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Marijuana Warriors and Statistical Illness (was "Here We Go Again" or "Walters Is At It Again")
A number of our readers wrote in this weekend to point out that drug czar John Walters was stumping the "marijuana causes mental illness" bandwagon. It was probably inevitable. After all, a year ago we reported, "Reefer Madness Strikes a Leading British Newspaper," and this and other spurious claims have continued to emanate from various outlets and agencies ever since. Still, propaganda is no less irritating for having anticipated it. So I could only sigh when I received a copy of a New York Times story that a member had forwarded, with his note "Walters is at it again." The article did quote people on the other side, which is good. But there's no way around the headline, which is what most people will ever read and which did not reflect any controversy or disagreement over the drug czar's claims. Master stats and criminology expert Matthew Robinson (author of the famed "Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics" picked a similar title for his detailed critique of Walters, "Here We Go Again: White House Makes Scary Claims About Marijuana." I'll leave it to readers to follow the link for the bulk of Robinson's analysis, but the major thing to keep in mind is that Walters has not met the three-level burden of proof to back up his claims. Those levels are the following: One must show a correlation. Marijuana use and mental illness have to show up in many of the same people. That might not be so hard to demonstrate, but the reason for the correlation may be as simple as the fact that lots of people use marijuana, so most physicial or psychological issues may be represented among its users. Which leads to the second needed level: One must show a temporal order. That is, it is necessary to prove that marijuana use preceded the onset of mental illness. If marijuana use began later, there obviously is no causation. Even if they start at about the same time, there may be no causation. And then there is a third, very crucial intellectual requirement for drawing the conclusion that marijuana use causes mental illness. That is the need to demonstrate a "lack of spuriousness" -- which means eliminating the possibility that other factors could have led to both the marijuana use and the mental illness. For example, physical or other life issues may have led an individual to become depressed, and that person may have then begun using marijuana because of being depressed. Or there could be biological or personality factors that make both depression and drug use more likely. Or there could be other things going on. And now you know more about statistics than the drug czar does. :)
The Ethics of Heroin Maintenance
Heroin maintenance programs have been used in some European countries (notably, Switzerland and Great Britain) wit
Students for Sensible Drug Policy Responds to the Arrests at San Diego State
Just watch the finesse with which SDSU's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy responded to the arrest of 75 of their classmates:SDSU-SSDP President Randy Hencken's superb performance shows how effectively one can reframe the issue by choosing smart and appropriate talking points. There are many interesting, and truthful, drug policy reform arguments that would nonetheless have been poorly applied here. As the video shows, a disciplined and mature reaction from reformers resulted in positive press coverage. There is another lesson here, however, that should not go unnoticed: the reform argument came off strong because we had people on the ground at San Diego State well before the DEA showed up to haul students away in handcuffs. SSDP is a growing presence on campuses throughout the nation and beyond. Each new chapter increases our chances of being organized and prepared when the next such opportunity presents itself. If you're in school and you donât have a chapter, go here now. Whether you're looking to organize events or just stay informed and make some friends, you'll find what youâre looking for. This is where the next generation of reformers is coming from.
Drug Cops Raid Innocent Man, Shoot Him 5 Times, Then File Bogus Charges
His name is Tracy Ingle and he's alive, but he needs help.1. They raided his house from multiple entrances, bashing down his front door with a battering ram and crashing through his bedroom window.2. He grabbed a broken gun to scare what he thought were burglars and was subsequently shot 5 times. One bullet remains lodged above his heart.3. In jail, they withheld his pain medication and antibiotics. They ignored his doctor's instructions to change his bandages and clean his wounds. He became infected.4. They found no drugs but charged him with drug dealing. His sister claims ownership of the scale and baggies which form the basis for the drug charge. She uses those things for making jewelry.5. He pawned his car to make bail so he had to walk 2 miles on crutches to his first court appearance. His leg was still infected.6. On the warrant, the words "crack cocaine" are scratched out and replaced with "methamphetamine," suggesting the document may have been illegally altered after the judge approved it.7. A neighbor who saw the whole raid now refuses to talk after a visit from the police. They assured him that "he did not see what he thought he saw."If you can handle it, Radley Balko has much more.[Ed: Sign our petition to Congress, state legislators, governors and the president to stop these dangerous raids from happening, and click here to learn more about the issue and campaign.]
Mississippi Drug War Blues: The Case of Cory Maye
Drew Carey's latest reason.tv video features the horrific story of Cory Maye, an innocent man who sits in prison after killing an intruder in his home who turned out to be a police officer executing a drug warrant meant for someone else. This video is required viewing for anyone who thinks they have an opinion about the drug war. If you don't know Cory's story, and the countless others like it, you don't understand what the drug war really is, what it does to innocent people, and how it has corrupted the administration of justice in America. [Ed: Sign our petition to Congress, state legislators, governors and the president to stop these dangerous raids from happening, and click here to learn more about the issue and campaign.]
Marijuana: UKâs Police and Drug Policy Experts Object to PMâs Reefer Madness
Finally making good on his proposal nearly a year ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brownâs reclassification of marijuana as a class B drug is so obtuse and such poor public policy that the police are refusing their newly-given power: Nearly six out of 10 cases of cannabis possession used to be dealt with by arrest and formal caution before it was downgraded. But police chiefs are not expected to return to such a practice, blamed for wasting thousands of officers' hours that could be spent on other crime-fighting duties. The Association of Chief Police Officers told the Guardian: "The key will be the discretion for officers to strike the right balance. We do not want to criminalise young people who are experimenting." When police go so far as to reject an increase in their power, especially when it comes to drugs, it should be clear that your policies are laughable. Adding to his obtuseness, PM Brown rejected the recommendation of his own panel of 23 highly-qualified drug policy experts when they ruled harsher reclassification was the wrong thing to do. Itâs doubtful, but hopefully the combination of objections by UK law enforcement and drug policy experts will finally make him realize, and admit, that the policy is flawed. Making this reclassification even more ridiculous, the government is having major problems keeping drugs out of the hands of prisoners: DRUGS worth more than £100million are being traded in prisons every year, it was revealed yesterday. The claim was made by a former drugs treatment chief who said half of all prisoners are addicts. As much as 44lb (20kg) of narcotics, mainly heroin, were smuggled into jails every week said the former official, Hussain Djemil. It seems there should be more pressing concerns for British drug policy officials. If they canât keep hard drugs out of the prisons (which come complete with strip and body cavity searches, drug dogs, prison guards, constant surveillance, etc.), whatâs the point of increasing sentences for a soft drug like marijuana? Of the millions of cannabis users, some of those who will be caught will go to jail for even longer where they will be exposed to a 100 million dollar industry that will provide them cheaper drugs! Once again, how and why is reclassification going to be an effective deterrent? Police refusing to adhere to the reclassification policy is a wonderful sign. It sets a good precedent of dissonance toward misinformed or abusive authority that is rarely seen directed toward elected officials over drug policy matters. If more police chiefs would follow this example, drug prohibition would be in greater jeopardy. Hopefully this will lead to more reasonable people standing up in civil disobedience against drug policies that they know to be immoral and ineffective.
DEA Inteligence audit goes pretty bad....
A Department of Justice audit on the DEAâs use of intelligence analysts had some shocking finds, and a few suggestions.
British Prime Minister Ignores His Own Experts and increases Penalties for Marijuana
It's official. The British government is reclassifying marijuana to make possession a more serious offense. Use has been declining since they reduced penalties in 2004. However, instances of morons claiming marijuana can kill you have increased dramatically. Looks like the morons won this round:Smith's expected announcement (Watch the video here.) comes just days after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown â who has been afflicted with a severe case of 'Reefer Madness' since taking office last June â raved that consuming cannabis can be fatal, and that strict penalties on pot are necessary in order to "send a message" to young people that marijuana smoking is "unacceptable." Ironically, the Home Secretaryâs formal announcement contradicts the official recommendations of Britainâs Advisory Panel on the Misuse of Drugs, which released its own report today finding that pot lacks the potential health risks of most other illicit drugs, and that its use is unlikely to trigger mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. [NORML] As people around the world continue to die from everything except marijuana, one begins to realize how destructive it really is to go around making such a spectacular fuss about it. The time and resources spent pretending marijuana is so dangerous + the time and resources spent pretending to protect us from it with laws that don't even work = a whole mess of actual bad things that could be dealt with more effectively. There will never be one minute of a police officer's time or one dollar of a nation's crime control budget that is best spent combatting marijuana use. Not ever. Marijuana has been failing to hurt people for thousands of years. If only the same could be said for police, politicians, and the press.
Judge Says Stun Guns Can't Be Mentioned in Autopsies
This is creepy:AKRON, Ohio - A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge ruled.Friday's decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff's deputies are charged in the death a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun. [kstar.com]
SDSU SSDP President's Speech Today.
I was able to get my hands on a transcription of the speech that San Diego State University SSDP President Randy Hencken gave to many San Diego media outlets at a protest to "Operation Sudden Fall".
Nobody is Safe from Drug Prohibitionâs SWAT Teams
Yet another SWAT team raid has gone horribly bad. A group of police officers stormed a house looking for suspected drug dealers. But this otherwise normal situation is somewhat out of the ordinary because there was actually a relatively wealthy, affluent person who was unwittingly targeted: The [police officers] were together Wednesday night, battering down the door of a suspected drug house, when two men on the other side nearly ended their lives, police said. Gillis and Garrison remained in Grant Medical Center last night, recovering from serious gunshot wounds, as investigators worked to build the case against the two men accused of shooting them during a raid gone awry on the Near East Side. One of the accused is Derrick Foster, a 38-year-old former defensive end for Ohio State University who police said has no criminal record. The article also states that a work review called Foster "an asset to the Near East Side" of the neighborhood where he was employed as a Columbus code-enforcement supervisor. He was a pillar of society. When he heard the police bust in the door of his friends house, he mistook them for a team of robbers and fired his legally-owned weapon. He was not under any investigation, others in the house were. Here is the official police story on what took place: Officers with the narcotics bureau's Investigative and Tactical Unit had received a warrant to search the house at 1781 E. Rich St., just north of Main Street. They approached about 9:45 p.m. IN/TAC officers are trained for such raids and make eight to 12 a week across the city, police said. They follow a specific procedure that includes announcing their presence immediately. "The whole time they're pounding on the door, they're yelling, 'Police!'," division spokeswoman Amanda Ford said. But according to a witness, the only alert given was for the windows to be broken. The police spokeswoman, who wasn't there, apparently knows something that the witness doesn't. In addition, even if the police did yell, I can think of several completely plausible explanations why people in a home may not hear such an announcement â theyâre listening to loud music, theyâre in the basement working with loud machinery, theyâre asleep and using earplugs, etc. Also, the article stated "police didn't know who might be in the house when they raided it." I question the intelligence and responsibility of the decision to raid a house when they had no idea who might be there. In this case, an innocent man (or men) was exposed to a traumatic experience that ended in a horrible way. What if his daughter had been there too? What this shows is that anybody could be the target of one of these raids. This is not just a problem for the underprivileged. Foster is a college-educated middle-class father. He owned a legal firearm, a right granted in part for the purposes of self-protection. Attempting to protect himself, he now faces two counts of felonious assault and attempted murder. It is extremely fortunate that this didnât turn out even worse. Both of the policemen that were wounded are thankfully expected to recover. But the sad truth is that Fosterâs five-year-old daughter is probably going to have to grow up with her father in prison because of this futile drug prohibition-related insanity. Yet another American family destroyed by the increasingly indiscriminate drug war.
News Release: Will SDSU Drug Bust Coverage Raise the Critical Questions?
Will SDSU's Drug Bust Reduce Drug Availability on Campus in the Future? Advocates Urge Media to Look Beyond the Surface, Ask Critical Questions About Raid's Long-Term Implications for Drug Trade (or Lack Thereof) In the wake of a major drug bust at San Diego State University, in which 96 people including 75 students were arrested on drug charges as part of "Operation Sudden Fall," advocates are asking media outlets to go beyond the surface to probe whether drug laws and enforcement actually reduce the availability of drugs. "Cocaine was banned in 1914, and marijuana in 1937," said David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, "and yet these drugs are so widely available almost a century later that college students can be hauled away 75 at a time for them. That is the very definition of policy failure." Borden, who is also executive editor of Drug War Chronicle, a major weekly online publication, continued: "Since 1980, when the drug war really started escalating under the Reagan administration, the average street price of cocaine has dropped by a factor of five, when adjusted for purity and inflation. (1) Given that the strategy was to increase drug prices, in order to then reduce the demand, that failure has to be called spectacular." Drug arrests in the US number close to 1.5 million per year, but to little evident effect as such data suggests. Ironically, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis painted a compelling picture of the drug war's failure in her own quote given to the Los Angeles Times: "This operation shows how accessible and pervasive illegal drugs continue to be on our college campuses and how common it is for students to be selling to other students." "While SDSU's future drug sellers will probably avoid sending such explicit text messages as the accused in this case did, it's doubtful that they will avoid the campus for very long," Borden said. "In fact the replacements are undoubtedly already preparing to take up the slack. By September if not sooner, the only remaining evidence that 'Operation Sudden Fall' ever happened will be the court cases and the absence of certain people from the campus." "Instead of throwing away money and law enforcement time on a policy that doesn't work, ruining lives in the process, Congress should repeal drug prohibition and allow states to create sensible regulations to govern drugs' lawful distribution and use. At a minimum, the focus should be taken off enforcement," said Borden. â END â 1. Data from DEA STRIDE drug price collection program, adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index figures. Further information is available upon request.
John Conyers Demands Answers From DEA Over the Medical Marijuana Raids
Just read this fantastic letter (pdf), which Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent to DEA's acting administrator Michele Leonhart. Considering the infinite variety of questions one might have to ask in the hopes of understanding what the hell DEA thinks it's doing, Conyers does a pretty good job of covering the bases. His questions are so good, I suspect someone else may have helped write them. Should DEA fail to provide a satisfactory response, Conyers will initiate Congressional hearings to get the answers that he and the American people have been demanding for too many years now.
Dia Mundial de la Marijuana (Global Marijuana Day), Mexico City
Here in Mexico's capital, several thousand people gathered at the Alameda Central, a large park in the historic center of the city, to celebrate Global Marijuana Day. Punks, Goths, hippies, and members of all the other "urban tribes" that constitute the youth counterculture of one of the world's premier cities came together for a day of respect, tolerance, music, and above all, to call for the legalization of the sacred herb. Of course, it's not just the youth cultures of Mexico City that we're talking about here; it's the global cannabis culture. Cannabis Nation knows no boundaries. In many respects, I could have been standing in Memphis or Malmo or Madrid or Mombasa or Minsk--the t-shirts and slogan are the same, the concerns roughly identical. I'll say this for the global prohibition of marijuana: It has created a global culture of resistance that supercedes national identities or barriers. The music and musicians were spot-on, but lyrically and rhythmically. Some of the songs were pure celebration: We're going to the beach and I wanna smoke We're going to dance and toke Some of the songs were highly politicized and, naturally, critical of the US. One rapper compared Bush ("creating hell on earth") with Hitler and Hernan Cortes, placing him squarely in a particularly Mexican pantheon of villains. Speaking of politics, one of the great battles going on in Mexico right now is over the government's efforts to privatize Pemex, the state oil monopoly. For many Mexicans, Pemex is a symbol of the Revolution a century ago that overthrew foreign domination. After the Revolution, the Mexicans expropriated the foreign oil companies; now they fear the government is going to give the national oil industry back to the foreigners. One sign at the march tied that struggle to the struggle for marijuana legalization: Mariguana y petroleo Eso es nuestro patrimonio Marijuana and Oil That's our patrimony The police presence was minimal, and as far as I could see, there were no problems and no arrests, although pot-smoking was open and frequent throughout the day. I took lots of photos, as you can see. (Sixteen more below the fold.)Sadly, my memory stick got full, and I missed some of the potentially most impressive shots, when the multitude was marching down Avenida Juarez, past the Bellas Artes palace and in front of some of the old colonial buildings in the city center. Still, Global Marijuana Day in Mexico City was a trip. Enjoy the photos, and look for a full report on the action in the Chronicle later this week.
Anything but people
I went to a meeting today of the B.C.Mental Health and Addictions Research Network.The meeting started off with the narrator stating how important the data was to the researchers and how important it
Don't Use Text Messages to Advertise Your Cocaine Prices
When I heard today that 75 students at San Diego State University were arrested on drug charges, something didn't sound right. That's just a hell of a lot of people, and in light of the drug war's typically flimsy evidentiary standards, I leaned towards the assumption that more than half of them probably didnât do a damned thing.That may still be true, but after learning how reckless and cavalier these guys were, I'm less shocked by the outcome:"Undercover agents purchased cocaine from fraternity members and confirmed that a hierarchy existed for the purpose of selling drugs for money," the DEA said.â¦A member of Theta Chi sent out a mass text message to his "faithful customers" stating that he and his "associates" would be unable to sell cocaine while they were in Las Vegas over one weekend, according to the DEA. The text promoted a cocaine "sale" and listed the reduced prices. [AP]Um, had you ever heard of the drug war, you idiot? Why not advertise on Craigslist while you're at it. Many will say they had it coming, but I sympathize nevertheless. The lure of the black market sucks these guys in like a whirlpool. It is precisely the sort of people who would behave this way that are drawn forcefully towards such activity, empowered by it, and ultimately destroyed by the state at tremendous expense to the taxpayer. If someone responsible and accountable to the public were charged with distributing these substances to those determined to consume them, we wouldn't have conspicuous drug monopolies creating disorder on college campuses across America. We wouldn't have to pay for young people to be investigated and convicted, then sent away to a horrible place where taxpayers must buy their food and clothing and medical care and even fund their reintegration into society. Look no further than the fact that college students are getting hauled out of college 75 at a time for drug violations to know that our drug policy isn't working at all.
Government still clinging to dogma and rejecting science on Insite
The story in the paper today was that doctors at UBC(university of British Columbia)had written the Prime Minister in support of the renewal of the exemption required to keep the only safe injection s
Man Dies After Being Denied a Liver Transplant For Using Medical Marijuana
Rest in peace, Timothy Garon. I'm not making it up, this really happened:SEATTLE (AP) â A man who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.â¦His death came a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana, although it was authorized under Washington state law.They let him die. They let him die because he took his doctor's advice and used medical marijuana to treat his hepatitis C.Here's what the Washington Post, a reputable news source, said about marijuana and hepatitis C. This is from 2006, a long enough time ago to make policy changes:Marijuana can improve the effectiveness of drug therapy for hepatitis C, a potentially deadly viral infection that affects more than 3 million Americans, a study has found. The work adds to a growing literature supporting the notion that in some circumstances pot can offer medical benefits.So marijuana is effective in treating hepatitis C, unless of course, the fact that you used marijuana is held up as an excuse to deny you a liver transplant, in which case using marijuana will get you killed. If what they did to Timothy Garon doesn't qualify as medical malpractice, then it's time to rewrite the rules.
Second Chance
We have been way overdue for helping people who's less fortunate, this is a big step but we still need to fight for more changes and we will.