The Speakeasy Blog
Fresno Cops Kill Armed Man Fleeing Meth Bust
A Sanger, California, man is dead after being shot by police as he first pulled a weapons, then tried to flee in an undercover drug bust gone bad. Chronicle story here.
Federal Court Blocks DEA Effort to Close Florida Pharmacies
The DEA went a step too far when it tried to shut down a pair of Florida CVS pharmacies, a federal appeals court has ruled. The ruling is only temporary, though, so stay tuned. Chronicle story here.
Surprise! The Media Doesn't Understand Why People Take LSD
In medical practice, the term "drug abuse" is typically understood to describe habitual consumption with harmful consequences to the user. It's also sometimes used to describe non-therapeutic or unintended use of a medical drug. But when it comes to illegal substances, the press routinely -- and ignorantly – calls it full-blown "drug abuse," even if you try the substance just one time.
Here's the latest example from a CBS News story about LSD:
In 2009, the last time data was taken, 779,000 Americans age 12 and older said they had abused LSD at least once in the previous year.
I have a feeling that very few of these 779,000 people would consider themselves drug abusers. It says right there that you only had to drop acid one time in '09 to get counted, and as far as I'm concerned, doing acid one time doesn't make you much of a drug abuser. If it did, then we'd have to come up with a whole new term for some of the people I've had the good fortune of encountering at Burning Man, or for that matter, liberal arts college.
But as silly as all of this is, it gets worse when you take the context into account. The above quote, tragically, is actually the last line contained in this otherwise interesting article:
LSD should be considered for alcoholism treatment, study says
(CBS News) Decades ago, researchers would examine LSD's effects on various health conditions including pain, anxiety, and alcoholism. A new study suggests it might be time to revisit the mind-altering drug's therapeutic uses. The study found lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as acid, could help serious alcoholics sober up…
What we have here is entire article that goes on for several paragraphs about renewed scientific interest in the therapeutic benefits of LSD, only to conclude by implying idiotically that every single LSD user in the country is a drug abuser. Did it not occur to the author that some – perhaps a substantial portion – of the people using LSD were doing so for the same sort of therapeutic purposes being studied by these scientists? If the drug is in fact beneficial, then maybe, just maybe, people could be using for its benefits rather than as part of a pattern of abuse?
Seriously, this isn't even complicated. If CBS News has a hard time grasping the concept of beneficial, non-abusive drug use, my first recommendation would be to reread the first 8 paragraphs of their own article.
This Week in History
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past. Chronicle story here.
Google Hosts Massive Drug War Debate
Oh, by the way, this huge thing is happening in a hour. Familiar friends, foes, and random celebrities will be debating the drug war like never before. It will be delicious.
Irony Alert: Anti-Marijuana Newspaper Runs Ads for Pot Paraphernalia
Christian Science Monitor has a bit of a reputation for launching rabid attacks against the marijuana legalization movement, so you can imagine my surprise to find them advertising the high-end Volcano Vaporization System™ right next to an anti-legalization editorial.
What fun. Thanks to the targeted marketing geniuses at Google, Christian Science Monitor can collect revenue by promoting sleek vaporizers to the marijuana enthusiasts who stop by to laugh at the pathetic anti-pot propaganda they're constantly publishing.
Now to be fair, it's very possible that they never even had a clue this was happening. If you let them, Google will sell stuff in your sidebar that relates to the subject of the article on the page, and your site gets a cut according to the number of clicks. We do the same thing here at StoptheDrugWar.org, and we've occasionally noticed some really sleazy anti-drug propaganda and other questionable crap popping up in our ad space from time to time. We can reject specific ads, but it's not an easy thing to monitor 24/7, and frankly I think it's hilarious when I write an editorial trashing the idiotic drug policy ideas of some prohibitionist politician, only to have an ad for his presidential campaign pop up on the side of the page. It's like these people are paying me to make fun of them.
So when it comes to Christian Science Monitor running ads for awesome high-tech pot paraphernalia, the point isn't that they're being willfully hypocritical. Rather, it just looks really stupid. It's amusing, and perhaps even significant, that Google's algorithm recognizes pot products as they best thing to sell to the people reading these articles. Here you have these anti-pot fanatics running redundant anti-drug editorials in a desperate attempt to dial back the forward momentum of the legalization movement, and one inch away you see Google asking, "Would anyone like to buy a badass vaporizer?"
It says an awful lot about the economics of marijuana that Christian Science Monitor can't even promote prohibition without inadvertently becoming part of the pot economy.
New Hampshire House Passes Marijuana Decriminalization Bill
A marijuana decriminalization has squeaked to victory in the New Hampshire House, but faces a veto threat from Gov. John Lynch (D). Chronicle story here.
California Medical Marijuana Measure Dropped in Favor of Legislative Campaign
The coalition behind this year's California medical marijuana initiative is shifting gears. It has dropped the initiative effort, and will instead concentrate its efforts -- and its cash -- on passing a measure in the legislature. Chronicle story here.
Two More Drug Raids, Two More Deaths
Two men have been killed by police in drug raids in Miami Lakes, Florida, and New Orleans. The one in Miami Lakes was armed; the one in New Orleans apparently was not. Chronicle story here.
Massachusetts Marijuana Legalization Bill Gets Hearing
Marijuana legalization got a hearing in the Massachusetts legislature Tuesday. While even the bill's sponsor doubts it will pass, it helps pave the way for a legalization initiative in the future. Chronicle story here.
Medical Marijuana Update
Bills are being considered in some states, busts are going on in others, and local governments grapple with medical marijuana from Washington state to New Jersey. Chronicle story here.
Why Obama Won't Oppose Marijuana Legalization in an Election Year
The anti-marijuana zealots at the Christian Science Monitor are at it again, pleading with the President to please, please, please help promote pot prohibition. They're frustrated that Vice President Biden traveled all the way to Mexico to lament legalization talk among Latin American leaders, yet the Obama Administration remains silent regarding marijuana legalization measures hitting the ballot in Colorado and Washington this year.
The administration needs to step up and make a strong case against legalization in the US in order to counter a well-financed, well-organized pro-marijuana effort. One argument is that the cartels would actually welcome legalization, in the same way that US casino owners have welcomed state gambling lotteries. To drug dealers, the more addicts the better.
Biden did say a debate in Latin America about legalization would help “lay to rest some of the myths that are associated with the notion of legalization.”
How about he and Obama start to challenge those myths in states like Colorado and Washington? [CSM]
They're not going to do that. See, it really isn't at all a coincidence that Joe Biden happened to not be in America when he made the only anti-legalization remarks of his vice-presidential career. As much as I'd love the notoriously gaffe-prone VP to spend more time discussing his dumb ideas about drugs, he actually knows better than to do that.
In case anyone has managed to miss the memo somehow, a majority of Americans don't want a war on marijuana anymore. Seriously, the Christian Science Monitor should be grateful that the Obama Administration has done as much as it has to piss off the marijuana reformers who helped put this President in office. Alienating half the electorate and way more than half the Obama base with a bunch of pea-brained anti-pot propaganda is more likely to compromise Obama's Colorado campaign than it is to stop the momentum of the marijuana reform movement.
That's why Obama never talks about marijuana, ever, unless publicly forced to do so, and it's also why his Administration has taken no ownership of its outrageous betrayal of the President's pledge to protect medical marijuana patients. From now until November, President Obama will pretend to the very best of his ability that there is no such thing as marijuana. Bet on it.
In fact, if I am wrong, and the President actually engages in the sort of desperate anti-pot posturing proposed by the Christian Science Monitor, I will even buy a subscription to that stupid newspaper just so I can read them gloating over it.
(This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)
This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
Bad cops pay out big in New York, a sheriff cleans house in Florida, a sticky-fingered cop gets in trouble in North Carolina, and a California cop gets caught with his fingers in the dope jar. Chronicle story here.
Oregon Marijuana Legalization Initiatives Moving [FEATURE]
The clock is ticking on marijuana legalization initiatives in Oregon. There are currently four different initiative campaigns underway, but at this point, four months away from when signatures must be handed in, only two look like they have any chance of success this year, and both of them are still tens of thousands of signatures from getting on the November ballot. Chronicle story here.
Iran Executed Nearly 500 Drug Offenders Last Year
Iran executed nearly 500 people for drug crimes last year, according to a new report from Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based NGO. Drug executions made up more than 70% of all executions in the Islamic Republic. Chronicle story here.
Pat Robertson Demands Marijuana Reform and Blames the Drug War on Liberals
Update: Robertson has now made it official -- he's for legalization of marijuana, and supports the Colorado and Washington initiatives: NYT
For the second time now, televangelist Pat Robertson has gone off on our drug laws in a big way. This time he has an entire segment on his Christian Broadcasting Network program attacking over-incarceration and generally saying cool stuff that you never thought you'd hear on a hardcore Christian cable channel (except the liberal-bashing, of course). You can check it out from 20:40 to 29:25:
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For the video-impaired, our friends at LEAP tapped out the transcript. Here's a taste:
We here in America make up 5% of the world's population, but we make up 25% of jailed prisoners...
Every time the liberals pass a bill -- I don't care what it involves -- they stick criminal sanctions on it. They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail.
I became sort of a hero of the hippie culture, I guess, when I said I think we ought to decriminalize the possession of marijuana.
I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy.
It is crazy. It's also crazy that so many of the politicians on the left who've backed this idiocy did so only because they were afraid people like Pat Robertson would accuse them of sympathizing with hippies. We've reached a turning point in the drug war debate where we're no longer arguing reform vs. non-reform. Every voice in the discussion of U.S. drug policy is speaking of reform, with the only difference being that people like Pat Robertson are serious about it, and people like Barack Obama are not. Weird, but worth watching.
The Drug War Is Bad For Business
Eric Sterling has an interesting piece at Forbes looking at the big picture economic impact of the War on Drugs.
Today, tens of millions of Americans — would-be consumers – because they have been convicted of a drug offense, aren’t earning what they could earn without a record. Our prison population, estimated as high as 2.3 million persons, is out of the car market. Ford and GM should calculate how many cars they could sell in the U.S. if our imprisonment rates were close to those of their European or Japanese competitors (instead of 7-to-10 times higher). How many cars could they sell if tens of millions of Americans did not have a conviction-suppressed income? A reduced average household income and credit capacity suppresses sales of goods and services for almost every American business. While most of those offenses were instances of youthful bad judgment, the consequences for the economy last for decades.
The business community needs a complete economic analysis of the impact of drug policy. In the 1980s, war on drugs policies were not on the radar of business or investors at all. Today, the intensity of global competition and the fragility of our domestic economy require management and investors to fully understand how American drug policy plays with their profits. Every investor should analyze how much the costs of drug policy shrink return on investment. [Forbes]
Other than Eric Sterling, and perhaps occasionally others in the reform movement, I don't hear anyone asking these kinds of questions. It's an entire category of drug war cost that has simply never been measured.
This gets back to a point I've made often here, which is that we've really never had anything approaching a full accounting of all the costs created by our drug laws. I can't imagine how such a thing could even be conceived. Things like the damage to virgin forests caused by illicit marijuana cultivation, the number of crimes that go unsolved because drug-involved witnesses wish to avoid police contact, the extent to which police corruption compromises costly law enforcement expenditures; all these things and many more are horrendous in their effects, incalculable in their scale, and yet rarely even acknowledged outside the realm of reform advocacy, let alone quantified in the course of the raging debate over whether these policies are worth their price-tag.
In other words, however harmful you believe the War on Drugs to be, it is almost certainly considerably worse. And whatever benefits one expects to enjoy following the fall of prohibition, the true and total impact of effective reforms could exceed anyone's expectations by addressing problems that should have been blamed on the drug war but weren't. I suppose there's only one way to find out.
In Mexico, Biden Rejects Drug Legalization Talk
US Vice President Joe Biden was quick to fight back against the rising clamor for a debate on drug legalization as he landed in Mexico City Monday on a two-day trip to meet with Mexican and Central American leaders. Chronicle story here.
Florida House Passes State Worker Drug Test Bill
The Florida legislature is one vote away from approving the mandatory, suspicionless drug testing of state employees. The courts may have something to say about that. Chronicle story here.
Judge Challenges Nevada Medical Marijuana Restrictions
In a ruling Friday, a Nevada district court judge ruled that the state's laws for the distribution of medical marijuana were unconstitutional because they seemed designed to thwart their ostensible purpose. The ruling came in the case of two dispensary operators who had been charged with drug trafficking for taking money to grow marijuana for patients. Chronicle story here.
Costa Rica Joins Call for Drug Legalization Debate
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla has added her voice to the rising clamor for discussions on drug legalization as an alternative to the current state of affairs, in which Central American nations see themselves as increasingly threatened by the illicit drug trade. The discussion should go on even if the US opposes it, Chinchilla said. Chronicle story here.
Canadian Senate Passes Harsh Crime Bill
Canada appears set to march boldly backward as the Senate has passed a Conservative crime bill that includes mandatory minimums for growing as few as six marijuana plants. Chronicle story here.
DEA Extends Ban on Fake Marijuana Chemicals
The DEA has extended for another six months its emergency ban on five synthetic cannabinoids used to manufacture "fake weed" products. The chemicals are sprayed on herbal mixtures and the resulting product is sold under names including Spice and K2. Chronicle story here.
South Carolina Man Killed in Drug Traffic Stop
A South Carolina man was shot dead and a Kershaw County sheriff's deputy injured during a narcotics investigation traffic stop that turned violent Tuesday night. Melvin Lawhorn, 26, becomes the 13th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year. Chronicle story here.
Another Dumb Drug War Idea: Banning Hidden Compartments in Cars
Frequent visitors to this site should know by now that there is no idea so absurd, no strategy so stupid, as to be rendered ineligible for introduction into the War on Drugs. There is nothing these people won't try, and by nothing I mean that literally, as in every bad idea that the human mind can possibly produce will eventually be attempted by amped-up narc-mongering nutjobs hellbent on bending our legal system to hell.
The latest news in this ongoing crusade to arrest everyone for everything is Ohio's preposterous plan to start busting and jailing people for having hidden compartments in their cars:
A hidden compartment in your vehicle, with or without drugs, could mean big trouble as Ohio officials get serious about slowing down drug-smuggling.
A proposed state law, advocated by Gov. John Kasich, would make it a fourth-degree felony to own a vehicle equipped with secret compartments. A conviction would mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine. [Columbus Dispatch]
Right out of the gate, I've got three good reasons why this is insane:
1. It's already illegal to have drugs. Is Ohio having a hard figuring out what to charge people with when they find a kilo of coke in a car? I have an idea: coke. That ought to get the job done. You can make all the laws you want about where people can and cannot store enormous amount of highly-illegal contraband, they're still not gonna keep it in a turkey bag and balance it on their head. Anyway, since when does the highway patrol hate ripping cars apart?
2. How am I supposed to know if I have a hidden compartment in my car? It's hidden. There's a multi-billion dollar industry of people smuggling this and that from here to there, and those cars get resold like crazy. Heck, the number one reseller of shady smuggler cars is the cops. Any used car on the road could have a stash spot in there somewhere, and excuse me for not preemptively cutting every inch of my crappy car open with a metal saw to make sure. You're gonna put me in jail for possession of empty space that I failed to notice?
3. I should be allowed to hide random crap in my car. Right? It should go without saying that I have every right to hide my stuff in my car any way I want. Maybe I'm hiding candy from my kids or porno from my wife, or whatever from whoever else. It's my damn car. Why is the government telling me I can't have a compartment full of candy and porno in my car if my lifestyle calls for that? The fact that some other dude keeps a kilo of coke in his compartment has nothing whatsoever to do with me. Leave me the hell alone.
It remains to be seen whether any of this will occur to anyone before this stupid new idea becomes a stupid new law. But you can bet that the people smuggling drugs through Ohio really couldn't care any less what the law says about where you aren't allowed to store the marijuana, meth, cocaine, and heroin that you aren’t allowed to have in the first place.
