Thursday, February 24, 2005

Just when I was putting the pieces of my head back together... August 13, 2004: John Walters, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently startled the media by admitting that the $3.3 billion Plan Colombia, now in its fourth year, has failed to make a significant dent in the amount of cocaine flowing out of that country. Yesterday: John Walters, director of the US National Drug Control Policy, said on Wednesday in Miami that methods used to combat drugs in Colombia - principally aerial fumigation - were being studied to see how they can be replicated in Afghanistan. 11:40:57 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Assisted Suicide, the CSA, and the Supreme Court So you've got a state, Oregon, that has passed a law allowing assisted suicide in specific situations. Unwilling to accept the audacity of a state wanting to control its own medical practices, the DEA steps in and starts yanking the licenses of doctors who participate (under the notion that the Controlled Substances Act gives the feds the authority to override at whim). Apparently this infuriated the President, who called in the Attorney General... and I've just gotten hold of this transcript of his remarks: President: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states respectively."... The federal government has no place here. The question is a moral one, an individual one. Grappling with the nature of life and the purview of God, in which the federal government has no... Forget it. The courts are gonna nail you. You pull this crap one more time, you're fired. Wow! The President really does believe in states' rights, in individual moral responsibility, in limited federal government... unfortunately this President also happens to be the fictional President Bartlett on "The West Wing." In real life, the feds have appealed the case to the Supreme Court and the Supremes have taken the case - Oregon v. Gonzales. It's of interest to me because of the over-reach of the Controlled Substances Act, once again interfering in the right of states to allow doctors and patients to choose their own medical course of treatment. Clearly, there are logical connections to Raich v. Ashcroft, and people are already starting to wonder how Raich will affect Gonzales. Moon Over Pittsburgh has a nice little update on Raich and discusses Gonzales as well. Worth a read if you're interested in the Supreme Court, federalism and the CSA. 7:07:52 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Grown-ups say the Darnedest Things Now that Art Linkletter is back in the news as spokesperson for USANext, it gives us the oppotunity to laugh at his exchanges with Nixon again. Hesiod over at The American Street has all the fun, including this: Linkletter: "Another big difference between marijuana and alcohol is that when people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable. You don't see people --" Nixon: "That's right, that's right." Linkletter: "They sit down with a marijuana cigarette to get high --" Nixon: "A person does not drink to get drunk." Linkletter: "That's right." Nixon: "A person drinks to have fun." Linkletter: "I'd say smoke marijuana, you smoke marijuana to get high." Nixon: "Smoke marijuana, er, uh, you want to get a charge of some sort, and float, and this, that and the other thing." Yup. Richard Nixon was an alcoholic. But, even Richard Nixon knew that Art Linkletter was pretty much an out of touch old fogey. Later on, he famously met with Elvis an enlisted him as an "anti-drug" crusader (what a bizarre moment that was). As Tricky Dick said to Bob Haldeman at the time: "This is just what I've been looking for. Elvis Presley, a rock 'n' roll hero to millions, wants to help with our anti-drug crusade. This will go a lot farther with the kids than Art Linkletter." There's more, including Linkletter's analysis of various marijuana grades. Update: A commenter reminds me that Linkletter's daughter had supposedly died in an "LSD-related" incident. There's several problems with that: The story is false. Diane Linkletter committed suicide and there were no drugs in her system. It appears that the Linkletter family preferred to "encourage" the LSD story than face the reasons for suicide. Even if it was true, it would have been completely irrelevant to the ratcheting up of the war on marijuana caused in part because Linkletter and Nixon were idiots. I have absolutely no sympathy for people in power who experience a tragedy and then procede to use that power to destroy the lives of countless others through ill-advised and counter-productive laws. 6:01:07 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Blogger's Head Explodes Our favorite drug czar was speaking to the press again, this time in preparation for today's release of President Bush's national drug control strategy for 2005. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday. OK, before I break something, let's take a trip in the wayback machine. 1. "I want to escalate the war on drugs," said Attorney General John Ashcroft in his first interview after being nominated for the post. "I want to renew it. I want to refresh it." [link] 2. A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. [link] 3. In an attempt to show just how benign the War on Terror will be for law-abiding citizens, Ashcroft has chosen an odd model: the War on Drugs. At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Ashcroft repeatedly said that the tools in the fight against terrorism should be at least as strong as the ones used to fight gambling, organized crime, and illegal ("illicit" in government parlance) substances. Law enforcement officials, he said, should be able not only to freeze terrorists' assets, but seize them--"Just like we have for those individuals involved in drug trafficking."[link (9/27/01)] 4. The drug war and the war on terrorism is converging both practically and, more important, rhetorically. This will allow the Justice Department and the Defense Department to use all their new, extraordinary powers for both. Timmy the drug user will go from being an exaggerated fictional ad to a basis for ignoring due process for street-level drug investigations and for involving the military in more domestic law enforcement.[link (11/29/02)] 5. Ashcroft: "And finally, the Patriot Act updated our anti-terrorism laws to reflect new technologies and to give us the same tools used to fight against drug dealers and organized crime so that we can fight against terrorists."[link (6/8/04)] and back to the present... The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday. OK, can I break something now? But wait!!! It goes from being horrifyingly inane to mind bogglingly stupid. On the other hand, Walters said it ought to be easier to go after drugs traffickers than terrorists because the drugs trade involved many thousands of people, making it potentially more vulnerable to attack and disruption. ??? Um. Can you repeat that? On the other hand, Walters said it ought to be easier to go after drugs traffickers than terrorists because the drugs trade involved many thousands of people, making it potentially more vulnerable to attack and disruption. Excuse me while my head explodes. [Hat tip to Casey] 12:36:35 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []