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George Bush and Cocaine: How the President Might Save His Approval Rating
[Editor's Note: Jimi Devine is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.] As the eyes of the political spectrum make their way through Scott McClellan's expose on his Bush administration experiences, which includes information involving GWâs cocaine use, the president will continue to deny his actions. But Bush shouldnât be so quick to repeat that he was too wasted to remember whether he powdered his nose -- look at this honest group of politicians who have come out on the record about their past drug use and the lack of negative effects on their political careers. Obviously the current flagship of an open door policy to past drug use has to be Barrack Obama. In 1995's "Dreams From My Father" the Democratic frontrunner acknowledged his drug use before even becoming a member of the Illinois state legislature. Over primary season this did open Obama up to attack, most famously Mitt Romney noting: "I think that was a huge error by Barack Obama⦠it is just the wrong way for people who want to be the leader of the free world." As we look at Obama and a few of the politicians who admit to being in the "once or twice" club, the underlying similarity between many is their political prominence. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg famously responded to the marijuana question with, "You bet I did, and I enjoyed it." Nevertheless, a dash of irony is added by New York being the marijuana arrest capital of the world. While Bloomberg's approach wasn't for everyone, others did come out of the smokey closet. Past presidential contenders John Edwards, John Kerry, and Howard Dean admitted together at 2003 presidential debate they had all tried the drug in the past. Few went into detail like Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer who cooked up his marijuana in some baked beans with a friend while at Columbia University. Finally we come to Al Gore. As a senator in the 1980s he took part in the hearings to approve Supreme Court nominees. When Douglas H. Ginsburg came under fire for his past marijuana use, Gore stepped up and admitted he had also tried the drug in the past. Of course, it was later found at that âtriedâ meant a lot more than occasional consumption. So here now we sit with allegations from a former press secretary that the President of the United States can't remember if he ever tried cocaine. I think it's pretty obvious how the president needs to use this as a boost to his credibility. Look at Dean and Gore, one is the Chairman of the DNC and the other convinced us that the ice caps are melting. If Bush decides to come out from his closet or from under his marble desk, at the very least he would be saying something the American people could believe.
New York Times Calls For Massive U.S. Investment in Mexico's Drug War
Just last week, the NY Times delivered a dismal assessment of drug war progress in Mexico. Now its editorial board proposes that we spend billions in U.S. tax dollars funding the proven failure that is Mexico's war on drugs:The timid assistance package proposed by the Bush administration and pared down by Congress suggests that Washington doesnât grasp either the scale of the danger or its own responsibilities.â¦The Bush administration is right to acknowledge the shared threat and the common responsibility. But the three-year, $1.4 billion aid package it proposed doesnât do the job. It is too small, notably so when compared with the billions the cartels earn in the United States.The whole editorial all but refutes itself, observing that nothing is working, then calling for substantial investments in the same tactics that have produced only dramatic violence. It really is amazing to think that the editors of one of our top newspapers have no concept of the social, economic, and historical dimensions of the war on drugs. What examples could they possibly be relying upon to conclude that larger investments are the key to drug war victory? If the NYT thinks $1.4 billion isn't enough, then they should tell us how much they'd like to spend. Seriously. How much will it cost to win? How would you define success? If we buy a whole entire drug war for the Mexican government, will it be modeled after ours? If so, are you insane?I'm so damned tired of being told that the drug war would work if we spent more and fought harder. How much are we really willing to sacrifice in order to prove how false that is?
Current scenario of HIV/AIDS Interventions in Chennai
Current scenario of HIV/AIDS Interventions in Chennai
Good things could happen
The Alter Net news today reported that America was ready for legalized marijuana.Sounded pretty good to me until I opened my daily paper and saw an article by one Alan Ferguson saying that in spite of
Reuters Should Stop Printing Mindless Anti-Pot Propaganda
No one other than the Drug Czar publishes more misleading headlines about marijuana than Reuters news service. Heck, the Drug Czar even gets his blogging ideas from them.Via NORML, just look at these two recent Reuters headlines regarding recent marijuana research: Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain partsMarijuana may up heart attack, stroke riskAll of this sounds very disturbing, of course, but as is always the case with scary marijuana headlines, there turns out to be far more to the story and far less for marijuana users to worry about. In this case, both studies relied on small samples of obscenely heavy marijuana users (up to 350 joints per week!).Let me be the first to concede that if someone smokes marijuana all day every day, there is something wrong with them. They may be treating a medical and/or psychological condition and their use may even be understandable under some unusual circumstance. But these are not the people we should study if we want to know the effects of marijuana. The lessons we learn from observing them won't apply to anyone but them. Beyond all of that, neither of these studies even shows what the headline said. They just didn't. Sarah Baldauf at U.S. News & World Report helpfully points out that the "shrinking brain" study researchers didn't know what size the participants' brains were before initiating marijuana use. It's possible that people with a smaller hippocampus and amygdala are more likely to become compulsive marijuana users, and that the drug doesnât change brain size at all. Brain size is also a deeply flawed measure of intelligence anyway. In sum, the story isn't news, it's nonsense.As for the marijuana-heart disease link, the study didnât address whether the subjects actually had heart disease. Its conclusions were based on heightened levels of a protein that's associated with heart disease. It means nothing, even if you leave aside the fact that the subjects of the study smoked an unbelievable 78-350 joints per week.In fairness to Reuters, both stories included a strong counterpoint from MPP's Bruce Mirkin, arguing that the absurdly high marijuana consumption of the study participants rendered any conclusions meaningless. Nonetheless, we should not be grateful simply because a reformer got a quote in a story that should never have been published. We could go on all day about bad things that marijuana "might cause," "could lead to," or "may be associated with," but none of that means a thing unless it's actually true. What is true, and will always be true, is that the war on marijuana users harms far more people than marijuana ever could.
Most Mexicans Think Drug Traffickers Are Winning the Drug War
It seems Mexican President Felipe Calderon's aggressive drug war tactics are impressing American politicians more than his own people:A majority of Mexicans believe violent drug gangs are winning a war with President Felipe Calderon's government after one of the worst months on record for killings, Reforma newspaper reported on Sunday.According to a poll by the newspaper, 53 percent of Mexicans think that drug traffickers hold the upper hand against government forces which are trying to clamp down on cartels that ship drugs to the United States.Only 24 percent said they believed the government was winning the battle. The remaining 23 percent gave no opinion. [Reuters]Since Calderon took office and promised a crackdown on drug trafficking, there have been over 4,000 drug war killings in Mexico. Mexicans must live amidst horrific and growing violence, with no end in sight, just so Calderon can stand proudly atop the drug war podium. Of course, he can only do so figuratively, for fear of being gunned down like his highest-ranking police officials.Really, the question of who's winning the drug war shouldn't even have to be asked. Of course the cartels are winning, because there wouldnât be cartels without the drug war. Every dollar they make, every bride they pay, every assassin's bullet is a product of drug prohibition's bloodstained legacy. The problem with the drug war isnât that we arenât trying hard enough, it's that trying hard is actually where all the worst violence and disorder comes from.
The Legalization Threat; DDEAL Newsletter #1
Drug Dealers Ensuring Against Legalization (DDEAL.us) (Please REPOST! The threat of legalization is REAL!) DDEAL Newsletter #1
Obama Supports Mexico's Drug War Crackdown
Nowhere is the failure of drug prohibition more obvious than in Mexico, where President Calderon's crackdown has already produced over 4,000 deaths, without making a dent in the drug trade.Yet Obama now joins John McCain in praising Mexico's brutal and ineffective anti-drug efforts:Mexican drug cartels are terrorizing cities and towns. President Calderon was right to say that enough is enough. We must support Mexicoâs effort to crack down. [suntimes.com]I don't know how anyone can look at the dismal state of the Mexican drug war and find anything to be proud of. Still, I agree with Pete Guither who responded to Obama's comments by pointing out that we just can't expect a realistic drug policy platform from the major party candidates. They're not there yet.Obama's good positions on needle exchange, medical marijuana, and sentencing have drawn interest from reformers, but there's simply no way to paint his praise of Mexico's bloody drug war crusade as anything other than typical prohibitionist "troop surge" rhetoric. It's the opposite of what's needed and it should give us pause before endorsing the popular perception among reformers that Obama "gets" the drug war issue.When describing his plans to fund drug war activity in Central and South America, Obama says "we'll tie our support to clear benchmarks for drug seizures, corruption prosecutions, crime reduction, and kingpins busted," demonstrating a fundamental failure to grasp how those activities complement one another. Crime and violence will simply increase if enforcement increases, so any set of benchmarks will ultimately have to ignore one category or the other. In regards to both Obama and McCain, however, we've got to recognize that ending violence in the international drug trade is the final stage of drug policy reform. It's the very last issue we'll have to confront and the last one about which we're likely to hear interesting or forward-thinking proposals from prominent politicians. There's no middle ground here. When we're ready to end violence and corruption in the drug trade, we'll stop waging the drug war.(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)
Drug Tests Are Useless Devices That Donât Even Work at Detecting Drugs
The Drug Czar's blog was very excited on Friday. Why? Because a school in Florida drug tested 120 students and all of them passed!"It worked out very positively," [the principal] said this afternoon. "We did not have a single student test positive, out of 120 students we tested."Random meant random, she said. Tests were done unannounced at different times during different days of the week. Some students were tested more than once, just because of the randomness of it all, she said. [Tampa Bay Online]Admittedly, a random sample of 120 students testing negative for drugs is a surprising result. So surprising, in fact, that one begins to wonder how the hell it happened. Well the answer is simple: according to Tampa Bay Online, they used saliva tests, which are practically useless.Via wikipedia, here are the estimated detection times for saliva drug testing: Marijuana and hashish (THC): An hour after ingestion, and up to 24 hours depending on use.Cocaine (including crack): From time of ingestion up to 2 to 3 days.Opiates: From time of ingestion up to 2 to 3 daysMethamphetamine and ecstasy (MDMA, "crank," "ice"): From time of ingestion up to 2 to 3 days.Benzodiazepines: From time of ingestion up to 2 to 3 daysSo, basically, all 120 of these students could have been smoking hash and crack all night on Friday and still passed their drug tests on Monday when they got to school. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm just saying that testing students' saliva doesn't prove whether or not they use drugs. That's not how it works, and any newspaper article purporting to celebrate the effectiveness of such a program ought to disclose that fact, lest it should become yet another arm in the Drug Czar's nationwide campaign to randomly collect bodily fluids from our children.
Mexicans believe drug gangs winning war with government
Drug gangs Winning Drug War And what do the jack-booted thugs (erm...government authorities) say?
Injecting drug users in Chennai deprived except for HIV/AIDS .
Injecting drug users in Chennai deprived of their Services except for HIV/AIDS
Stigma and discrimination faced by Current drug users in Chennai
Stigma and discrimination faced by drug users or people who use drugs in Chennai is multidimensional
Barbara Kay Says Mean Things About Marijuana Users and the Reform Movement
Barbara Kay's latest column on marijuana policy at The National Post is a remarkable achievement. I've simply never seen an article that endorses marijuana decriminalization while simultaneously serving up such silly anti-pot propaganda. Kay maintains that she supports decrim, but opposes legalization, urging proponents to "inquire more deeply into recent scientific findings" about marijuana. After encouraging a science-based debate, Kay launches into a series of wildly unscientific generalizations:â¦because alcohol in moderation is culturally aligned with enhanced fellowship and animated human interaction, it is therefore a communal as well as an individual good. Conversely, the purpose of marijuana is the alteration of consciousness, an end achieved by a process that thrives in solitude and mental torpor.What!? Rather obviously, the "enhanced fellowship and animated human interaction" achieved through alcohol use is the direct result of the "alteration of consciousness." Kay is literally suggesting that marijuana users seek "alteration of consciousness" while alcohol users do not. That is just not true. What else can I say? People use alcohol and marijuana for the same reason. They like the way it makes them feel. Equally dishonest is her characterization of marijuana use as a "process that thrives in solitude and mental torpor." To whatever extent marijuana is consumed in more solitary settings than alcohol, mightn't that have something to do with the fact that one is illegal and can get you arrested, while the other is sold openly at bars, concerts, and sporting events? Here in the U.S., public use of marijuana at interracial jazz clubs was one of the reasons the drug became prohibited to begin with. Whenever one reads such silly arguments, it's only natural to wonder what the author wants. People don't just go around pretending alcohol doesnât alter consciousness because that's what they believe. No one actually believes that. Right?In this case, it seems Kay is motivated by animosity towards what she describes as "the nihilist agenda of cynical all-drug legalizers who are exploiting marijuanaâs relatively innocent image as their Trojan horse." If that's what she thinks drug policy reform is all about, I guess I shouldnât be surprised by anything else she says.
Another Ryan Frederick Update
Radley Balko has much more information from Ryan Frederick's preliminary hearing, which I mentioned yesterday.Of particular interest is the fact that special prosecutor Paul Ebert has threatened to file felony drug charges against Frederick, despite the fact that only a tiny amount of marijuana was recovered in the raid. The suspected marijuana grow that prompted the raid simply didnât exist, so any new drug charges at this point are almost certainly a trumped-up character assassination designed to smear Frederick in front of the jury. It's a critical move for Ebert, who clearly realizes that it will be hard to explain why Frederick would have shot a cop over a few flakes of pot. Unless Frederick can be painted as a hardened criminal, his persistent claim that he thought the police were burglars would likely prevail.It is just amazing the amount of effort being put into prosecuting an innocent man for a murder that wasn't his fault, all so that the real killer (the drug war) can remain on the loose.
McClellan: Bush Partied So Much, He Couldn't Remember Whether He Tried Cocaine
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new book is pissing off the Bush Administration for a dozen reasons, most of them irrelevant to this blog. This passage, however, ought to replace "I didn't inhale," as the most infamous pseudo-acknowledgement of drug use in presidential history:McClellan tracks Bush's penchant for self-deception back to an overheard incident on the campaign trail in 1999 when the then-governor was dogged by reports of possible cocaine use in his younger days.The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat."'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'" [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]I'm almost prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on this, seeing as he was speaking off the record with a supporter. It's not a context in which one would be inclined to lie. Nor is "I don't remember" a particularly flattering portrayal of one's own drug history. Really, one begins to wonder what else Bush doesnât remember doing at these "wild parties." Let's all just pause for a moment to picture George W. Bush on acid. Yikes, nevermind.Anyhow, in case you're wondering where I'm going with this, I'm not going to argue that you can do cocaine, party until you forget all about it, and then grow up to be just as smart and great as George Bush. A lot of people would find that argument unimpressive for a variety of reasons. My point, rather, is that as we inevitably subject future presidential hopefuls to the usual and predictable inquisitions over their past drug use, we now have a new bottom line against which to compare their answers. From now on, all we should ask is that candidates for the job of president be able to accurately and confidently tell us what drugs they did in college. As long as you have some vague idea what you put in your body and why, you can pass the newly revised presidential drug use questionnaire.
World Psychedelic Support Statistic
Another attempt to fight the good fight, http://www.project-sunspot.com is conducting the first world psychedelic support statistic, documenting the numbers in the public at large who support the furt