[Firestarter]

Edward Jay Epstein – Agency of fear

Here´s another book relevant to this thread. This is a different kind of book than the others I’ve posted here. It shows how the fear for drugs is used to reorganise the government, and for mind control purposes. It shows similarities to the “war on terror”.
I was surprised to learn how many of our ideas on addicts are the prejudiced ideas that were used to fuel the war by drugs. It’s almost exclusively about the Nixon administration (but still relevant today)…


DRUG VAMPIRES
Epstein considers the description of drug addicts by the state propaganda similar to vampires. The story that each addict would make addicts of others was pioneered by Richmond Pearson Hobson in the 1920s (Hobson died in 1937). Hobson was financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr.
In 1966, Nelson Rockefeller depicted heroin addiction as an infectious disease that would be spread to “innocent” victims in both the ghetto and the suburbs.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon justified his request for emergency powers to deal with the drug epidemic by supplying statistics to the media that the number of addict-users had increased from 68,000 in 1969 to 315,000 in 1970 to 559,000 in 1971. Myles Ambrose declared that “Such a geometric progression threatened the entire American citizenry with "the hell of addiction" every individual infected with heroin was in turn driven to infect at least six others.”
How did they reach these remarkable numbers?
In 1969 it was not assumed that there were many addicts unknown to the police; in 1970 it was assumed that there were 246,912 unknown addicts; in 1971 they supposed 490,912 unknown addicts at large.
If the same method was used to reach the estimate of 68,088 addicts in 1969, by mid-1970 the addict population would be 68,864…
To put this in perspective, there were more than 9 million alcoholics and less than 100,000 known narcotics addicts at the time.

After continual White House pressure, by 1971 television stations had donated commercial time worth some $37 million for messages about the war on drugs, according to an estimate by the Advertising Council in 1972. Because of this massive campaign, President Nixon could rightfully claim in his June 1971, declaration of a national emergency that "the threat of narcotics ... frightens many Americans".


ADDICT CRIMINALS
In 2017, it’s still common to see addicts as major criminals. One of the strategies that is used to convince us of junkies as criminals, by putting the criminals back on the street directly after an arrest - "revolving door" arrests.

Like the numbers to show that the amount of addicts was rising dramatically, also numbers were invented to show the addicts as major criminals.
Governor Rockefeller stated that $5 billion was yearly stolen in New York City by addicts alone.
If all the projected 559,000 addicts committed two or three burglaries a day, as President Nixon postulated, they would commit more than 365 million burglaries a year – 200 times more than all of the burglaries. If in 1970 there were 100,000 addicts in New York and they had to steal $30 a day to pay for their habit, than that "army of addicts" would steal $1,095,000,000. Calculations like these would mean that addicts would steal 12 times more property than was actually stolen in 1971.
In 1973, Rockefeller claimed that the 135,000 addicts in New York had a "day-in, day-out" robbery schedule. This would amount to something like 49,275,000 robberies, muggings, and murders a year, which would mean that a New York resident would be robbed, mugged, and murdered approximately 7 times a year. There were (only) about 110,000 of such crimes reported in New York City.

In the summer of 1972, a shipping strike temporarily interrupted the supply of heroin in Eastern cities and quintupled the street price of the drug. If heroin addicts had to finance their habit through theft, then there should have been either a sharp increase in crime or an increase in the number of applicants for methadone-treatment programs. But nothing like this happened…
During the East Coast dock strike, IDA researchers found that heroin use in the Washington jails dropped from nearly 20% to 0, while the use of barbiturates and amphetamines among the arrestees rose from 3 - 4% to nearly 20%.


SUCCESS INFLATION - TURKEY
The state propaganda often tells us about the successes of law enforcement in the “war on drugs”.
On 24 October 1969, none other than Henry A. Kissinger demanded that poppy production in Turkey must be stopped:

Mr. Kissinger recommended that the participants at the meeting constitute a Task Force, and that a working party be established under State's leadership. The working party should prepare a report to the Task Force containing a detailed action program relating to the following: specific measures to end the Turkish opium crop no later than summer 1970; action to ensure that heroin production is eliminated in France; a diplomatic scenario should be included and fully integrated with domestic programs. The report should be in the hands of the Task Force within one week, with a view to providing a Task Force report to the President immediately thereafter.

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus.../45848.htm

Then suddenly in 1971, the Turkish military overthrew the elected government of Turkey. The new premier, Nihat Erim, agreed to suspend poppy cultivation in Turkey in time for the American election.
This sounded like a major success, but according to estimates by the CIA, Turkey produced only 3- 8% of the illicit opium in the world. While the state media accused Turkey of supplying "up to 80 percent of the heroin smuggled into the United States", the Golden Triangle was producing about ten times as much.

Another great trick is to present drug catches in “street value”. A kilogram of heroin seized in 1970 could be replaced by a trafficker in France for about $5,000; but the Bureau of Narcotics would report it at $210,000 (more than 40 times what the heroin was actually worth).

Poppy wasn’t only used in producing (illegal) heroin, but also for codeine used in (legal) drugs. In 1974, the “coughing crisis” erupted, and the Office of Management and Budget, decided to reverse the policy of annihilating the world's poppy production and seek new sources of opium for the drug industry.


POLICE BRUTALITY
In 1930, it was already known that federal narcotics agents in New York City took credit for arrests made by the NYPD, and that some of the federal agents were themselves involved with narcotics traffickers.
In 1969, it was discovered that the New York office of the federal Bureau of Narcotics had become the leading dealers in heroin in the USA and were protecting the operations of dealers (who in turn helped them to get their "arrests").

If Americans could be persuaded that their lives and the lives of their children were being threatened by a rampant epidemic of narcotics addiction, Nixon's advisors presumed they would not object to government actions like no-knock warrants, pre-trial detention, wiretaps, and unorthodox strike forces.
A new law was passed, that meant that if an addict took a drug within 24 hours after committing a crime, he could be mandatorily sentenced to concentration camps for life for committing a petty crime (of course in 2017 the USA promotes the 3-strikes law, which is arguably even more effective…).

There was a new policy to check automobiles and trucks crossing the border with Mexico. This delayed them up to 6 hours in hundred-degree temperatures; anybody appearing suspicious or recalcitrant was stripped and bodily searched.
More than five million people were checked, but virtually no narcotics were found. The task force thus was quietly withdrawn from the Mexican border.

It was repeatedly suggested that the only way to get immediate results, is to assassinate traffickers.
According to Ambassador Martin, the only way of disrupting the supply of opium from the Golden Triangle is to organise assassination teams to kill the key traffickers that control the trade.
John Ingersoll was asked by the White House to prepare a plan for "clandestine law enforcement". According to Jeffrey Donfeld, who drew up most of the memoranda, assassination was "a very definite part of the plan".
According to Egil Krogh's detailed description of the discussion on drugs of John Ehrlichman with President Nixon, the president agreed to "forceful action in [stopping] international trafficking of heroin at the host country".
The memorandum of the meeting noted:

It is anticipated that a material reduction in the supply of heroin in the U.S. can be accomplished through a $100 million (over three years) fund which can be used for clandestine law enforcement activities abroad and for which BNDD would not be accountable.

METHADONE
Already 40 years ago it was known that methadone is just as addictive and damaging to the health as heroin, while letting the government provide it to addicts, doesn’t even reduce crime, and gives the addicts the possibility to become methadone dealers themselves…

Methadone was developed by German Nazi scientists during World War II as a substitute for heroin and morphine. After the war the formula for this synthetic drug was given to American drug companies, and it was subsequently manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company.
Jerome Jaffe claimed that by distributing methadone, he had single-handedly decreased the crime rate in Chicago with 40%.

Under the auspices of the New York Health Research Council, Dr. Vincent P. Dole, of the Rockefeller Institute, and psychiatrist Maria E. Nyswander, experiments were done that laid the foundation for what was to become known as "methadone maintenance".
Dole and Nyswander actually increased the dosages of methadone for 22 addicts participating in the experiment until they were stabilized on a higher dosage of methadone than they had previously used of heroin. They succeeded in substituting the methadone for heroin.
Because the high of methadone is less intense and works longer, theoretically, addicts on methadone could better be employed (than on heroin).

Other doctors tried to replicate Dole and Nyswander's program of methadone maintenance but found that many of the methadone patients continued their life of crime. They also found out that they persisted in using illegal drugs.
An April 1974 report by the newly created Drug Enforcement Agency, entitled "Methadone: A Review of Current Information", showed that addicts on methadone maintenance are not necessarily rehabilitated heroin addicts. They found out that where there is an extensive methadone program, there were more methadone addicts arrested than heroin addicts.
It was found that among the addicts younger than 31, the only reductions in criminal arraignments one year after they had begun methadone treatment occurred in three categories: drug offenses, forgery and prostitution. In all other categories the rate of criminal charges actually increased.

Edward Jay Epstein – Agency of fear; Opiates and Political Power in America (1977): http://www.mediafire.com/file/c61nk1980k...jkmmmm.pdf
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In 2017, there are still methadone maintenance programs everywhere in the “developed” world. Most of the information on the internet is moderately positive about these methadone programs…
The best critical review I found is from 2001, which focuses on Atlanta.
By 1970, methadone clinics opened across the country. Approximately 800 clinics operate today; they have 115,000 patients.
In the 1990s, private clinics began appearing. Addicts pay up to $300 a month for methadone versus $100 a day for heroin. A private clinic with 200 patients is guaranteed a monthly income of almost $60,000.

Clinics regularly give methadone to patients who haven't proved an addiction, increase dosages without a physician's approval and provide take-home doses even to patients who were caught selling previous doses on the street.
GPA Treatment Director Stacey Pearce says that new patients, with opiates in their urine, claims to be using heroin with track marks or prescriptions for pain pills at multiple pharmacies, get methadone.
DHR inspection reports show that at 4 of 10 Atlanta-area clinics, patients have walked in for the first time and got methadone without proving they suffered an opiate addiction. At 2 clinics, patients that were caught selling their doses, can still take a home supply with them.
Patients claim they can easily get more methadone. If they complain of leg cramps, insomnia or other withdrawal symptoms, the dose goes up.

State rules say clinics can start a patient on a maximum dose of 30 milligrams and can increase the dosage until signs of withdrawal disappear (a 50 milligram dose can kill somebody who hasn’t build up a tolerance to opiates). It's pretty standard to get five or 10 additional milligrams every few days until the dosage reaches 60 to 100 milligrams (a day).
On 3 January 1996, Chris Brackett walked into a methadone clinic. The clinic started him on a 30 milligram dose of methadone. When Brackett returned to the clinic at 7 AM the next day, a nurse gave him another 40 milligram dose, because his cravings and symptoms hadn't ceased. He went home, to Canton. Brackett's girlfriend walked into their apartment at 6 PM, and found him laying dead on the couch. The autopsy listed the cause of death as "intoxication by multiple prescription medications, including methadone": http://www.creativeloafing.com/news/arti...-legal-way


From 1999 to 2007 the number of methadone deaths in the USA increased from something like 800 to 5500 a year, then lowered to 4600 in 2010.