Drug WarRant

Howard Wooldridge at Citizens Opposing Prohibition reports on a combined effort to lobby for a bill ending federal prohibition.

I received word this week that the major players on the Hill are now united in what direction to take regarding marijuana; namely push for a bill to repeal federal prohibition. COPs, MPP, DPA and NORML have all agreed on this strategy. MPP’s Aaron Houston produced an excellent one page sheet of FAQs. (provided below). We believe this bill will also help the ballot initiative in California to legalize adult use and sale.

It certainly seems obvious that something like this is going to have to happen eventually as a continuing (and partial) move toward full legalization/regulation. And now seems to be a very good time to start getting people used to it. It’ll be interesting to see the reactions of federal legislators on both sides of the aisle, control freaks all, as they adjust to the notion of letting states make actual decisions without them.
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Jesus wept.

The officers checked out the vehicle with Cesar, a federal drug-sniffing dog, who alerted them to three framed pictures of Jesus in the vehicle.

Apparently, Jesus won’t intercede to mask the odor of pot.

War on Drugs: Mexican President Felipe Calderón finds reception is mixed after recent slayings.

Not a good day for Felipe.

Anger, fear and skepticism received Mexican President Felipe Calderón in Juárez on Thursday.

Testimonials of leaders in the city where more than 4,500 people have died in the past two years had the same theme: enough with the violence.

Calderón, his wife, Margarita Zavala, and seven members of his Cabinet were surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers and police officers.

At the Cibeles convention center, business, religious and education leaders complained about the brutality of the drug war, human-rights violations by the military, unemployment and increasing taxes.

Granholm makes sensible case for prisoner clemency

One of the advantages of being a lame-duck governor is being able to pursue sound public policy even when it is politically unpopular. Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s sensible record of releasing ailing and elderly prisoners whose cost of incarceration outweighs any continuing threat to public safety is a case in point.

Granholm has commuted the sentences of 124 prisoners in her seven-year-tenure, the great majority since she was re-elected to her current and final term in 2006.

Good for her.

Every tax dollar spent on incarceration is a dollar unavailable for police protection, preschool education, drug and alcohol courts, and other programs that have been proved to reduce violent crime. Criminals who represent a continuing threat to the public must be kept behind bars. But a state that increasingly lacks the wherewithal to support even basic law enforcement functions simply cannot afford to incarcerate those who no longer pose a threat.

Or who never posed a threat to begin with…

Speaking of commutations and pardons…

Dear Mr. President. Yes, you can.

The ACLU is trying to get President Obama to commute the sentence of Hamedah Hasan, a grandmother who has spent 16 years in prison so far (with 10 more to go) for a first-time non-violent crack cocaine offense.

Go take action at their site.

President Obama has gone 387 days (and counting) without granting a single pardon or commutation. This makes him one of the slowest-acting Presidents in history to exercise the power of forgiveness.

Tell President Obama to send Hamedah Hasan home today.

Get your power back

Does anyone else find it ironic that Apolo Ohno, a top Olympic athlete who must endure countless drug tests to prove that he doesn’t have even the tiniest amount of hundreds of different banned drugs, is being sponsored by a drug company whose main products we’re no longer allowed to buy without registering and being put on a list? Opening of the ad says to the Olympic athlete… “Get your power back!” … with the understanding that you do it by using their drug.

I wonder what would happen if NORML tried to be a sponsor of the Olympics… (preferably snowboarding).

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

Boy, the spammers are really out. I’ve had about 400 spam comments just today, more than twice my highest day so far. Fortunately, Akismet does a great job of catching most of them.

Could Decriminalization Be the Answer? by Jens Glüsing in Spiegel.

The massacre in Ciudad Juarez at the end of January made it clear that Mexico is losing the war on drugs. Narcotics-related violence is on the rise in other Latin American cities as well. An increasing number of voices are demanding that drugs be decriminalized.

We’re Blowing It: A new paper suggests U.S. military aid does nothing to reduce drug production in Colombia.

Yet a recent evaluation of military and anti-narcotics aid to Colombia argues that neither American nor Colombian interests were well served by U.S.-supplied training and arms. The authors find that rather than bringing stability, increases in military aid caused spikes in violence from Colombia’s infamous paramilitary organizations and had no impact whatsoever on coca production. Plan Colombia, it seems, may have served as little more than a conduit for channeling weapons to the destabilizing influences that it was meant to suppress.

City condemns Juárez violence: Resolution deletes marijuana reference

The City Council heard more than two hours of testimony, but in the end backed away from supporting legalized marijuana as a way to combat drug violence in neighboring Juárez.

The council voted 6-2 Tuesday to condemn the violence in Juárez and deleted a paragraph that called for the legalization of marijuana and government regulation of its sale.

The resolution that ended up passing called for a presidential summit on the drug war and for the U.S. government to make it one of its top foreign policy priorities.

Providence Journal Editorial: Decriminalize Pot

It’s time to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot in Rhode Island. Education is a more humane way than incarceration and a criminal record to help people and maintain order.

One thing seems clear: Our current approach has been an expensive flop.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy Candlelight Vigil — tomorrow (Thursday, Feb 11) in various locations around the world.

Fourteen young people were murdered among 25 shot at a party celebrating their high school soccer team victory and one student’s birthday.

In any other time and any other place, this would be unbelievable. In any other time and any other place, the world would be riveted to “on the scene” accounts of this outrage.

But these days, for the students of Mexico, there remains a stunning silence. It is as though the world accepts as normal the bloodshed of the innocent high school students because the bloodshed of the failing war on drugs is normal. This is not normal!

SSDP says this is too much blood.

Some excellent investigative journalism by Lee at HorsesAss about how the Washington State Department of Corrections has conducted a harassment campaign aimed at medical marijuana.

Michael Savage on marijuana. [Obligatory keep-things-that-can-break-away-from-you warning]

I got about halfway through it.

Kay Lazar of the Boston Globe does a strange and incomprehensible hit piece on marijuana: As Pot-Smoking, Pill-Popping Baby Boomers Age, New Health Problems May Arise.

It’s an entire feature article with absolutely no facts. A lot of random unfocused speculation that pot and “other drugs” (I love the way they lump them together to make wild speculations) will cause some heretofore unknown dangerous effect on an entire generation, that tons of old people will overwhelm treatment centers because of their pot addictions, and that doctors will misdiagnose pot’s short term memory effects as dementia. Complete with “experts” saying absolutely nothing.

“We need to help [patients] to either cut down or stop use earlier,” Delany said, “so we will have fewer problems when they’re older and it is more expensive to treat them.”

Treat what? The munchies?

Check out this headline in the Vancouver Sun: Marijuana Does Nothing To Help Memory In Alzheimer’s: Study

And the lede re-emphasizes the point:

Marijuana does not appear to improve memory or reverse effects of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a University of B.C. study…

That’s too bad. When there had been some preliminary evidence that marijuana might have some potential in treating Alzheimer’s, it sounded pretty exciting, and I was hoping there would be some more research to determine if it was true. But I guess this is just one of those things that doesn’t pan out. They obviously did a thorough study that proved that marijuana doesn’t have any value to human Alzheimer patients.

Let’s check it out. How many Alzheimer’s patients were involved in the study?

Six researchers affiliated with the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute used a synthetic derivative of cannabis called HU210, which is 100 to 800 times more potent than marijuana consumed by humans.

In experiments, mice were initially taught how to get to a desired location in a maze.

The mice that got high dose HU210 did no better than control subject mice, which got no drug, or those that got a low dose.

The study was done on a total of nearly 100 mice — a third that got a high-dose drug injection, a third that got a lower dose and a control group that didn’t get the drug but still had a sham injection to produce the same conditions. […]

After the experiments, mice were killed and their brains were examined. Post-mortems showed mice that got the highest dose of the drug had fewer brain cells, pointing to a detrimental effect of marijuana. [emphasis added]

Well, that certainly cleared that up. If you’re a mouse attempting to navigate a maze, don’t bother injecting yourself with a massive dose of HU210. It’s probably not going to help you.

And they’ll still remove your brain.

We’ve been talking about the drug cartels in Mexico, and one of the interesting things about this is how they are donating money to churches and communities — essentially cleaning up their image and capturing the heart and soul of the people, many of whom aren’t sure who else to trust.

It’s a powerful and pernicious tool.

Here’s another article showing how the cartel is spending money to help kids.

It has paid for batting helmets for a girls softball team. It has paid for a machine that helps fill water bottles for high school football players. And it has paid to send kids to an Atlanta Braves game.

All the way to Atlanta? Wow.

Wait.

My mistake. Turns out this article isn’t about Mexican cartels and the money they get from people voluntarily purchasing their product. No, this is about another out-of-control group that actually steals their money from people.

Tapping into money from drug seizures, Sheriff Jimmy Ashe has directed $10,588 since 2007 to sports programs, trophies, booster clubs and a high school chorus.

The sheriff often spent the money with no oversight. In one case he directed $3,000 to youth baseball teams – including one on which his son played.

Asset forfeiture is a particularly nasty business that leads to greed, corruption, and even death (see Donald Scott). One of the worst practices of asset forfeiture is giving a portion of the seized money to the law enforcement units responsible for the seizure. This provides perverse incentives and increases the likelihood of abuse.

And using it for self-promotion? That just makes it harder to break the cycle of corrupt practice, because now law enforcement has purchased the good will of the community.

Parents in Jackson County said Ashe’s decision on how to spend the money has made a difference.

“I think that Jimmy Ashe is great for doing that,” said Susie Fortner, a single mother of three. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if we would have gone this far in sports.”

Click on the image for the larger version.

I see a lot of stories about Mexico come through my newsreader. It says a lot about how often I get stories of drug-war-related killings that now when I see headlines like “Six shot dead in Mexico Disco,” “Gunmen kill 13 high school students at party in Mexico.” etc. I rarely bother to even read the articles. They have sadly become… ordinary.

But I found interesting the juxtaposition of two articles this weekend. One in the Arizona Republic: Drug Cartels Tighten Grip; Mexico Becoming ‘Narco-State’

Some analysts are warning that Mexico is on the verge of becoming a “narco-state” like 1990s-era Colombia.

“We are approaching that red zone,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime at the Autonomous Technological University of Mexico. “There are pockets of ungovernability in the country, and they will expand.”

For the past decade, he said, parts of Mexico have been sliding toward the lawlessness that Colombia experienced, in which traffickers in league with left-wing rebels controlled small towns and large parts of the interior through drug-funded bribery and gun-barrel intimidation.

In the latest sign of the cartels’ grip, on Wednesday the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon announced it was calling off primary elections in the northern state of Tamaulipas because drug traffickers had infiltrated politics.

It’s a fascinating article that goes into detail regarding the reach of the cartels, including ownership of legitimate business and provision of needed community support, not to mention the huge boost to the economy from their activity. And the drug war has not really made any dent in their power (it may have done the opposite).

Only three things could change the balance, said Ray Walser, an expert on Latin America at the conservative Heritage Foundation: a massive increase in U.S. drug aid, a large addiction-treatment program in the United States or the legalization of drugs in the United States.

None of these measures seems to be on the horizon, Walser said.

The other story, an AP piece running in dozens of media outlets today, is a little odd. Amid drug war, Mexico less deadly than decade ago

“What we hear is, ‘Oh the drug war! The dead people on the streets, and the policeman losing his head,'” said Tobias Schluter, 34, a civil engineer from Berlin having a beer at a cafe behind Mexico City’s 16th-century cathedral. “But we don’t see it. We haven’t heard a gunshot or anything.” […]

“In terms of security, we are like those women who aren’t overweight but when they look in the mirror, they think they’re fat,” said Luis de la Barreda, director of the Citizens’ Institute. “We are an unsafe country, but we think we are much more unsafe that we really are.”

Certainly it’s interesting that the murder rate is down from 10 years ago in total, but of course that does nothing to counter the fact that the drug war is causing a huge toll. It’s just that other factors have improved.

Experts say while drug violence is up, land disputes have eased. Many farmers have migrated to the cities or abroad and the government has pushed to resolve the land disputes, some centuries old. […]

De la Barreda attributes the downward trend [in murders] to a general improvement in Mexico’s quality of life. More Mexicans have joined the ranks of the middle class in the past two decades, while education levels and life expectancy have also risen.

It would be interesting to know just how much the improved quality of life was due to the influx of drug-war cash.

So, if you’re planning your Spring Break vacation, go to Mexico. It’s safe! Except when it isn’t.

Reason TV interviews Gary Johnson. He talks about drug policy around the 4 minute to 7 minute mark.

“I’ve found, people armed with just a little bit of knowledge on this topic, move… move to a more rational position.”

‘We Must Win the Battle’ Calderon shows that he still doesn’t get it. Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth fails to ask the $64,000 question.

Drug Czar Should Go by Timothy Lynch

Voters are disgusted by the reckless spending of politicians in Washington. The backlash is coming, so policymakers are now scrambling to do something, or at least be seen as doing something, about the enormous federal debt. Now is a good time for Congress to abolish government agencies that are outdated, dysfunctional or just unnecessary.

A prime candidate for abolition is the office of the so-called “drug czar.”

Businesses Should Stay on Marijuana’s Good Side by Mason Tvert

Sooner or later, these companies will come to realize that they must respect the fact that marijuana consumers and supporters of reform are everywhere. And if they expect to keep their business, maintain their market-shares, and ensure healthy bottom lines, they must end their anti-marijuana madness.

After all, it’s not just those prime-time athletes who enjoy marijuana, but in many cases the fans… and the bank account holders… and the on-line video watchers… and the mountain climbers… and, of course, the coffee drinkers.

People who will never make a living teaching economics.

Harmon says making legalization work is based on a mistaken assumption that the people growing it now will allow themselves to be taxed.

“To me it’s akin to saying, ‘I grow tomatoes and you’re going to tax tomatoes in my backyard. Am I going to voluntarily disclose I’m raising tomatoes and pay a tax to you?” he says.

Legalization, according to Chris Gibson a top antidrug trafficking official, does nothing to reduce the criminal element for marijuana. He cites the Mexican drug cartels as an example. They’ve been growing marijuana in America’s national forests for years.

“They’re going to be able to undercut that price and there is still going to be a black market out there for marijuana grown by them,” he says. “Who do you think people will go to: The taxed product or the cheaper (and) potentially more potent version?”

Looks like there’s no point taxing anything then, because people won’t pay it — they’ll just pay criminals to supply it for them.

The truth is that people will pay rather significantly more to get it legally. In a legal market, the criminal has to undercut by a lot to get any significant share of the market, and that doesn’t give them enough profit margin to run a successful criminal enterprise. The trick is very simple — to make the tax reasonable enough so criminals can’t both significantly undercut and get rich.

Interesting series by David P. Price at Wilson County News.

Burglars who break into our homes, ransack and steal our prized possessions are deemed lesser criminals than someone whose “victims go to him”! This is clearly distorted. Distorted by those who cling to the Ignorance of Power. They believe the way to stop drug use is arrest everyone involved and “throw away the key”. Forty years has shown this approach doesn’t work.

CBS representatives won’t let NORML purchase a Times Square Billboard during the Superbowl.

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

One of the many heartbreaking stories told in Drug War Victims is that of Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter Charity Bowers, part of a missionary plane shot down over Peru in our drug war.

After 9 years, the CIA footage has finally been released of the tragic event. The footage is distant, yet you hear the voices of the Americans and Peruvians deciding the fate of the unknowing passengers. The casual approach exhibited to shooting down a plane full of people is absolutely sickening, particularly when it was clear that the most either side had was a rough guess that the plane might be a “bandito” rather than an “amigo.”

Guardian: CIA footage broadcast of fatal attack on plane carrying US missionaries in Peru: US agency denied covering up botched anti-drug operation that led to death of American woman and baby in 2001

“I’m at 4,000 feet. The military is here. I don’t know what they want,” [pilot] Donaldson says [to the tower].

Moments later the jets open fire and Donaldson is heard screaming: “They’re killing me! They’re killing me!”

The CIA operatives are then heard to say “tell them to terminate, don’t shoot”. But by then it was too late. Bowers and her daughter were killed by a bullet from the jet’s guns.

This is your drug war.

Check out this media stupidity

Coroner’s report: Lewis had marijuana in system

OWENSBORO, KY (WFIE) – USI basketball player Jeron Lewis died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy according to the final report issued by the Daviess County coroner.

Toxicology tests showed Lewis also had marijuana in his system when he collapsed in a game against Kentucky Wesleyan January 14. There is no evidence the marijuana contributed to his death, however.

A young basketball player dies because of an undetected medical condition – an enlarged heart. Yet there are no questions by the media regarding the physicals taken by athletes. Just an irrelevant headline that he had marijuana in his system.