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I hear more and more people say they are getting that Alice in Wonderland feeling. This changeling America our war-and-fear-mongering leaders are selling is unacceptable.

Responding to years of agitation by harm reductionists and public health advocates, the Pennsylvania Board of Pharmacy Saturday published new regulations that will allow pharmacies to sell syringes without a prescription. The change goes into effect immediately. The move was lauded by activists as a significant public health victory in the battle against the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C via injection drug use. Under previous regulations, pharmacies could sell syringes only to people who obtained a doctor’s prescription. The new regulations carry no limit on the number of syringes that can be purchased at a time, nor do they have age limits. “This change is particularly important in Pennsylvania because we have only two locations--Pittsburgh and Philadelphia--in which legally authorized syringe exchange programs operate,” said David Webber, an attorney for the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania. “These two programs alone are simply not adequate to address this problem across the entire state, but syringe exchange programs continue to be crucial in providing sterile syringes as well as access to drug treatment and health care for injection drug users.” “This is a chance for every pharmacy to become part of HIV prevention in Pennsylvania,” said Scott Burris, professor at Temple University’s School of Law and a national authority on syringe regulation and HIV prevention. “The pharmacy board has taken an important step forward for evidence-based policy.” It didn’t come swiftly or easily. Activist organizations including the Pennsylvania Aids Law Project, Prevention Point Pittsburgh, Prevention Point Philadelphia, as well as legislators, HIV workers, and others had lobbied for the change for a decade. In August 2007, the pharmacy board proposed new regulations allowing for over-the-counter syringe sales and opened them up for public comment. Thanks to concerns expressed by harm reduction and public health groups during the comment period, the board removed age and quantity restrictions. The board rejected record-keeping requirements requested by the House Professional Licensure Committee, saying it “does not believe that maintaining a record and requiring individuals to provide a name or other identifying information would advance the public health and safety.” Similarly, it rejected a number of concerns from the Pennsylvania Medical Society that the rule change would increase drug use. The board’s action reflected well-established scientific evidence that access to clean syringes is a critical component of stemming the spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and Hep C among injection drug users. Now the number of states that do not allow syringe sales without a prescription is down to two: Delaware and New Jersey.

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr. Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war: Thursday, September 10 Last Thursday morning, the body count for the year passed 5,000. Four people were killed in Guerrero, among them a rural law enforcement officer. Additionally, in Chiapas, a group of gunmen threw a fragmentation grenade at a municipal office. Several people were wounded and a vehicle parked outside was damaged. Friday, September 11 In Tijuana, authorities reported a spike in drug prohibition-related violence. Nineteen people were killed in the first eight days of September. Authorities have reported 405 homicides in Tijuana from January 1st through September 11th. This is less than half of the 843 homicides reported in 2008, but 68 more than the 2007 total. The Baja California attorney general’s office believes that much of the recent violence is due to reprisals against suspected informers following the arrest of several high-level traffickers. Saturday, September 12 In the resort city of Acapulco, five bullet riddled bodies were found dumped in a landfill. According to Mexican authorities, police found a note near the bodies which was signed “the boss of bosses”. It is unclear to whom the note refers. In Sinaloa,a municipal police commander was killed when his car was ambushed by four vehicles carrying an estimated twenty armed men. His 13-year old son and a friend of his were wounded. Two innocent bystanders, aged 14 and 17, were killed by stray bullets as they sat under a tree near the road. Meanwhile, four charred corpses were found in a burning car on the Mexico City-Oaxaca highway. In Ciudad Juarez, 12 drug-related murders were reported. Sunday, September 13 In Ciudad Juarez, eight people were killed in just a few hours. The eight people who were killed died in six different incidents. Among the dead was Jose Robles Ortiz, who was riddled with bullets on September 11th. His death is being investigated by the state prosecutor’s office for the state of Chihuahua. Monday, September 14 At the El Paso border checkpoint, over $1 million in cash was seized over the period of a few days. The largest seizure took place on Friday afternoon, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials found $802,720 in an SUV that was headed towards Mexico. Two Mexican nationals, aged 33 and 34, were detained and remain in El Paso County Jail. Two other seizures made during the week totaled $206,000. El Paso is just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, and is a lucrative drug trafficking corridor for Mexican drug trafficking organizations. It is a federal offense to not declare currency over $10,000 dollars upon leaving or entering the US. Tuesday, September 15 In Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, 21 people were killed on Tuesday. In Tijuana, firefighters found six bodies inside a burning car. Four of the men were seated in the car, while two were found in the trunk. In Ciudad Juarez, five people-including two brothers-were gunned down at a car wash. Ten people were killed in other acts of violence in the city. Five people were killed when gunmen opened fire at a hardware store, and five men in a pickup truck were killed when they were ambushed. Wednesday, September 16 In Ciudad Juarez, suspected drug cartel gunmen attacked a drug rehabilitation clinic, killing ten. This is the second such attack this month. Drug gangs have targeted rehab clinics in Ciudad Juarez, claiming that they are protecting members of rival trafficking organizations. A spokesman for the states attorney’s office said that the dead included nine men and one woman. Mexican independence day celebrations took place under extremely heavy security, due to fears of violence. Security was especially tight in Morelia, Michoacán, where a grenade attack by members of La Familia cartel killed eight people and wounded over 100 during last year’s celebrations. In many cities, traditional children’s parades and outdoor parties were canceled because of security concerns. Read last week's Mexico drug war update here.

Jaime Daremblum at The Weekly Standard uses math to prove that Mexico's drug war is getting results:

But despite the continuing violence--in a particularly vicious attack on September 2, 18 people were killed execution style at a Juárez drug-rehabilitation center--Calderón's efforts have not been in vain. A new report from the U.S. State Department observes that "more than 43,000 individuals connected with the major cartels were arrested between December 2006 and February 2009," including senior members of the cartels. Mexican authorities confiscated 4,220 weapons in 2006 and 9,500 a year later; all told, they have seized "more than 27,000 since the beginning of 2008." Since January 2007, they have also confiscated some 65 metric tons of cocaine, nearly 1,250 kilos of methamphetamine, and roughly 4.2 million kilos of marijuana. These achievements are not insignificant.

He's right. These achievements are significant indeed. They got 7,500 people killed last year.

Don't you understand that the exact activities you're rooting for are the reason people are dying? What is so complicated about this? It's a simple formula: more drug war = more death. It's perfectly incoherent to root for arrests and drug seizures, while simultaneously expressing hope that the violence will subside. It doesn't work that way. Anyone struggling with this concept should just pull up a chair and watch what happens next.

Update: We won. Dear friend: Our nemesis in Congress, arch-drug warrior Mark Souder, is at it again. Earlier this year, the House Education & Labor Committee passed a student aid bill including language to scale back his infamous financial aid/drug conviction law. The new version of the law would only count sales convictions -- a great step forward, though we still want full repeal. More than 200,000 students already have lost aid for college because of drug convictions. Tomorrow, we're told, Rep. Souder will offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives, seeking to have this good language stripped from the final version of the bill. PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND ASK THAT HE OR SHE VOTE NO ON SOUDER'S AMENDMENT TO THE STUDENT AID BILL. Students should not lose access to college because of drug possession convictions! The bill is called SAFRA, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, H.R. 3221. To reach your Representative (or find out who your Rep is), call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. When the receptionist in your representative's office answers the phone, politely say something like the following:

"My name is _____ and I'd like Rep. ___ to vote against Rep. Souder's amendment to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which would deny educational opportunities to students with minor drug possession convictions. Blocking access to education causes more drug problems and hurts the economy. Thank you."

When you're done, please forward this alert to all your friends, and please post it to sites like Facebook and Twitter too. A copy of this alert can be found at http://stopthedrugwar.org/alerts/college_aid. Also, please send us a note letting us know that you've taken action and if the staffer you spoke with told you anything that sounds important. Visit http://www.raiseyourvoice.com for further information on this issue and the hundreds of organizations that support repeal. Thank you for taking action! Please consider making a donation to support these efforts. Sincerely, David Borden, Executive Director StoptheDrugWar.org Washington, DC http://stopthedrugwar.org P.S. Find StoptheDrugWar.org on Facebook here and here, and on Twitter here.

Facing a $5 million budget deficit, the Minneapolis Police Department responded Monday by disbanding its narcotics squad. That makes Minneapolis the only major city in the US without one. Last year, the 14-member narcotics squad investigated nearly 4,000 cases resulting in 519 federal and state charges. Officers seized about $300,000 in drug money, as well as 24 guns and 26 vehicles. Police Chief Tim Dolan said the department still has sufficient resources to handle drug cases. He said community resource teams in the department’s five precincts will handle street-level and mid-level dealing, while the Violent Offender Task Force will work on high-level cases. The department also has officers seconded to an anti-drug task force with state, local, and DEA members, and it has just started a gang unit, he said. "Are we going to be as good as we were before in dealing with drug cases? I don't know," he said. "Their stats speak for themselves." The former head narc, Lt. Marie Przynski, was not happy. "This unit has been highly productive, if not the most productive unit in the Minneapolis Police Department," Przynski said. "I'm disappointed, and so are my officers, about this decision." The 14 former narcs will be reassigned, with three of them joining the Financial Crimes unit, including an asset forfeiture specialist and a specialist in pharmaceutical investigations ranging from forged prescriptions to insurance fraud. Other members of the defunct dope squad will be assigned at least temporarily to street patrols. The department still needs to cut 50 positions to get under budget. It may also reduce the number of deputy chiefs from three to two. Still, Dolan said neither street patrols nor key units, such as homicide, robbery, sex crimes, juvenile, and domestic abuse would be reduced. One city council member, Ralph Remington, suggested that the department could have more money if its members quit misbehaving. Just three weeks ago, the city paid out $495,000 to a man slugged by a Minneapolis police officer during a drug raid last year. That was only the most recent high-profile settlement paid by the city for departmental misbehavior. "The department could save a lot of money if they corrected the bad behavior of a few bad cops," said Remington.

UPDATE: Seven of the eight shops in the two towns are closed as of today. The eight remains open, but says it is selling only coffee. Six Dutch border town cannabis coffee shop owners seeking to block local authorities from shutting them down lost a court battle last Friday. A judge in Breda in the southern Netherlands ruled that the coffee shop owners had chosen the wrong judicial venue for their challenge of the ban. The coffee shop owners are challenging a decision by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, both near the Belgian border, to close all eight coffee shops in their communities in a bid to stop “drug tourism.” An estimated 25,000 foreigners pour into the two towns each week to take advantage of the Dutch policy that tolerates retail marijuana sales. They are blamed for causing problems ranging from public urination to traffic congestion to hard drug dealing. Under the ban, the coffee shops could stay open and serve alcohol, but could not sell marijuana. If they continued to sell marijuana, they could be punished with a five-year closure. The lawyer representing the coffee house owners, Harry Nieland, said Tuesday that his clients had not yet decided whether they would abide by the ban on marijuana sales or challenge it. The ban by the mayors comes as the Dutch government wrestles with how to reduce or eliminate the number of foreigners coming to Holland from more repressive neighboring countries to buy marijuana. Last week, a leaked letter from three Dutch ministers suggested the government would seek a “members only” policy for the coffee houses. Under European Union law, countries cannot discriminate by nationality, so the Dutch cannot ban foreigners from becoming coffee house members. But the Dutch government wants to subvert the law by requiring that marijuana be purchased only with credit cards issued by Dutch banks.

As I was writing the post below about asset forfeiture, I felt once again the familiar frustration of knowing in my heart that the drug war survives only because so many people don't even know what it really is. They may form an opinion about whether or not drugs should be legal, but do they know how often police confiscate cars from people who never committed a crime? How many innocent teenage girls got their underpants searched for nothing? How many mothers lost their children over a false positive drug test? How many people have gone to jail not because they broke the law, but because a cop lied?

Just imagine what would happen if the average American actually came to grasp the full breadth of abject unfairness that characterizes the application of our drug laws in every conceivable circumstance. The totality of injustice in the war on drugs is its own galaxy. Even as someone who actively tries to keep track of it, I'm routinely stunned by the magnitude of systemic corruption, callousness and incompetence that festers in every corner of the massive drug war juggernaut.

As advocates for change, we must accept that we can never teach everyone among us to truly understand and appreciate the full spectrum of cruelty and perversion that defines the war on drugs. Fortunately we don’t have to. To vividly depict just one small fraction of the drug war's infinite injustices would do the job and it's just a question of keeping the dialogue going long enough for reality to begin sinking in.

The flipside of no one fully appreciating the harms of the drug war is that when it finally ends, the benefits will exceed every expectation.

Radley Balko has a story in the Jackson Free Press noting that the Supreme Court has decided to hear a disturbing asset forfeiture case from Illinois. In case anyone needs a refresher on the absurdity of our forfeiture laws, this sums it up nicely: 

Civil asset forfeiture is a particularly odious outgrowth of the drug war. While few would argue that criminals ought to be able to keep the proceeds of their crimes, civil forfeiture allows the government to seize and keep property without actually having to prove a crime was committed in the first place. Hence, forfeiture cases tend to have names like U.S. v. Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Dollars, or U.S. v. One 1987 Jeep Wrangler. Proceeds from civil forfeiture at the state and local level usually go back to the police departments and prosecutors' offices, giving them a clear and unmistakable incentive to seize as much property as often as possible.

Balko goes on to explain why the Supreme Court isn’t likely to curb the practice and I agree with his analysis. Hopefully, however, the case will at least afford us a rare opportunity to spark national discussion about the chronic abuse of asset forfeiture laws.

As sad as this sounds, the best case scenario here might a New York Times headline that reads "Supreme Court Rules Police May Confiscate Property Without Evidence of a Crime." If nothing else, I hope we can all at least acknowledge that this is happening.

Remember a couple weeks ago when the U.S. Forest Service warned campers to watch out for people who drink Tecate, eat tortillas, and listen to Spanish music because they might be dangerous marijuana growers? Yeah, they're kinda backtracking on that one a little bit:

Denver, Colo., September 14, 2009 – On Sept. 2, U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables and members of his organization met with 17 Hispanic community leaders, representing a variety of Hispanic organizations in Colorado, to issue an apology for regrettable references used during an Aug. 26 briefing to news media concerning illegal marijuana cultivation activities on national forests in Colorado. [Dept. of Agriculture]

The Forest Service says they've "learned some valuable lessons from this experience," presumably including why you shouldn't try to scare the hell out of everyone with wildly racist public announcements. What they did was absolutely crazy. Apologies and regrets won't change the fact that they carelessly insulted millions of people in a deranged fit of drug war delirium.

After four years of debate, Indonesia’s parliament passed a new drug law Monday. It was immediately criticized by reformers on numerous counts. The new law maintains the death penalty for some drug offenses, criminalizes drug addiction, and makes it a crime for parents to fail to report their addicted children to authorities. The law also transfers responsibility for fighting drug trafficking from the government to civil society. "The drugs law will save our children and young generation. It will be essential in the fight against drug trafficking,” said Minister for Law and Human Rights Andi Mattalatta after the bill was passed. “Currently, drug dealing is not only conducted by individuals but by drugs syndicates that operate neatly," But the Indonesian Coalition for Drug Policy Reform (ICDPR) begged to differ. “This law classifies drug addicts as criminals and therefore subjects them to criminal charges, while doctors have said that drug addiction is a curable disease,” Asmin Francisca, the group’s coordinator told reporters outside parliament’s plenary session hall. “The law should have recognized that a proper solution to drug addiction is to empower drug addicts, not to punish them as criminals.” Asmin warned that the article in the law transferring responsibility for fighting trafficking from the government to civil society could lead to vigilante justice. “The article, however, does not clearly elaborate on what kind of civil participation is needed to fight the war against drug trafficking,” she said. “Without clear regulations, the law is open to many forms of exploitation by civil groups, including acts of vigilantism.” Asmin also condemned the retention of the death penalty for some drug offenses. “Death penalties are not in line with the purpose of modern criminal charges that aim to rehabilitate a person rather than punish them for their actions,” she said. “Basically, I believe this law is not in line with the basic principles of human rights.” According to the Indonesian National Narcotics Agency’s extremely precise figures, there are 27,000 drug users in the country, including 12,689 aged 30 or older, 6,790 between 25 and 29, 5,720 between 20 and 24, 1,747 between 16 and 19, and 109 users under the age of 16.