|
|
|
Drug WarRant
 |
Friday, April 16, 2004 |
Apologies to my loyal readers
I have a confession to make. I have paid all my federal taxes. I realize that this action was unforgivable, since part of it went toward the Drug Czar's six-figure salary and his $11 billion drug control budget.
Because of this, I am failing my duty to the constitution of the United States and am helping to fund lies, deception and violence perpetrated against the American people.
Vice Squad has coverage of the Drug Czar's latest in Ridiculous Quote of the Year and Last one Speaks has more on the Czar's lies here and here.
Again, I apologize.
12:47:25 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, April 15, 2004 |
Drug War Family Values
Stupid government. Bad government. No supper for you. Go to your room and think about what you've done.
 US Drug Law Keeps Married Couple from Living Together
Via Drug Policy Alliance:
A pair of middle-aged newlyweds cannot live together in North Carolina or anywhere else in the U.S. because the husband smoked marijuana as a teenager and was convicted three times of simple possession -- in Canada. Terry VanDuzee, 48, says one of the three convictions was expunged and he's been pardoned for all three. Nonetheless, American law bars anyone from immigrating to the United States if convicted of drug offenses more than twice....
The couple has asked for help from elected officials and government agencies on both sides of the US-Canada border, including President Bush, Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and Canadian immigration. They've also set up a website to document their quest to live together and ask visitors to petition the US government on their behalf.
"If you had to be punished continually over all your [life] for things we did as teenagers, we'd all be up a creek," Debbie told the Herald-Sun newspaper. "Terry deserves to be forgiven. Why should he have to suffer the rest of his life for something he did when he was a teenager?"
Update on that Terrorist Cell from Norway
If you recall my post in January: 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. Kari Rein is an immigrant, and immigration officials now 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.
Well, Kari has now officially applied for a pardon from Governor Ted Kulongoski. It will take 30 days for the pardon to be considered. Even if granted, the family will be out over $26,000 in legal fees.
4:50:18 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, April 14, 2004 |
Something for the 911 Commission
or How the War on Drugs has Undermined our Domestic and International Security
All the talk recently about the 911 Commission, and who knew what/when, and what the priorities were, and on and on... It got my mind wandering about the relationship of the War on Drugs in all of this. It's clear to me that the commission should be asking more questions.
I don't know if 911 could have been prevented. Could the Bush/Clinton administration done something different? Sure. Would it have mattered? Who knows. However, I do know that the War on Drugs has been a major player --
This drug war has clearly
- Distracted federal effort, focus, and resources from more important issues like terrorism
- Actually provided funding for terrorism, through prohibition profits and corruption
- Created conditions of instability that encourage terrorist growth
The War on Drugs and Afghanistan
Robert Scheer wrote Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times:
But what is perhaps even more astonishing is that, because the Bush administration's attention was focused on the "war on drugs," it praised Afghanistan's Taliban regime even though it was harboring Bin Laden and his terror camps. The Taliban refused to extradite the avowed terrorist even after he admitted responsibility for a series of deadly assaults against American diplomatic and military sites in Africa and the Middle East.
On May 15, 2001, I blasted the Bush administration for rewarding the Taliban for "controlling" the opium crop with $43 million in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, to be distributed by an arm of the United Nations. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced the gift, specifically mentioning the opium suppression as the rationale and assuring that the U.S. would "continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans."
What Scheer leaves out is the fact that while we were subsidizing the Taliban as a reward for suppressing poppy growers, the Taliban appeared to be using the ban to increase the value of their stockpiles.
The UN suspects Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers of selling their vast opium stockpiles to pay for the war effort against rebel leader Ahmed Shah Masood. The order to destroy the poppies -- a vain attempt to gain international recognition -- was announced last July by Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. He declared opium-growing un-Islamic, and the ban was ruthlessly enforced.... The UN Drug Control Program says the ban has created a shortage of heroin, driving up prices locally from the equivalent of $55 a kilo to about $500.
The prices stayed high until the Taliban lifted the ban shortly after 9/11/01:
In a dramatic and little-noticed reversal of policy, the Taliban have told farmers in Afghanistan that they are free to start planting poppy seeds again if the Americans decide to launch a military attack....
Last night one Afghan trader, who had just fled from Afghanistan, said the price of opium per kilo had now fallen from 50,000 Pakistani rupees (£525) to 10,000 rupees (£105). Everybody was trying to offload existing stocks, he said.
"Almost all Afghans will be cultivating poppy as it was their only cash crop. They can't cultivate other crops as the soil is fit only for poppy cultivation," he claimed.
Now, of course, after the liberation of Afghanistan, came the headache of re-building, once again directly tied to the poppy, as this outstanding New York Times article - Afghan Route to Prosperity: Grow Poppies - points out:
But as opium production underpins ever more of Afghanistan's economic life, from new business growth to home construction, officials also fear that the economic and political risks of uprooting it will only increase. To the chagrin of Afghan and international officials, the narcotics industry has far outpaced the legal reconstruction of Afghanistan, with a capitalist intensity they would otherwise applaud.
It has lured private capital for investment and created a free-market system. With Thuraya satellite phones, farmers in distant Kandahar, a rival source of poppy in the south, know almost in real time about changing weather conditions here in this northeastern province, Badakshan, and adjust prices accordingly.
Landowners and traffickers offer credit to farmers willing to grow poppy. Trafficking has linked Afghanistan to the global economy. It even brought the first real industry here, a heroin processing laboratory that villagers estimated had operated for six months to a year before it was destroyed by Afghan and British forces in January. One local referred to it as "the company."
So here we are trying to re-build the country, and we spend our time destroying the only industry that has a chance of assisting with that rebuilding.
Our own officials could do to read the Times article, because it appears (as I reported last week) they do not understand the dynamics:
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]."
We could, of course, support a legal poppy industry in Afghanistan. This would help rebuild the country and increase stability in the region while cutting offf funding and recruitment to terrorists. Or, we would attempt to destroy the poppy industry, cause poverty and instability giving rise to terrorism, while the poppy crops grow anyway controlled by criminal enterprise and providing funding to terrorists.
Of course, in the idiocy of our drug war blindness, the choice is simple. Support terrorism.
The War on Drugs and Terrorism at Home
Let's take a look a little closer to home. Was the War on Drugs affecting our preparedness here? Yep.
As I mentioned last month, Newsweek's Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, noted 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 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.
Clearly, by focusing resources on the war on drugs, we dropped the ball on preparedness for 9/11. After 9/11, however, we corrected that problem, right? Wrong.
The federal government already had this nice little war going on in California.
Federal agents had been harassing other pot clubs before September 11, but the attacks forced them to suspend their campaign -- for two weeks. On September 28, DEA agents took thousands of records from a medical research center in El Dorado County.
Then, on October 25, they hit the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Co-op, a hotbed of... sick people:
Around 5 P.M., an officer from the Drug Enforcement Administration rang the bell at the co-op. Behind him stood 29 other agents, most armed with pistols. Their unmarked sedans clogged the street. Anyone passing by the nondescript building on Santa Monica Boulevard might have assumed a drug kingpin lived inside.
 Then, one year after 9/11, the feds breached the enemy stronghold of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana garden:
Suzanne Pfeil, an alliance member staying at the Corral's, said she was awakened by two-dozen camouflage-clad agents in helmets who pointed automatic weapons at her.
"They told me to stand up," said Pfeil, who suffers from post-polio syndrome and uses a wheelchair. "I told them I'm sorry. I can't stand up."
In 2002, the Seattle Times reported:
Although nine states have approved the use of medical marijuana, Ashcroft has concentrated the weight of the anti-drug bureaucracy on California. His agents have busted marijuana clubs in West Hollywood, Oakland, San Francisco, Sebastapol and, most recently, Santa Cruz. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer characterized the raids as "punitive expeditions."
Some of you might think that federal law enforcement would have its hands full chasing down terrorists bent on mass destruction. Stoned Californians can wait for another day. Well, Ashcroft says he's on to both. He is perfectly capable of flicking on the orange terrorism alert then sending federal agents to weed out marijuana plants in hostile California territory.
and San Francisco's district attorney said:
I hope the DEA, the Justice Department and the entire Bush administration will heed the "Cease and Desist" orders delivered by yesterday's protesters. Surely at a time when we face so many real threats -- like the senders of anthrax-laced letters who still have not been caught -- the federal government has better things to do than to deprive sick people of their medicine.
During this time, the administration found other ways to go after terrorists. Well, that is assuming that terrorists toke up and watch the Superbowl:
"Where do terrorists get their money?" asks one of the ads, which portrays a terrorist buying explosives, weapons and fake passports. "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you.
Yep, to avoid their own complicity in funding terrorism through drug prohibition profits, the feds tried to blame pot smokers.
And while, to this date, Osama bin Laden has not been found, John Ashcroft can be proud of the fact that, at a cost of a mere $12 million, they were able to capture noted bong entrepreneur Tommy Chong.
I feel so much safer.
12:36:38 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Monday, April 12, 2004 |
Not everyone signs on to school drug testing...
The Drug Czar has not only been pushing school drug testing here, but our government has been trying to influence other countries, starting with Bush ally Tony Blair. Fortunately, not everyone in the UK is willing to roll over and fund the testers. Professor of Public Health Woody Caan wrote in the British Medical Journal:
Last month the prime minister, Tony Blair, lent his weight to random drug testing in schools in an interview for a downmarket newspaper. He proposed a national programme be implemented soon, adhering to unspecified central directives.
The Department of Health has 19 criteria for introducing new screening programmes.2 At least 18 of these 19 criteria are not met for widespread, wide spectrum drug urine analysis in schools. The remaining criterion is that the condition is an important health problem.
Drug use in young people is indeed associated with many health risks,3 but a single, positive urine test, for any illicit drug, is probably not meaningful in a clinical sense. Each schoolchild's context of use (family history, social and emotional development) is crucial to interpreting any supposed "drug career." Use by a homeless pregnant teenage runaway from local authority care with a history of deliberate self harm and high risk sex work to pay for her drugs may be very different from a single experimental use at home with adults during a family party.
I find this to be a refreshing point of view. Not only does Professor Caan point out technical shortcomings, but he also asks the question that is not being asked in this country: What does a positive test mean? He notes that it is different in different situations, and that a plan needs to be developed to determine how you work with people who test positive.
But in this country, we've looked at testing as absolute -- as zero tolerance -- as if the test was more important than any actual drug problem. Who cares about impairment? -- we just test for the presence of the drug. Who cares whether some drugs have different affects than others? Who cares whether somebody has a medical drug problem? -- we just lump all positive tests together.
We could learn something from the Brits here (not including Tony, of course).
12:59:24 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
The Drug Testing Industry - fertile ground for corruption?
Check out this investigative report by Gwen Filosa in today's Times Picayune.
For years before his retirement as Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick beat the drum for a Massachusetts company [Psychemedics] that uses hair samples to test people for drug use. He spoke out publicly in favor of testing students' hair and on occasion escorted its officers to meetings with officials and opinion-shapers in the media. ...
In December, Connick was made a Psychemedics board member at an annual stipend of $20,000. Last month the pot was sweetened further when Psychemedics gave Connick stock options for 5,150 shares...
Several private New Orleans schools, such as De La Salle High School, have been testing students for drugs for several years. De La Salle was one of the first schools that Connick helped acquire grant money for drug testing by Psychemedics.
But Orleans Parish school officials scrapped a program that started in two schools in 2002 after many parents expressed a distrust of the tests' accuracy. Jefferson Parish stepped up to take the grant money Connick had put together for drug testing. The Jefferson program is managed by Connick's nephew, Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick.
The article also noted that when he was named to the board, Connick "-- never known to by shy with the media -- kept the news to himself."
This points out a fact that often gets neglected in this whole testing issue: Drug Testing has become a huge business. There are thousands of companies, plus drug testing associations and advocacy groups, campaign contributions, and corruption.
1990 drug testing was estimated to be a $300 million industry (Zimmer and Jacobs "The business of drug testing: technological innovation and social control."). In 2001, Sandard and Poors estimated the industry at $5.9 billion, and it's been growing exponentially since then.
The recent push by the Drug Czar for drug testing in schools means untold new profits for this industry -- all paid for by taxpayers at the expense of education programs. I can't wait to see how much he earns when he leaves the White House.
The ACLU has also questioned some of the workplace research on increased productivity and lowered absenteeism touted by drug-testing enthusiasts as being scientifically tainted by funding from the drug-testing industry. "My impression, quite frankly, is that it has been the government and the testing industry that have driven this thing, more than the employers," said Lewis Maltby, director fo the ACLU's national task force on civil liberties in the workplace.
The article in New Orleans is about one possibly corrupt former district attorney. But that's just the tip of the iceberg in this industry.
4:46:07 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
From the mouths of...
Even this youngster gets it:
I think drugs should be legal because of all the people that use drugs. The war on drugs takes a lot of money from the government that could be used for other purposes, such as education. Cops spend time trying to bust drug users instead of real crimes like rapes, murders and child abductions.
Since drugs are illegal, smugglers must smuggle the drugs into our country and that would cause violence. But if drugs were legal, there wouldn't be a need to smuggle drugs in and have conflict about the drugs.
Government could tax the drugs if they were legal. If companies make drugs, it will make the drugs safer because of better and cleaner equipment and supplies. There would still be an age limit if drugs were legal.
- Tony Wang, eighth-grader, Pershing Middle School
1:29:02 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Deterrence
TalkLeft has a post on handling drug dealers in Vietnam.
Our lawmakers seem to think if they just pass some harsher laws, they'll be able to deter drug dealers. And yet, in Vietnam, despite 18 executions already this year, it didn't deter this 48-year-old woman from transporting 3/4 of a pound of heroin, even though she knew she'd be tied to a stake and shot by a firing squad.
You want to deter criminal drug dealers? Eliminate their profits by ending the drug war.
1:27:56 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
More from so-called Representative Souder
LastOneSpeaks discusses more of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources hearings on medicinal marijuana (see my report on Kampia's testimony) and gives the link to the detailed transcript of oral hearings.
You get a real sense of the intent of the hearings when you read the opening statement:
SOUDER: Subcommittee will now come to order. Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming. This hearing will address a highly controversial topic: the use of marijuana for so-called medical purposes. [emphasis added]
1:26:08 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
|
|
