Monday, January 10, 2005

Jon Stewart takes on the Drug Czar Nice little segment on The Daily Show tonight -- Jon led it off with the illegal media pieces by the Drug Czar and segued into the Dept. of Education payola scandal. And had a little fun with it as always. Stewart: ONDCP - That's the Office of National Drug Control Policy, voted least fun Christmas party 12 years running. 10:22:16 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Who do you trust? Interesting column in the New York Daily News by Denis Hamill In 1969, as a hippie kid at Woodstock, I sat in the mud with a score of Brooklyn pilgrims from Prospect Park's Hippie Hill listening to festival organizers shouting over the loudspeakers to the 400,000 zonked-out druggies, "Beware of the brown acid, man! If you've dropped the bad brown acid, report immediately to the medical tent, man!" ... Judging by recent events, you get more truth from drug culture than pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration. On three separate holiday-related occasions, I was sitting around gabbing with friends in Brooklyn and Queens and one of the first topics to arise was the reluctant revelations by the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies that they are literally killing us by the tens of thousands with these deadly prescription drugs they are hawking with less conscience than streetcorner dope pushers. 8:40:05 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

More on that Carnival Cruise bust... Scott comes through for me (as always) with the full details of the Jam Cruise 3 drug bust (including, bizarrely, photos of all those arrested and video of the news coverage). "Jam Cruise 3" Lands Twelve in Jail Before Ship Ever Leaves The Dock The scenario was the same, over and over. As more than 1,200 passengers passed through the Jaxport terminal, they stopped for a photo, then proceeded on to Customs for a pre-boarding inspection. Over a span of six hours, a dozen of those passengers were 'outed' by a proficient U.S. Customs and Border Protection drug dog named Megan. So these were all people in the U.S., boarding a boat in Jacksonville, Florida and going through U.S. customs. Now I'm trying to understand this. Isn't it the job of Customs to prevent things from coming in to the United States? Yes, I know that the cruise goes outside our national waters, so Customs gets involved, but shouldn't that be when the boat returns? Is this at all an appropriate use of Customs personnel? We don't have the resources to check more than a small percent of the cargo containers coming in to the country (any of which could contain terrorist weapons). But we can have Customs personnel checking for cruise passengers with some pot hidden in their crotch? That's criminal use of our homeland security forces. 6:58:55 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

A couple of things to check out Loretta Nall's debate last night turned out relatively non-controversial as her "opponent" was mostly in agreement. (It's hard to get the real prohibitionists to debate since their position has so little factual base.) You can get the story (and listen to the show) at Loretta's blog. John at High: The true tale of American Marijuana has completed the first part of his rebuttal of the Drug Czar's ridiculous publication: "Marijuana Myths & Facts: The Truth Behind 10 Popular Misperceptions". The rebuttal of the intro is a good start and I look forward to see where he goes from here. Here's a couple of brief observations I made on that publication back in November (and if you look at the comments on that post, you'll see that Lorax has started work on a different kind of refutation.) Of course, for the real Marijuana Myths and Facts, you can go to Zimmer and Morgan's Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts - an excellent book. Power and Control has a little piece on a drug bust at a Carnival Cruise which caught my attention. Unfortunately, the news on it is very spotty, and I haven't been able to find more details (such as whether there was any legitimate legal cause/justification to do a search). But the notion of using a "captive" location (like a cruise) to do random drug searches is disturbing to my view of what's left of the constitution. And finally, Happy Birthday to Libby at Last One Speaks. 8:22:33 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Houston OpEd lays out the truth about marijuana In yesterday's Houston Chronicle, defense attorney Brian Samuelson has written an outstanding piece: Lawyer's Plea on Pot Penalty. Basically, he's calling for decriminalization and gives quite a number of excellent practical reasons for it. He also, though, lays on the line the truths that are seldom told in public. Here's a taste: In fact, the overwhelming evidence available today strongly indicates that marijuana use is not nearly as harmful as once believed, and actually has therapeutic and medicinal values. Unlike nicotine and alcohol, marijuana is not physically addictive. There is no convincing scientific evidence that marijuana kills brain cells, impairs long-term memory or causes mental or physical illness. The only "harmful" effects from the use of marijuana that have been proven are that an individual under the influence of marijuana will realize a loss of short-term memory, difficulty learning and recalling new information, and a temporary impairment of psychomotor function. Yes, marijuana temporarily dulls the senses. But, unlike alcohol, a person who intends to operate a motor vehicle after smoking marijuana can immediately eliminate the loss of perception, and its other temporary effects on the brain, by eating a small meal. As a criminal defense attorney, I can assure you that arrests for driving under the influence of marijuana are extremely rare. Every serious scholar and government commission that has examined the relationship between marijuana use and crime have reached the same conclusion: Marijuana use does not lead to crime. Almost all human and animal studies indicate that marijuana decreases rather than increases physical aggression. Not bad. I hope a lot of people read it. 12:15:35 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []