Waking Up to the Heroin Epidemic

8 Comments

1. 

   chimneyswift on February 7, 2014 at 9:57 am

   Hey, I just wanted to acknowledge that you’ve been way out in front of this issue. Thank you for making it a priority.

2. 

   seabe on February 7, 2014 at 10:06 am

   I thought you were referencing Brand’s new column:

   Russell Brand: Philip Seymour Hoffman is another victim of extremely stupid drug laws

3. 

   Arthur Gilroy on February 7, 2014 at 11:07 am

   Hmmm…

   Realpolitik, PermaGov-style. (Emphases mine.)

   Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade
   By JAMES RISEN

   WASHINGTON — When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.

   Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Mr. Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.

   Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.

   The assertions about the involvement of the president’s brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.

   Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan’s second largest city, dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.

   “I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be,” the president’s brother said in a recent phone interview. “I am a victim of vicious politics.”

   But the assertions about him have deeply worried top American officials in Kabul and in Washington. The United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money, several senior Bush administration officials said. Their concerns have intensified as American troops have been deployed to the country in growing numbers.

   —snip—

   The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week.

   Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. —snip—

   Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration, which conducts counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, nor the fledgling Afghan anti-drug agency has pursued investigations into the accusations against the president’s brother.

   —snip—

   Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

   —snip—

   Has anything changed in the interim? During Obama’s administration?

   No.

   Of course not.

   I mean…this particular Karzai is dead, killed by who knows whom. One capo goes down; another steps up to take his place. Hamid Karzai is still in power; the drug trade continues and is helping to fuel a massive heroin surge in the U.S. and the Obama administration has done nothing to clean up the situation.

   Why?

   Same as before. Always the same no matter which Rat Party is supposedly “in charge.”

   Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [decline] to comment.

   Always and forever.

   So far.

   Bet on it.

   Obama?

   He’s your president, Booman.

   Not mine.

   Deal wid it.

   And…hopefully…WTFU.

   Sigh.

   AG

4. 

   WaterGirl on February 7, 2014 at 12:12 pm

   The link to Russell Brand blew me away.  It’s very compelling, and I begin to feel like I may have a tiny understanding of what it would be like to have an addiction like this.  

5. 

   TarheelDem on February 7, 2014 at 12:39 pm

   A society that behaves like an addict creates individuals who act like addicts.  Some, like Jamie Dimon, choose socially approved addictions and can hide any others.

   A nation whose special operations use drug money as a means of laundering operations or of bribing some of (as Dick Cheney called them) unsavory characters, should not be surprised that there is a cocaine epidemic during Iran-Contra and a heroin epidemic from a 11-year war in Afghanistan in which one of brothers or our ally is a known opium runner.

   An industry that amplifies those things that cause addiction through its cutthroat competition and management style should not be surprised that addiction kills its most acclaimed on a regular basis.

   A medical establishment that has descended into the pharmaceutical marketing of pill pushing should not be surprised when everyone buys the marketing message that drugs are the magic solution and the ignore the rapidly mumbled required fine print.

   Waking up to the heroin epidemic likely means a new round of high-tech law enforcement because dealing with the real roots of the issues is too much to change.  And most law enforcement officers are willing to decriminalize marijuana but not yet ready to decriminalize all drugs or to allow addiction to be widely treated as a medical issue separate from drug use.

   And then there’s the big issue in treatment of addiction as a medical issue–people voluntarily seeking treatment for a stigmatized condition that can possibly leave you unemployed forever.  The social perception and mythology around addiction needs some examination as well.

   • 

     TarheelDem on February 7, 2014 at 12:50 pm

     And then there’s this from Russell Brand:

     If this seems odd to you, it is because you are not an alcoholic or a drug addict. You are likely one of the 90 per cent of people who can drink and use drugs safely. I have friends who can smoke weed, swill gin, even do crack, and then merrily get on with their lives.

     Addiction is not deterministic.  Like most living phenomena, it is complex and probablistic.  But we also know that putting some double-binds in place in some ways causes people to crack in that direction.  Others fetishize guns and kill someone.

     That’s why the “I have the same problems and I don’t do drugs.” bit of moralism is just another cruelty that is part of the problem.

6. 

   n1cholas on February 7, 2014 at 9:30 pm

   Prescription drugs are the major gateway drugs to things like heroin, cocaine and meth.

   Ban prescription drugs now to save America!

   Just kidding. Banning drugs is fucking idiotic.

7. 

   Marie2 on February 7, 2014 at 10:32 pm

   If Americans weren’s so provincial and “exceptional” they would wake up to the heroin epidemic that has been unleashed in Russia, Iran, etc. because blowing up Afghanistan made us feel better about 9/11.