Drug WarRant

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.

… and another open thread, as I continue my vacation in the snowy wilds of Iowa.
“bullet” Via Scott at Grits for Breakfast… Apparently, the U.S. government is not only running cocaine, but providing loans to Mexican drug cartels.
Well, the loans were supposed to be to help trade with Mexico, so I guess that works.
“bullet” OpEd by Rob Kampia: If Tobacco Regulation Works, Why Not for Marijuana?
“bullet” Fortunately, she wasn’t home… Drug Police Smash Down Front Door of Innocent Gran in Cannabis Search

DRUG-busting police smashed down the front door of a grandmother’s house in a hunt for a cannabis farm.
Anne Mayor was stunned when she returned to her small home in Aintree to discover six officers had broken in and scoured it for drugs. […]
“The officer apologised, but I don’t want an apology. It’s not good enough.”

“bullet” OpEd by Paul Armentano: Ending America’s Domestic Quagmire: No-Knock, You’re Dead
“bullet” OpEd by Sanho Tree: What Darwin Teaches Us About the Drug War

As politicians intensified the drug war decade after decade, an unintended consequence began to appear. These ‹get toughŠ policies have caused the drug economy to evolve under Darwinian principles (i.e., survival of the fittest). Indeed, the drug war has stimulated this economy to grow and innovate at a frightening pace.
By escalating the drug war, the kinds of people the police typically capture are the ones who are dumb enough to get caught. These criminal networks are occasionally taken down when people within the organization get careless. Thus, law enforcement tends to apprehend the most inept and least efficient traffickers.

“bullet” Greg Francisco at LEAP: Making Criminals Out of People Who Are Not
“bullet” Need a job? Search under way for new drug war czar (No, it’s not Walters’ job, just a HDTA task force executive director position.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Still on the road visiting family. Finally getting some internet access at my mom’s place in Iowa. Pretty strange to move one state over to Iowa and suddenly there is a massive Presidential campaign going on! Yard signs, endless TV ads, and more. Yet in Illinois, relative silence. What a dysfunctional electoral system.
“bullet” In its semi-endorsement of Dennis Kucinich for President, The Nation magazine mentions as part of the overall package, Kucinich’s opposition to the drug war. It really does seem to be getting easier for people to actually say that.
“bullet” LEAP’s Howard Wooldridge has been working hard on the Hill, and now he’s looking for your help. Write a letter to your Senator and let him deliver it for you. Great idea.
“bullet” On a personal note, I will be missing the huge hands and amazing talent of Oscar Peterson, who died this week. I got to see him twice — once at Avery Fisher Hall with Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie and his Orchestra. The second time, he and his trio were performing at The Blue Note, and I and my friends had the table right next to the piano. Incredible.
His hands were so big that running tenths were a breeze for him, yet he could also play delicate waterfall passages with precision. I once heard it said that he could play anything he could think. As a piano player, that both depressed me and filled me with awe.
Here’s a taste:

Holes Found in U.S. Claims of a Drug-War Win

For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing “an unprecedented cocaine shortage” due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States and Mexico.
But fact-checking by NPR reveals that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences.

Walters is learning that the days where he could just claim whatever he wanted and everyone would nod in agreement are gone.
People are checking…

Four cities declined to respond to questions about the local cocaine supply; five said there was simply no shortage.
The question brought laughter from Sgt. Roger Johnson of the Detroit Police Department.
“No, we don’t have a problem finding it at all,” Johnson said.

The article goes even further into the historical trends showing that Walters’ boasts are meaningless.
A good piece — kudos to John Burnett for looking into this story.