Drug WarRant

Afghanistan (AKA Graveyard of Empires) has emerged stronger than ever after 19 years of US intervention in the US led war on terrorism. Still intent on protecting its $1 trillion in untouched metals resources from marauding foreign mining companies, Afghanistan and its farmers have adapted to utilizing 21st century technologies to grow opium poppies:

…heroin supply to Britain has careened in the last decade, namely due to the ‘solar revolution’ in Afghanistan. This has enabled farmers to use electricity generated from solar panels to pump untapped water from 100 meters under the desert. Now, where there was once an arid dust belt, there are fields of thriving poppy, punches of colour lighting up the desert, too much of a lucrative cash crop for Afghan farmers to pass up. […]

Afghanistan was used as a “playground for foreign nations to kill Afghans like a video game” – as one of my young Afghan friends once described to me. It’s highly unlikely British Intelligence Agencies were unaware of the newly blossoming poppy industry, much of which is growing in Helmand, a ‘hotspot’ for drone strikes and aerial surveillance. Today Afghanistan produces 90% of the worlds’ heroin, 3% of the Afghan population are addicts, and production of the crop has more than doubled, from 3,700 tonnes in 2012, to 9,000 tonnes in 2017. […]

The Biden administration characterized the May 1, 2021, Afghanistan pullout date for the removal of 2,500 remaining US troops as “hard to meet,” and said it was not his intention “to stay there a long time.” What the President means by hard-to-meet or a long time is anyone’s guess. In the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk, the British pulled 400,000 of their troops out of Normandy in just ten days.

A clue to Biden’s intentions may lie in his consistency. Even though he began his senate career by opposing the war in Viet Nam, Joe Biden never lost faith in using wars to produce a drug free society, or at least a society free of drug users. He seems to believe drug laws can change people’s understanding of what is right or wrong about drugs. With that kind of attitude, it’s possible a new era of drone wars may bloom in the Afghan desert highlands.

Since the inception of the Marshall Plan it’s been U.S. policy to discourage or expel troublesome dictators who appear destined to grow in power and external threat capabilities. Political experience recognizes that leaders or governments who treat their own citizens badly tend to show the same ill will toward other sovereign governments and foreign nationals. The situation makes it difficult to ignore despots.

Recently, despot-in-chief and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte expanded his operations from extrajudicial executions of illicit drug consumers and traffickers (the poor) to killing labor leaders, or what Duterte calls “communist rebels”:

…“Nothing could be more apt than calling this day a ‘Bloody Sunday,’” Ms. Palabay said in a statement. She said the killings were part of a “murderous campaign of state terror” by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte to stifle legitimate dissent, and she urged the country’s independent Commission on Human Rights to investigate the raids.

Three activists were arrested in the raids, including a paralegal who worked for Karapatan, Ms. Palabay said. […]

It’s not as if the U.S. hasn’t joined other nations or the ICC in the past in toppling leaders unfit for power, or who merely oppose U.S. interests. President Idi Amin of Uganda was removed from power after he admitted to being a cannibal. Manuel Noriega of Panama was deposed after refusing to cancel the Panama Canal Treaty with the U.S. that transferred control of the canal to Panama. To justify his removal, the George H. W. Bush administration indicted Noriega on charges of cocaine trafficking. The alleged cocaine discovered in Noriega’s residence turned out to be flour.

The present irony is that President Joe Biden is one of the architects of the drug war, beginning his career in the Nixon era as a naive 29-year-old U.S. senator representing Delaware. Drug Czar William J. Bennett filled Biden’s head with disinformation about drugs, falsehoods like marijuana gateways, the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity, and instant and absolute addiction to crack. Biden acted upon the lies, later being forced to apologize for the disinformation he was fed.

Duterte uses the methods and ideologies of Nixon, Bennett, and Biden as both an excuse and a tool to commit mass murder. Should Biden act to eliminate Duterte, he may find it within himself—after nearly 50 years of public service—to concede to wiping the slate clean of all drug wars and prohibition related U.S. drug policies that tyrants employ against their citizens or opponents. Who knows? The President might even agree to the full legalization of cannabis.

Many people know how the drug war has affected them personally, or those close to them. Less attention is focused on the insidious impact of drug enforcement on society as a whole. A new initiative by the Drug Policy Alliance called ‘Uprooting the Drug War,’ seeks to expose the damage caused by drug wars beyond the usual mass of arrests and incarcerations:

“Even as there is growing momentum for treating drug use as a matter of personal and public health, the systems on which we would normally rely to advance an alternative approach are infested with the same culture of punishment as the criminal legal system and have operated with relative impunity. Today, we expose those systems and their role in fueling drug war policies and logic that compound the harms suffered by people who use drugs and people who are targeted by drug war enforcement,” said Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance [DPA]. “Ending the drug war in all its vestiges is critical to improving the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities….”

…at Uprooting the Drug War, …analysis of six different systems through first-hand stories, data spotlights, and reports … take a deep dive into how drug war policies have taken root and created grave harm in the fields of education, employment, housing, child welfare, immigration, and public benefits. […]

An exposé of drug war social harms is important, but it doesn’t address a key issue needed to scale down the war and end it. What about all the federal, state and municipal employees whose income and livelihood depends on the continuation of current drug policies? President Biden or Congress needs to provide prohibitionists with a parachute—something that allows them to retire early or easily transfer to another line of work. Failing this, the drug war’s labor force is set to continue to act in every way possible to preserve their jobs up until they retire.

Prohibitionists still retain influential and powerful drug war allies, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Chuck Grassley. The two senators recently introduced a bill, HEN21186, that among other things allows a redundant relic of the drug war, the federal cannabis farm in Mississippi, to continue its operations at taxpayer expense, effectively retaining prohibitionists in the federal loop. Ending the drug war will require targeting it from all directions.

After 107 years of drug war-induced misery and futility, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finally reversed the legal remnants of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act that prohibited general medical practitioners from treating patients addicted to drugs for their addictions. The HHS made history recently by changing 21 U.S.C. § 823(g)(2) of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) so that physicians who want to prescribe buprenorphine to their patients for opioid use disorder (OUD) can do so without going to jail. The following restrictions must be met:

• The exemption only applies to physicians who may only treat patients who are located in the states in which they are authorized to practice medicine.
• Physicians utilizing this exemption will be limited to treating no more than 30 patients with buprenorphine for opioid use disorder at any one time (note: the 30 patient cap does not apply to hospital-based physicians, such as Emergency Department physicians).
• The exemption applies only to the prescription of drugs or formulations covered under the X-waiver of the CSA, such as buprenorphine, and does not apply to the prescription, dispensation, or use of methadone for the treatment of OUD.
• Physicians utilizing this exemption shall place an “X” on the prescription and clearly identify that the prescription is being written for opioid use disorders (along with the separate maintaining of charts for patients being treated for OUD).
• An interagency working group will be established to monitor the implementation and results of these practice guidelines, as well as the impact on diversion.

Under the new regulations, actual progress toward ending the drug war is achieved merely by engaging in a harm reduction-based approach that encourages medicinally-based therapies that see addictions as treatable illnesses. By allowing drug treatment to be administered by licensed and general medical practitioners, HHS sidestepped the NIMBY effect where people object to having a drug treatment center in their neighborhood or next to schools or businesses. Under U.S. medical privacy laws (HIPAA), the new regulations protect the privacy and dignity of the patient suffering from opioid addiction, making it more likely a person will seek treatment should they desire it.