Drug WarRant

Jessica Peck Corry writes in the Denver Post:

Reporters and politicos – so eager to define individual voters as liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat – find themselves in a predicament: Most Colorado voters in the last election simply defied such categories.
In November’s election, 41 percent of all voters supported legalizing marijuana, a number greater than the 40 percent who voted for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez. In all, 636,938 voters wanted marijuana legalized, 11,000 greater than the number who backed Beauprez.
While once considered a rallying cry of hippies and peaceniks, marijuana legalization is now a position supported by economics professors and family physicians.

… and people are starting to notice (although the media is sometimes behind on this)

Despite such widespread support, the media unanimously held that November’s bid for bud fell flat, with headlines like “Pro-pot proposal takes a big hit” and “Marijuana amendment goes up in smoke.” Beauprez’s bid, on the other hand, was largely recorded as a casualty of a national trend where mid-term elections rarely see gains for the majority party

Her conclusions as to what the election results mean are, I think, most relevant to Colorado, and I don’t think they can yet be extrapolated to the rest of the country as she does, but they’re interesting:

The old categories may just not fit anymore. […] This “Middle Majority” is growing, now representing closer to 40 percent of America. These individuals tend to have a vibrant libertarian streak while still maintaining conservative social values in their own lives. […] Most in this group support legalization because they are tired of the government taking billions away from important priorities like education and health care, and instead frittering it away on a failed militarized drug war.

In the Nashua Telegraph:

A move to decriminalize the use of marijuana tops the agenda as the New Hampshire Legislature begins to hear from the public on its 1,400 bills for the 2007 session. […]
‹Despite the threat of severe penalties, many responsible, productive New Hampshire citizens continue to use marijuana. As long as these individuals do not harm others, we believe it is unwise and unjust to continue persecuting them as enemies of the state,Š the group declares.
Matt Simon of Amherst, the group‰s spokesman, said it had less than a week to prepare testimony in support, but will be ready.
‹Six days isn‰t much time, but the evidence is on our side, and I know we will be able to make a compelling case for the committee,Š explained Simon.
‹If the committee is willing to give this bill the serious consideration it merits, it will conclude that decriminalization is the only sensible solution to the slew of problems marijuana prohibition has created for New Hampshire.Š
The group contends laws against the use of marijuana only increase the incidence of violence and property crime.
Leaders with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance (NHLA) are also expected to offer support.
The three authors are a rare bipartisan mix led by liberal Keene Democrat Chuck Weed, conservative Haverhill Republican Paul Ingbretson, and Manchester Republican Steve Vaillancourt, who at other times has been a Democratic and Libertarian lawmaker.

Interesting group of bill authors. But I’m a bit surprised at the short notice — it doesn’t seem likely that it will do well, so the publicity surrounding the effort is the important part.

Via Phillip Smith — Apparently Indonesia, impressed with the U.S. success in becoming drug-free by 1995, has decided to be marijuana-free by 2015.

Finally. An excellent article in a major paper clearly laying out the answer to Afghanistan that we’ve been talking about for ages.
Anne Applebaum — Ending an Opium War: Poppies and Afghan Recovery Can Both Bloom

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is that it exists at all — because it doesn’t have to. To see what I mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug trade also threatened the country’s political and economic stability. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy cultivation. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy eradication could “bring down the government.” Just like Afghanistan, Turkey — this was the era of “Midnight Express”– was identified as the main source of the heroin sold in the West. Just like in Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.
As a result, in 1974 the Turks, with American and U.N. support, tried a different tactic. They began licensing poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing morphine, codeine and other legal opiates. Legal factories were built to replace the illegal ones. Farmers registered to grow poppies, and they paid taxes. You wouldn’t necessarily know this from the latest White House drug strategy report– which devotes several pages to Afghanistan but doesn’t mention Turkey — but the U.S. government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring U.S. drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal documents euphemistically refer to as “narcotic raw materials” from the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.
Why not add Afghanistan to this list? […]
The director of the Senlis Council, a group that studies the drug problem in Afghanistan, told me he reckons that the best way to “ensure more Western soldiers get killed” is to expand poppy eradication.

An excellent article — do you think any policy leaders will actually read it? The article does a good job of laying out the issues, and also shows that regardless of the difficulties and potential limitations in implementing the Senlis Council’s recommendations, the result would still be positive for us — certainly more positive than the direction we’re headed right now.

In the Colorado Springs Gazette: Editorial: It’s Time for New Strategy in the Drug War

[…] After decades of an even worse failure in the drug war, it’s time for the government to rethink that war as well. […]

Besides failing to keep drugs off the street, the drug war is detrimental to our national security.

Many officials note that the illicit drug trade finances terrorism.

That’s a fair point, but it’s 180 degrees off course.

It blames drug users for all the money in the illegal drug trade, when prohibition is responsible for the huge amounts of money to be made selling drugs. […]

The way to get terrorists out of the drug trade is to take away the profit incentive.

The drug trade doesn’t finance terrorism, the drug war does. If the U.S. and other nations stop treating personal choices such as drug use as crimes, many problems would disappear. […]

We often hear about drug-related crime.

It should more accurately be called drug war-related crime. […]

After four decades of a failed drug war, isn’t it time to take a fresh look at what’s not working on that front?

There’s been all sorts of stuff to read this holiday weekend. Here are a few more …
“bullet” Radley’s got a piece at FOX News about the good folks at LEAP

For several years now, LEAP has been looking for a debate with the country’s top drug policymakers š anyone from DEA Administrator Karen Tandy to Drug Czar John Walters to powerful prohibition politicians like Indiana Rep. Mark Souder.
So far, they’ve had little luck. That’s too bad. If the drug war is still as important and necessary as our leaders in government say it is, it’s champions should be able to defend it–especially against the law enforcement officers they’ve asked to fight it.

I feel their pain. I’ve been wanting the same thing myself.
“bullet” Libby talks about North Dakota hemp efforts over at Detroit News.
“bullet” Tanya at Blame the Drug War covers a scathing report in Canada.

VANCOUVER, OTTAWA — The federal investment in the war on drugs has been an abject failure, according to a report to be published today.
Canada’s drug strategy, renewed with much fanfare in 2003, has put too much emphasis on law enforcement instead of on means to combat illicit drug use and minimize its human toll, says the report that is to appear in the HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review.
The criticism appears unlikely to sway the federal Conservative government from its intention, confirmed by a Health Department spokesman, to tilt the strategy even further toward pure law-enforcement measures.
The study, which found that critical programs in prevention, treatment and research are being underfunded, comes five years after Canada’s Auditor-General issued a scathing report that said the country’s drug strategy focused too heavily on enforcement and needed a more “balanced approach.”

“bullet” Water Drinking Contest Turns Deadly

A Sacramento woman is thought to have died of water intoxication after taking part in a radio station‰s water drinking contest.

If only they’d stick to safe things like marijuana.

“bullet” Interesting read by Christopher Hitchens — A Life of Living Dangerously (in the January issue of Maxim) about the nanny state:

I have what is sometimes known as a life, which luckily for me involves self-employment as a writer and speaker. It’s always amusing, but it involves a fair bit of stress, travel, late nights, and the suchlike. And you know what? I think I can handle it on my own. There are times when a cigarette will help me-due to its famous nicotine content-to stay awake and to concentrate. (Nicotine can even ward off Alzheimer’s, say the doctors, if you live long enought to get it, that is.) My metabolism can process Scotch whisky without any undue difficulty, and there are moments when the glow can help me write, or even talk. It wards off boredom, which presses in on me from every side in a country increasingly run by tedious idiots. Some of my writer friends do really well with the help of a joint, and good luck to them, but dope gives me heartburn and makes me less aggressive, and I don’t need either of those results. Very occasionally, a snort of cocaine can be a good thing, but I despise people who make a habit of it. (Outside my house is a school with a sign that says DRUG FREE ZONE on its fence. Uh, huh. I am never more than two telephone calls away from a score if that’s what I choose, and I gather from well-informed sources that the stuff often comes direct from the police department.) I have no use for breakfast, but at lunch a T-bone with about eight cloves of garlic, rammed home with some rich Burgundy or pinot, often appeals. (The New England Journal of Medicine now admits that two proper drinks a day are more or less essential for the heart: I was in possession of this information while doctors were still nervously covering it up.) I don’t drink any sort of coffee except espresso, and was delighted to learn recently that decaffeinated beans raise a person’s level of bad cholesterol. I have no intention of telling you about Viagra-related matters, but I will say that when my cock talks, I listen.

“bullet” Via Grits for Breakfast, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: Big score holy grail for drug officers. A depressing read. Makes you really realize how incredibly stupid all this is.

Over a nearly three-year period, 6,121 drug confiscations sent by Atlanta police to the GBI crime lab tested positive for cocaine. Just six were more than a kilogram, a little more than 2 pounds. On the other hand, more than 4,000, or 64 percent, were less than a gram, which is roughly the weight of a single raisin.
Coffield, a former police union leader, said a joke has circulated for years: “The Atlanta police narcotics unit is solving the cocaine problem one rock at a time.”
“All they care about is numbers,” said Coffield, expressing a complaint being voiced by current Atlanta officers and city officials.

“bullet” An ignorant article in the LA Times by Chris Kraul: U.S. fears ‘Colombianization’ in Ecuador’s drug war. Completely lacking in the article is any reference to the utter failure of the supply-side drug war and the culpability of the U.S.-led drug war in creating and exacerbating the problems in Colombia.

“bullet” For fun — a tongue-in-cheek column by Curtis Berndt in the Journal Gazette (IN): Ready To End Smoking Debates? Outlaw Tobacco And Legalize Pot
“bullet” The Agitator reports that Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has hired Mel Sembler to raise money for him. Mel Sembler, if you didn’t know, is the child torturer who ran STRAIGHT, Inc. — a series of concentration camps for youth which were shut down (only to become the Partnership for a Drug Free America Drug Free America Foundation).
Update: Correction — STRAIGHT became Calvina Fay’s Drug Free America Foundation. I get those “drug free” names mixed up. [Thanks, Steve]

Inspired by the NY Times article mentioned earlier, Meteor Blades’ Another Failed War Needs ‘Redeployment’ brings the drug war to the Daily Kos front page.

The drug war is now and has always been, at its core, a culture war. Changing mandatory sentencing guidelines, if it happens, will be, like voter-approved medical marijuana laws in several states, but a half-step toward calling a ceasefire to insanity. Cheers to Congressman Conyers for encouraging this half-step.

There’s been some really important hard work done by thehim and others at Kos to start to get the online liberal community to realize that ignoring the drug war or sweeping it under the rug will hurt them, and that reform is really in their best interests, despite the political dangers.

A pretty big discussion at digg.com on my article Why is Marijuana Illegal? has boosted my traffic about 2,000% today.
Nice.
Welcome to any new visitors that make it to the front page of Drug WarRant.