November « 2012 « Drug WarRant

Open Thread

Another whirlwind weekend for me. I’m up in Chicago now – just played a couple of hours of Christmas music on the piano for a nice alumni event at the Allerton Hotel. Tomorrow I’m off to Los Angeles and I’ll be doing an event Sunday afternoon and then taking the red-eye back Sunday night.

So [...]

Marijuana and the NFL again

A much better article in The Nation than the one after election day in USA Today. Dave Zirin: THe NFL’s Coming Conflict on Cannabis, which he notes the dysfunctional NFL policies.

In the bizarre macho ethos of the NFL, alcoholism is ignored, pain killer abuse is encouraged and other violent, off-field behavior is winked [...]

Too bizarre to pass up

Mark Kleiman has a very reasonable article at The Crime Report: Legalizing Pot: One Step at a Time. I’m pretty sure a version of it has been published elsewhere, but it’s essentially a plea for the federal government to let us learn from the federalist experiments in Colorado and Washington.

What’s bizarre is the current [...]

Unions fighting the good fight

A little piece, but one that made me stand up and cheer on a small miner’s union in Vancouver.

Miners Union Fights Drug-Testing Policy

VANCOUVER, B.C. (CN) – A coal miners union wants Teck Coal to put the brakes on a random drug-testing policy before wrapping up arbitration proceedings.

The union claims that [...]

U.N. General Assembly will address drug war

Eventually.

Via Drug Policy Alliance

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry is reporting that the United Nations has accepted its resolution to hold a General Assembly special session on drugs. The session will take place in the beginning of 2016 with preparations beginning next year.

The resolution is about international cooperation against drugs, but it’s also clearly about [...]

Go Directly to Jail

Do not pass go, do not go to the lunchroom.

At 9 a.m. on the morning of October 31, 2012, students at Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande were settling in to their daily routine when something unusual occurred.

Vista Grande High School Principal Tim Hamilton ordered the school — with a student population [...]

‘Breaking the Taboo’ trailer

What else could cause such behavior?

I was struck by this headline: Report: Shooter drug-free during Sikh temple killing

MILWAUKEE — A white supremacist with a history of alcohol problems was drug-free when he walked into a Sikh temple in the U.S. this summer and fatally shot six people before killing himself, according to a toxicology report released Wednesday.

There’s almost [...]

Eugene Jarecki

Excellent video interview at The Guardian: ‘The House I Live In’ director Eugene Jarecki on the war on drugs: ‘Everybody is a Victim’

Among other things, he discusses the notion (that we’ve discussed here) that perhaps the drug war is a success, depending on what you are measuring.

The continued intentional misuse of drugged driving data

There was another study done, this time in California, where drivers were asked to voluntarily participate and were tested for alcohol and other drugs (breathalyzer and saliva tests, primarily).

Naturally, this has led to another spate of hysterical reporting about the road filled with stoned drivers. The L.A. Times topped the list with its headline [...]

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