Monday, October 16, 2006

When your drug war is a failure, silence those who actually have a solution Everybody in the entire world is in agreement that the international effort to deal with opium in Afghanistan has been a colossal failure. Everybody is blaming everybody else and nobody has a clue what to do about it, with one exception: The Senlis Council (a European think-tank) has developed and promoted concrete and workable plans, including: Opium Licensing for the Production of Essential Medicines: Securing a Sustainable Future for Afghanistan. So when you have a complete failure on your hands, have no clue how to turn it around, and a bunch of very smart people come up with a comprehensive plan to solve your problems, what do you do? The Afghan government has ordered the closure of all offices of a group that wants to promote new ways of dealing with the global drugs problem. The Interior Ministry said the Senlis Council, had been "confusing farmers" and had been a factor in the increase in poppy cultivation. Idiots! [Via Blog Reload] 11:47:54 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Drug WarRant needs a new laptop Maybe I should say I want a new computer. My current laptop is still working, and I hope to get it to limp along until January at least, but it's missing a couple of keys and is held together with tape. My 12" Mac Powerbook has been phenomenal -- it has been my workhorse for years, going everywhere with me (including Europe). I've dropped it, kicked it, done everything to it and it has been continually reliable. But it's getting old, starting to feel a little slow, and also cannot handle some of the new photography and design software I need to use. No, I don't need a high-powered laptop to blog, but I use my one computer for everything I do, which includes blogging, photography, graphic design, and website management. So I'm looking for some help. Check out the options I'm weighing and consider donating to the Drug WarRant laptop fund. I'm hoping to have enough raised to get a new computer by January or February (and I'll have both a birthday and Christmas in between for added reasons to donate). There are a lot of small costs that regularly come up with Drug WarRant (including server fees, domain fees, and research costs, etc.), but I've never been interested in doing much fundraising (and I don't have any advertising revenue). I don't do this for compensation (I have a day job that I love as well), but I could use help with a major purchase like the laptop. Don't feel obligated -- if you can't afford to donate, please don't. If you think your donations could be better used to help a drug policy reform candidate or an established drug policy reform organization, please do so. But if you've got $5 or $50 or $500 sitting around with no plans... Thanks. 9:23:27 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

HHS gets a letter Via Americans for Safe Access, Senator James Jeffords (Vermont) sent a letter (pdf) to Michael Leavitt, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, asking why they hell it's taking them so long to do their job in the legal process of evaluating a petition to reschedule marijuana (he worded it a little different than I did, but the polite language barely covers his annoyance). follow-up on your answer to a question I asked during your confirmation process. ... the law requires the Secretary to conduct this evaluation "within a reasonable time." ... you stated that you "would make every effort to complete the evaluation by August 2005." Needless to say August 2005 has long since passed ... and yet no action has been taken ... Please describe the factors that have led to this delay ... It's good to have a Senator paying attention to the foot dragging by HHS. Eventually that agency is going to have to actually come up with something due to the accumulated political pressure or through a court order. Of course the problem (from the perspective of HHS) is that they'll no choice but to show that medical marijuana is viable, or they'll have to lie with specific detail that can be publicly and scientifically refuted. 7:53:29 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

The ONDCP's pet talks about needle exchange Over at the Drug Czar's "blog," they have crafted an Ask the Expert "interview" with "Doctor" David Murray on needle exchange. This is their own pet doctor who they trot out whenever they want to sound like they have something medical to say. It's as bizarre as most of what comes out of the Drug Czar's office. Though full of verbiage intended to sound erudite, in the end, it makes no sense at all. Check out this passage, where Murray essentially says that, unless needle exchange actually reduces drug use, it doesn't matter whether it saves lives. We are faced with two epidemic diseases that destroy the health of individuals and communities. The first is the spread of blood-borne pathogens such as HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C through the sharing of contaminated injection equipment or by engaging in high-risk behaviors. The second is the scourge of drug use itself. An effective public health intervention must address both of these epidemics. The evidence is mixed as to whether needle exchange programs actually reduce the transmission of blood-borne pathogens; some studies have argued that they do, others argue that they demonstrably fail. But as to the second epidemic, the evidence is clear that distributing needles to enable continued drug injection does not reduce the continued drug injection. Finally, there is increasingly clear evidence that drug use itself, whether by injection or not, is associated with high-risk behaviors that lead to blood-borne pathogen transmission. The most comprehensive public health solution must be to reduce the incidence and prevalence of drug use. Of course, I'm not sure why I even get worked up about any of this. I'm guessing that drug policy reformers like me looking for a laugh or something to get worked up about are pretty much the only ones who read Pushing Back. 10:09:22 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Radley Balko Congratulations to Radley Balko for his new gig as a senior editor at Reason. Sounds like a good fit to me. Radley, of course, is the author of Overkill, has done incredible research in the area of the militarization of the drug war, and is The Agitator who brought the Corey Maye case to national attention. 9:01:22 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []