Drug WarRant

Naturally, Scott tracked this one down…

Customs officials on the other side of the Pond are on the lookout for curvy drug mules after customs officers arrested a woman for attempting to smuggle £50,000 worth of cocaine in concealed pouches built into her bra. Criminals are now being said to favor “tall, flat-chested women who don’t arouse suspicion when they have fuller figures.”

So, is the same thing true for men? Is this one of those times when being small is an advantage?
Not that I’m looking for a job or anything.

“bullet” An Open Letter to the Black Community On Behalf of Ron Paul by Robert A. Wicks

A Presidential candidate’s position on the war on drugs is the first legitimate political litmus test I have seen within my lifetime. […] Laws against drug use are no more justifiable than anti-miscegenation laws. They are laws which attack the root of the notion that all men are created equal by establishing that some have the right to rule over others, and those others have no similar right. What other justification is there for preventing an adult from inhaling, ingesting, or injecting the chemical of his choice into his own body? A large portion of the black prison population is imprisoned because of drug offenses. Many of those who are imprisoned for other offenses, such as property crimes and violent crimes are there as a result of the various violent consequences of the war on drugs. Ron Paul does not claim to be able to fix all this. As President, he can only Constitutionally stop the federal war on drugs, not those in which the states engage. But removing federal support for drug prohibition could have a tremendous impact nonetheless.

“bullet” I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but retired DEA agent Mike Levine has Bill Conroy of Narco News on his internet radio show to talk about the plane with 4 tons of cocaine that crashed in Mexico and was apparently used by the CIA and other U.S. agencies.
“bullet” Death by Drug War — via Radley Balko

The state of Washington’s position is clear: If someone calls 911 when a friend is overdosing, not only does the witness risk charges for possessing or selling drugs (which 911 callers in these situations have feared since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act), but he or she could be charged with homicide, too. The end result? Overdose victimsÖwho might survive with prompt medical careÖmay be abandoned and left to die.

If you get a chance, read the entire referenced article by Dominic Holden. It’s pretty powerful.

They’re not even trying to be optimistic about it.

But U.S. law enforcement officials and analysts caution that even with the unprecedented level of anti-drug aid to Mexico, violence could actually rise as drug cartels respond forcefully to increased U.S. and Mexican pressure.
One U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that 2008 “may prove to be even deadlier. We expect drug traffickers to respond aggressively to combined U.S. and Mexican actions and pressure.”
Growing U.S.-Mexico cooperation will force “drug cartels to increase the political ante by increasing the level of violence,” said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, a political consultant with Washington-based Peschard-Sverdrup & Associates. […]
“When pressure on them [drug traffickers] increases or continues from law enforcement officials, the usual response is to kick up the violence, especially directed at government and law enforcement officials, which might explain why deaths of law enforcement officials are up,” said a senior U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Good thing we’re supporting an effective approach in Mexico.

Still, Arturo Yaöez, who trains detectives for the Mexico City government and has worked in federal law enforcement, questioned whether Mr. Calder÷n’s counter-narcotics strategy is really working.
“Where are the results, the numbers … ? Information is thin,” he said. The influence of organized crime “is growing across Mexico. How exactly are we winning?”

Plan Mexico is a proposal developed in secret to spend billions of dollars ratcheting up the drug war in Mexico — a proposal without the support of Congress, that generates strong misgivings in the people of Mexico regarding their sovereignty, and will probably increase the violence in Mexico without actually accomplishing anything. What’s not to like?

As you well know, it’s physically impossible to overdose from marijuana use — there are no legitimate recorded deaths as a direct result of smoking cannabis.*
That hasn’t stopped the occasional quack in the U.K. from attempting to assign deaths to cannabis use. (See here, here, and here.)
Usually, these idiots are treated with some derision, but simply allowed to continue on, but Dr Louay Al-Alousi faced the wrath of the dead boy’s parents — who hired their own pathologist.

A consultant pathologist who was found guilty of professional misconduct will discover whether he can practice without restrictions later this week.
Dr Louay Al-Alousi admitted the charge when he appeared before a General Medical Council hearing in January last year.
The doctor, who works for the University of Leicester and the University Hospital of Leicester NHS Trust, carried out flawed post-mortems on two teenagers.
He wrongly attributed their death to cannabis use. His mistakes were exposed by the parents of 16-year-old James Burgess, of Leicester Forest East.
James’s parents, Paul and Joanne, enlisted their own pathologist, while a coroner had a third expert examine James.
Both agreed his death was due to an unsuspected heart condition.
At the inquest, cannabis was ruled out as a cause of death and the family’s solicitor called for Dr Al-Alousi to be reported to the GMC.

It’s a shame that the parents had to do all that just to find out how their son died. Clearly they knew that it was a nonsensical post-mortem. It’s also troubling that the panel is even considering lifting restrictions on this quack.

Link

CHICAGO (AP) Ö Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, a new study finds. Even for the severe pain of kidney stones, minorities were prescribed narcotics such as oxycodone and morphine less frequently than whites.
The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race and ethnicity in both urban and rural hospitals, in all U.S. regions and for every type of pain.
“The gaps between whites and nonwhites have not appeared to close at all,” said study co-author Dr. Mark Pletcher of the University of California, San Francisco.
The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Prescribing narcotics for pain in emergency rooms rose during the study, from 23 percent of those complaining of pain in 1993 to 37 percent in 2005.
The increase coincided with changing attitudes among doctors who now regard pain management as a key to healing. Doctors in accredited hospitals must ask patients about pain, just as they monitor vital signs such as temperature and pulse.
Even with the increase, the racial gap endured. Linda Simoni-Wastila of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Pharmacy said the race gap finding may reveal some doctors’ suspicions that minority patients could be drug abusers lying about pain to get narcotics.
The irony, she said, is that blacks are the least likely group to abuse prescription drugs.

Over at Daily Kos, I respond to kos’ post.
I expect some fireworks.
Update: I think I shocked Alex.

Matt Stoller at Open Left is not happy with the Democratic candidates — in part because the mainstream candidates are not addressing the real issues.

The issues we are dealing with today – health care, jobs, even a war in Iraq – are literally the same issues we dealt with in 1992. How can that possibly be considered progress? A real progressive candidate would take an apolitical problem and turn it into a mainstream political subject. None of our candidates have done that. Here are five easily mainstreamable problems ripe for the picking. […]
Subject: End the War on Drugs
Factoid: There are 1 million people put in jail for doing what Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George Bush have done.
Marijuana is America’s largest cash crop, and it is responsible for around 225,000 arrests a year. Overall, the war on drugs incarcerates around 1 million people a year. Direct spending on the war on drugs this year is $50 billion dollars, about $600 a second. Around half of high school seniors have consumed marijuana (pdf). Simply put, why do some people go to jail for marijuana and cocaine, and others run for President?
[…]
Subject: End the cradle-to-prison superhighway
Factoid: 2 million people are in prison in America, by far the highest total of any other country in the world.
Think slavery has ended? Think torture is ‘new’? Think again. With two million people in prison, and tens of thousands of sexual assaults every year, prison is a huge industry and a horrendous abridgment of the idea that is America. […]
The cancerous symptoms are all around us, and leading Democratic Presidential candidates are too corrupt and morally crippled to even begin talking about them. But we’ll get there.

Note: the comments section shows that Matt’s got some strong disagreement within his readers regarding the “end the drug war” item, and that we’ve still got some major work to do.

Here’s a good article to start the New Year — an excellent piece by Atlanta-Journal Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker

Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated.
With the nation poised on the brink of a new political era, isn’t it time to abandon the wrongheaded war on drugs? Isn’t it time to admit that this second Prohibition has been as big a failure as the last – the one aimed at alcohol? […]
The nation’s so-called war on drugs recalls that old Vietnam War phrase about burning the village in order to save it. It also brings to mind Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Our war on drugs really is a war on people. That’s true insanity.

Strong words from a major newspaper.

Something in the air
Snow, and the promise of change
The New Year beckons

Whenever the Drug Czar links favorably to some news report, I pretty much expect that it’ll be pretty amazingly stupid.

Bertha Madras said drug use and abuse are associated with all kinds of problems.
Madras, deputy director of demand reduction in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, mentioned that drugs can cause delinquency, violence, accidents and brain damage.
Her advice? Say no to drugs.

Did you know that food can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hives, asthma, diabetes, kidney failure, anaphylaxis, gout, and death?
My advice? Say no to idiots who give meaningless advice.