Sunday, January 23, 2005

Still waiting on those budget cuts President Bush's budget is due out on February 7. A few of his promised cuts to halve the deficit have been surfacing as trial balloons, including: Medicare benefits Housing and community programs Hubble Telescope Repair But still no word on eliminating the ONDCP, the DEA, much of the Federal Prison (and prosecution) costs, the wasteful drug eradication program in Colombia, drug task forces, and much more of the ineffective and exhorbitantly expensive drug budget. We could save billions! Come on, President Bush. You can do it. Give John Walters his pink slip. 9:56:09 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

US Backs Away from Afghan Arial Spraying In yesterday's LA Times Deferring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Bush administration has backed off its plans to use aerial spraying to destroy Afghanistan's poppy crop, at least for the time being, administration officials and lawmakers said. Instead, the United States will help develop alternative livelihoods for poor farmers, build up the police and counter-narcotics forces and pay teams of Afghans to cut and burn poppy fields by hand this spring to demonstrate that opium production will be a risky business in the new Afghanistan. Yeah, it's that pesky little problem of how do you win the hearts and minds of the people when you bomb their crops with toxic chemicals, or burn their fields and drive them into abject poverty? If only there was some other solution? "Everybody supports an aggressive program on drugs including manual eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods," said a congressional source who asked to remain anonymous. Well I don't. And I don't need to remain anonymous. You've got a profitable crop that just needs to be made legitimate so that the criminals don't profit from it. And the only solution that comes to mind is spending huge amounts of our taxpayer dollars to destroy it, and then more huge amounts of our taxpayer dollars to provide food since their livelihood has been destroyed. Weird logic. Oh, and we actually do buy lots of Turkey's poppy crop for legitimate medical purposes. So why can't we buy it from Afghanistan instead? Update: The Senlis Council is advising President Karzai to explore new policy initiatives and urges the International Narcotics Control Board to give special license to Afghanistan for opium production for morphine. "The medical use of heroin, would take a very large part of the market out of the hands of war lords and drug traffickers--the people who are threatening the newly formed democracy in Afghanistan," said Reinert. "A pilot project for heroin prescription is being launched at the moment in Canada. More initiatives like this are needed." Colombian Strategy Failed: The Council said that recent experiences in Colombia, where enormous sums of money have been put into military action to little effect should not be repeated in Afghanistan, saying that this money could be spent on the organization and implementation of schemes like those in Canada for heroin prescription. "We have seen in Colombia that even military power is not enough to defeat the force of the extremely lucrative illegal drugs economy," said Reinert. "We must learn from the mistakes made in Colombia and under no circumstances repeat them. For the moment, the same policies that failed in Colombia are being proposed by the United States. It has not worked in Colombia, where drugs represent 2.5% of the GDP, so why would it work in Afghanistan, where they represent 60%?" Read the whole thing. [Thanks to Loretta] 9:47:30 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Governor Frank Murkowski, idiot ..has nothing better to do than try to mess with the constitutional right of privacy of Alaskan citizens. In yesterday's Anchorage Daily News: Gov. Frank Murkowski on Friday asked the Legislature to overrule a court ruling that adult Alaskans have the right to possess marijuana for personal use in their homes. Murkowski introduced a bill that challenges the state court's ruling and that would significantly tighten other state marijuana laws -- making a lot more pot crimes into felonies. Only one little problem -- that court ruling was based on a constitutional right of privacy specified in the Alaska state constitution. William Satterberg, the Fairbanks lawyer who argued the case that toppled the state prohibition on at-home pot, said he doesn't think the courts will backtrack. "Unconstitutional still remains unconstitutional no matter what the Legislature thinks," Satterberg said. The Alaska Supreme Court in September let stand a lower court ruling last year that adult Alaskans have the right to possess up to four ounces of marijuana in their homes for personal use. The lower court based its opinion on a 1975 decision, known as Ravin v. State, which declared the strong right to privacy from government interference that is guaranteed under the Alaska Constitution outweighed any social harm that might be caused by the small at-home use of marijuana by adults. Kudos, by the way, to the Alaska Public Defenders Office: The Alaska public defender's agency said it would need another $160,000 a year in state funds to meet its increased workload under the bill. You can bet there would be a whole lot more expense than that in other areas as well (think prisons). [Thanks, Scott] 9:30:59 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []