This slogan, in all seriousness, will be appearing in magazines and on bus stops in Australia. I don't know what 'dickhead' means in Australian, but around here it means someone who isn't very nice.

Needless to say, being a dickhead is neither a crime nor a likely result of smoking pot. Ironically, however, writing the word 'dickhead' on a bus stop generally is a crime if done for any purpose other than this one.

Given what we know about the effectiveness of absurd anti-drug ads, I'd guess this campaign is unlikely to cause a decrease in marijuana use, but it might cause an increase in the use of the word 'dickhead.'

In fact, it already has.

During the course of research for this series, it became apparent that many prominent players in the war on drugs don't have many compliments for the current drug czar, John Walters.
…

Though President Bush appointed Walters to be the public face of the war on drugs, some anti-drug activists say he's been the invisible man.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey was drug czar from 1996 to 2001. He says, bluntly, that as far as he can tell, there is no federal drug policy at present.

Four members of Congress — all prominent drug warriors — have asked for the drug czar's resignation. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) says Walters, even more than his predecessors, manipulates numbers to inflate the Bush administration's successes in drug policy.

"When it comes to statistics, I think it's fair to say they cook the books," Grassley said. "They use whatever statistics fit their public relations program."

The drug czar's office says that Grassley was "badly briefed."

"My sense would be you're talking to the wrong people," Murray said. "You are talking with people who have a partial and mis-clarified sense of what the office does."

Of the more than 100 anti-drug professionals across America interviewed for this series — in overseas operations, domestic law enforcement, treatment and prevention — very few share the rhetoric of this drug czar: that we are "winning the drug war."

New Mexico has officially become the 12th medical marijuana state, prompting reckless viciousness and incredulity from the Drug Czar. From AP:

"This is a triumph of politics over science," [Drug Czar John Walters] said, suggesting [New Mexico Governor Bill] Richardson sought "to curry the favor of wealthy donors who are marijuana legalization advocates."

That's rich. Considering overwhelming public support for medical marijuana, a more accurate political interpretation would assume that Richardson is attempting to "curry the favor" of almost everybody.

As I've said before, there are really only like six people on the "con" side of the medical marijuana debate. Our opposition otherwise consists of confused parents and arrogant moralists who would be panicking about something else if they hadn’t been tricked by these six people (it used to be seven).

If John Walters wants to bark about the political viability of marijuana policy reform, let's buy him a bullhorn.

Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer, should launch air strikes and machine-gun attacks to destroy jungle drug factories and airstrips used by traffickers, President Alan Garcia said on Monday. Garcia said a day earlier the destruction of coca crops would resume in one of the most-important cocaine-making regions in the South American country. Officials had made a deal with local farmers to halt the eradication. "We've got to finish every last cocaine factory and every last airport. Use the A37 planes, bomb and attack these airports, these cocaine factories with machine guns," Garcia said, directing his comments to the country's interior minister, who is in charge of the police that lead the fight against drugs. Peru is the second-largest producer of cocaine in the world after Colombia. "I'm not willing to be blackmailed ... I'm not going to be a straw doll or puppet of the political fears," said Garcia, who took office in July. According to official figures, Peruvian police raided 718 cocaine factories last year and seized 14.7 tons of partially processed cocaine. They also destroyed more than 25,000 acres of illegal crops of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

Reports of candy-flavored methamphetamine are emerging around the nation, stirring concern among police and abuse prevention experts that drug dealers are marketing the drug to younger people.
…

"Drug traffickers are trying to lure in new customers, no matter what their age, by making the meth seem less dangerous," [DEA Spokesman Steve] Robertson says.

"The traffickers know the word is out about what a horrible drug this is," [Deputy Drug Czar Scott] Burns says.

"They are having a tough time selling this product, especially to young people. What do people in marketing do when they have a tough time selling a product? They have to come up with some sort of gimmick."

Wait, what? I thought we were in the middle of a massive, unmanageable meth crisis. Scott Burns is right that meth use is on the decline, but it's annoying that he only brings this up when it suits him. Of course, meth use was going down before the "crisis" was even declared, yet these late-comers wanna take credit for saving America with poignant public service announcements. It wasn't until 2005 that ONDCP figured out meth and marijuana were different drugs. And they continue to mix them up.

Seriously though, it's the users who decide what drugs are in and out. There's no evidence that street-level marketing schemes or ONDCP propaganda make a lick of difference to party people who want the most bang for their buck. They know what they're after. Pink meth exists because people want pink meth, not because they don't want any meth at all.

Drug policy expert Chris Rock explains it best in his classic performance Bring the Pain:

"Drug dealers don't sell drugs. Drugs sell themselves. It's crack. It's not an encyclopedia. It's not a f**king vacuum cleaner. You don't really gotta try to sell crack. Ok?

I've never heard a crack dealer going "Man, how am I gonna get rid of all this crack?!"

I don't have cable, so the only way to catch the latest edition of Lou Dobbs' appalling series "The War Within" was to attend a live filming at George Washington University. The value of actually being there was limited, although it was comforting knowing I could disrupt the live broadcast if I felt I had to.

To be fair, tonight's episode was a bit less offensive than previous installments. The focus was on addiction, and despite periodic outlandish Dobbsisms about "winning the drug war" and so forth, there were many valid concerns raised. Still, for a show that promises "News, Debate, Opinion," Lou Dobbs entirely failed to provide any debate. He brought out recovering addicts and school administrators, but his primary expert guests were Nora Volkow (NIDA), Joseph Califano (CASA), and Terry Klein (SAMHSA). As far as I can tell, these people completely agree on everything from public health policy to pizza toppings.

Having just discovered that the drug war isn't working, Dobbs would do well to consult some of the experts who've been predicting failure for decades. Califano offered the startling statistic that the U.S. has 4% of the world's population, but consumes 2/3 of the world's drugs. It is of course mind-boggling to contemplate how such an observation doesn’t lead to an immediate referendum on the policies that have gotten us here.

Thus, Lou Dobbs has become a curious and increasingly common character in the drug policy discussion. He can see that nothing's changed. He wants to talk about "how to win," yet he insists on having that conversation with people who haven’t had an original idea about drug policy in their wildest dreams. Bizarrely, he interrupts the discussion of treatment to complain that our interdiction efforts are ineffective and under-funded, quickly snuffing out my faint hope that Dobbs' newfound interest in treatment would lead him to question the value of buying more helicopters to chase speedboats across the Gulf of Mexico.

Dobbs' insistence that the drug war is failing stands in stark contrast to recent ONDCP propaganda about how "America's drug problem is getting smaller," thus it's interesting to consider how a John Walters appearance on the "The War Within" would play out. If Walters could get over any potential objections to the premise of the program, he and Dobbs might have a blast plotting how to double our drug war losses.

Lou Dobbs, self-proclaimed champion of the middle-class, seems to think the solution to drug abuse is inside the wallets of American taxpayers. Guess he's got a "war within" going on right up there in his giant, ignorant head.

Cross-posted from Flex Your Rights

We've got some more required reading for all you "4th Amendment is dead" fools who keep farting on our freedom parade. I know, there's no shortage of police, judges, and prosecutors who can't find big enough boots to trample your rights with. Believe me, I know. But the law evolves over time, as does the behavior of our public servants. This month brought a couple examples of the ability of State Courts to set a higher threshold of 4th Amendment protection for the citizens they serve.

This week, the Wyoming Supreme Court rejected the State's argument that the inadvertent discovery of marijuana in a home justified searching a lockbox found elsewhere in the residence.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice William Hill, said the state failed to prove the search that disclosed the evidence which was the basis for the charge against Benton was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Wyoming Constitution.

Hill's opinion quoted the amendment that protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures and case law "because we wish to make clear that the issue presented in a case such as this is one of the most important known to Anglo-American jurisprudence."

"The warrant requirement is robust, alive and well under the Vermont Constitution. It's gasping on life support under federal law," said Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School in South Royalton. "It's a reaffirmation of Vermont -- we're special, we're different -- and the subtext is we're smarter and better than you, United States Supreme Court."

The Washington Post has an important point:

WHAT IS a bong hit 4 Jesus? We're not sure, and we doubt anyone really knows what the phrase means -- which is one reason the Supreme Court ought not to regard it as prohibited speech.

It's true. Prohibiting something you don't understand is the height of ignorance. All attempts to interpret the statement can be dismissed as the desperate fulminations of confused people who demand arbitrary authority to shield themselves from future confusion.

Now that it's been immortalized by the very people who find it objectionable, bong-hits-for-Jesus will probably be with us for quite some time. In the interest of preventing subsequent misunderstandings, I propose that we decide what it means. I vote that we use bong-hits-for-Jesus as a dissmissive retort to anything that doesn’t make sense. For example, if someone's carrying on about something you disagree with or don't understand, you'd reply "bong-hits-for-Jesus, dude."

If we succeed in making BH4J the next WWJD, the censors will surely come to regret ever complaining about it in the first place.

Joliet Police Chief Fred Hayes said calling off the operation averted a potential disaster. The prosecutor's relative was "an associate" of the target of the operation, and the target learned of it, Hayes said.

"I think the state's attorney's office handled it very professionally and expeditiously," Hayes added, saying the supervisor's quick action might have prevented officers from being placed in serious jeopardy.

Police issue warning about super strength Cannabis Mar 20 2007 by Ben Rossington, Liverpool Echo SUPER-strength cannabis so potent that just one puff can cause schizophrenia is being grown by Merseyside drug gangs. Cannabis resin, usually smuggled in from Morocco, has been replaced by home-grown super skunk as the drug of choice for sale by criminal gangs on Merseyside. Experts warn this new strain of cannabis is so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff. Today Merseyside’s police chief has warned that organised gangs are moving into the production of the drug as a quick way of making cash.

EDITORIAL Cannabis potency in Europe There has been much recent interest in the possibility that the concentration of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active principle in cannabis, is now greater than it was. If pronouncements in the popular media are to be believed, the THC content (potency) is 10 or 20 times the levels of only a generation ago, giving apparent cause for concern about increased problems. The more cynical might comment that this is also a convenient rallying cry for those against an increasingly permissive attitude to cannabis use. But to what extent do the available data justify this fear? If one begins to explore the issue in more detail, it becomes evident that concerns about high potency cannabis are by no means new, and the reality appears both less alarming and more complex. THE FACTS AS FAR AS THEY ARE KNOWN A recent study [1] found that data overall were weak, but the evidence available suggested that the potencies of resin and herbal cannabis that have been imported into Europe have shown little or no change, at least over the past 10 years or so. This is hardly surprising, as these products have been made by traditional methods that have probably remained the same for generations. In Europe, average potencies of imported resin and herbal cannabis are typically between 2% and 8%. Cannabis (hash) oil is uncommon in Europe, but its THC content has also shown no clear trend over many years. What has changed throughout Europe and elsewhere is the appearance, from the early 1990s, of herbal cannabis grown from selected seeds by intensive indoor methods. This material, best described as domestically produced 'sinsemilla' (from the Spanish sin semilla—without seeds), is also known as 'skunk', 'buds' or 'nederwiet'. Its hydroponic cultivation, with artificial control of 'daylight' length, propagation of female cuttings and prevention of fertilization certainly does produce cannabis with a higher potency; on average it may be twice as high as imported herbal cannabis, although the two potency distributions overlap and some samples of imported cannabis are, and have always been, of high potency [2]. The increased THC content of herbal cannabis produced by indoor methods is a consequence of both genetic and environmental factors as well as freshness (i.e. production sites are close to the consumer and storage degradation of THC is thus avoided). There is some evidence that the potency of domestically produced sinsemilla is gradually increasing, perhaps as a result of continual improvements in technique. This product is distributed through the same networks as other cannabis products but, as indicated by the presence of home-grow shops in some European countries, consumers are also producing the drug at home. However, a note of caution is needed when assessing this information. Data on potency trends over 5 years or more were available only from five countries in Europe; in some of these the test sample sizes were low or unknown. Questions exist in terms of how representative the seizures are of the overall illicit market and in terms of the subsampling and selection of material from individual seizures for forensic testing. In addition, for a number of methodological reasons, both the reliability and comparability of data from different forensic laboratories were questionable. By far, the greatest number of THC analyses was carried out in Germany, with over 7000 measurements annually, but no distinction was made between imported and home-grown herbal cannabis. There has also been a rise in overall potency in North America, but in Australia and New Zealand the picture is less clear. THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH If the strength of some forms of cannabis has increased, then is this a cause for concern? The first matter to address is whether the availability of a more 'concentrated' form of a drug is in itself an issue. A parallel might be drawn here with the consumption of alcohol. Public health consequences of alcohol consumption are not a simple function of the strength of the beverage consumed, be it beer, wine or spirits. Rather, at population level, research suggests that it is the total quantity of alcohol consumed that is important rather than the concentrations in which it is sold. How far this parallel holds for cannabis is unknown, but it does raise the question of whether the availability of high potency cannabis impacts on total consumption levels of THC. It is still unknown whether those who smoke higher potency cannabis have higher blood levels of THC or whether they titrate the dose according to the subjective and relatively immediate pharmacological effects. It should be noted that even if we consider only the smoking of cannabis cigarettes/joints, all the following factors will influence an individual smoker's dose exposure: the amount used per cigarette/joint, sharing with others, the number of cigarettes/joints consumed per session, the number of sessions in any given time period, and individual smoking technique. As Hall et al. [3] note, age of onset of use and frequency of use are likely to be more influential than changes in potency in determining consumption levels. It is also important to note that, as far as we can tell, for most countries the market share of sinsemilla appears to be currently quite low. For example, in the United Kingdom it is estimated that resin comprises 70% of consumption. Of the remainder, about half comprises 'traditional' herbal cannabis and half sinsemilla. In other words, if the effective potency (the weighted average) had been 5%, then the appearance of sinsemilla can be estimated to have increased this to no more than 6%.