Drug WarRant

From Bruce Mirken with MPP:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new report from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C., challenges the key assumption underlying present U.S. marijuana laws: that marijuana must be prohibited for adults in order to deter teens from using it.
When reformers propose regulating marijuana for adults in a manner similar to alcohol or tobacco, government officials typically argue that such a policy would encourage use by children, and such assertions are widely accepted by the press and the public. MPP undertook a thorough review of government data from the U.S. and around the world, as well as studies by think tanks and academic researchers. Key findings include:

• Marijuana prohibition has not prevented a dramatic increase in marijuana use by teenagers. In fact, the overall rate of marijuana use in the U.S. has risen by roughly 4,000% since marijuana was first outlawed.
• Independent studies by RAND Europe and the U.S. National Research Council have reported that marijuana prohibition appears to have little or no impact on rates of use.
• Since Britain ended most marijuana possession arrests in 2004, the rate of marijuana use by 16- to-19-year-olds has dropped.
• In the U.S., rates of teen marijuana use in states that have decriminalized adult marijuana possession are statistically equal to the rates in states that have retained criminal penalties.
• In the Netherlands, where adults have been allowed to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana since 1976, the rate of marijuana use by adults and teens is lower than in the U.S., and teen use of cocaine and amphetamines is far lower than in the U.S. Indeed, some researchers believe it is the prohibition of marijuana that causes progression to hard drug use, sometimes called the “gateway effect.”

“The idea that prohibiting adults from using marijuana will keep it away from kids is a myth that isn’t backed up by the data,” said MPP Executive Director Rob Kampia. “We need laws that are based on facts and science, not faith-based myths.”

Full Report available for download
Now lets see if the press picks up on it. The report release is timed to coincide with the traditional release time of government’s annual “Monitoring the Future” report. Each year, the ONDCP cherry-picks some out-of-context set of numbers from that report and touts it as either a victory in the drug war or a sign that we need to spend more/arrest more, etc. With the new MPP report, the press will have the option of at least “balancing” those claims with the real in-context information in the MPP report.

Winning the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan: The top U.S. anti-drug official said Saturday that Afghan poppies would be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year, a measure likely to anger farmers and scare Afghans unfamiliar with weed killers.

I guess we’ve screwed up Afghanistan so badly already that the administration has decided we might was well turn the whole show over to John Walters to finish destroying the country, and ending hopes of protecting our interests in the region.

The Afghan government has not publicly said it will spray, and President Hamid Karzai has said in the past that herbicides pose too big a risk, contaminating water and killing the produce that grows alongside poppies.
But Walters said Karzai and other officials have agreed to ground spraying.
“I think the president has said yes, and I think some of the ministers have repeated yes,” Walters said without specifying when spraying would start. “The particulars of the application have not been decided yet, but yes, the goal is to carry out ground spraying.”

Who’s in charge of this lunatic asylum?

Via Blame the Drug War, comes the story of a drug suspect in Canada who shot two policemen (a third was shot by friendly fire) during a drug raid when he thought the people busting in were home invaders.
So the head of the police union realizes that a change is in order. Not re-evaluating when home invasion is used in drug investigations (which would make sense), but rather…

WINNIPEG needs a full-time, heavily armed SWAT team to respond to drug busts and other potentially dangerous searches, says the boss of the local police union.
Loren Schinkel noted every other major Canadian city has a tactical team dedicated to that kind of situation, while Winnipeg is taking a big gamble by calling out its Emergency Response Unit on a case-by-case basis.
“The reality is, with 80 per cent of the warrants executed in Winnipeg by the drug unit, weapons are located,” he said. “We’re really rolling the dice.”

Idiot. Using a full-time, heavily armed SWAT team for routine drug busts is not going to make them safer. But then again, he probably just wants to play with the cool toys. How many will die because he’s a moron?

Radley Balko has the story.

With the tragic and unnecessary death of Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta and the serious questions regarding criminal misconduct by the police, bad policies, insufficient judicial oversight, and damage to relations in the African American community, naturally, it would make sense to see the political leaders stepping up and asking for investigations and changes.
Well, Senator Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) is going to do something:

Despite a failed attempt this year to ban candy made to taste like marijuana, the Georgia state Senate’s chief proponent of the law said he will “definitely” bring the issue back up in January.
“Will do. No doubt about it,” said Sen. Vincent Fort, D Atlanta.

Perhaps Senator Fort’s constituents should suggest to him that he remove his head from his ass.

Note: To be fair, Senator Fort was involved in organizing a community meeting about the Kathryn Johnston tragedy (although I’ve not found any public statements by him about the shooting), but still — for marijuana flavored candy to be his legislative focus is just… idiotic.

Tonight at 7 pm ET/PT on Global Television: Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey
Article:

IMAGINE A CANADA where marijuana is legal and a prescription gets you a hit of heroin or cocaine.
That’s the proposal of Senator Larry Campbell, the former cop and mayor of Vancouver whose life inspired the Da Vinci’s Inquest TV series.
Such controversial and contrarian views are at the heart of the provocative Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey, airing Saturday at 7 p.m. on Global as part of the Global Currents series of documentaries. […]
“It’s the hypocrisy of it that really appals me. I just can’t quite figure out how we can call ourselves an enlightened society and still turn a blind eye to something that seems to be doing so much damage yet it would be so simply cured if only we would come to terms with our own feelings about substances.”
Damage Done depicts many people who have wrestled with their stance on forbidden substances, most notably members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. The group claims about 5,000 members and anyone can join, but LEAP was founded by police veterans who gradually concluded that the traditional war on drugs was illogical. […]
“They have the strength of their own convictions. At one point in time they were just ordinary cops. They were just enforcing the law the way it was written. Something happened to change their minds. I think that in the process of that epiphany, if you will, they had to become stronger. It made them heroes, in my opinion,” said Littlefield.
“And that makes them very filmic, so I kind of exploited that. The guy’s riding his horse across the country to protest the drug war. What’s more filmic than that. And the horse only has one eye. I mean, come on.” […]
Tenacity also paid off in securing an interview with former New York City cop Frank Serpico. His one-man crusade against dirty cops was made into a classic ’70s movie starring Al Pacino.
“He’s not a member of LEAP officially, although he totally supports them. He’s just not a joiner, really, as you might think,” said Littlefield. “I’m talking to him about potentially making another documentary about the roots of police corruption.” […]
“Global is airing a 45-minute version this weekend. There’s also a 54-minute version which includes a couple of other American characters and that is what we refer to as the NFB version. It’s hopefully going to be distributed all over the world and through the NFB’s resources in North America and hopefully you’ll even be able to buy your own copy one day.”

“bullet” Nice feature about LEAP member Jerry Cameron, and a positive response to the legalization call, in Tonyaa Weathersbee piece in the Jacksonville Times Union: Decriminalizing Marijuana
“bullet” Washington Post Editorial: Commute This Sentence

A Clemency Case Not Even President Bush Can Ignore — or Can He?
THE SUPREME Court this week declined to review the case of Weldon Angelos, leaving in place his obscene sentence of 55 years in prison for small-time marijuana and gun charges. The high court’s move is no surprise; the justices have tended to uphold draconian sentences against constitutional challenge. But it confronts President Bush with a question he will have to address: Is there any sentence so unfair that he would exert himself to correct it?
So far, Mr. Bush hasn’t found one. […]

Update: Source corrected.

In the current issue of Drug Sense, Bryan Brickner has a feature article: Speak Truth to Power, where he talks about his experience in the debate that I moderated last month.

Great moments, like the ending of the drug war, will perhaps be inaudible to us. In other words, we often do not sense the meaning of moments as they happen. That being the case, when speaking truth to power, one should watch for when “the spell” begins to break.
The spell? The spell is the spell of power. It begins to break when the appearance of the reasons for believing become unbelievable. In the case of the drug war, the reasons for fighting it no longer produce fear. Without the fear of the illegal drug user — in oneself and in others — power has only one remaining effect, that of force. […]

There’s also an interesting juxtaposition in the section of the Drug Sense newsletter dealing with schools, and the levels of powers abused in the name of the drug war. On one hand you have the schools attempting to control what students say (Bong Hits 4 Jesus, the Carson High newspaper article on marijuana legalization and, from some weeks ago, the students who wore a marijuana leaf to support the medical marijuana bill in S.D.), while from a different abuse of power you have the student caught goofing around and pretending to snort Smarties candies who was told by the Principal that he’d have to go undercover and be a narc to avoid suspension.

I’m helping out an organization that is needing some (volunteer or unpaid internship)expertise in web development to help put together a dynamic, interactive site for a major medical marijuana legalization effort.

The site should be a resource for chapters and volunteers to download and print literature and documents.
The site should sign up members, get details about them, and to store them in a database by region to communicate with them for specific actions in the future.
The site should facilitate interchapter communication among volunteers, (talklist or blog, etc.).
The site should attract and receive donations.
The site should allow people to contact their legislator directly.

Obviously, that will take more than simple html expertise, but there’s a lot of open source and freely available web applications for those who know how to work with them.
Contact me if you’d like more details.

This OpEd by second year accounting student Joshua Rabon is a good read… and a great headline.