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Feature: 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conferences Opens Amid Optimism in Albuquerque

Submitted by Phillip Smith on (Issue #608)
Consequences of Prohibition

Hundreds, possibly more than a thousand, people poured into the Convention Center in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the Drug Policy Alliance's 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference got underway yesterday. Set to go on through Saturday, the conference is drawing attendees from around the country and the world to discuss dozens of different drug reform topics. (See the link above for a look at the program.)

screening of near-final version of the next Flex Your Rights film, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police
This is the second time DPA has brought the conference to the distant deserts of the Southwest. In 2001, DPA rewarded libertarian-leaning New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (R) for becoming the highest ranking elected official in the US to call for ending drug prohibition by bringing the conference to his home state. Since then, the ties between DPA and New Mexico have only deepened.

As DPA New Mexico office head Reena Szczepanski explained at the opening plenary session, the Land of Enchantment is fertile ground for drug reform. "Back in 1997, when drug policy reform was little more than a twinkle in the eye, New Mexico passed a harm reduction act mandating the Department of Health to give out clean syringes for people with HIV/AIDS," she noted. "Then, when Gov. Johnson said it was time to end the war on drugs, DPA very wisely immediately opened an office here. In 2001, we passed the overdose prevention act, allowing for the distribution of naloxone. Then we passed opting out on the federal welfare ban, we passed asset forfeiture reform, we passed the 911 Good Samaritan Act -- saving somebody's life is more important than busting them for small amounts of drugs."

But wait, there's more. "Thanks to Gov. Bill Richardson, we became the 12th state to have legal access to medical marijuana for seriously ill people," Szczepanski continued. "We're working on treatment instead of incarceration, we're working to end the war on drugs in New Mexico and this country. This is a very special place for drug policy reform."

New Mexico is also right next store to one of the drug war's bloodiest battlegrounds: the mean streets of Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas, which in turn in borders New Mexico. More than 2,200 people have died in prohibition-related violence in Juarez this year alone.

That violence just across the river inspired El Paso City Councilman Beto O'Rourke to turn a motion expressing sympathy for El Paso's sister city into one that also asked for an open and honest debate on ending drug prohibition. The resolution passed the city council by a unanimous vote, only to be vetoed by the mayor. Then, as the council scheduled an override vote, the pressure came down.

"Each of us on the council got a call from Rep. Silvestre Reyes, our congressman and a very powerful figure," O'Rourke told the crowd Thursday. "He told us if we went forward with this, it will be very hard to get your district the federal funding you need. That's a powerful threat, since we rely on federal funding to deliver basic services. It was enough to get four members to change their votes."

While the resolution was defeated, the debacle opened the door for serious debate on drug policy in El Paso and generated support for ending prohibition as well, O'Rourke said. "Our local Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter came out very strongly and helped organize a global policy forum in El Paso. I received hundreds of calls, letters, and emails of support from around the country and the world," O'Rourke related to sustained applause.

If Councilman O'Rourke was a new face, Ira Glasser is a familiar one. Former executive director of the ACLU and president of the DPA board of directors, Glasser told the crowd he was more optimistic about the prospects for change than ever before.

"Today we stand on the brink of transformative progress," he said. "I have never said that before. We can almost touch the goals we have sought, the unraveling of the so-called war on drugs, which is really a war on fundamental freedoms and constitutional rights, on personal autonomy, on our sovereignty over our minds and bodies, a war against people of darker skin color."

Just as Jim Crow laws were the successor to the system of slavery, said Glasser, so the drug war has been the successor to Jim Crow. "It's no accident that after the civil rights revolution ended with the passage of the last federal civil right law in 1968, Richard Nixon was elected on the southern strategy against progress on civil rights," he noted. "Within months of taking office, Nixon declared the modern war on drugs."

Glasser wasn't the only one feeling uplifted. "I am feeling good, better than ever before," said DPA executive director and plenary keynote speaker Ethan Nadelmann. "The wind is at our back. We are making progress like never before. We have to move hard and fast. Historically speaking, there are moments when everything comes together," drawing a pointed comparison with the successful temperance movement that managed to get alcohol banned during Prohibition. But Prohibition generated its own counter-movement, he said, again drawing a pointed parallel.

"Now, we're in another moment," Nadelmann said. "We're hurting with the recession, state budgets are hemorrhaging. More and more people are realizing we can't afford to pay for our prejudices, we can't continue to be the world's largest incarcerator."

But it's not just the economy that is opening the window, he continued. "What's happening in Mexico and Afghanistan, where illicit drugs are ready sources of revenues for criminals and political terrorists, that has people thinking. We have two major national security problems causing people to think afresh."

Nadelmann had a suggestion: "Ending marijuana prohibition is a highly effective way of undermining that violence," he said. "Until we end it, buy American."

Just after the opening plenary session ended, reporters and other interested parties repaired to a Convention Center conference room to see the US unveiling of the British Transform Drug Policy Foundation publication, After the War on Drugs: A Blueprint for Regulation, a how-to manual on how to get to drug reform's promised land. Transform executive director Danny Kushlick was joined by Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, Deborah Small of Break the Chains, and DPA's Nadelmann as he laid out the case for moving beyond "what would it look like."

"There's never been a clear vision of a post-prohibition world," said Kushlick. "With this, we've tried to reclaim drug policy from the drug warriors. We want to make drug policy boring," he said. "We want not only harm reduction, but drama reduction," he added, envisioning debates about restrictions on sales hours, zoning, and other dreary topics instead of bloody drug wars and mass incarceration.

"As a movement, we have failed to articulate the alternative," said Tree. "And that leaves us vulnerable to the fear of the unknown. This report restores order to the anarchy. Prohibition means we have given up on regulating drugs; this report outlines some of the options for regulation."

That wasn't the only unveiling Thursday. Later in the evening, Flex Your Rights held the first public showing of its new video, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. The screening of the self-explanatory successor to Flex Your Right's 2003 "Busted" played to a packed and enthusiastic house. This highly useful examination of how not to get yourself busted is bound to equal if not exceed the break-out success of "Busted."

The conference, of course, continued Thursday afternoon and will go through Saturday, but your reporter was busy getting this week's Drug War Chronicle ready to go. Come back next week for fuller reports on the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference.

Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Comments

maxwood (not verified)

1. Researching regulation might not be so boring after all-- there's researching Dosage Regulation Utensils, based on the common-sense idea that overdose is the basis of almost all drug problems, and defining a Single Toke as 25-mg. or less, whether cannabis, tobackgo, oregano or any other herb is involved. There needs to be a Downdosage Revolution relegating hot burning $igarettes and Big Bowl pipes to the Medieval Torture Museum and specifying the dosage size and attributes of vaporizers, THC-loaded e-cigarettes and long-arm one-hitters (screened crater diameter 5-6-mm.). Makers of traditional Midwakh and Kiseru (mini-pipes, with a long flexible drawtube added) should be funded and encouraged to expand their markets in US, UK, Uruguay etc.

2. Ira Glasser has it right about Jim Crow and Rich Nix. Ira Glasser should appear on the Ira Glass show, This American Life, which recently did a very good job covering the banking crisis.

3. As soon as the US and its allies legalize cannabis, it will be possible to send advisers not to butt heads with militants but show Afghan farmers how to convert from poppy to both Industrial and Inspirational Hemp, getting the Afghan economy on its feet and soaking up the legions of unemployed youth now easily recruited into the Taliban. Any further underutilized Afghans should be invited to work in Deadwood Abatement Pograms in Australia, Brazil, California etc. clipping and bundling trillions of dead sticks, preventing billion dollar fires, and providing wood for light carpentry and manufacturing, chips for cart path paving, powder for composting, erosion-prevention and stream-bed development (water retention) etc. The good news about "inspirational" cannabis is that it nourishes the ability to judge where to cut a stick to make the best toys and tool handles.

Fri, 11/13/2009 - 4:03pm Permalink
TrebleBass (not verified)

maxwood brings up something important: Dosage Regulation. I think it would be difficult to, for example, monitor a crack smoking room and try to get users educated enough not to hurt themselves, but it would go a long way to just package the crack in a certain way. Not only can this save people from serious harm, but it's also in itself a form of education: let's say, determine what a [relatively] safe hit of crack would be, and sell it in containers that dispense exactly that dose. The dispensers would come in a box which would say: "take only hits of this size or smaller. leave eight minutes or more in between each hit. if experiencing hyperventilation, cease use for at least two hours. People with high blood pressure should exercise extra caution". I'm no doctor, so i don't know exactly what the message should say, but you get the general idea.

I don't know what the best regulations would be for crack, coke, and meth, (should we or should we not have crack bars and meth bars, i don't know) but I honestly think there's a big probability that simply going for "all-out" legalization (without very strict regulations on sales as most people deem necessary), might turn out just fine. There needs to be experimentation with a crack bar and a meth bar somewhere just to see what it could be like. We could then use the experience to come up with ideas for regulation. The first of those bars would be very heavily monitored and restricted, and very few would be let inside for the experiment, but then we would learn whether it's possible to ease up, let more people in, and let the users use more freely. Preventing overdoses and giving the users the safest, most satisfying experience possible would be the goal.

Fri, 11/13/2009 - 6:32pm Permalink

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