Our Government Lies For Dollars
Steven Greenhut writes at reason about that mammoth crack baby epidemic we heard about in the 90s:
"As many as 100,000 crack babies are born every year," reported the Los Angeles Times in an overheated 1990 article echoing the results of a Department of Health and Human Services study. The feds were calling for a massive influx of tax dollars to fund social programs to help a new generation of Americans born to mothers who used so-called crack cocaine.The article included a "must have" list for government agencies: more postnatal care and foster care, extra dollars for schools to deal with the disabilities these children reportedly would have, government-provided residential care, drug programs and more. "But absent those billions of additional dollars, what can state and local government do now to help those innocents?" the article asked, almost hopelessly. This was typical of news coverage of the time.
More than two decades later, we learn the truth. The hysteria - which led to new drug laws that imposed unreasonably harsh sentences on the mostly African-American people who used that particular kind of cocaine - was unwarranted. The numbers of crack babies were wildly exaggerated. As The New York Times now reports, "This supposed epidemic ... was kicked off by a study of just 23 infants that the lead researcher now says was blown out of proportion."
...No one is suggesting that it's good to use cocaine while pregnant, but years of study show that the "shocking symptoms" that crack babies revealed are actually symptoms found in many newborns. "A much more serious problem, it turns out, is infants who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome," according to the Times.
The latest scare from the government is the notion that Colorado pot legalization is leading to kids scarfing mommy's pot brownies.
As Greenhut writes:
There's no evidence that legalization caused such things. People have been eating pot brownies since I can recall, and they have been doing so even though laws haven't allowed it. But the goal isn't a reasoned debate. The goal is to prompt upset legislators to pass laws designed to slow down the burgeoning legalization movement.
The federal government is the worst crack whore when it comes to control and money. Especially when a group of politicians get's it head wrapped around the idea regardless of the evidence that the idea is wrong.
Here it was crack, but you see it with the whole war on drugs. The "pot is bad" idea that started with making pot illegal in the 20s. They never looked at the fact it was used for hundreds of years prior to then with little harmful effects.
Jim P. at June 1, 2013 3:23 AM
Well, this makes sense.
Drug use isn't anywhere near the real tragedy of the drug culture.
Lying is. Drugs make you lie. Use drugs? You lie to "friends" (in quotes because if they really were, you wouldn't lie to them), husbands lie to wives, wives lie to husbands, children lie to parents and parents lie to children. And of course, the drug user lies to the police.
Getting high is more important than telling the truth, than being honest, when that happens.
It becomes easier to lie about other things, like the impact drug use actually has on one's own family.
Radwaste at June 1, 2013 3:24 AM
So our government lies to us? How is this news? Our government lies to us anytime it is convenient, and many times when it isn't.
>>Drug use isn't anywhere near the real tragedy of
>the drug culture.
>>Lying is.
Geez, pull your head out of your ass. The real tragedy of the "drug culture" (about which you know nothing) is the millions of people who are thrown into prison by the government, not to mention the untold millions who are collateral damage because mom or dad or the supporting spouse are in prison, due to the actions of the government. The "cure" is far worse then the "disease" could ever be. The government lied to make it happen.
Assholio at June 1, 2013 8:07 AM
Assholio:
Don't get the cart before the horse here. Perhaps you have not heard that the first casualty in war is the truth, but it has been dead for a long time on this issue: simply, the recreational use of currently-banned substances. On this very venue, it is difficult to get any advocate of "legalizing" a drug to say what they want to do, then acknowledge what has to be done to get there. Then, it is likewise hard to note that police misconduct is a second wrong (just as it is with 2nd Amendment or other issues of liberty), which does not justify lawbreaking - other than to children.
Radwaste at June 2, 2013 2:51 AM
@assholio:
Prisoners are in jail because of the actions of the government?
No. They are in jail because of their own actions.
The righteousness of the broken law(s) is a different issue. Don't conflate the two.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 3, 2013 11:40 AM
Good to know there are no innocent people in jail
lujlp at June 3, 2013 12:06 PM
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