Drug WarRant

“I want there to be a thousand Kevins,” he exclaims. “There can’t be just one Kevin. Kevin is not going to be able to do this alone. Kevin can’t just do this year after year, he is going to have a heart attack.”

Sure, I understand the argument for just not talking about him, but this article has so much worth discussing…

Kevin Sabet Is The Marijuana Movement’s Biggest Threat, But Can He Really Stop ‘Big Pot’? by Joel Warner

Here’s the most damning bit of the entire article:

It’s why Project SAM opposes any form of legalization. But then what does the organization want in its place? Sabet has repeatedly promised to develop model laws, but so far, policy proposals encapsulating Project SAM’s preferred legal reforms, such as reduced marijuana arrests and increased public health campaigns and treatment options, haven’t materialized.

“What do they want as a policy?” says Tom Angell, chairman of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority. “They make these assertions, how it’s something in the middle, but it’s very vague.”

Sabet says his organization has been working with drug-law experts and political consultants on the matter, and Project SAM-backed policy initiatives are coming soon. “We have to go on the offense,” he says. “I am sick of saying, ‘Vote no, vote no.’ We want to be ‘yes.’”

Coming soon… yes, we’ve heard that for quite a while, now.

Here’s another interesting bit in the article:

The sky hasn’t fallen in Colorado or Washington State since marijuana became legal, concludes Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who studies marijuana policy. But that’s because, he says, it’s too soon to determine the social impacts of the policy change. He thinks that anyone who tries to spin the short-term data to either promote or condemn legalization is missing the bigger question: What happens years from now to the first generation to grow up not just with legalized but potentially mass-marketed cannabis?

“Only an idiot would predict that the problems would come in two years,” says Caulkins. “I think we are going to legalize this nationally, we are going to let Big Tobacco play, and 25 years from now we will say, ‘What were we thinking?’”

Um… I think the real ‘What were we thinking?’ moment has already come, and is was a reaction to criminalization, not legalization. This is where the public policy folks completely fucked up. If they wanted to make a difference in how marijuana was legalized, then they needed to get involved in suggesting strategies, not just acting as naysayers.

You may have heard that the USPS recently issued a memo to newspapers in Oregon stating that it’s illegal to mail pieces with advertisements for marijuana because it’s Schedule 1.

Now members of Congress are demanding answers.

Lawmakers Question Postal Service About Marijuana Ad Threats to Newspapers by Tom Angell

A group of members of Congress is demanding the U.S. Postal Service explain a memo it recently issued warning newspapers not to mail any publications containing advertisements for marijuana. […]

“Regardless of how you feel about our failed prohibition of marijuana, every American should agree that the U.S. Postal Service should not be censoring what is or is not published in newspapers,” Blumenauer, who has led House efforts to allow medical cannabis access for military veterans, told Marijuana.com via email. […]

The lawmakers say they want the postmaster general to answer several questions, such as whether USPS intends the memo to have legal effect in all 50 states. “If not, is it customary for individual districts to create their own policies that may contradict how other districts are operating?” they ask. “What discretion does a regional postmaster have in enforcing or implementing these policies, specifically in states where marijuana is legal?” […]

The letter ends with an ominous question possibly intended to uncover evidence the Department of Justice isn’t abiding by Congress’s medical marijuana interference ban. “Did the USPS cooperate with anyone at DEA or DOJ in establishing this policy? If so, please detail the nature of this cooperation.”

Yes, it’s Andrea Barthwell again, a lady who changes drug war scams more often than some people change clothes. A huckster, a shyster, a drug warrior (former deputy drug czar) with no interest in the truth. This site has shut down a couple of her enterprises (Illinois Marijuana Lectures, and End Needless Death on the Roadways) by exposing her lies.

You can read some of my stuff about her here:

• Andrea Barthwell, caught red-handed
• End Needless Death
• Andrea Barthwell, Snake Oil Salesman

Here’s her latest: Luxury treatment center.

The Manor, a Luxury Addiction Treatment Center, Opens in the Midwest

The Manor, an exclusive, highly confidential addiction treatment center nestled in the tranquil hills of Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine, has announced that it is now welcoming guests seeking treatment for the disease of alcoholism, and other dependencies, including individuals who desire a healthy, drug-free lifestyle. […]

“The work of recovery is mentally and emotionally demanding,” said Andrea G. Barthwell, MD, DFASAM, an internationally renowned physician who is a former U. S. Deputy Drug Czar and a pioneer in the field of addiction medicine. Dr. Barthwell is the Chief Medical Officer at The Manor, and the architect of The Manor’s holistic and intimate model of clinical and medical care. “To engage in one’s comfort zone is a privilege we extend to every guest, in an intellectually stimulating and emotionally safe place,” Dr. Barthwell said.

“When healing from the chaos of alcoholism and other dependencies,” Dr. Barthwell continued, “we seek peace, social connection, gentle guidance, and serenity. Our guests can walk along the running stream, engage in deep, restorative sleep and move their muscles in a myriad of ways that suit them to bring about gentle healing. These little amenities encourage openness, the key to the entire process,” said Dr. Barthwell.

In my other life on Facebook, I’m always on the watch for fake news – it’s become endemic to today’s online world. And I’m not talking about the good satire from The Onion that has the intention of giving you a good laugh while making commentary — there are a lot of sites that purposely make something just outrageous enough to get people to believe it and share it, in order to generate clicks and ad revenue.

Years ago, I temporarily helped spread a particularly embarrassing bit of false information, and vowed never to let it happen again.

I now regularly check on anything that seems too good to be true, and am particularly wary of anything of major importance that directly appeals to my interests. If I don’t know the site (and I already know not to believe anything on the Daily Current, or any apparent news source with .co added — like NBC.com.co), I’ll take a phrase from the story and put it in google to see what I can find.

Here’s a good article related to the recent fake news story about NIDA paying people $3,000 a week to smoke pot:

No, The Feds Won’t Pay You $3,000 Per Week to Smoke Marijuana

It’s very important for us as activists to be reliable and trustworthy sources of information.

We’ve talked a lot over the years about the impact that the drug war has had on the over-incarceration in the U.S. And inevitably someone responds by saying that there aren’t all that many in prison (or state prison, or federal prison, or those convicted of possession only, etc.) as if somehow the fact that not all prisoners were a direct result of the drug war negated the argument.

Here’s an interesting article that sheds a little more light on the subject:

Drug offenders in American prisons: The critical distinction between stock and flow

There is no disputing that incarceration for property and violent crimes is of huge importance to America’s prison population, but the standard analysis—including Alexander’s critics—fails to distinguish between the stock and flow of drug crime-related incarceration. In fact, there are two ways of looking at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes:

1. How many people experience incarceration as a result of a drug-related crime over a certain time period?
2. What proportion of the prison population at a particular moment in time was imprisoned for a drug-related crime? […]

Snapshot pictures of prison populations tell a misleading story

Violent crimes account for nearly half the prison population at any given time; and drug crimes only one fifth. But drug crimes account for more of the total number of admissions in recent years—almost one third (31 percent), while violent crimes account for one quarter.

Interesting data.

Cut Sentences for Low-Level Drug Crimes by the Editorial Board.

Now that Congress is within sight of passing the most significant federal sentencing reforms in a generation, it’s worth taking a closer look at where the legislation falls short.

The main driver of the federal prison population is, by far, the dramatic increase in the time people spend behind bars — specifically, those convicted of drug offenses, who account for nearly half of the nation’s 199,000 federal inmates. From 1988 to 2012, the average time served for drug crimes more than doubled in length, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That increase in the length of drug sentences comes at a great expense: an estimated $1.5 billion each year, based on how much it costs to keep a federal inmate behind bars.

The new sentencing-reform bills now moving through the Senate and House would help reduce some of the longest mandatory-minimum sentences, including ending the use of life without parole for drug crimes, and would give judges more power to impose a shorter sentence when the facts of a case warrant it.

But these fixes do not reach to the heart of the problem, which is that the vast majority of federal drug offenders serving outsize sentences are in for low-level, nonviolent crimes, and have no serious history of violence. […]

Making any real dent in the federal prison population will require broader reforms than those Congress is currently considering.

Video of keynote address by Ethan Nadelmann at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Washington DC available here.

Early on in his talk, he discussed how we lose track of the lessons from history, and he mentioned about how few young people know about McCarthyism and what we went through in that period and reflected:

“and just thinking about the war on drugs and where we lie now, because what happened in the late 1980s and 1990s, and for that matter under Nixon in the 70s, but truly in the 80s and 90s and into the first decade of this century, was something like McCarthyism on steroids.

It resembled McCarthyism in that it played on real fears of the American people — fears about drugs coming into our country, fears about junkies and drug addicts and drug dealers, and all sorts of things. It played on that. But what it also shared in common, was the fact that almost everybody went along. Almost everybody went along. Not just white people, but black people and brown people leaders and followers, people around the world. It became almost a great global consensus where America and Cuba and Libya and Russia could all agree on something, which was that we needed a global war on drugs no matter the cost or the consequences.

And what pains me about today, is that we barely know our history. And that there has been no accountability. That the Joe McCarthys of the drug war still stand strong and still get honor in our societies and have not been called out.”

Yep.

Later on in the talk, another good sound bite: “Drug policy reform is many things, but it is foremost a movement for liberty and freedom.”

The war on drugs: Harming, not protecting, young people by Count the Costs.

7 ways the war on drugs hurts children and young people

Colorado police officers warns of marijunana dangers [sic]

Wow. This guy travelled all the way to Iowa just to give them a combination of outright lies and dramatic misstatements.

A Denver-area police officer cautioned Siouxlanders Friday not to follow down the path of his own state on marijuana. […]

“If you legalize it, then you’re done,” Gerhardt said at a news conference Friday. “There is going to be no way to contain it.”

In the last four years, there has been a 92-percent increase in marijuana-related fatal car accidents in the state, according to data from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program, a component of the National Drug Control Strategy. Overall, fatal car accidents rose by 8 percent, Gerhardt said.

Joining him with the false fear mongering was Peter Komendowski, president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free Iowa:

Komendowski said parents and their children should be educated on health risks that might come with marijuana so they are prepared.

“If we have to wait for a test to see if they’re really impaired, or if we have to go to do the morgue, it’s too late,” he said.

DEA Boss Clings On Amid Campaign for His Ouster

Chuck Rosenberg was supposed to be a different kind of Drug Enforcement Agency leader, someone who could serve as acting administrator for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s time in office without rocking the boat like his embattled predecessor.

Instead, Rosenberg is under siege from activists and lawmakers after calling the use of raw marijuana to treat medical conditions “a joke” earlier this month, and he’s facing a campaign by reformers unseen even by the famously anti-reform Michele Leonhart, who stepped down in May after a sex party scandal.

[…]

On Thursday, seven members of Congress – Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Sam Farr, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. – wrote to Obama asking that he fire Rosenberg.

And on Friday, a group of nearly two dozen patients, caregivers and policy advocates visited the DEA’s headquarters in northern Virginia to present boxes stuffed with printouts of an online petition calling for Rosenberg’s ouster. The petition has been signed by more than 100,000 people and was spearheaded by Marijuana Majority leader Tom Angell.

Again, I reiterate, petitions are generally worthless. But what Tom has done here is really quite excellent. He started a petition, and, because he keeps really good relationships with a variety of media folks, he gets articles written about there being a petition, which gets more people to sign it. And because he has also developed relationships with political leaders, they write their own letters, which generates more press. Then he gets the press to cover the deliverance of the petitions, along with sick people who signed them.

And, because I’m on Tom’s press list, I get regular updates from him on the status of the petition, which makes me more likely to write about it. Good organization. Good activism.

Will Rosenberg be fired? Of course not. But that’s not the important thing – what we’ve got is major news outlets treating the DEA as under siege, putting them on the defensive, and giving medical marijuana patients sympathy for being treated “as a joke” by the bad government bureaucrats.