Why don’t they just ask for human volunteers? They’d be lined up around the fucking block, and it wouldn’t cost us a cent.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a division of the federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), has spent $3,634,807 over the past decade funding research that involves getting monkeys to smoke and drink drugs such as PCP, methamphetamine (METH), heroin, and cocaine and then studying their behavior, including during different phases of the female monkeys’ menstrual cycles.
The study also uses “interventions” as “treatment models” for monkeys who have been taught to use drugs.
……In yet another federally funded study of drug-taking monkeys, the monkeys were sometimes given “trail mix” after “their daily experimental sessions.”
For the munchies.
Back in 2001, the NIH gave $328,364 to a project called “A Primate Model of Drug Abuse: Intervention Strategies.” The principal investigator for the project was Dr. Marilyn E. Carroll, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota.
When asked how they can justify this flabbergasting waste of our money, the NIH responded:
……that the research would help create better drug treatment models, alleviating the financial burden on society caused by drug addiction.
“Drug abuse and addiction are a major burden to society; economic costs resulting from tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug abuse are estimated to exceed $600 billion dollars annually in the United States–including health, crime-related costs, and losses in productivity,” said the NIH.
Bullshit. Why don’t they devote a little research to the billions of tax dollars thrown down the bottomless pit of the “war on drugs”. That’s the real burden to society; the $100,000,000+ spent on enforcing stupid laws against people who choose to imbibe in drugs the government cannot control. If Big Brother could find a way to manage the production, sale, and taxation of illegal drugs, they’d be legal in a heartbeat, “Just Say No” be damned.
The government wastes 3 dollars for every dollar spent.
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) puts out an annual Pig Book; a compilation of the year’s biggest porkers (spenders) in government. If you go to their site and read over some of the ways in which elected officials spend our money, take your blood pressure pills first.
Some of them are quite proud of the way they throw our money in the toilet.
More examples of how the Feds spend our money at their discretion HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
The Feds are using my money to get monkeys buzzed on coke and pot in the name of “scientific knowledge”, as if they don’t know about the effects of those drugs on humans? What kind of crack are you smoking, NIDA?