Charlie Rose

Max83  12/01/2012 02:22 PM Report

That is correct anne4444. And the spiritual reason for drug addiction is an attempt to escape from physical reality or from facing facts.

To remedy this, one needs to find a cause or reason for living and love something or someone who will return your love.

All this is independent of race and of course you are still a drug addict even if you are white and are only consuming ''legal'' prescription drugs. That is the illusion many people that are addicted to legal drugs have, be they white/black/yellow etc., that they think they are superior to and their problems are minor to those of illegal drug users, because they are OK with the system and obey the law. The underlying problem and spiritual cause is however the same if you are a hard or soft drug user and so I feel everybody with a drug problem, be that a legal or illegal drug problem should be treated with the same understanding.

The real question that needs to be asked here I think is why Americans need and consume so many drugs, be they legal or illegal. If a society is getting high on such a high level there is usually an imbalance within the system and that society and in my opinion this conversation really highlights this very well, even if it only focuses on the political and cultural imbalances and not so much on the spiritual ones.

anne4444  12/01/2012 11:43 AM Report

The reason for most crimes… is unfulfilled desire.

wpaul  11/30/2012 02:41 PM Report

Too bad that those who claim to be against racism are using racist tactics themselves. Tetlock's "Racism in the brain or racism on the brain" should be must reading for all those such as these guests how are just as racist as those they claim to oppose.

Max83  11/29/2012 05:55 PM Report

Thank you to the Charlie Rose Show for this outstanding conversation.

These have been some of the most knowledgeable, truthful and eloquent guests I have seen on the show so far. Outstanding!

It is an inconvenient Truth for many, but the Truth is being told in this piece.

Dennis_100  11/29/2012 04:18 PM Report

While providing little benefit to society, incarceration for minor drug offenses has filled our prisons, ruined many lives, and increased the costs of government. We simply need to have a rational national debate about this issue, considering the inhumanity and economics of incarcerating people for minor drug offenses, as well as the broader consequences of our policies (eg, the devastation visited daily on Mexico by the cartels that supply the drugs we use). And our politicians need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator of public opinion and lead the way. Decriminalizing,taxing and regulating marijuana use would be a good start.

REMant  11/29/2012 12:01 PM Report

We've seen and read many things on this "prison nation." And there's nothing new in the suggestion that it's all a business run by the wealthy, as they have similarly been blamed for the current financial crisis. But the reason why we have the penal system we have in the first place was to provide the kind of intervention these people apparently advocate. Yes, it was first done by Whigs, the progenitors of Lincoln's Republicans, but now by Democrats. "Penitentiaries" were not built to warehouse minorities, but to "civilize" the backward. As were juvenile "reformatories." And similar facilities were built for the mentally ill. Many allege our public school system was intended to do the same, and the capitalist economy of factories, as well. And we've had the temperance, and other movements. None of it has proved very successful.

But any business aspects that have grown up around it don't hold a candle to the kind of corruption inherent in this philanthropic work, unless it is claimed the whole thing is the victimization of innocents, not an uncommon liberal view, as we saw recently with Ken Burns, and free them all.

We went through this kind of thing with the mentally ill, when it was decided they should be mainstreamed - also, conveniently, a cost-saving measure - which ended up putting them on the street, which, of course, then prompted a campaign to warehouse them in a different fashion. A few of these facilities have proved effective, but mostly this appears to have become only a boon to slumlords. The net result just a more direct means of privatization.

There's likewise a movement afoot to decriminalize drugs, some measures appearing on recent ballots, but the drug problem, like most of the rest of our character problems, starts with a banking system that impoverishes rather than improves, and I fail to see how "coming together" will do anything more about that than it has about anything else.