The matrix of global drug prohibition was reloaded in Vienna last month -- the only change being a new target date for making the world drug free. Video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union:

In yesterday's Drug War Chronicle we reported that a deal seemed to be near for reform of New York State's infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws -- reform that appeared likely to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for many (though not all) of the state's drug defendants while allowing current Rockefeller prisoners to apply for commutations. The deal now reportedly has been reached. Click here for the latest from the New York Times, and here for the NYT archive on the topic. Tony Papa sent out the link for the following NYPost.com video about it too: The legislation is not perfect, and it doesn't help everybody -- check back for details -- but we are optimistic that this will help a lot of people and that we are at an historical turning point in the issue.

With the help of our intern, Stacia Cosner of SSDP fame, we put together this short video last week:

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's Howard Wooldridge is commonly known on Capitol Hill as "the guy with the hat." Howard debated drug legalization on the Al Jazeera network this week -- check it out below:

Our friends at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union have announced the winners of their drug policy video and poster contests, in preparation for next weeks UN international drug summit in Vienna. Click on the images below to check them out.

Ryan Frederick "Odds and Ends," via Radley Balko.

Peter Guither routinely dissects drug war illogic in the public discourse over at the Drug WarRant blog. Last week he highlighted some illustratively blind comments in the Wall Street Journal by an unnamed senior US official who actually argued that increased violence in Mexico is a sign of progress in the drug war:

U.S. law-enforcement officials -- as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico -- say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing. "If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence "because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb followed up:

The cops wanted a new metric by which to judge their success -- one that would not penalize them for an increased murder rate that necessarily follows from doing their job, i.e. eliminating a major drug trafficker.

Pete pointed out that Goldfarb and the official are "confusing success in an action with success in policy." Sure, we can take out any given drug trafficking organization if we try hard enough, but if the result is that different traffickers supply the same amount of drugs to people, while tearing the country apart at greater and greater levels with their fighting, it's poor strategy. And since people are dying in the Mexican drug wars at a rapid pace -- 8,000 have been killed in the past two years since President Calderón ratcheted things up by sending in the military -- I'd say yes, we absolutely should stop it, ASAP. If we're going to be at all logical about things, that is.

Online here. Always good to see a conservative trash the drug laws...

Blogger Lee Rosenberg has authored a six-part series on Joe Biden's role in the drug war, a pretty important topic. While Biden's views on drug policy have certainly improved in recent years, we don't really know how much they have changed, and the history is a pretty bad one. Rosenberg therefore concludes with the $60,000 question (if $60,000 isn't too quaint a number by now):

Unlike his experience in foreign policy and his knowledge of the Middle East (which I’m often impressed by), Joe Biden’s history as a drug warrior likely wasn’t a factor in him becoming Vice President. But as he sets out to play a very critical role in advising a President who might be scrutinized like no other, will he be a continual stumbling block for the reform we desperately need on this front? Will he be the devil on Barack Obama’s shoulder about the drug war in the same way that Dick Cheney was the devil on George Bush’s shoulder about the war on terror?

Only time will tell...

Paul Armentano and NORML came out last month with a report, "Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis & Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, 2000 — 2009," detailing the findings of scientific research on marijuana and its derivatives for treating a wide range of diseases and conditions -- ALS, Alzheimer's and Fibromyalgia, to name just a few. Paul made a significant observation in the foreword to the report:

Whereas researchers in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s primarily assessed cannabis' ability to temporarily alleviate various disease symptoms — such as the nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy — scientists today are exploring the potential role of cannabinoids to modify disease.

Most of the public has already woken up to the lie that's been told by drug warriors to justify medical prohibition of marijuana, the false claim that it has no medical uses. What may never be fully understood is the opportunities tragically lost, the good that could have been done if promising lines of research had been pursued decades earlier instead of decades later, but for our government's bizarre antagonism against a plant...

Radley Balko covers the second wrong-door raid in two months committed by drug agents in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

We haven't reported lately on the issue of under-treatment of pain, so this weekend day seemed like a good time to link to a couple of the sites whose people labor in trenches of the pain struggle every day. First, the war on pain doctors continues, with the latest major battle being that of Wichita-area Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife Linda Schneider. The Schneiders were charged with the deaths of 56 patients by over-prescribing pain medications, but the judge has now limited the case to just four. My guess is that most of these patients passed due to the medical issues that led them to seek treatment, just as one would expect to happen in any medical practice that takes on seriously ill patients; and that a few might have needed the drugs for pain but misused them (as one would also expect to happen sometimes). I haven't examined the case closely enough for that to be more than a guess, but it's an educated guess, as that is usually what is going on in these pain doctor trials. Visit the Pain Relief Network news update page for info. How have things come to this? Big topic, but Dr. Alex DeLuca has a post last week on his "War on Doctors / Pain Crisis" blog, "The Distortion of Medicine and Confusion of Standards," that goes into some of it. A key part of the problem is that while modern pain management textbooks recommend "titration to effect" -- e.g. "gradually increasing the opioid dose until the pain is relieved or until untreatable side effects prevent further dosage increase" -- most doctors just don't do that. And so patients in ongoing, serious pain go without adequate treatment. This makes the typical standard of pain care below medical standards. But it also means that doctors who wrongly believe they shouldn't be relieving a patient's pain are available to testify in trials for the prosecution -- hence the Schneider trial and many others. Even when the defense brings in experts to testify as to what the expert view really is, it creates confusion that can lead to false convictions. This is in fact what happened in the famous William Hurwitz case. DeLuca goes into this in more detail in an interview filmed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, linked to in his post, so check it out. Another physician victim of the pain wars, Dr. William Mangino, recently submitted a Reply Brief in the appeal of his case. He is imprisoned in Pennsylvania, and he wrote the brief himself. It paints a pretty terrible picture of the what the government is doing in these cases. Dr. Mangino sent us a copy, via one of his friends, and we've posted it here.

The latest video from our friends at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union

Nubia Legarda is a Students for Sensible Drug Policy activist from El Paso. Legarda hasn't visited her family in neighboring Ciudad Juárez for months because of the drug trade violence ravaging many of Mexico's cities -- her reason for joining SSDP last year. Texan Terry Nelson is a 30-year law enforcement veteran who worked for the US Border Patrol, the US Customs Service, and the Department of Homeland Security. He is now a leading spokesperson for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

As a native New Jerseyan, I'm pleased to report that a committee of the state senate gave its approval yesterday to the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. One of the cosponsors of the bill, Sen. Loretta Weinberg, even represents my hometown. The upcoming Drug War Chronicle will have a feature story on the vote, and Phil actually got a preliminary version of that to me last night, so I thought I would make it available here on the blog. The article will be finalized sometime Thursday, but in the meanwhile you can read it here.

Things are bad in the drug war here in the US, but they're bad all over. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has released another in its series of films on international drug policy, this one detailing mass forced drug testing among other abuses in the Republic of Georgia:

Sadly, California's Prop 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, lost yesterday, felled by a massive last-minute infusion of cash by California's prison guard union in opposition. Also by the scandalous opposition by several former governors and other unenlightened pols. Good try by our friends the organizers, though, they were fighting to the end. Maybe next time. On the bright side, Sensible Fayetteville passed a lowest priority marijuana enforcement initiative in Arkansas, one more victory to add to those already mentioned here last night. I'm sure Scott will be writing more later, and of course look for Friday's Chronicle to read Phil's comprehensive post-election drug policy reporting.

Michigan's medical marijuana initiative, Proposal 1, is ahead 60-40%, with 10% of the vote counted. Click here to see the latest update at Michigan Live. We await word on California's Prop. 5...

Some links from our friends at Reason:

report on California's Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA), Prop. 5 hitting the ballot next month; and video of rally supporting Charlie Lynch, former medical marijuana provider facing a possible life sentence in court next month

Here's the video:

Despite having nearly a million heroin addicts, with HIV spreading rapidly through that population, Russia's government has very tragically said no to methadone maintenance. According to a short video posted by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), 80% of all new HIV cases in Russia are due to needle sharing by injection drug users. Check out the video here: Check out HCLU here.