War on Drugs
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On gateway drugs.
Being lied to is a gateway to rebellion.
A Romance, addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, altered consciousness, bars, Bruce Weigl, childhood, children, dangerous drugs, depression, dizziness, dizzy, drug abuse, drug research, drug use, drugs, ecstasy, gateway drugs, incarceration, insomnia, jail, jail poetry, laws, lying, marijuana, mass incarceration, MDMA, parenting, poem, poetry, pot, PTSD, sleep disorder, sleep disturbance, spinning, teaching in jail, veterans, War on Drugs, which drugs are most dangerous, which drugs cause most harm
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On loneliness.
It’s well known that loneliness wrecks brains … so why are we imposing it on the people we expect better behavior from?
addiction, animal welfare, biomedical research, coke, cooperation, crime, crime deterrence, Daniel Weary, David Grimm, dendritic growth, evolution, evolution of cooperation, health risks of incarceration, heroin, imposed loneliness, incarceration, isolation, jail, John-Michael Bloomquist, lab animals, lab mouse, laboratory animals, loneliness, loneliness epidemic, mass incarceration, meth, mice, mouse, neuron growth, parole, parole officer, parole violation, pot, probation, punishing defectors, punishment, rehab, rehabilitation, research animals, science, Surgeon General, The Prodigal’s Return, Vivek Murthy, War on Drugs
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On reading Natalie Diaz’s “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs” with a room full of men in jail for drugs.
Natalie Diaz wrings beauty from an impossible situation — how much hurt can you bear, trying to help someone who can’t be saved?
addiction, amphetamines, crystal meth, drugs, heroin, How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, jail, jail poetry, juvenile detention, meth, methamphetamine, Natalie Diaz, opiate epidemic, overdose, poem, poetry, prison, prison poetry, rehab, relapse, sobriety, street drugs, teaching in jail, War on Drugs, When My Brother Was an Aztec
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On correspondence.
With vague mail policies, guards can sever people from the world … often those who need help most.
activism, beginning of life, biotech catalogs, books to prisoners, central dogma, church outreach, correspondence, DNA, DOC, drug blotters, drugs, enforcement, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, filing cabinets, greeting cards, Indiana, Indiana Department of Corrections, Indiana DOC, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, K2, LSD, mail, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, MWPP, plasmids, poetry, post cards, prison, prison guards, prison mail policy, prison poetry, RNA world, RNA world hypothesis, spice, suboxone, synthetic marijuana, undergrad research assistants, USPS, vague policies, War on Drugs
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On prosecution.
Prosecutors can wield their tough reputations to push problems elsewhere … but that’s not the same as fixing them.
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On government intrusion and addiction.
To beat the opiate epidemic, we need strong communities. But prosecutors’ reliance on police informants destroys communities.
AA, addiction, Akhil Reed Amar, ants on the melon, Bill of Rights, constitution, Cor Urbis, creative writing, Daniel Dennett, death before dishonor, economics, emotion, evolution of emotion, exclusionary rule, FBI, Fourth Amendment, freedom of religion, game theory, Homo economicus, human evolution, jailhouse tattoos, Jeremy Waldron, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, mosque, NA, opiate epidemic, poetry, poetry in jail, police, police informants, policing, prison, prisoners’ dilemma, privacy, protection, rats, recovery, repeated prisoners’ dilemma, rights, search, signaling, snooping, teaching writing in jail, tip, Virginia Adair, War on Drugs
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On driving.
If you know you’re safe from the police, why not zip along? Get where you’re going faster! But these small choices feed injustice.
america’s original sin, Bill of Rights, Black Lives Matter, Car Wars, City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, Civil forfeiture, constitutional law, cops, David Harris, Douglas Husak, driving, ESPN First Take, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fourth Amendment’s Death on the Highway, illegal stops, impeding traffic, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, injustice, institutional racism, jim wallis, Justice Marshall, Justice Sotomayor, marijuana, Mark Schlereth, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, minority rights, overcriminalization, Pages to Prisoners, paraphernalia, police, policing, quintet of hate machines, racial injustice, racism, Rikers, Second Amendment, segregation, solitary confinement, speed limits, Stephen A. Smith, Strieff dissent, Supreme Court, The Bail Trap, The New Jim Crow, transporting alcohol, Tyrone Tomlin, unreasonable search and seizure, Utah v. Strieff, war on cops, War on Drugs, white privilege, Whren v. United States
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On fairness (and how we treat the utility monster).
How do you measure someone’s capacity for joy? And what does that say about our opiate epidemic?
animal welfare, Betham, competetive equilibrium, distribution of resources, distribution of wealth, economics, equality, evolution, fairness, heroin, heroin epidemic, human evolution, mass incarceration, Milton Friedman, moral philosophy, natural selection, negative externalities, opiate abuse, opiate epidemic, opportunity, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, political philosophy, survival of the fittest, tax policy, utilitarian, utilitarianism, utility monster, utility theory, War on Drugs
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On pain.
Habitual drug use ruins lives. But the War on Drugs ends them.
Frank Brown Cloud 