Drug WarRant

• Howard Dean: Yes
• John Kerry: Yes
• John Edwards: Yes
• Carol Moseley Braun: I’m not going to answer
• Dennis Kucinich: No, but I think it ought to be decriminalized
• Al Sharpton: I grew up in the church. We didn’t believe in that.
• Wesley Clark: Never used it
• Joseph Lieberman: I never used marijuana, sorry.

Transcript.

In today’s Village Voice: The DEA’s War on Pain Doctors by Frank Owen

Some in the medical community call it “a war on pain doctors,” others “a government jihad” or “state-sponsored terrorism.” However you describe the current campaign, which according to pain-patient advocates began under Janet Reno, but which they say has increased in intensity under John Ashcroft, the DEA’s hardball tacticsÖstorming clinics in SWAT-style gear, ransacking offices, and hauling off doctors in handcuffsÖhave scared physicians nationwide to the extent that legitimate pain sufferers now find it increasingly difficult to get the medicine they need. Doctors’ offices today display signs that say “Don’t ask for OxyContin” or “No OxyContin prescribed here.” And medical schools advise students not to choose pain management as a career because the field is too fraught with potential legal dangers.

“The war on drugs has turned into a war on doctors and pain patients,” says Dr. Ronald Myers, president of the American Pain Institute and a Baptist minister who operates a string of clinics for poor people in the Mississippi Delta. “Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going to prison. The DEA is creating a situation where legitimate pain patients now have to go to the streets to get their medication. It’s a health care catastrophe in the making…”

…some doctors believe that the DEA, having conspicuously failed to stem the tide of illegal drug use in this country, is coming after physicians to ratchet up the agency’s prosecution count. (This year alone, two federal reviews lambasted the DEA for its poor performance in fighting illegal drug use, one report giving the agency a zero on a scale of one to 100.)

The entire article is excellent, and a real indictment of the policies of the DEA. I have an earlier post on the subject here.
Is there something just a little out of whack with the DEA? They’ve got a public relations problem, so they’re going around in full riot gear busting terminally ill medical marijuana patients, doctors, and bong makers. My suggestion? Next year reduce their budget by $1,897.300,000.

New Bedford, Massachusetts: Mayor, White House discuss solutions. Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz Jr. has really gotten in bed with the Drug Czar, including developing a plan for volunteer drug testing of all middle and high school students. (Of course, the voluntary part would not actually mean that it would be voluntary to the students, but just to their parents, and it’s assumed the funding would come from tax funds.)

In a telephone conversation last week, John P. Walters told the mayor that personnel would be dispatched to work with the city in finding ways to aggressively deal with New Bedford’s serious drug problems.

In addition to working with the Drug Czar on testing kids, the Mayor has had a relationship with Walters in a number of ways, including extablishing a new DEA office (soon to expand) and other programs.
I think I can cross New Bedford off my list of places to live.
Polk County, Florida: Polk County school district receives federal grant to begin drug testing
All High School athletes will now have to pass a drug test before competing. The $250,000 project is funded by the Department of Education.
Get this: the program will test athletes for marijuana use, but not performance enhancing drugs like steroids. (Apparently the steroid test is too expensive.) What lunacy!
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Department of Education would give a school district $250,000 for books?
Freeport, Illinois: Freeport to participate in nationwide study: Youth problems to be addressed through prevention; leaders to work in broad-based group.
The difference here is this program (part of Communities that Care), appears to take the approach of targeted plans to meet the needs of a particular community’s youth, including developing programs that get young people involved in positive activities (as a partial method of preventing drug use, teen pregnancy, etc.). It’s also not run by the federal government.
Now I’m not very familiar with this program, other than what I’ve read on the web (I’d love to hear from someone with first-hand knowledge), but it seems to me at first glance that this is an approach that makes some sense (certainly more valuable than drug testing!)

Now that the UK is looking to downgrade cannabis, the loonies are coming out. No, not potheads — but drug warriors grasping at straws to scare people.
The Sunday Telegraph ran CANNABIS USE CAUSES ‘HUNDREDS OF DEATHS A YEAR’, CORONER WARNS. Yes, Hamish Turner and others have “proof” that marijuana is killing people right and left.
Of course their proof consists of statistics like: “in 2000, 12 per cent of the 3,400 people killed in road accidents showed traces of cannabis.” Traces. Of a drug that over 5 million people in Britain regularly use and that stays in your blood for days. Yep, that’s a causal link, all right. Of course, they probably also found traces of chocolate and tea and other dangerous substances.
But my favorite in the article:

Cannabis also contributed to the death of Dragan Radoslavjevic, 42, from Paignton, Devon.æ He died earlier this year after using a power tool to drill a hole in his head. An inquest in Torquay heard that he suffered from depression and relied on drugs such as cannabis and heroin. [my emphasis]

Considering over 40% of Americans have tried marijuana, it looks like we are way overdue for a huge rash of self-inflicted deaths by power drill to the head!
Anybody got a 1/2″ skull bit I can borrow?

BUSH TO TEENS: RELIGION HELPED MEND MY WAYS
President Bush, speaking Wednesday at a youth center in Oak Cliff, gave an unusually candid assessment of religion’s role in leading him from his wayward youth.
“Sometimes, and a lot of times, the best way to help the addict, a person who is stuck on drugs and alcohol, is to change their heart,” Bush said.

The 1,538,813 Americans arrested for drug abuse violations last year were unavailable for comment.

Helping Justice Overcome a Flawed Policy – a nice little piece on Senator Durbin’s efforts to introduce the Truth in Trials bill.

Sen. Durbin’s bill is in line with the history and purpose of the American criminal jury system, which has been likened to the “fourth branch of government” and the “final check and balance.” His measure would allow jurors to know whether the verdict they are asked to return would be a just one. If not, jurors could refuse to convict — nullify the law — on their own initiative. Durbin’s bill will merely allow the jury system — the conscience of the community — to dispense, as Judge Hoyt so well put, “acts of mercy … where the facts dictate morally and ethically that mercy is appropriate.”

An interesting piece by Moby, of all people, in the New York Times.

Recreational drug use has been, and continues to be, an integral part of our culture.æ Recreational drug use is practiced in bars and in churches, in Dumpsters and in penthouses, so with all of our technological resources, why can’t we make it as safe as it is fun?

This week’s Drug War Chronicle, including Decriminalization Comes to Britain: House of Commons Passes Cannabis Rescheduling Bill (one step closer to a reasonble half-measure). You can still donate to Stop the Drug War and receive a copy of the video “Busted.”
This week’s issue of Drug Sense Weekly including an update on the case of the death Clayton Helriggle (one of the drug war victims). You can still donate to Drug Sense/MAP and have your contribution matched.
Last One Speaks is always a great read (check out her take on the prison industrial complex). I also got a real kick out of her halloween slogan (to go with a Cheech and Chong costume):

Bongs don’t hurt people, John Walters’ do

She’ll be off attending the Drug Policy Alliance Conference this week. I look forward to her reports with great anticipation.

An excellent article in the American Prospect:
“Drugstore Cowboys –
How America’s wrongheaded war on drugs brought down Bolivia’s president”
by Christopher Hayes

…imagine, for a moment, how Paris would have reacted if, during Prohibition, Calvin Coolidge had begun paying the French government huge sums of money to burn its country’s vineyards. It seems a safe assumption that the hypothetical French prime minister who collaborated with such a policy wouldn’t have lasted long in office.

Burning Prohibition-era French vineyards may seem like a ludicrous scenario, but it’s more or less analogous to the current U.S. policy of coca eradication in Latin America. So it should come as little surprise that Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned earlier this month amid growing popular opposition to his support of American eradication efforts in his country.

For Bolivia’s indigenous majority, coca is not just another plant. People have been chewing coca leaves on the altiplano — the windswept Andean plateau that stretches through the eastern third of Bolivia and parts of Peru — for about 4,000 years, and to this day coca occupies an incredibly central role in indigenous culture. “Coca leaves are used in everyday interactions in Aymara and Quechua culture as gestures of friendship, like exchanging a cigarette or a cup of coffee,” says University of Illinois anthropologist Andrew Orta, who studies the region. Aside from being chewed, the coca leaf is used in tea, rubbed on cuts and employed during ritual offerings to local deities. Because coca is grown and chewed mostly by the country’s indigenous majority, it has also become an expression of identity. Across Bolivia, graffiti, signs and T-shirts proclaim, “The Coca Leaf is Not A Drug!”

The entire article is worth reading. It shows just how out of touch our foreign policy is related to the drug war. Our drug eradication policies destroy the economies of countries and increase violence and instability, and despite all that, the net flow of drugs to the United States is not significantly reduced.
Update: Another good article on the subject in the Miami Herald by Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University: Another U.S. Foreign-Policy Failure.

When the preceding Bolivian government faced U.S.æ demands to destroy the coca crop, I advised it to insist on adequate aid to finance economic development benefiting the hundreds of thousands of displaced peasant farmers and their dependents.æ Desperate for any assistance at all, Bolivia’s government ultimately uprooted thousands of hectares of peasant crops — and got almost nothing in return but phony slogans about alternative development.

Wednesday release from the Drug Czar’s office: White House Drug Czar, Surgeon General, and Partner Organizations to Address Drug Use Among Hispanic Youth

“Marijuana use is a serious problem for all young people, but we are particularly concerned about the high usage rates among Hispanic eighth graders, who are using this harmful drug at a crucial time in their lives,” said Director Walters. “Together with our partners, we are reaching out to the Hispanic community and providing bilingual resources designed to reverse these trends.”

Research shows that among eighth graders, Hispanics tend to have the highest rates of past-year drug use for most illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. One in 10 Hispanic youth ages 12-17 reports using illicit drugs in the past month. Because Hispanics represent the largest, fastest-growing, and youngest ethnic group in the United States — one in three Hispanics is under age 18 — the need for tailored youth drug prevention efforts is critical.

Whoa – better watch out for those drugged up Hispanics! But wait – this is from the Drug Czar. Could it, in fact, be a crock? For the second day in a row, I’m wading through tables at SAMHSA, and low and behold…
Table 1.32B – Marijuana use Past Month among Persons Aged 12 to 17

Table 1.27B – Any Illicit Drug use Past Month among Persons Aged 12 to 17

Table 1.27B – Any Illicit Drug use Past Year among Persons Aged 12 to 17

So, it turns out that White kids use drugs more than Hispanics (and we already knew the Drug Czar was a crock). Go back to the release:

…Because Hispanics represent the largest, fastest-growing, and youngest ethnic group in the United States…

That’s an …interesting… statement in this context.
Of course, this is not the first time there’s been concern about growing Hispanic population and the use of Marijuana. Witness this letter to Anslinger from editor of the Alamosa, Colo, Daily Courier in 1936:

Is there any assistance your Bureau can give us in handling this drug? Can you suggest campaigns? Can you enlarge your Department to deal with marihuana? Can you do anything to help us?

I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish speaking persons, most of whom are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions.

While marihuana has figured in the greatest number of crimes in the past few years, officials fear it, not for what it had done, but for what it is capable of doing. They want to check it before an outbreak does occur.

In fact…

The anti-marihuana law of 1937 was largely the federal government’s response to political pressure from enforcement agencies and other alarmed groups who feared the use and spread of marihuana by “Mexicans.”

Yep, that’s, in part, how it all started.
Who the hell is Richard Carmona?
Included in the release is this statement:

“Young marijuana users take on serious mental and physical risks, including potential brain and lung damage,” said Surgeon General Carmona.

This one threw me. I must admit that I hadn’t followed the current Surgeon General. (In fact, I don’t remember much of anything about him, particularly related to the War on Drugs — Walters’ office always pretended to be the “experts.”)
So why is Carmona suddenly showing up spouting completely discredited statements? Even Walters has avoided the “brain damage” nonsense. I’m going to try to contact Carmona’s office sometime in the next week or so (busy time for me right now). I’ll let you know if I find anything out.
Oh, and by the way, you’ll be pleased to know that there is now La Anti Droga site, complete with tons of useful information for recruiting Hispanics in the drug war.

I realized today that I missed something from the government’s most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Of course, they distributed the results they wanted known widely through press releases — lots of statistics about various changes in drug use patterns, and some play on the fact that there were 19 million current illicit drug users.
However, I had not seen any reports that showed lifetime illicit drug use, but I knew it had to be in the report. Sure enough, in Table C.13 we discover:

That’s right. Over 100 million people have used some illicit drugs in their lifetime and almost that many have used marijuana. Practically 1/2 of the population.
So what does this tell us? (of course these are things that most of us in the drug policy reform field already know)

1. Over 80% of people who have used drugs are not current drug users, let alone abusers (so much for the certain enslavement properties of drugs).
2. Arresting drug users is futile, since you’d have to arrest half of all U.S. citizens.

This inspired my latest design for the Drug WarRant merchandise at CafePress:

Of course, if we actually put all those who have used illegal drugs in jail, it would cost over two trillion dollars a year to do so (just imagine the tax rates for the remaining population!)

In my in-box today from the Drug Policy Alliance:

If you could slash the amount of your tax money being spent on absurd TV ads comparing marijuana smokers to terrorists, would you act right now?

Is the pope catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the Drug Czar an unethical taxpayer-funded lobbyist?

You have an opportunity today to cut those ads and save taxpayers $50 million a year. Right now Congress is debating how much of your money should be spent on the anti-drug ads next year. The House wants to spend $150 million, but the Senate only wants to spend $100 million. Your Senator, Richard Durbin, is on the committee that will make the final decision.

And I can pretty much count on him doing the right thing, but I’d like to follow up anyway. What do I do?

1) Call Senator Durbin’s office TODAY. Call the Capitol Switchboard for free at 1-800-839-5276 and ask for Senator Richard Durbin. Tell him you strongly oppose wasting taxpayer money to support government advertising campaigns that are ineffective and can be produced privately. Tell his office, “I want Senator Durbin to save taxpayers $50 million by only spending $100 million on the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, part of the Transportation-Treasury appropriation bill. In a time of war and deficit spending he should go with the Senate spending level, not the $150 million the House wants to spend”.

Actually, he should go with the spending level of $0, but I guess you gotta take what you can get.
For more on this, visit the Drug Policy Alliance.
Oh, and by the way, the new anti-marijuana ads produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug- Free America, will utilize sarcasm. Right.

The effort launches with a pair of 30-second spots. In “Pool,” a toddler carries an inflatable raft to a swimming pool and places it in the water. As she teeters on the edge, a voiceover says: “Just tell her parents you weren’t watching her because you were getting stoned. They’ll understand.”

The other ad, “Pick Up,” shows a group of young boys leaving a baseball field. One sits on the curb, waiting to be picked up, as day turns to dusk. The voiceover says, “Just tell your little brother that you forgot to pick him up because you were getting stoned. He’ll understand.”

I can’t wait. Thankfully they’ll be out in time for Thanksgiving. (via TalkLeft)
What’s that phone number to call my Senator again?