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Local Media Slags Addicts Again
Not being prone to intelligent and thoughtful articles, the local paper continues to toss dirt on visitors to prisons in the Frazer Valley. The whole thing arose when a visitor's baby stroller displayed some contact with what I think was amphetamines.
Crazy Sheriff Proposes "Normandy" Style Anti-Drug Invasion
If you can think of a stupid idea, you can find a drug warrior who agrees with it. Today's example comes courtesy of Sheriff Victor Hill in Clayton County, GA, whose frustration with the failing drug war has driven him over the edge:Hill said the conventional method of warrants and arrests are not working, and that military-like occupation of deputies is necessary.â¦"The war on drugs in Clayton County, as in most jurisdictions, I liken it to the Vietnam War," Hill said. "Hit and miss, there is no clear win â we donât know if weâre gaining ground or not. What we want to do is we want to change our strategy. We want to make this more like a Normandy invasion." [11Alive.com]I swear, one need only place a microphone before the frothing mouths of these drug war lunatics and they will reveal beyond ambiguity just how far removed they are from understanding why it is that they've been asked to do this in the first place.Who, other than Sheriff Hill and his cavalry, wants a Normandy Invasion in their community? It should never be necessary to explain that the job of police is to make the neighborhood not a warzone. To even suggest that our domestic drug war should be fought like Vietnam is to fail the most basic litmus test regarding one's qualifications to protect the safety of the public. The remarkable irony here, however, is that Sheriff Hill is right. If we want to "win" this war on drugs, we must jettison our Bill of Rights and occupy every square block from coast to coast. Ubiquitous checkpoints, widespread urine collection, and systematic door-to-door drug raids are just the beginning if we wish to make even a small dent in the massive ongoing hashbash these hippies insist on throwing every goddamn day.With all this in mind, I nominate Sheriff Victor Hill to be the next Drug Czar. His candid assessment will advance the drug policy debate dramatically, probably to a point at which everyday people recognize the absurdity of all this and demand an end to this whole stupid war, lest the people calling for a Normandy Invasion should eventually get their way.
Why Does the Drug Czar's Office Oppose Efforts to Prevent Drug Overdoses?
This has already been addressed at DrugWarRant and The Agitator, but I'd just like to echo the observation that Dr. Bertha Madras is a cruel witch whose idea of drug prevention is willfully letting drug addicts die before our eyes.In her capacity as Deputy Director of Demand Reduction at the Drug Czar's office, Madras is speaking out against medicines that effectively treat drug overdoses. If that sounds crazy to you, well, what can I say? These people are deranged:...Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs."First of all, I donât agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. Thatâs No. 1," she says. "I just donât think thatâs good public health policy."Madras says drug users arenât likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isnât as likely.Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug userâs motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment."Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras says. [NPR]Um, maybeâ¦if you donât die. I seriously canât believe my eyes. This is just as cold as it gets, even by ONDCP standards. Does she know or care that lives will be lost if her vision of good public health policy prevails? How many people should we allow to die in order to spread the message that heroin is dangerous?This is one of those moments that reveal in stark terms the complete logical bankruptcy of the drug warrior mindset. By rejecting any interest in saving lives, Madras leaves one wondering what the hell she even wants. Seriously, what are we paying these people to do if not save lives?This is not some crackpot narc spouting off silly soundbites in a local paper. This is a spokeswoman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. These people are supposedly the smartest, most competent drug experts, charged with drafting public health policies to protect us all, and their idea of the week is to cheer from the sidelines as people die from drugs so that the rest of us will learn to behave ourselves. ONDCP's hateful, literally fatal contempt for the people they should be helping is just so creepy and awful that one struggles to understand the continued need to expose their behavior for what it is. Really, what could I say about this organization that is not made perfectly evident by the philosophy which its own spokespeople espouse openly in our newspapers?If I didn't know better, I'd predict that ONDCP's open opposition to preventing drug overdoses would immediately cost them what remains of their shrinking legitimacy.
Prison Guard Trades Sex for Drug Smuggler Pass
An American border guard met a young Canadian hooker and drug addict at a friend's place in the lower mainland. It must have been lust because he was just convicted on one of many charges against him that arose out of a seven month investigation.
the FBI and Saddam
I hope you watched the 60 min. interview with the FBI's interrogator of Saddam Hussein on Sunday night. There was one very telling moment in the interview where Saddam says goodbye to the agent and says that they'll meet again.
The Stem Cell Debate and the drug war.
I was just educated in the recent attempts to legalize the use of stem cells in spinal cord research. GWB used a presidential veto to undermine the will of both the Congress and the Senate. A classic example of dogma over knowledge and research.
Marc Emery
I can only pray that the Canadian government does the right thing and refuses to extradite Marc to the US.
Actually,I have no qualms about saying "I told you so"
Yesterday I wrote about the local paper's campaign to invoke searches of babies and small children visiting prisons. Last night 179 prisoners at the medium security Matsqui institution in the Frazer Valley took over the yard and did some damage and lit some things on fire.
Put the lunatics in Charge
The Vancouver Province and columnist Joey Thompson have out done themselves this time. Always on the prohibitionist side of the drug issue, now they're going after addicts already in prison. Some guard complained (what else's new) about some visitor having ions from some kind of hi-tech scan that was positive for drugs and reported it to child welfare.
Randomly Sad But True
The following oddly-worded advertisement, presumably computer-generated, popped up in one of our Google ad boxes: Prohibition Looking for Prohibition? Find exactly what you want today. Yahoo.com Sad but true. Not forever, though, if we have our way...
Welcom to Mexico
As I'm sure most of you have heard, the Mexican government has sent the army to the US border to referee the fight between two cartels for the US drug market. We've all heard about the kidnappings and murders and the fact that the cops are taking sides.
It's Really Easy to Put Innocent People in Jail for Drugs
In an effort to protect our society from drugs, we've created laws that endanger everyone:A federal judge decided Tuesday to free 15 men from prison because their convictions were based on testimony of a government informant who lied on the witness stand and framed innocent people.Collectively, the men have served at least 30 years behind barsâ¦The case is a blow to the federal justice system, which relies heavily on informant-based testimony, lawyers said. The men, some with no prior run-ins with the law, were given long prison sentences based almost exclusively on the word of informant Jerrell Bray and Lee Lucas, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who supervised Bray. [Cleveland Plain Dealer]Stories like this emerge regularly, and yet one can only imagine how many such travesties of justice will never come to light. The process is so simple: informant makes up stories to get himself out of trouble, someone else get in trouble, informant doesn't. You couldn't design a more efficient system for collecting innocent people and tossing them behind bars.The 15 innocent people that will now be set free are incredibly lucky (if you wanna call it that) that the people who set them up happened to be exposed as serial liars. That is really the only thing you can hope for when your conviction resulted from a conspiracy between shady snitches and dirty drug cops.This is what you get when you pull back the curtain and behold the drug war for what it truly is and not what it is supposed to be. The Drug Czar with all his tricky talking points and misleading rhetoric canât and won't ever attempt to defend injustice such as this. But it is that very same anti-drug propaganda that has served to blind our eyes and deafen our ears to the sickening unfairness that characterizes the practical application of these brutal laws.When one comes to appreciate the totality of the lies, errors, and overkill that are inevitably included in the drug war package deal, it ceases to even matter what one thinks about drugs. This war would be a disaster even if it worked the ways it's supposed to. But it doesn't. And it never will.
Idiot Steals Two Crocodiles and a Monkey, Blames Marijuana
I'm so sick of people blaming marijuana for the stupid things they do. Lest we should all be further stigmatized by his mischief, someone needs to stop hooking this guy up:DARWIN, Australia (AP) â An Australian teenager[*] blamed the influence of marijuana for his decision to steal two crocodiles and a monkey, local media reported Wednesday.â¦Watts said he planned to sell the stolen baby crocodiles and the marmoset but had been unable to find buyers, ABC reported.â¦Watts' lawyer told the court his client admitted it was a "dumb stoner" thing to do and had written to Crocodylus Park to apologize. [AP]Marijuana isn't for everyone, to be sure, but most people are more than a few tokes away from busting into the zoo and stealing crocodiles. I think he's just embarrassed to admit that these are the sorts of things he generally feels inclined to do. But there's also a revealing subplot here that's worth exploring. Consider that this young man snuck into the zoo high on marijuana, successfully captured two crocodiles and a monkey, and escaped undetected. It's a rather impressive outcome compared to the carnage that ensues when drunken zoo-goers attempt to interact with the animals.A victim of the recent San Francisco tiger attack was at twice the legal limit when he taunted the tiger until it leapt over the wall and attacked him. A drunken Lithuanian was hospitalized in May after climbing into a Giraffe exhibit and getting trampled. Then there's the intoxicated Chinese man who entered the Panda cage at the Beijing Zoo to "hug" the Panda and ended up biting the bear when it attacked him. Not to mention the drunken Ukrainian who tried to show off for friends by taking on a caged grizzly and was nearly killed, or the corpse found in the grizzly den at the Belgrade Zoo during an annual beer festival. Clearly, from a harm reduction standpoint, marijuana is the safer choice for zoo-going trouble-makers.*Since his name was omitted, I've been unable to verify whether the culprit was Corey Delaney.
The Drug Czar's Awesome Plan to Blame Hugo Chavez for Everything
Drug Czar John Walters went off the rails this week, suggesting that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was somehow involved in the drug trade. According to Walters, the best evidence of this is the lack of any evidence. Read it, it's hilarious:"Where are the big seizures, where are the big arrests of individuals who are at least logistical coordinators? When it's being launched from controlled airports and seaports, where are the arrests of corrupt officials? At some point here, this is tantamount to collusion," Walters said in an interview. [Los Angeles Times]Indeed, the Drug Czar is so confounded by the ongoing failure of international drug prohibition, he can only assume that entire nations are conspiring to undermine him. The whole thing is just so crazy, The Los Angeles Times was forced to qualify his statements by pointing out that he couldnât back them up with facts (emphasis mine):Walters said the volume of Colombian cocaine moving through Venezuela, believed to represent at least one-third of Colombia's production, continues to increase with no discernible effort by Chavez government to impede it. He provided no statistics to back up his assertion.Awesome. I nominate this reporter for a Pulitzer. You could add that sentence to the end of every paragraph ever written about the wild nonsense that spews forth out of John Walters mouth like a broken water main.As Pete Guither points out, Walters's bizarre assertions are probably an attempt to blame someone -- anyone he can find -â for this:MIAMI -- U.S.-directed seizures and disruptions of cocaine shipments from Latin America dropped sharply in 2007 from the year before, reflecting in part a successful shift in tactics by drug traffickers to avoid detection at sea, senior American officials disclosed Monday in releasing new figures. [News Tribune]Walters can blame Hugo Chavez as much as he wants. But the failure of international drug prohibition will never have anything to do with Venezuela's refusal to fight a futile drug war at the behest of bullying bureaucrats from Washington D.C. The drug war is failing because that is the only thing it knows how to do.
It all make sense now
I just read a quote from Albert Einstein: "Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them." It puts the whole drug war thing in perspective. No wonder the politicians can't find a solution.
Our Drug Laws Literally Allow Police to Steal From Innocent People
I received this email through the Flex Your Rights website a few weeks back and found it quite disturbing, though perfectly typical and unsurprising by drug war standards:I'm a retired police lieutenant from a large midwestern city. Prior to my retirement my department, like so many others, saw dollar signs when new laws in response to the "drug war" (gawd, what a mistake THAT has turned out to be) allowed law enforcement to seize property with either flimsy or non-existent probable cause. Special police units were posted on the expressways leading into the city with instructions to stop as many cars as possible, search them and the occupants, and if anyone had more than a few dollars, SEIZE IT. Our command staff gleefully reported to us that the burden of proof was on the citizen to prove that the money was NOT drug proceeds, and since the amount of money seized would often be less than the amount that the citizen would have to spend to sue us, that we could be assured of keeping the bulk of the money. I was flabbergasted. To make things worse, part of my yearly performance rating as a police lieutenant was based on how much money and other real property, such as cars, that my troops seized. On my instructions, my troops never seized a dime. Turning law enforcement officers into bounty hunters is one of the most tragic mistakes this country has ever made. Keep up the good work.Lieutenant Harry Thomas (ret.)I can't verify any of this, but I really don't need to. Lt. Thomas describes the asset forfeiture epidemic that corrupted law enforcement agencies throughout the nation, necessitating the formation of Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR) in 1992 and the passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. And now that forfeiture laws have been "reformed," police have since felt free to continue confiscating property under the most ludicrous circumstances because the drug war says it's ok.Lt. Thomas's story provides a particularly disturbing picture of police officers being commanded by their superiors to operate as an extortion ring. The recognition that citizens would have a difficult time proving their property "innocent" demonstrates an unconscionable willingness to seize property from law-abiding citizens. Put simply, the behavior described above is theft in both effect and intent. Make what you will of this particular account, but if you think that one could implement forfeiture laws such as ours without provoking this exact behavior, then I dare you to put your life savings in a briefcase and drive around Indiana consenting to police searches.
Added to the List
The two men killed in Yesterday's shooting incident have been confirmed as gang members. This adds them to a long list of gangsters murdered in a war that continues to rage over drug turf and bragging rights.
Gotham Restaurant: the scene of wild shooting spree
As I write this, two bodies lie dead in the intersection of Georgia and Seymour streets in Vancouver. Police rushing to the scene collided at a nearby intersection. Witnesses testified that police armed with Armalites and M-16's were patrolling the area.
Repost this message - Free Marijuana
The U.S. government has heard the will of the people and they don't care. It's time to fight back. Why should the residents of America or anywhere else care to follow their wishes? They ignore their own laws and stretch the power of the executive branch way beyond the power of the people! It's time to fight back.