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Attention Marijuana Users: Hershey⢠Doesnât Want Your Business
I never thought this day would come. But when greed and idiocy converge, the effects can be catastrophic. SAN JOSE, Calif. - Hershey Co. has sued a Lafayette man who admitted to making marijuana-laced candy and soft drinks, claiming his products violated the company's trademarks.Kenneth Affolter, 40, was sentenced in March to more than five years in prison for manufacturing forbidden treats with names like Stoney Rancher, Rasta Reese's and Keef Kat. [MSNBC]I'm not an expert in trademark law, but those donât sound like Hershey products to me. Hershey's suit, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, accuses Affolter of trademark infringement, trademark dilution and unfair competition. Unfair competition!? To whatever pathetic extent this man actually competed with Hershey, he's now been taken out of commission by the Drug Enforcement Administration. If there's anything unfair going on here, it's the incarceration of a man who provided marijuana edibles to sick people. So I guess Hershey Co. has nothing better to do than piss off stoners around the world, which is foolish for reasons so obvious they need not be stated. And all they're asking for is $100,000 from a man who is now either destitute due to legal fees and forfeiture, or has buried his assets so deep that neither DEA nor Hershey's will ever see a dollar.Suddenly those irresistible Hershey's Cookies & Cream⢠bars don't sound so good. If Nestle⢠has a decent white chocolate product, I can cost Hershey $50 a year on my own. Who's with me?
Remedial Marijuana Ethics 101: Don't Be An Idiot
If you work at McDonalds, donât hide your pot in a Happy Meal. Something bad will happen.Don't drive drunk if you've got 25 pounds of marijuana in your car. Seriously, you're off the team if you do that. Flex Your Rights will not answer your email. Also, don't mail 12 pounds of marijuana to a school. George Michael, who gets arrested frequently for marijuana, now says it should be legal.Operation Follow Method Man has also produced results this week: the arrest of Method Man for possessing marijuana and driving around super-baked. In fairness to our cause, I'm not suggesting that marijuana necessarily causes idiocy. But it can become a crutch for the desperate or confused. As for the celebrities, well, it's already clear that celebrities don't exactly need pot to get arrested anyway. Method Man, notwithstanding this unfortunate incident, would probably get arrested more often if not for his frequent relaxation rituals. Today was a strange day for marijuana news, but tomorrow will tell a different tale. Bad science, violent raids, urine testing, persecuting patients, blocking research, wasting tax dollars, exaggerating harms, and funding the black market; these things -- and so many more -- are the real story and there aren't enough mailing mishaps or celebrity pot busts to distract us from the hideous truth.
Remedial Psychedelic Ethics 101: Don't Dose People
You wouldnât think people who are prominent members of the psychedelic community would need a reminder about elementary decency, but, sadly, that appears to be the case. Psychedelic drugs, like mushrooms, peyote, and LSD, are not candy. They can be deeply disorienting and disturbing, even for veteran psychonauts, and for people with no experience with or knowledge of them, they can be absolutely terrifying. It would seem to be a fundamental of psychedelic ethics that you do not inflict the experience on people against their will or without their knowledge. To do so is not only disrespectful of the consciousness of the victim of such a stunt, it is also disrespectful of the psychedelic substance that inner consciousness explorers claim to hold in such reverence. But some people just don't get it. Last night, I received a call from an old friend who reported being dosed by someone who was part of the entourage of an elite clique who were putting on an event in a large Eastern city. Now, my friend was fortunate enough to have some experience with psychedelics, so the experience was not absolutely terrifying. But it was most unpleasant. And that's should be no surprise. For at least 40 years, people have been talking about the importance of "set and setting" in determining how a person will respond to psychedelics. Set refers to the person's mental stateâwhat the person knows and expects of psychedelics, whether that person has underlying psychiatric problems, whether that person is prepared for the experience. Setting refers to the physical/notional location of the experienceâis it a soothing place, does it take place within some ritual or another, is it loud and noisy and chaotic?âthat, along with set, has an impact on the psychedelic experience. Dosing someone with psychedelics without his or her knowledge wreaks havoc with set. People need to prepare themselves for taking drugs like these; to have them inflicted on you even if you like them is unethical. Being dosed also prevents the victim from having any say in settingâhere you are, your mind is melting, and that's that. Dosing people is thus double-plus ungood. No names are being named at this point. There are efforts afoot to see if the perpetrators will make proper amends. The most positive outcome is that the people involved will be educated about things they should already know and understand intuitively. For the rest of us who are inclined to dabble with such substances, let's try extra hard to be respectful of each other and these very special substances.
More Reefer Madness Yellow Journalism in Australia
More Australian Reefer Madness Journalism Yesterday, we published a newsbrief about the Australian media frenzy over "super dope", but the yellow journalism about marijuana coming from Down Under just keeps coming. Early in the week, it was the "super dope" scare, where the Aussies whipped themselves into a frenzy over kind bud. By late in the week, there was a new wave of hysterical marijuana reporting, this time centering on people who have both indoor marijuana grow operations and children. "Children in Drug Den Danger!" screamed the Daily Telegraph in an article about raids on two Sydney homes where parents were growing pot: SIX children aged as young as five have been forced to live and sleep within metres of toxic chemicals and cancer-causing cannabis plants - all because their parents wanted a quick dollar. Whoa! "Cancer-causing cannabis plants"!?!?!? This is just simply absurd. As far as I know, no one, not even Harry Anslinger, has ever claimed that a growing marijuana plant is carcinogenic. I suspect this is merely bad reporting; as the Australian AP reported in its account of the raids, the equally silly
More Reports from Warsaw
Allan Clear continues his reporting from the International Harm Reduction Association conference in Warsaw, this time covering days two and three. Click the "read full post" link below or here to read the whole thing. Day 2 On the morning plenary, Fabio Mesquita provided two case studies of the national responses to HIV among injectors in Brazil and Indonesia. Fabio was instrumental in altering the landscape for drug injectors in Sao Paolo and Brazil as whole. He now works in Indonesia. A couple of notable points were that 28% of the population of Brazil have taken an HIV test and the phenomenal scale up of syringe exchange in Indonesia, from 17 to 129 over two years. The INPUD drug user session was extremely well attended. Bijay Pandey talked about his organizing in Nepal. As NDRI's Sam Friedman pointed out it's hard enough to organize around user's lives in general. To do so during a civil war is particularly impressive. Like all specific user organizing the future of the work is in jeopardy but the effort has been put in. Perhaps there's no more supportive drug researcher than Sam Friedman. A tireless advocate for drug users, Sam provided a Marxist Leninist dialectical critique of global socio-economic substructural micro organized community ventures that help diffuse the totalitarian oppression we all live under in this post soviet imperialistic world. User dominated of course. Alexander Rumyanzev talked about the way drugs are used to affect social movements and oppress drug users. There has been a long line of very articulate drug user activists in the history of harm reduction - John Mordaunt, Matt Southwell, Annie Madden, Jude Byrne, Louis Jones, Bill Nelles, for example â and one of the most articulate drug user activists for the last decade has been the USA's Paul Cherashore so it was good to see him back on form. He urged drug users to strike back at the system. He wasn't clear on a strategy for doing so but made valid comparisons between gay rights and drug user rights using the San Francisco gay community's response to the murder of Harvey Milk and later talked about the Stonewall riots as flashpoints that eventually changed policy and society as a whole. more...
Czar Wars
The nomination of Gen. Douglas E. Lute as the new White House "war czar" raises the old question of what a "czar" is and why they are needed.According to Wikipedia, a "czar" (sometimes "tsar") is basically an emperor:Originally, and indeed during most of its history, the title tsar meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, i.e., a ruler who has the same rank as a Roman or Byzantine emperor due to recognition by another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch).Ralph Peters at The New York Post explores the latter question, arguing that the appointment of various "czars" is an indulgent and frivolous exercise. Unfortunately, just as I'm nodding in agreement, Peters' train of logic leaps the tracks and nosedives into a perplexing abyss:I worked for the most effective "czar" of the past half-century. As director of the Office for National Drug Control Policy, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey did a remarkable job of getting the government's cats and dogs (and not a few monkeys) to work together for the common good.But the major players could blow off even McCaffrey. The general could beat our nation's deadly enemies, but not the Washington bureaucracy.Here we go again. Drug war supporters talk about Barry McCaffrey like conservatives talk about Ronald Reagan, an unfortunate but necessary absurdity now that the name John Walters has become highly toxic even within Congress and the anti-drug community.Apparently, it really is necessary to point out that America wasn't drug-free from 1996-2001 and that Barry McCaffrey's legacy would be considered disastrous outside the accountability-free sphere of revisionist drug war history. Of course, it's also possible that Peters knows "our nation's deadly enemies" are far from beaten and is merely shielding himself from the wrath of accused war criminal Barry McCaffrey. In either case, this article, which questions the efficacy of appointing various war czars, while simultaneously casting Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey as a glorious hero, is a confusing thing to have bothered writing.
New Jersey Lightening Up on Lawyers
According to the New Jersey Law Journal, via Law.com, the NJ Supreme Court has shifted away from a 20-year-old policy of suspending lawyers convicted of cocaine possession, instead merely censuring a Wayne-based workers compensation and personal injury attorney for it: The court, in an order made public on Tuesday, took one step further a recommendation for lenience made by the Disciplinary Review Board, which suggested a "suspended" three-month suspension for the lawyer, Wayne, N.J., solo Anthony Filomeno, in view of his demonstrated remorse, rehabilitation and early release from a year-long pretrial intervention program. Now maybe they'll go a little softer on the rest of the drug-using public...
Hinchey-Rohrabacher
Alex Coolman has a nice summary of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment and its history over at Drug Law Blog. I haven't heard yet about this year, but will let you all know when I do... Read our '06 Hinchey-Rohrabacher coverage here and here.
Christiania is under threat again...
Read about it courtesy Kerry Howley, at Reason. We reported on a previous flare-up back in '04.
Conferences...
NORML just announced its annual conference, October 12-13, in LA this year. DPA's conference is December 5-8 in New Orleans.
Australia: Better Bud Prompts Proposed Bong Ban
The only thing more misguided and pointless than obsessing over pot potency is banning bongs:As reports have surfaced that potent marijuana could be introduced into Australia, state lawmakers have talked about banning drug paraphernalia.At a ministerial council on drugs strategy meeting in Adelaide, officials discussed the merits of banning instruments such as bongs and pipes that are used to smoke illegal cannabis. [AHN]A report in The Herald-Sun prompted helpful comments from readers:"The way the government is going, there wont be any water for bongs.""I can't stand the smell of the stuff, leave alone stuffing it in a pipe and trying to smoke it. Rather have a good Aussie Beer instead of a dozzy intoduced Weed. Yuk Duck as they say."I donât speak Australian, but I think what they're saying is that trying to prevent marijuana use by banning bongs is like trying to prevent drinking by banning pint glasses.
Narc Team Rams Suspect's House With Vehicle, Finds Marijuana
This raises more questions than it answers:TRAVERSE CITY â Joseph Giganti's life and home recently took a hit when Traverse Narcotics Team officers allegedly rammed into his rented residence, then seized property during a drug raid.The Traverse City businessman is suing the state police agency for a $2,700 security deposit he forfeited after a TNT vehicle allegedly collided with his rented residence during the April 5 drug raid, according to Giganti's lawsuit. [Traverse City Record-Eagle]What's going on here? Radley Balko has noted how SWAT teams are stocking up on large attack vehicles, which will inevitably be used for something. We donât know what type of vehicle was involved, or why it collided with the suspect's residence, but I'm not expecting a perfectly logical explanation to emerge. If this was an accident, it is a troubling one, in that it requires particularly reckless driving in order to collide with a house. If, on the other hand, this was done deliberately to disorient the suspect, it should be unnecessary to explain how intolerably excessive such tactics are.So what was this guy doing that necessitated such aggression?Officers found about a half-ounce of marijuana and a water pipe in the raid, but no evidence of drug dealing, [attorney Michael] Stepka said. Giganti has not been charged with a crime, court records show.Once again folks, when we talk about legalizing marijuana â and other drugs, for that matter â it isn't because we want to get stoned on the sidewalk. It's because we don't want public safety officers to protect people from themselves by ramming houses with police vehicles.
Fighting Meth With Misinformation in Idaho
There is no question that methamphetamine is a potentially dangerous drug. Communities that take steps to prevent people from starting to use it in the first place are to be lauded. But if such efforts are to be credible with their target audiences, they need to include accurate information, not scary, demonizing distortions. Unfortunately, Blaine County, Idaho, is not doing that. In a new brochure from the Blaine County Sheriff's Office and the Community Drug Coalition written by a sheriff's office employee, comes the following amazing claim: "One of the biggest dangers of meth is how quickly people can become addicted to it," the brochure says. "The National Methamphetamine Awareness Campaign says that 99 percent of people are hooked on meth after using it the first time." Oh, come on. Yes, people can become dependent on meth. Yes, it is a drug whose biopharmacological effects make people want to binge on it. But no, 99% of people who try meth once are not hooked on it. And spewing such garbageâat taxpayer expense, no less!âis counterproductive at best. Here's what the federal government's meth resources web page has to say about methamphetamine addiction: "Long-term methamphetamine abuse results in many damaging effects, including addiction." Note that the site says long-term use, not one-time use. Neither do other federal government statistics back up the 99% claim. The 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the most recent available, notes that 10.4 million people over the age of 12 reported using meth at least once in their lives, but only 512,000 reported current (last month) use. Even if we assume that everyone who reported using within the last month is an addict (and that's not a very reasonable assumption), we find that only about 5% of people who ever used meth are currently addicted. It is possible, I suppose, that the remaining 93% of all meth users ever got strung out on their first line, but have since managed to beat the addiction. If that's the case, which I doubt, they didn't get the monkey off their backs through drug treatment. In 1992, 21,000 were admitted for meth treatment; by 2004, that number was up to 150,000. But the number of people reporting using meth that year was 1.3 million. Of past year meth users, a little more than 10% got treatment in 2004, whether they sought it themselves or were forced into it. If you want to discourage people from using meth, you need to be believable. Unfortunately for Blaine County, Idaho, it has produced an anti-meth brochure that is more laughable than believable. Next they'll be telling me meth will make hair grow on the palms of my hands.
Allan Clear Reports from the International Harm Reduction Conference in Warsaw
(DRCNet is pleased to welcome Allan Clear, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, as a special guest correspondent for the Stop the Drug War Speakeasy. Allan is currently in Warsaw, Poland, attending the 18th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, and has graciously agreed to report for us on the proceedings. He has come through with photos and all. Because I was offline most of the last few days, Allan's first few posts are all coming out together in one. Any subsequent posts from the conference will come out one by one. Here Allan writes about getting to the place, the place, pre-conference meetings of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs and various satellite groups, and the conference's first day. - DB) Allan Clear Stijn Goossens & Luiz Paolo Guanabara, at the conference (Click the "read full post" link below or here to read Allan's full reports, with more pictures.)
Big News: Sentencing Commission Crack Cocaine Sentencing Report is Out
This issue has dragged on for too long -- I've been working on it since 1994, and that wasn't the beginning of it. Hopefully this new report from the US Sentencing Commission will help bring about some change, even if still woefully insufficient. Commentary I have seen online at the time of this writing: Prof. Doug Berman on the Sentencing Law and Policy blog Alex Coolman on Drug Law Blog Jeralyn Merritt on TalkLeft Families Against Mandatory Minimums press release Also our feature story on USSC's recommendations to Congress on the issue, effective unless Congress votes to block them, Drug War Chronicle issue before last. Talk amongst yourselves... :)
Gaia-Murdering Psychopath
Peter Guither of Drug WarRant explains to drug czar John Walters why it is his prohibitionist policies that bear the root blame for endangering a rare hummingbird species in the Andes, not the coca growers as Walters' agency claims on their own blog.
Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance
Cenk Uygur blasts zero tolerance policies on the Huffington Post. Not a post about drugs, but of indirect relevance to the drug issue, where the zero tolerance concept comes up very often.
Initial Hurwitz Prosecutor Resigns from DOJ #2 Post
good riddance to Paul McNulty!!!!! One of the big news stories today was the resignation of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty as part of the US Attorneys firings scandal. I commented on the possibility of a McNulty firing on March 20th here in the Speakeasy, pointing out his history as the prosecutor who initiated charges against pain physician Dr. William Hurwitz, got the DEA's pain FAQ pulled to influence the trial, as well as his role in getting parole abolished in the state of Virginia. McNulty was present last month when the new Hurwitz verdicts -- more limited than the original, though still negative -- were read. Good riddance to Paul McNulty. May this mark an end to his evil works once and for all.
The Latest Botched SWAT Team Raids
Radley Balko has posted the latest round-up of botched SWAT team raids online at Reason. Read 'em and scream in outrage...
If Only Afghanistan Were More Like Colombiaâ¦
Colombian narcs who haven't been killed yet are holding police training seminars in Afghanistan. From The International Herald Tribune:It is a measure of Afghanistan's virulent opium trade, which has helped revive the Taliban while corroding the credibility of the government, that U.S. officials now hope that Afghanistan's drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia.â¦"I wanted the Colombians to come here to give the Afghans something to aspire to," [DEA Kabul Chief Vincent] Balbo said. "To instill the fact that they have been doing this for years, and it has worked."They're unearthing mass graves in Colombia. Cocaine is cheaper than ever. The president is embroiled in a massive corruption scandal. You canât even grow bananas there without becoming a pawn in a paramilitary extortion scandal. Yet American drug warriors talk about Colombia like it's a shining beacon of justice and democracy.Afghan narcs-in-training will learn what a joke this is when their Colombian instructors request asylum.