Apparently marijuana was in the files. They were speaking how people who smoke marijuana are harder to manipulate because it makes us open our mind and question things more, whereas alcohol does the opposite effect. Which is why alcohol is promoted while marijuana is demonized.

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Marijuana is banned because Mexican immigrants grew it to make money. Cocaine is banned because black dockworkers used it to stay awake. Nothing is banned if you’re white and willing to pay for it.

      • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        John Ehrlichman.

        “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        but there are politicians from back in the day recorded saying they stigmatized weed to counteract the politics of blacks, hippies, etc.

        it still never ceases to amaze me that president nixon admitted to doing this and people still believe that the drugs are bad.

          • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            that has to be the only explanation that makes sense to me; but the scale of this kind of ignorance becomes staggering when you consider the sheer volume of information that the american gov’t released thanks to things like the freedom of information act.

        • Castor_Troy [comrade/them,he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Well said. I forgot that point that it was even more concrete than how I stated it. The strategy was to weaken the left. The tactic was to do that by stigmatizing communities associated with the left because of their association with weed.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      and opium was banned to give the police a reason to prosecute chinese migrants while laudanum was left alone because it was the opium that white people used.

      i think it’s fascination how much you can learn of a person’s world view by how they regard these drugs.

  • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Believing myself to be immune to manipulation is the only prerequisite to getting manipulated.

    Is marijuana healthier and less addictive than alcohol? Absolutely. Is smoking healthy? Hell no! And you can still find yourself doing it every day out of habit. It’s just an easier habit to shake than alcohol or nicotine.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    That McKenna quote about how psychadelics aren’t illegal because your loving government is concerned you might jump out a fourth story window, but because they open you up to the idea that everything you’ve been taught might be wrong.

      • hector@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        Any suggestions? I found some ephedra, it was overpriced, and I didn’t much care for it. It’s hard to find the e. sinica, the good stuff, they trick you and sell you e. nevadensis, an american variant with no stimulant in it.

        I wanted to get a synthetic cathinone but I think it might be illegal with the analogue drug thing and the government illegalized all the khat because it’s association with east africa and the middle east.

        What else is there? Coca leaf would be the best, but alas, that’s not available either. I once some for sale supposedly in the country that said if it gets over here they are hands off if just using as tea, idk how true that was it seemed overpriced to me, forget what they wanted, 300 a kilo or pound or something and I didn’t trust them obviously.

        I have add anyway, but the add stimulants are impossible to get without huge out of pocket expenses and even then, it’s a big thing the sobriety squad has been on crusades to take add medicine away from people, make you have a meeting with a psychiatrist every month for a refill, making sure some insurance won’t get you those meds, or in the same room as someone that would prescribe them.

        So it’s out of pocket, thousands a year before the cost of the medication that would be outside of insurance.

        • Sickos [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          Omg if you have add and haven’t gone the legal route with stimulants you do NOT even need to abuse them; like a fraction of a pill can change your whole goddamn life (if you’re lucky and sensitive to it)

          • alexandra_kollontai [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            3 days ago

            Not OP but I’m currently trialling my 4th brand of medication and seeing the worst side effects yet. Only one that changed things was adderall but it isn’t prescribed here, and I’m not extroverted enough to know any drug dealers.

            • Sickos [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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              3 days ago

              Oof; sorry comrade that sucks

              Edit: hey, if you’re not averse to “supplements”, I have found that 200mg L-theanine pills can help alter, alleviate, or shut off the effects for me. Like, if I take one with the drug it’ll be a bit less effective but a lot less side-effecty, or if I have one at the end of the work day it helps me switch off faster

          • hector@lemmy.today
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            3 days ago

            I keep hearing how life changing it is for staying on task and accomplishing goals, if I could just get the script, but since I can’t, there has to be a plant drug that could work, or a drug derived from a variation of a plant drug perhaps that I could order. Cathinones based on Khat sound great I know they have a lo of synthetics too but many if not all are illegal don’t know how that works exactly.

            There could be ephedra analogues, variations of that molecule even, I could give that a try again I guess, or if I could find a vendor that had it cheaper. Search engines don’t work well for this stuff anymore since 2021 when they enshitiified (more.)

        • Edamamebean [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          Personally I’ve been drinking absurd amounts of coffee. Obviously it’s not as potent as most other things but once you make it past cup 3 or 4 your heart starts racing and you sweat a lot and become very anxious (in my personal experience). What more could you want from a stimulant

          • hector@lemmy.today
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            3 days ago

            I drink a lot too, and tea, I probably went through 30 tea bags yesterday, but that’s more than normal, 10 today already.

            But caffeine isn’t really a stimulant in the same way, it inhibits the endogenous drug that makes you sleepy, adeninose or something like that, while the speed drugs will actually jack up your epinephrine (and dopamine and seratonin if they are the better ones,) and norepinephrine and the like. And I forget all the mechanisms, it’s all on feedback loops one endogenous drug affects another on feedback loops. Like Cocaine does the dopamine, the opiate the body makes endogenously, the main one at least, and then kicks in epiniphrine and norepinephrine, as I recall. So the 20 minutes of euphoria from doing coke is from that dopamine.

            I quit kratom and nicotene. I have a lot of weed, and brew my own alcohol, but need something to get me going on projects, and to keep concentration, and actual stimulants are great for that. People with adhd swear by adderol and ritulin, low grade amphetamines and something similar in action. They do improve concentration and not getting distracted, improve motor coordination, response time, etc in reasonable quantities.

            Like if you wanted to write a work, having some safe amphetamines would be a great tool to have, if you used them responsibly. And I believe in our right to use drugs as we see fit. But plants are often the only ones not proscribed completely.

  • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Apparently marijuana was in the files. They were speaking how people who smoke marijuana are harder to manipulate because it makes us open our mind and question things more, whereas alcohol does the opposite effect. Which is why alcohol is promoted while marijuana is demonized.

  • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Apparently marijuana was in the files. They were speaking how people who smoke marijuana are harder to manipulate because it makes us open our mind and question things more, whereas alcohol does the opposite effect. Which is why alcohol is promoted while marijuana is demonized.