Drug WarRant

This blog has received a nomination for the distinguished Koufax Award in the category of Best Single Issue Blog. It’s an extremely competitive category with some amazing blogs, and it’s great just to be listed with them.
Stop by and vote for your favorite in the comments, or by email. (Only once)
Here’s the info on the voting, with links to other award categories as well.

Mohammed Daoud, governor of Afghanistan’s Helmand province, either knows nothing about Afghanistan, or nothing about drugs.
He has vowed to destroy all the opium in his province in two months (the Helmand province is the leading producer of opium in Afghanistan.)
Mark May 4 on your calendar. Let’s see how he does.

… for today goes to Ianthia Smith, Guardian Staff Reporter, for the article Bahamas on winning side of drug war.
Ianthia actually led off the article with:

The Bahamas is one step closer to winning its drug war…

On step closer to winning the drug war! Wow, that is big news. Especially since nobody in the history of the world has actually won a drug war yet (to my knowledge).
But then again, maybe Ianthia meant it in the way I might say that, by eating a bowl of Wheaties this morning, I moved one step closer to winning an Olympic Gold Medal.
Now, here’s the evidence that the Bahamas is winning its drug war:

1. Seizures of marijuana doubled in 2005, demonstrating the success of the drug war.
2. Seizures of cocaine decreased in 2005, demonstrating the success of the drug war in previous years

Kind of hard to lose when you measure it that way.

Must see TV. Tomorrow (Sunday, March 5), CBS’s 60 Minutes (7 pm ET/PT, 6 pm CT), includes a segment on Marc Emery. I don’t know how the segment will turn out, but this is the kind of visibility he needs.

The last place he wants to be is in jail, but Emery says if the Canadian courts allow the U.S. government to extradite him and a U.S. jury puts him away, he still sees a silver lining.

“I am blessed by what the DEA has done,” he tells Simon. “I would rather see marijuana legalized than me being saved from a U.S. jail. I hope that if I am incarcerated, I can influence tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people to take up my cause.”

Note: There are a couple of short preview videos at the CBS page.

Link

Saying that mandatory minimums are a
“one-way ratchet upwards” and cannot “satisfy the basic dictates of fairness,”
Judge Patricia Wald, testifying on behalf of the American Bar Association,
raised a host of concerns about such sentencing practices in testimony before
an Organization of American States Commission that is examining the issue. […]
Wald noted that mandatory minimums lead to an array of problems,
including: […] “Unchecked power” by prosecutors that Wald says, “dangerously disturbs the balance between the parties in an adversarial system, and deprives defendants of access to an impartial decisionmaker in the all-important area of sentencing.” […]
Wald, retired chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit and former judge at the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, concluded by saying that she was “saddened
to see that the sentences imposed on war crimes perpetrators responsible for
the deaths and suffering of hundreds of innocent civilians often did not come
near those imposed in my own country for dealing in a few bags of illegal
drugs.”

I love it!

Washington DC — By the request of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the
nation’s largest medical marijuana advocacy organization, Congressman
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) this week led a group of three other House
lawmakers in calling for a Government Accountability Office (GAO)
investigation of how much money the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
spent each year over the past decade to enforce federal medical
marijuana laws. Joining Hinchey in the GAO request are Congressmen Ron
Paul (R-TX), Sam Farr (D-CA), and Barney Frank (D-MA).

“We want to find out what the Department of Justice spends annually to
prosecute medical marijuana patients so we can tell the American people
exactly how much of their taxes is being wasted and diverted away from
critical law enforcement activities, including homeland security
activities,” Hinchey was quoted saying in a press release from his office.

This is good. However, looking over the letter, I think they could have worded it better in one place. They specifically request:

…that you determine the amount of funds spent for any DEA activity relating to medical marijuana including money spent on investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and advocacy.

It’s good that they included advocacy, but in that case, they shouldn’t have limited it to the DEA, but also included the ONDCP.

Harry Browne former Libertarian Presidential Candidate, died yesterday.

And on his first day in office, he would pardon all non-violent drug offenders…

The first season of the delightful Showtime series “Weeds” is now available on iTunes (the entire 10 episode series is $19.90).

OK, the story so far. In time honored Google tradition, we spread the word about Vigil for Lost Promise.org – a site that countered the hypocritial DEA’s .com site. And sure enough, Vigil for Lost Promise.org got to the top of the list for several searches.
Today, magically, Vigil for Lost Promise.org had different results in searches.

• In search for “Vigil for Lost Promise” it dropped from #1 to #17
• In search for “Lost Promise” it dropped from #1 to #97

Clearly this isn’t a case of the DEA site getting more link value, or the two sites would have just exchanged places. My vigil site suddenly lost google value. Who knows, maybe it’s something I did wrong with it.
Update: I’m hearing from others that the ranking hasn’t changed for them. Google has all sorts of unknowable search algorithms that could be in play, so I’m just going to wait and see how this works (thanks for the quick responses).

---

Just a reminder — because I can’t say it often enough given how some people make assumptions — the loss of life to drugs is obviously something about which we care greatly and deeply. A vigil to remember their lives is a fine and noble thing.
What I, and others, find to be the ultimate in shameless audacity, is for the DEA to be sponsoring it. Not only are their tactics directly responsible for the deaths of innocents, and the harassment of sick people in pain (and their doctors), but they also are part of the prohibition engine that increases the risk of death to those who use illegal drugs. And they’re fine with that. They’re not interested in harm reduction. They’re interested in enforcement.
And why is the prohibition establishment responsible for contributing to drug deaths?

• Prohibition puts drug distribution in the hands of criminals, who care little for the welfare of users. Prohibition also makes criminal drug trade extremely profitable. In fact, prohibitionists are the drug traffickers best friends. Without them, the drug dealers would be out of a job.
• Prohibition adds a stigma to drug abuse that often prevents people from seeking help. It is easier to get friends to help you quit smoking cigarettes, or attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, than to ask for help in kicking an illegal drug habit.
• Stigma also interferes with seeking medical attention in the case of an overdose or severe reaction. Someone who would not hesitate to rush a friend with alcohol poisoning to the emergency room may wait a fatally long time considering what to do with a friend who has overdosed.
• The current lack of any regulation of drugs increases the risk of tainted drugs and uncertain potency, which can lead to overdoses and death.
• The resistance to providing clean syringes to drug addicts increases AIDS and other fatal blood-born diseases.
• Current law in many cases prevents organizations and individuals from pursuing other harm-reduction activities, such as providing ecstasy testing kits to make sure people don’t take an unexpected and fatal mixture.
• Illegal drug dealers want to hook clients in order to obtain future profits.
• With prohibition, since the drug purchaser is put into a situation of dealing with criminals, he or she is much more likely to be involved in violent and dangerous situations.
• Prohibition creates vast profitable criminal enterprises that settle their problems through violence, and innocent victims get caught in the crossfire.

I once heard former drug czar William Bennett mention that one thing drug legalizers couldn’t answer is what would they say to the parent of someone who died from drugs. Well, I would say: Let me introduce you to Mr. Bennett, who is partially responsible for your child’s death, through the policies he promoted.
I’ve only gotten one “opposition” letter so far regarding Vigil for Lost Promise, and I don’t even know what the person is opposing.

The call came this morning at 8:30 am, a couple who attend our parent support group had turned off the life support to their son. He was 18, started on marijuana then alcohol and then the cornicopia opened. In the end it was xanax and oxy chased with booze…a lifetime of promise lost replaced by a lifetime of grief for those left behind….if you think there is a difference between kinds of loss when it comes to substance abuse…you really don’t have a clue

You’re right, I don’t have a clue. Who are you angry at? And why?
You want to do something about it? Change the laws that put drugs distribution in the hands of criminals. Turn drug abuse into a medical problem rather than a police problem so we can help people. Save future lives.

U.S. Government:

Washington — Steadily increasing cooperation among nations led to “significant successes” in reducing international drug trafficking and criminal activity in 2005, the U.S. State Department declared in releasing the 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) March 1.

However, included in the report:

• Bolivia: “Overall coca cultivation increased 8 percent from 2004 to 2005, to 26,500 hectares.”
• Peru: “The USG estimates there are 38,000 hectares of coca cultivation in Peru, including 4,000 hectares in new areas.” This represents a stunning 38 percent increase from 2004 to 2005. The combined one-year increase in Peru and Bolivia was 12,400 hectares, or 24 percent.
• Ecuador: “Ecuadorian security forces located and destroyed about 36,160 cultivated coca plants in small, scattered sites in 2005. While not commercially significant, the extent of cultivation was about double that of 2004. Together with the discovery of a small, partially harvested opium poppy plantation, they suggest that growers are testing the feasibility of drug crop cultivation in Ecuador.”

Colombia’s coca-cultivation estimate for 2005 has not yet been made public, and probably will not be for a few more weeks. If it ends up revealing that eradication failed to reduce coca cultivation in Colombia last year — as was the case in 2004 — then official U.S. statistics will show a 7.5 percent increase in coca cultivation throughout the Andean region.
Such a result would be a stark admission of failure, since Washington has spent more than $6 billion on counter-narcotics in the Andes since :”Plan Colombia” began in 2000.

Oops.