Drug WarRant

This could be huge.

UN to call on governments around the world to decriminalise all drugs, says Richard Branson

The UN may be about to call on the governments of all countries to end the “war on drugs” and decriminilise the use and possession of all illegal substances.

In an extraordinary post on his Virgin website, Richard Branson said he had been showed a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which dramatically changed the organisation’s stance on drug control.

He said the “as-yet unreleased statement” had been sent to some of the world’s media under embargo, but the businessman has gone public with it early for fear the UN will “bow to pressure by not going ahead with this important move”.

The UN was preparing to declare “unequivocally that criminalisation is harmful unnecessary and disproportionate”, Branson wrote. A document changing the UN stance on drug control was supposed to be released at a conference in Malaysia on Sunday, he said, but that has now been delayed.

“As I’m writing this I am hearing that at least one government is putting an inordinate amount of pressure on the UNODC,” he said. “Let us hope the UNODC, a global organisation that is part of the UN and supposed to do what is right for the people of the world, does not do a remarkable volte-face at the last possible moment and bow to pressure by not going ahead with this important move. The war on drugs has done too much damage to too many people already.”

Here’s the press release from Branson.

In tonight’s debate, Sanders was asked if he would vote to legalize marijuana in the state of Nevada in 2016.

“I suspect I would vote yes,” Sanders said. “I am seeing in this country too many lives being destroyed for nonviolent offenses.” Then he added the United States needs to “rethink this war on drugs.”

Kevin Sabet tweeted:

Not letting @BernieSanders off the hook on the marijuana issue.It’s well known he isn’t a marijuana enthusiast;we’ll get to the bottom of it

which prompted Tom Angell to retort:

LOL. Now Sanders is officially on notice that a losing movement with no political support is coming after him. #oooh https://t.co/2a6xgggYXf

Good article from Radley Balko: Meth isn’t an argument for drug prohibition. It demonstrates prohibition’s failure.

Meth is often the example prohibitionists pull out when someone points to an example like Portugal. “So you’d legalize meth, too?” But as the Economist piece suggests, meth is a product of prohibition (in this case alcohol, but also restrictions on amphetamines more generally), not an argument in favor it. We have a meth problem because we have drug prohibition. Without it, meth wouldn’t go away, but it almost certainly wouldn’t be as prevalent as it is today. […]

But let’s get back to that Economist article, and what could work — loosening the restrictions on intoxicants instead of tightening them. Here’s what I suggested in that post from last year, which I think the data suggest is even more clear now than it was then:

Here’s one idea that makes too much sense for anyone to seriously consider: Legalize amphetamines for adults. Divert some of the money currently spent on enforcement toward the treatment of addicts. Save the rest. Watch the black markets dry up, and with them the itinerant crime, toxicity and smuggling. Cold and allergy sufferers get relief. Cops can concentrate on other crimes. Pharmacists can go back to being health-care workers, instead of deputized drug cops.

Everybody wins, save of course for those who can’t bear the prospect of letting adults make their own choices about what they put into their bodies.

To anyone educated in the law who has a general sense of reality and the principles of our United States government, it’s clear that there’s a real problem with civil asset forfeiture as it exists in this country. For the most part, those who support it are those who profit from it.

So how does it still exist? Well, whenever I talk to people about it, their general reaction is disbelief. As hard as it is for us who are involved to realize, most people don’t really get it.

This survey points out the problem.

Have you heard of the term “civil asset forfeiture”?
Yes . . . . . . . . . 28%
No . . . . . . . . . . 72%

Close to 3/4 of the population just don’t know about it.

But when they do…

Which of these three options comes closest to your opinion about what SHOULD be legal?
Law enforcement should be able to permanently seize money or other property if they suspect it’s connected to criminal activity, even if no charges have been filed . . . . . 7%

If we continue to inform people, we should be able to change the law.

Seven Percent of Americans Think It’s OK For Police To Take Your Stuff, No Charges Needed

The poll found similar levels of support for who should benefit from forfeiture funding. Nationwide , 66 percent of Americans believe forfeiture funds should go either towards the state’s budget or to a separate fund (like education). Only 13 percent supported the idea that forfeiture proceeds should directly fund law enforcement.

Wide majorities across race, gender, income levels and political ideology back these two key reforms.

We’ve often discussed the fact that, when it comes to driving, marijuana often makes drivers cautious (countering impairment), while alcohol makes them reckless (increasing the impact of impairment).

This takes it a step further.

Studies by Oregon researchers hint that mild pot-induced paranoia may have a public health benefit

College students abandon condom use when binge drinking — but not when they’re stoned — a study by an Oregon State University researcher found. […]

“Unlike alcohol, marijuana may cause users to compensate for impairments in inhibitory control by changing decision-making and risk perception,” the study said.

In other words, the pot smokers may be a little bit paranoid or anxious.

The researchers concluded that “decision-making impairments may be mild following marijuana use and that cognitive compensation may occur.”

Update: It appears that the authors of the study were not consulted in the article, and dispute the support for conclusions made in the article. (see comments)

I oppose junk science and junk journalism of real science wherever I find it.

So, even though this post was intended as a bit of fun, I withdraw any support for this article.

… but a good step.

6,000 inmates to be freed as US eases drug sentences

The Justice Department is preparing to release about 6,000 inmates from federal prisons starting at the end of this month, as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and 1990s, federal law enforcement officials said. […]

The release will be one the largest discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history. It coincides with an intensifying bipartisan effort to ease the mass incarcerations that followed decades of tough sentencing for drug offenses, such as dealing crack cocaine, and that have taken a particularly harsh toll on minorities.

“Today’s announcement is nothing short of thrilling because it carries justice,” said Jesselyn McCurdy, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Far too many people have lost years of their lives to draconian sentencing laws born of the failed drug war. People of color have had to bear the brunt of these misguided and cruel policies. We are overjoyed that some of the people so wronged will get their freedom back.” […]

“The drug war has devastated families and communities, and it is time for the healing to begin,” said Anthony Papa, a spokesman at the Drug Policy Alliance, who spent 12 years behind bars on a mandatory minimum drug sentence.

We’ve got a long way to go — so many people are caught up in the criminal justice system because of the drug war. But maybe, we’re moving in the right direction.

“Tobacco is a product that does a lot of damage — marijuana is infinitely worse”

This is my new favorite quote.

‘Marijuana is infinitely worse’ than tobacco, Harper says as he encourages pot debate to go up in smoke

Marijuana is “infinitely worse” than tobacco and its use should be widely discouraged in Canada, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says.

Harper goes all in on this one. I mean, it takes some real intentional avoidance of fact to claim that marijuana is worse than tobacco to begin with. It would be really ballsy to try to claim that it was twice as bad as tobacco. It would be unthinkable to claim that it’s 1,000 times worse than tobacco – since tobacco causes about 6 million deaths per year worldwide, that would mean that marijuana would cause 6 billion deaths annually, completely eliminating the world’s population in less than 2 years.

But to reach infinitely worse? That would require complete destruction of the universe and much more.

That’s what Harper is claiming.

A busy week at work for me, and some distractions in the news.

Are My Methods Unsound? Why ‘Sicario’ Is the ‘Apocalypse Now’ of the Drug War

There’s been quite a bit of talk about the movie Sicario. I’m curious. Have you seen it? And how does it, as fiction, stack up to the realities of our drug war?

I must admit, I’m not rushing out to catch it. In part, because when I go to the movies I usually want to escape. And a movie about the drug war just doesn’t feel like entertainment to me.

Legal marijuana sales began yesterday in Oregon. Sky fallen yet?

Can Addicts Finally Force the War on Drugs to End? by Maia Szalavitz

People who use or have used drugs rarely have a seat at the table when policy is set—and are heard from mainly in the form of stories of sin and repentance.

But now a group called Unite to Face Addiction is planning a massive rally in Washington, DC, to attack stigma and call for change. On Sunday, October 4, big names like Steven Tyler, Joe Walsh, Jason Isbell of the Drive-By Truckers, and Sheryl Crow will perform. Speakers will include former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, former baseball player Darryl Strawberry, author William Cope Moyers and current “drug czar” Michael Botticelli, who is in recovery himself. […]

The biggest challenge—other than fundraising—was trying to build a coalition, according to Williams. “How do we get prevention and harm reduction and recovery and treatment people who all disagree, how do we get them under a broad umbrella?” he asks rhetorically.

I’m happy to see this, while also recognizing the challenge. There are huge sections of the treatment industry that are little more than opportunistic mercenaries (like the vultures who send me letters all the time offering to write “free” guest posts about treatment and recovery in exchange for a text link to get better Google rankings for treatment businesses) who publicly push for continued prohibition so they can skim the criminal justice referral cream off the top, and, when they encounter people who really need help, conduct unsound treatment practices that can leave patients more vulnerable to overdose deaths.

Not that addicts themselves always have the right answers. Sometimes those in recovery can be rather religious in their proselytizing about their particular recovery method or about the dangers of “their” drug, not accepting that their story isn’t everyone’s story.

But on the other hand, too often there has been a paternal approach to addicts that says they are unable to speak about their own experience and they must be cared for against their own will.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this event.

We’ve talked a lot about race and the drug war here, and there’s an interesting article by Jess Singal in New York Magazine: The Black Activists Who Helped Launch the Drug War.

There’s no doubt that the drug war disproportionately affects poor and minority communities and that black communities in particular have been particularly affected. But the article points out that the drug war wasn’t just foisted on the black communities, but in many cases those communities welcomed it with open arms.

Michael Javen Fortner, a political scientist at City University of New York, is hoping to complicate the story that the Rockefeller laws, and others like them, were foisted on black people by white people. His book, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, out September 28 from Harvard University Press, tells the story of Harlem’s struggles with drugs and crime from the 1940s through the passage of the Rockefeller laws. Key to this story is the role of Harlem’s residents in forcefully advocating for a tougher, more punitive approach to the neighborhood’s “pushers” and addicts.

Yes, many of the origins of the drug war were racist, and racism has often fueled the drug war, but as we’ve noted here before, in the early days of drug policy reform, it was often difficult to get black communities involved in reform. I saw that first-hand in communities where I lived. In recent years, that’s changed, particularly with powerful leadership in organizations like LEAP, NAACP, ACLU, and some church groups.

Stung by costs, some of Minnesota’s medical marijuana patients back to buying on streets

As we’ve often said here, the vast majority of people prefer to buy legally if they can, and are generally willing to even pay a little more to do so. But when the cost is excessive, it forces the user to choose between poverty and breaking the law.

“What we’re talking about is an expensive designer drug that only the rich can afford right now.”

That’s unacceptable.