Drug WarRant

Via The Agitator, John Walters is not having a good day.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. drug czar has been challenged to explain disputed statistics underlying a string of rosy reports on progress in cutting the flow of cocaine from South America, one of which prompted an expert to liken the official numbers to “lipstick on a pig.”
The request came in a detailed 1,800-word letter to John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), from Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.
The Iowa senator expressed concern that the ONDCP has been picking data “to provide a rosier but not necessarily more accurate picture” on the multi-billion dollar effort to eradicate coca plantations in Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine, Bolivia and Peru.

Of course, we’ve been saying that the Czar cherry-picks his data for years. But it’s nice to see Congress maybe waking up a little? Or perhaps there’s been a political shift in the drug war and they need a fall guy?

Link

South Carolina General Assembly
H.4865
Sponsors: Rep. Davenport
A bill… relating to the confinement of prisoners, so as to provide that the Department of Corrections may enter into agreements with foreign countries for the confinement of inmates convicted of drug related offenses…

That’s right. We can use extraordinary rendition for pot smokers! Yeah — South Carolina can send its drug offenders to China or Indonesia.
So has this guy got a screw loose, or is he really that un-American?
That’s Representative Guy Ralph Davenport, Jr.

Link

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if the drugs are carried in small amounts for personal use, under legislation passed by Congress.
The measure given final passage by senators in a late night session on Thursday allows police to focus on their battle against major drug dealers, the government says, and President Vicente Fox is expected to sign it into law. […]
Under the legislation, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin or 500 milligrams of cocaine.

Interesting. I wonder what the Bush administration’s take on this will be.
Of course, this isn’t all good news.

People caught with larger quantities of drugs will be treated as narcotics dealers and face increased jail terms under the plan.

That includes someone possessing 6 grams of marijuana.

I can’t believe this!

University of Colorado police have posted pictures of 150 people on a website smoking pot on the “420” day celebration last week and are offering a $50 reward for anyone who can identify them.

What are they going to do? Prosecute? Based on a picture of smoking… something?
The sick part… They got 50 calls in the first hour.

Update: Oh, I get it now. Read this page. They purposely officially closed the field on 4/20 and posted signs so that they could go after anyone for trespassing, and they’re just going after the ones that they have pictures of lighting up what appears to be pot to punish them.
This is petty vindictiveness on the part of the administration and the campus police. The students should protest. At the very least, this kind of provocative action may serve to actually help the cause of marijuana legalization in Colorado.

At the Drug War Chronicle

A week after the US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) issued a one-page opinion claiming marijuana has no proven medical uses — a position that ignores the much more comprehensive analysis done by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine in 1999 — a bipartisan group of 24 House members led by Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has called on the agency to explain its reasoning and offer scientific proof for its position.
“Despite the fact that you are responding to a scientific question, your press release failed to provide any scientific expertise,” the representatives wrote in a Thursday letter to FDA Acting Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. “We call on you to show us the purported scientific evidence for the basis of this response. There is no evidence that you have new scientific proof or that you oversaw clinical trials. It perplexes us that even though the FDA is responsible for protecting public health, the agency has failed to respond adequately to the IOM’s findings seven years after the study’s publication date.”

Representatives who signed the letter: Maurice Hinchey, Ron Paul, Barney Frank, Sam Farr, Tammy Baldwin, Raþl Grijalva, Robert Wexler, Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Dana Rohrabacher, Jim McDermott, Tom Lantos, Jerrold Nadler, John Olver, Lois Capps, Julia Carson, Peter Stark, Jan Schakowsky, George Miller, Zoe Lofgren, Tom Allen, Barbara Lee, Gary Ackerman

Via NORML

Leiden, the Netherlands: Vaporization is a “safe and effective”
cannabinoid delivery system for patients desiring the rapid onset of
action associated with inhalation, but who are seeking to avoid the
respiratory risks of smoking, according to clinical trial data to be
published in the Journal of Pharamceutical Sciences.
Researchers at Leiden University’s Institute of Biology (the
Netherlands) found that use of the Volcano vaporizing device delivered
set doses of THC to subjects in a reproducible manner while
suppressing the intake of respiratory toxins.
“Our results show that with the Volcano, a safe and effective
cannabinoid delivery system seems to be available to patients,”
investigators concluded. “The final pulmonal uptake of THC is
comparable to the smoking of cannabis, while avoiding the respiratory
disadvantages of smoking.”
Cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke,
including greater concentrations of certain aromatic hydrocarbons such
as benzopyrene, prompting concerns that chronic marijuana inhalation
may be a risk factor for tobacco-use related cancers. Previous
research by California NORML and others have demonstrated that
cannabis vaporization suppresses many potentially harmful respiratory
toxins by heating cannabis to a temperature where active cannabinoid
vapors form (typically around 180-190 degrees Celsius), but below the
point of combustion where noxious smoke and associated toxins (i.e.,
carcinogenic hydrocarbons) are produced (near 230 degrees Celsius).
A 2004 protocol by California NORML and MAPS (Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies) to investigate the types of
emissions produced by cannabis vaporization was recently rejected
after an 18-month regulatory delay by NIDA (US National Institute on
Drug Abuse), which stated that the study would “not add to the
scientific knowledge base in a significant way.”
“The US Institute of Medicine and others have repeatedly called for
the creation of a non-smoked, rapid-onset cannabis delivery system to
administer reproducible doses of active cannabinoids to patients,”
said NORML Advisory Board member Dr. Mitch Earleywine, author of
Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence. “These
data confirm that vaporization can deliver all the essential
components of medical marijuana safely and effectively while
suppressing the intake of carcinogenic smoke. Now the Drug Czar’s
office and the Food and Drug Administration can rest assured that
patients may receive the therapeutic relief they need without
suffering from the unwanted health risks associated with smoking.”

Gee, I don’t think the Drug Czar and the FDA are going to be that happy about it.
The government refuses to allow vaporization studies, claims that “smoked” marijuana can never be a medicine and now we’ve had to go to another country to get a study done that shows the truth. If this were an accountable government, people would be fired for this.
Lawsuits should be filed for intentionally blocking research that could save lives (except, of course, that the government automatically immunizes itself from such lawsuits).
Write your representatives. Demand some action.
Oh, and for those interested, after a recent increase in the stock prices for GW Pharmaceuticals, it closed today down 2.7% in Online Trading. Probably just a coincidence.
And here’s where you can get the Volcano.

These have been widely reported elsewhere, but in case you missed them, I wanted to give you the links:
“bullet” Torturing Drug War Suspects: I talked about it some time ago, but Radley brings back to the net the case of the torture of Eugene Siler. Cops torture him to get him to sign a consent form for their search of his place. Siler’s wife, however, had turned on a tape recorder and now the audio is available online (Note: The address is an mp3 file being forced to play on Windows Media. If Mac users have trouble making it work, install Windows Media Components for Quicktime).
It’s truly sickening. And how many times has something like this happened when there wasn’t a tape recording? Would a court believe the word of a drug suspect over a cop without such direct evidence?
This is an indictment of those specific cops, but it’s also an indictment of the drug war in general that fosters such behavior.
“bullet” Life in prison? A 17 year-old man takes part in a robbery that nets $2 (they returned the wallet), pleads guilty, and gets 10 years probation. During his probation, he smokes a joint and flunks a drug test. Judge sentences him to life in prison.
I don’t know how anyone can claim that makes a bit of sense from a moral, criminal justice, practical, or financial basis. (Read the rest of the article for information on how the judge handles different cases.) [Thanks, David]

Des Moines Register today

In a conference call with Iowa reporters, Grassley [R-Iowa] said: “I think the president ought to fire the drug czar.” He said that he wrote Walters calling for more action on meth and the response he received was “basically, bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.”
Walters and the Office of National Drug Control Policy continue to place much more emphasis on fighting marijuana use, said Grassley.

Now, this doesn’t make Grassley a friend of Drug Policy Reform by any means — he’s still a hard-liner who doesn’t get how the drug war works. But it’s nice to see the falling out — Grassley thinks he’s actually fighting the drug war, while Walters knows it’s about demonizing marijuana for political and financial reasons.

“bullet”

I’m recommending that you advance order Glenn Greenwald’s new book “How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok.” While I don’t know if the drug war is specifically mentioned in the book, it has a lot of relevancy, as the book deals extensively with the further destruction of the fourth amendment. I also know that Glenn is strongly opposed to the Drug War (as he has demonstrated through his willingness to let me post about the drug war at his highly popular site).
The book is currently #2 in the Amazon best-seller list and it doesn’t even come out until May.


“bullet” The big discussion today in the blogs is Net Neutrality. See Libby’s post for an overview and some excellent links. Congress is acting this week, and they may be acting without thinking it through very well (surprise, surprise). While I’m not a big fan of government regulation, it seems possible that, in this case, government regulation may be needed to prevent private regulation and to insure the continued free flow of the internet.
“bullet” Posting here has been slightly sporadic and will continue to be so, as this is an extremely busy time for me. End of the semester extra work, plus:

• Last week a student group I advise held a four-square marathon to raise money for scholarships. They went for 61 consecutive hours (and I was there for about 50 of them).
• I’ve been Musical Director and Pianist (actually, the entire orchestra) for a delightful student-directed production of “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” that was performed this past weekend.
• This Friday, I’m playing background jazz piano for a stylish art exhibition and sale.
• Saturday, I’m going to Iowa to get back together for the first time with the cover rock band I played with in the early 1980s. We’ll be playing a lot of Doors and Wilson Pickett music, as well as preparing for a gig in May where we’ll back up the incredible Becca Sutlive (who also happens to be our lead guitarist’s daughter).
• I’m also busy with lots of photography work.

But I’ll try to keep posting as much as I can. Be sure to read the comments, as many of the regulars here provide more good material there, and visit the messageboard as well.

Boy, I wonder if anyone at the FDA foresaw this. The FDA statement against medical marijuana has been received around the nation (and even the world), as if NASA had proclaimed that the earth is flat.
It was such an obvious political lie (especially when the FDA is facing criticism for political decisions in a number of other areas), that nobody with a shred of credibility has accepted it. Editorials all over the country have slammed the FDA.
Here are just a few examples.
Here’s a classic. It begins:

The credibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is dead.

and ends:

The reliability of the government to give a straight answer drawn from its huge resources is an embarrassment.

It’s time to pile on. Let’s drive the nails in the coffin. Put another shovel of dirt on them.
Go to MAPinc. Check out the huge list of newspapers that published an article about this. Pick one close to you and write a letter to the editor that responds to the FDA statement. It’s a perfect opportunity.
Go ahead. Do it now. I’ll wait….