Drug WarRant

Via Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.
Rep. Bobby Scott ( D-VA ) will introduce an amendment in the next day or two to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill to shift $10 million to the Department of Labor’s Reintegration of Youthful Offenders Program from the Department of Education’s Student Drug Testing program.
Take away from a bad idea (student drug testing) and give to a good idea (helping youthful offenders get their lives on track). Sounds like a smart plan to me (which means it’s not likely to pass). Lets give it every chance and contact your Representative.
But do it now — this Amendment could come up any minute (see links at the top of the page).

Link

Arlen Specter says he “may introduce legislation” in the Senate in favor of medical marijuana.

The U.S. senator, who has long supported the use of human stem cells for disease research, told Your Humble Narrator yesterday that he’s in favor of a state’s right to decide whether to allow its doctors to prescribe marijuana.

Specter himself, who is battling Hodgkin’s disease, could be a candidate for medical marijuana use.

I’m very appreciative of Senator Specter’s decision to support medical marijuana. (And it should be noted that he has supported it in the past, though perhaps not this vocally.)
However, wouldn’t it be nice if the majority of our Senators, Representatives, and Presidents had the compassion, intelligence and morality to see the rank stench of their denial of medicine to sick people? Must they (or their loved ones) get sick for them to see what must be done?

Our good friends at Educating Voices are at it again. These are the folks (led by Judy Kreamer of Naperville, Illinois) who helped Andrea Barthwell lie about sponsorships for the Illinois Marijuana Lectures.
Earlier today, they had a “scoop” at their website. In bold font and in two places they proclaimed that:

“Federation Of State Medical Boards Opposes the Smoking of Marijuana For Medicinal Applications – Unless Approved By the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

(Screen shot of that page earlier today – pdf)
A couple of suggestions to Judy when it comes to promoting big “scoops.”

1. Generally, reporting the publicly available results (pdf) of a delegation that happened over a month ago isn’t a “scoop.”
2. A scoop preferably should have some correct information (especially a month after the fact) and should in particular not get the facts exactly wrong.

Educating Voices now has a “clarification” up at their site.
Here’s the actual resolution as voted on at the Federation of State Medical Boards:

Resolution 05-1, offered by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, reads as follows:

Resolved, that the Federation of State Medical Boards oppose the smoking of marijuana for medicinal applications unless approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration; and be it further

Resolved, that the Federation of State Medical Boards create a special ad hoc committee to review and analyze the use of marijuana for medical purposes; and be it further

Resolved, that the committee develop recommendations for use by state medical boards in developing rules and policies to regulate the medical use of marijuana.

The Reference Committee heard testimony from Director Walters of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy about the adverse effects of drug abuse and utilization of marijuana for recreational purposes and about its policy on the utilization of marijuana for medicinal purposes. […]

ACTION: 384 – Resolution 05-1, Use of Marijuana, NOT ADOPTED

Yeah, that part about it not being adopted, in bold and underlined — you can see how Judy missed that. I love the fact that the Federation chose not to adopt it despite the visit (at taxpayer expense) of Judy’s friend John Walters to spread more lies.
So basically, we have a resolution put forth by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts (isn’t that the state that thinks that the discovery of fossils in the ground are a hoax?) that is soundly rejected — but Illiterate Voices proclaims a victory. Then, when they got caught, they promoted the Kansas resolution (voted on back in February) as their new “Scoop.”
One more note: Further down on that “Scoop” page, check out the headline on the article about the Raich decision:

The U.S. Supreme Court Bans Use Of Medical Marijuana

Gee, I didn’t know the Supreme Court could do that, did you? Of course, the Supreme Court did no such thing, but that doesn’t stop Illiterate Voices!
Their website states that “The EVI Board Members have a total of over 300 years of experience and expertise in drug prevention.” Perhaps they should try for a G.E.D.

Loretta at US Marijuana Party blog has pieces of a horrific story involving the trial of a man accused of killing three cops in the process of a drug bust.
There have been charges that the bust happened because payments to the police officers for protection had stopped, and there are conflicting stories as to the shootings.
With the limited information available to me, I’m not about to begin to defend or excuse actions of anybody involved.
All I know for sure — if it wasn’t for the drug war, this wouldn’t have happened.

Last One Speaks has a couple of items to check out:
“bullet” Sativex goes retail in Canada — That’s right, the liquid form of marijuana called Sativex¬ is now available by prescription in Canada. Next stop, the U.S. (as soon as they can convince everyone that the plant is bad, but the liquid form of the plant is good).
“bullet” Don’t they have something better to do? talks about the hemp flavored lollipops that are getting a ton of free publicity through lawmakers trying to outlaw them.
There’s another article on this here, with some bizarre notions.

“We should not have these out and available for kids to acquire these kinds of tastes. I’m concerned it could be a stepping stone to smoking marijuana,” Mr. Spade [D-Tipton] said.

Yeah, that’s right. People smoke pot for the taste.

Lenawee County Sheriff Larry Richardson agrees. “I’m all for it,” he said. “Kids tell me it tastes like the real stuff. I definitely think we should put controls on it.”

So how do kids know it tastes like the real stuff?
Of course, Last One Speaks has it right:

It’s perfectly legal, it doesn’t get you high and frankly it doesn’t sound like it would necessarily even taste that good. In fact, if these leglislators didn’t make such a big deal about it, most kids probably wouldn’t even notice they were on the shelf and would opt out for the Sweet Tarts instead.

This has been reported in a variety of places already, but is worth noting:

A minister tested positive for cannabis today at a voluntary session designed to show the capability of a high-tech drugs testing machine.
Edwina Hart, Social Justice Minister at the National Assembly for Wales, had not been using drugs, but the result showed that her hands had been cross contaminated with traces of the substance, from door handles, money or other public areas.

She said: “You could pick it up from any where couldn’t you?”

Conservative Assembly Member William Graham, who had arranged for police to demonstrate the drug testing machine at the Assembly, also tested positive for cannabis.

Radley Balko at The Agitator has the best take on this:

This technology is already here in the U.S., and at risk of appearing the Luddite, threatens to make the Fourth Amendment obsolete, or at least more obsolete.

If virtually all of us have traces of some illicit substances on us, then virtually all of us are subject to further searches. Meaning none of us any longer has the the right “to to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…”

GritsForBreakfast has the bad news. Lots of good work in the Texas legislature this year was undone by Governor Perry’s veto pen, including a bill to require police to inform drivers of their fourth amendment rights, and a fix of the probation system.
Condolences to the people of Texas.

Reuters has an article today: Mexico’s Fox under fire as drug war spirals.
Poor Vicente Fox. We used to wine and dine him and show him off at fancy parties. Now we don’t return his calls.

MEXICO CITY, June 19 (Reuters) – In the first four years after Mexican President Vicente Fox took office, he became Washington’s sweetheart in its war on drugs with his crackdown on traffickers.

But an escalating gangland turf war that has killed at least 600 people south of the U.S. border this year has soured the romance, with serious doubts raised about Fox’s ability to rein in the violence.

A senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official, Anthony Placido, told Congress last week that Mexico’s corrupt police forces were “all too often part of the problem rather than part of the solution” in fighting the drug cartels.

Fox won office in 2000, ending 71 years of one-party rule and promising to clamp down on the multibillion-dollar cross-border trade in cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

Profitable black-market trade with high demand, plus increased prohibition, equals increased violence and corruption. Basic arithmetic.

“The honeymoon period following the capture of these top drug traffickers is now over for Fox,” Jorge Chabat, a Mexican security analyst, told Reuters.

“We are now seeing a return to the relationship we had during the 1990s between Washington and Mexico that was characterized by conflict and reconciliation,” he added.

Analysts say the real problem is the heavy U.S. demand for cocaine and marijuana and the ability of the drug cartels to pay off police, politicians and judges inside Mexico.

The analysts are giving all the hints, but it seems the drug warriors can’t count to 4.

Could a certain Deputy Director at the ONDCP be getting a little big for his britches? Is the Czar himself in danger of falling out of favor?
A little bird informs me that trouble (and maybe a power struggle) is brewing inside the Czar’s office, and that there may be a shakeup soon.
This could get interesting.

“bullet” Christopher sent me this AP story: College towns lead in marijuana use (talk about headlines stating the obvious). The interesting point — Christopher notes that if the numbers are true in the article, then 17.5 million Americans smoked pot in the last 30 days. This isn’t lifetime use – this is current use.
If we locked all those people up, that would be the equivalent of arresting the entire population of my state of Illinois (including Chicago). Oh, and you’d have to throw neighboring Wisconsin in the clink as well. Talk about a futile war.
One additional note in that article. After mentioning that 12.2 percent of Boston residents reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, John Auerbach, executive director of the public health commission for the city of Boston, is quoted as saying “…we’re not surprised that substance abuse is a serious issue in the Boston area.” [emphasis added] There is a difference between “use” and “abuse” and it upsets me that our public officials (and the media) have continually blurred that line to the disservice of public health and public discourse. Part of this has been the promotion, on the part of the ONDCP, that any use of an illegal substance constitutes abuse. Wrong.
“bullet” Nice piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer by local resident Don Parcell Drug war looks more like Prohibition. It’s so great seeing people come to that realization.
“bullet” Several people have sent the article by George Will This War is Worth Fighting. (Note, it’s been published all over the country with a variety of headlines.) It’s an incoherent article, with some good facts and more propaganda from Walters, and ultimately Will doesn’t really seem to even know if he has a point.
“bullet” TalkLeft has an update on Renee Boje, a medical marijuana war refugee living in Canada. She has, unfortunately, been ordered extradited to the United States. Her alleged co-conspirator Peter McWilliams died awaiting federal trial — choked to death on his own vomit when prosecutors refused to allow him medical marijuana to control his nausea. Let’s hope that Canada listens to Renee’s appeal of this horrible decision.