Re: [Marxism] Narcotics stats

[steve heeren <tzsche@xxxxxxx>]

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

> In a post a while ago, Yoshie pointed out how the opium trade is again
> booming in Afghanistan! Probably most of the opiates produced there do
> not reach the United States, which is more reliant on Colombia and
> Mexico in this regard.
>
> "A rough estimate of the hardcore [heroin] addict population in the
> United States places the number between 750,000 and 1,000,000 users.
> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Household
> Survey on Drug Abuse found that, in 2001, approximately 3.1 million
> Americans (1.4%) 12 years old and older had used heroin at least once
> in their lifetime."
> http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/heroin/

this is a total lapse on your part to quote the white house  as some
sort of guide to matters having to do with the public's use of
stimulating or sedating substances (the word "drugs" is so totally
devoid of meaning, except when used as US govt. policy to put the US
poor into concentration camps and as an excuse for carrying out
imperialist policies in Latin American.  we HAVE TO abandon its use) the
war on drugs, don't forget, began with Richard Nixon, as part of the
rightwing backlash against what little by way of "welfare" the US state
was willing to come up with under LBJ

> Which is basically how it is, I think. Biggest problem is typically
> not the pain you feel, but that it is unacknowledged, or made to be
> something it isn't.


No. the biggest problem is how one "understands" or comprehends one's
pain  -- to WHAT do you attribute it. i suggest you read "Wounds" by Dr.
Norman Bethune as a starting guide on how to understand our pain.

beneath that is what you hint at - acknowledging pain. Carl Rogers, by
no means my favorite psychologist, did make the point that there are two
barriers to his ideal of  personal "congruence":  1) being able to
actually EXPERIENCE your experience (sounds funny, i know) and 2) being
able to EXPRESS THAT EXPERIENCE once you have had it. this second
barrier is very applicable to much of modern (western, especially
american) masculinity, where a lack of a "vocabulary of feelings" is
regnant.

steve heeren


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