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Shooting Down Innocent People in Airplanes Wonât Win the Drug War
When the average person forms an opinion regarding the efficacy of our drug policy, are they taking into account the totality of brutal unforeseen disasters that regularly occur in the course of our international anti-drug crusade? Alas, the reality of the actual drug war (not the one the drug czar talks about) is considerably uglier than many among us realize.Thatâs why this Wall Street Journal piece from Mary Anastasia OâGrady stands out as an example of what drug war reporting in the mainstream press ought to look like.Innocents Die in the Drug WarOf all the casualties claimed by the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America, perhaps none so fully captures its senselessness and injustice as the 2001 CIA-directed killing of Christian missionary Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity in Peru.  â¦On that day the Bowers family was flying in a single-engine plane over the Amazon toward their home in Iquitos. Mrs. Bowers was holding the infant on her lap when a bullet fired by the Peruvian Air Force, under direction of the CIA, hit the aircraft, traveled through her back and into Charity's skull. The plane crash-landed on the Amazon River. Mr. Bowers, his young son and the pilot survived. Neither the plane nor its passengers were found to be involved in any way in the drug business and initial reports said that the mistaken attack was a tragic one-time error.Yet, as OâGrady explains, this was in fact the perfectly predictable consequence of an out-of-control drug interdiction program that basically shot planes out of the sky with no investigation and no oversight. The problem isnât just that they killed innocent people, but that they created and maintained a policy that they must have known would produce that result. Itâs the perfect exhibit in the total disregard for innocent human life that is central to the drug war itself.To her credit, OâGrady is willing to make the connection between violence and prohibition:Consider the fact that Mr. Clinton's justification for the Airbridge Denial Program was that drug trafficking was a threat to Peruvian national security. Of course it was: Prohibition naturally produces powerful criminal networks that undermine the rule of law.â¦Since then, U.S. interdiction has put the pressure on Colombia and the problem is now resurging in Peru. The latest reports are that Mexican cartels are teaming up with remnants of the Shining Path terror network to rebuild the business, proving once again the futility of the supply-side attack as a way of minimizing drug use in the U.S.In other words, we get nothing in exchange for the death and destruction weâve subsidized and sustained for all these years. Nothing, that is, except a bunch of dead innocents, a smoldering civil war below our border, a world-record prison population, and a shameless political culture that still swears this is the only way to deal with drugs.
Day One at the U.N. Drug Treatment Meeting -- Slightly More Interesting Than Predicted
More than 200 people from around the globe have shown up for the first day of this drug treatment meeting at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna. (If you're just tuning it, it may be helpful to read my first post, from yesterday, where I set the stage for what's to come.) Tantalizingly titled "Technical Seminar on Drug Addiction Prevention and Treatment: from Research to Practice," the tag line at the bottom of the conference program awkwardly hawks "NOTHING LESS than a qualified, systematic, science-based approach such as that used to treat other health conditions" â a fair enough goal. I tell you, the crowd was on tenterhooks for the event to begin. In truth it was the most subdued, dead crowd ever gathered. Perhaps the most exciting event of the day was kangaroo hotpot on the canteen menu. To be clear, I have less interest in the science on show than on the subtexts of the dialogue and what is said and not said â all with an eye on the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) meeting occurring next March. At that convening, countries will gather to review the last decade of UN-approved international drug policy, set forth at the first United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs in 1998, and issue a new UN Political Declaration. I suspect that the goings on at this prior conference may offer hints of what's to come. Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the UNODC, was in fine fettle opening the event. True to his pompous, unapologetic manner he was disrespectfully late, but his opening remarks were good. He wants the CND/UNGASS process to put increased money into demand reduction in order to put health at the center of the equation and reduce drug related crime. Consequently, Costa called for the rebalancing of drug control (by putting a greater emphasis on health), expressed concern that too little is spent on treating drug addiction, and acknowledged that law enforcement should not be used as an alternative to treatment. Costa also rejects the over-incarceration of drug users (he's been consistent about this). I'd like to think that Costa's comment re: over incarceration was an unsubtle dig at the US, where 1 in 31 US citizens live under the auspices of the criminal justice system. However, I suspect he's directing his remarks at the world below the equator or at Central Asia. In so many words, he admonished member states for not protecting their drug users and respecting their human rights. The day went downhill from then on in, as the conference morphed into a showcase for the disconnect between the science around drugs and addiction and the current reality re: which research-based policy recommendations are ever actually applied or funded or prioritized by governmental bodies. Consider the presentation of the keynote speaker, Dr. Nora Volkow, who heads the United States' National Institutes on Drug Abuse. I like Volkow. She cares about people who use drugs, and exudes compassion and even fire when she defends them. Before her presentation, we had a conversation about the federal ban on the funding of syringe exchange, and she expressed real excitement about working for Barack Obama. Ingo Michels, representative of Germany's Ministry of Health Certainly Dr. Volkow's presentation on the science of addiction was well done, and it affirmed much of what has been said for years by those of us who are involved in harm reduction. She ran through her Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan studies (they show the effect of drugs on the brain) and noted that there is hope of our someday being able to know in advance who is vulnerable to problematic drug use. In stating that abstinence is 'magical thinking' and addiction has a smorgasbord of serious medical consequences, including hiv/hcv, cancer, and mental illness, associated with it, she laid out a fine argument for embracing harm reduction without connecting the dots of course. She noted that people are people are at risk due to environmental factors. But looking at the blues, reds and yellows in the dissected brains on show, one would be hard pressed not to consider the color of the person who possessed this brain to begin with and then the hard, cold facts re: the skin color of who actually gets locked up for long periods of time in the US for having what Dr. Volkow was describes as a brain disease. The drug war in the US has disproportionately affected people and communities of color. Looking at the science of addiction doesn't dispel the effects of institutionalized racism. Nor does it reunite families, deliver education, or prevent HIV transmission. Scientific discovery is only the first step; it won't do us much good unless and until it's translated into real world policies and services. Hopefully that's Dr. Nora Volkow's dream under Obama (and Obama's dream as President): to put the theories that come out of what she and her colleagues are learning in the lab into practice. Most of the rest of the presentations were equally predictable. Drug treatment works. Drug prevention is cost effective. Drug treatment is cost effective. Addiction is a brain disease. Methadone works. Buprenorphine works. And that's all to the good. But will any of the policy recommendations that come out of this research ever actually be applied or funded or prioritized by governmental bodies? Anywhere? Vladimir Poznyak, from the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization (WHO), was the first person to bring up harm reduction. Clearly there is some tension between WHO and this UNODC meeting. Given the consistent commitment WHO has expressed for harm reduction, Poznyak pointedly highlighted needle exchange and harm reduction as HIV prevention in a WHO technical manual during his talk. But for my money the Man of the Day was Ingo Michels from the Ministry of Health in Germany. Michels' presentation, which detailed Germany's comprehensive drug treatment system and included information on safer injection sites, heroin prescription, and drug user organizations, clearly rejected the extent to which harm reduction had remained hidden and unspoken during the first day. It was also the first indication that harm reduction is more than just a means of HIV prevention. Your intrepid reporter then got the first question in. Prattling on in my usual fashion that is never succinct and always more about making a point rather than asking a simple question, and bearing in mind what I said in yesterday's post about the way in which US governmental representatives at these UN meetings always suppress the extent of harm reduction and needle exchange programs in the US and their success, I went at it. I detailed out the number of needle exchange programs in the US; noted out that the larger programs are federally funded (except for needles); and pointed out that they represent a continuum of care for drug users, act as a safety net for drug users who are "out of treatment," and make referrals to drug treatment. In short, I argued that the UN is cornering itself by limiting harm reduction programs as just an HIV intervention. Well, that set Michels off. He slammed the US representatives for blocking the UNGASS process and said he hoped the Obama Presidency would mean that there would be a new UNGASS delegation at this March's meeting. (Being fairly new to this process, I think he probably overstepped his bounds. Excellent stuff.) Surprisingly, the conservative panel facilitator, Gilberto Gerra, Chief of Health and Human Development Section of UNODC, also animatedly joined the discussion by saying that UNODC believes that harm reduction should be part of the "comprehensive package." I'll be damned. More battle to be joined tomorrow. Allan Clear is executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition.
When it Comes to Marijuana Laws, Obamaâs Website Should be Called Same.gov
Did anyone notice how the marijuana legalization question was ranked #1 on Obamaâs Change.gov site, but he answered the question 4th? Not only did Obamaâs team fail to explain the "no" answer, but they didnât even honor the 1st place popularity rank the question earned when it drew the most votes from the public.Thereâs nothing surprising about any of this, but it is indeed perfectly emblematic of the profound lack of seriousness with which this issue is treated in our political culture. The marijuana question was answered second to last and received the shortest response of all the questions. Itâs just not something our political leadership wants to talk about. There is scarcely anything less important to them than this and theyâd really appreciate it if we stopped asking about it.But we wonât stop. Certainly not now. Perhaps we appreciate the symbolism behind Obamaâs Change.gov campaign even more than its authors do. Yes, we surged at the opportunity to push forward ideas long relegated arbitrarily to the political fringe. We seized upon this new venue for unfiltered political dialogue, an entirely unclaimed territory in which we had yet to be told we were unwelcome. We clutched it in our collective fist, squeezed it with all our might, and recoiled in disgust when it squirted us in the eye. Sure, we got burned, but we saw it coming. They didnât see us coming. They never could have imagined that this experiment with online democracy would find us standing at the front of the line. They shook their heads, sighed and joked that this is what you get when you let the frickinâ internet dictate political priorities. Well, itâs fine with me if they think that, because theyâre the ones kissing the internetâs ass in the first place. Will they now retreat to the editorial pages and go back to letting the pundits tell them what the people want?
High School Seniors Are Using Lots of LSD This Year
Jacob Sullum pokes numerous holes in the drug czarâs recent claims of dramatic drug war progress. This in particular jumped out at me:â¦if Walters wants to take credit for every drop in drug use that occurs on his watch, he'll have to take the blame for the enormous increases in past-month LSD use among high school seniors and past-month methamphetamine use among sophomores, both of which nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008 (hitting a whopping 1.1 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively).Be careful out there, kids! Thanks to the total failure of the war on drugs, you are up to your asses in acid and meth, but seriously, do not mix them. It will suck. Youâll get arrested (and probably tasered, too). See, contrary to the drug czarâs wild accusations, those of us who want to end the drug war have no interest in seeing young people make poor choices. And the fact that Americaâs high schools are overflowing with acid and speed ought to help illustrate why closing the black market is actually a perfectly rational approach to keeping powerful drugs away from our kids.
More on the Ryan Frederick Case
Radley Balko has new details in the case of Ryan Frederick, the Virginia man who was charged with murder for killing a police officer who he mistook for a burglar during a questionable drug raid.The story just gets more complicated all the time, but if one thing remains clear, itâs that the entire case against Frederick is a sham. The loss of life is regrettable indeed, but it is the result of shoddy drug war policing, not premeditated cop-killing by Frederick.
New Jersey Medical Marijuana Bill Gets Favorable Committee Vote
As a native New Jerseyan, I'm pleased to report that a committee of the state senate gave its approval yesterday to the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. One of the cosponsors of the bill, Sen. Loretta Weinberg, even represents my hometown. The upcoming Drug War Chronicle will have a feature story on the vote, and Phil actually got a preliminary version of that to me last night, so I thought I would make it available here on the blog. The article will be finalized sometime Thursday, but in the meanwhile you can read it here.
Why Should You or Anyone Care About This Week's U.N. Anti-Drug Meeting?
What's on in Vienna this week? Oh it's the "The Technical Seminar on Drug Addiction Prevention and Treatment: From Research to Practice." What on earth can be the reason for holding a drug treatment meeting at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna right before the holidays? Alas, I'm not familiar enough with local tradition to know whether it's as customary as a carol service or just another of the Bush Administration's dying groans â a last-ditch effort to spend down its budget or influence UN drug policy. There's plenty of reason to believe that it might be both. The US is the prime instigator of this conference, charmingly titled (in classic UN-speak) "The Technical Seminar on Drug Addiction Prevention and Treatment: From Research to Practice." Don't let the exciting title fool you. What happens here under the auspices of the US, in league with its dear friend Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of UNODC â who is capable of saying very sensible things, but is also on record as having said that "One song, one picture, one quote that makes cocaine look cool can undo millions of pounds' worth of anti-drug education and prevention" â may well set the tone of future international drug policy. Although not directly connected to this conference, we'll know for sure in March. That's when the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which serves as the UN's governing body on these issues (the UNODC is the CND's administrative wing), will be having its 52nd Annual Meeting here in Vienna. The business at hand will include a Ministerial segment which will sign off on and release a new UN Political Declaration. This follows a year-long review and evaluation of the performance of the policies set forth during the 1998 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs, which was the first of its kind. And why should you or anyone care about these meetings or UN Declarations? Because they have genuine implications in the national, international, and local level. The policies set during that first 1998 UNGASS on Drugs came down firmly on the side of the criminalization of illicit drugs and their users. Its goal was "eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008." Translation: it rubber stamped the ongoing War on Drugs. In the US, this disastrous, expensive, and ineffective strategy costs taxpayers a cool 12 billion in 2004 alone, and swelled the ranks of non-violent first-time drug offenders in US prisons, many of them low-income or working-class people of color. It has been equally disastrous internationally, from Mexico to Afghanistan. Now the future of international drug policy rests on what this new UNGASS Declaration will say. And at this very moment, out of your sight and away from the news media, there's a pitched battle being waged in the Demand Reduction Working Group â one of many working on that document. Representatives from the meetings' participating nations and from outside community-based organizations are arguing amongst and between themselves about the strategies for reducing illicit drug use. Are the collected nations going to sign on to yet another tour of duty with the War on Drugs? Or will this Declaration finally shift the focus of international drug policy towards a human rights, public health-based approach that will serve rather than merely criminalize and punish drug users? The answer to that question will be particularly important to countries that are in the process of developing their own drug plans. Certainly they should be able to turn to a science and public health-based document. Even 11 years ago, when the first UNGASS Political Declaration and action plans were being written, the science was clear re: the importance of harm reduction and syringe exchange as a mean of preventing HIV among people who use drugs. Even then, there was murmuring about the importance of developing drug policies that intersected with a human rights framework, and of "evidence based" solutions. Times have changed and our thinking has become more sophisticated. Drug treatment has to have a bigger role now; the interplay between drugs and infectious disease is more apparent. The world of drug policy has the opportunity to learn some towering lessons learned from the world of HIV, which long ago learned to include People Living with AIDS in policy discussions. In short, now is the moment for an evidence based, health oriented, human rights based international drug policy. But will the US stand aside and let that happen? Or will countries developing their own drug policies be denied access to evidence-based drug strategies? Will they be forced instead to rely on the existing official drug plans of countries like the US, which is notorious for exporting the same bad drug policy as it reserves for us at home and for acting out in a belligerent, bullying style at most international forums? At meetings held here in Vienna, the US delegation and the US mission are infamous for having apoplectic fits every time the term "harm reduction" is raised. They do so despite the considerable amount of harm reduction work that takes place in the States and its proven effectiveness in curbing HIV; despite the amount of federal funding that supports some of the larger programs around the country; despite the promotion of Safety Counts as an HIV prevention intervention; despite widely available methadone; and despite the great work that has curbed overdose and viral hepatitis, and made possible housing and mental health care for people who use drugs. Still, the State Department and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have happily and successfully ignored these vast accomplishments, and never breathed a word of them to fellow governments at these meetings. The rest of the international community believes that no harm reduction occurs in the States. And for so long as they believe that, they will be less well equipped to counter the resistance of their US counterparts. Which brings us to the issue of why I'm here and why we need to show up to meetings such this "technical seminar" â even in mid-December. Because back in July 2008, over 300 community-based organizations from around the world came together under the auspices of UNODC to prepare our own Political Declaration. And while not perfect, our Declaration is inclusive of people who use drugs, human rights, and harm reduction. http://www.harmreduction.org/article.php?id=782. Still, the work we put into that document will go unheeded and unused if countries like the US (and its allies in the War on Drugs, Russia and Japan) remain resolutely opposed to good policy reform. Someone has to challenge our government or we'll stay stuck in our rut and produce the same tired, regressive UN document no matter who has been elected to the White House. Anyway that's the scene setting for the next couple of days. There could be some cloak and dagger goings on â hints of the meeting to come in March. Or it's quite possible that this drug treatment conference is going to unfurl as, well, a very boring drug treatment conference in which case I'll report back on the hairstyles of the US Government delegation. Manana â¦â¦. Allan Clear is executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition.
The Real Reason Obama Wonât Support Marijuana Legalization
Much has been made of the fact that a marijuana legalization question was ranked #1 when President-elect Obama opened his Change.gov website up to questions from the public. In an open vote, the public spoke loudly and clearly that marijuana reform was the very first issue that the new President should address. For our trouble, weâve been rewarded with the sorriest excuse for an answer that Obamaâs transition team could possibly have provided:Q: "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?" S. Man, DentonA: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.Care to elaborate? You see, we all knew what the answer was. The point was that we all wanted to know why.As frustrating and insulting as it is to witness an important matter brushed casually to the side without explanation, Obamaâs answer actually says a lot. It says that he couldnât think of even one sentence to explain his position. Within the vast framework of totally paranoid anti-pot propaganda, Obama couldnât find a single argument he wanted to associate himself with. Thatâs why he simply said "No. Next question."All of this highlights the well-known fact that Obama agrees that our marijuana laws are deeply flawed. Heâs said so, and has back-pedaled recently for purely political reasons. If Obamaâs transition team tried to give an accurate description of his position on marijuana reform it would look like this:Q: "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?" S. Man, DentonA: President-elect Obama will not use his political capital to advance the legalization of marijuana. While he agrees that arresting adults for marijuana possession is a poor use of law enforcement resources, he believes that the issue remains too controversial to do anything about it.Itâs really that simple, which makes our job quite difficult. Any ideas? Update: Paul Armentano says to keep doing what we've been doing and I agree. The fact that we've provoked dialogue about marijuana reform on the President-elect's website is quite remarkable. The "Open for Questions" feature will reopen for new questions soon and we'll be back to push drug policy reform to the top yet again.On that note, please be advised that the site we're talking about is Change.gov, not Change.org. Change.org has been linked repeatedly in the comment section below, but that is not Obama's site. It fills a similar role and is worth visiting, but that's not where we should focus our energy if we want to directly confront Obama himself. I'm a little concerned that mixing these sites up could dillute our message, so please stay focused on Change.gov. I will post something when the next round of questions is open.
Petititon for Redress of Grievances - Ending the Drug War Today...
Hey - I was wondering about this - would it be possible to file for a redress of grievances caused by the Controlled Substances Act?
Asserting Your Rights Doesn't Mean You're Getting Away With Something
Last week I posted Don't Consent to Police Searches or Answer Incriminating Questions in response to this story in which three men were arrested for marijuana after mindlessly consenting to a police search. A commenter responded with this (emphasis in original):While I respect that you disagree with me, it's my personal opinion that headlines that encourage the skirting of laws are not going to be useful in influencing the citizens and legislators we need to help us change the laws.I agree that teaching people their rights isnât necessarily a direct path to drug policy reform, but I want to address the idea that my headline "encourages[s] the skirting of laws," which I think misses the point. In my work with Flex Your Rights, Iâve frequently encountered a false distinction in which asserting constitutional rights is considered honorable when one has nothing to hide, but is somehow perceived as disingenuous when the assertion of those rights prevents the discovery of criminal evidence. At worst, this argument takes the form of claiming that itâs an abuse of the constitution to refuse a search when one possesses marijuana, for example (thatâs not what the commenter above is saying, but itâs where that line of thinking often leads).All of this is premised on the assumption that police are legally entitled to discover contraband and that youâre "getting away" with a crime if police procedures donât result in your arrest. Technically, however, there is no crime until police obtain probable cause for an arrest, thus any citizen who effectively asserts 4th and 5th Amendment rights is not getting away with anything. They are legally innocent, because evidence of guilt never emerged. Thus, the whole point of understanding and asserting basic constitutional rights when confronted by police is that you are always innocent until proven guilty under the law. Asserting your rights can never be equated to "skirting the law," because these rights are the law.As for the larger question of whether encouraging citizens to assert their rights is a bad message for reformers, I would insist that we have nothing to gain by remaining silent on this issue as our prisons are filled with naïve drug offenders who waived their rights on the side of the road. Flex Your Rights was formed to end that silence and weâve drawn remarkably little public criticism for these efforts, probably because our opposition recognizes that criticizing know-your-rights education comes perilously close to criticizing the constitution itself.
Top Question on Obama website: When will marijuana be legalized?
President Elect Obama is known for reaching out beyond the beltway to take the pulse of the nation.
You Can Help Encourage Obama to Answer Questions About Our Marijuana Policy
President-elect Obama has created a web page to accept policy questions from the public. Users can vote for their favorites and his transition team has pledged to answer the most popular questions. At this moment, Iâm seeing these two in the top ten:"Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?""13 states have compassionate use programs for medial Marijuana, yet the federal gov't continues to prosecute sick and dying people. Isn't it time for the federal gov't to step out of the way and let doctors and families decide what is appropriate?"Showing that we care about these issues is vitally important, so please head over to change.gov and vote for these questions. Registration is easy and the questions should be right there on the front page (where theyâll stay if we make sure to vote for them).This is a very cool opportunity to show the strength of our movement by making marijuana reform the #1 issue on Obamaâs website. Please help, and forward the link to your friends and family. Votes close at noon tomorrow, so please donât delay. Thanks!Update: As noted in comments, I failed utterly to comprehend the fact that 12:00 am is midnight (duh!), so this post actually went up 9 minutes before the deadline (our time stamp is an hour ahead for some reason). So I'm an idiot, but the good news is that marijuana legalization ended up being the #1 question. I doubt I'm going to like the answer we get, but at least we've sent a message that marijuana reform is far from a fringe issue in 2008.
DEA Says it Has a Policy of Not Arresting Medical Marijuana Patients
Months ago, Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent a pointed inquiry to the DEA demanding an accounting of the costs and methodology behind the federal raids against medical marijuana dispensaries in California. DEAâs response (pdf) recently became available and contains some interesting information, including this:DEA does not investigate or target individual "patients" who use cannabis, but instead the Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) involved in marijuana trafficking.â¦Again, the agency does not target individual users who are engaged in "simple possession" of the drug - even though they too are violating federal law and entitled to no immunity.Itâs not really news that DEA avoids arresting patients, but itâs remarkable to see it in writing. This serves to remind us that DEA in fact bears no legal obligation whatsoever to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that have approved medical use. The organizationâs enforcement priorities with regards to medical marijuana are shaped by politics, not a sense of legal obligation, thus patients have been quietly left off the battlefield in recognition of the obscene PR fiasco that would result if they were visibly targeted. Keep this in mind if Obamaâs pledge to end medical marijuana raids is met with resistance from anyone who claims that "federal law must be enforced." DEAâs concession also helps to illuminate the complete incoherence of any argument that state-level marijuana reforms are rendered impotent in the face of incongruous federal drug laws. Such reforms have enormous practical value by dramatically reducing the threat of arrest and conviction under state laws, which have always been the only real threat facing individual users.This acknowledgment should end debate over the importance of state-level marijuana reform.
The Sins of the Father
I have posted three other blogs so far, but I have attempted to write several more.
Southeast Asia Plans to be Drug-Free by 2015
The plan is to get all the kids to stop smoking and drinking, which will result in the elimination of all drug use within 6 years:KUCHING, Dec 10 (Bernama) -- The International Federation of Non-governmental Organisations for the Prevention of Drug and Substance Abuse (IFNGO) has targeted a drug-free Asean by 2015 to counter the widespread abuse of "gateway drugs" among the region's younger generation, who are susceptible to the lure of alcohol and tobacco.Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said today children and the youth who were addicted to such "gateway drugs" provided the recruitment base for addiction to illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine."Fighting the war against drugs is a formidable and difficult task. I am certain that with concerted effort from all members of the Asean IFNGO network, we can bear down on the problem of gateway drugs and achieve our goal of a drug-free Asean by 2015," he said. [Bernama.com]And I am certain that by 2015 I will have, through deep concentration, mastered the art of levitation and learned to shoot laser beams from my eyes. If I fail, it will be everyoneâs fault but my own.
Donât Consent to Police Searches or Answer Incriminating Questions
Hereâs the perfect illustration of how not to handle an encounter with police:WHEELING -- The Ohio County Sheriff's Department initiated a traffic stop early this morning at the Mount de Chantal Kroger.After getting permission to search the vehicle, deputies found nearly a half a pound of marijuana, a digital scale, baggies and blunt wraps, along with some cash.25-year-old Andre Smith of Wheeling, 20-year-old Jeff McGhee of Wheeling and 18-year-old George Oliver were arrested and taken to the Northern Regional Jail.One of the suspects later admitted to deputies that the marijuana was purchased out-of-state, and he planned to sell it. [WTRF]Of course, thereâs no guarantee that refusing the search will prevent it from happening, but it often will, and if police search you anyway, youâll at least have a shot at getting the evidence thrown out in court. Iâve discussed this exact issue with dozens of defense attorneys and the answer is always the same: if the suspect refused consent, the charges are frequently dropped. I recently met a defense attorney from Kansas who called Flex Your Rights to order a copy of our video. Doing criminal defense in Kansas, this guy deals with traffic stop arrests all day every day. The drug war in Kansas is initiated on the highways and then fought out in court, and this lawyer is the guy you want to know if you get jammed up in a traffic stop. He said he gets very few clients who refused consent, and as a result a lot of his work involves negotiating plea bargains for drug cases. On the rare occasion that he gets someone who actually had the presence of mind to refuse the search, they walk. Heâs a badass and he knows how to annihilate improperly seized evidence.Every case is different and police misconduct is a virus, but the bottom line is that giving consent will always destroy you if thereâs anything in the car. Itâs just that simple. Donât play their game.
Americaâs Meanest Prosecutor Refuses to Resign
When a new president takes office, it is typical for all U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations. Yet, one of our nationâs top prosecutors says sheâs just not going to do that, and it happens to be Mary Beth Buchanan, whose career is defined by outrageous drug war grandstanding, flagrant assaults on free speech, and countless other acts of vindictive and unethical conduct. Radley Balko chronicles Buchananâs disgusting legacy and notes the likelihood that this is all a big ridiculous stunt to leverage herself into future positions of political power. Fine, I say. Obama should still give her the axe. If she subsequently plays the victim card in a run for governor or senate, so be it. Such a campaign would finally provide a long-overdue referendum on all the despicable crap sheâs done.
Elderly People Who Grow Pot in Albania
Apparently, Albania is Europeâs 2nd ranked marijuana producer, due in small part to the desperation of elderly Albanians who grow pot because they canât work and their children have moved away and they canât afford their prescriptions. So, as you might guess, the Albanian government is waging total war on the elderly, which is ridiculously easy under Albaniaâs crazy marijuana laws. The result is a bunch of impoverished old ladies going into hiding, while the real drug traffickers remain the only people in Albania who make any money.Meanwhile, with Amsterdam bowing to international pressure and closing some of its coffeeshops, perhaps the Albanian government should consider turning this mindless marijuana policy on its head and raking in those mischievous "drug tourism" dollars nobody seems to want. Seriously, you live in Albania. You canât afford a U.S.-style drug war, so donât try.
Can Both Sides of the Drug War Debate be Completely Wrong?
Drug policy academic Mark Kleiman is back with another simultaneous assault on both the drug czar and drug policy reform. I enjoyed Pete Guitherâs response.
More than just a swerve over the line.
This really happened to me, and it just goes to show yet another invasion of rights, and harrassment the police and government can throw at