Black Lives: Addiction – Insiders Speak Out About the Murky Drug Trading World in the US
RT (2019)
Film Review
This episode consists of interviews with an ex-cop, a former gang leader and various drug dealers and ex-drug dealers. It also features a debate between a Black pastor and a drug dealer whether whether the latter can earn as much money doing a “legal” hustle. The dealer, who deals drugs mainly to pay child support, highlights his genuine lack of legal options. As Michelle Alexander documents so vividly in The New Jim Crow, his criminal record disqualifies him for student aid, public housing and most employment.
In my view, the main weakness of this episode is its failure to examine the CIA role in international drug trafficking or their role (first exposed by late investigative journalist Gary Webb and subsequently admitted by the CIA Inspector General) in supplying crack cocaine to California gangs. See
CIA’s Drug Trade Essential to Geopolitics
CIA Drug Trafficking on Prime Time TV
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Stuart,
Where does it end? The link between drugs and government controls goes back possibly as far as history does, and now with the “opioid epidemic” it has come around again. It almost makes me think that drugs and government are synonymous. No wonder I came to believe that being a psychiatrist is like being a drug pusher for the state.
It has gotten even worse since I retired. “Psychiatric News” is full of sob stories about how medication-assisted treatment is “underutilized” and moans about how we need more funding for “treatment” and better access to MAT. As if they have a clue. They don’t even mention the mainstays like Alcoholics Anonymous and its spin-off, Narcotics Anonymous, which don’t count because they are free and rely on abstinence, and because they work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Anything free, anything that doesn’t have a price tag on, is worthless, don’t you know? It’s one of the commandments in the Capitalist Bible.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You betcha, they’re even commodifying water and air now. In China’s polluted cities, you can buy cans of fresh air from Canada.
LikeLike
I thought the president of Spaceball Planet bought his canned air from planet Druidia! How ridiculous to believe that Canada for some mysterious reason does actually have clean air: do we have a closed and clean atmosphere from the rest of a polluted planet? Just because you can’t feel the particular pollutants as they tumble down your esophagus doesn’t mean the air you’re inhaling is pure, or even clean.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sha’Tara,
“Priceless,” you mean?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suppose, if it’s free to all, it’s ‘priceless’ but to Wall Street and other gangsters and banksters that means it’s worthless. To them something has value according to what the market will bear and if the market is saturated in debt, just get the Fed to print more Monopoly money.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They may tell you it’s worthless while working behind the scenes to acquire a monopoly on it, or to ruin it so it really is worthless.
LikeLike
Standard practice. How did people switch from drinking water to soft drinks and cows milk? Advertising which if called by its proper name is commercial lies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed. Because water is now contaminated with industrial pollution, so Coca-cola puts it in plastic bottles and sells it by the case. Cows are treated with bovine growth hormone, so you can’t trust the milk, either.
LikeLike
Ah, the Psychiatric News – brings back fond memories. Hard to believe I was once young and foolish. I wish I had known 30 years ago that it was funded by drug companies.
LikeLike