Monday, June 26, 2006

This is just too... hard to pass up Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for having drugs without a valid prescription. The drug? Viagra. [Via TalkLeft] 10:45:27 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Drugs are Not Child's Play The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has declared today "International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking." And they're doing it with the theme "Drugs are Not Child's Play," which ranks in terms of pure exploitive hype right alongside National Lampoon's Buy This [Magazine] or We'll Shoot This Dog -- just not as funny. UNODC has selected "drugs are not child's play" as the theme of its 2006 international campaign, in an effort to increase public awareness about the destructive power of drugs and society's responsibility to care for the well-being of children. The latest estimates indicate that 200 million people, or 5 per cent of the global population age 15-64, have consumed illicit drugs at least once in the last 12 months. But what about kids? What about children (aged 4 to 10)? Although they are seldom the object of national and international studies, children of all ages are affected by drug abuse and illicit trafficking. Street children, working and living in dire conditions, are vulnerable, as are boys and girls whose family members are buying or selling illicit substances. These kids are exposed not only to bad examples but also to violent behaviour associated to drug abuse. In some instances, children have lost their parents to this scourge and are now cared for by uncles, aunts or grandparents. At school, the situation may not be any better. Teenagers and peers may be pressuring kids to smoke cigarrettes and drink alcohol, at first, and then to try marihuana. Other types of drugs may follow. UNODC's anti-drugs campaign urges adults to protect children. And so we should. One of the first and most important steps would be to dismantle the UNODC. It is, after all, the policies promoted by the UNODC that makes trafficking profitable and increases the danger to children. [Thanks, Herb] 10:10:49 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Robert Novak, Colombia's Johnny Roundup Ever have one of those days when you just feel like you're dealing with jerks and idiots all day? Today's one of them. Starting out with Anthony Maria Costa and John Walters, and now... Robert Novak (or as John Stewart liked to call him: "Douchebag for Liberty") Novak has a particularly ugly, false, and partisan column today in the Chicago Sun Times: Dems Balk At Support For Colombia's Drug War. He starts with a profile of our 'heroic' drug war efforts in Colombia... MARIQUITA, Colombia -- At the Colombian National Police base here last Wednesday morning, a small air fleet took off. Hours earlier, a Fairchild Metroliner intelligence plane scouted poppy fields in the jungles 40 miles northward. Now several well-armed Huey helicopters embarked. They were followed by three Turbo fixed-wing aircraft spraying the fields to eradicate plants producing narcotics destined for U.S. and European users. Taking off last to complete the day's operation was a Blackhawk helicopter, fulfilling "search and rescue" requirements. Such hazardous operations -- subject to ground fire from narco-guerrillas -- take place in the Colombian Andes every day, amid disapproval from Western European government officials, Democrats in the U.S. Congress and critics inside Colombia. [emphasis added] And what reason do these critics have for not providing the drug warriors with everything they desire? "It is the campaign, all over the world, of the drug traffickers to claim there is environmental damage [resulting from aerial eradication]," Serrano told me. He credits the narco-terrorists influencing the European Union's refusal to participate in aerial eradication even though close to half of Europe's heroin supply comes from Colombia. Right. It's just the traffickers who claim the poisonous chemicals pose a danger. Aided, of course, by those uninformed Democrats and Europeans who object to increasing the already huge dispersal of chemicals that have been heavily implicated in damage to the environment and human reproduction. And, of course, if it wasn't for all these dupes of the drug traffickers and their silly environmental concerns, we'd be all done in Colombia. After all, Novak hears from his drug warrior friends in Colombia that they could win this war, if only they could have 15 more planes for additional aerial eradication efforts. But apparently the Democrats not only have this environmental hang-up, but they insist on seeing civil war in Colombia, while Novak is somehow able to discern that there is no political war in Colombia -- only good guys versus drug traffickers (he undoubtedly has some explanation for the fact that drug revenue has been used by every power structure in that country but neglected to share it with us). So naturally, Novak's deluded little mind was outraged when Representative Jim McGovern proposed eliminating $30 million in the foreign aid bill from aerial fumigation in Colombia and transferring it to emergency humanitarian relief for refugees. Novak fumes: In response to this evidence of Colombia's escape from degradation as a narco-terrorist state, Democrats in the House voted 161- 28 for McGovern's disastrous cut in U.S. aid. The House Republicans saved Colombia, but ardent young officers of the national police are anxious to win this war. They need more help from Washington, and they deserve it. [emphasis added] The House Republicans saved Colombia? By continuing the status quo of spending millions of taxpayer dollars on poisoning crops with nothing to show for it? Remind me not to call Robert Novak if I need medical attention. Note: Novak has been a huge fan of aerial chemical eradication efforts in Colombia. 7:10:22 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

UN and US Drug Czars' New Message: Cocaine and Heroin as Safe as Marijuana! Via Pushing Back: "Among the key findings of the U.N. World Drug Report..." Today, the characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin. [Thanks, Daksya] --- In other news, mother's milk determined to share many of the characteristics of other liquid-based beverages such as whisky and rum. 3:41:58 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

World drug czar claims victory Anthony Maria Costa is sort of John Walters, but on a global scale. He's in charge of the UN Office on Drug and Crime, which pretty much has as its goal the imposition of United States' failed drug policy on the rest of the world. (It's the one part of the UN our government seems to like, since it acts like a U.S. lapdog and mindlessly promotes prohibition.) According to this Bloomberg article: Global Drug War Is Being Won, Illegal Use `Contained,' UN Says June 26 (Bloomberg) -- The world is winning the war on drugs, according to a United Nations report that said opium production might soon be eradicated in Asia's notorious "Golden Triangle" and coca cultivation in the Andean region of South American has decreased 25 percent since 2000. "Drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained," Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a statement accompanying the release today of the agency's 2006 World Drug Report. Of course, that's just like the drug czar's regular pronouncements here, as Jeffrey Miron notes in the article: "If you read these reports over time from the UN or the U.S. drug czar, you see a constant up and down, from claims of victory to statements that things are horrible," Miron said in an interview. "You tend to find that a problem that is solved one place shifts to another. There will always be some uses going up and some going down, and these reports don't address issues like the costs of drug use from diseases spread by needles or infringements on civil rights from the drug war." And that's so true. Any time a number goes down temporarily, regardless of context, the prohibitionists claim victory specifically attributed to their efforts (usually with no causal evidence). If the number, instead, remains the same or goes up, that's merely a reason to put out a press release calling for increased vigor (and more funding). Nice job security. (Also note that Costa brags about coca cultivation being down in the Andean region, but doesn't mention the actual distribution of coca. That's partly because many experts believe that the traffickers have developed higher yields needing less cultivated area, and there's been no evidence of a reduction in supply.) 8:12:43 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []