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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, March 18, 2006 |
Marc Emery in the Washington Post
Great piece by Doug Struck in today's Washington Post:
High Crimes, or a Tokin' Figure?: Canadians find the 'Prince of Pot' Harmless. The DEA begs to differ.
It's a full 3-page profile on Marc and his Marijuana crusades, that points out how clearly public he had been about his activities.
Until recently, nobody much cared, it seemed. The police hadn't bothered to come around for eight years. Before that, they busted Emery for seed sales and raided him four times. But he just got fined -- once with "a nice speech from the judge saying what a nice person I was and how marijuana probably shouldn't be illegal," Emery says -- and the police stopped trying.
In truth, Emery hated being ignored. He tried to stir up notoriety. Every year, he filled out his income taxes listing his occupation as "Marijuana Seed Vendor," paying heftily and honestly, he says, on his multimillion-dollar business. The Canadian Revenue Service never questioned him.
He told the Canada post office he was getting and sending his seeds through the mail. They never stopped delivery. He started the B.C. Marijuana Party, fielded 79 candidates in 2001, and ran repeatedly for local and federal offices. He never won.
He broadcast "Pot-TV" on the Internet, entertained politicians, and openly funded marches, lawsuits and marijuana-legalization drives from Arizona to Israel to Washington, D.C.
When it was too quiet at home, he would go somewhere to rattle up a pro-pot demonstration. He would light up a fat joint in front of a police station, daring the cops to arrest him.
Twenty-one times they did. Usually he got off, or was released after a night in jail, or fined. His longest stretch was 61 days in jail in 2004, ordered by a Saskatoon judge clearly irked at Emery's in-your-face apologia. No big deal, Emery says. He read the Bible behind bars.
Then came the DEA.
Read the whole thing.
Between 60 Minutes and the Washington Post, Marc is starting to get some real momentum in the mainstream, and it's all coming out as fairly positive press for him. People see him as a nice, quirky guy, not some monster. They notice that Canada had no interest in putting him away, and so the DEA comes off in not so great a light.
I think there's a long-term chipping away that has been occurring, through a complete lack of understanding about public relations on the part of the DEA. The public has gotten bored with seizure photo-ops and are starting to realize that they have no meaning long-term. At the same time, they see DEA busts of medical marijuana patients with revulsion. And the Marc Emery extradition is not going to help the DEA at all.
12:35:02 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Friday, March 17, 2006 |
Nearly Half Of Americans Believe Pot Should Be Regulated Like Alcohol
Via NORML
Nearly one out of two Americans support amending federal law "to let states legally regulate and tax marijuana the way they do liquor and gambling," according to a national poll of 1,004 likely voters by Zogby International and commissioned by the NORML Foundation.
Forty-six percent of respondents -- including a majority of those polled on the east (53 percent) and west (55 percent) coasts -- say they support allowing states to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. Forty-nine percent of respondents opposed taxing and regulating cannabis, and five percent were undecided.
"Public support for replacing the illicit marijuana market with a legally regulated, controlled market similar to alcohol -- complete with age restrictions and quality controls -- continues to grow," NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. "NORML's challenge is to convert this growing public support into a tangible public policy that no longer criminalizes those adults who use marijuana responsibly."
Respondents' support for marijuana law reform was strongly influenced by age and political affiliation. Nearly two-thirds of 18-29 year-olds (65 percent) and half of 50-64 year-olds think federal law should be amended to allow states the option to regulate marijuana, while majorities of 30-49 year-olds (58 percent) and seniors 65 and older (52 percent) oppose such a change.
Among those respondents who identified themselves as Democrats, 59 percent back taxing and regulating marijuana compared to only 33 percent of Republicans. Forty-four percent of Independents and 85 percent of Libertarians say they supported the law change.
Respondents' opinions were also influenced by religious affiliation. Nearly 70 percent of respondents who identified themselves as Jewish, and nearly 60 percent of respondents who said they were non-religious believe that states should regulate cannabis, while only 48 percent of Catholics and 38 percent of Protestants support such a policy.
10:52:23 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Philippines both winning and losing the drug war
I found this article from the Philippine Star interesting, even though the butchering of the English language makes it sometimes a little confusing.
Basically it says that, despite the fact that the United States called the Philippines "a drug trafficker's paradise," saying the illegal drug trade in the country has evolved into a billion-dollar industry, the chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency ( PDEA ) says the government is winning the war on drugs.
How do you explain this discrepancy? The chief claims that it's part of the strategy:
"The report, made annually by the US State Department, is used by their decision makers in allocating funds for the anti-drug campaign for other countries," Avenido said.
He said if the US tags a country as drug free, they will no longer give support to that particularly country, he explained.
So it seems the trick for other countries is, in order to get the most money from our taxpayers, you need to be seen to be cracking down very hard, but not really accomplishing anything. Fortunately for them, that strategy is a perfect fit with the drug war.
9:50:50 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Judge objects to harsh crack sentencing guidelines
Via TalkLeft
U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Presnell in Orlando, FL refused to apply the Federal crack cocaine sentencing guidelines. He ruled:
This arbitrary and discriminatory disparity between powder and crack cocaine implicates the Section 3553(a)(2)(A) factors. Unless one assumes the penalties for powder cocaine are vastly too low, then the far-higher penalties for crack are at odds with the seriousness of the offense. The absence of a logical rationale for such a disparity and its disproportionate impact on one historically disfavored race promotes disrespect for the law and suggests that the resulting sentences are unjust. Accordingly, these statutory factors weigh heavily against the imposition of a Guidelines sentence.
The fact that this sentencing disparity has not yet been corrected by Congress is a powerful racist stain on our government.
9:35:47 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Drug Czar caught
Not only can't the Drug Czar go around unchallenged any more, even the Press is realizing that they can't automatically believe everything he says, and is asking questions (and catching the lies).
The White House drug czar yesterday sounded the alarm on high school kids drinking and drugging during spring break but backed away from assertions that 1 in 7 high schoolers under age 18 are partying unsupervised in hotspots like Cancun and Miami Beach.
"It was in fact a very real human error," Rosanna Maietta, spokeswoman for the Bush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said of the agency's faulty math, which suggested that 15 percent of all high schoolers under age 18 were unleashed to go wild during the annual vacation.
[...]
Late yesterday, after several inquiries from the Herald, the Drug Control Office, through its public relation arm, Fleishman-Hillard, admitted it lacked the statistics to back up its claim.
"lacked the statistics" Nice euphemism. Try that yourself sometime ("Honey, remember last Friday when I told you I was playing cards with the guys? Well, it turns out I lack the statistics to back up that claim.")
9:31:41 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Drug Testing Summit gets opposition
Jennifer Kern at Drug Policy Alliance writes about her experience at the Czar's drug testing summit on Wednesday.
Due to the efforts of an incredible number of people in a variety of organizations, it's becoming impossible for the Drug Czar to operate completely unchallenged.
9:00:02 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 |
Congress tells ONDCP to test Biological Weapons
Just when I think we can sink no lower.
Buried in the ONDCP re-authorization that the House passed with only 5 "no" votes was this piece of crap (pdf, see page 30):
(n) REQUIREMENT FOR SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MYCOHERBICIDE IN ILLICIT DRUG CROP ERADICATION.-Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall submit to the Congress a report that includes a plan to conduct, on an expedited basis, a scientific study of the use of mycoherbicide as a means of illicit drug crop elimination by an appropriate Government scientific research entity, including a complete and thorough scientific peer review. The study shall include an evaluation of the likely human health and environmental impacts of such use. The report shall also include a plan to conduct controlled scientific testing in a major drug producing nation of mycoherbicide naturally existing in the producing nation.
Marc Souder sponsored the overall ONDCP re-authorization, and the specific biological warfare section was inserted by Dan Burton (also from Indiana).
More information on this is available at the U.N. Observer, which notes:
Speaking to the Colombian daily El Tiempo on Monday, former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, now Bogotá's Ambassador in Washington, emphatically reiterated Colombia's opposition to the plan, telling the paper, "During my government we opposed it. And Colombia's position, now under President Álvaro Uribe, has not changed." [...]
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits all biological warfare, including attacks on crops. The BWC has no exemptions - not for the Drug War, nor for the US Congress. The US eradication project thus violates the BWC's Article I, which prohibits development and stockpiling of biological weapons.
The main biological weapons agents under US consideration are strains of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum that attack coca and other illicit crops. With its serious human health and environmental risks, F. oxysporum has been dubbed "Agent Green" by civil society opponents, who liken it to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used by the US in Vietnam. In the US conception, huge amounts of specially-formulated Fusarium would be sprayed from large military aircraft to blanket large portions of Colombia and, potentially, other countries.
The HR 2829 provision does not specifically mention Colombia or Fusarium, although it does specify that the testing plan should be for a "major drug producing nation". This opens the possibility that the tests could be conducted elsewhere, such as Central Asia, where the US has supported development of biological weapons for use against opium poppy. Given past events, however, the bill's language is widely interpreted to refer to Colombia.
The moral poverty of our Congress is astonishing.
6:08:45 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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An interesting discussion on drug policy available online
I discussed at some length the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) report on drug policy by David Boyum and Peter Reuter.
AEI recently hosted a discussion about the report, bringing in the authors and several drug policy "experts." (I use quotation marks, because that description can be somewhat hard to define.)
The entire session video is available online, and was... instructional. The session was hosted by James Q. Wilson, with presentations by David Boyum, Peter Reuter, Rand Beers, Edwin Meese, and Jacob Sullum (plus an audience Q&A session).
Many of the criticisms of the AEI study I mentioned in my article (despite the fact that the study savaged current policy) were reinforced in the session. Foremost is the fact that legalization was not allowed to be discussed in the study -- of course.
The moderator (Wilson) tried to address this, noting that the study purposely did not include the option of legalization in part because both political parties are opposed to it, and there is no significant political movement in the country for legalization. And then Wilson tried to offer his own additional reason in this incoherent statement:
I infer there's a second reason... research I have done
have led me to believe... that the legalization of drugs might well not reduce the number of drug addicts, but might increase it, and if it increases, depending again on how we finance these matters, this could lead to either an increase in crime, a decrease in crime, or no change in crime. Uh, much depends on those circumstances.
Well, that explains it!
Boyum and Reuter's presentations were the rather standard academic circle-jerk of noting that current policies are an abject failure, and shifting some resources from enforcement to treatment would certainly be an improvement, we don't have enough data, and since legalization is not an option, our recommendation is for the government to do... uh... less.
Then came Rand Beers, architect of Plan Colombia. He mostly talked about how he agreed that treatment was an improvement over enforcement, but that it was politically difficult to promote -- suggesting that perhaps treatment as part of enforcement would be more politically possible.
Edwin Meese talked a nice game, but clearly went off the deep end in the morality mode. He talked about the importance on focusing on the drug problem as part of social disintegration. He misused tons of statistics, and then complained that the rest of the group weren't talking enough about the increasing dangers of marijuana potency and how medical research was discovering all sorts of carcinogenic effects and mental health problems evidencing that marijuana is a much more serious drug than was previously supposed.
Meese's contribution to the treatment question was to suggest that we increase the treatment facilities in prisons (clearly he was having none of the reduction of enforcement arguments. And finally, he entertained the group with a fantasy of how Plan Colombia was a shining example of major improvements in security, stability, human rights, reduction of coca growing, and tremendous improvement in the Colombian economy.
Jacob Sullum, of course, was the one who really had something to say. (The video page has links to the different points in the video, so if you don't have time to watch it all, you can always jump right to Sullum's section -- worth it.) For those who don't know, he's a regular contributor at Reason's Hit and Run, and author of the excellent Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.)
Sullum had some really fine points to share, including discussing the notion of two views of harm reduction that are useful in discussing drug policy: micro harm reduction and macro harm reduction. Micro harm reduction measures the harm related to a policy as it impacts an individual. For example, allowing needle exchange for heroin use is clearly beneficial in micro harm reduction, because it reduces potential for blood-borne illnesses, whereas not allowing it does not provide any benefit. From a macro harm reduction analysis, you would look at the overall societal cost/benefit. So in the case of needle exchange, you'd see if the policy caused more people overall to use drugs, get addicted, cause problems, etc. and if that negative outweighed the positive of reducing blood-borne illnesses (as it turns out, needle exchange has proved to be positive at the macro level as well).
This micro and macro analysis seems to provide one of the best notions of a real discussion of cost/benefit. But as Sullum notes, there are still problems in definition. For example, he does not think that self-harm done by an individual should count as great as harm done to someone else, and particularly not as high as harm done by the government to people. (Most prohibitionists count self-harm highly, misattribute collateral damage as drug use related rather than prohibition related, and ignore harm done by the government.
Sullum also noted that the "all use is abuse" approach by the government is "one of the biggest barriers to clear thinking in drug policy." He noted that if tomorrow, you were able to reduce the number of people using marijuana by 50% and didn't have any affect on those who were abusing drugs, the government would celebrate as if it had won a major victory, when in fact, by any valid measurement, there would be no benefit to society whatsoever.
Really good stuff, there.
The Q&A was less interesting. Some good questions by some very familiar folks, but the answers tended to involve lies (Meese and Rand), or confusion (Reuter and Boyum).
4:46:43 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Coca: as always, we demonize without understanding
In the piece about Morales giving Rice a guitar with coca leaves on it, I noted that the U.S. government has no understanding of the cultural background of these countries.
This article by Niko Kyriakou really points out that gap.
The war against coca--the plant used to make cocaine--has become a defining issue for U.S. policy in South America, yet many Americans know little about the plant their country is fighting. [...]
In Bolivia's Andean neighbor Peru, a spokesman for second-place presidential candidate and retired Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala this week announced Humala's support for a plan to feed a small amount of coca to school children as a way to improve their overall diet.
If the left-wing Humala wins Peru's presidency in April, he plans to serve poor children bread made from flour containing five percent coca.
Giving children coca in the United States not only would be political suicide, it would be considered a criminal act. And that difference in stance reflects a vast gap between U.S. and South American experience of a substance with a known history stretching back to long before Christopher Columbus's landfall, times when the Incas controlled much of the continent.
For thousands of years, coca has been a rich source of nutrients for poor South Americans.
Today, use of the leaf is so common that in Bolivia, for example, police carry out U.S.-funded coca eradication with wads of coca in their mouths, said Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
Coca leaves often are chewed or made into a tea rich in calcium, iron, and vitamin A, said Tree, adding that by contrast, coffee ''leeches all the vitamins out of your body.''
Coca also has health benefits as a salve for arthritis and gout, as toothpaste, and as a cure for altitude sickness.
Even the U.S. embassy in Bolivia recommends on its Web site that travelers consume coca tea to help alleviate altitude sickness.
But of course here in the states, the only message is "eradicate." In Congress, the only word is "eradicate." To the ignorant masses in Congress and elsewhere in this country, coca=cocaine, and the two as one are pure evil. No other message is allowed.
11:58:37 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Drug Testing Summit going on Today
Tom Angell of Dare Generation Diary is live-blogging the Drug Testing Summit in Falls Church, Virginia.
They've brought in the big guns. The Drug Czar himself is there to promote his government-sponsored fetish of watching children pee in a cup.
SSDP has been doing a great job keeping on top of this issue. You can be sure that even though this event is a one-sided government snow-job attempt, they won't get away with it, because the other side will be there to get interviewed by the media and to get our message out to the educators.
Related: An editorial in the Newport News, Virginia Daily Press somewhat gently chided those strident parents who were outraged that only a voluntary drug testing program had been implemented.
Empowering Parents Works Better Than Supplanting Them
"Please, someone, please - be the parent."
That was the echo that seemed to reverberate around many of the pleas by parents, students and community members, as they stood before the Williamsburg-James City County School Board and begged it to implement student drug testing. They told heartfelt and heart-wrenching stories of children, siblings and friends whose lives had been left in shambles, or taken entirely, by drugs. Over and over they asked: If there had been drug testing, might the problem have been detected and the tragedy headed off?
What they were searching for was someone to do that testing, to get involved. Someone to act like a parent.
The School Board wisely realized that its job is not to fill that function by imposing drug testing on students, but to help parents fulfill it by offering a voluntary testing program parents can choose to take advantage of. [...]
And, of course, parents don't have to wait for a program. Those home kits are on the shelves of drug stores, and local labs are open for business.
The rebuke is a soft one, but it's clearly there.
10:01:17 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006 |
Weeds wins Royal Television Society award
Nice to see this excellent Showtime series continuing to get good notice:
Weeds, Sky One's drama about a housewife who deals marijuana, created a stir by beating Channel 4 imports Lost and Desperate Housewives to win the award for best international programme.
[Thanks, Allan]
11:51:25 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Rick Steves - A NORML guy
Via a friend in Seattle...
I think I would have really enjoyed a program that was held at the University of Washington this evening: "Marijuana, the Unnecessary War,", featuring travel writer Rick Steves along with Roger Goodman, director of the King County Bar Association's Drug Policy Project.
Steves isn't worried what people think of his stoner stance. He doesn't need to get elected, he said, and doesn't care if people boycott his travel books and shows.
The truth is, he hardly smokes anyway.
"If I wasn't working so hard, I would smoke," he said. "I'm kind of a workaholic. I smoke overseas with European friends."
Alcohol leads to other things, Steves said. Sex leads to other things.
"Pot causes us to enjoy the Beatles."
11:45:49 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Looks a lot like legalization
Link
LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits in the war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation's top opium-growing region.
The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will fuel a booming narcotics trade, which already accounts for 35 percent of the impoverished country's income.
"We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their money for the national benefit," Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daud said during a trip to the region this week by U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann.
"They must invest in industries. They must invest in construction companies," he said.
But he said that so far the government has had no success in attracting the drug traffickers to open new businesses and that most of the money is being sent overseas.
Yep. Kind of like legalization. Of course, Gov. Daud is really just looking for any way to get money. Not so long ago, he was begging the international community for more money for eradication efforts. Still, going after investment from the drug lords might be a more attractive option for Daud.
The U.S. ambassador seemed unsure how to comment, which may be a sign that U.S. hard-line diplomacy regarding Afghanistan and drugs may be running into serious difficulties.
[Thanks, Bill]
4:59:01 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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DEA is at it again
Via Americans for Safe Access:
This morning, in a cruel act of harassment and intimidation DEA agents, along with Riverside County Sheriff's officers, raided a small medical marijuana collective grow outside of Palm Desert, California.
When the DEA knocked on the door, patient Gary Silva went to open it. DEA agents proceeded to kick in the door, dislocating Gary's shoulder and causing lacerations to his face. Gary uses medical marijuana for degenerative disk disease and nerve damage. He is currently being treated in the emergency room of a local hospital.
Agents confiscated less than 80 plants and dry medicine, which were grown for several patient collective members. Patient records and equipment were seized as well. No arrests were made. DEA agents repeatedly told Gary that they would not be charging him, and that he would only be charged if he grew again.
Emergency action information is available at their site.
4:42:21 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Monday, March 13, 2006 |
Censoring medical marijuana information helps no one
You may be aware recently that a couple of radio stations in Wyoming had been running some medical marijuana Public Service Announcements from MPP, until a local police chief complained and they pulled them.
MPP's Bruce Mirken responded with this wonderfully written piece in the Jackson Hole Star Tribune.
[Thanks, Allan]
9:42:21 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Editorials, good and bad
A couple of editorials in my morning reading caught my attention. One good, one bad.
 A good one from the Colorado Spring Gazette, also published in the Sedalia (MO) Democrat
The article talks about the border violence near Nueva Laredo, and continues...
These latest victims can be added to the rising costs of an American drug control policy that does little to keep drugs off the streets in U.S. cities, while racking up huge bills.
Drug warriors in this country like to trumpet their successes in the media, posing with large caches of drugs and weapons they've taken from smugglers and dealers. And for that dangerous work they are to be lauded. But the larger picture shows that for all the foot soldiers' risky work, the supply of available drugs seems little changed. Don't blame that on the folks on the front lines; the fault lies further up the chain of command and is the result of a faulty premise.
The drug war is based on the idea that if the government wishes something to go away, it can simply outlaw it. Apparently those in charge of the nation's drug policy were absent from history class the day Prohibition was covered. It didn't work in the 1920s and it's not working now, because it ignores one of the basic tenets of freedom: so long as the rights of others are not harmed, what one does with one's own body is not the business of government.
Excellent points, and well-said.
Now, an editorial to read for the delicious stupidity of it. Kat Stromquist is the Views Editor of the Tulane Hullabaloo. She's a senior, majoring in Political Science, and isn't much of a spokesperson for the academic strengths of Tulane.
She writes the most convoluted editorial I could imagine on the recent Supreme Court case that ruled that the government did not have a compelling interest to prevent O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao De Vegetal's use of the hoasca tea in ceremonies. Her editorial: Courts Try to Take Stand, Stumble Drunkenly
I can't even make out her position in some places (it's that incoherent), but let's play with a couple of passages for fun.
She mentions that the decision "startled and complexed many observers" (I'm not sure who) and then characterized the Supreme Court decision:
The Court is an institution of unpopular stances, but this statement is almost perverse.
Perverse? Let's see why.
To allow religious individuals special privileges is to deprive non-religious individuals of those same privileges. The religious freedoms we are guaranteed include the freedom to have no religion at all, so subscription to any particular faith should not carry benefits nor status.
Almost sounds like she's upset that the court didn't rule that everyone should be allowed to used the hoasca tea. But I guess if she wants to follow this "no benefits" 'rule' for religions, she'll be leading the charge to eliminate tax-exempt status for churches. Right, Kat?
With this ruling, the court also defines something many consider immoral, or at least a vice, as something to be identified with religion. Religious practice is one of the more sacrosanct institutions of society.
Well, the court merely clarified the government's reach under the law. But there's something odd about her wording. It apparently can't be religious, because she has identified it as a vice.
The open exercise of religion provides a haven for the pious and a shrine for believers.
???
If religion is defined as a loophole by the court, the declaration of religion is bound to be abused.
Hate crimes could easily be redefined by racist zealots as ritual sacrifices. Cruelty to animals, our society's most defenseless members, can be committed as part of some sort of dietary practice.
This is so unbelievably ignorant, that Tulane should immediately request an investigation of her transcripts to date. The court has not declared religion a loophole -- it was interpreting the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress, and according to FindLaw (which Kat might have considered reading before spouting inanities):
RFRA prohibits the Federal Government from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, "even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability," ... except when the Government can "demonstrat[e] that application of the burden to the person (1) [furthers] a compelling government interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that ... interest,"
Obviously, the bogeyman conjured up by Kat's vague allusion to "hate crimes" committed by "racist zealots" isn't in danger of coming to pass due to the Supreme Court's ruling. And as far as the potential "cruelty to animals, our society's most defenseless members" as some sort of dietary practice, have you ever visited a commercial chicken farm, Kat?
Back to the quotes:
The protection of illegal activities as instruments of religion endangers religious freedom for those with genuine beliefs; the advantageous will not let this ruling be ignored. [emphasis added]
So, Kat, will you be the one to tell the church members that their beliefs are not genuine? And how have you determined that?
To find religion is a sort of fortune.
Christians speak of gold-paved streets and pearls when describing their kingdom of heaven, and for many, a blessing that great is offered to them in their lifetime by their faith.
Many others spend their entire lives seeking something.
We seek faith in an innumerable quantity of places: in spring days that almost hurt with their vividity, in music and dancing, in falling in love. As regrettable as it may be for society, some look for the answer with drugs.
If we are to hold that drug use is a valid method of religious epiphany and that the achievement of religious faith is an essential good, there is no reason to criminalize drug use for those who are not already members of a particular religion.
It cannot be true that the use of psychoactive substances can only work on people who have a particular belief.
OK, once you get past the bizarre mumbo-jumbo, now Kat is saying something with which I wholeheartedly agree: "there is no reason to criminalize drug use for those who are not already members of a particular religion." Absolutely. Let's legalize drug use. (But I fear Kat didn't really mean that.)
A decision made without regard to social consequences is no decision at all, only the flip of a coin on the Court's lunch break.
Actually, it's a pretty radical notion that the Court is to make every decision in terms of social consequences.
And finally, the winner of the tortured analogy competition:
These justices are not acting as architects. They are merely standing on site, hammer, wood, and nails in hand, but no blueprint.
Hey, I realize that more people are probably reading her editorial through this site than would otherwise -- Kat's editorial just isn't worth this amount of time, but we all have to have fun now and then.
9:32:13 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Cocaine Gene
Via TalkLeft comes this article at the BBC.
The Institute of Psychiatry has identified a gene variant that may increase the likelihood of dependence on cocaine.
This is not a particular surprise to me. There's always been some evidence that susceptibility to abuse of various substances (alcohol and other drugs) has been linked to genetics. It's important to note, however, that genetic predisposition seems not to be automatic, but may rather influence a person to lean a particular way.
8:24:55 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Sunday, March 12, 2006 |
Five Good Members of Congress
On Thursday, Congress reauthorized the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
These are the principled members of Congress who voted against:
- Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
- Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
- Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
- Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)
- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
The rest of Congress likes spending taxpayers' money on ineffective, racist, un-American, and wasteful government agencies.
[Thanks, jackl]
12:35:19 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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U.S. policy more interested in failed drug war than protecting Americans
Mike Krause, veteran of the Coast Guard, and director of the Justice Policy Initiative, writes in the Denver Post: Drug war trumps port safety
The top objective of the U.S. Coast Guard's anti-terrorism strategy is to protect what's called the "U.S. Maritime Domain," including American ports.
But it is hard to take seriously the idea that ports are being effectively protected when the Coast Guard spent more tax dollars last year fighting the war on drugs than has been spent in total on port security since Sept. 11, 2001.
So the Coast Guard spends its time and our money on headline-grabbing drug seizures that don't make a dent in supply, while leaving the ports alone.
So not only does cocaine interdiction distract the Coast Guard from its port security mission, cocaine interdiction itself is failing.
Most disturbing is that Congress, the Coast Guard and the drug czar all seem fine with this - and, in fact, want even more of the same.
10:54:03 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Rice demonstrates depth of foreign policy
Link
Condoleezza Rice and Bolivian President Evo Morales met to discuss the drug war.
Now, you might think that this would be a big thing -- after all, there are huge differences in policy. U.S. pushes for complete eradictaion, Morales wants to preserve coca growing, etc., and there have been significant tensions between the two countries.
On the plane en route to Chile Rice had stressed the importance of meeting with Morales.
"President Morales has said that he is also concerned about the security issues associated with the drug trade and so I think that gives us a good starting point for discussion," Rice said.
So the two of them had this important discussion. So I'm wondering... was this a three-day summit? A packed full-day meeting?
Rice and Morales talked for about 15 minutes, discussing a shared problem: the illegal drugs trade. [...]
Rice and Morales did not immediately comment publicly on their discussion.
15 minutes? You can't have a discussion in 15 minutes. All you can do in 15 minutes is issue an ultimatum, or say "Hi."
So what was the purpose? A photo-op? If so, Evo Morales won that one big time, with a skillful move that demonstrated that the United States' drug policy is ridiculous, and that the U.S. government has no understanding of the cultural background of the countries with which it deals.
Morales, dressed in black leather embroidered with traditional motifs, presented Rice with an unusual gift that set the US delegation aback: a small, traditional guitar decorated with lacquered coca leaves.
Rice, an accomplished pianist, graciously accepted the five-string "charango" and strummed it for a few seconds.
But a member of the chief US diplomat's delegation indicated the guitar may not pass through US Customs. Though the coca leaves are legal in Bolivia, they are forbidden in the US.
Makes the U.S. delegation look downright stupid.
8:46:50 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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