Getting Wasted In the Drug War

A drug bust is one of life's defining moments. More expensive

than your wedding. More painful than your divorce.

More permanent than your tats, and harder to live down than

a fat mullet and a piano tie. There's your mug shot floating

around like a turd on the internet as your first Google hit.

Maybe there'll be a video of you on "Cops" shouting slurred

obscenities and staggering through your DUI drills. And

there will always be the haunting memories of your strip

search and the cold sweat at the sight of latex gloves.

Don't believe that just because you don't get high and

never DUI you won't get busted. The Drug War is all around

you. Americans spend over $65 billion getting wasted on illegal

drugs every year; $75 billion on booze, and $3 billion on

goodtime pills. Throw in another billion or so for some

bongs and you have got yourself a party, my man. You could

be at the wrong little get-wasted-together, in the wrong ride,

in the wrong 'hood, living with the wrong roommate, or piss

off the wrong cop and find yourself peeing in a corner on

Rikers Island for a long weekend before you've been charged

with anything.

The good news is that you have wisely set yourself apart

from the unsober masses by purchasing this book, putting a

defense attorney in your corner to advise you before you

throw (or go to) The Hardcore House Party, before you Pack

for Your Drug Trip, before you Hook a Brother Up, before

you're nabbed in The Dope Mobile, before you take that

Drug Test?, and before you're Face to Face with the Fuzz.

Expert counsel before you really need it.

Some of you, alas, will get nabbed anyway. During this

dark period, Busted! will be your personal Jesus, sheparding

you from the bust to the bang of the judge's gavel. From

enduring your night(s) in jail, to picking a drug bust attorney,

to throwing yourself on the ground and groveling for mercy,

and/or fighting your bust like a stone cold pro: Rush

Limbaugh. A man whose pain and humiliation brought such

joy to so many will serve as a guest guru, dropping the deep

drug bust knowledge of the rich and famous that any

burnout can grasp between bong hits.

SEX AND DRUGS: THE BUSTED! PHILOSOPHY

Sex and drugs have always gone hand-in-hand, and there

have always been a lot of laws and (re)education aimed at getting

the people to stop screwing willy-nilly and stop doing

so many drugs. But, try and try, nothing seems to work.

Everyone keeps fucking and everyone keeps doing dope.

Sex education has been forced to acknowledge this painfully

obvious reality and has grudgingly turned the focus toward

condoms. The time has come for drug bust education, beginning

with acknowledging the obvious: People are going to do

drugs. Whatever the merits of the Drug War, there can be no

debate about whether locking people up has been effective at

quenching Americans' thirst for a good buzz. It hasn't. It never

will. Mankind has been getting wasted since we crawled from

the mud and realized that we are all in pain and going to die.

But Busted! isn't about the futility of the Drug War. It's

about staying out of jail and out on bail. It's about the bare-knuckle reality of the criminal justice system, fighting a dirty war. Like all dirty wars, anything goes. Perjury, racism, public humiliation and medieval punishment all are fair game.

Knowledge is your only defense.

Sex education still begins with abstinence - no question,

always the best way not to contract some gnarly disease.

Similarly, in the Drug war, the best way not to get busted is

not to possess drugs. So don't possess drugs. Drugs are bad.

We all know that shit ain't broccoli. The difference, in my view, between marijuana and the host of other available inebriants is the difference between casual sex with a condom and barebacking transvestites in truck stops. But that's your decision. A drug bust takes away all your decision-making authority, and wars are not about fighting fair. Bad things happen to people who get busted. Profoundly bad things. Nomatter what your dope of choice the criminal justice systems brings only pain and suffering.

Consider the Busted! and Now We Bring the Pain chapters as warnings from god.