Drug WarRant

In the Seattle Times, Roger A. Roffman writes Time to answer concerns to advance marijuana policy reform

In it, he implies that he finds common cause with marijuana reform, but has some important advice for us.

I believe, however, that we’ll only see success in marijuana policy reform when those in the movement expand the goals they’re trying to achieve. The objective needs to be more than protecting civil liberties. It must also include the goal of protecting those who are vulnerable.

I suspect that chiefs of police, prosecuting attorneys, medical societies, educators, and parents will once again join in supporting change in the marijuana possession laws if those reforms include a number of goals:

• Protecting adult civil liberties, • Effectively preventing marijuana’s harms to children and adolescents,
• Acknowledging the reality of marijuana dependence and addressing its prevention and treatment,
• Proposing credible prevention of accidents because of driving while stoned, and
• Identifying specific health risks from pot use in vulnerable groups (for example, individuals with cardiovascular disease).

It’s time for the conversation to bring all of these goals to the table.

This is first-class “concern troll” advice, which does nothing but prop up empty prohibitionist arguments in the guise of schooling us reformers on being better at crafting reform.

Let’s take them one at a time.

• Protecting adult civil liberties, • Effectively preventing marijuana’s harms to children and adolescents,

As far as I know, reformers have been united in wanting to reduce the access of marijuana for children. After all, we are the ones calling for age restrictions. And the “effectively preventing” statement? That’s an obvious argument fallacy. Requiring reformers to reach that bar is stupid — obviously kids will find ways to circumvent restrictions (some always do). What’s clear (and already proven from example in other societies) is that our approach is more likely to reduce the harms to children that that of the prohibitionists.

Why aren’t the prohibitionists being asked to justify how their policy has worked — how strict marijuana laws have “effectively prevented” marijuana’s harms to children?

• Acknowledging the reality of marijuana dependence and addressing its prevention and treatment,

The fact is that the ones failing to acknowledge the truth about marijuana dependence are the prohibitionists. Over and over, they use the lies about treatment statistics as “proof” that marijuana is dangerous and requires treatment. We can’t have a reasonable discussion about marijuana and dependency as long as marijuana is illegal and is a huge opportunistic cash cow to the treatment industry through criminal justice referrals.

• Proposing credible prevention of accidents because of driving while stoned,

Check out the weaselly wording of that one. Roffman wants us to craft a plan to prevent all the accidents that will occur from driving while stoned. This, while the current head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy can’t even come up with any evidence of a problem from stoned driving without falsifying data.

First, show us the problem. Second, why has it been so difficult for all the researchers in the government who work on this (and lots have been) to come up with a clear identifier of when marijuana causes driving impairment? Shouldn’t that be the source of the “solution” for the “problem”? Why, instead, has the government decided to push for “per se” laws? Perhaps because nobody can show us the extent of the problem?

• Identifying specific health risks from pot use in vulnerable groups (for example, individuals with cardiovascular disease).

For years, the federal government has funded just about any research regarding marijuana as long as it was designed to find something wrong with marijuana. (Forget about research for its benefits!) The federal government does a fine job of touting any adverse findings (even as it ignores all those findings which accidentally show benefits from marijuana). What more does Roffman want from us?

…

There’s a lot more that we reformers need to do to counter the propaganda put forward by decades of prohibitionist rule (and sometimes we may have to stoop to answering stupid questions), but what we don’t need is advice that actually props up that propaganda.

Thanks, but no thanks, Roger.

Still on the road, but hoped to have more wifi access by now. Unfortunately, the friends I’m staying with in Chicago have temporarily lost their wifi, so I’m finally blogging in the lobby of the theatre before my show.

Norm Stamper comes to the rescue of California NAACP with this strong OpEd in the Huffington Post: The Politics of Cannabis and Color

But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including “more than 20 African American religious and community leaders” headed by one Bishop Ron Allen.

Mr. Allen’s statement was illogical, and insulting and condescending to the multitudes of African American civic leaders, including law enforcement officers and members of the clergy, who are working to end a drug war that has had devastating effects on communities of color. […]

As Huffman points out, ending the drug war — or, more modestly, bringing a halt to the indisputable madness of marijuana prohibition — is imperative if we are to help halt the institutionalized denial of civil rights and civil liberties in African American communities.

Yet, speaking as “President and CEO” of the “International Faith-Based Coalition,” a pro-drug war organization that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere to combat Proposition 19, Bishop Allen addressed a news conference on the steps of the state capital. “Why would the NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?” he said. “It’s going to cause crime to go up,” he said. “There will be more drug babies,” he said. Huffman “must resign,” he said.

Stop and think, Mr. Allen: Huffman was hardly urging blacks to “stay high,” or even to pick up a single joint; marijuana legalization will cause crime to go down, not up; and there will be fewer drug babies.

You can sign a petition to support the California NAACP here.

It seems unlikely that Illinois State Representative Jim Stacia is going to vote in favor of medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana is a cruel hoax. Supporters oppose the use of purified chemical components of marijuana smoke and insist on “smoked dope” or nothing. That should be the first clue that this is nothing but a “sham”. You can’t deliver medicine safely by smoking it.

Marijuana potency is nearly three times more than it was in 1983, and when it’s smoked, its potency is uncontrolled. In 2006 there were 33,854 admissions to treatment centers here in Illinois for marijuana addiction and there is little doubt that marijuana is a gateway drug to cocaine and heroin.

Many have e-mailed me that I better support this “or else”. Not only will I not support it, I will speak passionately against it.

Easy answers to stupid questions. No.

The question? Could a $1.50 marijuana joint doom Prop. 19 in California?

Easy answers to stupid questions, part 2. No.

The question? Legalizing Pot in California: Users Could Double, Are There Health Risks?

This is an open thread

The new Director of the UNODC

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/07/giant-leap-backwards-as-ban-ki-moon.html

I’m away from wifi and trying to post from my iPhone..

George Will has a fascinating and strange piece about prohibition in the Washington Post.
“Another round of Prohibition, anyone?”
http://bit.ly/9bDpF8

After the first few years, alcohol consumption dropped only 30 percent. Soon smugglers were outrunning the Coast Guard ships in advanced speedboats, and courts inundated by violations of Prohibition began to resort to plea bargains to speed “enforcement” of laws so unenforceable that Detroit became known as the City on a Still.

Prohibition agents cherished $1,800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them.

[…]

Now that ambitious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans — from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use — Okrent’s book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences.

I’m not sure how George Will is able to write while sharing a room with a two- ton unseen elephant.

….
Thanks, Daniel

Alice Huffman, President of the California NAACP: Marijuana Law Reform Is a Civil Rights Issue

As leaders of the California NAACP, it is our mission to eradicate injustice and continue the fight for civil rights and social justice wherever and whenever we can. We are therefore compelled to speak out against another war, the so called “war on drugs.” To be clear, this is not a war on the drug lords and violent cartels, this is a war that disproportionately affects young men and women and the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African-Americans.

We reject the oft-repeated but deceptive argument that there are only two choices for addressing drugs — heavy handed law enforcement or total permissiveness. Substance abuse and addiction are American problems that affect every socioeconomic group, and meaningful public health and safety strategies are needed to address it. However, law enforcement strategies that target poor Blacks and Latinos and cause them to bear the burden and shame of arrest, prosecution and conviction for marijuana offenses must stop.

Black Church Coalition Condemns NAACP Support For Pot Legalization

A nationwide coalition of 34,000 minority churches is condemning the California NAACP for supporting a state ballot initiative that would legalize recreational use of marijuana. […]

But the Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, says drugs have “ravaged” the black community with too much violence and death to consider legalization.

Evans says his church will no longer contribute to the NAACP because of its position on marijuana.

Once again, the church (or at least those represented here) has no interest in actually addressing the issues.

UN Drug Policy in the Dark Ages — a good article by David Borden.

UN drug chief Antonio Maria Costa had this to say about the Colombians: “The drug control policies adopted by the Colombian government over the past few years — combining security and development — are paying off.”

But paying off for exactly whom? For Peruvians in the coca business, among others. Because once again, the main effect of the coca fight has not been to reduce the size of the crop — total growing only declined by five percent last year, an amount easily accounted for by changes in demand or other fluctuations — but to shift it from place to place.

Yawn… oh, and cannabinoids inhibit cancer cells… A Couple Of Recent Studies The Mainstream Media Forgot To Mention by NORML’s Paul Armentano.

As I wrote last week, to date there are now over 20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature pertaining to marijuana and its active compounds — making marijuana the most studied plant on Earth. But what’s the point in further research if nobody even bothers to pay attention to the research that’s already been done?

New Vienna Declaration Blog starts with a statement from Norm Stamper.

Received by email…

CALL FOR STORIES – THE UNHEARD VOICES DOCUMENTARY PROJECT

The Unheard Voices documentary project is seeking interviews and testimonials from drug-related offenders and ex-offenders, and their families, on the far ranging consequences of their criminal convictions.

Inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Project, which gathered video testimonies from survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust, the Unheard Voices documentary project is building an archive of testimonies on the cultural holocaust that has been the War on Drugs.

“No issue has had more impact on the criminal justice system in the past three decades than national drug policy. The ‘war on drugs,’ officially declared in the early 1980s, has been the primary contributor to the enormous growth of the prison system in the United States during the last quarter-century and has affected all aspects of the criminal justice system and, consequently, American society.” ~ The Sentencing Project, “A 25 Year Quagmire: The ‘War on Drugs’ and its Impact on American Society.” (2007)

If you or anyone in your family has had a criminal conviction for a nonviolent drug-related offense, we would like to hear about the lasting impacts to your lives, and how you overcame your circumstances, or were permanently affected. Your stories will help put a human face on a critical social issue that has been overwhelmed by fear, politics, racial prejudice, and intolerance, in an era where the public attitude has been, “out of sight, out of mind.” When the stories hit home, the policies begin to change.

We seek written testimonials and interview subjects for our video archive. If you would like your voice to be heard please contact Director Charles Shaw at charles.shaw@opendemocracy.net.

Off-topic. My show opened July 2, and reviews are starting to come in.

• Across space and time in the Autistic Mind — this review is really outstanding. The reviewer did a full treatment of the show and the concept of The Living Canvas. Too much to quote here.
• Chicago Reader review.

The Living Canvas: Demons is a trippy and affecting piece about two sisters, one apparently struggling with mental illness and the other struggling to understand. Meagan Piccochi’s sinuous… choreography and Isaac Mandel’s stellar soundscape combine with Pete Guither’s stunning digital imagery–projected on the naked bodies of the 10-member cast–to create a garden of psychedelic delights.

• Chicago Critic review

This is an open thread.

As a follow-up to the California NAACP endorsement of the marijuana legalization referendum…

There have been a several loud outcries against the California NAACP, some claiming that the NAACP has no business in this question, given that marijuana legalization is a civil liberties question and the NAACP’s mandate is civil rights.

There are a lot of good responses to that oversimplification, but what Andrew Sullivan has cobbled together from Scott Morgan and other sources really hits the nail on the head.

It is in these neighborhoods where the police make most patrols, and where they stop and search the most vehicles and individuals, looking for “contraband” of any type in order to make an arrest. The item that young people in any neighborhood are most likely to possess, which can get them arrested, is a small amount of marijuana. In short, the arrests are racially biased mainly because the police are systematically “fishing” for arrests in only some neighborhoods, and methodically searching only some “fish.” This produces what has been termed “racism without racists.”.

Scott Morgan opines:

Our marijuana laws have never, and will never, be enforced fairly. The brutality of modern drug enforcement reaches every community, but if young white men were given criminal records and subjected to profiling and police harassment at the same rates as people of color, the criminal justice system would quickly come to a crashing halt. The drug war was built on a foundation of fundamental unfairness, and mitigating its catastrophic impact on communities of color requires measures far more drastic than telling police for the millionth time that there’s more to their job than searching young black men all day and night.

This article by Justin Scheck in the Wall Street Journal really points out why law enforcement is so opposed to any loosening of marijuana laws.

hasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there’s one mission on which he’s spending more than in recent years: pot busts.

The reason is simple: If he steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county’s most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but “it’s where the money is.”

We’ve got to cut off the federal anti-pot subsidies.

Drug traffickers can.

Ecuador authorities seize drug-smuggling sub

The vessel utilized twin screws and was diesel electric-powered, the agency said. It was about 30 meters (98 feet) long and nearly 3 meters (nine feet) high from the deck plates to the ceiling. It has a periscope and an air-conditioning system.

The astronomical profits from the black market actually add up to such a degree that it seems logical to invest in an entire working submarine, even though they know it might be lost completely due to seizure.

How can the drug warriors ever hope to make supply-side work under such conditions?

I’m off to visit my folks this week. My mom turns 88 today and my dad turns 88 on Wednesday. I’ll post whenever I have wifi access.

Today, I thought it would be a good idea to read an important document that is often mentioned, but that many people have never actually read…
_____________________________

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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