Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Open Thread, unrated version On her radio show, Diane Rehm fellated drug warrior Joseph Califano, the guy whose so-called statistics have made him the laughing stock of the scientific community. Julian Sanchez discusses the on-air debacle. If you wish, you can listen to the segment here. Favorite moment -- when a caller gets Joe's number and Califano is forced to spout inanities about how marijuana is as dangerous as cocaine and heroin, Rehm goes down on him thusly: ... it sounds as though Mr. Califano, having been in this field for as long as he has, and involved with this issue for as long as he has, probably has the correct information. Journamalism at its finest. [Thanks Michael] Moving briskly from fellatio to masturbation, we have DEA head Karen Tandy: "Plan Colombia is working." Oh, yeah. Work it, Karen. [via Scott Morgan} For more fantasies, see Drug war keeps stability alive, terror in check. Oops. Turns out medical marijuana doesn't destroy the fabric of civilization after all. More brilliance! Heroin laced with fentanyl? Outlaw fentanyl precursers. Except that it's possible that most of the fentany-laced heroin arrived in this country already laced. So nothing is really accomplished, and the real problem (putting drug distribution in the hands of criminals) is left un-addressed. Now that's a letter to the editor! With respect to drug testing in the workplace, I suggest that managers or supervisors who can't evaluate their staff's performance by observing them or examining their work are far more suitable candidates for drug testing than the employees. -George Kosinski [Via Tanya] Truth via Venezuela: Carreño dismissed any possibility of permitting the intervention of US authorities in Venezuela to fight drug trafficking and accused the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of forming its own "drug cartel." According to the Carreño, when Venezuela ended its cooperation with the DEA two years ago, they observed that the US agency was trafficking drugs through the country. "They were making a large quantity of drug shipments under the pretense of monitoring them, and they didn't carry out arrests or breakup the cartels," explained Carreño. "We were able to determine the presence of a new drug cartel in which the United States Drug Enforcement Agency was monopolizing the shipment of drugs," he said. Sounds like the DEA to me. Marsha Rosenbaum teaches USA Today a little truth about drug testing. 11:02:19 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []