Submitted by The_Critical_Cynic t3_zzhptn in todayilearned
My only surprise would be that heroin use wasn't already prevalent.
A perfect example of making something worse by trying to suit your definition of better.
I was told this was where the whole "Marijuana leads to hard drugs" statement originated from.
Don't know if it's true.
No, that BS was around long before then.
Source; I'm old as fuck, and that statement predates me by a lot.
Reefer madness
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Which proved that marijuana is a gateway drug.
I felt like it didn't seem true. Good to know.
The article cited does suggest that there was some usage. However, there was seemingly a spike after they went after the marijuana.
I was thinking this had something to do with hemp farming for fabric way back in the 20's. They came out with all sorts of things to fight that I thought.
Sounds like the war on drugs in a nutshell.
It was more like post prohibition, all the federal alphabet agencies needed a new boogeyman to -keep them in business- protect the public from.
Is he the same guy who wrote East of Eden? It's one of my favorites
Reefer Madness leads to Smack Tomfoolery
Nope this is his son.
News flash, they were already using heroin. It is a crock of bs to say they switched to heroin because it "did not smell". That makes absolutely zero sense.
Paper, I believe - at least, that's why Hearst got into it, he had timber investments for that purpose.
I wonder sometimes how many old-growth trees would still be standing in the US if hemp had remained legal.
Amongst soldiers with nothing to fight but boredom, heroin use, and production ran rampant
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Gee, thanks.
“Sam Stone” by John Prine comes to mind.
Military personnel took all sorts of crazy stuff
I hear heroin is great. Weed's pretty f n weird for me
Reefer Madness is the greatest anti-anti-marijuana media piece ever. The difference between how they show people smoking weed and how people actually smoke weed is fucking hilarious.
They also became quite fond of doc's special k, so cant use that in the feild either apparently, armys a buzz kill
Reefer madness is no excuse for reefer rudeness.
and the current government crackdown on Heroin is why Fentanyl is so prevalent..
I thought you were going to say it was supplied by the CIA
Sounds like a resounding success?
How horrific.
It's not so odorless when people smoke it in the back of my metro bus while I'm just trying to get to work in the morning..
Fucking narc.
I read that last year and really liked it and haven't been able to find a book to stick since then.
Lol I love three things about this:
The navy knew men were drinking it and added poison to deter them.
The crews worked out various ingenious ways to remove the poison.
And that the article ends with the recipe!
Also doesn't last as lomg in the system.
I've been told to try Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men
Takes the weed
Wonders how I got here
"Yep definitely a gateway or portal or something..."
Apparently, fighting in Vietnam, for many, required doing drugs as a coping mechanism just to get thru it,
My friends Dad got hooked on heroin in Vietnam. He is also a lifelong alcoholic. He said he would take out the trash in his barracks or whatever and would fill the bottom of the trashcan with ice and beer so he could sneak cold ones throughout the day.
How dare one have athority over their own life
Smoked heroin isn't odourless. It smells like...'flowers'. Specifically poppies.
I didn't think it smelled either until I quit a few years back and someone walked into the pharmacy. BOOF - the smell coming off them was intense. I looked around expecting people to notice but no one did.
If you've done heroin you'd recognise the smell.
He was the son of the guy who wrote Grapes of Wrath. From literary giant to stoolie in one generation.
And later when they tested for both those, everyone switched to LSD.
Mother's milk is the ultimate gateway drug:
Every heroin addict who ever lived started on milk.
That dirty narc steinbeck
Heartbreaking song. Played it last night. Ironically I'm currently taking prescribed morphine, post surgery.
There's a hole in daddy's arm, where all the money goes...
Cannery Row is a good read as well
You could read Of Mice and Men in 2-5 poops depending on your style.
The tradition lives on today thanks to the War on Drugs
Pot use sticks in your piss for a month
Cocaine sticks in your piss for mere hours
Take a wild guess which one is more popular than it should be thanks to piss testing requirements
I think Oxy is the gateway drug to heroin and fentanyl. Government blessed and promoted.
The video where the guy takes a hit off a joint then gets the crazy eyes, gets out of his chair, turn you see him pick up a knife and move towards his wife always made me laugh. "Marijuana will make you go INSANE!
If your goal is to read Steinbeck and not be depressed afterwords, Cannery Row is a great read.
Another Steinbeck work that caused way more pain than necessary. The primary work being Grapes of Wrath
this is the same army that used killcount as a metric for success in Vietnam & counted damn near anyone as a combatant
this is the same army that greenlit a project to use mentally deficient people in combat roles
this is the same army that tried to cover up my lai and when it came out, only decided to convict one person
they didn't exactly have a track record of good decisions in vietnam
>TIL John Steinbeck IV wrote an article in January 1968 about marijuana usage among the troops.
Welp, THAT explains a lot.
I was the designated CBR officer (Chemical Biological Radiological) for my artillery battalion in early 1968 at Fort Carson. Apparently, there was a shortage of pot or maybe it just stank too much, so the young soldiers were looking elsewhere for yayas.
Anyway, I had to give a speech to each battery. I wrote it up eight years ago, and posted it here: CBR
Got you. Still a long ass time ago.
Given the mental states of some of the people who came back, I could understand how one would be tempted to self medicate.
I thought heroin was injected not smoked
It can be smoked off foil. When its done off foil it's called "chasing the dragon".
You use a straw to inhale the vapour/smoke trail as the heroin dissolves into a liquid.
Although when you inject you have to cook the heroin in a spoon with lemon juice so it may still give off a smell.
Apparently US heroin is laced with fentanyl so the smell may not be as common in the US. In the UK it's all pure Afghan, Turkish or Pakistani heroin.
Wooowee saying that just caused my first craving for heroin in years. Nope!
I thought chasing the dragon was just a metaphor for getting high. I didn't know it was a specific thing.
Very unlikely that most of the current addicts all started with Oxy, specially given how government rules made doctors afraid of prescribing it even to those who really need it. It may have started that way ~15-20 years ago, but not anymore.
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Yep. A funny thing is our perception of a timeline coincides with our age. At 21, 30 years ago seems like ancient history, at 60+, 30 years ago is 'not long ago'. We partially percieve time/history as a percentage of our existence.
The US had some serious drug problems in the populace way back in the late 19th century, Opiates were easily available and from post civil war to the turn of the century there were some serious addiciton issues in the US. Opium and morphine were over the counter drugs.
Then hemp/weed as a 'dangerous drug' only hit the federal lawbooks in the very late 1930's, after the repeal of prohibition.
Jerk.
But heroin isnt odorless, it's actually pretty pungent too
>Even now, I know that I have savoured the hot taste of life
>Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
>Just for a small and a forgotten time
>I have had full in my eyes, from off my girl
>The whitest pouring of eternal light
For K, RIP.
Cue Curb your entusiasm theme song
I've often thought you could apply this lesson to drug abuse patterns in the United States resulting from the criminalization of marijuana. I'll never argue that weed isn't addictive or can't have negative personal and social consequences, but they are minor compared to pretty much every other drug. One wonders if, as more people use marijuana in an increasingly tolerant and legal environment, substance abuse of other more dangerous drugs won't decline.
Alcohol has never been a good substitute for the more euphoric nature of most illegal drugs. Weed is definitely in that euphoric wheelhouse though, so I can see a lot of people who might have otherwise tried or used more dangerous drugs being satisfied with weed, as well as learning something about their own abuse risk profile with a far safer drug.
wow the opening scene of Pineapple Express was actually somewhat true lol
It smells like burnt hair mixed with another scent I can’t quite compare anything too
Or straight-out opium.
Style of reading or pooping? I skipped over a lot of the imagery, but poop pretty quickly
nosnevenaes t1_j2bnlfr wrote
He knew where the red hair grew