CBS is hosting an excellent point-counterpoint discussion about legalizing marijuana, featuring Judge James Gray of LEAP and David Evans of the Drug Free America Foundation. You rarely get to see the debate unfold in this much detail, so it's a very illuminating dialogue, even though Evans has thus far failed to actually address Gray's main arguments. Judge Gray just laid down the law in his last entry, so we'll find out tomorrow if Evans has anything left.

On a side note, my attention was immediately drawn to the pictures of Gray and Evans that appear at the top of the page. Judge Gray appears in full color, while Evans is in black & white. This struck me as the perfect metaphor for the debate that follows.

Residents of the Colorado ski town of Breckenridge overwhelmingly voted to legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana Tuesday. The measure passed with 73% of the vote.

The British Labor government has created a firestorm of controversy with its firing of Professor David Nutt

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), an inveterate drug warrior, doesn't want to hear the L-word in Washington.

A poll released this week suggests backers of California marijuana legalization initiatives have their work cut out for them.

Roughly 200,000 US veterans are in prison or jail, many of them there because of substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a new report released Wednesday.

Baggage * Century of Lies * 4:20 Drug War NEWS

Cultural Baggage for 11/01/09, 29:00 Howard Wooldridge, founder of Citizens Opposing Prohibition + Phil Smith of Drug War Chronicle on the level of violence in Mexico
LINK: http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/2644
TRANSCRIPT: Tuesday

Century of Lies for 11/01/09, 29:00 Bradley Jardis, a working policeman is under fire for his involvement with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition + Cliff Thornton of Efficacy & extract from PBS program: "Botany of Desire"
LINK: http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/2646
TRANSCRIPT: Tuesday

4:20 Drug War NEWS, 11/01 to 11/08/09 Link at www.drugtruth.net on the right margin - Sun - Phil Smith re medical marijuana hearing in California Sat - PBS "Botany of Desire" 2/2 Fri - Cliff Thornton of efficacy-online.org re future progress of drug reform Thu - PBS "Botany of Desire" 1/2 Wed - Phil Smith report on Mexican violence 2/2 Tue - Phil Smith report on Mexican violence 1/2 Mon - AP report on Mexican efforts to smuggle drugs

Programs produced at Pacifica Radio Station KPFT in Houston, 90.1 FM. You can Listen Live Online at www.kpft.org

- Cultural Baggage Sun, 7:30 PM ET, 6:30 PM CT, 5:30 PM MT, 4:30 PM PT (Followed Immediately By Century of Lies)
- Century of Lies, SUN, 8 PM ET, 7 PM CT, 6 PM MT & 5 PM PT

Who's Next to "Face The Inquisition?": Cliff Thornton of Efficacy-Online.org

Hundreds of our programs are available online at www.drugtruth.net, www.audioport.org We have potcasts, searchability, CMS, XML, sorts by guest name and by organization. We provide the "unvarnished truth about the drug war" to scores of broadcast affiliates i You can tune into both our 1/2 hour programs, live, at 6:30 central time on Pacifica's KPFT at http://www.kpft.org and call in your questions and concerns toll free at 1-877-9-420 420.

The two, 29:00 shows appear along with the seven, daily, 3:00 "4:20 Drug War NEWS" reports each Monday morning at http://www.drugtruth.net . We currently have 69 affiliated, yet independent broadcast stations. With a simple email request to dean@drugtruth.net , your station can join the Drug Truth Network, free of charge.

Check out our latest videos via www.youtube.com/fdbecker Please become part of the solution, visit our website: www.endprohibition.org for links to the best of reform. "Prohibition is evil." - Reverend Dean Becker, DTN Producer, 713-462-7981, www.drugtruth.net

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) has introduced legislation calling for a thorough evaluation of the U.S. criminal justice system, namely for the purpose of exploring ways to reduce our world-record prison population. As you might guess, simply discussing whether we should keep millions of American behind bars is enough to terrify the drug war's most committed champions.

They can’t handle the tough questions, so they're trying to make it illegal to even ask. Drug war hall-of-famer Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) today introduced an amendment to Webb's bill that would literally prohibit the commission from talking about legalization or even decriminalization:

AMENDMENT intended to be proposed by Mr. GRASSLEY
….
SEC. ll. RESTRICTIONS ON AUTHORITY.
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.

These words are a legal blueprint for silencing all criticism of the war on drugs before the experts even get a chance to discuss it. The whole thing flagrantly violates the spirit of the entire inquiry and renders meaningless everything Webb is trying to do. And yes, that's exactly the point.

No one has done more than Charles Grassley to make the drug war into the horrible mess that it's become, so you can bet he'll do anything to protect his shameful legacy. If he succeeds, the bill will almost certainly end up protecting bad policies instead of exposing them. We can’t let that happen. Click here to tell your Senators to oppose this misguided amendment and let the experts do their job without political interference.

A serious evaluation of criminal justice and drug policies is long overdue and that effort means nothing unless all options are debated openly.

The British Labor government has created a firestorm of controversy with its firing of Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) last Friday. Nutt was canned by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after the psychopharmacologist again went public with his criticism of the government for refusing to follow a science- and evidence-based drug policy.

As of today, after a weekend of furious back and forth in dozens of newspaper articles, two more members of the ACMD have resigned in protest over the firing, and a mass resignation of the 31-member body may come after a meeting next Monday. Johnson told parliament Monday that he had agreed to a request from the ACMD for an urgent meeting, but he also told parliament he had ordered a review of the ACMD to satisfy ministers that the panel is "discharging its functions" and that it still represents a value to the public.

The ACMD's charge is to "make recommendations to government on the control of dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs, including classification and scheduling under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and its regulations," its web page explains. "It considers any substance which is being or appears to be misused and of which is having or appears to be capable of having harmful effects sufficient to cause a social problem. It also carries out in-depth inquiries into aspects of drug use that are causing particular concern in the UK, with the aim of producing considered reports that will be helpful to policy makers and practitioners."

Tensions between the ACMD and the Labor government began rising after the government up-scheduled marijuana from a Class C drug (least harmful) back to Class B, where it had been prior to being down-scheduled in 2004. The Labor government ignored the ACMD's recommendation that marijuana remain Class C. Things only got worse when the ACMD recommended that Ecstasy be down-scheduled from Class A (most harmful) to Class B, and the government promptly ignored that advice.

At that point, Nutt went public with his criticisms of then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. He also famously compared the dangers of Ecstasy to those of horse-riding, deeply offending both the horsey set and the Labor government. Smith told Nutt to shut up, and he managed to do so until last week.

Last week, in a lecture and briefing paper at the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, Nutt accused Smith of "distorting and devaluing" scientific evidence when she decided to reclassify marijuana. He also said that Ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

"We have to accept young people like to experiment – with drugs and other potentially harmful activities – and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives," he said. "We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong.”

Nutt's briefing paper included a ranking of various licit and illicit drugs by comparative harm. Heroin and cocaine were ranked the most harmful in Nutt's scheme, with alcohol fifth, marijuana ninth, LSD fourteenth, and Ecstasy eighteenth.

"We need a full and open discussion of the evidence and a mature debate about what the drug laws are for — and whether they are doing their job," Nutt said.

That was too much for Home Minister Alan Johnson. He told parliament Monday that Smith had warned Nutt not to publicly disagree with ministry decisions again. "Well, it has happened again," said Johnson. "On Thursday October 29 Professor Nutt chose, without prior notification to my department, to initiate a debate on drug policy in the national media, returning to the February decisions, and accusing my predecessor or distorting and devaluing scientific research. As a result, I have lost confidence in Professor Nutt's ability to be my principal adviser on drugs."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is standing behind Johnson. An official spokesman said the firing was based on the "important principle" that advisers should present advice to ministers but not speak out against their policy decisions. "It would be regrettable if there were other resignations, but this is an important point of principle," the spokesman added. "The government is absolutely committed to the importance of having independent advice and evidence presented by advisory bodies."

Nutt defended himself and attacked the government in a London Sunday times opinion piece. "My sacking has cast a huge shadow over the relationship of science to policy," he wrote. "Several of the science experts from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) have resigned in protest and it seems likely that many others will follow suit. This means the Home Office no longer has a functioning advisory group, which is very unfortunate given the ever-increasing problems of drugs and the emergence of new ones. Also it seems unlikely that any 'true' scientist — one who can only speak the truth — will be able to work for this, or future, Home Secretaries.

One of the ACMD members who resigned, chemist Les King, said ministers were putting inappropriate pressure on scientists to make drug policy decisions based on political—not scientific—reasons. "It's being asked to rubber stamp a predetermined position," he said, warning that others could leave the council over the brouhaha. "If sufficient members do resign, the committee will no longer be able to operate," King said.

Scientist and Labor MP Robert Winston said Nutt had a "very reasonable" point about the relative dangers of legal and illegal drugs, and that he was disappointed by the firing. "I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn't dismiss it so lightly," he said. "I think it shows a rather poor understanding of the value of science."

Reuters reported Saturday that the firing is causing consternation in scientific circles. Scientists told the news agency the decision could undermine the integrity of science in policy-making, including critical areas like health, the environment, education, and defense.

"Scientific data and their independent interpretation underpin evidence-based policy making -- and nobody rational could possibly want a government based on any other type of policy making," said Chris Higgins, chair of an advisory committee on spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" disease.

Maurice Elphick, a professor of animal physiology and neuroscience at Queen Mary, University of London, said politicians should look elsewhere if they wanted data to back social policies and allow science to maintain objectivity. "If, however, politicians really do want to have an objective assessment of the relative risks to health of different recreational drugs, then they should listen to what the medical scientist has to say, not sack him." he said.

The Labor government has picked a fight with science. It's unclear how this will all play out, but Labor doesn't seem to be doing itself any favors so far.

The UN's top official on health rights called Tuesday

In an historic hearing Wednesday, the California legislature examined the pros and cons of marijuana legalization.