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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, March 27, 2004 |
Former U.S. Surgeon General on Medical Marijuana
Joycelyn Elders: Myths about medical marijuana in Friday's Providence Journal.
What an amazing piece by Elders. Dr. Andrea Barthwell (Drug Czar wench) - are you reading this? Here's a medical professional with integrity who is willing to look at the facts.
THE RHODE ISLAND General Assembly is now considering legislation to permit the medical use of marijuana by seriously ill patients whose physicians have recommended it.
This sensible, humane bill deserves swift passage. The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS -- or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.
But right now, Rhode Island law subjects seriously ill patients to the threat of arrest and jail for simply trying to relieve some of their misery. There is no good reason that sick people should face such treatment.
Dr. Elders then takes the Drug Czar's usual myths and destroys them one by one:
"There is no evidence that marijuana is a medicine." The truth: The medical literature on marijuana goes back 5,000 years. In a 1999 study commissioned by the White House, the Institute of Medicine reported, "nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety . . . all can be mitigated by marijuana." In its April 2003 issue, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that marijuana relieves pain in virtually every test that scientists use to measure pain relief.
"The medical community doesn't support this; just a bunch of drug legalizers do." The truth: Numerous medical and public-health organizations support legal access to medical marijuana. National groups include the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association. Regional groups include the New York State Association of County Health Officials, the California Medical Association and the Rhode Island Medical Society.
I know of no medical group that believes that jailing sick and dying people is good for them.
"Marijuana is too dangerous to be medicine; it's bad for the immune system, endangering AIDS and cancer patients." The truth: Unlike many of the drugs we prescribe every day, marijuana has never been proven to cause a fatal overdose. Research on AIDS patients has debunked the claim of harm to the immune system: In a study at San Francisco General Hospital, AIDS patients using medical marijuana gained immune-system cells and kept their virus under control as well as patients who received a placebo. They also gained more needed weight.
"There are other drugs that work as well as marijuana, including Marinol, the pill containing THC (the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana)." The truth: These other drugs don't work for everyone. The Institute of Medicine noted: "It is well recognized that Marinol's oral route of administration hampers its effectiveness, because of slow absorption and patients' desire for more control over dosing." Inhalation gives a more rapid response and better results. For some very sick people, marijuana simply works better.
"Smoke is not medicine; no real medicine is smoked." The truth: Marijuana does not need to be smoked. Some patients prefer to eat it, while those who need the fast action and dose control provided by inhalation can avoid the hazards of smoke through simple devices called vaporizers. For many who need only a small amount -- such as cancer patients trying to get through a few months of chemotherapy -- the risks of smoking are minor.
"Medical-marijuana laws send the wrong message to kids, encouraging teen marijuana use." The truth: That fear, raised in 1996, when California passed the first effective medical-marijuana law, has not come true. According to the official California Student Survey, teen marijuana use in California rose steadily from 1990 to 1996, but began falling immediately after the medical-marijuana law was passed. Among ninth graders, marijuana use in the last six months fell by more than 40 percent from 1995-96 to 2001-02 (the most recent available figures).
We need Joycelyn Elders on the national stage talking about this!
8:12:28 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Weekend Reading
 The Road to Hell. Disturbing news via TalkLeft. If you live in Louisiana, Texas, or Mississippi, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has just taken away some of your constitutional rights.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police do not need an arrest or search warrant to conduct a swift sweep of private property to ensure their own safety. Any evidence discovered during that search now is admissible in court as long as the search is a "cursory inspection," and if police entered the site for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and believed it may be dangerous.
The case involved a dangerous criminal, but you know how such a ruling will be used. Cops come to your home because of a noise complaint when you're having a party. Routine. But, to "insure their safety" they're going to take a look around your house. So they go into all the rooms, and, Oh look, there's a marijuana pipe on the dresser in your bedroom. Busted.
Hope this one gets squashed by the Supremes.
Go to LastOneSpeaks and check out this story and this one about spraying in Columbia. It seems that some courageous Columbians are standing up to oppose the destruction of their country by the DEA.
To not fumigate the national parks would be, for one honorable time, to put the national interest of a country with the second greatest environmental wealth on the planet before the interest of the United States."
Excellent coverage at Last One Speaks.
Jim at Vice Squad has a somewhat amusing story from Indiana. Seems an appeals court won't allow seized cocaine to be used in a prosecution. Why? Could it be...
- The bust was set up by an informant who suggested a sting
- The informant arranged to speed through town with the mark, so the cops would pull him over and discover cocaine on the passenger
- The informant mentioned to police that he had been drinking and using coke and the police went along with having him speed through town anyway
- The informant was supposed to be on home detention at the time, which the officers knew
Gee, why would the judges throw out that brilliantly conceived sting? Prospect, Indiana. Police I.Q.: 0
Vice Squad also has a post by Mike detailing some interesting drug war anecdotes from Moscow to Texas.
Check out this week's Drug Chronicle, complete with updates from Canada, Peru, Arkansas, Australia, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
Drug Sense's Weekly Newsletter is online here.
7:00:50 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 |
Drug Testing in Schools - Pros, Cons and Lawsuits
The discussions of drug testing in schools are going to heat up even more as time goes on. With Bush promising millions in tax dollars, and the Drug Czar pulling out all the stops (and the lies) to promote this, you're going to be hearing a lot more. And it's going to take a major effort to prevent a nation-wide policy of teaching humiliated children that they are always under suspicion, that they have no rights of privacy, and that they must prove themselves innocent in this country.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution ran opposing view OpEds today on the topic "Should Students be Randomly Tested for Drugs?" and they were quite instructive.
First you have the Drug Czar's pet doctor Andrea Barthwell, with "YES: it Reverses the Spread of Addiction." The title of her OpEd was pretty bizarre on its own -- Barthwell's trying to tie in drug testing with such things as school tuberculosis tests:
Addiction is a pediatric-onset disease that needs a public health response. In much the same way that school tuberculosis tests identify children who are sick and can spread a dangerous disease, student drug testing helps identify kids who have a problem with drugs and prevents the spread of the disease of addiction. Each child prevented from using drugs means there is one fewer child able to pass the disease of addiction to his or her peers
Of course, she fails to discuss the fact that drug testing has nothing to do with addiction, and that it can actually intensify addiction problems in school children, by diverting them to harder drugs less likely to show up in drug tests, convincing students not to participate in extracurricular activities, etc.
She "demonstrated" the effectiveness of drug testing by relating anecdotal evidence in one school, and using the military as an example.
And she includes with a completely unsupported statement: "Drug testing saves lives." But then again, remember that the Drug Czar's office isn't required to actually tell the truth.
On the other side of the debate, we have Martha Rosenbaum, director of the Safety First project of the Drug Policy Alliance in San Francisco with "NO: It's costly, humiliating and not a deterrent."
Random drug testing alienates students. Students must be observed (by a teacher or other adult) as they urinate to be sure the sample is their own. It is a humiliating violation of privacy. Testing can also have the unanticipated effect of keeping students from participating in after-school, extracurricular programs -- activities that would fill their time during the peak teenage drug-using hours of 3-6 p.m.
A student in Tulia, Texas, summed it up: "I know lots of kids who don't want to get into sports . . . because they don't want to get drug tested. That's one of the reasons I'm not into any [activity]. I'm on medication, so I would always test positive, and then they would have to ask me about my medication, and I would be embarrassed."
School administrators in Dublin, Ohio, for example, calculated that their $35,000 per year drug-testing program was not cost-efficient. Of 1,473 students tested at $24 each, 11 tested positive, for a total cost of $3,200 per "positive" student. They canceled the program and, with the savings, were able to hire a full-time counselor and provide prevention programs that reached all 3,581 students.
Some will argue that students need drug testing to help them say "no." But in 2003, the "State of Our Nation's Youth" survey found that, contrary to popular belief, most teens are not pressured to use drugs. The same survey found, much to the surprise of many parents, that 75 percent of teenagers actually enjoy spending time with their parents. Trusting, open relationships with parents and other adults have been proven to decrease teen drug use.
Unfortunately, drug testing actually has the effect of undermining parental influence, forcing adults to say to teenagers, in essence, "I don't trust you."
I believe Marsha's the clear winner here.
In other school drug testing news, TalkLeft has the details on the Arkansas parents who have filed suit in federal court to stop random drug testing of their kids.
[Parent Mr.] Plopper, a journalism professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said the administrators and school personnel "who support and maintain suspicionless drug testing are like schoolyard bullies who torment students just because they can. "In this case, however, these people are worse than such bullies because they are educated and should know better than to turn the civil liberties of equal protection and privacy into empty promises."
Don't forget that you can have your own T-Shirt with "Have you peed in a cup for your government today?" on it.
9:33:28 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Drug Czar's efforts on prescription drugs
Mark Kleiman comments on the White House plan to make the abuse of diverted pharmaceuticals a major target for drug enforcement.
Actually, this looks like a good move to me....
There are some complicated issues around doctor-shopping and script-kiting, which are the other major sources of diverted pills. The trick is to make life harder for the scammers without making it harder for the legitimate patients.
But it's good to see the drug czar's office focusing, for once, on a real problem where there might be some real solutions.
I have to disagree with Mark on this one. I'm not at all heartened by the shift (or additional emphasis) toward prescription drug abuse.
- First of all, any possible thought that enforcement will be focused on stolen or diverted drugs is delusional. What will happen is that enforcement will go after doctors who have a different idea of pain management than the DEA has -- it's much easier to go after people who are listed in the phone book (just consider the major "investigations" of medical marijuana coops in California, and bong manufacturers) than actual criminals.
- I am very uncomfortable with federal enforcement determining what proper pain management is for patients. A crackdown in this area is going to increase the pressure on doctors to be more conservative with pain medication -- at the expense of patients' health and lives. The proper regulation of pain prescriptions is through medical licensing organizations, not federal law enforcement.
- Even the efforts against diversion of prescription drugs are problematic. Just like all other prohibition efforts, if the feds are at all successful at arresting those who are making drugs available on the black market, then the prices will rise and increase the attractiveness for organized criminals to get involved in prescription drugs.
If the feds want to be useful in this area, the best thing they can do is educate people as to the dangers of using prescription drugs without the advice of a doctor.
Update: This piece by Anthony Gregory, with the Independent Institute, covers the situation well in my opinion.
12:43:49 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 |
Michele Leonhart confirmed to DEA despite disdain for truth
Here's a little item I missed. Michele Leonhart was quietly confirmed as Deputy Administrator of the DEA earlier this month (see my article DEA Bad Girl Michele Leonhart for background on her.)
There's a lot about her there, but here's the kicker. When talking about a snitch who put a lot of people behind bars but was discovered to be lying on a regular basis, she said:
"The only criticism (of Chambers) I've ever heard is what defense attorneys will characterize as perjury or a lie on the stand."
She continued by saying that once prosecutors check him out, they'll agree with his admirers in DEA that he's "an outstanding testifier."
Yep, according to her, lying isn't such a bad thing as long as you get the conviction.
Well, her views on the truth will fit in just fine with the drug warriors. After all, didn't the GAO already state that drug warriors practically had to lie in order to do their job?
My prediction on Leonhart's confirmation was:
The Senate Judiciary Committee must, at the very least, investigate Leonhart's connection to Andrew Chambers. The fact that she apparently has no objection to the use of perjury in attaining a conviction should be an automatic disqualifier. Based on past experience, however, it is likely that Leonhart will be confirmed without discussion or recorded vote.
Well, I called that right. The Judiciary Committee passed her on without comment on March 4, and the Senate confirmed on voice vote with a whole list of other nominees.
11:06:32 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Monday, March 22, 2004 |
Bethlehem to pay $7.89M Hirko Settlement. Communities put on notice.
Just released in the Morning Call:
Mayor John Callahan on Monday announced that the
city of Bethlehem will pay $7.89 million to settle the John Hirko Jr. federal
civil case, a figure that avoids a potentially higher jury award and one
Callahan believes should prevent the need for raising taxes to cover the
settlement.
Callahan and defense attorney John Karoly Jr. shook hands at the federal
courthouse in Allentown in what amounted to a media photo opportunity. But it
was symbolic nonetheless.
It marked the end of a seven-year ordeal that began when Hirko was shot and
killed and his residence was set on fire in a drug raid...
Callahan said as part of the agreement the city would seek a $5 million grant
for additional training for the police department.
Background on the Hirko case is available here and here and here and here.
This follows closely on the heels of a $5 million
settlement in the Tulia, Texas case.
Both of these cases could have ended up with massive jury judgments that could
bankrupt a city, so the settlements are really relatively small.
This is a wake-up call that communities need to be aware of the tactics being
used by drug task forces in their area. A mistake by them could end up with
significantly increased taxes. Citizens cannot afford to sit back and assume
that drug task forces work properly. In fact, the nature of these task forces
makes them an extreme high-risk for communities to employ, which is why such tactics
should only be used as an absolute last resort (such as hostage situations), not for everyday drug busts.
6:31:13 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Sunday, March 21, 2004 |
U.S. administration (and others) guilty of aiding and abetting terrorism
Newsweek's Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, in the March 29 issue (available on the stands tomorrow), note that in the first few months of the administration:
Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence...
This is additional verification of reports that have been circulating for some time. This June, 2002 colunmn in Alternet noted:
While Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida minions were diligently preparing for their murderous mission, the FBI was looking the other way with equal determination. More than twice as many FBI agents were assigned to fighting drugs (2,500) than fighting terrorism (1,151). And a far greater amount of the FBI's financial resources was dedicated to the war on drugs....
In Phoenix, where the now infamous Ken Williams memo originated, counterterrorism agents complained bitterly about their efforts being given "the lowest investigative priority" by a supervisor who preferred glamorous drug-fighting investigations.
And now we also hear this weekend from Network of European Foundation's (NEF) Comite de Sages that world-wide drug policy is encouraging terrorism by creating a profitable black market:
"This regime fosters terrorism because it provides the funds for terrorism and it endangers international security," NEF member Sir Keith Morris, a former British ambassador to Colombia, told a press conference....
...former Interpol secretary general Raymond Kendall, a member of the NEF, argued Wednesday that the UN should "change its approach from repressive law enforcement to look at consumption and demand and harm reduction methods."
Eugene Oscapella, from the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, said: "The UN has not stopped to think that it is precisely prohibition that is making drugs such a desirable commodity."
The foundation argues in a recent paper that "the drug trade under a system of prohibition has become a major, if not the major, source of funding for many terrorist groups."
(see also my post Friday on the Senlis Council)
An anonymous reader commented on Friday that:
"As long as terrorists use drugs to finance their murderous activities, I will be against illicit drug usage."
Well, you're welcome to be against illicit drug usage, but if you want to prevent terrorists from using drugs to finance their murderous activities, you need to change the prohibitionist policies that make it profitable. It's that simple.
The evidence is so overwhelming that I find myself wondering if the majority of our political leaders (on both sides of the aisle, and both sides of the ocean) are:
- Stupid
- Cowards who are unwilling to take a difficult political stand that will make a positive impact in the world
- Corrupt criminals who getting paid by special interests to continue a corrupt drug war
- Willfully ignorant, preferring to hold on to an irrational belief, because any other course would undermine their world view.
- Terrorists
What's your vote? Combination of the above? Something else entirely?
4:16:58 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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