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The Lost War: How the "War on Drugs" is defeating the "war on terror."
From Washington Post Article The Lost War: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701716.html?referrer=emailarticle 8/19/07 Poppies were the first thing that British army Capt. Leo Docherty noticed when he arrived in Afghanistan's turbulent Helmand province in April 2006. "They were growing right outside the gate of our Forward Operating Base," he told me. Within two weeks of his deployment to the remote town of Sangin, he realized that "poppy is the economic mainstay and everyone is involved right up to the higher echelons of the local government."
Marijuana Clears Skins Rashes Therefore It Must Be Legalized!
The story is from fox news, apparently pot clears up dermatitis. The headline is my own. Pardon the hyperbole, I wanted to make a larger point. I have always stated that pot should be legal because we are free, not because it is healthy. My libertarian views are not reliant on the latest medical pot news. I believe in freedom, it's that simple.
Department of Childrens and Family Services can take
The reasons for taking kids away from parents are usually drug related and and this is only done by taking a urine sample or admition will be enough and you could never get your kids back, even when you have not abused or neglected them.
New Mexico Medical Marijuana Update -- Richardson Says Full Steam Ahead Despite Attorney General's "Prank"
Late Thursday night we reported in the Chronicle that New Mexico's Dept. of Health had balked at supplying medical marijuana to patients following a warning from state Attorney General Gary King that he wouldn't defend state workers if the feds prosecuted them. Gov. Richardson, who is running for president in the Democratic primary, has ordered the Health Dept. to comply with the law, and has urged President Bush to stop the medical marijuana prosecutions. I'm not surprised by Richardson's stance, given how hard he fought to rescue the bill last spring when its demise had already been pronounced. Looking at the text of the law, I really have to say I think King is full of it. The law does not tell the Health Dept. to have its own employees grow or distribute marijuana; it tells the department to license people to grow it. Then those licensees will be taking their chances with the feds, for their own individual reasons. But that's not the same thing as state employees being subject to federal prosecution themselves. There have certainly been federal raids of medical marijuana providers in states that have licensed them, but not of the state agencies who have issued them licenses to protect them from state prosecution. Good for Bill Richardson, shame on Gary King, did he really think he could put that one over?
Anti-Drug Researchers Claim That All High Schools are Either "Drug Infested" or "Drug Free"
Anti-drug activists are so desperate to infect society with their fears and anxieties that they routinely make up statistics designed to terrify parents and policy-makers. Such is the case with Joseph Califano of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) who announced today that 80% of high schools are "drug-infested."Only a moment's inspection is required to discover that the people behind this research are insane. They begin by defining two types of schools:Drug Infested: Schools at which the students surveyed had witnessed some form of drug activityDrug Free: Schools at which the students surveyed had not witnessed drug activityIt is just so obvious that most schools are neither infested with, nor entirely free of drugs. Everything in this report is based on a false dichotomy that prevents any meaningful analysis. Califano argues that parents should remove their children from drug infested schools; a surprising declaration given that he puts 80% of schools in this category. Jacob Sullum offers a typically superb refutation of the finer points of the study, but I want to emphasize one additional important point: the reason groups like CASA can do crazy things like claim that all schools are either drug infested or drug free is because the media never holds them accountable. The entire premise of this study is ridiculous on its face, and there is no excuse for the failure of the press to readily observe that something is wrong with this report.Protecting children from drugs and other safety threats is an important discussion. Yet, this conversation goes nowhere when it is based on transparently nonsensical propaganda from hardcore anti-drug extremists. If Califano were correct that 4 out of 5 schools were really this dangerous, we'd already know about it.It is also strange that Joseph Califano, who thinks the drug problem is worse than ever, advocates the continuation of the exact policies that got us here. He's a psycho, but he's right about one thing: something's got to change.
New Afghanistan Strategy is Exactly the Same as the Old One That Didnât Work
When I heard the White House was creating a new strategy for countering opium cultivation in Afghanistan, I was curious. See, the U.S. government only has one counter-narcotics strategy, which is to slash and burn everything, arrest lots of people, and tell poor folks to stop being so greedy. How could they create a new strategy if they only have one idea?Apparently, the new strategy it to try the old one again, in case it works this time:At the roll-out, the architects of the administration's revised policy -- John Walters, U.S. director of national drug control policy, and Thomas A. Schweich, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs -- argued that the main principles underpinning the five-pillar Afghan counternarcotics strategy, announced two years ago, remained essentially correct. [World Politics Review]It's not the strategy's fault the strategy didn't work. It's these stubborn farmers and drug lords that won't cooperate with the damn strategy:Preliminary assessments of the data the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime plans to release next month indicate that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 15 percent during the past year, making the country responsible for approximately 95 percent of the world's total production. Although acknowledging their disappointment, U.S. officials argued this staggering figure actually presented an opportunity since any reductions in Afghan opium would make a major contribution to reducing global supplies.Yeah, the worse things get, the more progress we could theoretically make! Just look how much room there is for improvement! Now all we need is the right strategy. Hmm, let's convene all of the eradication experts to decide how much eradication we'll need. Probably a lot.Seriously, nothing could ever happen to make these people lose faith in drug eradication. It is their religion, and if you suggest to them that it doesnât work, they will just look at you like you're speaking Chinese. They claim to promote crop substitution, even though they also want to spray poisons everywhere that would destroy the fields. And they still donât get it that if any of this works, people will just grow opium somewhere else.Only by claiming repeatedly that their ideas are "new" can the drug war geniuses in Washington, D.C. inspire any curiosity about whether their plans will succeed. They are putting lipstick on a pig, and it is an indictment of our press that such announcements are met with anything other than a yawn.
Who's Planting All That Pot in the Woods?
Long before the Drug Czar raised eyebrows by calling pot growers "violent criminal terrorists," police in California were blaming Mexican drug cartels for increased outdoor marijuana cultivation throughout the Golden State: â¦these aren't flower-power farmers growing a few stalks hydroponically for personal toking. They're organized criminal gangs â some with deep roots in Mexico â and pot helps fund their violence. [Merced Sun-Star]There's no limit to how far they'll go to promote this idea:"Ninety-nine percent of the plants seized in the national forests," [Special Agent] Stokes said, "were planted by members of the Mexican National Cartel which has a huge network throughout California and the west. "We've actually tracked the dollars back to Mexico," Stokes concluded. [Mountain News]Something doesnât add up here. For starters, the Mexican National Cartel doesn't seem to exist. And I donât know how you'd track dollars from a marijuana crop that was eradicated and never sold.And then there's this from the Merced Sun-Star:â¦it's extremely rare and difficult for law enforcement to bust the drug lords responsible for funding the large growing operations. Often, even the growers themselves do not know who is funding an illegal cultivation.So really, no one has any idea who's behind this. Arrests for outdoor cultivation are extremely rare, and yet local papers throughout California eagerly and repeatedly quote law-enforcement officials who blame the problem on Mexicans.Appeals to racial prejudice and hysteria have always been a primary propaganda tool in the drug war. Exaggerating the involvement of violent drug cartels glamorizes the process of looking for pot in the woods and casts marijuana users as funders of violence. Such claims also facilitate the Drug Czar's desperate attempt to link marijuana prohibition to the more-popular war on terror.Whether they're Mexican gangsters or white college kids, the people planting pot in the woods are a product of marijuana prohibition. They'll never stop growing pot in the woods because it's valuable and they never get in trouble for it. The only way to stop people from planting drugs in the forest is to let them do it somewhere else.
Police Often Lack Basic Knowledge About Marijuana
Every year at this time, police around the country start excitedly notifying local papers that they're getting better and better at finding pot in the woods. It's a tiresome ritual, but reporters just love it, and it would never occur to them that the police sometimes donât have a clue what they're talking about:[Merced Multi-Agency Narcotics Task Force Commander] Compston said more growers are cloning female plants, which produce the valuable buds with higher THC levels, in order to yield a product that will be more profitable on the street. "They are basically making hybrid plants," Compston said. [Merced Sun-Star]Maybe I'm being picky, but I think it's rather telling that a regional task force commander fundamentally misunderstands how marijuana works. All commercial marijuana is female. Male plants aren't just less profitable, they're worthless and not available for sale. So to suggest that cloning females is some sort of new trade secret is just ridiculous.Even more amusing is the claim that these plants are hybrids. Clones, by definition, are not hybrids. They are clones, which means they're genetically identical to the mother plant. If the plants are all female, as Compston says, there can be no cross-pollination and therefore no hybrids. It sure is fun to call them "hybrids" though. How scary that sounds.Of course, the most popular marijuana myth continues to be the pound-per-plant estimate:Most marijuana plants are valued at $1,000 to $3,000 per plant, based on the measurement that an average plant will yield one pound of finished product per season, according to Merced County Sheriff's Detective Scott Dover. With the newer varieties' higher THC content, however, Dover said it's not uncommon to find a single plant priced up to $5,000.Dover's right about one thing: it's not uncommon to find police estimating the value of marijuana plants at $5,000. But a marijuana plant capable of actually yielding a pound is hardly the norm. An average plant yields ¼ pound, far less than the standard one pound estimate by which police determine the supposed street value of every crop they eradicate.The point here isnât just that police are often ignorant about marijuana. That has been obvious for a long time. What's notable is that reporters continue to regurgitate factually incorrect statements from law-enforcement with no effort to verify the accuracy of their claims. This behavior is critical to maintaining support for marijuana prohibition, not only by reinforcing myths about the drug, but also by falsely portraying the effectiveness of efforts to eradicate it.
The purpose of Government
What is the purpose of government? The Declaration of Independence states it as this; "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
Plan Mexico: The Right Name for the Wrong Idea
Architects of a new plan to subsidize Mexico's brutal drug war with U.S. tax dollars are trying to avoid the name Plan Mexico. Obviously they don't want to invite the comparison to our disastrous Plan Colombia, even though a few desperate drug warriors are still calling it a success. The refusal to name anything after it might be the closest they'll come to admitting that Plan Colombia is widely â and justly â viewed as an utter failure.As Pete Guither notes, journalists and bloggers alike have already named the program Plan Mexico. So while the details remain to be announced, the stigma of our previous and continuing failures in this area will inevitably haunt any effort to expand our destructive drug war diplomacy. Although Plan Mexico will surely prioritize scorched-earth drug war demolition tactics, The New Republic notes the bizarre possibility that some funding will be directed towards drug prevention:One element of that aid package is likely to be funding for drug-use prevention, according to Luis Astorga, a drug policy expert at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. This is a strange new twist in the complex partnership between the U.S. and Mexico to fight drugs. And the U.S. isn't in much of a position to tell anyone how to prevent drug use.Damn straight. Gosh, if we knew anything about drug prevention, these bloody wars over who gets to sell drugs to us wouldnât be such a mind-bending crisis in the first place. The irony is just staggering: When the U.S. cracked down on domestic meth production early this decade, Mexican cartels adept in trafficking cocaine and marijuana jumped at the chance to supply a new product.â¦The drug has traveled south, and is now available in every major city."Mexico's market is not big, but it has grown, mostly in urban zones," said Jorge Chabat, a crime and security expert at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. "Availability has certainly contributed to consumption now that meth is produced in Mexico."Let me get this straight. The U.S. banned pseudo-ephedrine-based cold medicines, and domestic meth production declined. Mexican cartels stepped in to fill the void, resulting in increased availability and use of meth in Mexico. Now the U.S. is poised to give drug prevention funding to Mexico due in part to a meth problem that didnât even exist before we essentially exported our meth manufacturing problem to that country. Wow. Just wow.At the end of the day, it is and always has been the massive drug consumption of U.S. citizens that fuels violence and instability throughout Mexico, Colombia, and beyond. We could spend every dollar we have bribing foreigners to stop selling us drugs and it wouldnât make a difference. We could hire every man woman and child in these countries to help stop us from getting high, and they would just laugh all the way to the bank.Too many American drug users are already sending their paychecks to Mexico. It is sheer idiocy to suggest that we send our tax-dollars there as well.
Calling All Facebook Membersâ¦
Students for Sensible Drug Policy needs your help. Facebook has a cool contest where non-profits can win a $1,000 grant just by collecting votes. All you have to do is vote for them before tomorrow. If SSDP gets the most votes, they win $1,000 to help provide materials for their chapters this Fall.Click "read full post" to see the instructions. It's really easy.
Drug czar's doc wouldn't answer my question
http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/help/ask-the-doc.aspx I asked the above website, the drug czar's kids campaign, on the "ask the doc" section, that whether should non-violent drug users to receive tr
"Essential Civilian Demand" -- Cannabis Prohibition Could Be Over Tomorrow
This blog introduces what I feel to be the most direct and efficient way of ending Cannabis prohibition, in time to plant commercially in every state next Spring 2008. By recognizing the true value of Cannabis, and invoking our federally protected Article One "First Freedom" of religion, people who appreciate the spiritual dimensions of Cannabis operating in their lives can claim the right to grow it without being exposed to prosecution.
drug war killings
One of the articles we published in the Chronicle this morning is a newsbrief about investigations starting in Thailand about the 2,500 extra-judicial drug war killings. User "eco" has posted a couple of pictures in the comment section at the bottom of the page, with a link to a web site that has more. If you have the heart for it, you can see them here.
Cocaine Shortages Don't Prevent Violence, They Cause It
The best thing you can ever hope for in the drug war is a statistical anomaly. That's why this summer's temporary cocaine shortages have prompted multiple gleeful posts at ONDCP's blog. Courtesy of a commenter on Phil's recent post on this topic, here's a great example of how little the drug czar actually knows about the relationship between drugs and crime:In the past, Walters said a shortage of drugs has led to a decrease in violence. "The vast majority of the violence is committed by the user under the influence of drugs," Walters said. "When there's a contraction in the market, there isn't as much violence. There's more likelihood that individuals who can't get the drug will seek detoxification, will seek treatment." [Indianapolis Star]Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Planet Walters, a magical world where all your wishes come true. Oh wait, darn, we're on Earth:Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson believes that the shortage in cocaine could be to blame for a spike in certain violent crimes close to home.Jackson said that federal indictments that have yanked dozens of suspected dope dealers off the streets in recent months have increased competition - and violence - in the drug trade. [Cleveland Plain Dealer]So in the short-term, violence goes up, not down. And in the long-term cocaine prices go down, not up. That is just Drug Enforcement 101, and it has been perfectly documented and understood for a very long time. Let's play a game. Pretend you're the Mayor of Cleveland. Disruptions in the local drug market have produced a rash of brutal summer violence. Then you read the newspaper to find the Drug Czar declaring that disrupted drug markets lead to order and tranquility because everyone just gives up and goes to rehab. As the sirens blare outside your office, it must be just galling to watch the genius drug war experts in Washington, D.C. predicting an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity.It gets tiresome trying to think of new ways to explain how odd it is that there's a whole White House office dedicated to making up fictitious criminal justice theories. You could fill a book with what they donât know about drug enforcement and, in fact, many have.
Destroy Yourself
Iâm quite âsickâ of all this bullspit I hear about how cannabis is illegal because it is far too detrimental to human health and well-being to be legalized. My body, my choice. If the government gave a toss about its citizensâ well-being, then why would it allow certain other HIGHLY suspicious substances to be 100% legal?
and yet another letter from a medical marijuana patient that the feds claim don't exist...
We received this message earlier in the week: I have had to move back home to a state that does not allow the medical use of marijuana -- the state I was in before, Maine, allowed it -- and it is very hard for me to find relief from my pain now. My doctor has increased my medications twofold, and I do not get the pain control I had on 1/2 the narcotics with the smoke. I just hope some day the government will stop demonizing a very useful tool, and allow us who really get relief from it without abuse of the drug.
Jury Duty: A Day in the Life of Our Corrupt War on Drugs
Via DrugWarRant, Michael Hawkins blogs the incredible story of his participation on the jury in a major drug case (read it, seriously). It's a familiar tale of prosecutors going after everyone in sight:When the defendant's brother [convicted in a separate case] took the chair, the first words out of his mouth were, "I don't know why they went after my brother. He had nothing to do with any of it."â¦The government's total evidence against the defendant -- who was shown to be a hard-working construction worker who has not missed a day's work in eleven years -- consisted of the following: seven calls (out of over 65,000), over a two-day period, from the defendant's cellphone to one of the drug runners' phones; and the fact that the blue Honda Passport was registered to the defendant. Through skillful questioning, the defense lawyer showed how the defendant's brother frequently "borrowed" the defendant's car, and that the defendant frequently left his cellphone in the car, attached to a charger.Hawkins theorizes that the guilty brother's refusal to identify key associates motivated prosecutors to target the other sibling, despite his apparent innocence. The jury figured it out, and justice was served. So the system works, I guess, if you don't mind prosecutors wasting your tax dollars on cases that should never have gone to trial in the first place.This is hardly the first time a frustrated prosecutor has sought to make an example of someone who merely lived an innocent life adjacent to the criminality of others. Trophy prosecutions are an inevitable byproduct of the drug warriors' insatiable lust for headlines and elusive "victories." Meanwhile, innocence places drug defendants in a unique predicament because they have no information to barter in exchange for leniency.Who among the great drug warrior army will stand up for the innocent victims in this glorious battle of good vs. evil? There are no words to describe the callousness of those who advocate blind sentencing in the war on drugs, while simultaneously casting an ever widening net that will so inevitably capture bystanders and pawns.
First day on!
This is my first day on StoptheDrugWar.org. I'm pretty excited to be here. I used to help with animal cruelty activism. I hope to learn a lot from here.