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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, October 21, 2006 |
Oh, Andrea
One of my favorite drug war liars, Andrea Barthwell, has shown up in Colorado to lobby against Amendment 44. She mostly gave some really lame arguments that were easily countered by Mason Tvert.
And then Tvert hit back, noting that Andrea has a potential financial interest in keeping marijuana illegal because of her job lobbying for Sativex.
Barthwell actually then claimed that Sativex "is so far removed from marijuana that it is not recognizable."
Yeah, Andrea, in much the same way that carrot juice is so far removed from carrots that it is not recognizable.
[Thanks, Tim]
11:07:22 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Friday, October 20, 2006 |
Senlis Council not going away
Earlier I passed on a BBC report that Afghanistan was closing down the Senlis Council offices in that country. (The Senlis Council is a think tank that has advocated non-drug-war solutions.) As the Drug War Chronicle reports today, that appears to be more wishful thinking on the part of some of the drug warriors.
The Senlis Council is not going anywhere, and they're actually using this opportunity to continue the dialog. Good for them.
9:03:02 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Thursday, October 19, 2006 |
Good grief
I was curious to see what George Will would say about the drug war in his new column in this coming Monday's Newsweek: Prohibition II: Good Grief. It started out on track...
When government restricts Americans' choices, ostensibly for their own good, someone is going to profit from the paternalism.
Perhaps Prohibition II is being launched because Prohibition I worked so well at getting rid of gin. Or maybe the point is to reassure social conservatives that Republicans remain resolved to purify Americans' behavior. Incorrigible cynics will say Prohibition II is being undertaken because someone stands to make money from interfering with other people making money.
But then I got a little confused
For whatever reason, last Friday the president signed into law Prohibition II. You almost have to admire the government's plucky refusal to heed history's warnings about the probable futility of this adventure.
Huh? How did he sign the drug war into law when it's already been going on for decades?
This time the government is prohibiting Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations on a list the government will prepare.
... Oh.
Well, I agree with much of what he says about the internet gambling ban, but...
How can you talk about Prohibition I and Prohibition II and never mention the drug war?
9:29:02 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Dragging out the scare tactics against marijuana initiatives (updated)
The drug czar's office (along with major segments of the law enforcement community) has been getting pretty hysterical about the notion of the marijuana legalization initiatives in Nevada and Colorado. Gee, it's almost as if their jobs were being threatened...
It's fascinating to watch the melt-down and how far they'll go to demonize marijuana. For Walters to trot out this dog-and-pony show is just bizarre (Marijuana causes you to drive 85 in a 45 mph zone and kill someone? I don't think so. And the notion that they really couldn't do anything to the driver because of the lack of drug laws is just... stupid.)
Of course, you always want to take advantage of the drug-fear-de-jour, so the drug warriors are working hard to tie marijuana legalization to... that's right -- Meth.
Perennial Nevada idiot Guy Farmer got into it early:
In 2004 Carson City Justice of the Peace John Tatro told me that at least half of the meth abusers who appear before him also tested positive for marijuana. And just last month the Appeal published a graphic example of how marijuana can lead to the use of hard drugs. It was the story of 17-year-old Cyndle Bell of Carson City and her personal battle against meth addiction, which she chronicled in a 15-minute documentary produced as her senior project at Carson High School.
There was also a law enforcement officer recently (see update below) who said that practically every marijuana case he saw also involved methamphetamines.
The drug czar's office wouldn't want to miss out on that kind of action, so we have "Plan called a meth gateway" in the Denver Post this week, with nonsense from ONDCP associate deputy director John Horton:
A proposal on the state ballot to loosen marijuana laws in Colorado would make it harder to fight the war on methamphetamine abuse, a federal drug official said Monday.
John Horton, a former Oregon prosecutor, said Amendment 44 - which would allow people 21 and older to legally possess an ounce or less of pot - would make marijuana accessible to more people and allow them to fall victim to the highly-addictive and destructive properties of methamphetamines.
"Many meth addicts say they started with marijuana," said Horton. "So I don't think we want Colorado to be a testing ground for new marijuana laws."
Of course, the truth is that marijuana use does not lead to meth (or any other drug for that matter). The so-called gateway theory is dragged out and mis-used time and time again. Note Horton's last statement: "many meth addicts say they started with marijuana." That's intended to lead you to believe that marijuana led them to meth and would lead others to meth, which is simple nonsense. Those who use the so-called "hard" drugs are more likely to try everything else (like alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, coffee) first. If marijuana wasn't available, they'd take another path to get there.
The only other legitimate "gateway" effect is the connection that drugs have due to their illegality, and the potential that it is easier to buy one illegal drug if you're already buying drugs from criminals (of course, marijuana legalization efforts actually remove this potential).
If you want a quick and easy method to see if marijuana leads to meth, just look at the government's own figures. If marijuana caused meth use, then the people in the blue bars in this chart would be ending up in the red bars.
Hmmm... Doesn't seem to be happening. Even if we assume that every single meth user is also a marijuana user, the percentage of marijuana users who end up using meth is practically insignificant.
But of course that won't deter the drug warriors from their scare tactics.
Now all we need is a chart to determine if being a drug warrior is a gateway to lying.
Update: Sukoi found the video with the Nevada law enforcement officer's quote. Amendment 44 Legal Marijuana Conference. It's drug warrior Pete Hautzinger (Mesa County District Attorney):
"I virtually never see a possession of marijuana case that doesn't also involve methamphetamines."
 See Brian Bennett's excellent charts on Methamphetamine usage that help give a bigger picture.
8:50:11 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Rumors
There are rumors out there that another Congressman may get nailed in the page scandals (this time involving a 16-year-old girl). Some of the rumors are pointing to a lesser-known Congressman from Illinois who is a real drug war cheerleader.
Interesting...
12:32:09 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006 |
Good for them!
Library volunteers say no to drug testing.
Update: The question that comes to mind is -- what kind of moron do you have to be to think that drug testing library volunteers makes any sense? And, according to the article, they don't see their stupidity and are just trying to come up with a different means of testing!
12:15:49 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!
Via Scott Morgan (read what he has to say) comes this:
The Chicago Crime Commission will hold its Stars of Distinction, 2006 Awards Dinner to recognize outstanding individual and organizational contributions in fighting crime. DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy will accept the Education Award along with Museum for Science and Industry partners responsible for bringing "Target America: Opening Eyes to the Danger Drugs Cause" to Chicago.
Sigh.
11:57:21 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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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!
11:47:54 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Sunday, October 15, 2006 |
Hooray for the Boulder Weekly
What a great editorial!
After spending several paragraphs detailing the arguments of those opposed to Amendment 44 (legalizing marijuana), they respond with this:
BW position: Opponents are full of bull, and a large percentage of Boulder County readers knows it. Why? Because they smoke pot and lead healthy, functional lives. The war on pot is a waste of money and a waste of lives. Prohibition has never worked and never will. If alcohol and cigarettes, which are demonstrably more costly and harmful to human beings and to society, are legal, then ganja should be legal, too.
End the hypocrisy. Vote YES on Amendment 44.
Now that's refreshing.
8:17:14 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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But people would never lie on an anonymous survey, would they?
Depending on data from surveys is always an iffy proposition. Even more so when it involves asking people about illegal activities. Anonymity may help people feel like they can be honest, but it also means there's nothing preventing them from lying. And a school setting actually encourages "pranking" such surveys (when I was in school, a lot of students pranked the tests that determined whether the school was doing a good job of teaching, often purposely selecting incorrect answers and driving down the entire school average).
That leads to this astute observation by a student:
Most people are quick to attribute the drop in cigarette, alcohol and drug use among Southwest Allen County Schools students to the random drug-testing program that has been placed in the school system's two middle schools and one high school. However, common sense from a student taking those very drug surveys that led to drug testing can prove otherwise.
In middle and high school, the anonymous drug surveys given to students are seen as a joke. Not only do kids say they have done drugs that they have not heard of, they fill in the corresponding bubble saying they used cocaine more than 50 times a week as a sixth-grader. Until now, these drug surveys have shown ridiculous numbers of drug users in the district resulting from the anonymity of the test.
After the random drug testing was implemented, however, everything changed. Middle and high school students began to see that these surveys, while still anonymous, were finally being used for something: numbers to verify the need for drug testing.
Drug testing is not the Holy Grail to preventing drug use. It has actually done very little to stop drug use in the district ( only 1.9 percent of tested students tested positive ). The huge decline in drug and alcohol use in these surveys can be attributed to the clever students seeing that if they are honest, federal grants will not continue to be poured into the district for drug testing and the program will not be renewed by the school board at the end of the 2008-09 school year.
Drug and alcohol use should not be as widespread as it is in schools, but administrators and employees should quit letting students fool them with a survey and look for something that actually works, and spend some money on education. After all, that is what school is for.
3:34:08 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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A Supreme Court that still believes in protecting the individual from potentially abusive government intrusion
Canada
Judges cannot issue probation orders requiring people to provide blood or urine samples to check if they are obeying conditions to abstain from drugs or alcohol, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.
In dismissing a Crown appeal of a B.C. Court of Appeal decision, the country's top court ruled that probation orders compelling people to provide bodily samples were contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[...]
"Compelling blood tests, absent a statutory framework governing such tests, is not consistent with the charter and random drug testing at a probation officer's discretion could become highly arbitrary," the court said.
I used to think that the U.S. Supreme Court believed in such concepts as well.
2:55:04 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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War on a plant
You may have already seen this one by now, but I couldn't resist...
Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall.
General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices. ... And as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa, Canada.
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.
Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.
"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those [forests] did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hiller said dryly.
One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."
Update: [Photo added] As Hope notes in comments, we're really talking about a hemp field here.
11:56:00 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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