'The Runner' by Jason Chase shows the Drug War at its racist best.
The screenplay tries to make a villain out of the usual suspects, including the obligatory coke-dealing Hispanic Drug Dealer, "Local Legend," and his black teenage admirer, Blake. But the real villain of the piece is Detective Wall, the smug and self-righteous drug agent, who...
1) calls Aiden's black teenage friend "a scumbag, not worth another thought," and wants to lock him up for 20 years.
2) ignores Aiden's request for a lawyer, saying, "Guilty people want lawyers."
3) slaps the teenage Aiden repeatedly, telling him, "I own you, you f - -, you waste!"
This un-American (indeed Nazi-like) law enforcement makes sense only if we believe the Drug War lie that plant medicine is pure evil, but that's wrong! God himself said his creation was good, both as to flora and fauna. Jules Verne and HG Wells wrote their best work under the influence of coca wine. Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin enjoyed opium. The entire Vedic-Hindu religion was inspired by the psychoactive effects of a plant, and Plato's views about the afterlife were inspired by his participation in the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries.
And yet Jason Chase has made a movie that glorifies the trigger-happy gunmen who bash down doors to stop people from using plants that grow at their very feet, thereby supporting a Drug War that has caused a civil war in Mexico, turned America's inner cities into shooting galleries, and empowered a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines.
Jason fails to realize that the negative events depicted in his film only take place because America has decided to demonize psychoactive plant medicine rather than learning how to use it wisely for the benefit of humanity, which, despite drug-war lies, has always sought self-transcendence and self-improvement with mother nature's plant medicines - and we seek to quash that impulse at our own peril.
Please, Jason, America does not need more films that glorify SWAT teams: America needs films that promote facts not fear, and education not criminalization.
If you're worried about addiction, Jason, what about the record-breaking 1 in 4 American women in the US who are chemically dependent on Big Pharma meds, many harder to kick than heroin, which they have to take every single day of their life??? That's the biggest addiction in human history!!! Why don't we break down THEIR doors and haul THEM downtown and call THEM "scumbags" and "waste"? Why don't we say that THEY'RE "not worth another thought"? Likewise with those who use liquor, which kills 400,000 people a year - or tobacco, which kills 95,000 a year.
We don't break down their doors and shout "Go, go, go!" And why not? Because the Drug War is a political war against minorities, not a war against the powers-that-be. It's a shame that in the third decade of the 21st century, Americans still don't get this, and that we are still making movies like this that celebrate our imperialist and racist war against psychoactive plant medicine.
Oh, and spoiler alert: remember that black teenager who was selling plant medicine of which politicians disapprove? He was shot dead in the gunfire that erupted as the SWAT team stormed in. (Detective Wall only wanted to throw the teenager in jail, but this works too, since either way, he's been taken off the voting rolls so that conservatives and Drug Warriors can continue to triumph at the polls.)
Agent Burrell had warned against the raid, suggesting that teenagers might get killed, but Captain Ames indignantly dismissed his worry, for the totally irrelevant reason that "thousands of lives are endangered by this crew."
"Really?" one wants to say in response. So what? That doesn't mean that you have to arrest them in the most violent and dramatic fashion imaginable! Fortunately for the SWAT team, the middle-aged Hispanic dealer was also killed in the raid, so at least the SWAT team can boast about something more than killing children.
Detective Wall, who apparently got a bad scratch during the raid (aww!), actually wins a medal for killing teenagers. A medal, he says, "is so no one questions whether it was a worthwhile cause."
Well, the medal didn't work this time, Wall. This reviewer, at least, questions the wisdom of your cause, for the Drug War that you champion goes against everything that America is meant to stand for, by demonizing teenagers, criminalizing plant medicine, incentivizing dealing, and holding the safeguards of the US Constitution in supreme contempt.
I dare say that Thomas Jefferson would agree with me, since he was rolling in his grave when the DEA stormed onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants, in violation of the natural law upon which the garden-loving president had founded America.
The Links Police
Why do you think I stopped you? That's right, because it would have been a crime for you to leave without at least perusing some additional pics and 'says on the topic of Drug War and minorities. Sad that today, when minorities are beaten for selling drugs, their so-called defenders cheer on the police. They (Jesse Jackson Sr., Bill Clinton and company) have yet to grok the simple truth made so evident during liquor prohibition, namely that prohibition leads to violence.
Author's Follow-up: August 31, 2022
If you ever see a quartet of self-satisfied cops holding a press conference about the latest drug bust, do me a favor and boo. The police should have nothing to do with substance use. If someone misses a dose of their antibiotic, do we have the cops come break down their door? No more should they do so when we're discussing the pharmacological improvement of mood and mind.
So, bug off, copper! Go help some little old lady across the street or stop a terrorist attack, and stop scapegoating "drugs" for every social problem in the world.
Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.
Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.
In fact, that's what we need when we finally return to legalization: educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Black Lives Don't Matter: in 'The Runner' by Jason Chase, published on April 2, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
Why do you think I stopped you? That's right, because it would have been a crime for you to leave without at least perusing some additional pics and 'says on the topic of Drug War and minorities. Sad that today, when minorities are beaten for selling drugs, their so-called defenders cheer on the police. They (Jesse Jackson Sr., Bill Clinton and company) have yet to grok the simple truth made so evident during liquor prohibition, namely that prohibition leads to violence.
You have been reading an article entitled, Black Lives Don't Matter: in 'The Runner' by Jason Chase, published on April 2, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)