Drug WarRant

Success in the committee. 6-4 vote in favor of medical marijuana. Congrats to everyone involved. I hear Julie did a great job.
One of the no votes was the Senator from my district, Bill Brady, who has consistently rebuffed all efforts to talk to him about medical marijuana. (Why am I stuck with such horrible representation?)

Illinois Medical Marijuana Bill receives its first hearing today. Unfortunately, I can’t be there — I’d love to hear Julie Falco again. What a wonderful person.
From what I’ve heard so far, I think there’s a really good chance that medical marijuana will make it out of committee. Then we’ll have to see what happens.
David Ostrow has an outstanding OpEd in yesterday’s Chicago Sun Times: Research, not rhetoric: Marijuana can save lives

Clearly, the White House and its drug czar, John Walters, should abandon their rigid, unscientific rejection of medical marijuana and start reshaping federal policy to match medical reality. And if they won’t act, Congress should. There are a number of actions Congress can take to put federal medical marijuana policy on a path toward sanity.
The first, and simplest, is to prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration from spending money to raid and arrest medical marijuana patients and caregivers in the 11 states where the medical use of marijuana is legal under state law. This would remove the cloud of fear that now hangs over hundreds of thousands of desperately ill Americans and those who care for them.
But that should be just the beginning. Everything about federal medical marijuana policy should be reconsidered, based on science, common sense, and simple human decency.
There is no longer any doubt that marijuana can be a useful medicine for some very ill patients, a medicine that can literally help people stay alive. So even as we await federal action, Illinois — where the Senate Public Health Committee will hold a hearing on the medical marijuana bill Tuesday — should create a workable medical marijuana program, like those now in place in 11 states.
It is time to end our government’s war on the sick and dying.

That’s right.
In the March issue of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics said:

… screening for illicit drugs is a complicated process prone to errors and cheating, and has not been shown to curtail youngsters‰ drug use.
Drug testing also creates a counterproductive climate of ‹resentment, distrust and suspicionŠ between children and their parents or school administrators…

They went on to list a number of other potential problems and recommended:

…parents suspicious that a child is abusing drugs or alcohol consult the child‰s primary care doctor rather than rely on school-based drug screening or home kits to check their concerns.

These are things we’ve known for some time, but John Walters doesn’t care about you or your children. He doesn’t care about trust — why should he? His entire life is a lie. He just wants kids to pee for him. He want a “golden” parachute, so he can soak up the profits from some drug testing company in his retirement.
Take your stinking kidney juice money back, John. Give it back to the people, or to the states so they can provide after-school activities for youth. Let’s have some positive efforts that help children rather then turning them all into criminals.
“bullet” You can also vote in MSNBC’s unscientific web poll:
Current results:

Do you support drug testing for children? (* 9977 responses)

• Yes. It’s the best way to curb illegal drug use. 31%
• No. It’s inaccurate and creates an atmosphere of distrust. 63%
• Not sure 6.5%

Marsha Rosenbaum, of Safety 1st, will be a guest on Richard Miller’s National Public Radio show, “Mind, Body, Health,” on Tuesday, March 6, 9:00 a.m. PST to talk about teens and drugs. You can listen to the show live on the web or tune in at 88.1, 90.7, and 91.5 FM in the Mendocino County area.

I really can’t imagine that President Bush is looking forward to his upcoming trip down south.

Like many Americans at this time of year, President Bush is striking out for southern climes.
Packing strategies for fostering trade, fighting drug traffickers and fending off the regionwide shift to the political left, Bush flies out Thursday on a swing through the friendlier parts of Latin America.

Even sticking to the “friendlier parts” can’t be much fun for him. His drug war is losing popularity by the day, and the war in Iraq has pretty much stripped him of the ability to offer either bribes or threats in Latin America.
He’s a lame duck, unsure of his strength in countering the influence of the President of Venezuela!
Here’s an interesting thing to discuss…. Could it be that this administration’s love affair with the drug war could end up being a liability to… the drug war? It seems that the rest of the world is starting (in bits and pieces) to identify the excesses of the drug war with the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration. And they’re starting to see that the advantages of defying U.S. drug policy might outweigh any potential repercussions.

Via Talk Left comes an interesting development in the Ed Rosenthal Case

Recap of Ed Rosenthal for those who are new to the story: Medical marijuana grower authorized by Oakland, California, arrested by feds, not allowed to mention legal status in his federal trial, convicted. Jurors find out they were duped by the government and are outraged. Judge isn’t happy either and sentences Ed to one day. Ed appeals anyway out of principle and is granted new trial. Feds decide to re-trial and try to pile on more charges to get him.

Now a federal judge is asking the tough questions in this case.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 3 Ö A federal judge has asked the United States attorney here to submit all trial preparation memorandums in the case against a leading advocate of medical marijuana so that the court can determine if the government has been pursuing a ‹vindictive prosecution.Š
The judge, Charles R. Breyer, ordered the review at the request of lawyers for Ed Rosenthal, a spokesman in the effort to legalize marijuana who has been in a closely watched court battle with the government.

Oh, and Tommy Chong is raising money for Ed Rosenthal’s defense fund.

See the obedient Hitlerjugend marching off to the drug war. It doesn’t matter if they know that D.A.R.E. has been proven to be, at best, ineffective. Nothing’s going to stop them from teaching the children that marijuana leads to coma and death.

See also this idiocy, granted the status of “education.”
Update: I know that this kind of stuff can seem pretty depressing to readers here, but re-watch that video and realize that the TV station got it right. Not only did they mention the D.A.R.E. effectiveness controversy in the lead-in, they gave it significant detail in the piece, even going so far as to mention that D.A.R.E. might have the opposite effect.
This actually served to make D.A.R.E. lady and daddy drug war look a little… creepy, particularly when juxtaposed with the little marching soldiers footage.
There’s some parents out there who watched that news item and went… “Wait a second…”
And that’s good news.

Via Grits for Breakfast comes this news that Halle Berry is going to be playing the role of the lead NAACP attorney in a movie about the Tulia drug bust. (46 people, mostly black, in a very small town, busted for drug sales based on the word of one officer.)
According to the article, production will begin in May.
Having a big star like her bring popular visibility to this aspect of the drug war could be very valuable.

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“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly

The Food and Drug Administration is aware of the dangers of nausea:

Severe vomiting can be life threatening and require intravenous fluids and hospitalization.

So it’s good to know that the FDA is there to make sure that the necessary medicine is available to… dogs.

Good news, dog owners: There’s a new drug to keep Fido from vomiting all over your living room or car. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, Cerenia, to treat or prevent vomiting resulting from motion sickness and other causes.

Of course if you’re a human suffering from nausea due to cancer treatments, the FDA prefers that you die.