• halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Reagan was massive in solidifying the stagnation of employee wages we have today. It started to gain traction in the late 70s and Reagan just added fuel to that fire with his economic policies. Trickle down economics doesn’t work, it never has, it always was a bullshit phrase made to sound good because economics is complicated but the average person knows how the hell water flows. The rich don’t spend their money, they invest it and hoard it, always have. Businesses don’t increase employee wages, they buyback stocks and pay shareholders dividends while reducing employee wages.

    Combined with focusing law enforcement on the bullshit war on drugs which has led to the militarization of the US police force while ignoring underlying causes of crime entirely to instead focusing on punishment, It does nothing to actually prevent crime and solve issues and instead just exacerbates the issue while they arbitrarily deem certain drugs better than others, ignoring their own definitions because there is no actual check on it. Drug scheduling exists, but the DEA gets to decide where things get placed. They’re never going to move things around to reduce their funding as new research comes to light. Marijuana is a glaring current example. It was made illegal because of course, hippies, and it threatened both the paper (hemp) and cigarette industries… and to this day is still listed as a Schedule I drug… meaning:

    Schedule I: Drugs with no current medical use with high potential for abuse and/or addiction. Schedule II: Drugs with some medically acceptable uses, but with high potential for abuse and/or addiction. These drugs can be obtained through prescription.

    We know that is complete bullshit due to thousands of medical studies showing legitimate use, yet it is still classified as having no medical use.

    On that same track, why is crack cocaine a Schedule I drug while powder cocaine is Schedule II? They’re basically the same drug. Couldn’t possibly be due to certain types of folks (Blacks) generally using one type (crack) over the other. Drug scheduling couldn’t possibly be used to try and hide law enforcement racial discrimination in a veil of illegality. Why is Peyote listed as a schedule I drug? Couldn’t possibly be so they have a reason to arrest some Native Americans for their native customs. America would NEVER do anything terrible to the Native Americans without a good reason.

    And then there’s always his FCC abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, introduced in 1949, it required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. That couldn’t possibly be related at all to the massive increase in dramatically party polarized and biased news and editorial programs and the widespread increase in misinformation from “news” companies in the 40 years since.

    Reagan isn’t solely responsible, but he helped lay the ground work for A LOT of bullshit we’re still dealing with today.

    • Revan343
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      1 year ago

      why is crack cocaine a Schedule I drug while powder cocaine is Schedule II? They’re basically the same drug

      What medical use is there for freebase cocaine?

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Good question. Ask the DEA since they determined that apparently there is a medicinal use that separates the two.

        • Revan343
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          1 year ago

          Well, for freebase cocaine they determined that there isn’t one, given that it’s schedule 1. That’s why I was asking what medical use you think it does have that would warrant it being schedule 2 like cocaine hydrochloride.

          As far as I know, the freebase form legitimately doesn’t have the medical uses that the salt form does, due to the poor solubility, so the difference in scheduling with cocaine is a poor example of the DEA’s shittyness. Better to stick with good examples like their mis-scheduling of cannabis

        • Revan343
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          1 year ago

          That’s the medical use of cocaine hydrochloride, aka powder cocaine. The freebase has poor water solubility, and thus presumably wouldn’t be very useful as a topical anesthetic