Drug WarRant

At the Drug War Chronicle:

It’s a trio that gives the Bush administration nightmares, and they were all together in Bolivia last weekend. Bolivian President Evo Morales hosted Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in what he called an “axis of good” during a visit to Bolivia’s coca-growing Chapare region, and Chavez announced he would support Morales’ call to legalize and industrialize the coca leaf by providing $1 million in funding for research into coca’s uses and factories to turn it into coca flour or tea.

My first reaction is to have a nice chuckle over the likely discomfiture of the drug warriors over this news. And that’s fine. But then I think about how incredibly destructive our drug war has been to Latin America and how difficult it is for them to struggle to find solutions to that overbearing imposition, and I get serious again.

Tony Newman has an excellent piece at AlterNet: The Top 10 Things I Know About Drugs

1. Drugs are everywhere….
2. Different people have different relationships with different drugs….
3. People use drugs for joy and for pain….
4. Drug abuse does not discriminate, but our drug policies do. …
5. Relapse happens. …
6. Smoking five cigarettes is better than smoking 20. Using marijuana is better than using heroin….
7. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse….
8. Prohibition doesn’t work. Prohibition is responsible for most of the violence associated with drugs….
9. Drugs and the drug war touch most families…
10. We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren’t going anywhere….

*Bonus point: The public is ahead of the politicians….

I’ll be heading off to New York Monday for a week of theatre. I’m taking 74 people and showing them the city with walking tours each day, plus seeing 7 shows (Lieutenant of Inishmore, The History Boys, Drowsy Chaperone, Faith Healer, Sweeney Todd, Awake and Sing, Red Light Winter),
So I’ll be pretty busy, but if there are any Drug WarRant regulars in New York who’d like to get together for some coffee and to talk drug policy, I’d love it. Wednesday afternoon would be the best time for me, but there may be other good times during the week.
Email me if you’re interested.

From an OpEd by Ronald Fraser in the Niagara Gazette:

When there is a big gap between the views of ordinary Americans on a public issue and the voting record of their elected representatives in Congress on that issue, something is wrong. In the national debate over the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the people and their representatives in Congress seem to be living on different planets.

Great description.

In this article in National Review Online, Radley Balko nails Sensenbrenner and Hastert for caring more about fellow congressmen than their constituents.

Funny. Congress — especially GOP leaders like Hastert and Sensenbrenner — don’t seem nearly as concerned when much more violent, confrontational raids happen to their own constituents.
In fact, last week, just as Rep. Sensenbrenner was scheduling this week’s hearings, a SWAT team in Dodgeville, Wisconsin broke open a window, rolled in a diversionary grenade, and raided an innocent couple’s home in full battle gear.

At Don’t Try This at Home by Steve Silberman in Wired.

Garage chemistry used to be a rite of passage for geeky kids. But in their search for terrorist cells and meth labs, authorities are making a federal case out of DIY science.

A fascinating article on the legal hurdles placed in the path of the kind of exploring and enquiring minds that invent new products and make our lives better.

In the meantime, more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state’s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as “commonly associated with meth labs” are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.
“To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society,” says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. “The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it – not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science.”
The increasingly strict regulatory climate has driven a wedge of paranoia between young chemists and their potential mentors. “I don’t tell anyone about what I do at home,” writes one anonymous high schooler on Sciencemadness.org, an online forum for amateur scientists. “A lot of ignorant people at my school will just spread rumors about me … The teacher will hear about them and I will get into legal trouble … I have so much glassware at my house, any excuse will not cut it. So I keep my mouth shut.”

Of course, it’s not just the drug war that’s causing this — it’s that intentional governmental linkage of the wars on terror and drugs. But it’s a sign of yet another casualty in the war on drugs — and it hurts society. It damages our future.

… well you may have to visit him in prison for the next 10-20 years.
Check out this must-read post by Micah over at Dare Generation Diary about the honor student and his friend who brought some marijuana-spiked muffins to the teachers lounge at school as a prank. Prosecutors are now looking to upgrade the charges to 2nd degree felonies — up to 20 years.

A Deadly Heroin Mixture Is Claiming Dozens of Lives
This story has been picking up steam in recent days as more and more people are dying around the country from this mix of heroin and fentanyl.
This is a serious problem and is a fault of prohibition.
Remember:

Under prohibition, we have given the right to the criminal of

• who’s going to supply the drugs to the United States,
• what kind of drugs are going to be supplied,
• how much those drugs are going to cost,
• how they’re going to be produced,
• how potent they’re going to be
• what age levels they’re going to sell to,
• and where they’re going to sell.

And if they decide they’re going to sell to 10-year-old kids on our playgrounds, by God that’s where they’ll be sold.

– Jack Cole [of LEAP

And, of course, that means that we have given full control over the safety and purity of drugs to the criminal as well.
The government should know this full well, since this is not the first time we’ve faced this problem. Think back to the ‘good old days’ of alcohol prohibition:

There were few if any production standards during Prohibition, and the potency and quality of products varied greatly, making it difficult to predict their effect. The production of moonshine during Prohibition was undertaken by an army of amateurs and often resulted in products that could harm or kill the consumer. Those products were also likely to contain dangerous adulterants, a government requirement for industrial alcohol.
According to Thomas Coffey, “the death rate from poisoned liquor was appallingly high throughout the country. In 1925 the national toll was 4,154 as compared to 1,064 in 1920. And the increasing number of deaths created a public relations problem for . . . the drys because they weren’t exactly accidental.”[18] Will Rogers remarked that “governments used to murder by the bullet only. Now it’s by the quart.”

“bullet” Weed Control by Jessica Winter in the Boston Globe. A fascinating article about the effort to free up research marijuana from the NIDA monopoly — this article also touches upon a laundry list of other issues related to the history of medical marijuana and current research. (Not a whole lot new to us, but a great primer article for the general public.)
“bullet” Uribe wins easily in Colombia

Law-and-order President Alvaro Uribe was re-elected in a landslide Sunday in Colombia’s most peaceful elections in more than a decade, strengthening the U.S. ally’s mandate to crack down on armed groups and drug traffickers. […]
Colombia remains the world’s largest producer of cocaine. Uribe, a key ally in U.S. drug-interdiction efforts, is urging the United States to beef up an aerial-fumigation fleet of 20 planes that spray coca crops.

“bullet” Editorial: High School Drug Tests Not A Panacea — in the Peoria Journal-Star (very close to my area).

Testing is not a panacea and is no substitute for attentive, responsible parents. […]
The 500 kids it can test – – those involved in baseball, chess, cheerleading, etc.æ – may be least likely to experiment with drugs.æ Those points were raised in a 2002 U.S.æ Supreme Court case.æ Though the justices narrowly upheld the legality of random urine tests, dissenters worried they might discourage participation, which can itself be a drug deterrent. […]
Though it may be legal to test, that doesn’t necessarily make it right or effective.æ A 2003 University of Michigan survey of 76,000 adolescents found almost identical rates of substance use regardless of whether their schools tested.
We appreciate that these policies can give parents peace of mind.æ Still, we prefer the voluntary, tough-love approach of Bartonville, which distributes at-home drug and alcohol tests to families.æ Engaged moms and dads are the most effective deterrent.

“bullet” More opting for jail over treatment. Via The Drug Update comes this note that many drug offenders in Calaveras County are choosing jail over treatment because they know the jails are so overcrowded that they’ll generally get a shorter sentence in jail than in treatment.
“bullet” Check out Rehabology.com.

What we are attempting, in our own small way, is to
not only tackle the big headline stories about drugs but also try and focus on
the faces behind the stereotypes and the people who don’t make the front pages.
In addition we would like to explore the connections between those who produce
and consume drugs, legal or illegal, as well as those who campaign for or
against their use.