If they decide to participate... and if this question gets selected... I'd love to see how the candidates (other than Ron Paul, of course) squirm around this one.
WASHINGTON, DC [^] The One Hitters, a softball team sponsored by Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, took over the #1 ranking in the Congressional Softball League last night. The team's 13-3 record has vaulted them to the top of the league, which is made up of Congressional offices, lobbying and consulting firms, non-profit organizations, and local businesses.
Team leaders are especially proud of the ranking, which contradicts negative stereotypes of drug policy reformers as unmotivated "stoners." "The drug policy reform community is made up of dedicated, hardworking people who take the issues of drug abuse and drug prohibition very seriously," said One Hitters captain and SSDP Executive Director Kris Krane. "We take pride in fielding a fun but competitive team that dispels myths and stereotypes about people who care about ending the so called 'War on Drugs.'"
The One Hitters have competed in the league for five years. Two years ago they made national headlines when the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy refused to play a game due to ideological reasons. "Everyone knows that ONDCP backed out because they were scared of losing to us on the field, much the same way they are afraid to debate us because their policies fail in the court of public opinion," said center fielder David Guard, who is associate director of the Drug Reform Coordination Network. "We have an open challenge to the Drug Czar to play or debate anytime, anywhere."
Congratulations to the one-hitters (what a great name).
And, of course, while we're certainly not implying that the one-hitters use drugs on or off the field, we're happy to have them stick that whole nonsensical "stoner" stereotype of being unmotivated and unproductive where it belongs -- in the garbage bins of historical bigotry.
Plenty of sports figures have used marijuana -- and generally the only ones to get in trouble are those who get caught through testing. I've never heard of an athlete who had problems because his private marijuana use hurt his game.
Add to that the jazz musicians and writers and artists. And Carl Sagan. And millions of other hard working, talented, and creative people in all walks of life.
It is the people who demonize and stereotype all pot smokers who are lazy, unintelligent, uncreative, and bigoted. Unfortunately, I fear that they may be beyond the power of cannabis to cure.
When you are in the midst of a fully fledged media cannabis panic, as we currently seem to be, you can be quite sure that any new research on the drug:
will be pounced upon by lazy journalists
will be trawled for any vaguely shocking sounding statistics (by non-scientists and non-statisticians)
will have these statistics spun into sexy 'shock' headlines
will have any negative findings, statistical ambiguity, commentary on confounding factors/ context / significance etc conveniently glossed over
will see politicians responding to the media coverage of the research rather than the research itself *insert daft quote from David Davis*
Assistant Director of the FBI Directorate of Intelligence Wayne Murphy in testimony before Congress....
The context: Lundgren and Delahunt have cited incidents in the past in which the FBI has covered up evidence that its confidential drug informants have committed violent crimes (including murder) in order to protect their identities, so that they could continue providing the bureau with information. They've cited other incidents, including the case above, in which the FBI has hidden exculpatory evidence, and allowed innocent people to go to prison. Lundgren and Delahunt want Murphy to assure them that the FBI has instituted policies to ensure that these sorts of incidents won't happen again--that murderers won't be protected and innocent people sent to prison in order to preserve drug investigations.
Remarkably, Murphy refuses to make such assurances.
This kind of attitude on the part of public servants is the reason why the Stop Snitchin' movement is gaining steam.
In the context of the latest medical marijuana raids in California, Jacob Sullum explores the positions of the Presidential candidates in this area and finds the Republican field, for the most part, lacking: Spliff Split.
He has an interesting conclusion:
These partisan tendencies do not mean Democrats have greater respect for the division of powers between the federal government and the states. When it suits them, they're happy to support federal involvement in policy areas the Constitution leaves to the states. It's just that Democrats are, by and large, more comfortable with the therapeutic use of cannabis than Republicans are.
It's hard to find a logical explanation for this split. Republicans, conservatives especially, are traditionally critical of overly cautious regulators who prevent people from using drugs that could relieve their suffering safely and effectively. They have a record of supporting the freedom to use herbal home remedies without unreasonable bureaucratic interference.
The prevailing Republican stance on medical marijuana, which is at odds with what most Americans tell pollsters they think about the issue, can be understood only in light of the connotations that cannabis acquired as a result of its accidental association with the 1960s counterculture. In fighting a symbol of their opponents' principles, conservatives have sacrificed their own.
So the feds had another massive raid yesterday serving a warrant...
Federal law enforcement agents raided [...] home in Girdwood on Monday, hauling off undisclosed items from inside and taking extensive pictures and video. [...]
Neighbors said agents showed up between 11 a.m. and noon and that a commercial locksmith was called to open the front door.
Locksmith? When did they start using locksmiths? Feds know what a locksmith is? And that a locksmith isn't a battering ram? Where's the tank knocking down the door? Where's the 4 a.m. surprise raid with flash-bombs and shooting the dog?
Oh, I see -- this is simply a corrupt U.S. senator who is suspected of violating his oath to the Constitution, committing high crimes and misdemeanors, and stealing millions of dollars from taxpayers, not some dangerous pot smoker.
The bizarre need for the press to giggle about pot
When the media isn't demonizing marijuana, the best they often can do is snicker at it. They love to make "funny" comments about pot -- it's like it's their chance to be... cool?
Well I think I've found a candidate for The Longest Stretch to Make a Pot Joke in an Article award. It's Gareth McGrath in the Wilmington Morning Star.
Now this is merely an article about the use of sandbags along the North Carolina coast and how biodegradable materials (such as cotton, flax, or hemp) are being considered in order to allow the bags to naturally disintegrate over time.
So how did he write the story? Check out the completely irrelevant opening and closing.
Call it the Cheech and Chong bag.
As the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission wrestles with what to do about the proliferation of sandbags along the state's coastline, one idea that's been floated is to make the bags biodegradable. And one of the materials under consideration is hemp - the industrial, non-hallucinogenic cousin of marijuana.
In short, that would be one way to make sure the sandbags get rolled up instead of becoming semi-permanent structures along the North Carolina coast. [...]
"There are a lot of unknowns out there right now," Geiss said of the practicality of using biodegradable sandbags.
Or as Cheech and Chong might say, there's still a good chance the concept could go up in smoke.
I have often said that the leadership in the African American community need to speak up more against the drug war. Well, here's the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Radley Balko has an update on the death of innocent Issac Singletary at the hands of cops for protecting his own property.
Bill Conroy has coverage and questions about corruption and the disappearance of federal funds in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program.
And now for something completely different: DEAsy Pickings. Operation Low-Hanging Fruit, indeed.
If you're looking for more news, check out The Speakeasy -- They've got a number of good posts there.
It really is pathetic the way the drug czar is forced to look for damaged goods in the press to get excited about in its "blog."
The latest?
More reporting from the UK's Independent newspaper on this serious issue: "A poll of more than 50 of the world's leading authorities on drugs and mental health confirms that most believe cannabis, and particularly its stronger variant, skunk, pose significant health risks and increase users' susceptibility to psychosis and schizophrenia."
Although the ONDCP provides no link, they're referring to this story by Jonathan Owen and Suzi Mesure. It's full of all the unsupported reefer madness hysteria, for paragraph after paragraph, almost blatantly supporting the re-classification. Buried near the end, they do finally look at another perspective:
Professor Tim Kirkham, a psychologist at Liverpool University, argued: "Cannabis has been used safely for many thousands of years," and says there have been "concerted efforts to demonise the drug's use." Dr Trevor Turner, former vice president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says: "I don't think it causes mental illness. I have never seen a case of so-called cannabis psychosis."
Dame Ruth Runciman, the chair of UK Drug Policy Centre who set in motion the downgrading of cannabis, disputes that the drug of today is any different to the weed that Ms Smith would have toked back in early 1980s.
"How do you know it's stronger?" she said, adding: "There is indubitably some skunk that is stronger about the place, but the evidence has been hugely exaggerated and does not support such an alarmist view... Cannabis as Class C is exactly where it should be."
Of course, the drug czar isn't interested in that part of the story. Nor are the reporters interested in any kind of factual balance. They're looking for the reefer madness -- it sells papers. So they lead with the bad reporting.
The real tipoff is in that opening paragraph:
A poll of more than 50 of the world's leading authorities on drugs and mental health confirms that most believe cannabis, and particularly its stronger variant, skunk, pose significant health risks and increase users' susceptibility to psychosis and schizophrenia.
Notice the omissions?
Who conducted the poll? Who was polled? Where is the poll data? What were the questions? What constitutes significant health risks? What constitutes "increase[d] users' susceptibility"?
Did they make it all up? Who knows? Nobody else is reporting this "poll" that I can find.
The occasion of my fourth blogiversary naturally sets me to thinking about what I do on this blog, and what I might be doing in the future here.
Of course, it's a relatively stress-free analysis. After all, I am a blogger. I have no boss. I am not subject to the wishes of a Board of Trustees or other organizational structure. I have no editor, publisher, or clientele of paying consumers to dictate what I write.
Oh, sure, there's the desire to have readers read my work. But bloggers learn quickly that the best way to have your blog fail is to be false to yourself in order to "please" your readers.
So I'll continue to write about what interests me. My decisions will be fairly arbitrary (I can't possibly write about everything, but I'm grateful for every tip regardless). Those who know me realize that I'm a bit of a geek for things like Constitutional law and the Bill of Rights, so i'll definitely talk about those things.
My eventual goal is legal regulation of current black-market drugs worldwide, but I also have no problem with helping people a step at a time along the way. If someone doesn't believe in medical marijuana, I'll try to convince them of its value. If they believe in medical marijuana, but not legalized and regulated recreational value, I'll try to convince them of that next step and so on. If I can help people make the full jump without the steps, that's preferable, but not exclusive.
Here are a few random things that have me thinking right now.
Instincts
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
This is why the drug czar's propaganda works. It takes advantage of the gullibility of those who have already been taught to believe in prohibition. To overcome that, our evidence must be overwhelming (and that takes time to convey).
Why not give up?
Recently a blogger I greatly admire -- Glenn Greenwald -- wrote this about the importance of blogging (and while it wasn't specifically about drug policy, I think the overall thoughts are still relevant).
Given how systemic and deeply rooted all of these political and media failures are, what is the point of writing about them day after day, and complaining on a case-by-case basis about them? The corruption and dysfunction is, by now, obvious to those who are able and willing to see it. Why beat the same drum every day?
As frustrating as it can be, this sort of day-to-day pressure on individual journalists and political figures is the most effective weapon possessed by blogs, websites and other organizations devoted to forcing into our public discourse various perspectives and narratives which are otherwise excluded. Given how energized, engaged and active blog readers are, virtually all journalists, editors, pundits and political figures now hear the criticisms launched at them, and usually hear them quite loudly.
Through this process, many became aware of objections to what they do that they otherwise would not have realized. At the very least, they are conscious, when they go to write the next article or give the next interview, that they can trigger very vocal and negative reactions by repeating their errors.
Even for those who are not driven by rationality and who are not operating in good faith, this process can still affect how they behave. Everyone is potentially affected, to some degree, even if subconsciously, by substantial amounts of anger directed at them. Journalists in general have thin skins for criticism and when they are subjected to it, they remember it.
The point here is that changing our public discourse is a slow, grinding, difficult process. Any changes that occur, any progress that is made, will be made only incrementally, one day after the next. Each individual change is usually so slight as to be imperceptible, but aggregated, those changes can be substantial. The real success of blogs comes not from single, easily identifiable spectacular achievements ("we defeated this bill/candidate" or "we uncovered this fact"), but rather, by the gradual re-shaping of the dominant political narratives, by changing how political and cultural issues are discussed, by influencing (either through pressure or competition) how the media conducts itself in covering our political process.
I believe that there has been a significant payoff in this area in recent years. In my own very conservative heartland hometown paper, some of the most discussed stories are drug war-related and while plenty of comments exhibit prohibition-blindness, there are now huge numbers of intelligent comments armed with facts and reason to dispute the propaganda.
You know, a guy gets tired fighting for decades for the right to do something which should be our right anyway. Yeah, I know the litany: We've got to play the game...if you don't like the law, change it...the political process is slow...we can't be impatient...we have to educate politicians and cultivate law enforcement....blah blah blah.
Well, in the face of the no-progress Hinchey-Rohrabacher vote and the continuing defiance of the will of California voters by the DEA, not to mention all the other drug war horrors, I'm prepared to once again make inciteful (if not insightful) calls for direct action against these downpressors.
And I agree with him as well. But as one who has actually protested outside a DEA museum exhibit, I know first hand the difficulty of convincing large (or even small) numbers of people to actually take that kind of direct action.
I agree that the Hinchey-Rohrabacher vote has increased my pessimism about expending extensive efforts in convincing politicians, or even in convincing indivduals to vote for specific politicians. While I went through a lot of effort to create voting guides in 2004, and a mildly successful effort to implement a wiki-based voting guide for 2006, I think that Drug WarRant in 2008 will simply provide a basic useful guide for how individuals can find out the drug policy views of their candidates.
My efforts will continue to focus on reaching and convincing people. One at a time, if necessary.
And my view of direct action is that, if practical, it will succeed not by trying to change the minds of politicians and bureaucrats, but rather by affecting the views of large numbers of individual people in positive ways.
Providing people with the tools to be self-advocates
Regular readers of Drug WarRant probably assume that the main blog page is the most visited. It's not.
I've recently started tracking site information with Google analytics and some of it is quite interesting. In the past month, the top four visited pages on this site were:
And while I'm sure that other months might have slightly different results (I'll keep tracking it), the point is clear -- people really like having an easy-to-use, focused factual piece with strong visceral elements, and I happened upon the right idea combined with the luck for it to turn viral. I see that page all over the place on messageboards (the Drug War Victims page, while less popular, has a similar effect, and receives significantly higher numbers of visits at other times).
I hope to create some additional tools of this nature -- something to help all those people who know the propaganda is crap but need an easy way to explain it (or link to it).
Discuss
What are your deep thoughts? (they don't actually have to be deep)
