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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, December 11, 2004 |
Who cares about homeland security anyway?
Certainly not our government. Take a look at the latest piece in the New York Observer (via Hit and Run), on homeland security funding in New York.
Not only does the funding across the country have little to do with the likelihood of attacks, but the funding within New York State doesn't focus on New York City! In fact, some expenditures have had nothing to do with homeland security:
"Officials in Yates and Madison counties said they had strengthened defenses against illicit drug labs."
The government's love of the drug war left us unprepared for 9/11, has negatively affected our ability to fight terrorism, and is leaving us less safe every day. For a reminder of some of the other stupidity in this area, see my article from this summer: The Drug War and our response to Terrorism.
8:55:53 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Friday, December 10, 2004 |
Don't read this or your brain will hurt.
I warned you:
The Supreme Court has now dissolved the emergency stay issued last week suspending an injunction forbidding the government to interfere with the rituals of the UdV [O Centro Espirita Beneficients Uniao Do Vegetal], the American branch of a Brazilian church that uses a DMT-containing potion called hoasca or ayahuasca as its sacramental drink.
If you want to understand this further, read Mark Kleiman's or Marty Ledermans' posts.
I mention this largely because I earlier reported that this case is likely headed to the Supreme Court. The significance of the lifting of the stay is that this controlled substance can be used in religious ceremonies at least until the government gets the case to the Court (a year). It may then be hard for the feds to show that there's an imminent threat to their international treaties and law enforcement abilities.
Just another tiny crack in the government's prohibition efforts.
9:34:18 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Souder's letter gets challenged
Kudos to Representative Sam Farr. He had the same reaction to Mark Souder's proposed "Safe and Effective Drug Act" as I did.
According to today's Drug War Chronicle:
Skepticism about Souder's motives has extended to Capitol Hill, where Rep. Sam Farr Tuesday circulated his own "dear colleague" letter. "I would urge all Members to cosponsor this legislation, IF it were truly designed to produce an honest evaluation of the scientific data," wrote Farr, who earlier this year cosponsored the Patients' and Providers' Truth in Trials Act, which would allow a medical necessity defense in federal medical marijuana busts. "I am, however, skeptical that this will be the case, given that the bill only refers to 'smoked' marijuana and is proposing that the examination be carried out by NIDA, an agency which is actively blocking medical marijuana research while consistently highlighting and exaggerating the drug's negative consequences."
Yep, the two things that just jump right out of Souder's letter, exposing it as a sham.
Farr also mentioned [a] vaporizer study blocked by NIDA. The blocked study is worth mention, Farr argued, because in his "dear colleague" letter, Souder specified a study of smoked marijuana. "Why should we think that NIDA, under the Souder bill, will study what it has already been able to study for the last year and a half, but wouldn't?" Farr asked.
An honest evaluation of marijuana, wrote Farr, would reach the same conclusion as DEA chief administrative law judge Francis Young, who, after a two-year study, found in 1988 that "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known... It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance."
Farr accused the federal government of "obstructionism" in blocking medical marijuana research, but said it couldn't stop the truth. "Despite this obstructionism, there is still ample evidence to show that marijuana is a safe and effective medicine. I applaud Rep. Souder for seeking the truth -- but the truth must come from objective sources, not an agency already proven disposed to blocking the truth about marijuana."
Nice to see that someone's not letting Souder get away with this blatant manipulation.
9:09:05 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Thursday, December 9, 2004 |
A must read about government stalling tactics
Take the time to read Feds vs. Meds by Dean Kuipers. It's worth it.
A couple of months ago, I told you about a little known new law that allows people to challenge scientific information disseminated by federal agencies. The law demands that agencies respond to petitions within two months. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed such a challenge just over two months ago regarding the government's refusal to accept scientific evidence regarding medical marijuana. The Department of Health and Human Services has now filed for a two month extension. It's another stalling tactic, but they will have to respond at the end of the next two months. And no matter how they respond, they will either have to admit marijuana benefits, or make legal statements that can be attacked by lawyers in court.
While this particular move only started in October, it is the culmination of over 30 years of effort.
Dean Kuipers does an outstanding job of explaining the entire situation, along with the history of stalling done by the federal government. Here's an excerpt:
Consider the first petition, filed in 1972. Only two years after marijuana was lumped with LSD, heroin, and mescaline in Schedule I, NORML filed the first petition with the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, the predecessor to the DEA, which stalled for three years and then denied to hear the petition. A court forced them to hear it, then the DEA (formed in 1973) killed it without any hearings. A higher court of appeals again forced them to hear it, but it was easily killed off once more. Finally, in 1986, after another exhaustive, grinding court fight, the DEA caved in and assigned the investigation to its own DEA Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young.
Young spent two years hearing the testimony of scores of scientists, doctors, medical marijuana patients, law enforcement officers, agents, corrections officials and the like, and in 1988 came back with a stunning verdict. In one of the most celebrated documents in the history of pot activism, Young issued a ruling of over 100 pages, saying not only that the DEA must move pot to Schedule II, to have controlled medical use like cocaine and opium, but that “the evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence of this record.”
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Of course, the DEA swept it all under the carpet. It decided that Young had applied the wrong standard, that the testimony of doctors and patients didn’t show “a currently accepted medical use.” The record had to show controlled scientific testing – which neither the FDA nor the DEA would allow by law.
That decision went through five appeals before it was finally dead, in 1994, 22 years after the petition had been filed. But the movement to reschedule saw cracks in the feds’ armor and picked up steam. Dr. Jon Gettman, then the director of NORML, filed a new rescheduling petition in 1995. This was finally denied in 2001 – it only took seven years this time – but the reasons why it was denied were more specific and easily attacked. The phrase “arbitrary and capricious” began to resonate. It’s a magic one among lawyers, especially those fighting regulatory agencies.
Read this and you realize how silly Supreme Court Justice Breyer was when he asked, in Raich v. Ashcroft, why medical marijuana patients didn't just follow the procedure for re-scheduling, rather than taking it to the Supreme court in a commerce clause case.
The federal government will use every drop of deceit, stalling, and legal maneuvering it can find. We'll have to use the courts, the laws, the states, public opinion and more to drag the feds, kicking and screaming, to admitting the truth.
10:11:19 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Meta-analysis or meta-deception?
Mark Souder's "Safe and Effective Drug Act" has been introduced in the House (see my post earlier this week). It's HR-5429
The short description:
To require the National Institute on Drug Abuse to develop a meta-analysis of the available scientific data regarding the safety and health risks of smoking marijuana and the clinically-proven effectiveness of smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes, and to require the Food and Drug Administration to promptly disseminate the meta-analysis.
Now, other than the obvious flaw of specifying "smoking" as the only way to use medical marijuana, the concept of this description is positive. Gathering and disseminating scientific data is something that drug policy reformers support whole-heartedly.
But let's go a step further. In the language of the bill, there is a small part about the method for this "meta-analysis."
(a) In General- The Director of the National Institutes of Health, acting through the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (referred to in this Act as the `Director of the Institute'), shall develop a meta-analysis of the available scientific data regarding the safety and health risks of smoking marijuana and the clinically-proven effectiveness of smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes.
OK, now the sham is exposed. It will be the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse that will gather the information. And NIDA has a historic reputation of being one-sided in its approach, susceptible to political pressures to re-inforce the drug war (and was at the very least a passive co-conspirator in the Ricaurte MDMA scandal). Current director Nora Volkow has tried to change the perception of the agency, but it's got too much baggage and too much of an agenda built in to its mission.
NIDA is the wrong place for this analysis. This bill should be opposed unless it can be amended to change the means of collecting scientific data, and to change the wording that repeatedly infers that "smoking" is the only means of taking medical marijuana.
9:00:06 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Wednesday, December 8, 2004 |
Mmmmm... scrambled
So New York lawmakers finally voted to scale back (somewhat) the harsh Rockefeller drug laws, after years of hard work and lobbying by tons of dedicated drug policy reformers.
Two longtime goals of drug law reformers -- giving near-total sentencing discretion to judges and allowing some offenders to avoid prison entirely in favor of treatment -- are not included in the agreement.
But the Governor has it figured out...
"Now we put in a new law that will rationalize that sentencing (structure) and make the punishment fit the crime," [Governor Pataki] said.
Right. Jim at Vice Squad has a few choice words for the Governor, regarding how you determine when a punishment fits a drug crime.
I'd take it a step further. This "reform" is a joke and yet the drug policy reformers don't dare turn it down. To ease the sentences of even a few is better than nothing.
But this is what it feels like: After years of forcing New Yorkers to buy contaminated eggs for $20 a dozen, the legislature has finally reduced the price to $12.
Pass the salt.
9:00:53 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Tuesday, December 7, 2004 |
Offending the concept of justice
Via TalkLeft: Florida's Judge Gregory Posnell refused to apply guidline sentences for a drug conviction that would have called for 188 months for a 24-year-old with thyroid cancer, based on drug stings involving $500. And he let us know how he felt in his opinion (pdf).
A guideline sentence in this case starkly illustrates the problem of attempting to fit the human experience into a discrete mathematical matrix. It just can’t be done, and this Court cannot in good conscience do it, because it offends the Court’s concept of justice.
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In the meantime, the “war on drugs” goes on. Others will undoubtedly replace Torrey Williams in the chain of drug commerce, and the Courts will continue to incarcerate them for long periods at alarming rates.
More at Doug Berman's blog.
5:52:58 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Sorry for the inconvenience
Some of my regular readers have had some difficulties lately. Comments have been moved to a new server, which hopefully will be much more robust, and some comments from the past couple of days may have been lost in the changeover (I have not deleted any comments).
Also, I don't know if it's at all related, but some comcast customers have been unable to access salonblogs or other radio userland blogs for the past few days. That appears to be resolved now.
Thanks for hanging in there and continuing to visit the Rant! (And don't forget to visit The Agitator, where I am doing some guest blogging.)
5:35:39 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Monday, December 6, 2004 |
The Brain's Own Marijuana
In the December, 2004 issue of Scientific American:
"The Brain's Own Marijuana: Research into natural chemicals that mimic marijuana's effects in the brain could help to explain--and suggest treatments for--pain, anxiety, eating disorders, phobias and other conditions" by Roger A. Nicoll and Bradley N. Alger
Marijuana is a drug with a mixed history. Mention it to one person, and it will conjure images of potheads lost in a spaced-out stupor. To another, it may represent relaxation, a slowing down of modern madness. To yet another, marijuana means hope for cancer patients suffering from the debilitating nausea of chemotherapy, or it is the promise of relief from chronic pain. The drug is all these things and more, for its history is a long one, spanning millennia and continents. It is also something everyone is familiar with, whether they know it or not. Everyone grows a form of the drug, regardless of their political leanings or recreational proclivities. That is because the brain makes its own marijuana, natural compounds called endocannabinoids (after the plant's formal name, Cannabis sativa).
The authors have both been extensively involved in research in endocannabinoids, and they give a fascinating, though often technical, overview of how marijuana affects the brain, starting with a brief history of the use of marijuana worldwide and leading to the effects on specific parts of the brain.
One of the most interesting parts to me was the discussion on how the brain deals with stressful situations. Research has shown that repeated stimulus (like loud sounds) combined with stressful situations (like bullets whizzing at you) generates a natural fear reaction to the stimulus (in this case, loud sounds). In most people, after the stressful situation stops, gradually the stimulus fails to produce fear (so you're not always jumping at loud sounds). Natural endocannabinoids are important in reducing the level of anxiety when the danger passes, but it's believed that some individuals don't produce them correctly, and you get no reduction of anxiety.
This is probably why the Israelis have looked into marijuana as a therapy for soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, and it leads to all sorts of potential uses of marijuana for psychological treatments.
The authors conclude:
In a remarkable way, the effects of marijuana have led to the still unfolding story of the endocannabinoids. The receptor CB1 seems to be present in all vertebrate species, suggesting that systems employing the brain's own marijuana have been in existence for about 500 million years. During that time, endocannabinoids have been adapted to serve numerous, often subtle, functions. We have learned that they do not affect the development of fear, but the forgetting of fear; they do not alter the ability to eat, but the desirability of the food, and so on. Their presence in parts of the brain associated with complex motor behavior, cognition, learning and memory implies that much remains to be discovered about the uses to which evolution has put these interesting messengers.
11:07:28 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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