Drug WarRant

Reminder. If you haven’t done it yet, please consider signing the Vienna Declaration.

… Basing drug policies on scientific evidence will not eliminate drug use or the problems stemming from drug injecting. However, reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfil human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.

The ACLU is suing Wal-Mart, for firing Joseph Casias, because he tested positive for marijuana, despite using it legally as a medical marijuana patient in Michigan.

California Rallying Cry?: Vote Green, Not Brown. Steve Fox has some advice for gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, who came out against the marijuana legalization referendum:

Here is my political advice to Mr. Brown. From now on, if he is asked about Proposition 19, he should say, “I have some concerns about the initiative, which I hope could be addressed by the state legislature if it passes, but if I am elected to be the next governor of the state I certainly plan to respect the will of the people.”

If he chooses to ignore this advice, he may be hearing or seeing – or simply feeling the effects of — the following slogan in the fall: “Vote green, not Brown.”

The dangers of drugged driving by Gil Kerlikowske, in The Baltimore Sun. The Drug Czar is clearly determined to push this unsupported policy move. I’ve written a letter in response, but have not heard from the Sun, yet.

Interesting survey of newspaper and blog comments to determine what arguments pro and con are used most often regarding marijuana legalization.

PROS:

• Medical usefulness 48%
• Crime and law enforcement 41%
• Potential positive impact on economy and public finance 33%
• Safer to use than some other prohibited drugs and alcohol 24%Industrial use 15%

CONS:

• Mental and physical health risk 68%
• Substantial legal substitutes for marijuana’s medical attributes 32%
• Social effects 32%
• Crime and accident risks 26%
• Tendency to lead to other drug use 16%

Santa Cruz County Grand Jury determined that legalizing marijuana would bring in an estimated $7,549,200 for the county. I haven’t heard of a Grand Jury used that way before.

Stupid Drug Warrior Tricks…

• Legalizing Marijuana by Chris Watkins, Narcotics/K9 Ops Contributor at Officer.com

Marijuana claims victims from the growers, users and the environment. Cancers associated with tobacco use are just as likely in marijuana. […] Tens of thousands have been murdered on the US/Mexico border in the last several years and to turn a blind eye to this issue is negligent on our part and dangerous to our national security. This fight won’t be won if we have politicians promoting the use and taxation of an illegal drug to fill federal, state or local coffers. This simply goes against the basic fundamentals of a civilized society and allows our government to become nothing less than drug dealers.

• Medical Marijuana Too Dangerous, Costly by Gerald Turetsky, in the Times Union (Albany, NY).

Marijuana is has other health risks. THC levels vary greatly. In recent years its potency has risen by up to 600 percent and, in some cases, 1,500 percent. These are dangerous levels, especially for people with weakened immune deficiency systems, heart conditions and psychiatric illnesses.

This is an open thread

The Supreme Court ruled this week, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individuals to own handguns.

Mark Draughn at Windypundit notes that Mayor Daley of Chicago is planning to fight the ruling and notes:

It’s nonsense to think that the loss of Chicago’s handgun is going to endanger cops or any other first responders. Illinois will almost certainly keep its background check requirement, which means that only people with no significant criminal record will be able to possess a handgun legally. The aren’t likely to suddenly commence a life of crime.

Let me put it another way: Last weekend in Chicago, 54 people were wounded by gunfire, 10 of them fatally. Since ordinary Chicago residents can’t own handguns legally, most of those shots must have been fired by people who had guns in violation of Chicago’s tough handgun ban. It’s hard to imagine that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens would have made things any worse.

But the mayor has some ideas, supposedly about safety, that could make things more dangerous…

“If the ban is overturned, we will see a lot of common-sense approaches in the city aimed at protecting first responders,” Daley said. “We have to have some type of registry. If a first responder goes to an apartment, they need to know if that individual has a gun.”

Fine, have a registry. But here’s what’s going to happen: the registry will do nothing to help responders facing illegal weapons (the ones that they need to worry about), but it will cause first responders to be overly aggressive when approaching licensed owners (who are much less likely to be a violent threat).

This was exactly the situation in the case of Drug War Victim Anthony Andrew Diotaluto.

Anthony worked two jobs to help pay for the house he lived in with his mother. He had permit for a concealed weapon because of the areas he traveled through for his night job. Sunrise police claimed that he had sold some marijuana, and because they knew he had a legal gun, decided to use SWAT. Neighbors claim that the police did not identify themselves. Police first claimed that Anthony pointed his gun at them, and later changed their story. Regardless, Anthony was dead with 10 bullets in him, and the police found 2 ounces of marijuana.

A marijuana bust turned deadly because the cops knew that he owned a gun.

These days, over 40,000 SWAT “call-outs” happen each year, mostly due to the drug war.

This directly conflicts with legal gun ownership, increasing the likelihood that legal gun owners will be killed by police in either routine, or accidental, raids.

Those who value the 2nd Amendment (including the NRA) should be speaking out forcefully about the excesses of the drug war.

You’ve got plenty of reason.

Fun with referral logs…

Got a referral today to this site for the question: What year was marijuana invented?

Um, Sorry Virginia… Viagra was invented. Marijuana was created by God.

In fact, some could argue that the existence of cannabis is itself proof that God exists. After all, what possible random chance could end up with a plant that has such an amazing range of useful and safe properties as cannabis? A plant that is extremely nourishing, provides fiber for clothing and building materials, provides oil for fuel, shrinks cancerous tumors, provides relief and/or cures for a wide variety of illnesses. And it makes you feel good and helps you reach a spiritual state without harmful side effects. Absolute proof that it was put there by God.

And so I brought that up to my friend George, who doesn’t believe in God, but is a strong believer in evolution (and yes, I know you can believe in both).

Me: So George, isn’t cannabis proof that God exists?

George: Not in the least. Sure, it sounds good, but if you’re making the case that God exists because cannabis is useful, then how do you explain poison ivy or deadly toxic plants like nightshade? Why would God make them?

Me: Well, how does evolution explain them?

George: Easy. Evolution is about reinforcing traits that end up helping the organism reproduce, and then those traits are passed on. Plants that develop toxins end up surviving (and reinforcing those toxin genes through reproduction) once animals learn (also through evolution) not to eat the plants or they’ll die.

Me: But that doesn’t explain cannabis. All those useful traits for humans certainly don’t help the plant survive…

George: Ahh, but all evolution cares about is that the species survives and reproduces (not the individual plant). Look around you — cannabis is everywhere. Those traits that it developed turned out to insure the survival and flourishment of the species. What other plant is cared for so lovingly? Clearly the traits worked and thus were reinforced by evolution.

Evolution can be pretty sneaky sometimes.

So can God.

Bishop Ron Allen is pissed that the California NAACP is backing the California legalization movement. Allen, apparently, has no problem with the high incarceration rates of blacks or the Jim Crow drug laws. Perhaps all the broken families in the black communities drive more people to his church?

Anyway, in this press release, Bishop Allen fails to address a single point made by the NAACP regarding its good reasons for supporting the referendum. Instead, he goes ballistic over… George Soros.

Bishop Ron Allen says, “It is time to take a closer look at how decisions are made at the California NAACP and what the contributing factors were that caused Alice Huffman to side with Proposition 19. California NAACP President Alice Huffman is selling out the very people that the NAACP has a history of protecting. She has been bought and paid for by the highest bidder, in this case it is George Soros, his Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation Network. We know Soros is a major contributor to the NAACP and he is a primary funding source for the legalization of marijuana worldwide. With Huffman’s position on legalization, she is destroying the good work the NAACP has done for the African American people, and she is discrediting the good name of the NAACP. She has sold us out for her personal financial gain and I call for her immediate resignation. Alice Huffman, step down as the President of the California NAACP now and restore its good name.”

If Bishop Allen cares at all about African American people, it’s time for him to address the real factors that have hurt that community — especially the racist and destructive drug war.

Rolling Stone reporter compares chance of victory in Afghanistan to losing U.S. drug war

HASTINGS: No. No, it’s a joke…Trying to stop corruption in Afghanistan is like trying to stop the drug war here. I think we should really choose our battles wisely and not waste our resources.

An interview with Tom Feiling the author of a new book: Cocaine Nation: How the White Trade Took Over the World — a call for legalizing cocaine.

I don’t see how it could get worse. People who are unable to control their intake are getting their drugs on the street in adulterated forms from people who are armed, with no provision or any kind of service to help them address their problems or take their drugs safely, This is the worst possible way to treat substance abuse. In any other social policy field, these things are subject to assessment: We see if these policies are working. But in the “War on Drugs” there’s an overarching moral imperative, so any cost-benefit analysis that you would apply to any system regulating a potentially dangerous subject is out the window.

The Drug Czar is touting Montana’s commitment to stop drugged driving: Prevention of Drugged Driving in Montana. And the article starts…

Montana has historically had one of the worst records in regards to fatal crashes by drivers under the influence of alcohol. We also have the highest per capita levels of alcohol consumption and percentage of teen binge drinkers in the nation. Alcohol abuse and misuse is clearly a public health issue in Montana.

Ah, yes, therefore we need to pass tougher drugged driving laws!

Is Drug Policy A Human Rights Abuser? — this review by Joseph Allchin introduces a word to me I had not heard used much: “Narcophopia.”

In Latin America, washed along by the flow of blood, a feeling that the ‘war on drugs’ may have been lost has stirred, and has caused a reassessment of prohibition, a policy that a new report claims “is driven by moralism rather than empirical research”.

‘Narcophobia: drugs prohibition and the generation of human rights abuses’, authored by Dick Hobbs from the UK’s London School of Economics (LSE) and Brazilian journalist Fernanda Mena, further states that drug “prohibition enforcement has hindered the advancement of democracy and led to violence and increases in human rights abuses”.

The Environmental Cost Of Growing Pot by Lisa Morehouse for NPR.

This is a really irresponsible piece by Morehouse. No cogent analysis of the difference of environmental cost between legalized marijuana and marijuana under a black market system — just an offhand remark that it might be different, but nobody knows for sure. This, in an article that starts out about the vote coming up and yet details only one specific aspect of environmental costs.

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This is an open thread.

Mexico…

It’s hard to even pay attention any more… the continuing reports from Mexico of destruction start to numb a person.

Mexican Singer Vega Shot Dead in Car

Hours later, on the way to his concert, [Sergio] Vega was gunned down by the Sinaloa cartel. Gang members opened fire on Vega’s red Cadillac, which caused him to lose control of the car. According to the newspaper El Debate, the gunmen “finished [Vega] off” with shots to the head and chest.

According to BBC, musicians who focus on the drug issues in Mexico have become targets for the violent drug gangs. In the past three years, at least seven musicians have suffered similar fates as Vega.

How Wachovia And Major U.S. Banks Have Spent The Past Four Years Helping Mexican Drug Cartels

Back in March, Wachovia struck a deal with Federal prosecutors under which the bank admitted it didn’t do enough to prevent money-laundering between criminal organizations, in which illicit funds transferred flew past the $300 billion mark. Now Wachovia faces charges from the Department of Justice over violating the Bank Secrecy Act – a first for the bulge bracket of large U.S. banks.

Similarly, traffickers used accounts at Bank of America to purchase three planes that ended up smuggling 10 tons of cocaine. “Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009,” says the article.

Killing Escalates Mexico Drug War

A leading Mexican gubernatorial candidate was killed early Monday in a state bordering Texas, in the highest-level assassination of a politician here since President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug cartels in 2006.

The killing of Rodolfo Torre, who was seen as a shoo-in for governor in Tamaulipas, represents an escalation of the drug traffickers’ war against the Mexican state.

We’ve gotten so numb, that we even forget about incidents such as this one…

When he first learned about what Juarenses have come to call the “massacre at Villas de Salvarcar,” Calderón hinted that the thirteen teenagers who died at the hands of professional executioners were common criminals and city low life. He could not have been more wrong. In fact they were honor students and athletes who had gathered to celebrate a friend’s seventeenth birthday. They had the misfortune of belonging to a football club whose initials, “AA,” were mistaken for the initials of the Sinaloa cartel’s local enforcers, the Artistic Assassins. And so, in the middle of the night, while the teens danced in a room cleared of furniture, they were gunned down. Seven hours later, when the first daylight photos were taken, the concrete floor where they died still glistened with their clotting blood.

And so it continues, day after day, while venal drug warriors, who care about nothing but their own gravy train, tell us soberly that the violence is a sign that we’re winning, and that we must continue to countenance and even fuel this destruction and corruption.

Why? Merely to avoid the remote possibility that a few extra people may voluntarily get stoned and eat Doritos.

This post is a plug for my latest artistic enterprise and a bit off-topic for drug policy.

As some of you know, one of my long-time artistic pursuits has been the photography and performance art of The Living Canvas — a unique art approach that is demonstrates the incredible expressive power of the human body through its function as a living canvas for projected textures and images.

The latest event is my seventh Living Canvas theatrical production: Living Canvas: Demons.

Join The Living Canvas in a journey through the mind of a young woman, encountering creatures of nightmare, mystery, and merriment. Eleven performers, clad only in the textures of projections and light, reveal a hidden world where naked flesh morphs into the manifestations of fantasy and nothing is what it seems.

Pete Guither’s The Living Canvas has been projecting textures and images onto naked performers since 2001, and Demons is their seventh show in Chicago. Each show has had a different theme and structure, but all celebrate the power of the human body to be an expressive canvas, with an underlying theme of body acceptance. In fact, each show not only has a Q and A session following, but also an opportunity for adventurous audience members to see what it’s like to be a Living Canvas.

OK – here’s a stretch for a connection to drug policy… One review of a past Living Canvas production said: “Stoners, Dali fans, sensualists of every stripe, this show’s for you.” — Brian Nemtusak, The Reader. However, you don’t have to be stoned to be blown away by the images and the story that is told.

Other reviews of past shows:

Nina Metz of the Chicago Tribune called The Living Canvas “intensely peculiar and mesmerizing… It’s riveting.” Time Out Chicago said “Pete Guither’s high-def projections of intricate patterns across naked actors is eye candy on the order of a laser-light show.” And ChicagoCritic.com called it a “sensual and visceral performance art piece done with craft and good taste.”

“The Living Canvas: Demons” opens Friday and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. from July 2 through July 31 at National Pastime Theater, 4139 N Broadway in Chicago. Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased by online or by calling 773-327-7077.

The show is part of a larger theatrical festival at National Pastime Theater called Naked July: Art Stripped Down. There is also a blog that discusses and previews the shows.

If you’re in the Chicago area during July, make it a point to see the show — it’s short (just under an hour) and unforgettable. Plus, there’s always that opportunity for audience participation if you’re interested. I’ll be at all of the performances. Feel free to come up and introduce yourself afterwards.

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This is an open thread.

One of the true tragedies in the drug war has been the failure of leaders in the black community to speak out against the new Jim Crow laws — the drug war that has decimated the black communities through intended and unintended racist application and the systematic disenfranchisement of blacks due to over-incarceration.

In fact, much of the African-American community has called for tougher drug laws and enforcement, perhaps partially due to a lack of understanding of the true effects of prohibition, partially due to a fear of appearing to be excusing or promoting drug abuse/trafficking among their own, and partially due to the tremendous power within the black community of what tends to be a socially conservative moralistic view promoted by the church.

So it is heartening to see the California chapter of the NAACP endorse marijuana legalization.

Saying that prohibition takes a heavy toll on minorities, leaders of the NAACP’s California chapter announced Monday that they are backing passage of a marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot.

The war on drugs is a failure and disproportionately targets young men and women of color, particularly African-American males, said Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP’s state conference.

The group cited statistics from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice showing that in 2009, 62% of the state’s marijuana arrests were of nonwhite suspects and that 42% were under 20.

The pattern was consistent in the state’s 25 largest counties, with arrests of African Americans at double, triple and quadruple the rate of whites even though studies show that blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites, NAACP officials said.

Of course, this move by the NAACP was not without controversy within the community.

But [Sacramento minister Ron Allen, president of the International Faith-Based Coalition, a Sacramento group representing 3,600 congregations, said he is stunned the state NAACP would favor legalized marijuana.

“Most African American pastors are disappointed, absolutely disappointed with the decision,” said Allen, bishop of the Greater Solomon Temple Community Church in Oak Park. “If anyone should know the effects of illicit drugs in the black community, it should be one of our most respected civil rights organizations.”

The point, Reverend Allen, is that the NAACP knows the effects of the drug war in the black community, and also knows that criminalization hasn’t done a thing to help the problem of the effects of illicit drugs in the community.

You and the rest of your religious leaders need to get your heads out of your asses and actually take the time (and open-mindedness) to learn what will be best for your flock instead of reflexively and ignorantly assuming that moral choices and government criminalization work the same way.

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Note: Good job by Malcolm Kyle with having currently the featured popular comment at the second article above.

In other news related to California legalization, former Governor Gary Johnson endorses the legalization campaign:

You can contribute here.

The one thing that scares drug war governments more than anything else is… the truth. They know that they can’t sustain the people’s support for their policies without lies and propaganda.

We’re the truth tellers.

More valuable than any strategy or campaign, celebrity or coalition, we have the ability to counter that propaganda just by telling the truth.

And yes, that scares them. We scare them.

Our friends at Transform worked diligently for a long time to get their government to actually release the results of drug policy studies the government had commissioned but then didn’t want to release because the data didn’t support their drug war.

They got a little look at the internal workings when a government memo accidentally got released as well…

“The release of the report entails the risk of Transform, or other supporters of legalisation, using information from the report to criticise the Government’s drug policy, or to support their call for the legalisation of drugs and the introduction of a regulated system of supply. These risks should be considered in reaching a decision on whether to release the report, as recommended.”

Remarkable, yet not at all surprising.

Here’s another interesting quote, this time in the newly released World Drug Report 2010 from the UNODC. In the introduction, Director Antonio Maria Costa says:

So grave is the danger that the issue is now periodically on the agenda of the Security Council. Unless we deal effectively with the threat posed by organized crime, our societies will be held hostage – and drug control will be jeopardized, by renewed calls to dump the three UN drug conventions that critics say are the cause of crime and instability.

Another remarkable statement. This time we have Costa, who has previously admitted that prohibition fuels violence, candidly state that, unless they can somehow find a way to get rid of the criminals (an impossibility within the context of the drug war), reformers could have the upper hand and end up dismantling their precious drug war.

Yep. We’re dangerous, all right.

This video was put out by The International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. Be sure to sign the Vienna Declaration.