Getting High on Scorpions: The Afghan Drug War

Here's the latest comic from Robert Arthur, author of a book that I read years ago and think about often, called You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos.

David Macdonald argues in his 2007 book, Drugs in Afghanistan, that Afghanistan’s increased drug usage is driven by an impoverished battle-scarred population trying desperately to relieve its suffering. Western-led efforts to universally criminalize drugs are futile because distressed people will always be able to find chemical relief.

As an example, Macdonald notes that in Afghanistan even the ubiquitous scorpions can be used for intoxication. Tartars in Bamiyan province prepare scorpions by smashing them between stones and letting them dry. The main part of the tail, with the sting, is then crushed into a powder and smoked with tobacco and/or hashish (marijuana).

Getting High on Scorpions: The Afghan Drug War

• [tristan eldritch]

  “a scorpion high reportedly can last days”

  Very Burroughsian.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Black meat’s not that much fun without a couple of Interzone boys on the side.

• [Doug Black]

  Wow, I never dreamed that Sealab 2021 episode (#2106, “All That Jazz”) had a germ of truth in it.

• [Michael Birch]

  However, in light of the recent cannibalism epidemic, please take note that the article says “scorpions” and not “scorpios”…   Your scorpio friends, such as myself, will not be very amused if you try to crush us up and smoke us. Just putting that out there…

• [Ian Wood]

  Unless it makes me eat someone’s face off, I am not innarested. I am not innarested at all.

• [john g]

  That would only be true if the drug war’s intent was to combat drug use.  The drug war’s purpose is to fund clandestine operations in foreign countries, to feed more people to the prison industry, and to eliminate competition for legal drugs.

  • [karl_jones]

    I see a parallel with torture.

    Public discussion of torture primarily (exclusively?) concerns extraction of information.  Is the information reliable?  Is the information useful, in military/political terms?  What are the moral consequences of extracting information via torture?

    But in the real world — according to my reading of ancient Assyria, and every bloodthirsty conqueror since — torture primarily serves to frighten people into submission.  Consider the words of Ashurnasirpal:

    I built a pillar over against his city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skin.  Some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar …  And I cut the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled …

    http://books.google.com/books?id=W0X9BTEO7OAC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=others+I+bound+to+stakes+round+about+the+pillar&source=bl&ots=6jpG2RoKRL&sig=L8sKvfWHT78irMetgooDek76gcI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O3nNT6HiLMu-gAeTjrHjDg&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=others%20I%20bound%20to%20stakes%20round%20about%20the%20pillar&f=false

• [Dirtbag_Kingdom]

  Off to the exotic pet store.

  • [Kevin Kadow]

    I expect to see hippies wandering around the desert in the American southwest with a blacklight and a garden shears.

• [Rob]

  “a scorpion high reportedly can last days” ? Challenge accepted 
  ಠ_ರೃ

• [Simper]

  I watched a documentary about poverty and drug use somewhere in Africa where people poop in bags, twist them shut, wait until the contents fermented, then they would inhale the methane and other gases for a cheep high. Ever since my saying is ” You can’t win the war on drugs because you can’t feasibly outlaw pooping in bags” . It isn’t my idea of a good time but if you outlaw everything  people will find a way and in the end what are you going to do? Outlaw plastic bags and defecating?

  • [Doug Black]

    I suppose it’s likely to be less harmful than huffing gasoline or dry cleaning fluid,still … knowing humans inhale concentrated poop fumes to get high is one bit of knowledge I wish I had remained ignorant of.  Unicorn chaser, anyone? 

  • [Mike Loven]

    Ah Jenkem…   an elegant drug, for a more civilized age…

    • [Cowicide]

      Hear! Hear! Jenkem has an exquisite high reminiscent of a fine red bordeaux.  The only thing I can think of that would be better is if you carefully blended some finely ground scorpion assholes into it.

  • [Ian Anthony]

    Naw, that was a hoax. Scorpion powder is one thing, but we’re safe from poop fumes: 
    http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp

    • [JonS]

       No, clearly it /wasn’t/ a hoax. It absolutely was grossly* exaggerated, but even the Snopes article makes it clear that Jenkem is a real ‘thing’.

      * heh – see what I did there?

      • [Ian Anthony]

        I stand corrected.

  • [The Life Of Bryan]

    Is there any known culture that doesn’t engage in widespread consciousness modification, typically by chemical means?

    • [lasershark]

      chemicals not required. toddlers spin on the spot to get dizzy.

      • [The Life Of Bryan]

        I said “typically”. I was thinking of The Choking Game and similar when I added that qualifier.

    • [john g]

      not just all human cultures either.  Elephants have been known to get high on fermented berries, even traveling a great distance to get to them.  If all motivation is based on a dopaminergic feedback loop, then outlawing drugs is as useless as outlawing sex.

  • [Allen]

    OK,, ,, ,, ,, ,, So basically that means that if you put your nose up to someone’s butt and sniff up their farts that it will get you high???? 
    Fart gases are the Same gases, right? Now all we gotta do is convince all the crack heads that suckin farts is even cheaper than suckin the crack pipe. AND IT’S LEGAL IN MOST STATES!!!!!!! Who cares if they all end up bein butt sniffers

    • [Stonewalker]

       I like the cut of your jib

      • [DreamboatSkanky]

        Jib-cutting is a gateway activity.

• [fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

  If I remember the lessons of our shining successes(tm) in Latin America, this new information involving scorpions is a clear sign that we should be dousing Afghanistan with pesticides and funneling large amounts of money to local authorities to ensure that helicopter-mobile arachno-kill teams can keep up the good work…

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    We can ill afford another Klendathu.

  • [internetcontrarian]

    I’m down for this. Eff scorpions. Not the band, cause they’ll rock you like a hurricane. But the bugs. Arachnids. Whatever. 

  • [Marc Mielke]

    I actually have little problem with even domestic attempts to get rid of scorpions. That’s money well spent, especially if they can wipe out centipedes at the same time. Big-ass spiders can go too. 

• [Simper]

   The hoax part was that US teens were using this particular method to get high. The method itself is very real if you actually read down into the snopes article it explains that.

  • [cdh1971]

    Well, and here I thought we had an explanation for certain teenager’s behaviour _and_ the smell of their rooms. 

• [The Life Of Bryan]

  When giant scorpion doobies are outlawed, only… wait, what?

• [niktemadur]

  Banana peels, anyone?  Then I also heard the same thing about nutmeg.

  One more, and this one seems legit and sounds very intriguing, an Atlantic fish with a potent psychedelic compound in its’ flesh, the Sarpa Salpa.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarpa_salpa

  • [redesigned]

    nutmeg *IS* hallucinogenic in large does, as it contains myristicin, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which is psychoactive and a strong deliriant.  i have personally experienced nutmeg hallucinations.  it isn’t as “fun” as many psychedelics.

    Banana peels are an urban legend.

    There are a number of fish that are hallucinogenic for different reasons.

    • [Ambiguity]

       Once, when I was a poor college student and all I had was a few dollars in my pocket and nothing to do on a weekend (it was summer and all my friends were gone), I bought a tin of nutmeg and decided to try the experiment.

      It works, but that’s about all I can say for it. Not much to recommend it, really.

    • [DreamboatSkanky]

      And skinny bucks.

• [edgarhjelte]

  How can people still get away with saying things like “criminalizing drugs is futile because desperate people will always be able to find chemical relief”, despite established knowledge about drug prevention?
  1: Decreased availability and higher price reduces drug use, and vice versa.
  2: The norms (on different levels) of the society influences drug use. An allowing attitude increases drug use, and vice versa.

  It’s never been just about the already hooked and desperate people. It’s mostly about keeping people from getting there in the first place.

  • [The Life Of Bryan]

    Ah, I see you’re new to Market Economies.

    • [edgarhjelte]

       Nope, it’s market economy I’m talking about. A ban on a drug removes all legal actors on the stage, leaving only the illegal, which means that distribution costs will go up and availability will be reduced, which leads to an increase in price and a reduction in consumtion. This works for drugs as well as most all other commodities. Come back when you’ve studied some more!

      • [Niczar]

        You’re entirely right! That is why hashish consumption is much higher in the Netherlands or Portugal, where it can be legally purchased cheaply, than in France where it’s illegal and significantly more expensive! Oh wait, it’s not. 

      • [redesigned]

        you have obviously never read ANY of the numerous studies done on this exact subject.  your assumptions are incorrect and based on a lack of understanding of both the motivating factors of drug use and the economic motivators behind the networks that make them available.

        come back when you’ve studied more!

      • [JamesHofstede]

         Absolutely wrong.

      • [The Life Of Bryan]

        One used to be able to get recreational drugs easily, and then we spent a few decades restructuring much of our society to fight this huge war (against ourselves!) based on your little hypothesis.

        How’d that ever turn out, anyway?

      • [blueelm]

        No you get “new drugs”  like hillbilly meth and impure homebrew heroin that rots  your legs off. And then you get people who use those. Wheeee…. come back when you’ve paid attention to reality more!

  • [Jason Conort]

    First off, not our country, yet we feel the need to impose our values on them. Heck we can’t even agree what our values are! Second did you read the story? How do you decrease the availability? By killing every animal that could possibly be ground up and smoked?

    • [edgarhjelte]

       I’m not talking about any specific country or any specific drug. Read what I write instead of speculating next time! I’m talking about prevention, not what desperate drug users will do to get any kind of fix.

      • [redesigned]

        prevention is best done through education not criminilization.  if fact criminilizations has a direct reverse impact on usage and tends to dramatically reduce both education and rehabilitation efforts.

      • [The Life Of Bryan]

        Some definitions might be in order if we are actually going to debate/discuss your point.

        Mainly, how exactly are you defining “drug” in this context?

      • [blueelm]

        You mean like alcoholics, right?

  • [atimoshenko]

    One word: Prohibition

    Criminalisation leads to a smaller number of much heavier users (and it is heavy use rather than widespread use that has the largest social costs), decreased safety (no regulation), and significant opportunities for organised crime. Who benefits? Self-rghteous moralisers maybe… 

    • [edgarhjelte]

      Drug use is the number one social problem in large parts of the world. Alcohol alone causes more deaths than all violence combined. Any decrease in drug use is of immense value to the society. Norms are a great part of the equation. For example there is little alcohol use in large parts of the world, due to cultural reasons. The drug is not promoted or is banned. (Actually a majority of the adults in the world have not drunk alcohol for the past 12 months, according to WHO.) A ban implies that the society (or just the government, if the democractic system is flawed, as in many nations, USA included) doesn’t approve of the drug. Apart from the reduced availability and increased price the ban itself leads to (since only illegal actors can distribute it), there is an additional preventing effect, since most people are more inclined to following society’s norms than breaking them. There are many studies on this. People often believe in some kind of reversed psychology for drugs, but that isn’t supported by empirical evidence.

      So, the people benefit from reduced damages. The governement benifits from reduced costs connected to drug users. Previously legal companies that used to distribute the drug loses, and that’s why such companies are using loads of money on lobbying. Many are fooled by them.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Any decrease in drug use is of immense value to the society.

        To the society in your mind. Personally, I’ll take a pass on prohibition, thanks.

        • [Ambiguity]

          I think that a great majority would prefer a drug free society if they could actually grasp the amount of destruction that drugs currently cause.

          I’d also prefer a magical flying pony in my garage, but since I’m not getting either — and the societal costs of prohibition are so demonstrably high — I’ll stick with a harm-based approach, where drug policies reflect the personal and societal costs of a drug in question, and relatively safe drugs are legal and available..

          And a Honda.

          Edit: what’s more: I think that a great majority would prefer a prohibition free society if they could actually grasp the amount of destruction that drug prohibition currently causes.

      • [redesigned]

        yeah prohibition of alcohol worked great and reduced the supply?  pick up a history book so you at least have something to base your opinions on.  *yikes*

      • [atimoshenko]

        Drug abuse is a problem, not drug use. And drug abuse is encouraged by the criminalisation of drugs.

        Mind you, I would appreciate seeing some sources for:
        “Drug use is the number one social problem in large parts of the world.”
        “Alcohol alone causes more deaths than all violence combined.”
        “Any decrease in drug use is of immense value to the society.”

        and especially
        “The governement benifits from reduced costs connected to drug users.”

        since the way I see it, criminalising victimless activities for which there is non-trivial demand adds massively to policing and enforcement costs, adds somewhat to public healthcare costs (unregulated substances more likely to be harmful), and removes a lucrative tax opportunity.

        And what specifically, are these “reduced damages” that “people” benefit from?

        • [blueelm]

          People with a lot of problems tend also to abuse drugs. Abusing drugs correlates with abusing people, well self abuse correlates as well. Wow! It’s almost like the relationship there has something to do with the person!

      • [JamesHofstede]

         ”if they could actually grasp the amount of destruction that drugs currently cause.”

        They understand that prohibition causes more.

      • [blueelm]

        So, ever read up on the history of the US? How safe did that prohibition make it for us? How much did it decrease real usage (oh, hard to find out those metrics isn’t it when it’s illegal, eh?)

        You need those cites you keep talking about. But, I’m starting to get a little high from your posts. Jenkem?

  • [EvilTerran]

    Ah, I see you’re trying to diminish drug use, as an end in itself. Why?

    Surely you should be trying to diminish harm, and increasing the black market’s profit margins would achieve precisely the opposite?

    • [edgarhjelte]

       Nope. All of society takes a heavy toll due to drug use. Surely you must be aware of this? Are you an american? Then you may be worried about violent crimes in your country. Possibly you may support increased weapon regulations, or not, if you’re the NRA type of person. But you may be interested to know that alcohol alone kills more people than violence, wars included, in your country as well as in the world as a whole. A very large percentage of all accidents are related to alcohol and other drugs. Insane numbers of children grow up among heavy drug users, giving them a terrible start in life. I’m trying to diminish drug use, all right, since I care about other people’s lives.

      • [redesigned]

         the usa has the higest incarceration rate per capita of any first world country by no small margin.  over 25% of the people in prison are there for non-violent drug only offences.  they are not being rehabilitated.  this is an epidemic and very real problem but not the problem you think it the problem.  land of the free my ass.

        edgar, you’d have people even give up alchol?  when do you draw the rightous line in the sand?  gambling? tv? video games?  reading?  sex?  (you do know that are all addictive and can have negative impacts, and that even addictive things like alchol can be used responsibly in non-adctive manner by regular people right?)

        your kind of care is the worst kind.  you think you know what is best for other people and would impose your morals/beleifs on them.  when you’ve been around a few years, you’ll grow up and realize that no two people share the same morals and that imposing yours on others “for their benifit” is the worst possible choice.

      • [EvilTerran]

        If people who wanted to take drugs could, for instance:

        - go to a licensed establishment, staffed by qualified pharmacists/nurses/other medical professionals;

        - receive their drugs at a known dose, with no impurities;

        - be advised as to how to enjoy them safely by the qualified staff, be helped out by them if things somehow go wrong anyway, and receive cessation aid without judgement if they want it;

        - and generally have their fun in a safe & welcoming environment with no criminals involved in any part of the supply chain…

        … then your “harms of drugs” would almost completely evaporate. Alcohol is a terrible example, it’s one of the most harmful drugs there is ( http://www.lila.it/doc/documentazione/rdd/thelancet.pdf ).

        I’m not American, BTW. British. And looking to Portugal, which craps all over your claims.

      • [Brian Flowers]

         You just made my argument for me…alcohol DOES kill more people than violence. Or marijuana by the way (which has never, in all of recorded history, caused a death — it’s physically impossible.) But Alcohol is completely legal. We tried banning it, and we all know how that worked out.

        Here’s the thing — making a drug illegal might prevent a few people from using it (although I highly doubt that — in most highschools it’s easier for a 14 year old kid to get weed than cigarettes BECAUSE it’s illegal) — but even if it does prevent some uses, at what cost? People don’t usually kill to get their next shot of whiskey, because there’s no reason to. Nobody kills over cigarettes, despite the fact that nicotine is the most addictive drug known to man. They will kill over cocaine or heroin. Why? Because it’s illegal, which drives the prices up, and when you don’t have any money, you’re already forced into a criminal lifestyle and you’re addicted; you’re going to do whatever it takes. If you’re an alcoholic you can stand on the street begging for money and have enough to buy a bottle in a few minutes, so even the most desperate alcoholics don’t generally resort to violence.

        Now add to this the fact that people who are addicted are much less likely to seek treatment if the drug is illegal, out of fear of criminal prosecution. And add that they have more trouble getting a job because the drugs are illegal — nobody gets fired for alcohol in a drug test, unless they’re coming in drunk. And add that — even if they DO get into school, they’re likely to get kicked out, so they’ll have no education (happened to a friend of mine — he needed rehab, he ended up working minimum wage trying to save enough to afford tuition, because he was paying previously ENTIRELY with financial aid.) So, no education, no job, no money, and a need to feed a powerful addiction. Is it any surprise they turn to crime and violence?

        And then we have the fact that organized crime is almost entirely funded by illegal drugs. Make the drugs legal, and you starve almost all of these organizations. There won’t be gang shootings over drugs if drugs are legal. There won’t be criminals building goddamn TANKS in Mexico if they aren’t turning a profit using them to transport drugs.

        There are places that have legalized or decriminalized a lot of the drugs that the US has currently made illegal. Overall, it’s worked out pretty well. Hell, it’s also worth remembering that pretty much none of these drugs were illegal anywhere in the world more than 40 years ago, and we had less of a problem with them than we do now.

      • [JamesHofstede]

         ”Insane numbers of children grow up among heavy drug users”

        So if your current prevention model results in that, what would legalization do? Would there be a ludicrously-insane number of children?

      • [malcolmkyle]

        Edgar, you prohibitio­nists often cite ‘our’ obligation to ‘The Children’, but prohibition­ has made all of these ‘at present illegal’ substances available in schools, and even prisons. So how has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has also raised gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootleggin­g in the United States. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has creating a prison-for­-profit synergy with evil drug lords and terrorists. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has removed many of our cherished and important civil liberties. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has put many previously unknown and contaminate­d drugs on our streets. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has escalating Murder, Theft, Muggings, and Burglaries­. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has overcrowd­ing the courts and prisons, thus making it increasing­ly impossible to curtail the people who are really hurting and terrorizing­ others. How has that helped our kids?

        Prohibition­ has evolved local street gangs into transnatio­nal enterprise­s with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, controlling­ vast swaths of territory, and with significant social and military resources at their disposal. How has that helped our kids?

        “The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” — Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf”

  • [Ambiguity]

    1: Decreased availability and higher price reduces drug use, and vice versa.
    2: The norms (on different levels) of the society influences drug use. An allowing attitude increases drug use, and vice versa.

    Put simply: your points are incorrect; spend a little time with the vast quantity of literature that has been produced. Seriously, this isn’t really a matter of opinion — there are a lot of data that have been collected.

    You’re right in that societal norms influence drug use. Just imagine how drug use would look if abuse were treated as a medical issue and not a legal one. Drug use would be much safer, societal costs would be reduced, and people could begin to make reasonable risk/benefit choices.

    Look at the increasing efforts to curb the sale of synthetic cannibinoids. The best way of combating that would be to legalize marijuana (a substance who’s risks are well characterized). Instead, the prohibition just makes people take chemicals with unknown risk and health profiles. MJ prohibition has not reduced consumption. And even if there were a bit of an uptick when legalized, the uptake would be in law-abiding people who are the least likely to get into a dysfunctional relationship with the plant.

  • [malcolmkyle]

    Edgar, how can you dare to state such rubbish in the age of the internet?

    Here are the main paragraphs from the address of His Eminence, Cardinal Dougherty, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, to the Catholic societies of the Archdiocese on New Year’s Day 1931 (2 years before the end of alcohol prohibition): 

    “Having heard the report on behalf of the members of the Total Abstinence Society, it occurs to me to say that when the law prohibiting alcoholic drink was passed, many thought that there would be no further need for our temperance or total-abstinence societies. Hence the practice of giving a pledge against intoxicating liquors to boys and girls at Confirmation was discontinued. There seemed to be no need of it.”

    “But, unfortunately. Prohibition has not performed the miracles that were expected. According to experts, such as judges, public officials, social service workers, and others, there is as much, perhaps even more, drunkenness and intemperance today than before the passage of the Volstead Act.”

    “When in the past did we see young men and women of respectable families carrying a flask of liquor when going to social events? When did we see young girls, not yet of age, drinking in public, perhaps to excess, cocktails and the strongest kind of intoxicating liquors, and perhaps being overcome by them? That, today, is not an uncommon sight.” 

  • [malcolmkyle]

    Edgar, kindly inform yourself before making any more statements on this subject!

    Here is part of the testimony of Judge Alfred J Talley, given before the Senate Hearings of 1926:

    “For the first time in our history, full faith and confidence in and respect for the hitherto sacred Constitution of the United States has been weakened and impaired because this terrifying invasion of natural rights has been engrafted upon the fundamental law of our land, and experience has shown that it is being wantonly and derisively violated in every State, city, and hamlet in the country.”

    “It has made potential drunkards of the youth of the land, not because intoxicating liquor appeals to their taste or disposition, but because it is a forbidden thing, and because it is forbidden makes an irresistible appeal to the unformed and immature. It has brought into our midst the intemperate woman, the most fearsome and menacing thing for the future of our national life.”

    “It has brought the sickening slime of corruption, dishonor, and disgrace into every group of employees and officials in city, State, and Federal departments that have been charged with the enforcement of this odious law.”

  • [malcolmkyle]

    Is somebody paying you to spread false information?

    The following paragraphs are from WALTER E. EDGE’s testimony, a Senator from New Jersey, given before the Senate Hearings of 1926::

    “Any law that brings in its wake such wide corruption in the public service, increased alcoholic insanity, and deaths, increased arrests for drunkenness, home barrooms, and development among young boys and young women of the use of the flask never heard of before prohibition can not be successfully defended.”

    “I unhesitatingly contend that those who recognize existing evils and sincerely endeavor to correct them are contributing more toward temperance than those who stubbornly refuse to admit the facts.”

    “The opposition always proceeds on the theory that give them time and they will stop the habit of indulging in intoxicating beverages. This can not be accomplished. We should recognize our problem is not to persist in the impossible, but to recognize a situation and bring about common-sense temperance through reason.”

    “This is not a campaign to bring back intoxicating liquor, as is so often claimed by the fanatical dry. Intoxicating liquor is with us to-day and practically as accessible as it ever was. The difference mainly because of its illegality, is its greater destructive power, as evidenced on every hand. The sincere advocates of prohibition welcome efforts for real temperance rather than a continuation of the present bluff.”

  • [donovan acree]

     If this was true, why has pot use in states where it is still illegal gone up in the US? Why are we hearing that more drugs cross the US border now than ever before. Why has the DEA budget gone up each year of prohibition rather than down?

    Take a close look at Portugal were the drug problem was so bad that they ended up making it legal. Once they did that, drug use and drug related problems like overdose, theft, and petty crime went down.

    There are much bigger questions at work here. Why is it OK to tell people what they can put in their own bodies? Why does the U.S. (the world leader in drug prohibition) incarcerate more people per capita than the rest of the world? The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since the war on drugs began.

    The argument has been that public safety concerns and healthcare costs of addicts are overly burdensome to the public. The irony is that criminalization of the public has increased care costs by incarcerating drug users for years rather than treating their illness for a few months. Public safety is lessened due to the increasing militarization of the police as part of the war on drugs. As danger from the police increases, they respond by arming themselves and becoming more violent to survive.

    Your ‘established knowledge about drug prevention’ is nothing but propaganda. It’s the koolaid the elite serve to increase their power and wealth. -and you drink it up don’t you?

• [SedanChair]

  David Macdonald argues in his 2007 book, Drugs in Afghanistan, that Afghanistan’s increased drug usage is driven by an impoverished battle-scarred population trying desperately to relieve its suffering

  Yyyeah I dunno about that. Afghanistan is certainly impoverished and battle-scarred, but it’s also full of human beings, and one thing we humans have in common no matter what our place of birth or station in life is that we be lovin’ us some drugs

  • [ocker3]

     I would argue that the recent (well, however long this war has been going on) escalation in violence is driving more Afganis to want to escape a reality that is even worse than normal. So yes, even people in areas without war tend to seek ways to alter their consciousness, but During a war, there’s even more motivation.

  • [blueelm]

    To be honest, a lot of people do use drugs to deal with pain. Pain and mental problems are good predictors of addiction. 

• [JamesHofstede]

  Prohibitionists believe people are bad and will always chose poorly when given a choice. They feel that they alone know what constitutes a full and productive life and are more than happy to tell you how to go about it. They think that the moment a joint touches your lips your mind is surrendered to drugs forever. They have no faith in their fellow man because they do not believe in themselves and so they extend those feeling to others.

  They must be in turmoil, I feel sorry for them and wish them a short life so as to reduce their suffering.

• [irksome]

  In the immortal words of Mickey Rat, “Got any extras?”

• [donovan acree]

  The real issue here is that there is a portion of our population engaged in an immoral activity that harms society and has brought down entire nations. Despite all the warnings and information about this sort of abuse, people still try to tell others what is right and wrong. They create laws to force people to live in the way which these immoral soap box proselytizers find acceptable. They do not accept anyone who thinks differently from them and willfully refuse to accept the truth even as our society crumbles around us.
  We need to ban together to stop these prohibitionists.
  I only hope it’s not too late.