Drug WarRant

“bullet” The ONDCP’s latest “podcast” is actually just the audio of their fact-deficient press conference with the UN and the DEA on the occasion of the UNODC’s latest report, and the claims that marijuana has magically become some kind of Super-Drug. It’s one hour and six minutes long, and I don’t have time (or stomach) to listen to it now, but if you’re a masochist and want to report back anything interesting… have at it.
“bullet” On a much brighter note, NORML’s daily audio stash (mp3) features a good interview with Maurice Hinchey, co-sponsor of the Amendment that is likely to be acted on today in the House to prevent federal funds from being used to harass medical marijuana users in states where it’s legal. Hinchey gives a nice overview of the situation, although it’s not really much new if you’ve been following this issue closely. The most interesting part is when Hinchey is asked why the Republicans seem to be so unsupportive of the amendment. (First you have to get past NORML’s extremely annoying and long podcast introduction, where they repeatedly tell you what you’re listening to.)

In the debate over marijuana legalization in Nevada comes an interesting piece: The Poetry of Drug Politics by Lohantan Valley News publisher Rick Swart:

At the same time there is something just a little bit hypocritical about standing around the VIP tent drinking cantaloupe margaritas and espousing the ills of “gateway” drugs. Mind-altering drugs are like lawyers — your own is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it’s the other guy’s that’s all screwed up.

Today’s McAllen (TX) Monitor: Losing the Drug War — Decriminalization would be more effective than drug eradication

There is an old saying: “There are none so blind as those who will not see,” which comes to mind when we see news reports about expanding the international drug war. […]
Actually, the main problem isn’t that the aerial eradication program isn’t successful. It’s that the drug war itself is failing. Born of the flawed idea that if drug users have trouble obtaining drugs, they’ll stop using, the drug war has been going on for decades with little success. […] The police are doing what they’re supposed to, but they’re fighting a losing battle because the drug war ignores economics and common sense. […]
If officials are serious about lowering the rates of crime and drug use, they should curtail their efforts to keep consumers from getting what they want.
Decriminalization of drugs would remove the risk suppliers now face, which would lower prices. That would, in turn, lead to a decrease in robberies and burglaries because users would not need as much money to buy their drugs. That’s not to say such crimes would disappear; they‰ve always been with us because not all crimes are a result of drug use.
The easy availability of illegal drugs in the United States is proof the drug war isn’t working, despite the billions we spend on it every year. That’s a pretty high price tag for a policy that’s not working.

I’d call it more than a waste. An eyesore and a hazard maybe. Or a toxic chemical spill that keeps spreading.
But still it’s nice to see Citizens Against Government Waste come out with such a strong statement in their new report: Wasted in the War on Drugs: Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Wasted Efforts (pdf).
Here are some highlights:

As the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), established in
1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, approaches its eighteenth year of existence, it
continues to demonstrate its inability to either achieve its core objectives or
function efficiently. […]
Despite consistent failures in reaching its own goals, the ONDCP continues
to fund its four primary programs: High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas
(HIDTA), the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC), the Drug Free
Communities Program, and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The
most wasteful aspect of these programs continues to be the media campaign that
was created to reduce the use of marijuana in the United States. […]
As the ONDCP continues to run this wasteful program, it is becoming
apparent that it is attacking the wrong target. Although numerous studies have
revealed that marijuana does not serve as a gateway drug, it continues to be the
primary focus of the federal government’s war on drugs. […]
The government also exhibits its obsession with containing marijuana use
by continuing to throw unnecessary funding and unavailable resources towards
tracking down and persecuting patients using medicinal marijuana in states that
have legalized the substance for medical use only. Not only does this undermine
federalism, it also proves that the government is incapable of exercising any kind
of fiscal restraint. […]
Since it was created in 1998, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign has been a failure. […]
While the ONDCP is being scammed by private ad agencies, it decided to
do a little scamming of its own. In 2003 the ONDCP came under fire shortly after
releasing a series of ads during the Super Bowl. Running on one of the most
important nights for ad campaigns, the ads inaccurately maintained that drug users
were directly aiding terrorism and linked unwanted teenage pregnancy to
marijuana smoking. Along with demonstrating a complete lack of ability to
reform the war on drugs, the media campaign took a turn for the worse by lying to
the viewers and destroying the possibility of credibility. […]
As U.S. funding continues to pour into hurricane relief efforts, the war in
Iraq, and the Drug War, it is absolutely necessary that Congress exercise fiscal
restraint and appropriate resources to the highest priorities. Unfortunately, the
federal government has become so obsessed with decreasing marijuana use that it
is spending money unwisely. […]
The federal government and the ONDCP have chosen to ignore evidence
suggesting that the methods being used in the war on drugs are not effective.
Despite numerous controversies and a failing ad campaign, the government
continues to pour millions of tax dollars into the program. […]
The federal government has continued to waste federal resources in an
attempt to thwart the use of legalized medical marijuana. In order to halt this
improper use of resources, taxpayers must speak through the voice of Congress.
In floor debate on his amendment in 2005, Rep. Hinchey stated, “In the Supreme
Court’s majority opinion last week, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the issue
can be addressed ‘through the democratic process, in which the voices of voters
allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.’
With this amendment, we intend to use the powers granted us in the Constitution
and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court last week to do just that.”
If passed, the Hinchey/Rohrabacher amendment would free up federal
dollars for more important priorities and help to restore a proper division of power
between the federal and state governments.

The report mostly takes exception to the government’s obsession with marijuana and not with other drugs, so CAGW advocates changing the focus of resources rather than eliminating them entirely (which would be my preference). However, the the report is still very important.
It’s also perfect timing. This report has been released with the Hinchey/Rohrabacher amendment due to be considered as early as this evening.
If you haven’t contacted your representative yet, do so immediately. It would probably be better at this point to call their office. Tell the staff member that you want them to support the Hinchey/Rohrabacher (ROAR-ah-BAH-ker) amendment that prevents the federal government from wasting your tax dollars going after medical marijuana patients in states where it’s legal.

Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for having drugs without a valid prescription.
The drug?
Viagra.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has declared today “International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.” And they’re doing it with the theme “Drugs are Not Child’s Play,” which ranks in terms of pure exploitive hype right alongside National Lampoon’s Buy This [Magazine] or We’ll Shoot This Dog — just not as funny.

UNODC has selected “drugs are not child’s play” as the theme of its 2006 international campaign, in an effort to increase public awareness about the destructive power of drugs and society’s responsibility to care for the well-being of children. The latest estimates indicate that 200 million people, or 5 per cent of the global population age 15-64, have consumed illicit drugs at least once in the last 12 months. But what about kids? What about children (aged 4 to 10)?
Although they are seldom the object of national and international studies, children of all ages are affected by drug abuse and illicit trafficking. Street children, working and living in dire conditions, are vulnerable, as are boys and girls whose family members are buying or selling illicit substances. These kids are exposed not only to bad examples but also to violent behaviour associated to drug abuse. In some instances, children have lost their parents to this scourge and are now cared for by uncles, aunts or grandparents. At school, the situation may not be any better. Teenagers and peers may be pressuring kids to smoke cigarrettes and drink alcohol, at first, and then to try marihuana. Other types of drugs may follow.
UNODC’s anti-drugs campaign urges adults to protect children.

And so we should. One of the first and most important steps would be to dismantle the UNODC. It is, after all, the policies promoted by the UNODC that makes trafficking profitable and increases the danger to children.

Ever have one of those days when you just feel like you’re dealing with jerks and idiots all day? Today’s one of them. Starting out with Anthony Maria Costa and John Walters, and now… Robert Novak (or as John Stewart liked to call him: “Douchebag for Liberty”)
Novak has a particularly ugly, false, and partisan column today in the Chicago Sun Times: Dems Balk At Support For Colombia’s Drug War.
He starts with a profile of our ‘heroic’ drug war efforts in Colombia…

MARIQUITA, Colombia — At the Colombian National Police base here last Wednesday morning, a small air fleet took off. Hours earlier, a Fairchild Metroliner intelligence plane scouted poppy fields in the jungles 40 miles northward. Now several well-armed Huey helicopters embarked. They were followed by three Turbo fixed-wing aircraft spraying the fields to eradicate plants producing narcotics destined for U.S. and European users. Taking off last to complete the day’s operation was a Blackhawk helicopter, fulfilling “search and rescue” requirements.
Such hazardous operations — subject to ground fire from narco-guerrillas — take place in the Colombian Andes every day, amid disapproval from Western European government officials, Democrats in the U.S. Congress and critics inside Colombia. [emphasis added]

And what reason do these critics have for not providing the drug warriors with everything they desire?

“It is the campaign, all over the world, of the drug traffickers to claim there is environmental damage [resulting from aerial eradication],” Serrano told me. He credits the narco-terrorists influencing the European Union’s refusal to participate in aerial eradication even though close to half of Europe’s heroin supply comes from Colombia.

Right. It’s just the traffickers who claim the poisonous chemicals pose a danger. Aided, of course, by those uninformed Democrats and Europeans who object to increasing the already huge dispersal of chemicals that have been heavily implicated in damage to the environment and human reproduction.
And, of course, if it wasn’t for all these dupes of the drug traffickers and their silly environmental concerns, we’d be all done in Colombia.
After all, Novak hears from his drug warrior friends in Colombia that they could win this war, if only they could have 15 more planes for additional aerial eradication efforts.
But apparently the Democrats not only have this environmental hang-up, but they insist on seeing civil war in Colombia, while Novak is somehow able to discern that there is no political war in Colombia — only good guys versus drug traffickers (he undoubtedly has some explanation for the fact that drug revenue has been used by every power structure in that country but neglected to share it with us).
So naturally, Novak’s deluded little mind was outraged when Representative Jim McGovern proposed eliminating $30 million in the foreign aid bill from aerial fumigation in Colombia and transferring it to emergency humanitarian relief for refugees. Novak fumes:

In response to this evidence of Colombia’s escape from degradation as a narco-terrorist state, Democrats in the House voted 161- 28 for McGovern’s disastrous cut in U.S. aid. The House Republicans saved Colombia, but ardent young officers of the national police are anxious to win this war. They need more help from Washington, and they deserve it. [emphasis added]

The House Republicans saved Colombia? By continuing the status quo of spending millions of taxpayer dollars on poisoning crops with nothing to show for it?
Remind me not to call Robert Novak if I need medical attention.
Note: Novak has been a huge fan of aerial chemical eradication efforts in Colombia.

Via Pushing Back:
“Among the key findings of the U.N. World Drug Report…”

Today, the characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

—
In other news, mother’s milk determined to share many of the characteristics of other liquid-based beverages such as whisky and rum.

Anthony Maria Costa is sort of John Walters, but on a global scale. He’s in charge of the UN Office on Drug and Crime, which pretty much has as its goal the imposition of United States’ failed drug policy on the rest of the world. (It’s the one part of the UN our government seems to like, since it acts like a U.S. lapdog and mindlessly promotes prohibition.)
According to this Bloomberg article:

Global Drug War Is Being Won, Illegal Use `Contained,’ UN Says
June 26 (Bloomberg) — The world is winning the war on drugs, according to a United Nations report that said opium production might soon be eradicated in Asia’s notorious “Golden Triangle” and coca cultivation in the Andean region of South American has decreased 25 percent since 2000.
“Drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained,” Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a statement accompanying the release today of the agency’s 2006 World Drug Report.

Of course, that’s just like the drug czar’s regular pronouncements here, as Jeffrey Miron notes in the article:

“If you read these reports over time from the UN or the U.S. drug czar, you see a constant up and down, from claims of victory to statements that things are horrible,” Miron said in an interview. “You tend to find that a problem that is solved one place shifts to another. There will always be some uses going up and some going down, and these reports don’t address issues like the costs of drug use from diseases spread by needles or infringements on civil rights from the drug war.”

And that’s so true. Any time a number goes down temporarily, regardless of context, the prohibitionists claim victory specifically attributed to their efforts (usually with no causal evidence). If the number, instead, remains the same or goes up, that’s merely a reason to put out a press release calling for increased vigor (and more funding).
Nice job security.
(Also note that Costa brags about coca cultivation being down in the Andean region, but doesn’t mention the actual distribution of coca. That’s partly because many experts believe that the traffickers have developed higher yields needing less cultivated area, and there’s been no evidence of a reduction in supply.)

Eric Baerren, News Editor of the Mt. Pleasant, Michigan Morning Sun has a strong and detailed response to the recent Michigan Supreme Court decision allowing the discovery of chemical byproducts in the blood to qualify as “impaired” driving.
Baarren takes apart the entire drug war and what it’s led to — more than I can quote here and worth reading in its entirety.
His ending…

Do they really think this was such a smart idea, that this kind of thing won’t lead to arbitrary enforcement of laws and the conviction of people who weren’t actually guilty in the first place? If so, and this is really how we’re fighting our war on drugs, I have a question:
What’s the penalty for desertion?