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Semanal: Blogueando en el Bar Clandestino

“Secretario antidroga hace la afirmación absurda de que la guerra a las drogas reduce el consumo de tabaco entre adolescentes”, “Subordinado de Clinton ataca a Obama por consumir drogas en el pasado”, “¿Por qué la DEA no toma medidas duras de una vez contra la marihuana medicinal?”, “EE.UU. recomienda liberación temprana para 19.500 infractores por crack”, “Ron Paul culpa la prostitución por la guerra a las drogas”, “¡No vas a querer esto!”, “Algunos indultos hoy día – Mientras tanto, la página web del fiscal de indultos no ha sido actualizada desde el gobierno Clinton”, “¡Se hacen retroactivos los cambios en las penas para el crack!”, “¿Será que el diputado Dana Rohrabacher es legalizador?”, “Algunas buenas noticias desde la Corte Suprema sobre las penas para el crack”.
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Reportaje: La presión sobre el Congreso aumenta mientras tanto la Suprema Corte como la Comisión de Penas toman providencias para reducir las condenas para la piedra de cocaína

Esta semana, tanto la Comisión de Penas como la Corte Suprema de los EE.UU. redujeron las sentencias para infractores de la legislación federal contra la piedra de cocaína. Pero, en razón de las condenas mínimas obligatorias impuestas por el Congreso, ello debe tomar providencias para reducir más la injusticia.
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I Hate to Say I told You So

Bert Tathum returned from Dubai today.As I predicted,He started Whining the moment the plane touched down."Why didn't they give me a break",cries Bert.Now remember,Berts a drug cop that got caught wit
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Drug Dealers Open Fire on Santa Claus Helicopter

Not even Santa Claus is safe from the violence caused by drug prohibition:
Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said on Tuesday.

"They thought it was a police operation and started shooting. Luckily, nobody was hurt," a police official said. [Yahoo]
Yeah, those drug traffickers are just lucky Santa Claus didn't go all Chuck Norris on them. You never know what kind of firepower he keeps on hand to protect his monopoly.

All I want for Christmas is a world free of drug war violence and disorder; a world in which men in big red suits can fly helicopters over Rio without being used for target practice by machinegun-toting thugs with free reign over the slums; a world where a man can frolic with carpenter elves and flying reindeer without getting his mistletoe confiscated by the government; a world in which a pungent piney aroma emanating from the den no longer gives police probable cause to search our cozy Christmas cabin.

So happy holidays to you all, whether hippie or hypocrite, activist or antagonist. May the New Year bring hope to the hopeless and clues to the clueless.
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Candy Flavored Meth is Safer Than Regular Meth

After a few months of worrying about other more important things, people are freaking out about candy-flavored meth again. They think it's a ploy to get more kids to try the drug, and some of them want to increase the penalties for adulterated meth, even though it's unclear whether such a thing actually exists. But this much is for certain: if you're worried about candy-flavored meth, there's a strong chance that you're an idiot. Here's why:

1. There's a good chance that candy-flavored meth doesn't even exist. Various experts have pointed out that rumors of candy-flavored meth are anecdotal and unsubstantiated:
David Duncan, the chairman of the illicit-drugs council of the National Association of Public Health Policy in Reston, Va., said that the candy-flavored-meth stories are myths, fueled by misunderstandings and a gullible media.

Steve Robertson, a Drug Enforcement Agency special agent and spokesman, said that the DEA has not analyzed any flavored methamphetamine… [Winston-Salem Journal]
The rumor site Snopes.com says the story of candy-flavored meth being marketed to children is false. Snopes explains that meth comes in all colors due to varied ingredients and methods of production. Some manufacturers use food coloring for product identification, but police don't put it in their mouths, so they have no idea what it even tastes like.

2. Kids don't want candy-flavored meth anyway. It's not a f%&king pixie stick. It's meth. It costs like $80 a gram. Kids can't afford it. Fortunately, kids don't have to do meth to enjoy the sweet taste of candy. They can just buy regular candy for $1.00 and avoid all the nasty side-effects.

I've got great news for anyone who worries about drug dealers targeting children: you can't sell drugs to kids because they don't have any money. What, are they gonna save up their allowance for 9 months so they can go on a two day meth binge? Are they gonna cry and tug on daddy's pants demanding more meth money?

Young people may be reckless, but you cannot get a return on your investment by passing out samples of speed in the schoolyard.

3. Candy-flavored meth is safer than regular meth. If you cut your meth with a bunch of candy, it won’t be very strong. Regular meth with no candy in there is much stronger and more dangerous, so it would actually make more sense to increase the penalties for people who don’t water down their meth with harmless candy.

After all, meth is gross. If your meth tastes good, it's probably fake.

So if there is any bright side to the hysteria surrounding candy-flavored meth, it is that we can all observe and hopefully learn from the collective stupidity of the media and elected politicians who will hurl themselves, mouths foaming, into full-blown panic mode over any opportunity to mention children and drugs in the same sentence.

Let us all point our fingers and laugh at them, for they are the true epidemic. They are the actual purveyors of disease and destruction, through the terrible war spawned in their laboratory of idiocy. Candy-flavored meth may be the rumor of the day, but the drug war is a lie that spans generations and it will never taste good no matter how much sugar you cut it with.
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United States Marijuana Party

Come join the fight in reforming marijuana/hemp laws in your state. We need more members! Please visit us at http://usmjparty.com/ for more information.
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Congress Just Says No to Anti-Drug Propaganda

It looks like Congress will be giving Drug Czar John Walters a big lump of coal for Christmas this year. A major congressional spending bill slashes funding for anti-drug advertising down to $60 million for next year, a 40% reduction from this year's $99 million. Try as he might to spin the failure of his advertising campaign, the Drug Czar is just going to have to face facts: everyone knows the ads don't work and Congress is on pace to kill the program entirely within a few years.

For those who've been paying attention, it comes as no surprise that Congress is defunding the Drug Czar's propaganda campaign. A report by the Government Accountability Office not only found that the ads are ineffective, but actually concluded that kids who saw them were slightly more likely to try drugs!

Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to make the Drug Czar understand that his ads are crap. Literally, the simple act of criticizing the ads actually makes him think they're working. Look what he said about this just last week:
I find it somewhat amusing that pro-pot activists lobby every year to cut funding for this program - they must be worried that it's working too well!
Really? So according to the Drug Czar, anyone who opposes the ads is a pro-pot activist who is afraid that they work too well. But in real life, the ad budget is getting torn to shreds by the U.S. Congress because they know the program sucks.
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Some people's Kids

I thought I'd met the ugliest people in this world already.Then I heard about a creep named Bert Tathum.It seems Bert is a narcotics officer that our government sent to Afghanistan to harass and destr
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The most ignorant thing I've ever heard

The federal Conservative government of Steven Harper,Released a report comdeming the current mandatory release program.In the most inane statement I've ever heard,panel chairman Rob Sampson said:"It j
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All the Lonley People

Big announcement on the news tonite.It seems Vancouver has become a major distribution point for the international drug trade.We're a major manufacturer of meth and ecstacy as well.The things you here on the news.An article in the Georgia Straight has some news that comes as a surprise to no-one that's spent five mins.
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If You Oppose Harm Reduction, You Support AIDS and Death

The Drug Czar's blog has been very concerned about harm reduction lately. They've taken the counterintuitive position of opposing efforts to save the lives of drug users, which seems like a strange choice. Now I understand why: they think harm reduction is the opposite of what it actually is.
These so-called "harm reduction" strategies are poor public policy because their underlying philosophy involves giving up on those who can successfully recover from drug addiction. [PushingBack.com]
This is wrong for a very simple reason: you cannot recover from addiction if you're dead. Harm reduction programs are not an alternative to treatment, rather they go hand in hand. Harm reduction keeps people healthy and alive, thereby creating opportunities for them to subsequently recover from addiction.

We could do nothing. That would be "giving up." We could ask drug addicts to either quit or die. That would be "giving up." Instead, harm reduction activists have taken to the streets and attacked this problem directly. They've studied the leading causes of death among drug users and created programs to reduce those casualties. That's the opposite of giving up.

Just pretend for a moment that you're cruel and you want drug users to die in large numbers. How would you go about it? Well, you would begin by eliminating regulated distribution so that users are forced to obtain unsafe products from criminals on the street. You would reduce access to clean needles in order to spread AIDS. You would enforce criminal sanctions against users so that they're afraid to seek help. And you would lobby aggressively against anyone who's studied the problem and proposed programs to reduce AIDS and overdoses.

Now I'm not saying the Drug Czar wants to kill people. I'm just saying he presides over a policy that is perfectly tailored to achieve that outcome. And he dares to suggest that the people out there working with addicts and saving lives are the ones who've given up.
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Dutch Police Insist on Smoking Marijuana Off-Duty

Apparently, American tourists aren’t the only ones enjoying Amsterdam's coffeeshops:
Police in Amsterdam are complaining over new rules banning them from smoking cannabis while off duty.

Officers in the Dutch capital, famous for its liberal drugs laws, have been told they must set the public "a good moral example". [Daily Mail]
Oh, whatever. There's nothing immoral about using marijuana and no reason to look to off-duty police for moral leadership.
…Dutch police union chairman Hans van Duijn said: "Many of our members are opposed to this.

"They are not paid for 24-hours a day. What they do in their free time is up to them."

It may seem strange to encounter law-enforcement officers agitating for the right to use marijuana, but their argument is perfectly legitimate. Marijuana is only intoxicating for a short period of time, after which one becomes sober again. There's simply no reason on earth why police shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy marijuana off-duty.

But if you live in a country where this is the biggest drug policy controversy of the day, you probably have more to be grateful for than to complain about.