Drug WarRant

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.

With New Mexico the latest state to legalize medical marijuana, the response at the drug czar’s “blog” is quite hilarious:

Medical Marijuana in New Mexico: A Triumph of Politics Over Science
Yesterday, New Mexico passed a symbolic law that purportedly legalizes so-called “medical” marijuana. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), these measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective under the standards of the FD&C Act. These measures are also against Federal law.
Unfortnately, this new law will frustrate the efforts of parents and anti-drug advocates who now have to deal with the pro-drug messages that medical marijuana laws deliver to the young people of New Mexico.

“…a symbolic law that purportedly legalizes so-called “medical“ marijuana …” Oh, that is rich! How many ways can they attempt to negate the truth?

Via Steve at Transform
This is the White House-produced rock video in the 80’s that finally convinced America to “stop the madness.” With a message this compelling, it took very little effort to finish the job and America was drug-free by 1995. No longer needed, the drug war infrastructure was dismantled, and the soldiers returned home.

… or not.
If you haven’t seen this before, you’ll definitely get a kick out of it. I don’t know if it’s because the video hasn’t aged well, but it sure seems like it was created by people who were on drugs.

In an OpEd promoting a medical marijuana law in Illinois, Montel Williams sticks it to the government:

Here’s what’s shocking: The U.S. government knows marijuana works as a medicine. Our government actually provides medical marijuana each month to five patients in a program that started about 25 years ago but was closed to new patients in 1992. One of the patients in that program, Florida stockbroker Irvin Rosenfeld, was a guest on my show two years ago. If federal officials come to town to tell you there’s no evidence marijuana is a safe, effective medicine, know this: They’re lying, and they know it.

Yes, they are.

With the situation in Afghanistan continuing to fail dramatically, more players are coming to the realization that a solution may require something other than pursuing the same old drug war. What an idea!
The British MPs have been pushing for some time now for adopting the Senlis Council’s proposal to buy the opium and turn it into medicine, and now Tony Blair may even be considering it.

The Prime Minister has ordered a review of his counter-narcotics strategy – including the possibility of legalising some poppy production – after an extraordinary meeting with a Tory MP on Wednesday, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Other stories indicated that NATO is interested as well.
The Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which is doing some great work out there, is not supporting the sudden interest in the Senlis proposal (Why ‘legalising’ Afghan opium for medicine is a non-starter), but misses the point. While I agree that the Senlis proposal is not a silver bullet, it provides a spring board to considering alternatives to the brute force drug war approach. And that’s good.
And now today Glenn Reynolds approvingly links to radical ideas:

MICKEY KAUS ON AFGHANISTAN AND OPIUM:

“A simpler, more promising solution to the poppy harvest would seem to be Christopher Hitchens’: legalize it and tax it. And, presumably, let the Afghans sell it to whomever they want. The price of heroin would fall. There would be more addicts. But fewer American British soldiers would have to die in Afghanistan–and we might actually win the war they’re dying in.”

Prioritizing the Drug War over the actual war seems like a dreadful mistake. When we interviewed Col. David Enyeart of Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan a few weeks ago, he dodged the question of how much harm our policies there were doing, saying basically that it wasn’t his guys who were involved in the drug-war stuff. But it seems pretty clear that it’s a problem.

Forgotten? OK, sure, the politicians may avoid talking about it (except when they’re passing harsher laws or eradication budgets), but it’s hardly forgotten.
And I don’t have much optimism about the direction this series will take. And unfortunately, they’re probably congratulating themselves on how balanced it is…

The war on drugs has affected people from all walks of life. Listen to the stories of federal drug officials, and the personal experiences of a former drug dealer, a recovering drug addict, a former drug prosecutor and a mother who lost her son to drugs.

All walks of life? Give me a break. These are the worst of the hard-core drug warriors. “Dr.” David Murray, Barry McCaffrey, Ginger Katz, and others. Where are the mothers of those who died from the drug war? The families who were torn apart by prison? The peaceful citizens who have had their lives taken away from them by unfair drug laws? The farmers who are poisoned by our chemicals?
Yep, NPR’s giving us balance…

Part 1 addresses the great debate in the war on drugs: What should take priority Ö controlling the supply of drugs through foreign operations, or controlling demand through prevention programs in the United States?

Right. That great debate which solves nothing… except to prevent discussion of the true great debate: Regulation vs. Black Market
In the entire description and connected pages, I could find no mention of a single drug policy reform organization or individual.
The degree to which the series seems to be overpopulated by ONDCP staff (and former staff) leads me to believe that NPR has joined the FDA and HHS as fully-owned subsidiaries of the drug war political establishment.

“bullet” The Illinois State University student newspaper reports on Thursday’s panel: Group claims prohibition, war on drugs is a failure, and even includes a picture of us (that’s Greg Francisco speaking, with George Pappas next to him and then me).
“bullet” thehim has the Drug War Roundup (Battling over Medical Marijuana in Washington State). Also check out the Maher video he posted (at the end, he has some good commentary on legal vs. illegal drugs).
“bullet” Nat Hentoff has the first part of what should be an excellent series on Bong Hits for Jesus: Will the Supreme Court hold high the banner ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus,’ or crush free speech?

We are in a time when many Americans are far more knowledgeable about Anna Nicole Smith than about the Bill of RightsÖits contents and its future as the Constitution keeps shrinking.

Scary. Hentoff also reminds us of the words of Justice Robert Jackson in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette:

“No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or any other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

“bullet” The DEA claims that it can’t act quickly enough to allow hemp farming licenses in North Dakota for the 2007 growing season.

Joseph Rannazzisi, a deputy assistant administrator at DEA, told Johnson in a letter this week that “it would be unrealistic ( and unprecedented ) to expect DEA to make a final decision on any application to manufacture any controlled substance within the timeframe you suggest…”

Manufacturing a controlled substance? It’s growing hemp.
“bullet” In Hartford, Dr. Robert L. Painter has some good commentary: Taking The Crime Out Of Drugs.