Friday, January 23, 2004

$23 million for children's piss Sound like some kind of perverse pedophiliac pecuniary pursuit? No, it's the President of the United States, putting forth the notion that the world will be a better place if we spend $23 million to force children to pee in a cup. Stupid. If you really feel you have to spend that money, you'd be better off giving each state $460,000 to put into after-school programs. It may not seem like much, but heck, the way budgets are today, some schools would be happy with $20 to buy a couple of basketballs. But the President has spoken, and you can be sure there will be a push for drug testing in schools across the country. After all, there's federal money to be had! Who cares if drug testing doesn't work? Fortunately, Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU have stepped up to the plate with Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No (pdf -- also available here), written by Fatema Gunja, Alexandra Cox, Marsha Rosenbaum, PhD and Judith Appel, JD Here's a segment: Comprehensive, rigorous, and respected research shows that there are many reasons why random student drug testing is not good policy: Drug testing is not effective in deterring drug use among young people; Drug testing is expensive, taking away scarce dollars from other, more effective programs that keep young people out of trouble with drugs; Drug testing can be legally risky, exposing schools to potentially costly litigation; Drug testing may drive students away from extracurricular activities, which are a proven means of helping students stay out of trouble with drugs; Drug testing can undermine relationships of trust between students and teachers and between parents and their children; Drug testing can result in false positives, leading to the punishment of innocent students; Drug testing does not effectively identify students who have serious problems with drugs; and Drug testing may lead to unintended consequences, such as students using drugs that are more dangerous but less detectable by a drug test, and learning the wrong lessons about their constitutional rights. There are alternatives to drug testing which emphasize education, discussion, counseling, extracurricular activities, and build trust between students and adults. The pamphlet then goes on to explain each of these points in detail, with facts, studies, quotes from educators and much more. Read the whole thing, and then pass it on to your K-12 teachers, bring it to the PTA, send it to the school board, offer it to your newspaper, involve your city council. If we aren't proactive, very soon we will be teaching our children a bad lesson: that their rights don't matter. And for what? An expensive program that doesn't work. 8:51:11 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

I guess we've found that terrorist cell from Norway From the Oregon Register-Guard: [Kari] Rein, 42, and her husband James Jungwirth, 41, a U.S. citizen, have lived in Williams, near Grants Pass, for 15 years. They run an herb and seaweed harvesting business and have a 14-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. 11 years ago, Rein was convicted of growing six marijuana plants for personal use and received probation and community service. The judge at the time said he was confident it was for personal use, "And I'm also satisfied that the two of you are people who are capable of being productive and are being productive in society," the judge continued, "and I don't think at this point that jail really serves any benefit to anyone." Here's the tragedy -- Kari Rein is an immigrant, and immigration officials now (11 years later) want to send her back to Norway. According to Rein's attorney, immigration officials say the conviction qualifies as an aggravated felony and mandates deportation under 1990s immigration rules that have received souped-up enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Six pot plants over a decade ago, and you send a wife and mother away from her home? Does this government have ANY sense of morality? 7:47:30 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

DrugSense Weekly Be sure to check out this week's DrugSense Weekly Lots of interesting information and a review of the most relevant newspaper articles of the past week. Also a great letter of the week and, DrugSense Weekly was nice enough to include my analysis/rant on the President's SOTU. Just a reminder that DrugSense and MAP are an incredible resource in drug policy reform. They're a great way to get involved. Sure, you read something on this site and it gets you pissed off. What do you do? Well, you could write your own rant and submit it to me for Guest Rants. Or, go to MAP, where you'll get assistance in writing letters to the editor in newspapers all over the world, where you can make a real difference and reach thousands of people with your words. They'll even give you current alerts with suggestions for writing letters. Or you can donate and, for a short time, have your donation matched. 6:36:04 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Lots of good stuff! Reason's Jacob Sullom asks in Bush on Steroids, "Why must sports by drug-free? The irony is that legal restrictions and league bans on steroids discourage athletes who use them from seeking medical guidance, so they're more at risk than they would be if steroid use were permitted. As with recreational drugs, prohibition makes steroids more dangerous, not less. An interesting article, and Sullom, as usual, is not afraid to ask the "taboo" questions. Talkleft has a couple of posts worth checking out, including Los Angeles is the latest city -- and the largest one -- to reject the Patriot Act Informants Who Set Up Fake Drug Busts Get a Sentence Break As most people know by now, Art Garfunkel was busted for pot possession. I really don't have much to say on this, other than the fact that he's one of over 600,000 people in the United States who should not have been arrested in the past year for marijuana possession. Damn Foreigner has an excellent post on US Ambassador giving unsolicited advice. Essentially Ambassador Paul Cellucci is threatening Canada again with border troubles if they don't dispel the "perception" that getting marijuana is Canada will be easier. One of the most bizarre parts of this is that he suggests something that would help: putting in criminal provisions for marijuana possession near schools -- this in conjunction with decriminalization. So, if your house is within x feet of a school you could go to jail for smoking pot in your own home, but your neighbor would just get a fine. Yeah, that works. It would be interesting to see if that would raise or lower property values near schools. Vice Squad is on top of Chicago cops, drugs, and corruption. Mark Kleiman talks about the disturbing trend in drug abuse research -- that all the funding is going toward the information that the warriors want to present -- in Opting for Ignorance: ADAM program killed The fabulous Libby at Last One Speaks has the humorous story of the Detective who was ruled "too cute" in a drug bust! The new issue of Drug War Chronicle is available with some interesting items, including more on the hysteria in the UK that I've been reporting, and a Minnesota Sentencing Commission report that says the state could save $30 million per year with treatment instead of prison. 12:54:08 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []