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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, March 24, 2007 |
Site changes
Just a note that I'm working on a slight layout change and yes, it will include Google ads. Please be aware that I am not in any way involved in selecting the ads that show up here.
I'll be doing some tweaking over the next couple of days. Please let me know if the page layout doesn't work in your browser or operating system.
4:15:10 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Califano and CASA just won't die
I haven't had to bring up this liar for awhile. Joseph Califano, and Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), you may recall, is known primarily for falsifying numbers about teenage drinking. They're ba-ack.
In the Daily Tar Heel, we see Report: Half In College Abuse Drugs Or Alcohol:
Experts Find the trend alarming
Drug and alcohol use is a chronic problem for college students across the country, a recent report found, and one that UNC students and officials say needs to be addressed.
Nearly half of all full-time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs, according to a study released March 15 by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
The report is Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America's Colleges and Universities (pdf). The actual report (even if you could believe the numbers, which I don't, given that CASA is promoting this), is actually more alarmist than alarming.
And check out Califano's statement:
Accepting as
inevitable this college culture of alcohol and
other drug abuse threatens not only the present
well being of millions of college students, but
also the future capacity of our nation to maintain
its leadership in the fiercely competitive global
economy.
What nonsense!
Not only is there very little in the report to support some major shift, what's really intellectually dishonest is that the report, while claiming that the problem is binge drinking and drug abuse spends pages upon pages pushing for abstinence and enforcement efforts (which, of course, have no impact on bingeing or abusing). Not once do they mention the notion of managing use.
I went to college in the 1970's and I work at a University now. College students experiment with drugs and try out their limits with alcohol. In any time and any place.
When I was in college, my roommate and I decided to find out what it was like to get drunk, so we loaded up with Bacardi 151, Sloe Gin, and Boone's Farm Apple and got puking drunk (yes, we were idiots, but mostly in terms of our lack of knowledge of good drink choices). However, after that one bad night, we rarely did any binge drinking, for one simple reason. We did most of our drinking in bars (the drinking age was lower) and they stopped serving you when you got drunk (and we learned to make better choices -- today I stick with good single-malt Scotch).
These days, the students in college do all their drinking at unsupervised parties because the drinking age is 21. Drug use occurs, but is driven further underground, where people who might have problems are less likely to seek out help.
There are potential lessons to be learned from analyzing college alcohol and drug use patterns, but not with Califano and CASA distorting the numbers and the message.
12:55:42 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Why drug warriors won't debate us.
thehim, over at Blog Reload eviscerates a poor San Diego State University student drug warrior.
Come on, Lee, isn't it unfair to use facts and logic and stuff?
8:30:49 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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The War on Drugs' War on Minorities
In today's Los Angeles Times is a blistering OpEd by Arianna Huffington
Democratic presidential candidates crave the Latino and black vote, but ignore the Drug War's unfair toll on people of color. [...]
The silence coming from Clinton and Obama is particularly deafening.
Obama has written eloquently about his own struggle with drugs but has not addressed the tragic effect the war on drugs is having on African American communities.
As for Clinton, she flew into Selma, Ala., to reinforce her image as the wife of the black community's most beloved politician and has made much of her plan to attract female voters, but she has ignored the suffering of poor, black women right in her own backyard. [...]
Avoidance of this issue comes at a very stiff price (and not just the more than $50 billion a year we're spending on the failed drug war). The toll is paid in shattered families, devastated inner cities and wasted lives (with no apologies for using that term). [...]
Maybe the president will suddenly wake up and decide to take on the issue five days before he leaves office. That's what Bill Clinton did, writing a 2001 New York Times Op-Ed article in which he trumpeted the need to "immediately reduce the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences" -- conveniently ignoring the fact that he had the power to solve it for eight years and did nothing. [...]
A 2000 study found that 1.4 million African American men -- 13% of the total black male population -- were unable to vote in the 2000 election because of state laws barring felons access to the polls. In Florida, one in three black men is permanently disqualified from voting. Think that might have made a difference in the 2000 race? Our shortsighted drug laws have become the 21st century manifestation of Jim Crow.
Shouldn't this be an issue Democratic presidential candidates deem worthy of their attention?
Really powerful stuff. Read the whole thing. Print it out and mail it to the Presidential candidates.
8:12:53 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Ranking drugs in Great Britain
If you haven't been following recent developments in the UK, there's been quite an upheaval and controversy over drug policy (the best coverage is at Transform Drug Policy Foundation blog).
Actual new and creative ideas are being discussed (although that is also causing backlash from the prohibitionists, who are attacking with renewed vigor).
And studies that actually trash entrenched thinking are not only being published, but reported in the media. In reporting the Lancet study published yesterday, the Associated Press and the Globe and Mail even shouted in the headline: Booze, smokes worse than some illegal drugs: study.
New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study. [...]
Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.
According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.
To me, the interesting thing here is the discussion -- the fact that conventional wisdom about the relative dangers of drugs is being questioned -- not the specific rankings. The methodology, though interesting, is subjective and can't really control completely for the effects of a drug's legal status.
Prof. Nutt and his colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts -- psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise -- to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD.
Still, this is a great opportunity for dialogue, and even the U.S. press is carrying the story.
Update: Of course, the notion that illegal drugs can be less dangerous than legal drugs is not anything even remotely new, and is, in fact, a big yawn to drug policy reformers. However, it's something that is still a bit of a surprise to many of those uneducated about drugs and drug policy.
7:56:29 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Friday, March 23, 2007 |
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Thursday, March 22, 2007 |
Personal notes (and open thread)
 I was quoted reasonably well (they got a few things wrong) in this article in the Illinois State University newspaper.
Big event locally on March 29 (a week from today). "Prohibition Kills: An Evaluation of the War on Drugs" featuring Greg Francisco (LEAP), Pete Guither (Drug WarRant), and George Pappas (IDEAL reform) at 7 pm on the Illinois State University campus (Bone Student Center, Old Main Room). If you're in the area, please come.
I've been busy recently with work and a bunch of other stuff, including putting together a girl band. (Yes, you heard that right.) It's for a production of Caryl Churchill's "Vinegar Tom" and the director (Deb Alley) wanted a girl band on stage for the 7 songs in the play, so I put the 3-piece band together (guitar, bass, drums), arranged the music and directed it. We've named the band "Succubi" and I think they're great (but I'm biased, of course). The music is a combination of beautiful, yet horrifyingly creepy, ballads and complex rock that's a little bit twisted (and definitely for mature audiences). "Vinegar Tom" opens Wednesday (March 28) in Westhoff Theatre (at Illinois State University) and runs through next Sunday.
9:13:31 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Marijuana distribution is social
This isn't new, or startling, but it was interesting to see it in graph form. Via the Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR)...
Marijuana Distribution Relies Primarily on Friends and Family
*Data was taken from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (since renamed the National Survey on Drug Use and Health) marijuana market survey questions.
I think the point here is that efforts to attack marijuana through criminal enforcement are doomed to failure and also inevitably cause tensions between citizens and law enforcement.
8:53:47 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007 |
DOJ wants to hide the truth from juries about interrogations
This disturbing post from Glenn Greenwald details some revelations that have come from the documents related to the firing of U.S. attorneys.
It was revealed that the DOJ (and other agencies within the government, including the DEA) have resisted the idea of videotaping interrogations.
The DOJ solicited the views of all federal law enforcement agencies -- the FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshall's Service -- and each of them vigorously opposed mandatory recording. In doing so, one of the principal arguments was that they wanted to conceal from jurors the conduct of law enforcement agents in interrogating defendants and obtaining confessions, because that conduct would appear coercive and improper to jurors.
As Glenn notes:
The difference between recording v. no recording is not whether the conduct of federal agents will be an issue in a trial. The difference is whether there will be an accurate or inaccurate record of what these law enforcement agents are doing to extract statements and obtain confessions. Yet here, every federal law enforcement agency is expressly arguing against recordings because they want to conceal from the jury what they did (or because they want to conceal what the defendant actually said).
Welcome to America.
10:11:11 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Thank God for Willie Nelson
Just watched Willie on the Colbert Show. A fairly brief appearance and he really didn't get a chance to talk much, but he did get to sing a few notes. During the show, there must have been a dozen marijuana references, including one from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (who also sang with Willie and Stephen), with Willie dutifully adding "Wheat? I thought they said 'weed.'"
Everybody loves Willie. And everybody knows he smokes pot. And nobody thinks that it's wrong.
Five minutes with Willie Nelson can wipe away the effects of months of reefer madness lies from prohibitionists, and you start to believe that everything really could be OK.
I think America would be a much better place if our leaders all spent a couple of hours in Willie's trailer.
1:09:08 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007 |
Report: Prohibition not effective
Via Transform comes this article in the Australian Age:
... the recently released report on amphetamines and other synthetic drugs by the federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission is a brave document.
Most notably, in contrast to the report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee, the committee unanimously supported harm minimisation and recommended that "harm-reduction strategies and programs receive more attention and resources".
In its conclusions, the committee said "prohibition, while theoretically a logical and properly intentioned strategy, is not effective". It also argued that "the current national approach to illicit drugs - supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction - will achieve greater outcomes if a better balance between these approaches can be reached". In common parlance, this means there should be less emphasis on law enforcement and more on education and drug treatment.
Unfortunately, it is a rare event when any government body decides to make drug policy recommendations that are based on evidence. The report was not received warmly by the Government.
Familiar story. Think U.S. Shaffer report in 1972. Think Canadian Senate Report 2002. Shunned in their own countries.
Transform sees hope, and offers a tease...
...coming soon is a major new document produced by Transform with the sole aim to aid rational debate on drug policy. [OE]Tools for Debate' will be a groundbreaking point-of-reference for anyone wishing to challenge non-rational policy positions, no matter how persuasive the rhetoric.
8:09:19 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Monday, March 19, 2007 |
Update on Bong Hits Hearing
From CNN
If the justices conclude Joseph Frederick's homemade sign was a pro-drug message, they are likely to side with principal Deborah Morse. She suspended Frederick in 2002 when he unfurled the banner across the street from the school in Juneau, Alaska.
"I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including something besides just basic elements, including the character formation and not to use drugs," Chief Justice Roberts said Monday. [...]
"It sounds like just a kid's provocative statement to me," Justice David Souter said. [...]
The outcome also could stray from the conservative-liberal split that often characterizes controversial cases.
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote several opinions in favor of student speech rights while a federal appeals court judge, seemed more concerned by the administration's broad argument in favor of schools than did his fellow conservatives.
"I find that a very, a very disturbing argument," Alito told Justice Department lawyer Edwin Kneedler, "because schools have ... defined their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that's inconsistent with educational missions."
Justice Stephen Breyer, in the court's liberal wing, said he was troubled a ruling in favor of Frederick, even if he was making a joke, would make it harder to principals to run their schools.
"We'll suddenly see people testing limits all over the place in the high schools," Breyer said.
On the other hand, he said, a decision favorable to the schools "may really limit people's rights on free speech. That's what I'm struggling with." [...]
What if, Souter asked, a student held a small sign in a Shakespeare class with the same message Frederick used. "If the kids look around and they say, well, so and so has got his bong sign again," Souter said, as laughter filled the courtroom. "They then return to Macbeth. Does the teacher have to, does the school have to tolerate that sign in the Shakespeare class?"
Justice Antonin Scalia, ridiculing the notion that schools should have to tolerate speech that seems to support illegal activities, asked about a button that says, "Smoke Pot, It's Fun."
Or, he wondered, should the court conclude that only speech in support of violent crime can be censored. "'Extortion Is Profitable,' that's okay?" Scalia asked.
A clear majority seemed to side with Morse on one point, that she shouldn't have to compensate Frederick. A federal appeals court said Morse would have to pay Frederick because she should have known her actions violated the Constitution.
More from Reuters
"It's political speech, it seems to me. I don't see what it disrupts," a sceptical Justice David Souter said.
"And no one was smoking pot in that crowd," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, referring to the group of students standing near the banner as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by in January 2002. [...]
Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Kneedler if the principal could have required the banner be taken down if it had said "vote Republican, vote Democrat".
Kneedler replied the principal has that authority.
It'll be June or July before we have a decision.
Update:
Much more:
- SCOTUSblog, as always, has great analysis: here, here, and here
The Supreme Court on Monday toyed with the notion that public school officials should have added discretion to censor student speech that they may interpret as advocating use of illegal drugs. But this was only a flirtation, not a warm embrace. During the argument in Morse v. Frederick (06-278), a clear majority of the Justices showed significant skepticism about creating a wide exception to the curb on suppression of student speech that the Court spelled out in 1969 in Tinker v. Des Moines School District
As blog colleague Marty Lederman has pointed out in the post below, a sweeping exception to Tinker had the visible support Monday of only Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Antonin Scalia, who seemed to be competing to lay out the most generous view of officials' discretion to enforce school-preferred messages.
- Hearing transcript available here (pdf)
- Coverage from PBS
4:08:45 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Serious levity at the Supreme Court today
The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War...
Yes, today is the day that nine Supreme Court Justices convene in the highest court in the most powerful country in the world and discuss...
Bong Hits 4 Jesus
Oh, I wish I could be there when Ken Starr, who has already altered the national status of blow-jobs, explains to the Supreme Court that "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" threatens the fabric of our nation and our educational system.
Of course, the reality is that this is a serious case. At its worst, the Supreme Court (no friend to any case involving even the hint of drugs) could rule that schools have broad authority to regulate student speech that is contrary to their educational message, even if they are not in school and the speech is not disruptive.
And there's also a deep significance as to the philosophy of educating citizens. It concerns me that authoritarians are pushing to train young people that the proper order of things in a free democracy is submission to authority. Get used to peeing in a cup on demand. Get used to being controlled in what you think, what you say. That's what the world is about.
For the most comprehensive look at the case, check out my resource guide:
http://bong.drugwarrant.com
If you're in DC today, SSDP will be holding a rally at the Supreme Court .
12:19:14 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Sunday, March 18, 2007 |
Open Thread
The Drug War Roundup this week focuses on building a wall. Tons of good stuff.
I've been wondering for some time just what this "skunk" is that the British media seem to be smokin' and why is it that they seem to be the only ones?
Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised. [...]
"Once it has hit the frontal lobes of the developing adolescent, you just don't know whether they'll recover or not."
Well, thehim's been wondering the same thing, and he may have an explanation.
Also via thehim, check out this Open Letter to Bill Richardson by the strangely named xxdr zombiexx.
Interesting concept: If the police attack you illegally in your home, you have the right to resist.
11:37:22 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Firefighting
This editorial in the Sacramento Bee got my attention:
Why Finance More Drug War Failures?
Two days after President Bush promised $3.7 billion more in aid to fight cocaine trafficking in Colombia, Sacramento police and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents announced the largest crack cocaine bust in the city's history. Police seized seven pounds of crack and two pounds of pure cocaine Tuesday. The drugs' estimated street value was a modest $375,000.
The juxtaposition of the two events, the president's promise of yet more aid for drug fighting in Colombia and the record cocaine seizure in Sacramento, is instructive. Over the last seven years, U.S. taxpayers have spent $4.7 billion to finance Plan Colombia, under which the Colombian government sprayed millions of acres with herbicides to eradicate coca fields and launched military offensives against guerrillas. It has had minimal impact on the availability or price of cocaine in the United States. [...]
Critics within Colombia point out that U.S.-financed eradication efforts have produced thousands of refugees and that the spraying kills not just coca but legal crops such as cassava, plantains and sugar cane, leaving small farmers with nothing. Money promised for economic development for alternatives to the lucrative drug trade never materialized. Meanwhile, coca growing has moved to new areas within Colombia, including the country's fragile national parks, and other countries in the region, destabilizing them in the process.
Exactly. We've been throwing money away on eradication and just causing more problems.
Excellent editorial. Until...
U.S. efforts should be focused in our own communities, on, in his words, "an obligation to reduce the demand." Don't waste billions more in Colombia. Fight drug traffickers on the U.S. streets. Use the money for local police and prosecutors, for drug treatment and education, for economic development, housing, job training and after-school programs. [emphasis added]
And it ends up talking about how these are the best ways to "win a war on drugs."
Sigh.
If they'd just left out the parts I bolded, it would be a good editorial, but instead it's just more of that muddle-headed thinking that surely some kind of fighting is necessary since we're in a "war." So while everybody seems to see that the war isn't working, you've got some people saying "The problem is, we've got to kill more Colombians," and someone else saying "No, no, you're wrong -- that doesn't work. We've got to kill more Americans."
Some days it feels like I'm watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I'm standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I'm crazy.
11:40:49 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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The Real Thing
It's a fun little story: Bolivia wants drink giant to drop 'coca' from Coca-Cola
Mostly a publicity stunt as part of Bolivia's efforts to improve the image of their exceptionally useful coca plant, and work toward making it once again an important part of their legal economy. But it may have struck a nerve
Coca-Cola released a statement on Thursday saying their trademark is "the most valuable and recognized brand in the world" and was protected under Bolivian law.
The statement repeated the company's past denials that Coca-Cola has ever used cocaine as an ingredient -- but was silent on whether the natural coca leaf was used to flavor their flagship soda.
Bolivian coca growers say that only a few years ago the company used to purchase tons of their leaves annually. They express frustration that Coca-Cola can use their beloved coca leaf -- yet not defend it to a suspicious world.
"Instead of satanizing the leaf, they need to understand our situation," said David Herrera, a state government supervisor for the coca-rich Chapare region. "They exported coca as a raw material for Coca-Cola, and we can't even freely sell it in Bolivia."
This got me thinking about the Coca Cola™ trademark.
If Bolivia and some of the other countries end up successfully navigating the international obstacles to allow the use of coca leaves in a variety of commercial products (toothpastes, analgesics, food products, etc.), soft drinks would be a natural.
And if somebody made a cola using coca leaves, it would be, by definition, a coca cola. Theoretically they could use those words on their product and advertisements (not as their brand name, but as a descriptor). So you could have Pepsi's coca cola, for example.
I don't know very much about trademark law, but it seems to me that a lot of lawyers could get very rich over this.
And I also wonder what the Coca Cola™ company is willing to do to avoid this situation even coming up...
[Thanks Allan]
10:35:48 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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