Drug WarRant

What is Canada sending US?
MARIJUANA DISCOVERED IN GARBAGE HEADED FOR U.S.
What?
That’s right. A garbage truck, delivering garbage from Canada to the United States was discovered to be smuggling marijuana.
The driver, who was arrested, clearly has something to learn about hiding marijuana in a garbage truck.

“Upon opening the rear of the garbage truck, a plastic garbage bag filled with marijuana fell out,” Ms.æ Miles said, adding that an ensuing search revealed multiple plastic and hockey bags full of marijuana.

I have three responses to this story…

1. Why is the United States taking in other countries’ garbage? Don’t we have enough?
2. We want your solid waste, but don’t you dare send any of those green plants that can provide excellent medicine or nutrition and make people happy. We don’t want any of that trash crap leafy plant material.
3. Maybe it was, in fact, all trash. What they found in the truck might have been Health Canada’s pot.

When scientists go bad
The Billings Gazette gave a free pass to the DEA’s Big Sky Illicit Drug Conference, by giving lots of article space to failed researcher and professional DEA shill Susan Dalterio. Her claim to fame is over 10 years of research on stoned mice with highly disputed results so that even NIDA cut off her funding back in 1982.
She now teaches biology and goes around the country spouting such scientific pronouncements as:

People who smoke pot tend to have the same emotional maturity level as when they first smoked a joint, she said.æ Dalterio cited Austin, Texas, as a living example.æ It’s a place full of old hippies “stuck in the ’60s,” she said.æ “They’re interesting, but they’re still stuck.”

The article has so many factual errors or outright lies that it’s not worth giving a full point-by-point response. Most of them are already addressed elsewhere in this blog.
Articles like this just make me tired.

Jack Ryan for Senate? No.
I’ve got to admit I haven’t started looking over the Illinois Senatorial candidates yet, so I really don’t know anything about them. I plan at a later date to do a little research on their views regarding the drug war. However…
I’m ready to make my first elimination, based totally on guilt by association.
Steve Neal of the Chicago Sun Times reports that Ryan is a fan of William Bennett. According to Neal:

[Bennett] is breathlessly touted by the Ryan campaign as ”one of America’s most important, influential and respected voices on cultural, political, and education issues”; ”one of the nation’s most prominent political figures,” and an ”extraordinary influence on America’s political and social landscape.”

In actuality, William Bennett is a moralist and one of the chief cheerleaders of the war on drugs, a former drug czar, and mentor to current drug czar John Walters. He is a compulsive gambler who constantly appears on TV to preach about others’ vices.
Now I hate to nail Jack Ryan (as a Clancy fan I love the name) simply by association, but in this case, there are only two options:

1. He agrees with Bennett, which makes his views unacceptable.
2. He’s praising Bennett and inviting Bennett to his fundraiser without knowing about him, which makes him too stupid.

Read the entire Neal article for more about William Bennett.

Lucrative New Markets
This New York Times article via Hit and Run (in case you didn’t know, New York has high cigarette taxes):

“A lot of people who were selling pot or heroin are now selling cigarettes,” said a 25-year-old struggling actor from East Harlem who said that he needs to dabble in cigarette dealing to make ends meet. “You can make the same amount of money,” he said, “and you don’t get locked away as long.”

What should be most startling about this news item to the drug warriors is that, despite billions of dollars spent on interdiction and extremely oppressive drug laws in New York, illicit drug supply and dealer market competition are vigorous enough to make the switch to illegal tobacco sales economically attractive.
But then again, the drug warriors clearly slept during economics class, since they don’t understand supply and demand or elasticity.

(Plagiarizing myself from Hit and Run’s comments)

Luize Altenhofen
I want to give a warm welcome and thanks to the folks from FSU’s Warchant, where there were some very nice comments about this blog (including my favorite: “That blog is definitely most excellent, dude.”).
I have never gotten a review that was displayed in such an appealing way (see screenshot). Sorry, guys, Luize isn’t here.

The battle continues…
Judges Seek Repeal of Law on Sentencing. The 27 judges who make policy for the federal courts voted unanimously to ask Congress to repeal a new law that curbs judges’ discretion over criminal sentences. By Linda Greenhouse. [New York Times: Politics]

Education and Drugs
It’s worth checking out: “In Search of the Anti-Drug” by Elizabeth Armstrong of the Christian Science Monitor. This is probably the most honest mainstream article on the subject of drug education I’ve seen.
While I don’t agree with everything in the article, Armstrong understands the problems with the traditional “Just say no” approach to teaching children about drugs. She discusses the failure of everything from “Reefer Madness” to “Brain on Drugs” to D.A.R.E. And she points out:

But what happens when they don’t want to say no? What happens when the reason isn’t peer pressure or what they have or haven’t learned, but curiosity?…Just when many children are beginning to wonder what drugs feel like, they are learning little more than how to avoid them.

Kids also are smarter than most drug education programs credit, and become very skeptical when burned with misinformation, lies, or exaggerations.

“Teenage disbelief and suspicion of drug prevention programs is rooted in scare tactics,” [Meredith Maran] says.æ “When I was 16 and started reading stories about drugs I was taking, and compared my reality to that, I said ‘that’s that.’ To this day I don’t trust anything from those sources.”

While I am firmly in favor of legalization and ending the costly and failed prohibition policies, I recognize the importance of limiting drug use by children. There will, of course, always be curiosity and experimentation by young people. Having some drugs illegal does not change that (when I was a kid, I knew two boys who died from sniffing gasoline). So what are some good approaches?

1. Legalization. It is now easier for most kids to get illegal drugs than alcohol. (When’s the last time you heard about a Bacardi or Philip Morris salesman pushing his drug in the schoolyard?) The fact that some drugs are illegal can also add to the allure. Legalize and regulate.
2. Reality-based and science-based education. No more lies. It will take a while to get kids to believe anything you say again, but work at it. Discuss the difference between use and abuse (acknowledge that there is a distinction).
3. Positive alternatives. Encourage and fund extra-curricular activities (sports, music, theatre, chess club, etc.). Job opportunities.
4. Respect. Kids won’t trust the message if you’re making them pee in a cup or sending drug dogs through their classrooms.

Of course, this won’t be easy. The failed methods have too much momentum and investment. As Armstrong notes, even though its failures are well documented, “D.A.R.E. remains the program of choice in 80 percent of US public school systems – and the curriculum has yet to be replaced or improved upon.”

Phone Slam!
Make a telephone call today for medical marijuana.
Today is the Cheryl Miller Memorial Project phone slam.

On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, as patients and supporters visit congressional offices in Washington, medical marijuana supporters across the U.S. will be calling those same offices to thank supporters and lobby others to cosponsor HR 2233, the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act.

Follow the link above for more information and strategies of what to do when you call. But if you don’t have time for that, simply go to the U.S. House site to find out who your rep is, or get a complete list of phone numbers. Take a moment today to make a phone call. Tell the staff person who answers that you support HR 2233, the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act.
Update: Even though the day is over, you can still make the call. It’s valuable anytime.

This just makes me mad
John Ashcroft is at it again.
Ashcroft not only wants to be your Attorney General. He wants to be your prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. The latest is a memo to all federal prosecutors requiring them to seek the greatest possible sentence in all cases, including any sentencing enhancements that might apply, reducing any discretion related to the individual case. This means that the small fish who has no information to give prosecutors gets the book thrown at him or her.
Keep in mind that this will cost a lot of money. Prison time. Trials instead of plea bargains. Lots of money.
Ashcroft is continuing his attempts to make the judiciary branch irrelevant. He has been working steadily to tie the hands of judges. Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice
Breyer spoke out against mandatory minimums (something Justice Kennedy did last month).
All above links from the fabulous TalkLeft, which is all over this today.

Pot doesn’t kill
An editorial in September 20th British Medical Journal: “Comparing cannabis with tobacco — again: Link between cannabis and mortality is still not established”
This editorial examined two large studies in the United States and Sweden, and determined:

“…published data do not support the characterisation of cannabis as a risk factor for mortality”

The editorial then went on to examine the use of marijuana as it relates to mortality factors:

No acute lethal overdoses of cannabis are known, in contrast to several of its illegal (for example, cocaine) and legal (for example, alcohol, aspirin, acetaminophen) counterparts. Deaths due to chronic diseases resulting from substance misuse generally result from the use of that substance (for example, tobacco and alcohol) over a long time. Importantly, and in contrast to users of tobacco and alcohol, most cannabis users generally quit using cannabis relatively early in their adult lives.

After analyzing the differences between tobacco and marijuana in both ingredients and use, the article concludes:

Although the use of cannabis is not harmless, the current knowledge base does not support the assertion that it has any notable adverse public health impact in relation to mortality. Common sense should dictate a variety of measures to minimise adverse effects of cannabis. These include discouraging the use by teenagers, who seem to be most at risk of future problems from drug use, not using before or during the operation of automobiles or machinery, not using excessively, and cautioning in people with known coronary heart disease.

So far, this editorial has been picked up in The Age in Australia, and The Independent in England, but has not seemed to reach much of the mainstream press (other than as a footnote in an AP story on bad Canadian pot).
So, to recap…
You literally cannot overdose from marijuana. Marijuana seems to have little or no affect on mortality, and is certainly safer than many legal products. It’s safer to drive while high than to drive while tired. Marijuana use does not cause use of harder drugs. Marijuana is an effective medicine, pain reliever and nausea suppressant for a variety of illnesses and treatments. Hemp is an environmentally-friendly crop which can be used for paper, rope, clothing, fuel, construction products, and has nutritional value that exceeds soy. And it makes you feel good.
So why is it illegal? Must be that last point.