Saturday, April 3, 2004

My kind of testimony Marijuana Policy Project's Rob Kampia testified Thursday before the farce that is the U.S. Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, chaired by drug warrior Mark Souder. "Testified" is one term for what he did. "Tore them a new one" would perhaps be more accurate. The topic was "Marijuana and Medicine: The Need for a Science- Based Approach." Kampia made it clear that he and MPP were in favor of a Science-based approach, and that they were probably the only ones in the room who were. He slammed the government's past tendency to ignore scientific evidence on medical marijuana and propagate myths and lies. He completely tore apart Andrea Barthwell's OpEd in the Chicago tribune, exposing her outright falsehoods. He finished with: This hearing is a witch hunt, not a quest for knowledge. The goal of this subcommittee, under its current leadership, is not to adopt a true scientific approach to the subject of marijuana. If that were the case, the authors of the Institute of Medicine report and physicians and patients from the eight medical marijuana states would have been invited. Or a representative from the American Nurses Association. Or a representative from the American Public Health Association. No, the clear goal of the current chairman is to expend federal funds in a fruitless quest to find evidence that supports his own baseless belief.... In sum, the Marijuana Policy Project strongly supports a science-based approach to medical marijuana. We hope that Chairman Souder eventually abandons his reliance on myths and lies, stops the federal witch hunt for medical marijuana patients and doctors, and embraces an approach that is based on science. Delightful! Read (or watch) his entire testimony here. 2:35:15 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Can our government be any more stupid? Yes. From the Daily Telegraph: The Bush administration took the highly unusual step of sending a senior official to Congress to chastise Britain, its closest ally in the war on terrorism, for dragging its feet in the fight against drugs. Robert Charles, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, said Britain was being too squeamish about eradicating poppy fields before Afghan farmers had found an alternative source of crops and income. "Our point of disagreement, and I put it very directly," said Mr Charles, "is that we believe that if there is a heroin poppy that needs to be eradicated, we shouldn't be picking and choosing, we shouldn't be delaying, waiting for an alternative revenue stream to become available." He said: "Our priority should not be some kind of misplaced sympathy for someone who will have to do a little bit more work [to grow other, less-lucrative crops, such as wheat or barley]." First of all, the government completely fails to understand the economics of the drug trade in Afghanistan, and we're having plenty of trouble of our own figuring out how to deal with the Afghans (see this article from LastOneSpeaks to get a picture of it.) Then the absolute condescension by Charles in that last paragraph is downright offensive. The notion that the Afghans are only growing opium because they're too lazy to grow a real crop is stupid. Oh, and pissing off our ally? Yeah, that's gotta help. 1:49:06 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []