Hello.
Monkey Monkey signing in for a little chat.
I, like a lot of my buddies, try to lead **good** lifestyles. There’s all the old classics like not eating at MacDonalds & not buying Nestle & Coca Cola, but then there’s all the other things also which would take too long to go into.
I’m not going to start saying how I think that everyone should do the same as me (it’s not really any of my business how anyone else lives), it’s just that, although I will never know for certain, I’m sure it makes a mockery of my ethics when instead of going to Tesco’s, I’ll cycle a couple of miles down river to get some healthy, organic, non-corporate and ethical groceries. But on the way back, I’ll more often than not stop for a nice healthy spliff by the river.
Recently I’ve been indulging in some nice Charis fresh from India. But this gets grown & harvested by poor families being ruled (and sometimes owned) by the plantation owners. This isn’t fair trade, and it’s certainly not ethical – there’s kids as young as 6 who go out to pick drugs for the westerners.
I know that a lot of the greenery comes from Holland these days where it is made legally (which kind of makes the ethics a bit cleaner), but with all the beans and stuff, where does it all come from? Who makes it? Are they treated well? – I know there’s a few garden shed labs dotted around, Chemistry student party goers, god bless ’em – but there’s gonna be a lot of bad shit that’s happened to a lot of people before the vast majority of things end up in our carefree hands.
I know ignorance is bliss, but I’m sure I’d be more blissful if I knew that I was getting shit from a source that didn’t benefit in misery.
A friend of mine once said “…meanwhile, back in blissful Utopia”
I think this kind of sums it up.
PEACE
i think that if you are:
then you can distance yourself to an extent from violence further up the chain.
This occurs because our “rulers” have made the decision for us without our input or consultation that street drugs should be illegal, and have created the criminal networks by their refusal to progress with society and accept our lifestyle choices.
They have more blood on their hands than ours…
hi monkey monkey
this is an interesting question
while most people are aware of heroin trade in the east and cocaine cartels in west not many people think about where the rest comes from IME
a lot of weed is grown here in europe, but it’s not legal and when it’s a larger operation than say you or i growing a few plants in the cupboard there is often the same hierarchy as farms in say marroco or india… with an investor ‘loaning’ lights and equipment out to people who take the risk and do the work for a share of the profit..
as far as beans go, i used to know several people who all worked in a factory and it wasn’t an especially pleasant working environment (dirty, dangerous). again an investor paid for the base ingredients and equipment, creaming of the lion’s share of the profit
but then that’s the same in most commercial enterprise, so maybe the question is one of socialist values rather than specifically the drug trade
but you mentioned children working on farms
I’ve been to Bolivia and ended up on a few coca farms and been to India and seen fields of ganja… in both countries there are children everywhere that live on the street in the most crushing poverty… we (in the west) couldn’t even begin to imagine what that life must be like… any children who are working on ganja farms would be made to work regardless of the crop…
so to the question of ethical ‘shopping’.. until prohibition ends, we will have no real say in how our drugs are made… your best bet is to do it yourself*
*may not be legal :biggreen:
so to the question of ethical ‘shopping’.. until prohibition ends, we will have no real say in how our drugs are made… your best bet is to do it yourself*
*may not be legal :biggreen:
exactly. This goes for a lot of things. How much of our computers and the network equipment this message is going through came from an Asian sweatshop? Even many of the parts in the bicycle you ride would have come from such a place (Shimano have effectively achieved in SE Asia what Hirohito failed at doing!)
The best we can do is be aware as consumers.
And at our level, to respect those who take the risks and are decent kinds by not running up stupid tick debts (and putting people at risk of reprisals from nastier gangsters), or whinging about prices when someone is risking 5-10 in the can…
i think the best we can do is be aware. one of the many reasons i have a self imposed “only natural highs” rule is that i dont know where pills and commercial hash and weed comes from. or, more accurately, i have a horrible suspicion that someone has suffered for my high, which i dont find acceptable, or condusive to a mellow trip.
really, tho the blame must lie with our government in its failure to legislate and protect its consumers and producers. it is their fault there are no regulatory bodies or ganja growers unions, so untill that is sorted, i’m going to alter my conciousness as i see fiot and urge them to include drug takers in their society.
i think tho, even for legal goods, the incentive to shop ethically is not as easy as it should be. the information is there, but not in a condensed form that is accessable to most people. it is changing, but it amazes me how hard it is to find accessable and ethically traded clothes and shoes etc with out dressing like a hippy (which suits me fine, but isnt everyones cuppa). The Ethical consumer magasine used to be good, then it turned really nitpicky and specific, and now i havent seen it for ages. what we need is an online database of all companies that records their treatment of staff, environmental policies, and sourcing of goods. that goes for pills, too when they’re legalised :biggreen:
Hello.
Good responses.
Before I start, it’s first thing Monday morning, and I DON’T WANT TO BE AT WORK.
Blaming the Government, though sensible and logical, always seems a little too easy. The legality and regulation of something does not necessarily reflect beneficially on the ethical production of it. If this were the case, there would be no need to champion the causes of small ethical manufacturers and sellers across the board, because the larger (and fully legal) companies would already have the matter well in hand.
It’s MY decision, not the government’s for me to by carrots from the farm and not from Tesco’s, though I do appreciate that the Government has made it possible for the farm to grow and sell them, thus giving me a choice in my consuming.
A couple of years ago, some frends of mine were trying to re-introduce weed to the English countryside, planting numbers of small **organically produced** plants around the country where they lived (they never told enyone the exact locations – which is fair enough). Around this time, unsuprisingly, there was a lot of good, clean weed among us. Though, I guess, this was officially ‘homegrown’, it was still produced in relatively large quantities and we were hoping that other people around the country would try to start doing this as well so that we could cut out the ‘business’ part of the trade. I guess this ties up with what Mr Globalloon says – the only way to really know is to do it yourself.
I think the hardest thing about the whole business is sitting in in front of a bloody computer on a Monday morning, talking about smoking ethical dope, when right now I would settle for some slave laboured diesel filled rocky shite, if it meant I could stay in bed…
PEACE
otoh, governmental subsidies and guidelines all but wiped out british agriculture, and the only reason that a lot of farms are still alive is that they ignored the horrifically shortterm and unethical way of farming that the govt tried to force upon them. i think that our governments have done all they can to STOP you having that choice, and the only reason you do is despite them, not because of them. the government are no freinds of the farmers.
Summary
1. The brief given by the Labour government to the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food is inherently flawed, self-contradictory, and precludes the drawing of sound social, economic and ecological conclusions. Free trade dogma are harming farmers, economies and ecosystems both at home and abroad. Current government policies are exacerbating exploitative and unsustainable economic conditions, and will only help British farming stumble from crisis to crisis. The resurgence and health of British agriculture demand a wholehearted conversion to Green policies.
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/reports/2004/Green%20farming%20in%20a%20green%20land.html
USE, I agree with you. But it doesn’t meant that I like it!
I try to lead a simple life – work in the day, listen to techno at night, grow my hair in between.
But it turns out that even something as seemingly insignificant as buying my veg turns into something that the powers that be would prefer me not to do, with them wishing me to get stuff from Government backed sellers instead.
This is what brought me to the whole drugs & ethics debate in the first place – the things that help me make my escapism a reality go some way in ensuring that there is something that has to be escaped from.
What I’ll need to do now is to simply ensure that whenever I’m in the situation, I’ll have to get munted enough not to give a fuck.
I hope that’s ethical…
but we the people (or a majority) elected these governments over the years, and are perfectly happy to buy the cheaper susbsidised food that results from this arrangement.
This “bread and circuses” arrangement of the EU is also the same arrangement that keeps the 25 diverse nations relatively stable to the point where we can all happily travel across them without the hassles of visas and the like, something most of us all make use of (teknivals anyone?)
Incidentally these subsidies end next year and are replaced by far smaller ones, but they will be increased for organic farmers. (this may well be due to lobbying of the Green movement across the EU)
but this will be painful in the first instance, – it has been done very abruptly so loads of farms will go out of business as they have become dependent on subsidies, and the organic farms will have to compete with cheap produce from the ex-soviet satellite nations now in the EU.
So we will still have to make the concious choice to buy organically.
As for other stuff, as long as it remains contraband we are doing as much as you can. The fact that you (monkey monkey) are sat at your desk and working and not breaking into houses and businesses to fund your lifestyle is good enough IMO.
dont try and pretend to me that the governments in this country were elected by a majority in a democratic system, and i dont beleive in santa either. or the easter bunny. we live in a propeganda lead timocracy, with two identical parties being swapped periodically.
dont try and pretend to me that the governments in this country were elected by a majority in a democratic system, and i dont beleive in santa either. or the easter bunny. we live in a propeganda lead timocracy, with two identical parties being swapped periodically.
which given our far greater access to alternative media and stuff like the internet shows that at least half the people are too stupid not to believe thr propaganda, and if they do know they do not care about doing something about it, provided they at a street/family level are OK. Again, Bread and circuses. “Fucking retards” they [rest of society] may be, but they are still the majority, otherwise the world would not be in the mess it it is in.
People themselves often don’t want to “rock the boat” and particularly in Britain often do not accept change through activism – this is an attitude which needs changing.
The current political system is by no means ideal and needs to give a greater voice to alternative views – otherwise when people are denied the ballot box, they will eventually turn to the bomb and the bullet. but others do not accept this as they feel they are “giving in to terrorists”.
How many people remember 9/11, compared to the peaceful protests of 3 years ago?
TBH I think it will take a purge of a large amount of the world population before things get any better, either through war or environmental disaster, so people who have concious views will have to start thinking about survival tactics!
i think that this is much more common in the south than in the north
traditional people in the south moan about things but don’t complain to anyone or do anything about it
this is especially true when people don’t feel that they won’t be listened to
so someone might complain to the local council about something small that they know will be acted on, but never write or talk to their MP as they feel their views will not be heard
shit MP’s will play on this by always replying to questions and criticism with bland form letters to make people feel that there’s no point in writing again
like a war of atrition on the motivations of the masses
traditional people in the south moan about things but don’t complain to anyone or do anything about it
this is especially true when people don’t feel that they won’t be listened to
so someone might complain to the local council about something small that they know will be acted on, but never write or talk to their MP as they feel their views will not be heard
shit MP’s will play on this by always replying to questions and criticism with bland form letters to make people feel that there’s no point in writing again
like a war of atrition on the motivations of the masses
maybe true to an extent, but I’ve found its the same people who whinge like fuck when some other group has done the same (written to MP and been fobbed off) and then gets on the street and has a march or a critical mass – I don’t mean busting in windows or any shit like that, just a peaceful demo – or when locals take over a disused building and squat it for positive purposes like housing or an infoshop/workshop type place
Often even when people agree with the overall aims of the activism they complain “they are holding up traffic/stopping the cops catching real crime/making us subsidise the costs through our council tax/they haven’t been through the proper channels” and all that shit.
changing this attitude though is IMO essential – and needs give and take on both sides. there’s a good book about positive activism which I’ll start a new thread on (as this one is drifting a bit 😉 )
I decided to start this thread after a funny chat with a friend of mine who was wondering if there were any ‘fair-trade crack whores’ he could ethically abuse (he was only joking – don’t worry!) which got me thinking about drugs & ethics.
Looks like I opened the flood gates…
good reading, good writing
peace.
Looks like I opened the flood gates…
good reading, good writing
peace.
I think its good that we are actually prepared to discuss the ethics of drug use, other boards and groups would have said “fuck off hippy” (or accused you of being the cops/MI5/some journo) and carried on as they were…
A lot can be done at street level though; respecting both the substance and its effects and those who take risks to provide it but are not violent gangsters… in other words enjoy yourself but do not pass any burden of your drug use back to society (apart from the legal aspects which we cannot do much about at present).
If more people used recreational drugs responsibly and ethically, there would be more of a social case for ending prohibition…
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