In the Chronicle's review of the top international drug policy stories of the year last week, the slow spread of heroin maintenance was in the mix. This week, its back in the news, with word that a new Canadian heroin maintenance study in Vancouver is about to get underway. The Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME) will choose a Downtown Eastside location next month and begin taking applications from potential participants in February, according to a Tuesday press release from the Inner Change Foundation, which, along with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is funding the trial. With selection of participants supposed to last only three weeks, that means SALOME could be underway by March. SALOME will enroll 322 hard-core heroin addicts—they must have been using at least five years and failed other treatments, including methadone maintenance—in a year-long, two-phase study. During the first phase, half will be given injectable heroin (diacetylmorphine) and half will be given injectable Dilaudid® (hydromorphone). In the second phase, half of the participants will be switched to oral versions of the drug they are using. The comparison of heroin and Dilaudid® was inspired by unanticipated results from SALOME's forerunner, NAOMI (the North American Opiate Medication Study), which began in Vancouver in 2005 and produced positive results in research reviews last year. In NAOMI, researchers found that participants could not differentiate between heroin and Dilaudid®. The comparison of success rate among injection and oral administration users was inspired by hopes of reducing rates of injection heroin use. SALOME was also supposed to take place in Montreal, but Quebec provincial authorities effectively killed it there by refusing to fund it. SALOME researchers have announced that it will now proceed in Vancouver alone. With an estimated 5,000 heroin addicts in the Downtown Eastside and a municipal government that has officially embraced the progressive four pillars approach--prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement—to problematic drug use, Vancouver is most receptive to such ground-breaking research. It is also the home of Insite, North America's only safe injection site. The NAOMI and SALOME projects are the only heroin maintenance programs to take place in North America. Ongoing or pilot heroin maintenance programs are underway in Britain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.

Once again, what passes for a victory in the Mexican drug war is really just another bloody mess:

Reporting from Mexico City - The dead drug lord lay on his back, blood-soaked jeans yanked down to the knees. Mexican peso notes carpeted his bullet-torn body, and U.S. $100 bills formed neat rows next to his bared belly.
…
Even in a country where pictures of gruesome crime scenes routinely show up on the front pages of newspapers, the Beltran Leyva images have stirred controversy over who staged the tableau and whether Mexican authorities did so to send a taunting message to the rest of his powerful drug trafficking gang.
…
"It is the state forces that adopted the basic language of the narco," columnist Luis Petersen Farah wrote in the Milenio newspaper. " 'There's your money,' the photograph seems to say. It's the language of war." [LA Times]

There's something deeply unsettling about watching the Mexican military mimic the intimidation tactics of the drug lords. Finding peace is simply not on the agenda anymore.

No matter how you frame it, most people still struggle with the concept that marijuana laws are enforced unfairly. I don't see what's so complicated about this:

Even though surveys show they are part of the demographic group that makes the heaviest use of pot, white people in New York are the least likely to be arrested for it.

Last year, black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession and no more serious crime. Latinos were four times more likely. [NYT]

You can't explain away a gaping disparity like that. This is not just a matter of cultural differences in marijuana using behavior. White people smoke herb in the streets of New York, too. There is no bigger factor at play here than the discretionary choices police make about who to approach and investigate. It really is that simple and that unfair.

But just because it's racist doesn’t mean it's bad, says the city:

Mr. Bloomberg’s chief criminal justice aide, John Feinblatt, declined to discuss the city’s approach to marijuana arrests, or the findings of the study. But through a spokesman, he issued a statement maintaining the pot arrests have helped drive down violent crime.

Even if I believed that stopping a million people a year in the streets of New York is necessary to drive down violent crime, that still doesn’t mean you have to arrest them when marijuana is discovered. None of this even begins to make any sense, and it comes as no surprise that city officials are loathe to attempt an explanation for it.

If you want to reduce violent crime, try legalizing marijuana so there's one less thing to fight over.