger on over the last few years.
The government is the problem behind addiction, on all levels. It’s a major cause for people feeling psychological pain. And they’re the sole reason these medicines are illegal and unavailable. On the subject of addiction, people can become addicted to most anything—food, sugar, alcohol, gambling, sleep, sex—you name it. It’s not good when you do too much of absolutely anything. But so what?
Justin: So, I take it prohibition isn’t the answer?
Doug: Illegalizing something does nothing but create a black market and give people a reason to induce other people to get high. I mean, people have been drinking alcohol for about the last 10,000 years. But it didn’t become a real problem until the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act passed in 1920. At that point, it financed the mafia. Laws turn simple bad habits into massive and profitable criminal enterprises.
The government learned absolutely nothing from the failure of alcohol prohibition. What they’re doing with drugs makes an occasional, trivial problem into a national catastrophe…
Justin: Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Doug.
Doug: My pleasure.
Justin’s note: Tomorrow, Doug and I will continue our conversation by discussing the “militarization” of US police departments. As you can imagine, Doug has interesting things to say about this topic. So be sure to check your inbox.
P.S. Doug shares his unique thoughts every month in The Casey Report, our flagship publication. If you sign up today, you’ll get complete access to all of our archived content, including recent essays by Doug on the Greater Depression, the migrant crisis, and technology. You’ll also receive specific, actionable advice to help you protect and grow your personal financial empire. You can sign up for a risk-free trial of The Casey Report right here.
“because self-righteous busybodies keep passing laws—with very severe penalties—regulating what people can or can’t do with their own bodies.” – Because, politicians have a ‘career’ to defend, and must look like they are ‘doing something’. Just like the DEA and the ‘drug warriors’ it is a make work program. NONE of these jobs, with the exception of maybe the local constable, were ever supposed to be full time gigs. They were usually volunteer jobs, doing your civic duty, and then you went back to ACTUAL PRODUCTIVE WORK.
The ‘war on drugs’ just like the ‘war on poverty’, the war on ‘terror’, war on ‘racists’, war on, you name it, it is just another way for the career politicians to set up and steal funding from you and I for another make work program for people that could never hack it in the real world.
Even the drug dealers are at least running a business.
‘The government learned absolutely nothing from the failure of alcohol prohibition. ‘ – Government learns alright, they learn how to make something that is not a problem in to a problem. Then, sell us the ‘solution’ with our own money, extracted through force.
And regarding Sheriff storm trooper above, this kind of moron is exactly why a lot of people don’t trust the police. Does this idiot think that threatening citizens is going to make them be more forthcoming about crimes that citizens witness? Does he think that alienating half the community is going to make his cops safer? Does this mental midget think through how when he ‘blows off the hinges’ that one of his officers may get ventilated by a person with an automatic weapon? I would think officer safety should rank up higher than bravado, but apparently not. Like I said, make work program for people that could never make it in the real world, as they are just simply too stupid.
Cigarettes kill and maim more people than any illegal drug, just go to a cardiologist office, and look at all the ghost on oxygen.
Alcohol is 2nd most lethal drug. Everyone knows someone who’s life has been ruined by booze.
The war on drugs is very similar to the war on terror, they are the primary industries for the LEO and MIC. without these boogy men, both organizations would be downsized, and the folks who worked in those industries would probably become alcoholics and drug addicts, thus, the need for a self re-enforcing story line.
Surprisingly left out of this article from Doug is the billions made by the CIA importing drugs and playing ball with drug cartels. I continually ask this question without ever getting an answer:
Why is it that if any one of us withdraw ten grand of our own money from a bank men with guns will come to question us about it but hundreds of millions of drug money gets laundered through major banks every day and no one investigates?
+1,000, CCRider.
Good movie.
[img
[/img]
Imagine what the world would be like if people had the ability to connect the dots?
Imagine if they could connect the dots to the US .gov and Big Pharma being the biggest drug (opium)pushers on the planet?
Trump is sending more troops to Afghanistan to guard the fields.
I don’t care what you put in your body – I just don’t want to pay for your rehab / bastard children / funeral. If you habit turns you into a junkie that steals everything in site – then we go Sharia on you!
CC and HSF BL said it well. Most aren’t aware that the original Taliban nearly eradicated poppy farming after the Soviets left. Amazing coinsidence that about the same time the Cocaine scourge began.
Approximately 5-6 weeks ago an article was posted here about a guy who answered a knock on his door late at night and was shot by a cop.
This is the same sheriff’s dept.
B S concocted to shame and demonize elderly ,vets and cancer patients ect.It costs the gov billions a year for cost of pain meds. in US.The gov intends to have a one payer system.So to cut costs the gov creates a propaganda and shame campaign.If you are legit you are now lumped in with homeless junkie.Hope they and their families get cancer die in writhing pain and told to f off by the system they created.Please do an article of the real people in real pain and their struggles to function.The Physicians that are afraid of being harassed and targeted DEA and losing their licence.
Hmm, I wonder if the department of ‘just us’ will investigate that. Maybe the governor aught to fire this idiot and hire a Sheriff that is NOT a complete militant moron. I bet this asshat loves John McCain.
Oh, that’s right, the opiate problem is mostly a white problem, and if a black dindu or ‘immigrant’ doesn’t have their rights violated – move along, nothing to see here.
I mentioned a while ago that heroin seemed to be the next “war” to keep the warriors employed. Looks like they’re going to lump in the pills also. Our masters will make much more profit off of patented chemistry than with all that competition from mother nature’s recipes.
A few years ago there was an article on the people in Whitley County Kentucky and cambell county Tenn. where my Grandmothers family came from. No more mines no more moonshine no more pot growing due to the Feds so now those still there get scripts from Medicaid/Medicare Dr. for Oxy and the dealers from Fla. drive up on I75 to buy them. Now they are called Pillbillies. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. they also go to Sams on stamp day and spend the 4 or 5 hundred in foodstamps to buy that many cases of coke and sell them in back of the local 7/11 for cash.
All vices (drugs, booze, porn, prostitution, gambling, facebooking, casual sex, etc.) are fed by the impulsive mind.
Never before in human history have there existed more ways for people to destroy their own lives and insure they wallow in misery.
Indeed, nothing more to add to Mr. Casey’s comments except to also point out that the CIA is running their global heroin distribution network from the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the US military bases in that country. No different from what they did during the Vietnam war under the banner of “Air America.” The war on drugs is nothing more than a funding mechanism for covert/illegal/immoral activities of the worst elements of the government (not that there are any good elements).
Just found an article done today by Jean Perier on New Eastern Outlook about the Afghan Heroin trade. Up 40 times since the taliban nearly eradicated it.
“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”
North Korea Is A Major Opium Producer (Making It A Prime Target For The CIA)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/north-korea-major-opium-producer-making-it-prime-target-cia
When the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in the wake of 9/11 as part of its newly launched “war on terror,” it set the stage for the explosive growth of Afghanistan’s dying opium industry. A few short months before the invasion took place, the Taliban made headlines for having “dramatically ended the country’s massive opium trade” after the leader of the fundamentalist group had declared the substance to be un-Islamic. At the time, Afghanistan’s opium was used to produce 75 percent of the world’s heroin.
But despite being squashed by the Taliban, the opium market made a dramatic comeback immediately following the U.S. invasion in October 2001. Not only was the opium trade restored, it surged drastically – rising from a production level of 185 tons under the Taliban (before the production ban) to 3,400 tons in 2002.
Over a decade later, the amount of opium harvested annually continues to rise. Afghanistan’s opium is now used to produce 90 percent of the world’s heroin. This increase has been directly overseen by U.S. forces, who openly guard Afghanistan’s poppy fields. Indeed, during that same time, the U.S. government claims to have spent $8.4 billion on counternarcotic programs within Afghanistan.
The dramatic increase in opium production in post-invasion Afghanistan has sparked speculation regarding the motives behind the aggressive action that the U.S. has recently taken towards North Korea, which is also a major opium producer.
It figures. They also don’t have a Rothchild central bank along with Iran and Cuba.
North K not paying opium taxes?? About that central bank. You NK people need a big BRO. How hard would regime change for drug lords be with drones, and seal team 6?? They must be greasing the taxmans hand.
This opium epidemic is right on time. We are just awakening to the poison in our food, and the negative impacts on our health. The various degenerative conditions inflicting very painful conditions with broad vague descriptions. They all deserve a break today!! Opiates for all. Soon the entire drug trade will be taxed
Societies moral and physical conditions are severely weakened.