Saturday, October 15, 2005

Police shoot dogs Via Last One Speaks comes this story from Decatur, Alabama. As long as they think you have drugs, your 4th Amendment rights don't matter, your possessions don't matter, the lives of your pets don't matter, and in many cases, your life doesn't matter. Police in a minor drug raid shot two of three family dogs. That part's not in dispute. Once we know this fact, in my mind the onus is on the police to defend and document their activities. The whole notion (as I have repeatedly said in this blog) of using SWAT-style tactics for drug raids is wrong and dangerous, and puts the prevention of flushing evidence above the lives of citizens. So at this point, unless the police can better prove their story, my tendency is to believe the family whose home was invaded. Police say they used fire extinquishers to subdue the dogs and only fired when necessary to protect their lives. The family said the police came in shooting the dogs, killed one immediately, shot the second one in the back as it fled and the third escaped by hiding under a table. The family also says that there was no fire exinguisher residue anywhere and they saw the police bring one in later. Police say they found an undisclosed amount of marijuana, cocaine, paraphernalia, and cash (of course, once they find drugs they always find paraphernalia, since ordinary household items start qualifying). The family said that there was about 8 grams of marijuana, but no coke, and the $600 the police seized was for moving expenses (they were packed for a move). 8 grams of pot and $600 justifies shooting your dogs? Of course, I don't believe that any amount of pot justifies busting down your door to begin with. Oh, and this doesn't help: "There was a female officer that saw my mother's dog laying there dead, and she walked by, saying, 'good dog,' and my mother had to sit there and see that," Cagle said. 7:29:48 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Free hard drugs Are people allowing themselves to actually be bolder in their thinking these days? From a small Pennsylvania town... Amid the flurry of voices on the phone cheering a column about an ex-cop advocating drug legalization was that of Dr. Joseph Foreman. I'm assuming the reference is to a story about one of the fine folks at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) -- perhaps Howard Woolridge's ride across America. From that, a doctor gains the courage to speak up. Dr. Foreman isn't a crank. When he told me that heroin, cocaine and meth should be legalized, I listened. "You have to control the suppliers. Once you take their profits away, they dry up. This is how we keep young people from getting hooked," he said. Foreman, 79, lives in Churchville and spent 40 years as a surgeon, part of it as chief of surgery at Warminster General Hospital in the 1980s. Here's where it gets really interesting. His solution is to launch government-run clinics where registered addicts would go to snort and shoot up. ( He doesn't include marijuana, which to him is not a "hard" drug. ) "If my plan works, there will be no more money for suppliers because the hardcore users will be getting [drugs] for free," he said. With the profit motive gone, the black market would disappear, and kids would be far less likely to get hooked on street dope, he said. His plan sounds like appeasement, I said. "Yes it is," he said. "But I recognize that putting addicts in jail or arresting street runners who are supplying drugs only means there will be another guy to replace them. I think my plan will work. I really do." The reporter was uncertain about the idea, but at least willing to pass it on. Well, I can tell Dr. Foreman not only that his plan would work, but that it has worked. From an article in the Guardian: Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist, Martin Kilias, found that the users' involvement in burglary, mugging and robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same strategy. All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier ( because clean heroin properly used is a benign drug ) and that they are more stable with clear improvements in housing, employment and relationships. Kudos to Dr. Foreman for having the courage to think outside the box and speak up. Kudos to J.D. Mullane and the Bucks County Courier Times to look past their conventional wisdom and allow the doctor's idea to be printed. We're a long way from the public's ability to even let their mind grasp such a solution -- being able to actually discuss it is an incredible first step. 3:26:46 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

News? Melissa Etheridge smoked pot while she had breast cancer. "Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana," Etheridge says in an interview to air Sunday on "Dateline NBC" (7 p.m. EDT). When asked how her doctors reacted, Etheridge says, "Every single one was, 'Oh, yeah. That's the best help for the effects of chemotherapy.' " The sad thing about this is that in a sane world it shouldn't even be news. It should be the equivalent of a celebrity saying "When I had a tooth pain, I took ibuprofen." Of course you did. But we're not there yet. So for now, I'm thrilled that she's saying it on NBC and lots of media are picking it up as celebrity news. 10:13:59 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

How are your brain cells? One of the classic reefer madness claims was that smoking pot would destroy your brain cells. Even though that was thoroughly debunked long ago, this wrong-headed assertion still pops up regularly. Not a single legitimate study has found any long-term damage to the brain from marijuana use. Now a new study indicates that pot may actually increase your brain cells! Cannabinoids promote neurogenesis in embryonic and adult rats, and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects, according to a new report in the current issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. The effects appear to contradict those seen from other studied drugs of abuse, the authors note. "Most drugs of abuse such as nicotine, heroine, and cocaine suppress neurogenesis in these cells, but the effects of cannabinoids weren't clear. We show that cannabinoids, in fact, promote neurogenesis," study author Xia Zhang of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told The Scientist. Now before you rush out and try to gain some brain, be aware that this is only a preliminary finding that shows some interesting results; it doesn't involve humans or smoking; and there's much more to learn. However, the good news is that this will generate interest (the press is already having a lot of fun with this) which will encourage more research in this area. And the thing is, for those who have studied and observed the effects and use (as opposed to abuse) of marijuana, none of these results are particularly surprising. [Thanks, kwix] 12:16:57 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []