Drug WarRant

Glenn Greenwald is always on top of government abuse of power, and recently he’s been all over the case of the military analysts for the major networks that were being prepped by the government to feed propaganda to us, their employers.
Mona, over at the art of the possible, helps to put it in perspective from our point of view…

But tax-payer subsidized psy-ops is nothing new; the DEA has been doing it for years, as for example by publishing a ‹debate manualŠ (originally titled How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate) to use during exchanges with those advocating drug-policy reform. (But the DEA counsels avoiding any debate at all, if possible.)
We‰ve been paying for the government to fund lies and propaganda defending its own tyrannical powers since well before Bush and 9/11.

Yep. We’re used to it. The important thing is not to get complacent about it.
There’s something horribly, treasonously wrong in a country of the people, by the people and for the people, where the government functions by lying to the people.

Eric Sterling does some interesting musing and wandering in Medical Marijuana in California — Questions

I am intellectually satisfied that marijuana has a wide range of medical values. […]
Therefore I believe marijuana should be available to patients who need it. So how do I understand what is happening in California? […]
There is a large experiment underway in California yet there probably is no consensus on what the experiment actually is about. Is it an experiment in medical marijuana? Or is it an experiment as Joel Stein says, in legalized marijuana for adults over 18. Certainly it will be hard to evaluate because the experiment is not being controlled or designed.
There are important questions: What is the actual role of the physicians who are issuing the recommendations? Are they facilitating the proper treatment of serious medical conditions that have been resistant to conventional medical treatment? Are they serving to block improper juvenile use of marijuana? Does their “gatekeeper” role help mitigate the abuse of marijuana?
It is time to ask the academic world to step forward to begin to seriously evaluate this experiment.

I understand the questions, but disagree with the final conclusion.
It must be disconcerting for those who spent so much time and effort developing and fighting for medical marijuana in California to be successful, and yet at the same time be unable to even identify their baby.
As a pure scientific medical venture, California’s medical marijuana movement was hopelessly doomed. The federal government’s unjustified active opposition insured that the valuable “state laboratory” concept (as envisioned by Justice Brandeis) could not function. Therefore California’s medical marijuana “system” is a political/social chimera, not a scientifically controlled experiment.
Asking some in the academic world to put something that chaotic into a clinically analyzed box could be disastrous. Lacking rigidly defined controls, the science will be seen to be undefinable, therefore failed, when in fact it is the public policy that has failed the science.
Imagine any other scientific experiment where the very ability to control the environment of the experiment was denied the experimenter — where testing of new food crops, for example, had to be done à la Johnny Appleseed. It would be very hard to be sure of the purity of your results, and yet there would still be something to learn (and enjoy) from each apple tree, until the day that the world woke up and allowed controlled tree farms to develop the best apples.
Medical marijuana in California is a cruelly grafted beast, yet is something to be treasured for whatever combination of things it has managed to be, until the government is willing to allow it to become something more controlled and measurable.

One of the best responses I’ve seen so far to the latest nonsense from Walters is Tim King of the Salem-News.com (Oregon): New Federal Report on Marijuana Use is Misleading, Groups Say

Is this a reaction to the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition?
(SALEM, Ore.) – A new federal government report on the ill effects of marijuana on teens may be a last ditch effort to demonize the medical weed before it sees its own day of emancipation. As it stands, even the most hardcore marijuana legalization advocates do not support children using anything that causes intoxication.
This new report uses scare tactics and seems to regard medical facts as a meaningless burden…

The whole thing is a fun read. It would be nice to see more of his kind of thing show up in the major news outlets.

Allan St. Pierre at NORML Blog: Cannabis Does Not Kill. Unfortunately, Cannabis Prohibition Enforcement Can!
Rachael is another kind of drug war victim. Facing drug charges, and afraid to go back to jail, she reluctantly agreed to act as a snitch for the cops and purchase drugs and a gun from two men. She was discovered murdered yesterday.
The cops are making it sound like it was her fault.
Update: Further musing… did anyone else notice that the two men are being charged with kidnapping, and yet Rachael is being accused by police of ignoring police concerns and going with them willingly? I’m wondering if there is a contradiction there.

“bullet” Update: Nice video on CBS today reported by Raw Story Democratic candidates more willing to consider marijuana issue (thanks, Michael).
“bullet” Marijuana, depression, and suicide. I’m too tired to respond to the same old crap. Have at it.
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

This is a pretty long video (by internet standards), but well worth watching if you have the time. We’ve been following the Cory Maye story here for quite some time, thanks to the intrepid work of Radley Balko.
Well now Drew Carey’s Reason.TV project has put together the ultimate video about Cory, his family, and his community. (click on the little screen symbol in the control bar of the video to watch it full screen – worth it if you can).

Putting a face on the tragedies of the drug war — one of the ways we can rouse people from the lethargy and stupor.

“bullet” John Conyers demands answers from DEA acting head Michele Leonhart

1. Is the use of civil asset forfeiture, which has typically been reserved for the worst drug traffickers and kingpins, an appropriate tactic to employ against individuals who suffer from severe or chronic illness and are authorized to use medical marijuana under California law? […]
2. Given the increased level of trafficking and violence associated with the international drug cartels across Mexico, South America and elsewhere, do you think the DEA’s limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally under California law?
3. Have you considered that DEA activities against qualified individuals is negatively impacting the ability of state and local officials across California to collect tax revenue, which they are entitled to under California law?
4. … Please explain what role, if any, emerging scientific data plays in your decision-making process to conduct enforcement raids on individuals authorized to use or provide medical cannabis under state law. […]
Finally, attached with this letter is a list of approximately 60 raids that the DEA conducted between June 2005 and November 2007. Please provide an accounting of the costs, dollars and resources, used to conduct law enforcement raids on the attached list of individuals. […]

“bullet” California taxpayers to file lawsuit — they want to stop the state from borrowing more money to build additional prisons.

We already have 170,000 prisoners in California. We don’t need more prison beds — we need sentencing reform and better support in the community for recovering drug addicts, people with mental illness, and parolees.

“bullet” SSDP President Randy Hencken at San Diego State University talks to the press about Operation Sudden Fall.

Before me are 77 chairs and 77 diplomas, each representing a young
person who was recently a student here at SDSU, but who is no longer
with us. 2 of them were recently lost to tragic, yet preventable drug
overdoses. And 75 of them were arrested as part of yesterday’s
reactionary drug sting.
77 students are gone from campus, but we must ask ourselves, has drug
abuse left the campus as a result? Are students any safer from dying of
an entirely preventable drug overdose? Sadly, the answer to both
questions is “No.”

Related: Stanton Peele says Go Ahead — Write My Blog

I’m sorry to do this to you, but you must go read Radley Balko’s report about Tracy Ingle.
F#ck.

Via NORML It‰s Official: Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith Have Lost Their Minds
Yep, despite all the evidence and the science, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is calling for cannabis to be re-classified back up to “B” from “C.”

“skunk…” “powerful form of cannabis”…. “binge smoke to achieve maximum possible intoxication”

Possibly 1,000 veterans a month are attempting to commit suicide, and actual suicides may exceed battlefield deaths.
How would that number change if the U.S. government regularly prescribed marijuana for PTSD?