Drug War Chronicle #539 - June 13, 2008

For the past three years, a select group of heroin addicts in Vancouver and Montreal have received pharmaceutical grade heroin as part of a pilot heroin maintenance program. Now, the NAOMI program is winding down, the researchers are assembling their reports, and the addicts are back on the streets.

California's Mendocino County has grown rich off of marijuana, but problems have come with the prosperity. Now, everyone is waiting to see whether last week's still undecided election will mean the county takes a step backward from its liberal cultivation laws.

Apply for an internship at DRCNet for this fall (or spring), and you could spend the semester fighting the good fight!

Drug War Chronicle is seeking information on serious police misconduct or misjudgments in the treatment of informants. Confidentiality will be protected.

Another year, another all-time high in US prisoners, and the drug war continues to make a major contribution. This is getting really old.

Busy, busy. Border guards going down, prison guards going down, more cops in trouble, and more investigations of a perjury-condoning prosecutor in Detroit.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has rejected an employer's firing of a medical marijuana patient who did not use on the job, saying it violates state anti-discrimination laws.

Veteran activist Dana Beal of Global Marijuana March fame spent more than a week behind bars in Illinois, arrested on money-laundering charges after police found $150,000 in cash. But he bailed out Thursday after the original charge vanished, to be replaced by an obstruction of justice charge. The cash is still in custody.

The Merida Initiative anti-drug assistance package for Mexico and Central America passed the House this week, but Mexico is balking at human rights and other conditions in the Senate version of the bill. Will the Senate sacrifice human rights on the altar of the drug war?

What may have been the largest drug bust ever took place in Afghanistan this week. But while NATO claimed it dealt a hard blow to the Taliban, profits from the lost hash are miniscule compared to what the group rakes in from the opium trade.

The Argentine government is working on a rewrite of its drug laws, but courts there aren't waiting for the politicians. In April, two federal tribunals in Buenos Aires declared the drug possession laws unconstitutional, and now more courts have followed suit.

A Scottish think-tank tasked by Parliament with figuring out how to reduce drug-related harm has called for marijuana legalization, safe injection sites, and opiate maintenance.

"Will John McCain Avoid Running a 'Tough-On-Crime' Campaign?," "World Record Marijuana Crop Gets Blown Up By Fighter Jets," "Two More Horrible Drug Raid Disasters," "Bob Barr's Newfound Drug War Opposition Shows That Anything is Possible," "Vietnam Orders Police to Win the Drug War by August," "Stop Making Excuses and Go Watch 'The Wire'," "People are Getting Themselves Arrested Just So They Can Sell Drugs in Jail," "The Drug War is a War on Communities of Color," "George Bush and Cocaine: How the President Might Save His Approval Rating."

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.

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