The Astrology of America’s War on Drugs
This episode, we’re covering the astrology behind America’s War on Drugs. We talk about Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s Big Three, the Controlled Substances Act and Mercury stationing direct in Aries, Saturn in Taurus and what that means for controlling pleasure, Pluto in Virgo and obsessing over health, the big sober energy of Saturn at Zero Degrees Capricorn, Scorpio Retrogrades, nodal returns strike again, and Elyse even sings the D.A.R.E song!
Transcription
ELYSE: Hello and welcome to allegedly astrology. Each week we break down the astrology that happened during some of the biggest scandals and events in history
DANA: As always, thank you to everyone for listening. And if you want to support us, you can leave a five star review and subscribe on whatever podcast platform you listen on
ELYSE: And if you do leave us a review on apple podcasts or Spotify and DM us a screenshot of your review will make you a customary move your Big Three and send you a quick write up about it.
DANA: We also have a bunch of stuff so you can head over to Teepublic and check it out if you're curious.
SARAH: And make sure you follow us were everywhere at this point allegedly astrology on instagram reddit, Hey hero and Tiktok and allegedly astro on twitter. And if you visit our website allegedly astrology.com, you can learn more about us, book a reading with Dana. We also are starting to put transcripts up for our newest episodes. Um so you can see the charts there to give it a look, look, see
ELYSE: Yes, check it out for sure. But let's get into today's episode which was a fan request by someone who goes by J1A1W1 who was jones-ing for a history ep. So if you have a topic you want us to cover, make sure to message us and will absolutely take this into consideration. So Dana, what are we talking about today?
DANA: Today? We're talking about the war on drugs.
ELYSE: The war on drugs. Another light topic for season four. But the war on drugs, not to be confused with the band of the same name refers to yeah.
SARAH: Great band.
ELYSE: Yes.
DANA: I don't know a single song.
SARAH: You saw them at Lollapalooza
DANA: Where there is no war on drugs. It’s a peace zone.
ELYSE: So yes, the war on drugs refers to a us government initiative that began in the 1970s and is still going on today. The goal of the campaign was to stop the illegal drug trade in America. And since its creation, it has been met with various degrees of support and criticism. So let's learn more about why we needed this massive global scale campaign to end drugs in the us or why we didn't.
SARAH: Yes. There are so many questions that need to be answered and honestly what we answer them. I'm not sure. But America has always loved and always had a problem with drugs. Like it was crazy. Everyone was addicted to morphine because of the civil war in World War I, cocaine and heroin were honestly in everything like coca cola had cocaine in it even this years. And I know even the Sears and Roebuck catalog which was like how you got, it was like the amazon before the internet existed in the 1890s. Um they offered cocaine and a syringe for $1 and 50 cents, which Is like $54 in today's money. And then um the us opium commissioner Hambleton right, is like, oh my God we have like a ton of drugs in our country, like more per capita than anywhere else in the world and that's probably not the best. So eventually states started to outlaw and ban drugs around 1900.
ELYSE: Crazy, what if you could just order a syringe of cocaine on amazon?
SARAH: Honestly, it was probably a really wild time like back then to just be like snorting coke, sometimes taking morphine.
DANA: Well that's around the time that Pluto and Neptune were in gemini and that aspect occurs for like the co presence of those planets and that sign will occur for like maybe a decade. I'm not exactly for sure about the duration, maybe longer actually, but It only happens like every 500 years.
SARAH: Damn, we missed it.
DANA: So it really know where I mean, I'm glad I'm not putting a syringe of coke in my arm.
SARAH: But if you didn't know it was bad and you were just having a great time?
ELYSE: Around 1900, the U.S. negotiated trade agreements regulating the trade of drugs and they also started texting weed and even went as far as banning alcohol, but eventually they were like, Okay, we went too far with the alcohol thing, you can drink it again, but the transition right?
SARAH: Yeah, they went like real hardcore for a while. But the biggest law at the time with regard to stopping the distribution and use of drugs was the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 and this was a federal law that regulated and taxed the making, importing and distribution of opiates and coca products and it's honestly seen as the beginning of America's drug war. So it started all the way back then.
ELYSE: But the act itself didn't seem like a big deal after all, it was just taxing opiates, which seems pretty standard to us these days at least. But what ended up happening was that there was a vague clause in it that made it seem like doctors couldn't prescribe opiate based drugs anymore and if they did they were targeted and jailed.
SARAH: Yeah, so this was like a big miscommunication but it resulted in opiates being taken underground. So this started really like the black market like the criminal drug trade because these criminal groups got involved and it became very shady, the police started to enforce like finding these like drugs now. So there was also a lot of media propaganda going on that shame people for taking drugs. So ultimately this like miscommunication in the act created like the shit show of drugs that still affects us today. So dana what's up with the chart because I know it wasn't mercury retrograde like I need to know.
ELYSE: Just a casual miscommunication.
DANA: Okay, so it was signed into law on December 17, 1914 and this was the day after a Sagittarius new Moon, which was conjunct mars. And Sagittarius is a future focused sign like a spiritual seeker who believes in salvation, but it also is always escaping the present and it's really escaping responsibility for like the hows and whys of the situation and this is also like the rising sign for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is like used as the USA Sibley chart. So it's just kind of like, I feel like this is, I mean that Sagittarius is like that that's the framework for this whole war, right? It's sort of like escaping instead of solving which is also what drugs are about. Okay, so uh and new moons are like a seed being planted and in Sagittarius again, this is about saving yourself and believing in better days like our head and also like it's taking action but whatever and it's conjoined mars so this is about hasty action. Um and it's also the day that venus station direct in Scorpio. And this is interesting because venus rules both the sixth house of public health in America's chart in the 11th house of like legislation, right? And so Scorpio is also the sign on America's 12th house of self undoing or self destruction and mars in Sagittarius was opposite Saturn and Gemini and so Gemini and Sagittarius are signs that like desperately avoid dealing with problems by hoping and trying to learn their way out. So it's kind of like law their way out of this right? And so Saturn wants to control and gemini like has a really good command of words like a sneaky clause sort of like you said.
SARAH: Another thing too I think is interesting about the chart which you like brought up a while ago is that you know it is so Sagittarius and this is like a war on an idea like it's like not even something that's like a concrete thing you could fight.
DANA: Oh, yeah I have been in there for the air conjunction.
SARAH: Oh perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Um flash forward several decades and it's the 1970s, the Vietnam war is going on. Everyone is tweaking because there's a really bad heroin problem especially among U. S. Soldiers that had been coming back from Vietnam. It honestly got so bad that the military was like okay we need to like start testing people because this is so out of control and basically every soldier was testing positive for heroin and everybody was like what are we going to do? And our president at the time? Richard Nixon was like oh you just wait I have a plan.
ELYSE: And Richard Nixon in case you don't know was the 37th president. He was a Republican and had served as a representative and a senator for California as well as vice president to Eisenhower during his five years as president. He saw a lot of shit but he eventually resigned because of that fun Watergate scandal which the whole thing we could probably do it on that alone but great name, great scandal. This dude loves a shady moment. So what are his big three?
DANA: Okay so Nixon was born on January 9th 1913 at 9 35 PM in Yorba Linda California and he's a Capricorn sun and Aquarius moon and Virgo rising. And this is not at all surprising given what we know about Nixon and here's why Capricorn suns are diligent determined when they have a goal and they usually have like several Sarah knows all about this. Aquarius moons are friendly but closed off and secretive about the contents of like their hearts and minds and uh like the moon is about emotions so emotions may be conflated with weakness with this placement and both Capricorn and Aquarius are ruled by Saturn the planet of control and discipline and commitment and neither sign is want to crack alone like much less in public but when they do crack in public it can feel like the greatest humiliation. So that's probably what happened with Watergate. Also Virgo risings are like energetic, helpful and goal oriented like Capricorn like since they're both earth signs but they can also be critical and like ashamed or shaming others or both, which is usually tied to being critical and Virgo is also the sign of physical health. So it's interesting that he like had any sort of hand in drug policy.
SARAH: I think it's interesting that he also has Mars in Sag and so did the 1914.
DANA: That is interesting. Sarah.
SARAH: And he has Pluto in the 10th which is like.
DANA: Well he was born in 1913 so he was born right before the was so he was so yeah, his first mars return coincided with that law.
SARAH: Interesting and he honestly like picked it up. So that's why I also think it's cyclical but Nixon is v anti drug and he goes before Congress and declares drug abuse as public enemy number one. And he also asked Congress to devote more federal resources to the prevention and rehabilitation of addicts. Which honestly have to give him credit for that. Like at the beginning he wasn't just trying to like stomp out drugs like he was trying to create a way for people addicted to drugs, you know, could get out of them.
DANA: That's what we want
SARAH: But obviously that went sideways but from this speech is where we get the term war on drugs. So that's the first time it was used this speech leads to This act called the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.
ELYSE: Which is a tongue twister. The Comprehensive Drug abuse prevention control act said that the pharmaceutical industry needed to have physical security and strict record keeping for certain types of drugs. And this act also categorizes controlled substances into five schedules or five classes of drugs.
SARAH: And we're all familiar with them. But the classes are based on how likely the drug was to be abused if it's used in medical treatments and if there's a potential for addiction.
ELYSE: So schedule one is seen as the most dangerous. They have a high risk of addiction and little evidence for medical benefits. Examples are heroin weed. Again, we didn't make this list up so we can debate the medicinal benefits of that.
DANA: Sounds like something a weed addict would say.
ELYSE: I'm addicted. No, I just want to make sure no one's trying to be like just coming at us and our DM saying we'd is addicting and has no medical benefits. But again, we didn't make up this list,
SARAH: We didn't say it.
ELYSE: So the examples are heroin weed MDMA and then it goes to a schedule five which are the least likely to be addictive which are Lyrica which treats fibromyalgia cough medicine.
DANA: Our friend used to take Lyrica before our dodgeball games.
SARAH: And shout out to that friend, you know who you are.
ELYSE: And the meds that fall into these schedules or classes can be changed so you can petition the DHS or department of human services and they can review it. So the classifications aren't technically forever.
SARAH: Yeah but apparently they seem like it hasn’t changed. I'm not sure. So under this act is a smaller act called the controlled substance act which we're talking about because it was the legal foundation for the war on drugs and this act said that the manufacturer importation possession use and distribution of certain substances is regulated by the D. E. A. Or as we know them, the Drug enforcement administration. So they're coming for you. So what is the chart for this?
DANA: This was two days before Mercury Stationed Direct in aries. It’s ruled by mars in Capricorn at the Exalted degree. That's a lot to say. So stationary planets are like super loud energetically. Um And when Mercury stationary matters regarding communication technology are like super underscored and in areas that's going to be like usually impulsive and quick. But since it's ruled by mars in Capricorn at its Exalted degree which is like the most Exalted position for mars this is where it has like all the power and also some temperance and the desire to play the long game. Mars in Capricorn is ruled by Saturn in Taurus and Saturn and Taurus is like the desire to control pleasure. And so this is like happened during Taurus season which is like when the sun is in Taurus so like the desire to control pleasure is becomes like the prime goal. The sun has to do with like the goal and jupiter was conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius, which is huge. So jupiter rules Sagittarius and jupiter is the planet of like high rollers and God and Neptune is like drugs and mystique. So this combination is sort of like astrological DMT It's like full of hope and good intentions, but it's really just like living on a prayer.
ELYSE: Just like Bon Jovi, Dana. Are you gonna do more song lyrics?
DANA: I don't know am I?
SARAH: Please don't.
ELYSE: But the thing to know about the comprehensive drug abuse prevention and Control act of 1970 can't wait till we can start calling it just war on drugs was that it wasn't necessarily this brand new concept, it was considered a continuation of drug policies that started in 1914 with the Harrison narcotics tax act. So what's the biwheel between these two acts?
DANA: Okay, so this is the nodal return. And when the nodes returned to the same signs, it means that the eclipses are happening in the same signs which triggers certain themes. The nodal return happens like it also happens to be the nodal opposition for the USA. So this could look like a time where the country learns hard lessons or like gets away from itself in some fashion growth that could be difficult or just getting away unraveling right. And so venus also was retrograde in Scorpio in both charts and this is wild. So everything I said about venus in Scorpio like applies here, It's like about control self undoing. Venus Retrograde in the in the 12th house of America's chart can look like waging a war on you know yourself, which also happens to be like a prime breeding ground for escapism and addictions. Um And then also we have Pluto. Pluto is square from like the Harrison narcotics act. So Pluto is in Gemini when the Harrison Act went into effect and in Virgo when the Comprehensive Drug Act went into effect. And so these are the two signs of the zodiac ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication and Gemini is also about facts and details, whereas like Virgo is about details, health and organization. And since we're talking about like Pluto it's going to be like obsessive and so all these like schedules, you know sort of like really organizing all of it.
SARAH: Oh my God yes that is so fucking Virgo. And pluto in Virgo to be like we're obsessing about health, we're so obsessed with it. We're gonna organize the way you suck up your health with drugs into five schedules based on this very specific criteria. Like what? So the war on drugs like Nixon, what did he do to actually fight them? So he did a few things. The first was he up federal funding for drug control agencies. He also created mandatory prison sentencing for drug crimes and he created an office for drug abuse prevention and created the D. E. A. Which we mentioned before it's the drug enforcement agency and the D. E. A. is a police force that targets illegal drug use and drug smuggling. So all of this basically took drugs from being like a cool thing you do sometimes and it turned it into a crime.
ELYSE: Yeah which is really a 180 from when he originally put this bill forward. Like he wanted to put a lot of resources to helping people fight addiction. And now all of a sudden it's literally a war on drugs and there was a lot of criticism about how this was handled. In fact Nixon's own domestic policy chief came forward to say that the war on drugs had ulterior motives, surprise surprise the hippies quote unquote at this time. Okay the antiwar group they were sort of like stereotyped to be using drugs like weed and black people were stereotyped to be using heroin. And obviously we can't make these broad sweeping statements. But in Nixon's mind these two groups were people that typically did not support him. So by criminalizing these drugs Nixon was able to disrupt these communities of people that were against him. So basically the war on drugs um was less about preventing drug use and more about stopping Nixon's opposition which dark times.
SARAH: Yeah that's a Capricorn sun literally no obstacles will get in your way even if you have to destroy communities. So though Nixon was all about being anti drug that whole campaign took a hiatus between 1973 and 1977 because there was a lot of other ship going on, you know, to mention Nixon, he had to step down from the presidency in utter shame and the cold war was going on and the space race and there was a huge oil and energy crisis.
ELYSE: Casual times, but you know, we know a lot about living through unprecedented times, but While this was going on, 11 states decriminalized marijuana possession and President Jimmy Carter actually ran on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana. His first year in office even resulted in the decriminalization of up to one ounce of marijuana. So things were looking up, it was a change from the Nixon administration, but what was going on during this drug hiatus that like made such a shift?
DANA: So in 1973, Saturn crossed the south node in cancer where America has its sun, mercury, venus and jupiter, in other words, it's leadership legislation, money and religion or beliefs and Saturn is control and the south node is decreased. So this could have like triggered a decrease in like trying to like control the public or like, you know, sort of like the governance around that, so, you know, like let him live I guess. But then in 1978, venus retrograded in Scorpio again, So venus retrograde in Scorpio seems to be at least maybe some sort of trigger for drug discourse in America most recently it happened in 2018 and I feel like that was when the when we found out about the Sackler family and opioids and stuff.
ELYSE: Oh crazy. And if you're curious about that you can go back and listen to our OxyContin episode, we will talk about this cotton, the ash theology of OxyContin and what douchebags the Sackler family is.
SARAH: Anyway, the whole little drug hiatus thing got put to a stop real quick once we entered the 80s and little old Ronnie Reagan was elected president.
ELYSE: Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States and he served from 1981 to 1989. He was a Republican. But before that he was the governor of California and an actor. He is known for his economic progress, surviving an assassination attempt having an astrologer and for purposes of this episode starting up the war on drugs again. So what are his big three?
DANA: So he was born on February 6, 1911, allegedly at 4 16 am in tampico Illinois. And I say allegedly because this birth time is given a D. D. Rating on Astro databank. So Astro databank is like the most reliable source but DD rating is like the lowest level of reliability. He has his sun in Aquarius, his moon and Taurus and he's a Sagittarius rising and this is an interesting combination right on a whole because I feel like it's like simultaneously suspicious and gullible, which like kind of makes sense for him and sort of that whole era Aquarius suns, you know like Nixon's Aquarius moon are friendly, the sun is the spirit, it's the goal. Aquarius, it's like the sign of the collective. Aquarius is also a sign that most likely to coincide with areas of extreme conservatism and this has to do with like sort of the idea that they're preserving the future. And so like they think what they're doing is right, right. It's, it's kind of like this, I mean I think it's a warped sense of what it could be a warped sense of righteousness in terms of like any sort of extremity, I don't really, you know vibe with its too high. The moon loves to be in Taurus but Taurus like Aquarius is a fixed sign and fixed signs are fixed in their ways. This is what makes them so suspicious. Also if you tell the Taurus to do something, it makes them not want to do it even if they wanted to do it before you ask them to. And this is a trait that Taurus shares with Sagittarius a sign that tourists technically has no relationship with, but they're both this way. And so Sagittarius is also again, America's rising sign in America also has an Aquarius moon. So maybe electing him as like sort of this prayer to restore American values and that horribly backfired. Um, and Sagittarius like believes because Sagittarius wants to believe and the greatest battle is conquering their own will instead of like from without, its more within Sagittarius is the sign of God and when humans um you know except their own divinity, it follows that they have to accept responsibility for their current circumstances. That's where Capricorn comes in. So like taking responsibility for circumstances often comes down to Saturn which again rules Capricorn And Reagan had his Saturn at 0° Taurus and the planet zero degrees of any sign is going to have like very pure energy of that sign. And if you remember from before Saturn in Taurus wants to control pleasure and so Taurus again is also the sign of wealth. So this can coincide with periods of financial precariously and this is not an episode about Nixon but we know about the trickle down shit or like extremely miserly behavior and the strength of the sign or this placement would be like financially savvy or like really knowing how to make will last or like really you know being committed in a relationship, you guys, I'm not like bad mouth in this whole placement but Nixon also had Saturn in Tarus and then finally I must note that Reagan's presidency coincided with the great conjunction in libra and this was the first great conjunction in an air sign since the year of 1405 prior to this, the great conjunctions have been occurring in Earth signs for 200 years and earth relates like materiality. So the era of earth coincided with the industrial revolution in the gilded age and like the idea that like wars are profitable. Um, and then air signs are not the idea the very material fact that wars have made people a lot of money. But then in air signs like this is more about like air signs about human connection and intellectual ability and like mental matters. So the first great conjunction in air kind of coincided with this like war on like abstract ideals for like these abstract values.
ELYSE: This makes so much sense. Holy Shit!
SARAH: It's also interesting too because again like his rising is in Sagittarius and like all of the stuff that happened with the other bills and acts about drugs had like mars in Sagittarius.
DANA: So it's like he's kind of like The 12th House of America Unraveling. Oh, interesting as well as the fifth house, which is the house of gambling and fun.
SARAH: Interesting. Yeah. Like every time you know something with the war on drugs comes up, there's typically from what we've seen a certain type of drug associated with it. So Reagan’s time in office coincided with this national obsession with cocaine, like honestly every human being was doing it and like the number of people who said they, it was insane. Like the number of people who said they did it regularly increased by like a huge amount and emergency room visits for coke related incidents quadrupled. So like everybody getting after it, it must have been a weird time to talk to any stranger, but everyone, everyone was getting addicted to it and it was available everywhere. But the true variety of coke that everyone was fending after during this time was crack.
ELYSE: Yeah, that's how my dad had to hire a bathroom attended that. That's how they became popular because everyone was just doing cocaine in the bathrooms in the 80s. It was kind of like an archaic concept. But you know how some like bars would have bathroom attendants were like why are you in here? Yeah why don't you give you a dollar for a breath mint. So crack is the rock form of coke, it's cheaper and you smoke it which gives you a quicker high and because it was cheap it was accessible to lower income communities and caused an epidemic that particularly affected black communities.
SARAH: So Regan sees this and it's like okay this is like a huge issue and because he was a really big fan of the war on drugs that started during the 70s, he went to work and not only reinforced but expanded many of Nixon's war on drugs policies, he vowed to crackdown on substance abuse and he did this by criminalizing drug users, making sure everyone was aware drugs were bad and creating more militant policies Like the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.
ELYSE: And this act did a few things. But the thing that matters most to us is that it expanded penalties towards weed possession and established a mandatory minimum sentence. So if you were caught with weed, you went to jail. And this act was a really big deal because it it revised the criminal code and was the first time that it had been done since the 19 hundreds. The budget of the FBI's drug enforcement unit also went up a ship ton from eight million all the way up to 95 million. So it's just like mm hmm. Clearly that's where the priorities lied. Um so what's going on with the chart of this time?
DANA: So this was October 12, 1984. And um Mars Retrograded in Scorpio that Spring. So we have a pattern of retrogrades in Scorpio I'm noticing. And even though mars was in Capricorn when this went into effect the sign of a planet retrograding. And like venus and mars especially will have a significant impact on the discourse and mood of a given year. And so okay, but also like this went into effect when Pluto was freshly in Scorpio at one degree along with Saturn, Venus, and the south node. So we're actually currently in the nodal return for this chart which is so things like this could be coming back up or like this could get revised in some way maybe although I think it would only be applied to larger things but anyway Pluto is obsession and corruption, Saturn is like trying to control that and then we have Venus which is pleasure and money. Scorpio is ruled by mars so all of this is answering to a mars in Capricorn exactly conjunction jupiter which is also kind of a conundrum. Um mars is power and in Capricorn it's controlled power but jupiter's faith and freedom which is so funny that I put greed um I didn't even mean I thought you did that um slip on my finger um And so what mars and jupiter is often a power grab and inflated confidence and in Capricorn it's like the the increase of decrease in the decrease of freedom. We just had it jupiter in Capricorn during the lockdowns so that applied before.
SARAH: So then a few years later Reagan goes ham and he passes the anti drug abuse act which was a very big law for the war on drugs. It said the goal was to have a drug free America. So once again this like fighting against this like idea and he created the office of the National Drug control policy which oversees anti drug policies. But the big thing this did was established another mandatory minimum prison sentence for drug offenses, which like screwed over a ton of people.
ELYSE: This is like, I can't remember her name right now, but the first person who Kim Kardashian like worked to get out of jail, she was in jail for like a very minor we'd crime for like 30 years or something.
SARAH: Kike there's like bigger fish to fry than like having a one hitter.
ELYSE: The act made crack the only drug with a mandatory minimum penalty for simple possession. So you would also get five years in prison if you were in possession of more than five g of a mixture or substance containing cocaine.
DANA: This is obviously racist.
ELYSE: Yeah, without a doubt.
DANA: This was on November 18th 1988 and the Sun and Mercury and Pluto were all in Scorpio. So by now we've established that Scorpio is a sign not to be ignored in relation to this war and the sun is the soul, Mercury is an idea and pluto is an obsession. So that all applies here. Also, this chart has Saturn at zero degrees Capricorn and so this is like extremely sober energy. Sagittarius is the party animal. And Saturn and Capricorn both relate to sobriety. I say that Saturn. Capricorn is a sign of sobriety. There's also the like Neptune in Capricorn and Neptune relates to blacking out and like incomprehension. Just like being really confused Neptune in Capricorn also relates to being taken for a ride by your administration or like your parents and all of this is the opposite Chiron and cancer and Chiron is the primordial wound like kind of like the one that addicts are usually trying to fill right? Like that deep spiritual hole and cancer is a sign of the mother. And so honestly I just feel like this is like motherless behavioral, motherless ruling like it's really not taking any sort of like emotionality into account. It's cruel and sick. Like gone is like that oh we want to help people. It's more just like yeah, throwing nurturing. Like also the nodes were in Pisces and Virgo which have to do with salvation and health, but also this is roughly six months away from the nodal return of the Harrison act.
SARAH: Yeah, so Reagan wasn't just a busting people. He also had a huge boner for reminding you about the dangers of drug use. So he tapped his lady, his wife Nancy to start the just say no program.
ELYSE: And the just say no program was an anti drug advertising campaign that taught kids different ways they could say no to drugs and booze and Nancy Reagan traveled around the country to schools freaking people out about drugs and it definitely worked. Like not only did just say no, become a national catchphrase, But it led to a spike in public concern over the country's drug program. Like I think when I read the stat that said um in 1985, the proportion of Americans who saw drug abuse as the nation's number one problem was 2%. And then by 1989 that number was 64%. So it just, there was a lot of propaganda about this happening.
SARAH: Oh my God, yes. And also to, that's like another interesting thing about all this like Sagittarius stuff like besides just being ideas, Sagittarius is propaganda. So it's like all fake. So as we've been saying, the 80s really swung back real hard to being anti-drug. So what was going on during this time?
ANA: Well there's a lot, we could say the eighties started with the great conjunction in libra, libra is an air sign that's going to be about disseminating ideas right? And it seems like they like doing it to Children, like wanting to make it seem fair I guess in a way that is kind of like what I feel like the Reagan arrow was about making things that were deeply unfair, like and then masquerading them is fair, but and also probably like believing in your own lies. Um which I bet Reagan did because he's an actor anyway, but also by the end of the eighties and like 86 to 88 Saturn wasn't Sagittarius. So this is going to sort of be like, you know, turning away or like Saturn is a sign of restriction and sort of like um maturity. So it's sort of like, oh we're maturing beyond that, right? But it never really made a lot of lessons to mature.
SARAH: Saturn is restriction, like it's like you did this now it's time for you to like pay the price for what you did.
DANA: Yeah.
SARAH: Daddy Satty.
DANA: But Reagan's Saturn is in Sagittarius is like the placement of godlessness, which I'm like, not that people aren't godless with it. And it could also be like a very deep spiritual and like God fearing, but it's kind of like that, it's either a god fearing or godlessness just cause it's like Saturn and Sagittarius is the God. So I feel like that also like always is about like believing in a higher power without that. It's sort of like just throwing addicts in jail
ELYSE: Totally. So during Reagan's time as president, Prison penalties for drug crimes were increased by a ship tone. So the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes increased from 50,000 in 1982, more than 400,000 by 1997, which is an insane increase and probably why there's like so much like crowding in prisons.
Speaker 1: But prison is also profitable just like war is so uh Here we are talking about the war on drugs, but so did the war on drugs work? Um it really depends on who you ask. Some people said it got people to stop doing drugs. Um I don't know who those people are, but a department of health and human services studies said that in 1999, million people use drugs which was down from 25 million in 1979. However, a lot of people say the government spent billions of dollars to put a lot of people in prison all the while drug-related crimes are still happening. So it just seems like the government spent a ton of money to not really do shit.
SARAH: Yes. I mean also like when you fight against like an idea like what do you expect is gonna happen. There's like nothing concrete. But another criticism was that the war on drugs was more about deterring people from doing drugs and less about helping people addicted to drugs with treatment programs.
ELYSE: Another criticism was that the war on drugs was super racist and remember there were longer prison sentences for crack than they were for cocaine, which meant people of color were getting put in jail much more than their white counterparts even though they're doing the same fucking drug.
SARAH: Yeah, bullshit and today like believe it or not, the war on drugs is still going on but people aren't that into it. In fact between 2009 and 2013, 40 States decided to soften their drug laws by doing things like lowering penalties and shortening mandatory sentences and in fact Oregon or Oregon, I don't know how you pronounce. It has gone as far as to be the first state to completely decriminalized drugs.
ELYSE: Oregon so progressive. But yeah, we're seeing a lot of decriminalization, especially with weed right now, so seems like we're heading in the right direction. But to give you a little bit more insight into how Oregon has decriminalized it. If you're caught there with one or two g of hard drugs including heroin, cocaine or meth, You actually won't be charged instead, you'll get $100 fine or you need to get a health assessment within 45 days at an addiction recovery center. So this is very progressive. What was going on when Oregon decriminalized.
DANA: That was February 1, 2021. And so this went into effect less than two months after the great conjunction at 0° Aquarius and Aquarius wants freedom and though it like may coincide with extreme conservatism, it can also coincide with like pure liberation and like sometimes anarchy and that way, I don't know, it's sort of like this line right of like what is freedom but also this is a reset from the great conjunction in libra which sought to control the situation to, you know, we're making things best for everyone. It's going to be fair all about this fairness, It's like letting people choose for themselves. What's fair? It's like emancipation in that way.
SARAH: Damn! So this is obviously the opposite of the war on drugs in many ways. So can we compare it to the chart for the Harrison narcotics tax act just to see what the transits were for each?
DANA: Yeah, so here's something that I thought was interesting. So the themes are north node and Saturn and Aquarius and Gemini. So decriminalization chart um has the north node in Gemini and Saturn and Aquarius and the Harrison act has the reverse the north node in Aquarius and Saturn and Gemini. So this is a flip of the script, it's a reversal of attitudes and Gemini and Aquarius are both air signs. Air signs care about human connection and your mind and drugs alter your mental states. People like say addiction is a spiritual sickness that happens when people lack community or supportive relationships. So I feel like like drugs are going to be on the program for our lifetimes because like we're in the age of air for the rest of our lives now. So this is sort of like an ongoing thing that I think people will have to sort of grapple with and just be like, I mean, I guess why wouldn't it be? It's just something that's like, I think it will be like continually changing throughout our lives.
SARAH: I mean, I didn't even know the rest of our lifetime will be in air, That's interesting. So these days, you know, we're on drugs, still happening, we're still spending a ton of money on it, but it is a bit more lax and people kind of care less about it because we have other things going on than what we did, and than when we did in the 60s and 80s.
ELYSE: We've got bigger fish to fry if you will, and those fish are named Vladimir Putin. So with that we'll leave you to ponder about the ethics of the war on drugs, but next week we'll be talking about a badass bitch named Frida, Kahlo!
SARAH: Yes, the original selfie queen,
DANA: She puts the free in Frida.
ELYSE: I’m Elyse.
DANA: I’m Dana.
SARAH: And I'm Sarah.
ELYSE: And this is allegedly astrology d I won't do drugs, they won't have an attitude or I will respect myself, E I will educate me now.
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