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Family drug ring wiped out with #6
Vancouver's sixth homicide has been identified as the last member of a family crack cocaine business.Earl Seymour and three cousins used to run the crack in Vancouver's infamous Down Town East Side.Earl has been identified as the sixth homicide of the year and the sixth drug related killing of '08.Ken was killed in Glace Bay N.S.
Rule #1 of Drug Legalization is Don't Talk About Drug Legalization
Pete Guither calls our attention to this remarkable statement from drug policy academic Mark Kleiman:But there are things we can do about drug policy that would reduce the number of people in prison, and the extent of drug abuse and drug related crime. Legalization isn't one of them because there's not public support for it. And if we acknowledge the fact that, from the point of view of the majority of the population it's a loser, um, then it's not as if we can talk them out of that, so I think the legalization debate is mostly a distraction from doing the real work of fixing our drug policies.Kleiman has long positioned himself as somewhat of a centrist in the drug policy debate, finding fault on both sides of the fence and calling for reform while dismissing legalization as unrealistic and irresponsible. To that end, the above quote may be his most perplexing to date.Along these same lines, I once attended a discussion of Peter Reuter and David Boyum's book An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy, in which the authors admitted ignoring the legalization option in their analysis. Boyum claimed that there was no legitimate political support for ending the drug war and that he and Reuter had therefore confined themselves to recommendations that they thought were politically viable. It is just depressing to witness academics confining the discussion of complex issues within the parameters of pre-existing public opinion. What's the point of possessing vast knowledge of any subject if one chooses to then limit themselves to the preferred policy prescriptions of all the people who don't know what the hell they're talking about? Plainly, the whole don't-talk-about-drug-legalization argument as stated above has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of drug legalization. Taken at face value, these pleading solicitations for us to shut up carry with them the salient implication that if drug legalization were politically viable, then it would be a perfectly sensible thing to discuss.Ironically, drug legalization could become politically viable overnight if not for the multitudes of influential people who continue to oppose it largely because it lacks political viability.
Summer Institute on Addiction in Amsterdam
Please feel free to share this information http://www.ishss.uva.nl/addiction Dear colleagues, We are pleased to let you know that the Summer Institute on Alcohol, Drugs and Addiction will be held at the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Universiteit van Amsterdam from July 13- 26, 2008.
Are HMO's pretending to treat chronic pain?
Are HMO's pretending to treat chronic pain? Like Kaiser pretending to offer a chronic pain program, accepting you into it and then saying no we can't let you in after waiting months to get in.
Mexico Mission Aborted--For Right Now
I could not get my truck into Mexico, so I have turned back. I'm currently sitting in Ponca City, Oklahoma, on my way back to the Great White North. I will then book a flight to Mexico City, but that will probably be three weeks or a month from now to take advantage of lower fares. Gotta run--there's an icy storm blowing in--but I'll be back tomorrow, and I'll have a few things to say about bureaucracy and corruption on the border, "Fourth Amendment-free zones" along the border, and all those Texas highway patrol cars lurking on US 281 coming out of the Rio Grande Valley.
Just When You Thought it Couldn't Get Any Worse
B.C. health minister George Abbott announced today(Fri.Feb.15'08)that the old Willingdon Juvenile Detention Center was to be re-fitted with 100 new beds and put back in use to deal with those unfortunate souls that run afoul of the "new" drug court his government is opening in Burnaby this summer.The claim is that this will be exclusively for people with multiple barriers such as addiction and mental illness.We had drug courts in B.C. back in the seventies to deal with the so called runaway drug problem of the day.There was also an attempt to make addiction itself a criminal act and the fact that a person was an addict was to be reason enough to lock them up till a cure was found or they died.Needless to say the program didn't meet even the barest necessity for proof required to pass such an abomination and several addicts,myself included,attended every meeting and asked questions they couldn't answer.The plan was dropped within weeks of it's being announced.This has the same bad smell that that legislation had and it will be very surprising if they don't succumb to the temptation to solve the drug problem by simply locking everyone up.The support for this program was from a group of select politicians that went to Europe and came back saying that they had found a program with a success rate of 70%.As usual the evidence was 100% anecdotal but that didn't stop the government from throwing money at the project.Surrey mayor Dianne Watts was one of the main proponents of this project.Watts thinks harm reduction is a diet plan and supports all things prohibition with the blind faith of the believer.Willingdon is an old institution with a terrible legacy of lost youth and criminal abuse that destroyed most that entered it's door.This is another waste of tax dollars on a program with nothing new to offer and as Mr.Abbott himself was quoted as saying;"will probably have to hold some for the rest of their lives".The people that this is aimed at are not the criminals that are doing the drive by shootings or the contract killings.This is an effort to put away
PRN Lawsuit vs. Kansas, AG Mukasey, Kansas Med Board, and the DOJ...
PAIN RELIEF NETWORK, on behalf of patients of Stephen J. Schneider, D.O., Plaintiff, vs.THE STATE OF KANSAS, THE KANSAS STATE BOARD OF HEALING ARTS, United States Attorney MUKASEY, US Attorney for Kansas MELGREN, and THE US DEPT OF JUSTICE, Defendants. The Complete Lawsuit (Text, Footnotes, Appendix, Exhibits) - [ZIP] Full Text of Lawsuit and Discussion Full Text of Lawsuit Including FootnotesPRN in Kansas - updated News archive
Judge Throws Out DEA Agents' Lawsuit Against "American Gangster"
I had a feeling this wasn't going very far:A Manhattan federal judge Thursday tossed out a $55 million suit filed by former federal drug agents who say the movie "American Gangster" tagged them as criminals.Three former Drug Enforcement Administration agents sued NBC Universal last month, contending they were slandered by an on-screen claim that Harlem druglord Frank Lucas' cooperation "led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency."For starters, Judge Colleen McMahon said, the New York City Drug Enforcement Agency doesn't exist."It would behoove a major corporation like Universal (which is owned by a major news organization, NBC) not to put inaccurate statements at the end of popular films," McMahon wrote. "However, nothing in this particular untrue statement is actionable." [NY Daily News]Cool. And now that we've thrown DEA out of civil court, let's toss a few of their criminal cases too. Starting with this oneâ¦
Letters Support Ruling on SWAT Raids
To my great surprise,recent letters to the cities local papers have expressed support for justice Catherine Bruce's tossing of evidence in a grow bust because cops used SWAT style tactics to enter the premises.There were the mandatory letters from cops wives and from the pro police lobby that inferred the cops would be threatened or that the occupants would get rid of the evidence but people weren't buying.The thought of someone trying to flush 700 plants and the concurrent hydroponic material was so comical that even the papers cartoonist took a poke at the concept.The very best complaint was that battering in a door with a ram would somehow negate the booby traps that were mentioned.Needless to say,hitting the door with a ram would set off any traps faster than just about anything else.The fact is,there has not been a case where bashing in someones door has saved a single police life and the opposite is not the case.One young man was shot holding a remote control.The fact that the US has had many tragedies from just such raids was probably as prominent in this ruling as was anything that's happened here.Of course there was a letter invoking Mayerthorpe,where four mounties were ambushed by a cop hating psycho but the ambush occurred long after the place had been secured and the case had nothing at all to do with violent swat style entries.It's just an example of the desperation that law enforcement is feeling now that their bully tactics have seen the light of day and been found wanting.
A Big Bump on the Road to the Mexico
I should have been well on my way to the interior of Mexico today, but it didn't happen. Although I had assiduously prepared all the necessary documentation--multiple copies of the vehicle registration, the title, the permission letter from the lender, the Mexico auto insurance--I got a rude surprise when I went today to Mexican customs to get my auto permit. According to the Mexican records, when I brought a vehicle here in 2004, I left without it. (The Mexicans are concerned that people are taking vehicles into the country and selling them.) That, of course, is not true. I handed in the proper papers to some soldiers and customs agents at a lonely highway checkpoint on the Mexican side of Douglas, Arizona, as I made my way north back then, and drove that pickup for another two years until I traded it in in Spokane, Washington, in the fall of 2006. But that's not what the Mexicans' records show. I was first told that I would have to send proof of all this to Mexico City, and then, after a few weeks or months, it would all be straightened out. That prompted a heated exchange with the poor young woman who was trying to tell me this. Eventually, she relented and said if I could come up with proof that that vehicle had indeed left Mexico, she could let me in for two or three weeks. So, after wandering around in a shocked daze for a few minutes, I parked my pick-up in a secure lot in Reynosa and headed back across the border to try to find the proper documents and arrange for them to be faxed to me in McAllen, Texas. Sadly for me, the dealer in Spokane who took the old pick-up in trade and sold me my current one, went out of business in December. Eventually, after burning through about $30 worth of pay-by-the-minute cell phone time, I was able to contact another Ford dealer in Spokane who was willing to send me documentation showing that the vehicle had indeed been traded in up there. Then it was a $50 round trip cab ride from the border bridge to downtown McAllen to pick up the faxed documents, then back over the bridge to Reynosa, then back to Mexican customs. But by the time I got back there Thursday evening, the woman who had made the agreement with me had left (earlier than she said she would), and the man who took her place was implacable, immovable. So, here I sit in Reynosa on a Thursday night, waiting to try again in the morning. From many years of dealing with government officials all over the world, I have learned to expect the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised, so I am know harboring serious doubts that things are going to work out in the morning. Is the Mexico trip dead? I see three possibilities right now: 1) I get the necessary permit tomorrow, and all this becomes just another headache I can laugh about later. 2) I do not get the necessary permit, and I turn around and drive 1200 miles back to the Great White North, aborting this expedition for the time being. 3) I do not get the necessary permit, and subsequently turn the trip into the Mexican interior into an extended journey along the US-Mexican border. I can pop into the Mexican border cities without having to have the permit for the interior, and I could survey the border from here to Tijuana. God, I fricking hate borders. Stay tuned. As soon as I know where this trip is going, I'll let you know.
Travel Expert Rick Steves Speaks Out Against Marijuana Laws
Rick Steves is such a smart, friendly, non-threatening gentleman. And that makes him a terrific advocate for reform:Travel guru Rick Steves wants America to take a cue from Europe and start talking seriously about marijuana.Too many lives, according to Steves, are ruined by criminal penalties associated with pot possession, and too much law enforcement and too many court resources are tied up focusing on cannabis as a legal problem instead of a health issue.Steves, who built his Edmonds travel business into a nationally known television show with travel books and tours, is now taking his marijuana message to the masses, too.Wednesday, together with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, Steves introduced a half-hour infomercial-style program he hosts called "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation." The program is available on Comcast on Demand, and promoters hope it will soon debut on local television stations. [Seattlepi.com]Last Christmas, my mother received a European travel guide by Rick Steves. "Oh, Rick Steves!" I exclaimed, "What a nice man. I met him in San Francisco at the Wonders of Cannabis festival." Mom was incredulous. "WTF?! No, this is Rick Steves," she said, "the travel guy from public television. He's a Lutheran. Your aunts love him." I replied that while all that is true, Steves is also an outspoken marijuana reformer who presents regularly at conferences I attend. The matter was finally settled when I flipped open the European travel guide to the Amsterdam chapter and began reading aloud Rick Steves' coffeeshop recommendations.Gee, I can't wait to send my aunts a copy of Rick Steves' half-hour marijuana reform infomercial. And while he's at it, Steves should start World Travelers For Drug Policy Reform, or WTF for short.
SWAT SHOT
Last night I happened to be channel surfing and came across what I thought was an embedded videographer doing a story on a forced entry of a Al Qaeda stronghold in Iraq. Typical army stuff, helmets, masks, flak jackets, squad level weapons, guys shuffling along in a camouflaged conga line, and everything available to blow away anyone that objected.
Now That We've Forgiven Barack Obama's Drug Use, Can We Forgive Everyone Else Too?
Note: I posted this a few weeks ago, but withdrew it so I could use some of the language in a Op-ed which was rejected by The Washington Post (probably for being too awesome). I repost it today in response to Obama's recent rejection of marijuana decriminalization. One of the most fascinating developments of the '08 presidential primaries has been the rising taboo against criticizing the candidates for their youthful experimentation with drugs. We've come a long way since "I didn't inhale," but is this really an evolving discourse surrounding drug use in American life or merely a truce between the privileged press and political classes? It began with the resignation of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign co-chair following barbed remarks about Barack Obama's past drug use. Now, a comment by BET founder and Clinton supporter Robert L. Johnson is drawing similar condemnations:Johnson said the Clintons have been "deeply and emotionally involved in black issues â when Barack Obama was doin' something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doin,' but he said it in his book."The Clinton campaign later put out statement in which Johnson claimed he was referring not to drug use but to community organizing.The Obama campaign Monday said that story does not wash. "His tortured explanation doesnât hold up against his original statement," campaign press secretary Bill Burton said in a statement. [Politico]Clearly, conventional wisdom now holds that voters don't think past drug use rises to the level of relevance in a presidential campaign. To even mention such a thing is considered so rude and toxic that doing so reflects more poorly on the messenger than the target. And this is the Most Important Job in the World we're interviewing for.What we're witnessing here is notable to be sure. But is this really a signal that our society is maturing in its attitude about drug use, or just another example of the class-based prejudice that ignores drug experimentation among the educated and upwardly-mobile, while police continue to flatten poor communities with their massive drug war hammers?As rare and encouraging as it is find the media directing its guile towards the accuser and not the user, we still live in a society that collects urine from millions of blue-collar Americans as a method of assessing their job qualifications. We still live in a society that revokes aid for higher education from students with drug convictions, a society that revokes low-income housing and food stamps from poor people for engaging in the exact same behavior whose mere mention is now off-limits even in the no-holds-barred realm of presidential politics. And, unbelievably, we live in society where felony disenfranchisement is so widespread it can change the outcome of these same elections in which the criminal histories of the candidates are never to be discussed. Now that our pundits and politicians have elected to shield one another from the consequences of their own indulgence, will they bestow the blessings of this grand enlightenment on the rest of us? Perhaps, but not until the people hold these high offices hostage and demand equal justice from the hypocrites who quibble over the contents of their autobiographies while fathers of four wait for their records to be expunged so they can apply at Home Depot.
Protest Against Police Violence is Monitored From Above by Police Snipers
Concerned citizens in Lima, Ohio continue to search for answers six weeks after their local SWAT team killed an innocent woman and shot her baby during a drug raid. Though the police department has yet to explain the shooting, their behavior certainly speaks volumes about the Us vs. Everyone mentality that made this tragic event possible. Via The Agitator, snipers from the Lima SWAT team were perched on the rooftop as citizens gathered to discuss the violent excesses of the Lima SWAT team. Apparently, they think you pose a threat if you protest the threat that they pose:As residents arrived in the parking lot at the school, several noticed movement on the roof of the buildings. The Lima SWAT team was in position looking down on the gathering speakers. âHere we come in good faith, and they have snipers on the roofs of our school! We came in peace, and they are ready to gun us down like dogs!â Willie Manley vowed to ask them face to face. âHow can we trust you, when you canât trust us?âThe mood seemed to changed as people continued to walk into the school many taking a final glance at the rooftops in disbelief, shaking their heads and commenting to friends. [The Sojourner's Truth]By what sort of twisted logic was it decided that these peaceful protesters might have to be put down? The whole thing just smacks of intimidation.This is the same SWAT team that had to remove an image from its website shortly after the shooting, which depicted a SWAT officer firing a machine gun straight at you when you opened the site. The graphic made anyone visiting the site feel like a potential target, which was exactly the wrong message to send after killing an innocent mother of six and shooting her baby.Yet, the decision to post SWAT snipers atop the local high school during a town hall meeting discussing SWAT violence is even more hideous. An act so ironic and inappropriate is an unambiguous statement of contempt towards a confused and grieving community. If the Lima Police Department were even remotely concerned about the widespread public animosity they'd already caused, they would not behave this way. And if they had a plausible explanation for killing an innocent woman and shooting her baby, we'd have heard it by now. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the War on Drugs. You might have heard of it before, but you really don't understand what it is until you've witnessed the spectacle of hundreds of African Americans marching hand in hand against indiscriminate police violence. If you've formed an opinion about drug prohibition without realizing that innocent mothers and babies are getting shot, then please take this opportunity to reassess the situation.animated graphic from Lima Swat Team web site -- they took it down after killing Tarika Wilson
Where Should Public Health End and Criminal Justice Begin
Today,Feb,13'08 a conference held at the UBC campus at Robson square asked that question and the answer was ; only as a last resort and countering violence exclusively. Harm reduction was the order of the day and a lack of both money and political will were cited as reasons for the pathetic response to the need for treatment that is both feasible and of a duration that would give success a chance.
TRUTH IN STRANGE PLACES AWARD
Our Truth In Strange Places Award goes this month to the new US Attorney for Northern California, Joseph Russoniello, who said, in regard to cracking down on medical marijuana, âWe could spend a lifetime closing dispensaries and doing other kinds of drugs, enforcement actions, bringing cases and prosecuting people, shoveling sand against the tide. It would be terribly unproductive and probably not an efficient use of precious federal resources,â
Cops don't necessarily need a drug offense to be complete jerks.
This is one of the most disturbing events in today's news. Here in Florida, of course. http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=73902 Welcome to the police state. Come on vacation
Hey Barack Obama, Fixing Marijuana Laws is Smart Politics
As the Obama campaign appears to gain momentum, the Senator has been reluctant to support any change in the way recreational marijuana users are treated by the criminal justice system. Given Obama's past sympathy for marijuana reform, it's a pretty safe bet that his current position is politically calculated. But what if he's making the wrong calculations?As SSDP's Tom Angell explains in this LTE, actual public support for marijuana decriminalization simply defies conventional political wisdom:Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman is absolutely right that decriminalizing marijuana will save taxpayers boatloads of money and free up limited resources so that police can focus on preventing violent crime, as he pointed out in his recent column "A truth Obama won't dare tell" (Commentary, Feb. 3).But it's absolutely wrong of Chapman to say, as he does in the column, that endorsing this common-sense policy change "would be considered political suicide" for a presidential candidate like U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).To the contrary, a CNN/Time Magazine poll taken in 2002 shows that 72 percent of Americans support marijuana decriminalization.Obama's latest position opposing decriminalization will only win him favor with the mere 19 percent of Americans who, according to the poll, favor the continued arrest and jailing of otherwise law-abiding citizens who happen to use marijuana.Supporting the criminalization of responsible adults is not only a senseless and cruel public policy, it is politically foolish. [Chicago Tribune]Of course, polling data like this doesnât necessarily reflect precisely how those same people will behave at the ballot box. And, as Pete Guither explains, any candidate endorsing reform faces the prospect of vicious mischaracterizations from their opposition.All of this is true. Still, success in American politics has always depended on a candidate's ability to gracefully negotiate divisive issues. Just as an opponent's harsh attacks might chip away support for a controversial policy position, so may passionate words and sound reasoning reshape public opinion itself, turning polling data on its head and bringing legitimacy to ideas long relegated to the political fringes.In that rare instant when the pre-written script is abandoned and the truth is permitted to speak for a moment on its own behalf, we have no frame of reference for the political viability of marijuana reform in presidential politics. The "foolishness" Tom describes is the mistake of recognizing common ground within the electorate and declining to indulge and nurture public values which run parallel to the candidate's own. I suspect that the moment an already exciting and change-driven candidate takes the marijuana issue on the offensive and challenges Americans to envision a better policy, the popular preconceptions of our pundits and politicians will be disproved. If I am correct, then the biggest obstacle facing any politician who'd like to reform our marijuana laws is nothing other than his/her own willingness to throw the first punch.
Check out this article!
The lunacy of the UAE (Dubai) is described rather well here: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/08/uaes-very-scary-drug.html I took the liberty of asking for a donation to DrCNet and Leap in post #61.