For a fascinating, yet disturbing weekend read, check out Crackpot Crackdown by Jordan Smith in yesterday’s Austin Chronicle.
It’s a story of racism, a district attorney who runs the county, and drug convictions with absolutely no evidence.
The new Department of Justice US Prison Population report (pdf) is to be released tomorrow. Here are some of the key figures in the report (thanks to Common Sense for Drug Policy, and jackl):
State Prison Inmates in 2002:
Federal Prison Inmates 2003:
At Drug WarRant, I always welcome those who have opposing viewpoints. In fact, it’s often refreshing to have someone actually have the guts to debate us about drug policy reform. (Note how recently we had a discussion that went on for hundreds of posts with “Jake.”)
So I feel the need to explain why I have deleted some comments recently. We have had a commenter here for quite some time who is quite involved and supportive in drug policy reform. Then another commenter recently showed up using the same name, with a very different viewpoint — ie, a series of random disconnected inflammatory comments, including insults thrown at other commenters here at Drug WarRant. As I did not feel at the time that this second person had any intention of actually discussing anything, I deleted most of his comments.
In the past day, he has actually asked some questions and made some posts that were relevant, and so those will stay. As long as he is actually discussing and not disrupting, he is welcome.
It still leaves the question of two very different commenters with the same name — perhaps one of them will choose to make a slight alteration.
Earlier this year, I mentioned Jeff Trigg’s experience with jury duty, and how telling the truth (that he believed in the principle of jury nullification) caused him to be excused. (Parts 1, 2, and 3 )
Now Baylen Linnekin has gone through a similar experience in being called for jury duty for a drug case.
Read his story. What would you have done?
A nice little overview article at About by Andrew Somers is now online: How do we end the War on Drugs?. The recommendations:
Radley Balko’s got a ton of excellent posts right now about the horrors of the drug war:
“bullet” Because what we need is more killing
Outrage ensued. A new policy has been issued this week. It’s worse.
“bullet” Militarizing Mayberry
SWAT teams in a town with a population of 2,701? Madness!
“bullet” Militarizing Mayberry Ct’d
Lawsuit filed against drug task force for terrorising two women over a hunt for marijuana. Good.
“bullet” Wrong House
“bullet” Wrong House Part II
“bullet” Wrong House Part III (a follow-up on the Bel-Aire, Kansas Sunflower Debacle)
“bullet” Painkillers
The DEA’s war on pain relief is especially damaging to low-income areas.
Surging Mexican violence draws comparisons to Colombia.
The threat in Mexico is rising because of a shift in the drug trade, U.S. anti-drug officials and drug-trade specialists say. Mexico – and not Colombia – is now headquarters for the Western hemisphere’s most important drug traffickers.
“Since the fall of the big Colombian cartels from Medellin and Cali, the power center in the Latin American drug trade has shifted to Mexico,” said Ron Chepesiuk, journalist and author of “Drug Lords: The Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel.”
“The violence is getting worse, I suspect, because the Mexicans are playing a bigger … more lucrative role in the trade.”
We’ve seen this for so many years. If you push down somewhere, it pops up somewhere else. Prohibition has absolutely no impact on the availability of drugs — it just costs money, destroys lives and land, creates wealthy super-criminals, and corrupts law enforcement. Can’t anybody do a cost assessment?
No. Take a look at Uribe. If anyone should have a first-hand awareness of the costs of prohibition, it’s him. And yet at the recent Summit of the Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies (see this article by Dan Feder), President Uribe talked about increasing efforts, not only in Colombia, but in neighboring countries.
One point of interest (worth reading in Feder’s article) is that Uribe did feel compelled to address calls for legalization (could they be getting louder?). He, of course, dismissed such calls, but his justifications were absurd and contradictory. He even admitted that he tended away from the use of “cold reason” when thinking about it.
It seems to me that the future of Latin America depends on a choice of two directions:
Of course, it doesn’t help that in many cases, the drug war is actually a cover for political agendas, access to valuable resources, and military positioning.
Another good article about prohibition — Law officers calling for end to ‘war against drugs’ by Lisa Hoffman with Scripps Howard News Service, which has been picked up by a few media outlets. Again, this features members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition who are doing an incredible job of getting the message out there.
This one shows, by contrast, just how bankrupt the arguments of the ONDCP are. After the article shows some very good points from LEAP about the failure of the drug war and noting that…
… the ONDCP sputters into the picture with the usual hand-picked manipulated statistics, emotional non-sequitors, and ad hominem attacks…
“It’s simply an irresponsible message to put out there,” said Rafael Lemaitire, deputy press secretary for the anti-drug office.
By any measure, Lemaitire said, the drug war – which employs police work, public education and treatment to attack the problem – has been effective in driving down drug use in America. In 1979, at the peak of the drug epidemic, 14 percent of the U.S. population said they had used drugs in the past 30 days. Now, that number is 6 percent.
And, he said, everyone knows at least one person whose life was ruined by drug use, and whole neighborhoods and communities besieged by drug-related crime. To give up on the battle would mean more misery, criminality and despair, he said.
“It’s ludicrous to think that any law enforcement person would want to put people and communities at greater risk,” Lemaitire said.
Hmmm…. imagine, in a democracy, a federal agency whose purpose is to lie to the people through both informal and coordinated media blitzes, to interfere with the election and lawmaking process by campaigning against local voting initiatives and state/local bills, to attempt to stifle and suppress contrary factual speech, and to promote and support policies that are contrary to the common good of the people. Meet the ONDCP.
Anyway, contrats to LEAP on all their recent coverage (Norm Stamper in the LA Times, Howard Woolridge’s ride, etc.). This is a very important organization to support, and they do great work with their speaker’s bureau. If you’ve got connections with a local Rotary Club or similar organization, why not try to arrange to get one of their speakers. It’s a great way to reach local leaders who may be more likely to open their minds to the subject when an ex-cop is talking.
Via Cannabis News, Marijuana less cancerous than tobacco.
This United Press International article by Steve Mitchell, Senior Medical Correspondent, reports what we had a preview of before — that this whole business of prohibitionists touting that marijuana has higher numbers of carcinogens is irrelevant. The truth is that marijuana use does not increase your risk of cancer at all.
What made this article particularly interesting is that the UPI Senior Medical Correspondent, through a combination of analysis and reactions from others, called Karen Tandy what she is: a liar.
Tandy did not claim marijuana caused cancer, but she implied it by saying, “marijuana smoke … contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke and produces high levels of an enzyme that converts certain hydrocarbons into malignant cells.”
She also said marijuana can cause anxiety and depression, particularly in teens. However, a study released last week from Canadian researchers found a synthesized version of a marijuana compound actually promotes development of new brain cells in rats, and this in turn was accompanied by a reduction in anxiety and depression.
Other risks of marijuana cited by Tandy included impaired cognitive function, such as short-term problems with perception and memory.
Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told UPI that Tandy’s assertions “run up against the known science,” which indicate the toxicity of the drug is minimal. […]
He noted that Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a psychiatrist in El Cerrito, Calif., had conducted a study with medical-marijuana patients and did not find evidence they developed cognitive impairments, paranoia, anxiety or other mental problems after they began using the drug.
“The government has insisted there are no pros and there are only cons of marijuana, but this is totally lacking in science and totally lacking in any realistic credibility,” Melamede said.
He predicted medical marijuana ultimately will be permitted in the United States.
“It’s unavoidable that it will eventually triumph because it works,” he said. “The government is lying and it will eventually win out in the end. It’s just a matter of how many people have to suffer between now and then.”
Good reporting UPI.
Wait, did I just say “Good reporting UPI?” What’s happening?
A very nice interview with Dr. Lester Grinspoon at Mother Jones today.
He talks about Marinol, Sativex, medical marijuana and the contrary pressures from pharmaceutical companies and patients regarding the legalization of marijuana.
One of the most interesting parts: he often talks with medical marijuana patients who are concerned about flunking work drug tests — he tries to get their doctor to prescribe Marinol. Even though Marinol doesn’t work as well as marijuana, the patient can continue to use marijuana and not worry about the drug test. The same will be true to a greater degree with Sativex, which will lead to a practical solution of legalization countered by the financial pressure of the pharmaceutical companies to push prohibition harder.
Also interesting — even though he’s an ardent proponent of medical marijuana, he sees no way long term to legalize medical marijuana without legalizing it for recreational purposes.
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