Reports, Research and Rejection

Is this News, or a Get Tough Movement a country can ill afford?

Social movements grow out of objective conditions and construction, or more simply put, by accident or design. Social phenomena emerge in societies, and groups of people emerge, sometimes by choice and sometimes by conditions. Some groups get large enough to become identifiable. Power holders decide to embrace these new societal participants, or reject them. Official reports are part of the public debate, and used by people trying to get power. People with the most money, get the most so-called, reports. More reports, greater and swifter rejection.

In the month of January 2006, as if to herald a new era of moral panic with the new year, headlines across the nation shouted, Hospitals Feeling the Strain of Methamphetamine!

Meth strains hospitals in Indiana, in North Carolina, Emergency Room Feeling Pain of Meth, Studies Find, Meth's costs burden Hoosiers, the New York Times said it this way, Hospitals Say Meth Cases Are Rising, and Hurt Care.

A sharp increase in the number of people arriving in emergency rooms with methamphetamine-related problems is straining local hospital budgets.

The National Association of Counties released the report that carried headlines through the month of January, and as if a finely tuned strategy was behind it all, state legislatures began to propose stiff Meth Bills, as if the present laws weren't tough enough.

Slate.com calls the National Association of Counties the Dukes of Deception. Who is the National Association of Counties? With Federal money increasing to war and natural disasters, counties are loosing federal grants that funded anti drug activities. To keep from giving-up law enforcement personal, this association is giving Counties, (large numbers of law enforcement personnel) a hand in their struggle to maintain their jobs, and budgets.

Defined groups can be a religious group, an ethnic group, or a group that shares a particular practice that isn't "normal" by current standards. In the US it can be a class of people; hillbillies (poor and white), cowboys (big and dumb), pot smokers (dirty and stupid), celebrities (beautiful and rich). With almost seven million people under direct police supervision, almost 2.5 million behind the walls of prisons, there is an identifiable prison class (criminals) that has emerged the last 10 years and they are seeking power, too. Most of the criminal class in the US, are nonviolent drug offenders.

To start the rejection process, power holders (constructionists) create a 'moral panic' and the mass media loves a good moral panic because when people are fearful, they read more news and news makers are able to increase their profits, advertisers, too. The objective is to have everyone reject the group that has emerged to identifiable, because at the heart of rejection, is social control.

The goals of the underclass, seeking power is to show the public what reports are saying, isn't true so society will eventually accept them the way they are, or change circumstances that have put them in an identifiable class.

The prisoner class is the lowest of the low, says Callahan. There have been a lot of reports about US Sentencing law, and prisoners. We need to understand the important relationship we have to the reports, and research papers released.

The November Coalition calls all good citizens to let your lawmakers know the gig is up. In the 1960's the hysteria was marijuana. In the 70's LSD, the 1980's brought us white powder cocaine, then crack cocaine hysteria and injustice began to spread, and more drug addiction, property crime and disease. With more whites using crack, our prisons burst at the seam with black, crack offenders. In the 1990's the panic was designer drugs like Ecstasy. We are bringing in the new millennium, with a old drug and new movement to punish it.

To be active opposing counterproductive methamphetamine laws, bookmark this section, check back often, spread the real news and join the November Coalition.