Drug WarRant

Well, it turns out that Americans for Safe Access has decided that the number of delays by Health and Human Services (see below) qualifies as illegal avoidance of the Data Quality Act. They have sent a letter to HHS:

Dear Mr. Jarman:
I write to request an immediate response to our appeal of your denial of our Request for
Correction of Information under the Data Quality Act, 44 U.S.C. Û 3516, Statutory and Historical Notes, P.L. 106-554 (“The Act”). Although that appeal was received by the Office of Public Health and Science (“OPHS”) on May 20, 2005, your office has repeatedly delayed in issuing a definitive response, claiming a need for “additional time to coordinate Agency review.” See Letter from John S. Jarmin to Joseph D. Elford, dated April 12, 2006. Just eight days after the latest such letter, however, on April 20, 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) publicly announced the results of this coordinated agency review in an Inter-Agency Advisory Regarding Claims That Smoked Marijuana Is a Medicine. See Exhibit A. Now that these agencies — the FDA, Drug Enforcement Administration and Office of National Drug Control Policy — have already publicly announced that they “do not support the use of smoked marijuana for medical purposes,” id., there is no reason your office needs additional time to respond to our pending appeal for the reason you stated on April 12th.
As I explained previously, time is of the essence in a public health issue such as this one.
The Data Quality Act is an amendment to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, which requires administrative agencies to (1) develop guidelines to ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” they disseminate to the public and (2) “[e]stablish administrative mechanisms allowing affected persons to seek and obtain correction of information maintained and disseminated by the agency that does not comply with the guidelines.” 44 U.S.C. Û 3516, Statutory and Historical Notes. Because the Act is intended to “ensur[e] the timely flow of vital information from agencies to medical providers, patients, health agencies, and the public,” the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Guidelines require the agency to respond to such requests within 60 calendar days. See HHS Guideline D.2.c.2.
Pursuant to this law, on October 4, 2004, Americans for Safe Access (“ASA”) filed a
Request for Correction of information disseminated by HHS regarding the Marijuana
Rescheduling Petition filed by Dr. Jon Gettman in 1995. More than eighteen months have
elapsed since ASA filed this request and nearly a year has elapsed since ASA appealed the initial denial of this request. Coordinated agency review which caused this delay was unnecessary, see Letter from Joseph D. Elford to Dr. Steven Galston, dated December 20, 2004, but, now that it has been completed, this cannot possibly serve to justify an even greater delay. I hope and expect that HHS will issue a final determination of our appeal in the 60 days you anticipate. If not, ASA will file suit in federal district court to compel this.
Sincerely,
Joseph D. Elford
Chief Counsel
Americans for Safe Access

So HHS is under the gun now. What will they do? Remember that HHS is one of the four entities (along with Congress, the Executive, and the DEA) that has the power to re-schedule marijuana.
Here is what ASA is demanding:

* HHS states that: “there have been no studies that have scientifically assessed the efficacy of marijuana for any medical condition.” ASA requests that HHS replace this statement with the following statement: “Adequate and well-recognized studies show the efficacy of marijuana in the treatment of nausea, loss of appetite, pain and spasticity.”
* HHS states that: “a material conflict of opinion among experts precludes a finding that marijuana has been accepted by qualified experts” and “it is clear that there is not a consensus of medical opinion concerning medical applications of marijuana.” ASA requests that HHS replace this statement with the following statement: “There is substantial consensus among experts in the relevant disciplines that marijuana is effective in treating nausea, loss of appetite, pain and spasticity. It is accepted as medicine by qualified experts.”
* HHS states that: “a complete scientific analysis of all the chemical components found in marijuana has not been conducted.” ASA requests that HHS replace this statement with the following statement: “The chemistry of marijuana is known and reproducible.”
* HHS states that marijuana: “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Based on the corrections above, ASA requests that HHS replace this statement with the following statement: “Marijuana has a currently accepted use in treatment in the United States.”

Go to comments and tell us how you think HHS will respond. Will they actually respond this time? If so, what will the response be?

Eric Sterling reminds me of something I’ve neglected for awhile.
You see, there’s this law called the Data Quality Act that allows for forcing the correction of inaccurate information disseminated by government agencies. The great thing about it is that the agency is required by law to respond in 60 days. Given the way the government has tried block drug policy reformers at every step through delays and circular appeals processes, this seemed like a great avenue to pursue (the first petition to reschedule marijuana took 22 years to go through the process). Americans for Safe Access put forth a petition in October, 2004.
Ah, but it turns out that the law doesn’t have much by way of teeth and if the agency doesn’t respond in 60 days it can turn to… itself and grant itself an extension. Once it issues a ruling, you can appeal that ruling… to the same agency, which then must respond within 60 days or… grant itself an extension. Yes, this is how our government works.
Here are a few of my posts on the subject.

• My first post on it, in October, 2004
• My disappointment with a second extension by HHS
• Recap of the first three extensions so far in April, 2005 and my conjecture of how HHS would respond.
• Late April, 2005 HHS finally responds by saying it doesn’t need to respond at this time. ASA appeals the “response.”
• Update on appeal process in August, 2005 as HHS continues to grant itself extension after extension on the appeal.

And now, 19 months into the 60 day process comes the latest:

Date: April 12, 2006
To: Joseph D. Elford, Esq.
Americans for Safe Access
Dear Mr. Elford:
Your appeal of the denial of your Request for Corrections under the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) Guidelines for Ensuring the Quality of Information Disseminated to the Public, received by OPHS on May 20, 2005 is still under review.
We wrote to you on February 07, 2006 indicating that we would need additional time to complete our response to your appeal. At this time we are continuing to prepare our response but require additional time to coordinate Agency review. Our goal is to have a response to your appeal within 60 days of the date of this letter.
Sincerely,
John S. Jarman, Excutive Officer,
Office of Public Health and Science,
Office of the Secretary,
Department of Health and Human Services

8 days later, the FDA came out with its outrageous statement against medical marijuana with the statement:

A past evaluation by several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use.

This, of course, is precisely the incorrect information that the ASA petition is trying to correct and that the HHS is dragging their heels in responding.
The deceit and delaying tactics are unbelievable! Despite my interest in the process, I even dropped the ball for a while because it just dragged on so long. That’s what they want — that we’ll lose interest (or die) before they actually address the issues. But they won’t get away with it in the long run. Eventually, they’ll run out of stalling tactics and the courts will have to step in.

Eric Sterling found this unbelievable quote.

“…[I]t’s another hammer we can put on people,” says Delaware State Police Captain Chip Simpson, commander of the special investigations section, praising a brand new law, “Brett’s Law,” that places a plant, salvia divinorum, in Schedule I of the state’s Controlled Substances Act.

Yeah, because that’s the job of the police, right? To put the hammer on people.
Maybe somebody can arrange to put the pink slip on Chip Simpson.

A really fabulous article by Marnell Jameson in today’s Los Angeles Times

[…] Today, at 14, the Los Angeles girl dismisses much of what she learned in the drug-education program, saying that when she’s older she plans to follow the more moderate example set by her mother and father.
“My parents know how much alcohol they can handle. They only drink socially — and wouldn’t drink and drive.” Further, she credits her parents, not school lessons, with helping her turn down tobacco, alcohol and drugs — all of which she’s been offered. “I learned what I know at home,” she says. To her, the anti-drug program seemed out of touch.
Increasingly, many academic scholars and government researchers agree. They point to a growing body of evidence that supports Mariana’s instincts. One-size-fits-all lessons do little to prepare kids for the real drug choices they’re likely to face, these experts say. By condemning all drugs as bad — not distinguishing between legitimate medications and, in moderation, alcohol — such programs can confuse kids and ultimately cheapen their own messages.

The article goes on to explain clearly the drawbacks, dangers and outright failures of most of the popular drug education programs. It also specifically talks about the value of fact-based education.
It might not be a bad idea to forward this article to your local school district.

Three years ago…

BANGKOK – The death toll in Thailand’s brutal 10-week-old war on drugs has soared to 2 275, or more than 30 killings a day, police said on Wednesday. […]
The three-month campaign against drug barons and traffickers was launched by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who said his forces would “X-ray every square inch” of the country to root out the drug trade. […]
Several local and international human rights groups have condemned the violence, with Amnesty International likening Thaksin’s campaign to a “de facto shoot-to-kill policy” of anyone believed to be involved in the drug trade. […]
Last Saturday, Thaksin said his drugs war would continue beyond April, with possible strategic modifications, until December 2, which he predicted would be Thailand’s day of victory over drugs.
The drug blitz is focusing on methamphetamines, which flood into Thailand from Myanmar.

Today:

Methamphetamine use among teenagers in and around Bangkok is more than seven times higher than it was prior to the ‘war on drugs’ declared by the government three years ago, an ABAC Poll has revealed.
Pollsters calculated that more than 41,000 teenagers took methamphetamine, commonly known as ya ba, in the past 30 days, a 723-percent increase from the 5,060 teenagers estimated to be using the drug following a survey made in May 2003.

One of the bloodiest drug wars in the world, and guess what? It doesn’t work.
This is an important lesson to all those who say “If only we cracked down more, we could win this war.”

Drug policy reformers have been talking about the dangers of corrupt government over-reach and the intrusion of the federal government on individual rights and freedom for some time. And this isn’t just coming from a theoretical libertarian principles perspective. It is a practical understanding on the part of people from varied political backgrounds based on witnessing the destruction first-hand.
So pardon us for being a little bit frustrated that people are taking so long to learn the lessons.
When the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal broke and the world was shocked, we already knew about the everyday prison torture here in the United States (disturbing video).
When the world finally realized that Guantanamo was filled in part with people held indefinitely for no particular reason, we already knew of similar cases in the war on drugs (such as Isidro Aviles, who was intimidated into accepting a 23-year sentence based on possession of $52 cash and ended up dying in prison — his mother still doesn’t know the cause).
As each new and expanded instance of government spying on American citizens in the name of the war on terror is revealed and serious people start discussing whether it should be of concern that the government is perhaps weakening the fourth amendment, our jaws drop and we wonder if the country has slept through the devastation of the 4th Amendment in the name of the war on drugs. This was done with no demonstrable benefit (and, in fact, seriously increased dangers) to American citizens. And yet we discuss the “merits” of government intrusion in the name of the war on terror as if there was no historical perspective.
We hear about innocent people killed by our soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some people are outraged; others are saddened but philosophical — after all, some collateral damage is expected in war. And yet we’ve seen the loss of innocent lives for years right here in this country, when military tactics are used domestically in the war on drugs.
And now, in the war on immigration, it is expected that President Bush, in his Monday evening speech, will call for the deployment of thousands of troops within the United States to protect the border. But you see, if this is true, we already know what will happen. We’ve been there before.

On May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. (pictured left) was herding his family’s goats 100 yards from his home on the US-Mexican border in Redford, Texas, as he did every day. Six days before, he had turned 18 years old.
Unknown to Esequiel or any of the other residents of Redford, a group of four Marines led by 22-year old Corporal Clemente Banuelos had been encamped just outside the small village along the Rio Grande River for three days. After watering his small flock of goats in the river, Esequiel started on his way back home when the Marines began stalking him from a distance of 200 yards.
The four camouflaged Marines were outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment and weapons. Esequiel carried an antique .22 caliber rifle — a pre-World War I, single shot rifle to keep wild dogs and rattlesnakes away from his goats. The autopsy showed that Esequiel was facing away from the Marines when he was shot. He probably never knew the Marines were watching him from 200 yards away.
Thus it was that a 22 year-old United States Marine shot and killed an innocent 18 year-old boy tending his family’s goats. This outrageous act was the inevitable consequence of a drug prohibition policy gone mad. Esequiel Hernandez was killed not by drugs but by military officers of the United States government.

If only people could learn from the drug war. We’ve tried to teach, but they won’t listen.

• They snicker uncomfortably because we said the word “drugs” or “marijuana.”
• They dismiss us and our information because they assume we are part of the “long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking crowd.”
• They ignore the whole issue because it’s only about criminals, right? And why should we care about them?
• They shuffle back and forth uncomfortably and say “I agree with you, but we really can’t afford to make the drug war a political issue right now.”

But the really scary people are the ones who say: “We haven’t won the war on drugs/terror/immigration/_____ (fill in the blank) because we’ve made the government obey the law. We need to give them more tools to fight these wars, even at the expense of individual rights. After all, 911/meth/crack/super-pot has changed everything.”
These are the ones who are willing to give up their prize possession — a free country with a government of, by and for the people — for a handful of “magic” beans.

Here’s the opening of an article by Andrea Bushee in the Telegraph (NH)

POT, SEX, BOOZE — IT COULD BE YOUR KID
AMHERST — One in three Souhegan High School students say they have smoked marijuana or had sex, and two in three say they have used alcohol.

Let me repeat:

One in three Souhegan High School students say they have smoked marijuana or had sex…

What does that mean? (especialy since clarified numbers are reported nowhere in the article) Well, let’s see — it could mean that 1/3 of students have had sex and none of them have smoked pot… And are the two mutually exclusive? The article doesn’t say.
I can understand a report saying a certain percentage of people drink either diet coke or diet pepsi without clarification — it might give you an idea of how many people like diet cola.
But marijuana and sex?

When I posted this story about University of Colorado police posting photos of students smoking pot and offering a reward for identification, the general consensus of the regulars here was that the tactic would cause them problems. It appears we were right.
Link

Civil rights attorneys Perry R. Sanders, Jr. and Robert J. Frank announced plans on May 10 to file a federal lawsuit against CU on behalf of several students who say their rights were violated by the CUPD at the 4/20 pro-marijuana gathering on Farrand Field.
“We were not advocating a federal civil lawsuit, we were advocating peace,” Sander said in a press release. “The university has forced our hand in this matter.” […]
In the announcement, Sanders said the Web site is one example of how the university has gone too far. “These are people that the worst thing they did was trespass, and there is a $50 reward by their picture,” he said. “This isn’t okay. This is killing ants with a sledge hammer.”
The university has “come after people like these three ladies right here who were not doing anything illegal that day,” he said. “They didn’t see any no-trespassing signs that I’m aware of. They certainly weren’t using any illegal drugs out there that day, they were like many hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were out there expressing themselves freely on a free university campus.”
“The photographs of the women, which are now posted on the Internet for the entire world to see, are a violation of these students rights,” Sanders said. “They’ve gotten calls from ( people ) as far away as Europe that they’ve seen ( the ) picture on the Web regarding being associated with using illegal drugs,” he said. “These people were not using illegal drugs at all. They were merely part of a peaceful protest.” […]
The attorneys contacted university representatives to ask that the CUPD’s investigation be stopped and the conflict resolved peaceably. “We offered the university an olive branch,” Sanders said in a prepared statement. “We, on behalf of clearly innocent students, asked them to take down the Web site and purge information related to it. We advised that the university would continue to harm these individuals if they acted on any of this information. The university not only rejected the olive branch, but picked up their bully club during finals and began telling students to come into the police station for questioning.”

While university officials and others claim that they did nothing wrong — after all, the participants were violating the no-trespassing signs, and the police have the right to go after those who break the law — there is a larger issue involved here.
The field was a traditional place for an annual 420 protest. Police and university officials knew this. As a public university, they purposely closed the field to prevent or hamper a peaceful political protest. They then posted pictures of the protesters online and offered rewards. Since they didn’t actually follow procedures for drug arrest (evidence, etc.), any actual pot smoking that may have occurred is irrelevant. All that they had is pictures showing that the participants were part of a political protest at a site traditionally used for protest, but that had been arbitrarily closed in order to hamper protest. Hardly justification for putting a price on their heads.
I don’t know if the lawsuit has a chance, but regardless, the publicity isn’t good for the university, and they seem to know it.
Link

University of Colorado officials aren’t sure that a tactic used April 20 to discourage an annual pot-smoking celebration on Farrand Field worked well enough for an encore next year. […]
University officials closed the field for the day to discourage the event, but the signs were ignored. Last year, the sprinklers were turned on at the field to douse the participants.
Hartman said he doesn’t know what the university will do about the gathering next year but said administrators feel that many people would like the university to discourage illegal behaviors on campus.
“We’re going to do as you guys to tell us what to do,” Hartman said. “We’ve run out of ideas.”

Via Money Up Front, comes Pot plant photos lead to arrest

A Statesboro man was so proud of his crop, he photographed it and went to a local drug store to have the pictures developed.
Unfortunately, his bumper crop was marijuana, and police arrested him Tuesday as he went to pick the photos up.
Statesboro Police Capt. L. C. Williams said Byron Charles Mattheeussen, 21, Acorn Lane, photographed his healthy marijuana plants – 42 in all – and took the pictures to Eckerd to be developed. When the photo lab technician saw what the subject of the photos was, she called police.

… if you’re trying to convince teens to smoke pot.
Via NORML (and thanks to everyone who let me know about it).

San Marcos, TX: Teenagers exposed to anti-marijuana public service announcements (PSAs) produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) are more likely to hold positive attitudes about the drug and are more likely to express their intent to use cannabis after viewing the advertisements, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors.
Two hundred and twenty-six volunteers age 18- to 19-years old took part in the study. Participants viewed either a series of anti-marijuana PSAs accessed from the ONDCP website or a series of anti-tobacco advertisements. Investigators then surveyed viewers’ attitudes toward the two substances by using a five-point scale (e.g., good-bad) and computerized implicit association tests (IATs). Researchers also measured respondents’ intent to use either marijuana or tobacco via a 10-point scale (e.g., agree-disagree).
Investigators found that viewers expressed significantly fewer negative attitudes toward marijuana after viewing the ads. No such “boomerang effect” was noted among those who viewed anti-tobacco advertising.

Gee, do you think the drug czar will mention this study when he asks for more money next year?