Drug WarRant

Andrew Sullivan on the Drug War and Football:

More pharmaceutical double-standards with respect to pain-relief. It seems any addictive pain-killer is fine with the NFL. Oxycontin? Have a Limbaugh-sized dose. But marijuana? You’ll be suspended.

How often does our irrational prohibition of marijuana end up forcing people to take drugs that are more harmful to them?

The editorial staff at the Austin Peay State University (TN) All State like to use the word “logic,” but it’s clear that the university has utterly failed to teach their students what that word actually means.
Link
[Warning: Do not read if you’re currently depressed and frustrated about the state of education in this country, or about the intelligence of citizens.]

First they came for our baking soda. Then they came for our tomatoes.

PULLMAN, Wash. — A Pullman landlord notified police about a grow lamp in a closet, and police got a search warrant for a drug raid.
Eight officers with guns drawn surprised three roommates in the apartment last weekend and discovered they were growing tomatoes.

Yes, it is kind of funny. But it’s gallows humor, because we’re laughing at the utter insanity of our society-threatening authoritarian drug war.

In this week’s Drug War Chronicle, there’s one thing in particular I wanted to point out:
Somewhat lost in the news of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signing a new medical marijuana law, is the fact that he also signed the 911 Good Samaritan Act, which provides “limited immunity from drug possession charges when an overdose victim or friend seeks emergency medical services.” According to the Chronicle, it’s the first of its kind in the country.
It has always amazed me that the various parent groups of those who died from overdoses (the Steve Steiner and Ginger Katz crowd) seem to ignore this important means of stopping tragic deaths, and instead focus their energies on the irrelevant (to overdose deaths) issue of opposing medical marijuana. Since they ally themselves with sado-moralists (abstinence or death), it’s hard to credit their protestations that they simply wish to “prevent this tragedy from happening to another family.”
“bullet”

“bullet” Other reading:

• Matthew Holt: Is the Drug War Nearing an End?
• Only slightly off-topic.. Jon Katz’ We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.
• All I Want is Some Cheap Mexican Weed

“bullet” And finally, I don’t know what’s more absurd. Cincinnati police claiming that having a local ordinance to jail marijuana users is somehow necessary to reduce gun violence, or the White House touting that as “Public Safety Prevails in Cincinnati.”

On March 24, I noted that Arianna Huffington had a very powerful piece in the Los Angeles Times — “The War on Drugs’ War on Minorities.”
On March 28, when pointing out that the piece had been reprinted in Alternet, I was rather disturbed that nobody seemed to be picking up on it.
Well, finally today, the piece was reprinted in the Huffington Post, and now everybody seems to be talking about it, including a number of blogs and diaries around the web, and some big guns ranging from TalkLeft to… Instapundit:

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON:

There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.
While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

The “Drug War” is a colossal disaster, and it’s even undermining the real war. The unwillingness of candidates in both parties to oppose it is a disgrace.

Gaining traction? Hmmm…. If only Drudge would pick it up so that the networks would know it’s OK to talk about it.

I had to check the date of this article three times to be sure it wasn’t April 1.

JEFFERSON CITY Ö First, the state said you must make a special trip to the pharmacy counter to buy certain cold medicines. That was to curb production of methamphetamine.
Now, a St. Louis legislator wants you to do the same thing to buy an even more common household item Ö baking soda Ö because it’s used to make crack cocaine.
Sales of cold medications containing pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed, are strictly regulated in Missouri. Customers must show a photo ID when they buy the medicine. Pharmacists must log the names and addresses of buyers, including how much they buy. People under 18 may not buy the medicines.
The sponsor of the baking soda bill, Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, D-St. Louis, said the same approach was needed for baking soda because crack cocaine is often produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and baking soda.

Baking soda.
That’s what happens. You let these idiot legislators start making one thing illegal because it’s connected to something else, and the next thing you know, everything is illegal.
Even the DEA’s Tom Murphy thinks that this is unworkable.

“When you generate a list of people who use baking soda, it pretty much includes everyone. It’s a common household item,” said Tom Murphy, a special agent with the St. Louis division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The baking soda bill is HB1189. Representative Talibdin El-Amin represents District 57.
If only we could outlaw legislators. They do more harm to this country than criminals, drugs, guns, locusts, asbestos, and trans-fat combined.

Update: Winning comment from Hit and Run regarding this story:

If baking is outlawed, only outlaws will be baked.

The Northeast Regional SSDP conference will be held April 13-15 at Brown University: Confronting the Drug War, Envisioning Alternatives with speakers including:

• Lincoln Chaffee, Former U.S. Senator
• Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance
• Glenn Loury, Brown University, Professor of Economics
• Daniel Pinchbeck, Author

While I unfortunately won’t be able to be there in person, I’ll be involved peripherally.

Robert Koehler writes at the Huffington Post: Devil Weed — about the case of Bernie Ellis, yet another medical marijuana advocate harassed by the federal government.

Welcome to the Bush administration’s other bogus war: the war on drugs. Science be damned. Rationality, compassion and state’s rights be damned. What matters is the continual drawing of random and arbitrary borders, which are then ruthlessly defended no matter what. And with the drawing of borders comes the creation of enemies, and in the world of herbs, marijuana is the enemy — the devil weed, no matter how medically useful.
As Ellis noted, “Every federal commission since Nixon has recommended reclassifying marijuana, allowing it to re-enter the medical pharmacopoeia.” Yet the feds have been known to prosecute medical marijuana growers even in states that have legalized it.

So who do we turn to for relief? The answer is in the signature tag line that Bernie Ellis uses in his letters:

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

You may have followed the politicians around the country outraged (outraged, I say) over the sales of marijuana-flavored candy. Have you tried any of this candy? I have, and it’s an acquired taste at best. It’s a novelty, a curiosity — not something that’s going to replace Butterfingers. If you were to give the candy to most children, they’d take one lick, spit it out and then punch you for giving them something so foul tasting. But politicians see it as another thing to outlaw in the name of the war on drugs.
Jacob Sullum does a great job of taking this apart in Lollipop Lickers: The fight against marijuana-flavored candy is a fight against pro-drug speech.

Crawford, whose group’s website features a photo of an angry-looking baby sucking on a bright green lollipop, suggests that cannabis-flavored candy may “fall into the hands of unsuspecting youth” and “serve as a gateway product for future marijuana use.” A Pennsylvania legislator says “it is really frightening to develop a taste for marijuana in children through lollipops.”
Such warnings fundamentally misconstrue the appeal of both marijuana (which people do not smoke mainly for its flavor) and candy that tastes like it. It’s marijuana that makes the candy cool, not the other way around.
And what makes marijuana cool? To a large extent, the government’s efforts to prevent its consumption. The legal moves against marijuana-flavored candy can be expected to have a similar effect.