Drug WarRant

Earlier this month, I thoroughly ridiculed, some upcoming Reefer Madness-style sensationalism from Nicky Taylor and the BBC.
Well, it’s happened. Nicky Taylor discovered first-hand the horrifying effects of smoking marijuana and is sharing her terrifying ordeal with the rest of the world…

“I felt absolutely terrified,” recalls Nicky, a divorced mother-of-three, thinking back to her first experience just over a month ago.
“Paranoia set in, and I felt as if I was having a panic attack. At one point, I was simply too frightened to get out of my chair.
“I had a feeling the drug had unlocked some sort of paranoia in my head that would never go away again – I suddenly felt everyone hated me. Without doubt, that was one of the worst moments of my life.”

The Daily Mail was thrilled to be able to help disseminate the information:

While some will question Nicky’s wisdom in committing herself to such an experiment when she is a mother of three young children, there is little doubt that her experiences are both enlightening and cautionary to anyone who might think cannabis is harmless.

I guess the British media and Nicky Taylor were providing a public service to inform the millions of people who had smoked cannabis that their first-hand experiences were, in fact, false.
So I called my friend George, who lives in a London suburb, and asked him about the article and the BBC piece.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed. “I’ve often had a bit of skunk on the weekend with friends or when going to an Arsenal match, and I thought I was enjoying it. But apparently I’ve been terrified. Who knew?”

Who knew, indeed? I really don’t understand the British press. I had even thought the BBC had some kind of cred, but if they’re showing “documentaries” like this, apparently they’re like some kind of National Enquirer (I already knew that about the Daily Mail).
Are their readers/viewers really that stupid that they accept this nonsense? Cannabis is so widely used that Reefer Madness is just not effective as propaganda anymore.
The Daily Mail piece really gets hilariously surreal at one point, when Nicky Taylor apparently fails to realize that certain effects of cannabis are features and that anyone with 2 more brain cells than moron knows you don’t conduct an interview while stoned (particularly if you can’t handle it)

“At one point, I went to interview the man who runs Amsterdam’s hemp museum after smoking cannabis,” says Nicky. “I wanted to appear professional – as any reporter from the BBC would. But this proved to be next to impossible. I was giggly and could hardly keep my mind on what he was saying.
“Embarrassingly, my attention suddenly wandered to a pile of guinea pig bedding which was sitting in the corner of his office, clearly intended for someone’s pet.
“I rushed over to it and kept picking it up. I felt as if I’d just discovered the Holy Grail, but the poor man clearly thought I was incredibly odd. He was obviously uncomfortable in my presence, and I was clearly unable to be professional while on the drug.”
To find out how much her concentration had been compromised, Nicky set herself the task of assembling a flat pack cabinet, first free from and then under the influence of cannabis.
Without having smoked the drug, she found the job straightforward. While stoned however, it was a different matter.
“I took only two puffs of cannabis, but was totally hopeless when it came to assembling the cabinet,” she says. I felt so spaced out that I ended up passing out on the sofa with the cabinet still in bits around me. The drug totally destroyed my ability to think.”
Over the course of the four-week investigation, this “mental oblivion”, as Nicky describes it, was to become a familiar feeling.

Clearly we need to arrest marijuana smokers. They might become… giggly.
The whole piece is such nonsense as to be not worthy of debunking… But it is so much fun to ridicule.

Scott Morgan takes it to the drug czar’s office with A False and Embarrassing Press Release from the Deputy Drug Czar
Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns tries to go after the decriminalization bill in New Hampshire and ends up getting it wrong big time, so much so that apparently lawmakers are passing it around for laughs.
Burns claims that the law would decriminalize “the manufacturing, possession, and/or distribution of 1.25 ounces or — over 90 marijuana joints.” The law would, in fact, only decriminalize possession of 0.25 ounces. And even in Burns’ deluded world, he’d still have to be rolling 2.5 joints per gram (and under the actual law, he’d have to be rolling 13 joints per gram). Now it’s true that people do have different sized joints, but generally one gram is average.
Be sure to read Scott Morgan’s full response, but here is the press release:

Press Release
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

STATEMENT FROM DEPUTY “DRUG CZAR”
SCOTT M. BURNS ON MARIJUANA
DECRIMINALIZATION EFFORTS IN
NEW HAMPSHIRE

(Washington, D.C.) — Today, Scott M. Burns, Deputy Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), made the following statement regarding marijuana decriminalization legislation, which is currently being debated in New Hampshire.

“Decriminalizing the illegal and highly addictive drug — marijuana — sends the wrong message to New Hampshire’s youth, students, parents, public health officials, and the law-enforcement community.

“The supporters of decriminalizing marijuana are fooling themselves if they believe the manufacturing, possession, and/or distribution of 1.25 ounces or — over 90 marijuana joints — is good public policy.

“Decriminalizing marijuana — the drug which sends the most of America’s youth into substance abuse treatment and recovery — is a dangerous first step towards complete drug legalization. In fact, marijuana sends the highest percentage of New Hampshire residents into drug treatment than any other illicit drug.

“The last thing New Hampshire need is more drugs, drug users, and drug dealers on their streets and communities — further straining limited law enforcement manpower and resources.

I strongly urge responsible leaders in New Hampshire to stop any effort to decriminalize or legalize the highly addictive drug marijuana.”

To learn more about the dangers of marijuana use, please visit:
http://www.ondcp.gov/drugfact/marijuana

“bullet” Ottawa, Illinois, population 18,307, now has their own SWAT team
“bullet” Arcata, California (population 17,294) is considering it.

The Huffington Post has given some of it space to an infomercial by DEA flack Mary Irene Cooper, who gushes about Al Roker’s new DEA unreality series on Spike TV: Inside The Real Drug War
Cooper who makes her living propagandizing the drug war and getting excited about the DEA Museum, is practically wetting her pants over the sheer adrenaline rush from the anticipated violence.

Never before has DEA let cameras this deep into the drug trade. Viewers live the DEA creed to expect the unexpected. As much as we prepare, plan, and train, we can’t control everything on a drug raid or undercover deal. All the planning could change the minute the reality of the street hits. You never know what’s on the other side of the door until you go through it, and as we say, anytime dope and money come together, there’s a good chance of violence.
Viewers will go undercover with us. You’ll feel your heart beating faster as we approach the darkened car on a dimly lit street. You’ll feel on edge as we set up undercover operations with unpredictable, violent drug dealers. You’ll feel the adrenaline rush as we crash through the door of stash houses occupied by armed felons.

Ooh, that does sound exciting! Gee, you think we’ll get to see a DEA agent waste a 14-year-old girl? Wouldn’t that be great!!!!!
I suddenly have a metallic taste in my mouth.
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10
OK. Let’s tell it like it is. This show is bad drug war porn, and Mary Irene Cooper is a whore — selling her drug war to the masses — using the “car-wreck” reflex to suck people in and take advantage of their baser instincts — all in order to spackle the image of what may be the most destructive agency in the history of the United States.
My apologies to whores.

“bullet” Reports that a recent military raid by Colombia into Ecuador may have been assisted by the United States Manta air base in Ecuador that is only supposed to be used for counter drug operations.
“bullet” Are federal agents intimidating patients in order to go after the Pain Relief Network?
“bullet” Via Crooks and Liars, Arthur Silber says: The United States: Now A Private and Exclusive Country Club, Run by Monsters
“bullet” Barney Frank plans to file a bill to legalize small amounts of marijuana. This is interesting, not in itself, but in what the action represents, as Frank himself says, that it’s “time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public.”
“bullet” A good reminder: For the thousandth time, you don’t need to consent to searches nor be interviewed by the cops.
“bullet” If you’re thinking of going to Dubai, don’t. There are a number of places way down at the bottom of my list for vacation destinations, including Dubai, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, and Leroy, Illinois (it’s just not that interesting). Higher on my list are Amsterdam, Alaska, and the Czech Republic (again).

Peru sees cocaine making a comeback

at Alternet

Earlier this month, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse announced plans to spend $4 million to establish the nation’s first-ever “Center on Cannabis Addiction,” which will be based in La Jolla, Calif. The goal of the center, according to NIDA’s press release, is to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”
Not familiar with the notion of “marijuana addiction”? You’re not alone. In fact, aside from the handful of researchers who have discovered that there are gobs of federal grant money to be had hunting for the government’s latest pot boogeyman, there’s little consensus that such a syndrome is clinically relevant — if it even exists at all. […]
Of those in treatment, some 36 percent had not even used marijuana in the 30 days prior to their admission. These are the “addicts”?

I’m going to my Dad’s for Easter, so probably no more posts until Monday. Here are a few other things to check out if you haven’t already…
“bullet” Travel Pro Steves to Challenge Futile U.S. Drug War by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. More here
“bullet” A 10-year-old girl with brain cancer would like to see her father before she dies. Her father is in prison with one more year left on a drug charge and has been denied a request for a 30-day supervised release.
“bullet” State Marijuana law in Supreme Court’s hands. This will be an important case — Alaska has long had a state Supreme Court decision (Ravin) that said small amounts of marijuana in your own home was legal under your privacy rights in the Alaskan constitution. But a new law passed two years ago attempted to change that and make all possession illegal, claiming that marijuana is more dangerous now.
“bullet” Thailand leader pretentiousness

Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said during his visit to Washington DC earlier this week that Thailand’s image had improved with an elected government and that it was now being recognised as “handsome without acne”, a far cry from its image under former prime minister Surayud Chulanont.
He said US leaders had welcomed him and congratulated him on Thailand’s return to the democratic process. During his visit, many leading personalities, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a former secretary of state were eager to “koh-phob” (meet him), he said.

Will the U.S. government consider Thailand’s drug war handsome without acne?
“bullet” Civil injustice strikes Ohio — Civil forfeiture gone seriously bad. Via Radley
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly

The Drug War Chronicle’s lead story this week is an important one:
Drug Overdoses Deaths Are Going Through the Roof — Is Anybody Watching?

According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).
What’s more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.

Now let’s consider a couple of other relevant bits of information.

• Criminal laws and enforcement related to drug offenses have continued to increase, and there has been an explosion in prisoners doing time for drugs.
• The government tells us that there has been a strong decline in use of illicit drugs

Curious.
If you took these facts and presented them to an intelligent friend who somehow had no knowledge of the drug war:

1. Fewer users
More arrested
2. More dying from overdoses

… then your friend would probably say: “Your drug war sucks!”
But, of course, we know that.
Everything about our drug war makes drugs more dangerous. We crack down on marijuana and cocaine and push people to other drugs that are more dangerous. We deny harm reduction techniques and people die. We make people afraid to get help and they die. We deny them critical information and they die. We use coerced treatment or incarceration to make people quit and when they’re released their bodies have an altered tolerance and they die.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Jacob Sullum has a must-read article over at Reason in which he discusses “High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It,” by Joseph A. Califano Jr, and “The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World‰s Most Troubled Drug Culture,” by Richard DeGrandpre.
Califano and his organization CASA has been discussed here numerous times (without much good to say). Jacob also rips him apart…

Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano‰s meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed […] That claim, like many Califano makes, is unverifiable, and it does not seem very plausible. […] Already I have put more thought into the alleged connection between faithlessness and drug use than Califano did. And so it is with the rest of the book. A proper debunking would require more than the 186 pages of text […] Although CASA brags about its affiliation with Columbia University, the school has less cause to be proud of that relationship, given the center‰s sloppy research and hyperbolic rhetoric.

You get the idea.
Here’s one of the key pieces:

What Califano fails to understand is that every drug, regardless of its current legal status, is potentially an angel or a demon. DeGrandpre builds upon the insights of the alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil, who first made his name with books about drugs and altered states of consciousness. ‹Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad its reputation, and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is,Š Weil wrote in his 1983 book From Chocolate to Morphine (co-authored by Winifred Rosen). ‹There are no good or bad drugs; there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.Š

It’s a good article throughout, but I also got sidetracked at one point when Sullum called Califano a “leading exemplar” of “moralistic pseudoscience.”
Moralistic pseudoscience — what a beautiful phrase. And very apropos. I’m a bit of a word-lover, so I enjoy these things. And it got me thinking about a new word we discussed here at Drug WarRant some time ago when talking about Califano. The word was “shocktoid.”
And sure enough, it is now an accepted word in the Urban Dictionary (although Brian Bennett should be getting credit for the word instead of me).
And it really does fit Califano. Shocktoids indeed.
By the way, we have another word accepted by the Urban Dictionary: Sadomoralist.
But back to Sullum’s article. Let’s end with this incredibly bizarre behavior (yet oddly normal for Califano).

Other Califano claims are absurd on their face. In his lexicon, if a single teenager reports seeing a fellow student buy, use, or possess alcohol or other drugs at his school, that is enough to render the school ‹drug-infested.Š In a 1999 report CASA said ‹teens who smoke marijuana are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette,Š an activity in which there is a one-in-six chance of instant death on each turn. Three years later it likened underage drinking to ‹a deadly round of Russian roulette.Š
In High Society, Califano trots out the metaphor for another purpose. ‹Russian roulette is not a game anyone should play,Š he informs readers, just in case they were considering it as an alternative to checkers. ‹Legalizing drugs not only is playing Russian roulette with children; it is also slipping a couple of extra bullets into the chamber.Š Meaning that if drug prohibition were repealed, half of America‰s children would die?

Remember, there are no bad drugs. There are merely good and bad relationships with drugs. There are, however, idiots. And that’s where Califano comes in.