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Drug Czar Pledges to Finally Do Something About All These Pot Smugglers
Gangstas better watch out. Hippies better stock up. The Drug Czar has had enough of the multi-billion dollar marijuana market, so he's decided to try even harder to stop it:MEXICO CITY (AP) â Marijuana is now the biggest source of income for Mexico's drug cartels and the U.S. is committed to cracking down harder on traffickers, U.S. drug czar John Walters said Thursday."We're trying to increase the force with which we're attacking this problem," Walters said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This is a focus because of the overlooked importance marijuana has in the violence."Previously, you see, the Drug Czar was just trying really hard. But now he's gonna try really extra super 110% hard. It sounds like his strategy so far consists of issuing some sort of edict to prosecutors, probably by email, asking that they please put more people in prison for pot:He added that the U.S. is "looking at additional ways in which we can have a stronger prosecutorial response," including requests for more funding and personnel.So the Drug Czar, confronted with the failure of everything we've been doing for decades, will now request more funding to continue the same wasteful, destructive, redundant charade. Marijuana-related violence is one of the most unlikely and counterintuitive phenomena in human history, and yet it has become commonplace thanks to drug prohibition and its infinitely corrupting influence. The only remaining question is how many more declarations of redoubled drug war our nation's Drug Czars can pronounce before being pushed off their proverbial podium.
Bank Robbery Capital of the World?Vancouver,B.C.Canada
Or at least of Canada.Some of my best friends were very good bank robbers.Nice guys unless you stood between them and their next fix.They used to throw money around like it was free.But then I guess it was.
Former Staffer Accuses Drug Czar of Ignoring Research
Recent years have brought a long overdue and richly deserved implosion in the Drug Czar's credibility. It seems the truth is slowly catching up with the entrenched drug warriors at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as the U.S. Senate, the anti-drug community, and even former staffers have joined the chorus to demand accountability from one of Washington D.C.'s most insulated institutions.Today John Carnevale, a long-time ONDCP insider who served under four Drug Czars, has publicly slammed ineffective supply reduction efforts and called for a redistribution of federal anti-drug funding. A press release from Carnevale Associates, LLC. entitled "FY02-09 Budget Emphasizes Least Effective Ingredients of Drug Policy" directly questions the Drug Czar's strategy and accuses the nation's top drug office of wasting resources:A review of the federal drug control budget shows that the current administration continues to favor supply reduction programs over demand reduction programs to reduce the demand for drugs by youth and adults. Since federal fiscal year (FY) 02, the budget has emphasized what research has shown to be the least effective ingredients of a federal drug control policy. This translates into almost a decade of lost opportunity in achieving performance results.These charges are just remarkable considering their source. While Carnevale remains committed to many of the most destructive aspects of the U.S. war on drugs, these criticisms of his former office reflect a growing consensus that ONDCP has become utterly divorced from reality. The office has simply lost its prestige within the anti-drug community and, with the flood gates fully opened, must now absorb biting criticism from every conceivable constituency. Once disgraced, the schoolyard bully can now expect to be kicked in the shin routinely and can't anticipate where the next challenge will come from.Of course, our nation's costly and fantastically unsuccessful supply reduction efforts are just the tip of the drug war iceberg. But it is notable to witness drug war insiders beginning to come to terms with our failed international drug war diplomacy. By exposing ONDCP's propensity for ignoring research, Carnevale inadvertently reveals a great deal about how that office approaches basically everything.
Drug Conference What Do We Tell the Kids? Vancouver,B.C.Canada
The meeting started with the usual speeches from the podium Which were on topic and fairly focused.Then the people in attendance began speaking and it was clear from the start that there were some other agendas in the room.First was the fact that people were very unhappy with the way the government,at all levels,was failing our children.The fact that we all know that B.C.
PRN + Patients hold Press Conf. to Reopen Pain Clinic...
PRN at Fed. Court - Reynolds and Patients Try to Reopen Schneider Clinic - Associated Press; WIBW TV; 2008-02-19. Source. (Includes: video of TV news coverage of the Press Conference) Excerpt: ... The patients held a news conference this morning outside the federal courthouse in Wichita. They wanted to draw attention to their plight and the civil lawsuit filed against the government last week on their behalf. The lawsuit, filed by the New Mexico-based Pain Relief Network, claims the government put patients in mortal danger and created a public health disaster. ... The news conference today was announced in a Press Release, Tuesday Feb. 18, 2008, WICHITA, Kansas:Pain Relief Network Sues to Halt Government Actions Taken Against Kansas Patients
Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Will Only Cause Horrible Problems
From the State of Virginia emerges this week's dumbest drug war idea:Some welfare applicants and beneficiaries would be required to pass a drug test and receive counseling to receive public assistance under a controversial bill being considered by the Virginia General Assembly.Under the proposal, which has been approved by the Senate, people applying for or in the state's job-training program, which is required to receive welfare, would be questioned about substance abuse. Those thought to be abusing drugs could be required to take a drug test. [Washington Post]I can just hear the chorus of self-righteous legislators insisting that we mustn't subsidize addiction with public funds. But I have a few questions. Who's going to intervene when a mother of four gets a false positive and suddenly can't feed her family? Will there be monitoring to prevent racial disparities in who is subjected to testing? How will any of this address the far larger problem of alcohol abuse?If our society is going to offer public assistance to those in need, we cannot afford to shape such programs around the blunt instrument of urinalysis. When it works, drug testing tells you whether someone has used drugs. It doesn't tell you if they need treatment or whether their welfare check is being put to legitimate use. When drug testing doesn't work, it falsely accuses innocent people and subjects them to undeserved sanctions and stigma.Even when it hits its target, the program just creates more problems:Limited resources for treatment present another challenge. The state has a waiting list of 800 to 1,000, depending on the type of substance abuse service. The average wait is several weeks. Adding people to the list will tax government programs further, critics say.This is the exact program you have to attend in order to regain eligibility for public assistance, but you can't get into it because Virginia's too busy busting and drug testing people to pay for treatment. The whole thing is just a massive escalator to nowhere.Whatever one thinks about government assistance, it should at least be clear that infecting existing programs with the blind and corrupt influence of the drug war will merely ruin more lives.
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.