Drug WarRant

Check out this excellent rebuttal at Hit and Run to yesterday’s stupid New York Times article on medical marijuana.

Yesterday, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s imminent decision in Ashcroft v. Raich, the medical marijuana case, The New York Times ran a bizarre story that suggests cannabis is more likely to drive a patient insane than relieve his symptoms. “There remains much confusion over whether marijuana in fact has any significant medical effect,” declares Times reporter Dan Hurley. The confusion, it turns out, is mostly in his own mind. …

Dan Hurley’s article tomorrow in the New York times is a strange, unbalanced article about medical marijuana, giving a lot of space to opponents, and then claiming there isn’t enough “clinical” evidence to support medical marijuana.
The problem is that he can’t even read his own article.
Take a look first at some of the “problems” he mentions (or quotes):

Yet there remains much confusion over whether marijuana in fact has any significant medical effect. … But the reality is, we don’t know. …While little scientific evidence supports such a lifesaving role for marijuana … There’s not been a randomized, controlled trial demonstrating that marijuana or any cannabinoid is any more effective in controlled seizures than a placebo … We have a product that has been legitimized without any evidence of efficacy. … researchers said that the results should be interpreted cautiously, because the study had been intended to test only short-term benefits … Showing clinical benefit in humans has been an elusive beast. … But the clinical studies just aren’t there. …

Boy, you’d really get the notion that clinical studies haven’t supported medical marijuana, wouldn’t you. But then he says:

In 1997, Dr. Donald Abrams, an oncologist and assistant director of the Positive Health Program at the University of California at San Francisco, became the first doctor authorized by the National Institute of Drug Abuse to receive marijuana to conduct research to determine if it provided medical benefits.

Now more than a dozen California researchers are studying it under the auspices of the University of California’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. [emphasis added]

Isn’t the big story here why the federal government has restricted studies? Can’t you read your own article, Dan?
There are plenty of problems with this ignorant article, including presenting the questionable (and controversial) schizophrenia study without noting that the study did not, in fact, diagnose any schizophrenia or psychosis.
Come on, you can do better than that, NYT.

Via Hit and Run comes this bizarre factoid presented by Lorraine Turchansky in the Canadian Press

Up to 50 per cent of users can be addicted after the first dose of crystal meth…

What does that mean? Up to 50 per cent? Can be? Zero fits that definition. The only thing that can be determined for sure is that exactly 100% of people named Lorraine Turchansky who write for the Canadian Press don’t know what they’re talking about.

Are We Losing the War on Drugs?
An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy
By David Boyum and Peter Reuter
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
(Released March 25, 2005)

How Goes the “War on Drugs”?
An Assessment of U.S. Drug Problems and Policy
By Jonathan P. Caulkins, Peter H. Reuter, Martin Y. Iguchi and James Chiesa
RAND Drug Policy Research Center, funded by The Ford Foundation
(Posted March 21, 2005)

Two major scholarly research sites, two almost identical critiques of the drug war (note that one of the authors worked on both).
In both cases, the studies are grossly flawed in that they operate under the assumption, for the purposes of the study, that prohibition can be the only model. Therefore they almost completely ignore:

• Side-effects of prohibition itself such as prohibition-fueled violence
• The impact of other potential models, such as legalizationa and regulation, on their recommendations. (Imagine a doctor recommending a course of treatment for obesity, and being able to recommend surgery or drugs, but not exercise or dieting. Such a limited diagnosis would be quackery.)

Despite the fact that the flawed studies depend upon a continuation of some mix of prohibition and treatment, both were extremely harsh in their evaluation of current drug policy.
These are not radical think tanks. They’re solid, well-respected, and often called upon to testify in Congress. These devastating attacks on the current administration’s policies could be quite powerful. Both had very nasty things to say about the reliance on incarceration, and both criticized the emphasis toward marijuana prohibition.
Before I give you highlights from the studies, there’s one point that I found particularly interesting. I’d often wondered why the administration is so obsessed with marijuana, yet I hadn’t thought it through. It’s really quite simple. After getting failing grades in the past because of an inability to show results in the drug war, the government set a goal of reducing drug use by 10%.
How do you do that? Work on treating hard-core drug addicts that cause the most trouble? No, they’re too small a number and take too long to affect. However, the largest number of actual drug users are casual marijuana users — it’s easy for them to quit, so that becomes a great target for reaching stupid goals like a reduction of 10% in drug users. So the administration has consciously and intentionally crafted a policy that specifically goes after casual marijuana users who are not a problem, while neglecting drug addicts who have a problem.
It also affects other aspects of their policy:

• Harm Reduction? No, that’s good for long-term health, but doesn’t give them immediate reduction of numbers. Better to go for abstinence only policy for potential short-term numbers gain even if it’s worse in the long-run (and if an addict dies, that helps the numbers too).
• Reality-based education? No, that’s better for long-term, but abstinence-only education gives them short-term numbers gain.
• Medical marijuana? No, those people still count as drug users under federal statistics.

So, as both studies note, the very numbers-based approach to goals encourages drug policy that is completely backward and counter-productive.

This editorial in the Sentinel and Enterprise (Fitchburg, MA): More cops needed to win drug war
It’s an editorial that calls for a strong stance in the drug war and calls for more money to be spent to win it.
Now here’s the example that they use in the editorial to demonstrate how serious the problem is:

For people like Paul McNamara, a Fitchburg police officer, the war on drugs in North Central Massachusetts is not an academic exercise.

McNamara found himself fighting for his life one day while working on Fitchburg’s STRAIT (Strategic Tactical Response and Intervention team) unit.

A man attacked McNamara and Sgt. Joaquin Kilson on Crestview Lane after they stopped him for having an open container of beer.

“It was a fight for our lives,” McNamara told the Sentinel & Enterprise. “It went from an encounter of, ‘What’s your name,’ and ‘You know you can’t be drinking here,’ into hand-to-hand combat very quickly.”

McNamara said the man came to Fitchburg to buy drugs, but he must have already been high when he arrived.

“We were on the ground fighting, the three of us, and we didn’t know where our weapons or radios went. A woman nearby handed Sgt. Kilson his radio,” McNamara said. æ “It took four or five of us to arrest him.”

McNamara and numerous other officers and law enforcement officials literally put their lives on the line every day to fight illegal drug trafficking and use.

As far as I can tell from this story, the only “drug war” danger they faced was the beligerance of a beer drinker, and their own incompetence in losing track of their weapons and radios while wrestling with him.

“bullet” Mexico: Arizona Daily Star

Mexico is mobilizing 6,400 soldiers next week to its northern states in response to a vicious drug war that has left nearly 200 people dead this year, officials said. …

Using Humvees, four-wheel-drive trucks and helicopters, the soldiers will work with agents from the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office to destroy drug crops in southern Sonora and launch operations against the clandestine runways drug traffickers use on the border south of Arizona.

The military buildup on the northern border will last one to two months, then the extra soldiers will leave, he said.
æ

It comes during a tenuous time when Mexico’s powerful drug lords battle for control of lucrative areas along the border with the United States.

OK, let me get this straight. There’s violence between rival drug lords due to the profitability of the black market, so you solve that by sending in a bunch of soldiers to destroy crops and then leave? And this will do what to drug prices and profitability? And the violence of the rivals will stop? Hello? Is anybody home?
“bullet” Afghanistan: New York Times

The American military will significantly increase its role in halting the production and sale of poppies, opium and heroin in Afghanistan, responding to bumper harvests that far exceed even the most alarming predictions, according to senior Pentagon officials. …

To support the new effort, the Defense Department is requesting $257 million, more than four times the amount last year, in emergency financing for military assistance to the counternarcotics campaign, in addition to the $15.4 million in the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal 2005, which began last Oct. 1.

Cato responds:

In “Drug Prohibition Is a Terrorist’s Best Friend,” Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato’s vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, explains that “the harsh reality is that terrorist groups around the world have been enriched by prohibitionist drug policies that drive up drug costs, and which deliver enormous profits to the outlaw organizations willing to accept the risks that go with the trade.

“Targeting the Afghanistan drug trade would create a variety of problems. Most of the regional warlords who abandoned the Taliban and currently support the U.S. anti-terror campaign (and in many cases politically undergird the Karzai government) are deeply involved in the drug trade, in part to pay the militias that give them political clout. A crusade against drug trafficking could easily alienate those regional power brokers and cause them to switch allegiances yet again.”

“News” Article in The Daily Telegraph (Australia) by Angela Kamper:

Chloe died because we all failed her

SMOKING marijuana drove Timothy Kosowicz mad and he strangled an angelic little girl. …

“This seems to be yet another example of the link between cannabis use and mental illness, a link which from my judicial experience and reading, I regard as well-established,” Acting Justice David Patten said.

Words fail me.

For some fun weekend reading, check out these delightful articles — all in Colorado
“bullet” Putting The Kind In Kindbud in the Boulder Weekly. A fascinating story of the the Colorado Compassion Club and Thomas and Larissa Lawrence, including how they got busted by the feds, some of their techniques for growing medical marijuana, and how Thomas became the first person ever to receive drugs from the Denver police.
“bullet” Green Butter by Wayne Laugesen (also in the Boulder Weekly) is, to begin with, Wayne’s story of accidentally using the “green” butter (laced with pot) on his sweet corn at a neighbor’s dinner party. While the author doesn’t like pot (he’d prefer to stick with beer), he speaks up on behalf of the CU students who hold a 420 pot party each year (cops are threatening to come down hard on it this year), with an interesting view…

Get it, drunkards? If we don’t speak out for the potheads right now, in their time of great need, there will be nobody left to speak for us when they come for our drink.

“bullet” Students Call on CU to Ease Up on Pot in the Daily Camera — students are taking a slightly different approach in favor of marijuana:

Student leaders approved a referendum this week calling for CU to acknowledge the drug as a relatively safe alternative to alcohol.æ Sponsors of the proposal said they want the university to make that distinction in the way it punishes students. …

Campaign adviser Mason Tvert said violent crimes, such as sexual assault, that sometimes result from alcohol abuse are not found with marijuana use, which makes it a safer choice.

“We do not advocate the use of marijuana, but we are advocating for a better public policy that does not indirectly push kids toward drinking,” said Tvert, the director of SAFER, a Boulder-based nonprofit that aims to increase public awareness on the differences between the two substances.

“bullet” The Colorado Daily covers that story as well in It’s Green Prozac:

“There has never been a case of fatal marijuana overdose in history,” said Cisneros.æ “How many more students need to drink themselves to death before our colleges turn to safer, more sensible alcohol and marijuana policies?”

Via TalkLeft, the word is that the Supreme Court will release their decision on Raich v. Ashcroft either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. [Note: this is not an absolute deadline, but is based on several media alerts.]
Potentially huge.

• Ruling for the government: The end of the commerce clause as a limitation on government (Congress will be able to define whatever it is they want to regulate at the state level), the death knell of federalism, probably an indication that Oregon’s assisted suicide law will be shot down next.
• Ruling for Raich: A morale boost for medical marijuana, states will be able to craft medical marijuana regimes that meet federal rules, some other states will rather quickly join the medical marijuana movement. The interesting issue here will be how the Supremes define Raich’s allowable activity:
  • Will it be specifically tied to the very narrow situation that Raich represented? or
  • Will they craft a new line that separates allowable state activity based on a state sub-class or an economic enterprise or something else entirely? or
  • Will they bring federalism back and actually overturn some previous case law?
• Technical Weasel-out Ruling This is where the Justices punt and claim that Raich should get relief through the FDA or some such nonsense. (Essentially the same as a ruling for the government).

Regardless of the ruling, medical marijuana will continue to be an issue and will continue to need our support and efforts.
Plans are already underway by some groups for demonstrations tied to the Raich ruling, in case the ruling is for the government:

“If the Supreme Court rules against medical marijuana patients, we’ll
need you to immediately swing into action to lobby Congress to end the
federal government’s attacks on medical marijuana patients and
caregivers.

To be specific, we need you to organize or attend a protest outside of
your U.S. representative’s local district office precisely two days
after the decision is announced — to urge your U.S. representative to
vote for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment to the Justice
Department’s spending bill, in order to prevent the DEA from spending
any money to arrest medical marijuana patients or providers who are
acting legally under state law.

Please visit http://www.RaichAction.org , where you can:

• find out where your U.S. representative’s local district offices are
  located;
• print flyers to hand out at the demonstration; and
• print talking points about the medical marijuana amendment.

Please email if you want to organize or attend
a demonstration in your area. (Please be sure to tell us the exact
location where you will hold your demonstration, including city and
state.) We will send an alert the day of the decision notifying you
that it’s time to act, with the demonstration taking place two days
later.”

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s not just a war on drugs — it’s a war on people and on culture.
It happened again on Saturday, this time in Flint, Michigan. From the Drug Policy Alliance:

On Saturday the local police raided a popular nightclub, Club What’s Next, and ticketed hundreds of music fans who were attending a dance night known as “Getting Lucky” (the DJs included Halluci-Nate, Sparkimus Prime, White Rabbit, Captain Cheddar and California’s Dj Primo.) While some people were arrested for possessing or selling illegal drugs, most people were ticketed for “frequenting a drug establishment,” a misdemeanor offense.

That’s right. In Flint, Michigan (and many other cities) if you go out dancing on a Saturday night and the police happen to arrest other people at the club for drugs, you could be charged with a drug crime even though you had nothing to do with drugs. These innocent party-goers now face up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. They also face a criminal record with all the legal and social barriers that brings. Several people that were at the club that night told us club-goers were also subjected to strip searches, including full cavity searches – even though they had nothing to do with drugs. Imagine the police walking into your favorite bar or nightclub and making you submit to a strip search for no reason! Imagine spending 90 days in jail or paying a $500 fine for dancing!

The raid on Club What’s Next was conducted by Flint’s Special Operations and Crime Area Target Team units, along with the Flint Area Narcotics Group and the Genesee County Sheriff’s Posse. We’re looking into whether or not federal Byrne grant money helped finance the raids. (On a side note, any law enforcement agency that has the word “posse” in it should be suspect).

This is sick. It’s un-American. It’s an outrageous abuse of power. And it’s an attack on young people and music.
Speak out against this abuse of power by taking action here.
You can make a difference. The last time a charge like this was invoked was in Racine, Wisconsin last year, and the outcry caused them to dismiss the charges.
Send the letter at the action alert above and tell your friends as well.