- Russia has been complaining that the U.S. hasn’t been fighting the drug war hard enough.
- Harm reduction organizations complain that Russia focuses solely on punitive enforcement measures and forcing sudden abstinence, to the detriment of the health and lives of drug users and addicts. Russia responds that it doesn’t consider harm reduction methods to be valid.
- Russia’s Yury Fedotov was named Executive Director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
- The Russian Federation pledges US$7 million in voluntary funding to the UNODC now with annual contributions of $2 million starting this year.
You do the math.
Gee, I wonder how open the UNODC will be toward harm reduction?
Pig-trough pension grubbing criminals labelling any and all who oppose them,, ‘terrorists’
Too funny.
Russia only has around 70 needle exchanges for their entire population and methadone replacement therapy is illegal. So … yeah … no HR from those guys.
Plus, this donation is clearly aimed at “buying” the UN office much the same way as contributing countries in the INCB tends to get a say based on how much they’ve donated.
“So, Dad, what are you working with”
“Oh, I try to make people’s life miserable by inflicting as much punishment on them as possible. I also work hard to ensure that they get no treatment. I’m pretty good at it.”
Don’t think I could do that.
HAHAHA, Russia is still communist, they want the rest the world to be to. What better way than to spread communism than to spread Americas communist prohibition.
There are some general features of a socialist enterprise, whether it’s the Post Office, schools, or the war on drugs. The enterprise is inefficient, expensive, very advantageous to a small group of people, and harmful to a lot of people. That was true of socialism in Russia, it was true of socialism in Poland, and it’s true of socialism in the United States. –The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise
by Milton Friedman
http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/socialist.htm
Considering that the Russian mafia is running drug trade and the government alike, I wouldn’t be surprised if that contribution money and this appointment aren’t, in fact, a Trojan horse.
Not that anything that Russia would do to manipulate the drug trade would be in our benefit. They’re just fighting for control of an immense off-the-books revenue stream that only multiplies once it hits War Street or equivalent.
Government meddeling in drug trade only means more misery for averge folks like me.
Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. For $7.5-million down and $2-million per year, Russia just acquired a new cover for a spy ring that’s capable of injecting itself directly into international territories under the guise of drug enforcement, just as the U.S. does with its DEA. Congratulations are due.
Who can we thank for this? Why none other than “Mr. Fedotov highlighted that he was ‘deeply grateful for this important pledge that will enable the Office to boost its programmes in critical areas’.”
At these prices, even the marijuana lobby could buy in.
Uh…Russia was never socialist, least of all now. State Communism bears as much resmblance to Socailism as a civil libertarian does to a Pat Robertson fundamentalist, athoritarian conservative.
It is amazing to me that the political conversation is so stilted in the U.S. these days. Americans don’t even know what socialism IS anymore, and they sure don’t know it when they see it. My head still reels that people think the bank bailout was socialism. It was the perfect inverse.
“Keep you damn Government hands off my medicare!”
I’m Gonna leave it at that. Socialism…ha…when was the USSR socialist? Don’t let the name fool you. We call ourselves a democracy, too.
i don’t think americans have ever really known what socialism is – it’s been rolled up with communism for decades; not that americans know what communism is, either, or fascism – to many, if not most, americans these -isms are but other names for dictatorships…
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$7 million? Million with an M? What kind of a budget does the UN have? $7 million is more accurately described as a rounding error to the overall cost of the drug war.
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Slightly off topic I think these people have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail one too many times:
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/01/marijuana-smuggling_pigeon_bus.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHFXG3r_0B8 <—-swallows and coconuts
Twice very recently snitching has gotten someone killed. Time to label it a serious mental illness. Stasturbators. Ptoooooey. Lock em up and throw away the key.
One does need to remember we are dealing with the products of the old Soviet Union when we are talking about the rulers of Russia today. Under the Soviet system, dissent was a crime. What constituted dissent? Well, it could be interpreted (and was) to mean every thing from actual political activities, to threatening the local kommissar’s hold on the black Market. In short it was a neat, flexible tool for putting away anybody who threatened entrenched interests. Now what do you suppose would be the “acceptable” counterpart to this under a system that ostensibly allows freedom of speech? Clearly only draconian drug laws offer the same opportunities go after any and all who threaten the status quo. By their nature they lend themselves to caprice. Here they use them to target minorities and immigrants. Plus, it keeps a vibrant black market alive in a country who had about half of it’s entire economy underground for most of the last century. Neat.
$7 Million? Mere pocket change now days.
I suggest a Drug War Debt Clock on Pete’s site, similar to the National Debt Clock. It would be an interesting way to graphically display the money being spent at this very moment on the war on (some) drugs.
Do you mean like this one Cliff?
Yes, just like that.
Bah, what’s so special about money being spent? Don’t you remember what B.H. Obama said to Congress when he got sworn in in 2009?
When B.H.Obama talks, people listen.
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Hmm, everyone remember the movie “Bad Santa”? Well there’s a new movie about a pot smoking teacher called “Bad Teacher”. The lead actress says she bought pot from Snoop Dogg. Wow.
Awesome.
Who’da thunk it?
Woulda never guessed.
Almost as special as smoking pot with Willie Nelson.
So friggin’ what?
B-O-R-I-N-G
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1348881/Cameron-Diaz-alleges-I-bought-marijuana-Snoop-Dogg-high-school.html?ito=feeds-newsxml