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In a scathing 93-page report released today, the international human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Cambodian drug detention centers of torturing and raping detainees, imprisoning children and the mentally ill, and illegally detaining and imprisoning drug users. The centers are beyond reform and should be closed, the group said. "Individuals in these centers are not being treated or rehabilitated, they are being illegally detained and often tortured," said Joseph Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights division at HRW. "These centers do not need to be revamped or modified; they need to be shut down." The report cited detailed testimonies from detainees who were raped by center staff, beaten with electric cables, shocked with cattle prods, and forced to give blood. It also found that drug users were "cured" of their conditions by being forced to undergo rigorous military-style drills to sweat the drugs out of their systems. "[After arrest] the police search my body, they take my money, they also keep my drugs...They say, ‘If you don't have money, why don't you go for a walk with me?...[The police] drove me to a guest house.... How can you refuse to give him sex? You must do it. There were two officers. [I had sex with] each one time. After that they let me go home," said Minea, a woman in her mid-20's who uses drugs, explaining how she was raped by two police officers "[A staff member] would use the cable to beat people...On each whip the person's skin would come off and stick on the cable," said M'noh, age 16, describing whippings he witnessed in the Social Affairs "Youth Rehabilitation Center" in Choam Chao. The title of the HRW report is "Skin on the Cable." More than 2,300 people were detained in Cambodia's 11 drug detention centers in 2008. That is 40% more than in 2007. "The government of Cambodia must stop the torture occurring in these centers" said Amon. "Drug dependency can be addressed through expanded voluntary, community-based, outpatient treatment that respects human rights and is consistent with international standards." Cambodian officials from the National Authority for Combatting Drugs, the Interior Ministry, the National Police, and the Social Welfare Ministry all declined to comment when queried by the Associated Press. But Cambodian Brig. Gen. Roth Srieng, commander of the military police in Banteay Meanchy province, denied torture at his center, while adding that some detainees were forced to stand in the sun or "walk like monkeys" as punishment for trying to escape. Children as young as 10, prostitutes, beggars, the homeless, and the mentally ill are frequently detained and taken to the drug detention centers, the report found. About one-quarter of those detained were minors. Most were not told why they were being detained. The report also said police sometimes demanded sexual favors or money for release and told some detainees they would not be beaten or could leave early if they donated blood. The report relied on testimony from 74 people, most of them drug users, who had been detained between February and July 2009.

I was at the drug store the other day,picking up my weekly legalized drugs and ran into an old friend I hadn't seen for a few years.We had been the friends of another friend and had never actually bee

Just a brief comment... The "war on drugs" baffles me in the exact same way and for a similar reason that the "war on terror" baffles me.

It's impossible to rank in order of severity the numerous lies that have long formed the foundation of the federal government's position on medical marijuana. But one of the most calculated and audacious deceptions deployed in this debate is certainly the manufactured myth that insufficient evidence exists to demonstrate the drug's medical efficacy.

That's why this NYT article should be required reading for anyone in the habit of expressing opinions on the scientific merits of medical marijuana:

Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review.
…
But federal officials have repeatedly failed to act on marijuana research requests in a timely manner or have denied them, according to a 2007 ruling by an administrative law judge at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

What an impressively cynical and corrupt political strategy it is to literally block research while simultaneously citing the absence of said research as an excuse for prohibition. The whole situation is so maliciously dishonest that it's disturbing to think how many government agencies were complicit in manufacturing it.

Meanwhile, medical marijuana's enemies condemn state-level reforms by reflexively insisting that the ballot box is not the place to formulate health policy. Our response is pretty straightforward:

"The more it becomes clear to people that the federal government is blocking these studies, the more people are willing to defect by using politics instead of science to legalize medicinal uses at the state level," said Rick Doblin, executive director of a nonprofit group dedicated to researching psychedelics for medical uses.

We did what we had to do, and it reflects well on the American public that this issue has been so well understood despite a massive federal conspiracy to make it confusing.

Ben Morris at MPP makes an interesting observation regarding Martha Coakley's high-profile loss in Massachusetts:

To state it simply, the Democrats chose a bad candidate. They backed one of the most vocal and public opponents of the MPP-funded ballot initiative, Question 2, which decriminalized marijuana possession in Massachusetts in 2008. Question 2 was more popular than President Obama on Election Day, garnering 65% of the vote compared with the president’s 62%. All but three towns in the state supported the initiative.

The point here isn't that Martha Coakley lost because her anti-marijuana advocacy from 2008 was fresh in everyone's mind as they entered the polls on Tuesday. This campaign wasn't about marijuana at all, and that's the problem.

You see, Coakley's victorious opponent Scott Brown had actually championed a sparsely-publicized effort to re-criminalize certain marijuana offenses in the aftermath of question 2. It went nowhere, of course, and could easily have been wielded against him on the campaign trial, had Brown's challenger for the vacant Senate seat not been a rabid prohibitionist herself. In a state where 65% of voters endorsed decriminalization, a pro-reform message could easily have given some heft to the Democrats failed campaign strategy.

This is advanced pot politics, to be sure, and I certainly wouldn't expect to see such strategies deployed deftly by the major parties in the short term. But as the issue continues to heat up, it's just a matter of time before someone figures out how to use it effectively. And that will be fun as hell to watch.