Pubdate: Tue, 03 Feb 2015 Source: Townsville Bulletin, The (Australia) Copyright: 2015 The North Queensland Newspaper Company Pty Ltd Contact: http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3758 Author: Valerie Harding NO EASY FIX IN DRUG WAR GRUMPY4810, referring to your text about law enforcement "bleating on that they had wiped out the drug trade in 1940 but 75 years on it's the same". Give the hardworking police their due, Grumpy dear. Stone Age Man got a millennia headlong start when he discovered how to numb the fears and hardship of his/ her life, by brewing beer and the habit has stuck. When they finally migrated to the Euphrates Valley they cultivated grapes and now wine is big business and so are his fears and hardships. Thus he began to experiment with narcotics while his religious rituals became more elaborate, his sacrifices more "refined" and his shamans, priests and gods to worship the choice of addiction more powerful. All drugs are poisons, thus all have side effects. For tens of thousands of years the central eastern Asians chewed betelnut as a stimulant and to heighten awareness though its side effect is bright red gums and teeth and sometimes cancer. Over the millennia hemp has been put to thousands of practical uses, including, in biblical times, the most healing of all oils. But as a drug, marijuana may mask the user's problems while destroying brain cells, memory, physical co-ordination, sense of time and much worse. For over 8000 years Native Americans have used the cactus peyote or mescaline in their religious ceremonies for its intense hallucinogenic power. The North American Indians never dreamt that the tobacco they smoked in their peace pipes would one day become the health wrecker it is now. And nor did the ancient Mayans realise that their custom of chewing coca leaf, would end in crack cocaine addicts' severe depression, so severe he will commit murder to get his next fix. Not even royalty has been left out of this never-ending escape from reality. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs mixed blue lotus root with alcohol for an ecstasy-like high. The ancient Sumerians first smoked opium in 3400BC. But let's fast forward to the Opium Wars that Britain inflicted on China in her attempt to gain access to China's riches. Britain, with her superior navy, waged two wars against the Chinese and forced Emperor Daoguang to open all ports to trade in opium. Overpowered, China's 2500- year-old civilisation collapsed half its 300 million people opium addicts, yet still Man hasn't learned how lethal drugs are. In 1923 Beria, chief of Russian secret police, lectured leading Russian psychiatrists on "brainwashing, the gentle art of psychopolitics", urging them to infiltrate American law courts and schools; to disrupt justice and ethics, popularise drugs and free love, destroy the family and enslave the Western civilisation by the lethal power of toxic drugs. Ninety-five years on law enforcement is engaged in a gargantuan battle. I can only cheer them on. VALERIE HARDING, Kirwan. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom