Drug WarRant

“bullet” Senator Tom Harkin (via)

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.

Now that’s some hall-of-fame logic. You’d think all those health professionals and pharmaceutical companies that gave him over half a million dollars would have been able to teach him something about what emergency room mentions actually mean… Oh. Right.
“bullet” Pope Benedict

Benedict on Saturday turned to the issue of drug trafficking and its damage to society, threatening Latin American drug dealers with divine retribution.
“God will call you to account for your deeds,” Benedict warned drug dealers..

Oops… another unintentionally funny line… wait for it…

“Human dignity cannot be trampled upon in this way,” the pope declared

The pope should try actually having a chat with God. I have my own relationship with the Divine Presence and, while I would never be stupid enough to claim to speak for Him, I get the distinct impression that if He was actually into the divine retribution shtick, drug dealers would be considerably further down on that list than Benedict himself.

Link

Police Mistakenly Raid Wrong House
Officers with the Hendersonville Police Department mistakenly entered the wrong house when executing a search warrant early Saturday morning.
Two teams of officers were executing a search warrant shortly after 1 a.m. at 729 Geneva St., when one team of three officers went to the rear of the wrong house, said Capt. John Nicholson.

here it comes….

“This has never happened before,” Nicholson said.

Link

Oakland medical marijuana patient and activist Angel Raich dropped her
lawsuit against the federal government Thursday, ending a five-year legal
odyssey which had taken her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I’ve lost all faith in the judicial system, I don’t understand how somebody
can lose their constitutional right to life in this country,” she said
Thursday.

It has become abundantly clear that the courts cannot be depended upon to protect the rights of individuals from government abuse.
Unfortunately, that means our hope lies in the cesspool that is Congress, and it will take a massive uprising of motivated citizenry to rouse them from masticating in their trough and to prod them into an uncharacteristically noble action — righting a wrong.
And in the meantime, despicable parasites like John Walters feed off the anguish of the dying and the shattered lives and communities, and pat Congress on the head saying “It’s OK. Continue gnawing on the bones of the innocent. It’ll all work out. Trust me.”
Fortunately, the voice of drug policy reform is growing stronger every day, and despite stuffing ears with cotton and brains with mush, it is getting very hard to ignore us. We will prevail. We must.

Check out this anti-driving-stoned commercial from MTV Canada.

“bullet”

“bullet” Your wonderful DEA at work: DEA Agent Posed Suspect In Sombrero
“bullet” This has been making the rounds. A former officer and his wife took some marijuana that he had confiscated and baked it into brownies. The pot caused him to freak out, thinking he was dying. The audio of the 911 call is pretty funny. It’s interesting how the dispatcher seems much more aware than the ex-cop of the ridiculousness of dying from eating a marijuana brownie.
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly

The world is abuzz today with the news:

The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug’s risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.
Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.

Part of me is thrilled by this news. Finally, one of the all-powerful pharmaceutical companies — part of the industry that has worked to block safe natural medicines like marijuana while pushing their own dangerous high-priced cocktails on massive populations who didn’t know they needed it — is getting a taste of their own medicine.
Another part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Somehow, I fear, the drug warriors will use this case to find a way to make pain medication even less available to those who really need it.
There’s another developing part of this story that is fascinating, involving drug warrior and Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani — reported by Brian Ross, Richard Esposito and R. Schwartz at ABC News:

Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin. […]
Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the DEA’s drug diversion office began a criminal investigation into the company.
According to the book “Painkiller,” by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, both Giuliani and his then-partner Bernard Kerik “were in direct contact with Asa Hutchinson, the administrator of DEA.” […]
Kerik told New York Magazine at the time that Giuliani had raised $15,000 in donations for a “traveling museum operated by the DEA.”

That “traveling museum” would be the the outrageous one I’ve spent so much time protesting. Back to ABC:

Some officials told ABC News there were questions inside the agency of whether the donations were an attempt to influence the DEA.
Meier wrote that “with Giuliani now in the mix, the pace of DEA’s investigation into Purdue’s OxyContin plant in New Jersey slowed as Hutchinson repeatedly summoned division officials to his office to explain themselves and their reasons for continuing the inquiry.”
Giuliani publicly praised the company, Purdue Frederick, when it hired him in May 2002 for an undisclosed amount. “Purdue has demonstrated its commitment to fighting this problem,” he said, referring to the issue of drug addiction.
According to Giuliani Partners, Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under Giuliani, was in charge of helping Purdue improve security at the New Jersey plant.
Kerik left Giuliani Partners after disclosures he was under criminal investigation.
In hiring Giuliani, Purdue said, “Giuliani Partners is uniquely qualified” to address the issue of preventing drug abuse.

There’s just a ton of investigation begging to happen here.
One place to start just might be GVI Security Solutions. They’re listed as one of the contributors to the DEA museum exhibit. They also later named former DEA head Asa Hutchinson to their Board of Directors in 2005. And the Chairman of GVI, Howard Safir, was the former New York Fire Commission and Police Commissioner, with both appointments coming from Giuliani.
Who knows how many other tangled incestuous webs you’ll find in this story.
Update: More from Mark Kleiman.

That’s the title of an excellent post by xxdr zombiexx over at Daily Kos.
It’s a good read on its own, but what makes is particularly nice to see is the extensive recommendations and massive comment section — almost unanimously supportive of the post.
Maybe there’s some hope for those lib’rul types.

“bullet” On her radio show, Diane Rehm fellated drug warrior Joseph Califano, the guy whose so-called statistics have made him the laughing stock of the scientific community. Julian Sanchez discusses the on-air debacle. If you wish, you can listen to the segment here. Favorite moment — when a caller gets Joe’s number and Califano is forced to spout inanities about how marijuana is as dangerous as cocaine and heroin, Rehm goes down on him thusly:

… it sounds as though Mr. Califano, having been in this field for as long as he has, and involved with this issue for as long as he has, probably has the correct information.

Journamalism at its finest.

“bullet” Moving briskly from fellatio to masturbation, we have DEA head Karen Tandy:

“Plan Colombia is working.”

Oh, yeah. Work it, Karen.

For more fantasies, see Drug war keeps stability alive, terror in check.
“bullet” Oops. Turns out medical marijuana doesn’t destroy the fabric of civilization after all.
“bullet” More brilliance! Heroin laced with fentanyl? Outlaw fentanyl precursers. Except that it’s possible that most of the fentany-laced heroin arrived in this country already laced. So nothing is really accomplished, and the real problem (putting drug distribution in the hands of criminals) is left un-addressed.
“bullet” Now that’s a letter to the editor!

With respect to drug testing in the workplace, I suggest that managers or supervisors who can’t evaluate their staff’s performance by observing them or examining their work are far more suitable candidates for drug testing than the employees. -George Kosinski

“bullet” Truth via Venezuela:

Carreöo dismissed any possibility of permitting the intervention of US authorities in Venezuela to fight drug trafficking and accused the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of forming its own ‹drug cartel.Š According to the Carreöo, when Venezuela ended its cooperation with the DEA two years ago, they observed that the US agency was trafficking drugs through the country.
“They were making a large quantity of drug shipments under the pretense of monitoring them, and they didn’t carry out arrests or breakup the cartels,” explained Carreöo. “We were able to determine the presence of a new drug cartel in which the United States Drug Enforcement Agency was monopolizing the shipment of drugs,” he said.

Sounds like the DEA to me.
“bullet” Marsha Rosenbaum teaches USA Today a little truth about drug testing.

Check out this new Jim Jones video on the 34th anniversary of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, via Drug Policy Alliance

Dr. Bronner (of the Magic Soaps) has come up with an amusing solution regarding what to do with those worthless field drug testing kits that police actually use as proof to lock you up — use them as a test to check for real soap!

What a great way to turn a bad arrest into a marketing gimmick!