Drug War Chronicle #519 - January 18, 2008

Editorial: A Matter of Basic Fairness in the Marc Emery Case

David Borden, Executive Director

This week it was reported that Marc Emery, Canada's famed marijuana law reformer and one-time seed merchant, has tentatively reached a plea agreement with the US Dept. of Justice that will spare co-defendants Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams prosecution, and will spare him extradition to the US, but will place him behind bars in Canada for the next five years. The reports were premature -- the deal has yet to be accepted by both countries, either could reject it, according to Jodie Emery, posting on talk groups -- but that is the way things may go as they are looking at this point.

The Emery case highlights two issues of basic fairness where the US and Canadian governments both fell short. One is the root injustice of prohibition. As Emery pointed out to media, no one was harmed by his business. Therefore taking away his freedom -- putting him in prison -- is unjust. Even just shutting down his business was unjust, based on this idea, because the law is an unjust one. This is an unfairness applying to the vast majority of drug prohibition prosecutions.

The other fairness issue flows from the fact that Emery carried out his business completely in the open, with full knowledge of authorities on both sides of the border, for almost a decade. His office is literally in the center of downtown Vancouver, and the magazine headquarters and bookstore across the street have an open storefront. I've seen these places myself. Anyone searching the Internet could find out what he was up to -- if they didn't already know from him directly, at a rally or reading his quotes in the media.

Setting aside the wrongfulness of prohibition itself, one could argue that because prohibition is the law now, the government had the right to tell him to stop until the law one day gets changed. In this view, the fair approach would have been to inform Emery that things had changed, and that he had to stop selling seeds or risk US or Canadian ire moving forward. Unfortunately that's not what happened. Having done nothing to move against him for all of those years, and not having warned him, instead one day the DEA moved in, filed extradition papers, and announced that Emery and his friends were facing 20-to-life. And Canada -- having tolerated him for years and years, even having accepted $600,000 or so in taxes, according to reports, knowing that he gave most of it away -- cooperated fully.

This second fairness issue is one that is fairly specific to Marc Emery's case, more perhaps than to any other. But it also reflects on the character of the criminal justice system -- many of us refer to it as the (in)justice system -- that the people making the decisions on how they would proceed would choose this route instead of the other, and that the sentences Emery and Rainey and Williams could face are so obscenely long to begin with. We have many prisoners here in the so-called land of the free who will serve decades before seeing freedom, if they ever do. It's a dark sign of the times that in part what I feel about this outcome is relief that he may only serve five years.

But make no mistake, five years is a big chunk of a life, a very severe punishment and a very long time. Try to imagine if you were about to be incarcerated, only for one year, how you would feel. Even a year in prison is a very severe punishment, if we are going to be realistic about it. But the "tough-on-crime" hawks who have dominated policymaking as of late have forgotten this. Too bad for Marc that that has happened. But too bad for all of us too.

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Feature: It's Safer to Be a Cop Than a Farmer

With the exception of 2001, when the September 11 attacks caused a sharp spike in police deaths, last year was the deadliest for police in nearly two decades. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 181 officers died in the line of duty last year, up from 147 in 2006.

But while law enforcement, aided and abetted by the mass media, was quick to emphasize the numbers, and especially a double-digit increase in the number of police killed by firearms, nearly half (82) of all officers killed died in traffic incidents. Eight dropped dead of heart attacks or heat stroke, seven more died of 9/11-related illnesses, five were blown up while serving in Iraq, three died in aircraft accidents, three died in other accidents, two fell to their deaths, two died in weather-related events, and one died of a wasp sting.

No officers were listed as having been killed by knives, clubs, or other non-firearm weapons. Some 64 officers were in fact killed by armed suspects -- up from 50 intentionally killed with firearms last year -- and another four died of accidental gunshot wounds.

"It serves the interest of law enforcement to portray the profession as dangerous," said Dr. Victor Kappeler, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University. "It benefits them in terms of public support when negotiating for salaries and budgets. When the media reports on officers killed in the line of duty, people think of citizens attacking the police, but most of these deaths are accidents. Policing is just not one of the most dangerous occupations."

In fact, it's not even in the top ten. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it was much more dangerous to be an ocean fisherman, logger, structural steel worker, garbage worker, farmer, lineman, truck driver, farm worker, or construction worker than law enforcement officer. Fishermen were killed at the job at a rate of 118 per 100,000, while for police officers, that figure was only 18.2.

Even when it comes to lawmen gunned down by criminals, somewhat surprisingly, it's not drug dealers gunning down our police officers. Despite years of talk about dangerous, heavily armed drug dealers and the threat they pose to police, a Chronicle review of all police deaths in the US in 2007 found only a handful related to drug law enforcement. That's not an aberration; we reported similar numbers last year, and it is a pattern that holds true over the years.

Here are the five cases we could find where officers died enforcing (or because of) drug prohibition:

Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper Calvin Jenks was shot and killed January 6, 2007, after he pulled over a pair of Texas teenagers with a car full of marijuana.

Toledo, Ohio, Police Detective Keith Dressel was shot and killed when he and another detective interrupted a drug deal on February 21, 2007. Dressel had been assigned to the Vice/Narcotics Bureau.

Dallas Police Senior Corporal Mark Timothy Nix was shot and killed March 23, 2007, while trying to apprehend a man wanted in a drug house murder.

Puerto Rico Police Department Agent Jose Fontanez-Correa was shot and killed May 22, 2007, while trying to arrest a suspect in a high narcotics trafficking area.

Rialto, California, Police Officer Sergio Carrera was shot and killed October 18, 2007, while serving a search warrant in an apartment building during a drug raid.

Of these five cases, three can be said to cases of officers being killed while directly enforcing the drug laws -- the two shot while trying to make drug busts and the one killed during a drug raid. The highway patrolman was ostensibly doing traffic law enforcement, and the Dallas police officer was trying to catch a killer.

Given that there were approximately 1.8 million drug arrests in 2006 and presumably a slightly higher number last year, we see that there is one police fatality for every 360,000 or so drug arrests.

"The media tend to portray law enforcement as far more dangerous than it really is," said Kappeler. "A typical TV cop sees more action in an hour than a real cop sees in an entire career. On average, you probably have to work 140 years in law enforcement before you would actually use deadly force, and many more years than that before it is used against you."

Despite all the talk from law enforcement about how it is up against heavily-armed drug dealers and thus needs to resort to paramilitarized SWAT-style policing in routine drug raids, only one police officer in the US died in a drug raid last year.

But still, the SWAT raids continue, and so do the fatalities, but it's the civilians who are dying. The most recent example came just two weeks ago, when a member of a Lima, Ohio, SWAT team executing a drug search warrant shot and killed 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and blew off the finger of the 14-month-old child she was carrying in her arms when she was killed.

"I don't think that's what that Ohio officer signed up for," sighed Jack Cole, a retired New Jersey narcotics detective who is now executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

But if we base our law enforcement tactics on myths about the dangers of policing instead of looking at the realities, that's what we will continue to get. Innocent civilians will continue to pay the price for overstated concerns about officer safety, and the war on drugs will exact even more casualties.

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Appeal: DRCNet Made Amazing Progress in 2007 and We Need Your Help for 2008

Dear DRCNet reader:

StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) is at a very interesting and promising point, and I am writing to seek your support for our organization at this time. In brief, first, and then in more depth:

1. We have enormously increased our web site visitation, with most of the increase being new people who don't read about drug policy or legalization on a regular basis. We have achieved this by capturing an audience share on the popular "Web 2.0" sites like Digg.com where readers nominate and vote on which articles should go to "the top," the only drug reform group to achieve this success on an ongoing basis.
2. We have taken concrete steps to expand the range of issues in which we actively do advocacy including: the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT raids in drug cases with the sometimes deadly consequences (visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for further information); the penalties for drug offenders and their families in welfare and public housing law, expanding the major coalition we've already built on the similar college aid law; and continued work on the college aid law. We have taken initial steps to engage the Afghanistan opium issue as well.
3. We have expanded our public education efforts on the drug prohibition/legalization question itself, with more on the way (http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization).
4. We have continued the most important aspects of our program from before, including the Drug War Chronicle newsletter, and our leveraging of our programs to benefit the work of other groups.
5. Further site work in the short- and medium- term pipeline should have additional major effects.

WEB SITE

As you may know from emails I've sent to the list, our web site underwent a major redesign during the summer of 2006, plus an expansion of our publishing (adding the daily content model – blogging, latest news links, daily posting of announcements and releases and so forth from other organizations) commenced in Sept. '06. The immediate result was a substantial increase in our site traffic, with a gradual increase in traffic continuing most of the time for the next several months.

Around August last year, things started "going wild," with high profile links to DRCNet beginning to appear on major web sites, and more and more often ever since. We literally have had to have our server upgraded twice in order to handle the traffic, and are now negotiating a third upgrade. The chart appearing to the right, unique hosts by month on StoptheDrugWar.org (an estimate for the number of people), illustrates the trend.

I hope you'll agree that we are in a seriously different place now than before. To provide a flavor for how (in part) this has been accomplished, we here list "big hits" that StoptheDrugWar.org has had since fall 2006 – "big hits" defined as articles getting 4,000 "reads" or more. (These numbers were last updated on Nov. 26, so there have been new "big hits," as well as increases in the totals for the articles listed, especially the most recent.) The key point is not just how many times our stories have gone "big," but how much more often it is happening now compared with a year or more ago. Here they are:

9/29/2006	Feature: Colorado Marijuana Legalization Initiative Trails, But the Fight Is On	(7,013 reads)
9/29/2006	Feature: Nevada Marijuana Initiative Organizers See Tight But Winnable Race Going Into Final Stretch	(5,155 reads)
12/15/2006	Feature: Clamor Grows for Freedom for Texas Marijuana Prisoner Tyrone Brown	(20,190 reads)
2/5/2007	Feature: The Conviction That Keeps On Hurting -- Drug Offenders and Federal Benefits	(4,570 reads)
2/16/2007	The Anti-Dobbs: Winning the War Within Through Drug Legalization	(5,781 reads)
2/23/2007	Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy," by Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen	(13,143 reads between two copies)
3/23/2007	Feature: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Free Speech Case Goes to the Supreme Court	(4,354 reads)
4/13/2007	Feature: The War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up	(15,180 reads)
4/25/2007	ONDCP Admits Exaggerating Marijuana Potency	(10,589 reads)
5/25/2007	Middle East: Opium Poppies Flower Again in Iraq	(5,356 reads)
5/25/2007	Feature: Border Blues -- Canada, US Both Bar People Who Used Drugs -- Ever	(4,046 reads)
6/1/2007	Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities	(11,959 reads)
6/8/2007	Feature: Canadian Mom Searching for Missing Daughter Denied Entry to US Over 21-Year-Old Drug Conviction	(8,754 reads)
6/25/2007	Justices Stevens, Souter, & Ginsburg: Drug Policy Reform Sympathizers?	(8,050 reads)
6/28/2007	Editorial: Two Good Reasons to Want to Legalize Drugs	(6,185 reads)
7/10/2007	Rudy Giuliani Hates Medical Marijuana, But He Loves OxyContin	(15,090 reads)
7/26/2007	Analysis: Who Voted for Medical Marijuana This Time? Breakdown by Vote, Party, and Changes from '06	(7,227 reads between two copies)
7/30/2007	San Francisco Orders Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to Sell Fatter Bags	(7,438 reads)
8/2/2007	New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer	(49,721 reads)
8/6/2007	Press Release: Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(72,302 reads)
8/6/2007	Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(48,654 reads)
8/14/2007	Police Often Lack Basic Knowledge About Marijuana	(21,612 reads)
8/15/2007	Who's Planting All That Pot in the Woods?	(6,694 reads)
8/23/2007	Drug War Prisoners: 86-Year-Old Alva Mae Groves Dies Behind Bars	(6,821 reads)
8/30/2007	Drug Testing Encourages Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth Use	(20,291 reads)
9/26/2007	Why Do Police Really Oppose Marijuana Legalization?	(20,994 reads)
10/5/2007	McCain and Giuliani Say Terrible Things to a Medical Marijuana Patient	(39,636 reads)
10/10/2007	The Truth About Why Republican Candidates Oppose Medical Marijuana	(4,801 reads)
10/16/2007	Digg & Reddit Users Want to Legalize Marijuana	(16,576 reads)
10/22/2007	DEA Director Resigns, Says She Had an Awesome Time	(11,182 reads)
10/24/2007	This Man Receives 300 Marijuana Joints a Month From the Federal Government	(40,075 reads)
10/31/2007	Cowards: Democratic Front-Runners Reject Marijuana Law Reform	(6,608 reads)
11/2/2007	Feature: Can Medical Marijuana Cost You Your Kid? In California, It Can	(15,105 reads)
11/5/2007	Drug Scare: Kids in Florida are Getting High by Sniffing Feces	(7,797 reads)
11/13/2007	Marijuana Evolves Faster Than Human Beings	(27,144 reads)
11/23/2007	John McCain's Awful Response to a Cop Who Wants to End the Drug War	(34,950 reads)
11/23/2007	Feature: On the Anniversary of Kathryn Johnston's Death, Poll Finds Most Americans Oppose Use of SWAT-Style Tactics in Routine Drug Raids	(7,183 reads)

ISSUE EXPANSION

As mentioned briefly above, we have begun our first foray into the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT teams in low-level drug enforcement, the kind of practice that led to the killing of 93-year-old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta last year. In October we commissioned a set of polling questions (our first) in a likely voter poll conducted by the Zogby firm. One of them asked if police should use aggressive entry tactics in non-emergency situations. (The text of the question, which recounted the Johnston tragedy and listed a few specific tactics, along with other info about the issue including extensive recommendations of how policy should change appears on our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids, and our Chronicle article about it appears at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/511/two_thirds_oppose_SWAT_raids_kathryn_johnston_zobgy_poll – it has continued to get traffic since the data compilation listed above, and now has almost 10,000 reads.) We got 66% of respondents on our side, including a majority of conservative and very conservative voters, politically a strong result.

There's a lot more to say about our issue expansion and our activist plans in the raids issue -- please email David Borden at [email protected] for further info.

ANTI-PROHIBITION ADVOCACY

Another question included in the aforementioned Zogby poll asked, "If hard drugs like heroin or cocaine were legalized, would you be likely to use them?" A mere 0.6% of respondents answered yes. While the poll should be thought of as more qualitative as quantitative -- people don't always predict their future behavior accurately -- the results clearly show that almost all Americans have strong reasons for not wanting to use these drugs that are not limited to the laws against them. Therefore the prohibitionists' specter of massive increases in addiction and social implosion following legalization isn't a sound assumption to make.

The web page http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization presents this result, as well as links to our many "consequences of prohibition" news category feeds. We have also had video footage from our 2003 Latin American legalization conference formatted for the popular YouTube web site, so that people can run the videos from their own web sites. Videos available so far are linked from the same legalization main page. A major component of our strategy is the idea of promoting the voices of respected leaders who are pro-legalization, in order to use the persuasiveness of their reputations to shift public opinion. With the web site successes of the past several months, and certain technical issues being addressed by a web site designer over the next couple of months, we will also soon be launching our VIP blogger series, also fitting into this strategy. Other publishing is on the way too.

DRUG WAR CHRONICLE AND SUPPORT FOR OTHER GROUPS

One of the particularly gratifying aspects of our web site success is that at times we have been able to bring other groups along with us. By this I refer primarily to the use of YouTube video – as mentioned above, a way that different web sites can easily present the same video clips without having to host copies of the footage on their own servers. Among our "big hits" articles are blog posts running video footage from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (one of their speakers posing a tough question to John McCain that he answers in an unbelievable way), the DrugTruth Network (an interview conducted during the NORML conference with federally legal medical marijuana patient Irv Rosenfeld), and MPP's "Granite Staters" New Hampshire presidential candidates and medical marijuana campaign. YouTube's stats indicate that roughly a third of the people visiting our web pages running these videos actually click to watch the videos (though after a certain amount of time the YouTube stats start omitting older data).

The stats also indicate that our relative effectiveness for getting out the drug reform message in terms of number of people can actually be greater than the most widely visited web sites that cover lots of different issues. For example, of the 36,000+ readers we had on the aforementioned John McCain story, nearly 13,000 clicked to watch the video itself, accounting for more than half of the total views the video has gotten. An article about the encounter on the widely-read Huffington Post blog, by contrast, garnered not quite 1,400 views for the video. Our post with the Irv Rosenfeld video on DrugTruth, and our post featuring outrageous McCain and Giuliani footage responding to a medical marijuana patient with Granite Staters, both have garnered over 40,000 reads. Hence, our cooperative approach of promoting the work of other organizations has extended to the new web site format, and we are thereby in some cases getting them a lot of exposure.

Here are a few of the testimonials we've received recently for how readers put the Chronicle to use:

I read Drug War Chronicle assiduously to be up to date on the failing drug war. - Gustavo de Greiff, former attorney general of Colombia, chair of Latin American drug reform network REFORMA As LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]'s representative in Washington, DC I read without fail the weekly Drug War Chronicle and have for years. This allows me to quickly and without wasted time know what events and people are shaping policy. To date I have met with staffers from half of the 535 offices on Capitol Hill. Years of reading the Chronicle have made me informed and able to speak knowledgeably on all facets of the New Prohibition. It is an invaluable tool I use constantly. - Officer Howard J. Wooldridge (Retired) The Drug War Chronicle is the first place I send people who want to know more about what is going on in drug policy today. - Tyler Smith, Associate Director, Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative I'm an award-winning investigative journalist. I've heard about things on DRCNet that I then turned into articles for the likes of Rolling Stone and Wired magazines. - Vince Beiser Drug War Chronicle is useful for me and my staff to keep us up to date on issues around drug policy and practice. We hear from hundreds of DC prisoners caught up in this nightmare and have little time to keep current on the issues you report on. - Philip Fornaci, Director, D.C. Prisoners' Project, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights I find Drug War Chronicle very helpful in doing grassroots activism. I serve on my county's Substance Abuse Advisory Board and Substance Abuse Prevention Association and as the community co-chair for the Washington State HIV Prevention Planning Group. I have used information from Drug War Chronicle to bring others in my community to recognize the need for drug policy reform. As a member of the Substance Abuse Advisory Board I have been able to circulate materials to all members of county government. - Monte Levine I host a weekly radio program where we discuss issues related to the failed war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We use the DRCNet as a resource every week. DRCNet makes this activism work so much easier, by providing a resource that is accessible, not only as a tool for research, but as an interpreter in this political world. Occasionally, a guest will need to cancel at the last minute. This hazard is part of live radio, and our way of being prepared is to have the DRCNet information in hand, ready to share with listeners. - Sharon North, Shattered Lives Radio, KZFR, 90.1 FM, Chico, CA. Here in the Netherlands we use a lot of your paper to write our own monthly "war in drugs journal" made by the Legalize! Foundation. - Has Cornelissen, Stichting Legalize! I use stories from Drug War Chronicle to lead high school juniors and seniors in an on-going inquiry into the Drug War as a model of failed public policy. DWC enables me to track current issues, update my materials, and stay connected to the drug policy reform community so I can continue my work of developing in young people a deep and critical understanding of the world in which they are coming of age. - Jeanne Polk Barr, Chair, History Dept., Francis W. Parker School, Chicago I am editor of The Liberator Online, a libertarian email newsletter. With almost 70,000 readers, it is as far as we know the largest-circulation libertarian publication of any kind. It is published by the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit non-partisan libertarian educational organization. I use Drug War Chronicle and DRCNet as a source for information on Drug War-related issues of interest to our readers. In fact, we have a story based on a DWC item (Sen. Mike Gravel's support for drug law reform) in our current issue. I used information in an article to help form a scholarship for those convicted of a drug crime who have lost federal funding for school. Now, we are aiming to expand the scholarship to other universities and community colleges. Thanks for your help!

WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Plans in the works for StoptheDrugWar.org have the potential to achieve as much for the site's reach and impact as the work already done has achieved. Along with some needed improvements and fixes to our logon, commenting, and list subscription frameworks, we will be executing major improvements to how we promote our material to the aforementioned "Web 2.0" sites that have driven so much traffic to our site already. Right now, we are only doing a good job of promoting our material to the site Digg, and only for our blog posts. Our minor redesign will make the Digg links on our pages more prominent, will add them to our Drug War Chronicle pages and elsewhere, and will add links to promote articles to other important sites where we've had some success already, like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Netscape. This is a logical extension of a strategy that has already been very successful.

Plans are also underway to dramatically expand the background information we have available on all the different drug policy issues, using the technology available through our web site system to present it in some pretty powerful ways. (Here again, more later.)

I hope you can tell from the foregoing how excited we are about the state of DRCNet's work at this juncture, and how important we feel it is to continue to push forward at full strength. With your continued support, we will build on our successes reaching wider online audiences. We will take on the explosive issue of reckless police raids. We will expand the coalition opposing the college aid drug conviction penalty to include the similar laws in welfare and public housing. We will get the message out about the urgent need for legalization and the impressive people who support that viewpoint. We will continue to publish Drug War Chronicle to empower activists throughout the drug policy reform movement, and to educate the media, policymakers and the general public. And we will put in place new, important sections of our web site to increase the reach and impact of our educational work even further. Thank you for your support and for being part of the cause.

Sincerely,

David Borden, Executive Director

P.S. Contributions of $50 or more can be credited toward our first (not-yet-selected) book premiums of 2008. (You'll need to remind us after we send out the upcoming premium announcements.) Remember that tax-deductible donations should be made payable to DRCNet Foundation. (The amount that is deductible will be reduced by the retail price of any gift(s) you select.) Non-deductible donations for our lobbying work should be made payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network.

P.P.S. In case you would like to donate at this time, I am providing the information here for your convenience: DRCNet Foundation (for tax-deductible donations supporting our educational work) or Drug Reform Coordination Network (for non-deductible donations supporting our lobbying work), P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, or http://stopthedrugwar.org/donate online. (Contact us if you'd like information on donating stock.)

P.P.P.S. Please feel free to call us at (202) 293-8340 if you'd like to discuss any of our programs or have other questions or concerns.

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Weekly: Blogging @ the Speakeasy

Along with our weekly in-depth Chronicle reporting, DRCNet has since late summer also been providing daily content in the way of blogging in the Stop the Drug War Speakeasy -- huge numbers of people have been reading it recently -- as well as Latest News links (upper right-hand corner of most web pages), event listings (lower right-hand corner) and other info. Check out DRCNet every day to stay on top of the drug reform game!

Since last issue:

Scott Morgan brings us: "DEA Agents Sue NBC Universal Over the Film American Gangster," "Press Coverage of the Drug War is So Flawed it Actually Encourages People to Sell Marijuana," "Banning Cylindrical Objects Won't Stop People from Smoking Crack," "Philadelphia Police Say Marijuana Costs $100 Per Joint," "The Truth About Driving When You're High on Marijuana."

David Borden writes: "No Wonder They 'Went in Shooting' -- SWAT Team Had Violent Animated Gif on Web Site Before Killing Tarika Wilson."

Phil Smith previews: "A Grand Total of Five Cops Died Fighting the Drug War Last Year."

David Guard posts numerous press releases, action alerts and other organizational announcements in the In the Trenches blog.

Please join us in the Reader Blogs too.

Thanks for reading, and writing...

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Students: Intern at DRCNet and Help Stop the Drug War!

Want to help end the "war on drugs," while earning college credit too? Apply for a DRCNet internship for this fall semester (or spring) and you could come join the team and help us fight the fight!

DRCNet (also known as "Stop the Drug War") has a strong record of providing substantive work experience to our interns -- you won't spend the summer doing filing or running errands, you will play an integral role in one or more of our exciting programs. Options for work you can do with us include coalition outreach as part of the campaign to repeal the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, and to expand that effort to encompass other bad drug laws like the similar provisions in welfare and public housing law; blogosphere/web outreach; media research and outreach; web site work (research, writing, technical); possibly other areas. If you are chosen for an internship, we will strive to match your interests and abilities to whichever area is the best fit for you.

While our internships are unpaid, we will reimburse you for metro fare, and DRCNet is a fun and rewarding place to work. To apply, please send your resume to David Guard at [email protected], and feel free to contact us at (202) 293-8340. We hope to hear from you! Check out our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org to learn more about our organization.

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Canada: Marc Emery to Accept Canadian Prison Time on US Charges

Marc Emery, Canada's most well-known marijuana activist, has reached a tentative plea bargain agreement with US federal prosecutors who charged him and two associates as drug dealers for selling marijuana seeds to customers in the US. Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams had all faced a minimum 10-year sentence and the possibility of life if convicted in the US. Under the deal reached, Emery said, he will serve a minimum of five years behind bars, mostly in Canada.

Emery said the deal was contingent on the dropping of charges against Rainey and Williams.

Assistant US Attorney Todd Greenberg in Seattle, where Emery was indicted in 2005, has so far declined to comment on the plea agreement. An extradition hearing is still set for Monday in Vancouver, he noted.

Selling marijuana seeds is illegal under Canadian law, but seed shops flourish, and the last conviction was against Emery in 1998. He was fined $2,000. Since then, he ran a well-publicized seed business, paying more than $600,000 in Canadian income taxes on his business until he was shut down when arrested by Canadian authorities at the behest of the US in 2005.

A flamboyant character who founded the BC Marijuana Party, Emery ran for elective office on numerous occasions, published Cannabis Culture magazine, and had his own Internet TV network, Pot TV. An avid critic of marijuana prohibition who thumbed his nose at US authorities, Emery was ultimately too juicy a target for American drug warriors to resist.

Indeed, after his arrest in 2005, then DEA administrator Karen Tandy gloated about it -- and helped Emery make his case that his bust was politically motivated. "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the US and Canada, but also the marijuana legalization movement," she said in a statement that caused consternation in the Seattle federal criminal justice establishment.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

Despite Tandy's loose-lipped remarks, Greenberg told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week that it was merely another criminal investigation. "His politics and the marijuana legalization movement in general have nothing to do with the charges in this case or with why the charges were brought," Greenberg said.

The apparent plea deal has sparked a considerable amount of angst in the Canadian press, with various columnists and editorialists chiding the Canadian government for not fighting to block Emery's extradition, not changing the country's marijuana seed selling laws to fit the reality of non-enforcement (or vice versa), and allowing the Americans to do their dirty work for them in getting rid of an irritating gadfly.

While the plea deal is not yet official, one thing is certain: We have not heard the last of Marc Emery.

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Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

The Detroit drug squad is under investigation, a Pennsylvania police chief is accused of stealing money from drug busts, and a Wisconsin prison has a problem with pill-stealing guards. Let's get to it:

In Detroit, the Detroit Police Department has invited the FBI to join its investigation of the department's Narcotics Unit. The move comes as the department digs into the unit's "conspiracy crews," teams of narcotics officers who work on long-term investigations of big-time drug dealers. Some members of one of the crews are suspected of stealing as much as a half million dollars. The accused officers have been reassigned to other duties pending the results of the investigation. A minimum of four officers are alleged to be involved, and perhaps more.

In Lykens, Pennsylvania, the police chief was arrested Monday for stealing money seized in drug busts. Chief W.R. Wade, who was suspended with pay two months ago, is charged with two counts of theft for stealing the money, as well as another count of unsworn falsification, for lying about a previous arrest on his job application. He is now suspended without pay. Wade went down after he announced the arrests of 21 people on drug charges, but in the end only arrested seven and failed to provide any evidence. Investigators found $3,800 in missing seized cash from one case and $200 from another in his home.

In Portage, Wisconsin, a prison guard was arrested January 7 for stealing narcotic drugs intended for sick prisoners. David Yatalese, 53, a guard at the Columbia Correctional Institution, is charged with theft, possession of a controlled substance and possession at or near a prison, a felony. According to prison officials, an internal CCI investigation tracked missing oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone back to Yatalese after another prison worker noticed prisoners' prescriptions coming up in need of renewal too quickly. Yatalese is the third guard caught stealing prisoners' drugs in the previous 20 months. One is awaiting trial, and the other got two years probation and drug treatment. Prison officials said they have a "serious problem" and are working on solutions.

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Salvia Divinorum: Virginia House Passes Ban

A bill to ban the hallucinogenic herb salvia divinorum was approved by a vote of 98-0 in the Virginia House of Delegates Tuesday, paving the way for the Old Dominion to join the handful of states and localities that have already criminalized the member of the mint family. The measure now moves to the state senate.

Salvia divinorum produces powerful but short-lived psychedelic effects. Once obscure, it has become increasingly well-known thanks to Internet-spread word of mouth. While the DEA considers it a "drug of interest," the agency has yet to move to designate it a controlled substance, and it remains freely available over the Internet or at various retail outlets in locales that have not banned it.

Sponsored by Delegate John O'Bannon (R-Henrico), HB21 would move salvia from unrestricted status to a Schedule I controlled substance under Virginia law. O'Bannon said he introduced the bill after receiving suggestions he do so from law enforcement.

"It's really not a pleasant thing to take. It can cause bad trips, dysphoria and sweats," O'Bannon said, in remarks reported by The Commonwealth Times, the student newspaper at Virginia Commonwealth University and the only Virginia media outlet to pick up the story.

Which is why, despite all the hullabaloo, salvia has not emerged as a popular drug. Most users are quite happy to limit themselves to using it once or twice.

O'Bannion demonstrated an idiosyncratic view of individual liberties as he discussed his bill. "I'm respectful of individual liberties and public good. I think what's happening is this is becoming a drug that can be misused," O'Bannon said. "Putting it on the Schedule I will not harm anybody," he said, but would make "a reasonable balance between public safety and civil individual liberties."

Of course, putting salvia on Schedule I, where its users would be subject to the same prison terms as the users of other proscribed drugs, would harm those people unfortunate enough to be arrested with it. But O'Bannion and his fellow delegates apparently didn't consider the impact that being caged in jails or prisons for long periods of time has on individual liberty.

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Marijuana: Sight of Someone Smoking a Joint Not Grounds for Home Search, California Appeals Court Rules

The California Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled last Friday that police cannot enter a home without a search warrant just because they see someone smoking marijuana inside. Police may enter a home to preserve evidence of a crime, the court held, but only if the crime is punishable by jail or prison. The ruling came in People v. Hua.

Under California law, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana has been decriminalized with a maximum $100 fine and no jail time. Because simple possession has been decriminalized, even if police see someone smoking a joint inside a house, they have not witnessed a jailable offense, hence the only way they may enter without a search warrant is if they seek and receive the permission of a resident.

The case came about in March 2005, when officers in Pacifica came to an apartment on a noise complaint, smelled marijuana as they approached, then looked through a window to see what appeared to be someone smoking pot in a group of people. Police then entered and searched the apartment over the objections of resident John Hua. They found two joints in the living room, 46 plants in a bedroom, and an illegal cane-sword on a bookshelf.

After a San Mateo County judge upheld the police search, Hua pleaded no contest to cultivating marijuana and possession of the sword and served a 60-day jail sentence. But he retained his right to appeal the search ruling.

On appeal, prosecutors offered a two-pronged argument: that they had reason to believe there was more than an ounce of marijuana in the apartment, and that Hua or others might be committing a felony by handing the joint back and forth. But the court wasn't buying; it said the first argument was "mere conjecture" and the second was a misinterpretation of the law, which prescribes the same fine for giving a joint to someone as it does for smoking it.

Prosecutors aren't happy. California Deputy Attorney General Ronald Niver said he would recommend appealing the ruling to the state Supreme Court. "It's difficult to accept the proposition that if you see marijuana in one room, you cannot draw the inference that there's marijuana in another room," he said. "It's like saying that if you see the streets are wet, you can't infer that it's raining."

Ironically, Niver's boss, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, was the governor who signed the decriminalization bill in 1978.

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Marijuana: Vermont to Consider Decriminalization, But Wants to Crack Down on Hard Drugs

The Vermont legislature will this year take up a bill to decriminalize the personal possession, growing of two plants, and small-scale sales of marijuana. At the same time, the legislature will consider a proposal to lower the threshold for what constitutes "trafficking amounts" for hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Both proposals will be discussed at public hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 23.

The legislative moves come after months of discussion about the cost and efficacy of Vermont drug policy and sometimes heated debate over marijuana decriminalization. The decrim debate really heated up last fall when Republican Gov. James Douglas ordered that marijuana cases be taken away from the office of Windsor County prosecutor Robert Sand, who approved court diversion for a local attorney caught growing 30 pot plants. Douglas accused Sand of having a blanket diversion policy, but backed off the state control over prosecutions after Sand made it clear he had no such blanket policy, and after it was found that an Orange County prosecutor had done a similar deal for a man arrested with more than 100 plants.

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin (D-Windham) said last month that drug law reform, including marijuana decriminalization, was one of his top priorities for the current session. That moved Gov. Douglas to say that he was open to decrim discussions, although he has not endorsed the idea.

The marijuana decrim bill, S-238, was introduced last year and reintroduced this year by Sen. Jeannette White (D-Windham). Under the bill, possession of up to four ounces or two plants and sale of less than four ounces would be a civil violation with a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine. Possession of more than four ounces or more than five plants would still be a crime punishable by up to five years in prison under the bill.

While White's decrim bill is a step in the right direction, the hard drug bill, S-250, to be offered by Sen. Richard Sears (D-Bennington), head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is not. That bill would lower the threshold for criminal trafficking charges from 300 grams of cocaine to 150 and from seven grams of heroin to 3.5. People convicted of possessing drugs in such amounts would face up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to one million dollars.

Sears has also signaled that he thinks the four ounce decrim limit is too high. "Four ounces of marijuana is a felony," he told the Barre-Montepelier Times Argus. "I don't think we want to go there."

But Sears is open to discussion, he said. "I thought it was important to let the public weigh in before we started taking a close look at the proposals," he said. "This is a change in state law regarding drugs, and the public probably has some thoughts about this."

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Marijuana: After 30 Years, Nebraska Legislator Wants to Recriminalize

For three decades, marijuana possession has been decriminalized in Nebraska, but now a state legislator has filed a bill, LB844, that would make it a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. Currently, the maximum penalty for possession of less than one ounce is a $100 fine.

Nebraska is one of 12 states where marijuana possession has been decriminalized. Most of of them decriminalized in the 1970s, but Nevada joined the select group in 2001. A decriminalization initiative will go before Massachusetts voters this fall, and it appears the Vermont legislature may consider a move this year as well (See story here this issue).

But if state Sen. Russ Karpisek has his way, Nebraska will be heading in the other direction. He told the Omaha World-Herald he wants pot smokers to suffer at least the same penalty as underage drinkers.

"Alcohol is legal for adults, while marijuana is an illegal substance," the Wilber lawmaker said. "It's one of those things us rednecks really get mad about."

The proposed bill is winning the support of anti-drug activists and some prosecutors. The "parent resource group" PRIDE-Omaha Inc. thinks it's a good idea.

"Current law is too lenient. It's kind of viewed as a slap on the wrist. Society in general ties the seriousness to the punishment. Our kids are growing up in a culture that really normalizes the use of marijuana," said the group's co-executive director Margaret Grove, adding that passing the measure would challenge social acceptance of marijuana use.

"I think certainly we would be inclined to make the argument that we've de-emphasized it too much," Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov said. "We're not sending a very good message." People don't want to go to the county's marijuana diversion program because they see the $100 fine as a "cost of doing business," Polikov complained.

But former state Sen. John DeCamp, then of Neligh, who led the decriminalization effort in the 1970s, said there was a sound basis for it. "I had very solid reasons for it," DeCamp said, adding that he convinced conservative legislators it would save tax dollars by incarcerating fewer people. Also, DeCamp said, soldiers were returning home from Vietnam "accustomed to a toke of marijuana" and didn't deserve to have their lives ruined.

Similarly, Omaha defense attorney Don Fiedler, who lobbied to support the 1978 decrim effort, said the move kept many Nebraskans from getting drug-related criminal records that would hinder their future prospects.

Last year, there were 7,416 citations and arrests for possession, sale, and manufacture of marijuana in the state, according to the Nebraska Crime Commission.

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Marijuana: Bill to Increase Penalties for Sales to Minors Moving in South Dakota

Under current South Dakota law, any adult distributing any amount of marijuana to a minor faces up to 10 years in prison, but a bill backed by Republican state Attorney General Larry Long would stiffen those already harsh penalties in most cases. That bill unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday, and could be voted on by the House as early as today.

The bill, HB1061, actually reduces the maximum sentence from 10 years to five years for distribution of less than an ounce to a minor, but keeps it at 10 years for distribution of between an ounce and a half-pound, increases it to 15 years for a half-pound to a pound, and jacks it up to a jaw-dropping 25 years for more than one pound. Like all other marijuana felonies in South Dakota, a 30-day mandatory minimum jail sentence for a first offense is included.

Attorney General Long told reporters he drafted the bill after a judge told him that some marijuana distribution offenses to adults had tougher sentences than the 10 years for giving it to a minor.

There are currently 10 men and one woman serving prison sentences for distribution of marijuana to a minor in South Dakota. According to the state Department of Corrections, they join another 72 marijuana prisoners, including 10 doing hard time for selling less than ounce and seven for possessing less than a half-pound. Those pot prisoners are among the 661 drug prisoners that constitute one-fifth of the state's rapidly growing prison population.

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Middle East: The Poppies Blossom in Iraq

British journalist Patrick Cockburn, writing in The Independent reports that opium poppy cultivation is rapidly spreading across Iraq. While Cockburn reported in May that poppies had appeared near Diwaniyah in southern Iraq, he now reports that poppies are growing in restive Diyala province, where Al Qaeda in Iraq is making what could be a last stand.

Diyala, deeply divided between Kurds, Sunni, and Shia, is so violent that local security forces have little time to deal with drug cultivation. The Iraqi news agency al-Malaf Press reported that farmers have turned to poppy cultivation around Khalis, Sa'adiya, Dain'ya, and Baladruz, while Cockburn added the town of Buhriz to the list. But cultivation is even more extensive in southern Iraq, especially around Amara and Majar al-Kabir.

The news agency quoted a local engineer as saying local farmers got no support from the government and could not compete with cheap imported fruits and vegetables. They also face rising fuel and fertilizer prices. "The cultivation of opium is the likely solution to these problems," said the engineer.

The poppy growing and trafficking is linked to Sunni and Shia militias, Cockburn wrote. US military strategy has relied on developing a 70,000-member Sunni militia, many of whose members dabble in protection rackets, crime, and smuggling. Similarly, Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the powerful Shia Mehdi Army militia, has complained that criminals have infiltrated its ranks. According to Cockburn, it is the local warlords and the militias that have sponsored the opium planting, not the farmers.

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Africa: Marijuana "Tries to Destroy Our Society," Nigerian Head Narc Says

Ahmadu Giade, head of Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), used a ceremony where seized marijuana was burned last weekend to declare war on pot as part of his agency's effort to "provide a drug-free society for all." His comments came as 100,000 pounds of what Nigerians commonly refer to as Indian hemp went up in smoke. The ceremonial burning would "spite drug barons" and demonstrate the superiority of law enforcement over drug dealers, he said.

While the Lagos newspaper The Day, which reported on the event, described the drugs as "narcotics" and "hard drugs," it appears that it was really describing Nigerian-grown marijuana.

Head narc Giade suffered from the same terminological confusion. "The threat of narcotic drugs is palpable," he said. "It is difficult to ignore this peril staring at us in the face. Cannabis control constitutes the biggest drug challenge in Nigeria and Africa. This is because it grows effortlessly in the country. This drug has the propensity to destroy our society but we equally have the capacity to subdue it."

Well, not so far, anyway. According to the US State Department's 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, "Sale and local consumption of marijuana is on the increase. The rise in marijuana use domestically in Nigeria is evinced by the increased quantities seized, the number and size of illicit plots discovered and destroyed, and numbers of arrests made."

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Weekly: This Week in History

January 23, 1912: In the Hague, twelve nations sign a treaty restricting opium and coca production.

January 21, 1943: The New York Times reports that swing-band leader Gene Krupa pleaded innocent to a charge that he contributed to the delinquency of a minor by asking 17-year-old John Pateakos to fetch marijuana cigarettes from his hotel room for him.

January 18, 1990: Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC, is arrested after hidden cameras record him smoking crack cocaine with ex-girlfriend Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore in her room at the Vista Hotel.

January 22, 1992: The California Research Advisory Panel concludes that drug prohibition has a more harmful effect on society and the individual than illegal drugs.

January 24, 1992: A Washington Post editorial comments, "... performance testing appears to be more effective than the standard urinalysis now used in the industry both after accidents and on a random basis." It also mentions that 97 percent of railroad accidents are caused by fatigue, illness, stress and other factors not associated with drug or alcohol use, and states, "On an annual basis, the test is less expensive than periodic urinalysis, and it's far less intrusive."

January 23, 1996: President Clinton nominates General Barry McCaffrey to become the nation's fourth drug czar.

January 20, 1997: The Lymphoma Foundation calls for rescheduling of marijuana as a medicine and the reopening of the Investigational New Drug compassionate access program.

January 19, 1999: Twenty heavily armed officers from the Placer County sheriff's department in northern California raid the home of Steve and Michele Kubby.

January 20, 2000: John Warnecke, former friend and colleague of Al Gore at The Tennessean, contradicts Gore's characterization of his past marijuana use as minimal. He notes that Al Gore was a regular user, and that he used marijuana for at least four years after he claims to have stopped.

January 21, 2003: Ed Rosenthal's federal trial for marijuana cultivation begins. Rosenthal was growing medically with authorization from the city of Oakland, California, but his legal team is barred by Judge Charles Breyer from informing the jury of this. Rosenthal is ultimately convicted but sentenced to one day.

January 21, 2003: A Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) article discusses a Commonwealth Government report that found tobacco and alcohol accounts for 83 percent of the cost of drug abuse in Australia, dwarfing the financial impact of illegal drugs.

January 21, 2003: MAPS and California NORML sign a contract for a $25,000 protocol study to evaluate the contents of the vapor stream from the Volcano Vaporizer.

January 24, 2005: The US Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, rules that police do not violate the Fourth Amendment when they use drug-detecting dogs to locate illegal drugs in the trunks of cars during a legal traffic stop.

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Feedback: Do You Read Drug War Chronicle?

Do you read Drug War Chronicle? If so, we'd like to hear from you. DRCNet needs two things:

1. We are in between newsletter grants, and that makes our need for donations more pressing. Drug War Chronicle is free to read but not to produce! Click here to make a donation by credit card or PayPal, or to print out a form to send in by mail.
   
   
2. Please send quotes and reports on how you put our flow of information to work, for use in upcoming grant proposals and letters to funders or potential funders. Do you use DRCNet as a source for public speaking? For letters to the editor? Helping you talk to friends or associates about the issue? Research? For your own edification? Have you changed your mind about any aspects of drug policy since subscribing, or inspired you to get involved in the cause? Do you reprint or repost portions of our bulletins on other lists or in other newsletters? Do you have any criticisms or complaints, or suggestions? We want to hear those too. Please send your response -- one or two sentences would be fine; more is great, too -- email [email protected] or reply to a Chronicle email or use our online comment form. Please let us know if we may reprint your comments, and if so, if we may include your name or if you wish to remain anonymous. IMPORTANT: Even if you have given us this kind of feedback before, we could use your updated feedback now too -- we need to hear from you!

Again, please help us keep Drug War Chronicle alive at this important time! Click here to make a donation online, or send your check or money order to: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036. Make your check payable to DRCNet Foundation to make a tax-deductible donation for Drug War Chronicle -- remember if you select one of our member premium gifts that will reduce the portion of your donation that is tax-deductible -- or make a non-deductible donation for our lobbying work -- online or check payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network, same address. We can also accept contributions of stock -- email [email protected] for the necessary info.

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Job Opportunity: Deputy Director, International Harm Reduction Development Program, Open Society Institute

The Open Society Institute works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, OSI implements a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. At the same time, OSI builds alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. OSI places a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of marginalized people and communities.

Investor and philanthropist George Soros in 1993 created OSI as a private operating and grantmaking foundation to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those foundations were established, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. OSI has expanded the activities of the Soros foundations network to encompass the United States and more than 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each Soros foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities.

Founded in 1995, the International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) of the Open Society Institute (OSI) works to reduce HIV and other harms related to injecting drug use, and to press for policies that reduce stigmatization of illicit drug users and protect their human rights. IHRD, which has supported more than 200 harm reduction programs in 26 countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia, bases its activities on the understanding that people unable or unwilling to abstain from drug use can make positive changes to protect their health and the health of others. Since 2001, IHRD has prioritized advocacy to expand availability and quality of needle exchange, drug treatment, and treatment for HIV; to reform discriminatory policies and practices; and to increase the opportunities for political engagement by people who use drugs and who are living with HIV.

The IHRD Deputy Director is supervised by the program director, and carries substantial responsibility for coordination of four areas: program management, policy and advocacy, grantmaking, and finance and budgets.

Responsibilities in the area of program management include directly supervising the work of three program officers and two administrative staff in areas including community organizing, technical assistance to harm reduction services, NGO strengthening, and policy/advocacy efforts; directing IHRD's approaches to external funders, and overseeing the reporting for and compliance with grants from international donors; establishing and maintaining linkages with IHRD partners including government representatives, health and social care providers, community groups, and international organizations; participating in the management team of the Open Society Institute Network Public Health Program, and representing IHRD as required at meetings of OSI, the Soros network, and at international, regional and national conferences; coordinateing conferences and expert consultations related to drug use and HIV; overseeing development of strategic planning, and reporting on work achieved and planned; and supervising research and technical assistance projects.

Responsibilities in the area of policy and advocacy include helping guide implementation of policy and advocacy initiatives and related strategies at the international, regional and national level throughout the Eastern Europe and Asia; assisting national foundations in the Soros Network with development, implementation and evaluation of strategies on harm reduction; and identifying and managing a team of international consultants working with IHRD to advance policy objectives.

Responsibilities in the area of grantmaking include developing and overseeing calls for proposals or grant competitions to support policy initiatives; and managing the review process, of proposals, grant reports, and identification of expert committees.

Responsibilities in the area of finance and budgets include producing IHRD's annual budget, reports for on spending and priorities, and working with program staff on individual program budgets; monitoring financial allocations & general program expenditures; and tracking and ensuring staff compliance with OSI financial guidelines, accounting procedures and reporting requirements.

Qualifications include a minimum of 5 years relevant work experience in issues related to public policy, human rights, drug use and/or HIV; a commitment to harm reduction principles, advocacy and civil society engagement; a Doctorate or Masters degree (or equivalent) in law, health, medicine, sociology, or relevant field; solid experience in staff, program and grant management, preferably in international public health; excellent spoken and written English, and presentation skills (Russian language fluency preferred, though not required); and the willingness to travel internationally as required.

The salary is commensurate with experience, qualifications. Excellent benefits are offered. The start date in January/February 2008. To apply, please e-mail resume, cover letter, and references before 2/1/08 to [email protected] and include job code "DEPDIR/IHRD" in the subject line. These items can also be mailed to: Open Society Institute, Human Resources -- Code DEPDIR/IHRD, 400 West 59th Street, New York, New York 10019 USA. No phone calls, please. The Open Society Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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Job Opportunity: Executive Director, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart

Blue Mountain Heart to Heart is a private nonprofit organization providing positive, non-judgmental support and assistance to persons living with HIV/AIDS, their partners, families, and friends in Walla Walla and Columbia Counties of Washington State. Heart to Heart offers case management and support services, training for volunteers, free and anonymous HIV counseling and testing, alternative treatment resources, and community prevention including syringe exchange and Latino outreach for the rural area.

Desirable qualifications for the Executive Director include strong management, fundraising, and grant writing skills; experience in a nonprofit agency managing contracts and budgets; Spanish abilities; and the ability to represent the agency in community, regional and state groups.

This is a full-time exempt position, and the salary is based on qualifications and experience. For more on the agency, visit http://www.bluemountainheart.org. To apply, please submit a resume and cover letter describing your education, qualifications and experience by February 1, 2008. Electronic submissions are preferred: [email protected]. Submissions by mail should be directed to: Search Committee, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, 2330 Eastage Street North, Suite 105 Walla Walla, WA 99362.

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Webmasters: Help the Movement by Running DRCNet Syndication Feeds on Your Web Site!

Are you a fan of DRCNet, and do you have a web site you'd like to use to spread the word more forcefully than a single link to our site can achieve? We are pleased to announce that DRCNet content syndication feeds are now available. Whether your readers' interest is in-depth reporting as in Drug War Chronicle, the ongoing commentary in our blogs, or info on specific drug war subtopics, we are now able to provide customizable code for you to paste into appropriate spots on your blog or web site to run automatically updating links to DRCNet educational content.

For example, if you're a big fan of Drug War Chronicle and you think your readers would benefit from it, you can have the latest issue's headlines, or a portion of them, automatically show up and refresh when each new issue comes out.

If your site is devoted to marijuana policy, you can run our topical archive, featuring links to every item we post to our site about marijuana -- Chronicle articles, blog posts, event listings, outside news links, more. The same for harm reduction, asset forfeiture, drug trade violence, needle exchange programs, Canada, ballot initiatives, roughly a hundred different topics we are now tracking on an ongoing basis. (Visit the Chronicle main page, right-hand column, to see the complete current list.)

If you're especially into our new Speakeasy blog section, new content coming out every day dealing with all the issues, you can run links to those posts or to subsections of the Speakeasy.

Click here to view a sample of what is available -- please note that the length, the look and other details of how it will appear on your site can be customized to match your needs and preferences.

Please also note that we will be happy to make additional permutations of our content available to you upon request (though we cannot promise immediate fulfillment of such requests as the timing will in many cases depend on the availability of our web site designer). Visit our Site Map page to see what is currently available -- any RSS feed made available there is also available as a javascript feed for your web site (along with the Chronicle feed which is not showing up yet but which you can find on the feeds page linked above). Feel free to try out our automatic feed generator, online here.

Contact us for assistance or to let us know what you are running and where. And thank you in advance for your support.

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Resource: DRCNet Web Site Offers Wide Array of RSS Feeds for Your Reader

RSS feeds are the wave of the future -- and DRCNet now offers them! The latest Drug War Chronicle issue is now available using RSS at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/feed online.

We have many other RSS feeds available as well, following about a hundred different drug policy subtopics that we began tracking since the relaunch of our web site this summer -- indexing not only Drug War Chronicle articles but also Speakeasy blog posts, event listings, outside news links and more -- and for our daily blog postings and the different subtracks of them. Visit our Site Map page to peruse the full set.

Thank you for tuning in to DRCNet and drug policy reform!

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Resource: Reformer's Calendar Accessible Through DRCNet Web Site

DRCNet's Reformer's Calendar is a tool you can use to let the world know about your events, and find out what is going on in your area in the issue. This resource used to run in our newsletter each week, but now is available from the right hand column of most of the pages on our web site.

• Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org each day and you'll see a listing of upcoming events in the page's right-hand column with the number of days remaining until the next several events coming up and a link to more.

• Check our new online calendar section at to view all of them by month, week or a range of different views.
• We request and invite you to submit your event listings directly on our web site. Note that our new system allows you to post not only a short description as we currently do, but also the entire text of your announcement.

The Reformer's Calendar publishes events large and small of interest to drug policy reformers around the world. Whether it's a major international conference, a demonstration bringing together people from around the region or a forum at the local college, we want to know so we can let others know, too.

But we need your help to keep the calendar current, so please make sure to contact us and don't assume that we already know about the event or that we'll hear about it from someone else, because that doesn't always happen.

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