Drug WarRant

So on Thursday, Stephen Harper’s government announced plans for a dramatic increase in the war on drugs in Canada. Apparently, he’s jealous of all the drug war fun in the U.S. and wants some of it for himself. His ideas have not been greeted with universal warmth.
In the Guelph Mercury

VANCOUVER – Critics of the Conservative government’s new anti-drug plan are calling it everything from naive to politically opportunistic and a threat to the civil liberties of Canadians.
A coalition of Vancouver health and social groups says prison terms and attempts to scare users straight won’t solve Canada’s illegal drug problem.
“You just can’t incarcerate your way out of this,” former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, a member of the Beyond Prohibition Coalition, said yesterday. “The United States locks down 2.3 million people every night.”
Owen, an architect of Vancouver’s drug safe-injection site, told a news conference the Tory government’s adoption of policies similar to the failed war on drugs in the U.S. is “uninformed.”

An editorial in the Globe and Mail:

‘The party’s over,” federal Health Minister Tony Clement intoned this past weekend. Mr. Clement was talking about drug users, but it wasn’t entirely clear which ones. It might have been otherwise law-abiding citizens who occasionally smoke marijuana. Or perhaps it was all those partiers suffering from debilitating addictions to hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. Either way, Mr. Clement appears to have borrowed his rhetoric from the 1980s. To go with it, he appears set to borrow the disastrous “War on Drugs” strategy from south of the border. […]
This new strategy may play well with some members of the Conservatives’ base. But as evidenced by what has transpired in the United States, it will do absolutely nothing to reduce drug use. Its only effect will be to make the effects of substance abuse all the more painful.

The always excellent Dan Gardner writes in the Ottawa Citizen, What’s Harper smoking?

Stephen Harper’s announcement Thursday of a new national drug strategy served at least one valuable purpose: It conclusively demonstrated that the prime minister knows nothing about drugs or drug policy. […]
So what does Stephen Harper have to say about this? At the press conference, he complained about drug references in Beatles songs and the fact that drugs have been romanticized “since the 1960s.” So naturally he wants to put in place the same policies that failed to stop Lucy from floating into the sky with diamonds — a conclusion that seems perfectly reasonable, I assume, shortly after one drops acid. […]
Righteous ignorance does fog the mind.

And there’s this excellent piece by Jody Paterson in the Times Colonist

The problems of ideology-based governance clearly must be more obvious from afar. Otherwise, Canadians wouldn’t be able to bear the hypocrisy of railing against oppressive and backward regimes elsewhere in the world while committing ourselves anew to the folly of a war on drugs. […]
Here’s the thing: Health issues can’t be resolved through ideology. […]
So why do we continue to let our elected politicians ignore the science when it comes to drug issues? Why should anybody’s poorly informed position around drug use be the lens that we apply when trying to address complex health and social problems that are far too important to be left to political whim?
I respect the right of Stephen Harper and his MPs to believe that using illicit drugs is bad. It’s a free country and they’re welcome to their opinions, […]
But why would we want to base something as important as our national drug strategy on opinion and belief?
We’ve got six decades worth of scientific studies underlining the importance of an informed, health-based approach in reducing the harm and societal costs of drug use. Yet we’re still letting vital public policy be decided by people who would rather maintain their personal fictions than take steps to fix the problems. […]
So with all due respect, Mr. Harper, believe whatever you like in your personal life. But as prime minister, please run this country on facts and not fiction.

More coverage of Harper’s drug war at Blame the Drug War.

“bullet” David Guard has a recap of the Mass Incarceration Hearing yesterday
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

… one of them, anyway.
The Onion

WASHINGTON, DCÖThe National Anti- Quartering Association, America’s foremost Third Amendment rights group, held its annual gala in Washington Monday to honor 191 consecutive years of advocating the protection of private homes and property against the unlawful boarding of military personnel.

Funny. And sad.

I’ve been tagged through Blawg Review’s La Meme Chose: Simply the Best. Thanks to Jeralyn at TalkLeft and Austin Defense Lawyer for the compliment.
So let me continue the meme with a list of 10 blogs that I read on a regular basis (in addition to those two) for inspiration or information about drug policy reform and the related fight against authoritarianism.

• Radley Balko’s The Agitator
• Scott Morgan at Stop the Drug War
• Reason’s Hit and Run
• Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog
• Alex Coolman’s Drug Law Blog
• Scott Henson’s Grits for Breakfast
• To the People
• Unqualified Offerings
• Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory
• ScotusBlog

Be sure to check out all of these wonderful blogs. Of course, as always, this is an incomplete list off the top of my head at the moment — there are many others whose wonderful blogging inspires and informs me.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom went ballistic on the drug war

“If you want to get serious, if you want to reduce crime by 70% in this country overnight, end this war on drugs,” he told reporters at City Hall on Thursday. “You want to get serious, seriously serious about crime and violence end this war on drugs.”
[…]
“It’s laughable that anyone could look at themselves with a straight face and say ‘oh,we’re really succeeding.’ I mean it’s comedy. And as I say, shame on my party, the democratic party, because they don’t have the courage of their private thoughts, because we don’t want to appear weak on this topic,” Newsom said.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey agreed.

“No, the war on drugs is not working. The war on drugs is not working because we are relying on law enforcement instead of on treatment,” Hennessey said.

Watch the video.

A vague haze of delirium
Seeps in his mind
Soaring and flying images blind.
I’ll be your leader;
I’ll be your guide.
On the amazing journey, together we’ll ride.

My show opens tomorrow night. I’m exhausted, but having a blast. Here’s a couple of quick items for you.
“bullet” As usual, Maia Szalavitz is outstanding: The Federalization of Medicine
The pain issue shows why medical policy should be left to the states. in Reason.
“bullet” Those wacky scientists! Harvard Scientists Build a Device to Smoke Weed During Brain Scan
“bullet” Obama feeling the pressure? Could it be that being behind on drug policy reform was actually hurting him a little? That’s interesting.
To be honest, I don’t expect the next President to be much help to us, regardless of who it is (with the exception of Paul). They’re all going to have their Karl Rove who will tell them to avoid reform like the plague. Change is going to have to come from the will of the people forcing it.
But I can’t remember any Presidential election when drug policy reform was talked about even a fraction as much by the candidates. It’s a healthy thing and gets the subject in the public eye. But it also may mean that the people are starting to “get” reform and the candidates are being forced to follow (at least in talk); additionally, the topic may be starting to lose its “taboo” status.
And just idle curiosity… I wonder if Obama got a chance to see the YouTube video of Ron Paul getting a huge ovation from a mostly black audience by calling for an end to the drug war.
“bullet” Good news. At the United Nations every-10-years drug conference in Vienna in March, 2008, we’ll have a tireless advocate for reform representing us — one who speaks four languages and can saddle a horse. Let’s see if UNODC’s Costa can top that!

Senator Webb’s hearing: Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost? is going on now.

October 2, 1937: Samuel R. Caldwell becomes the first person in the United States to be arrested on a [federal] marijuana charge.
Link

On this date 70 years ago, unemployed Colorado laborer Samuel R. Caldwell, was arrested for selling two marijuana cigarettes to Moses Baca. For his crime, he was sentenced to four years of hard labor at Leavenworth Penitentiary, plus a $1,000 fine

The government is really trying to push this Drug War Success story

SAN DIEGO Ö Mexico‰s crackdown on drug traffickers has helped cut supplies of cocaine in 37 U.S. cities and led to higher prices, the White House drug czar said Monday.
The disclosure came as the Bush administration prepares to present Congress with an aid package costing hundreds of millions of dollars to assist Mexico in fighting drugs, John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told The Associated Press.

Of course, the two paragraphs above demonstrate that they’re not even trying to hide the tactic — tout drug war success to bolster passing a massive drug war funding bill for Mexico.
Interestingly, much of the media is no longer simply willing to accept what John Walters says as the truth. Check out this UPI article: White House claims success in drug war. The entire short article involves quotes from critics as to why the White House’s claims are likely meaningless.
This Washington Post story gives more space to the details of the White House claims, yet still is quite skeptical.
Unfortunately, what nobody is doing is asking the question: “What happens if they’re right?” What if there really is a massive long-term reduction in cocaine availability in the states? Will all the problem users just simply no longer use drugs? Or will violence increase as the price increases and gangs fight over turf? Will cocaine drug users simply switch to something else? And what would that be?
Of course, the government isn’t really interested in the answer to that question. And it’s likely that they don’t even believe their own stories about success in the drug war.