While the General Assembly was stalled on the budget as well as major bills covering reservoirs, taxes, transportation and trauma care, the House of Representatives found 30 minutes to debate candy flavors.
The debate included a discussion about whether there was a scientific standard to define "marijuana" as a flavor, and then at one point, somebody realized that the proposed fine for marijuana-flavored candy was double the fine for actual marijuana possession.
A visibly annoyed Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson finally cut off debate.
"Here we are on Day 40, after lunch, where the Senate has continued to be disagreeable and not assert a position on the budget," Richardson fumed. "And we're talking about candy."
The "wrong message" to send to any teenager, to any child, is hypocrisy. It turns them cynical and makes them disrespect the law, when trusted adults evade reality for the sake of political concerns.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in England, is recommending that marijuana remain at Class C and not be returned to the more punitive Class B. The Prime Minister, however, seems determined not to be swayed by pesky things like facts, science, or experts.
Colombia's chief drug war cheerleader -- President Alvaro Uribe -- has made his feelings known about the Presidential race here:
"I deplore that Senator Obama, aspiring to be president of the US, ignores Colombia's efforts."
... another civil war has been going on in this country for roughly the last forty years. I'm talking, of course, about the War on Drugs. For some, the "drug war" is seen as a metaphor or a symbolic war as opposed to a "real" war. I disagree. The War on Drugs involves people with guns, it involves killing and it involves taking prisoners. [...] It is of the utmost importance to recognize that the drug war is indeed a civil war. Many other nations have at times fallen into civil war over matters of race or ethnicity, religion, social class, territorial claims or political ideology. I submit that the drug war is a civil war over the matter of culture.
Undoubtedly, this was not the intended message of DEA (Spike TV, 11 tonight), a new six-part series that returns a spotlight to the battle that once occupied the zeitgeist before terror: the war on drugs. [...]
So what you get is a high-octane sprint across the front lines of the drug war without any rooting sense of context. As such, DEA has the pulse of Cops, the heartbeat of World's Wildest Police Chases, but none of the contemplative sobriety of The Wire. [...]
What is surprising, though, is that communities, governments and law enforcement continue to fixate on supply, without adequately considering demand, which is to say, treatment for addiction.
No, not much has changed since drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was gunned down by Colombian agents in 1993. And nothing ever will until this war gets new battle plans.
The program, somewhat incongruously, is produced by Al Roker Entertainment -- yes, the jolly weatherman -- and that's about the most interesting thing to be said about it. This being Spike TV, the show is heavy on the macho side of drug-enforcement work, light on the painstaking investigation and drudgery. But it's all stuff you've seen before, in shows real and fictional: doors being bashed in by raiding officers; suspects being forced to the ground; plastic bags full of illegal this and that being displayed.
Looked at one way, the series is an argument that the trend of shows about real people doing their jobs ought to be put out of its misery. Every time one of these agents opens his mouth, you can more or less guess what's going to come out, because when enough ordinary, TV-watching people become TV stars themselves, the clichés of script writing and the mundanities of daily conversation merge.
LindseyMorales: "Honestly -- cannot wait for this show!!!!"
YDLY318:"This program looks very exciting. I will be watching. I am happy to know that we have these type of guys out there working to protect us and our children. Thanks guys!!!!"
paris5kttbm: "This show looks very exciting!!! The citizens of Detroit should throw a parade for these men who risk their lives everyday to make Detroit a safer place in which to live!!!!"
Note: Those above were supposedly from three different people, all who apparently subscribe to the quad-exclamation-point style of speech.
paris5kttbm: "Can't wait to see the entire series! I would hate to be the person on the other side of the door when that big guy comes busting in!"
darkside8mile: "The guy with the freedom patch looks like he must have been tanning during the series - "Mr. Hollywood"...."
DottieDimples: "Looking forward to seeing these guys in action!"
rus828: "looks cool"
jprunest: "I can NOT wait for this show! I have the DVR set!"
I'm not watching it. But if anyone does, feel free to leave your own descriptions in comments. And don't feed the trolls.
ATLANTA-- A Georgia state senator with the last name "Stoner" has put his name on a bill to ban the sale of so-called "Stoner Pops" to minors. The legal lollipops taste like illegal marijuana and critics say they help hook youngsters on the real thing. [...]
Students from Osborne High School were among those lobbying for passage of the bill. They argued that the chronic candy is sold on the street in a style that resembles the sale of real drugs. The message to children is that marijuana is cool. [...]
"I know several people who's addicted to marijuana and other drugs like heroin and cocaine and I'm just tired of seeing my fellow youths suffering from stuff like this," said Percy Broussard.
Doesn't it sometimes feel like turnips have a higher I.Q. than people?
Nice OpEd on travel guru Rick Steves and his quest for better drug laws in the New York Times
We are left, then, with people like Rick Steves to renew the republic with common sense brought home from other shores. He's taken to heart these words: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." They come from an earlier innocent abroad, Mark Twain.
National Post: Marc Emery should not be extradited. In a surreal twist, it seems the plea bargain that Emery and the United States agreed to is not going to work.
The Americans insisted on guarantees against Emery being released before his five years was up, and such arrangements are forbidden in Canadian law, so no Canadian judge can order the application of such a sentence. That means Emery will have to go ahead with the extradition proceedings that were held over in the face of the plea-bargain, and face a possible life sentence down south. Catch-22: because Canada is too humane and liberal to apply the punishment that the Americans would like -- a punishment Emery has voluntarily agreed to -- there appears to be no option but to hand him over to the Americans without protection against much worse treatment!
A great South Park episode, between the Heavy Metal references, the sudden drug war hysteria, and hiding kittens in attics to keep them from being seized by the DEA.
Via CESAR Fax (may not yet be up on their site), comes this chart showing a 10 year comparison of employee positive drug tests from Quest Diagnostics. The Quest statistics are often trotted out in cherry-picked portions to proclaim a dramatic reduction in cocaine use or marijuana use or meth use, but rarely showing the whole picture.
Is this supposed to be good?
Overall, the total percentage of workers with positive drug tests showed an insignificant reduction, one that could be more than offset by the substitution effect (switching from marijuana that stays in your blood a long time to other drugs that don't).
I don't see how anyone can call this chart an example of success.
Farmers in Afghanistan can't make enough to feed their families on traditional crops.
Opium pays 10 times as much as wheat or corn, and yet opium farmers still earn about $300 per family member per year (the real money goes to traffickers)
To get through the year, they often get a loan on the future crop from the traffickers.
Then eradicators, encouraged by the U.S., destroy the crop.
Unable to deliver the opium to the traffickers, the farmer faces death.
So the farmer sells his 10-year-old daughter to be the trafficker's "bride."
The Drug Enforcement Agency needs to be put out of its misery. It's a completely failed, corrupt organization with no legitimate accomplishable goals, that's being used for personal and political gain, dirty tricks, spying, drug-running, and undermining legitimate state and sovereign governments.
If that wasn't enough, sometimes they're also the keystone cops. A new audit discovered over 90 weapons and 230 laptop computers missing from the DEA, despite a bad audit for those specific items in 2002 and new procedures being put in place to better account for them.
And this follows a 2006 audit that took a look at the supposed $339 million the DEA had seized in 2005 and discovered they had no idea how close that number was to the truth, given the serious failures in following established procedures when dealing with cash.
But at least they've got a museum, and a brand new Spike-TV show.
Oh, and guns. They've got guns. (Except for the ones they lost, of course.)
Clergy Speak Out Against 'The War on Drugs' - update: link fixed
Here's a little Sunday morning inspiration for you. Send it to all your church-going friends and relatives. It's just over 9 minutes long and it's a must-see.
"It's so important for us, as both religious leaders... as members of congregations, to resist any sort of complicity, any sort of willingness to go along with this, because I think that ultimately really compromises our life of faith and our own morality."
- Father Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary's Episcopal
"I would hold the religious community responsible for that. I think it's an aspect of American puritanism/ And then we got into hysteria around that -- in a way it's a projection of anxiety onto certain people, again for puritanical purposes. And so, once we went down this path, then fueled by religious communities who supported it, it just picked up steam. And now it's one of the reasons that we, as religious leaders, need to speak out against it, because we were responsible for it."
- The Very Rev. Scott Richardson, St. Paul's Episcopal, San Diego
"It needs to be repealed. It can't be just reformed. The whole system has to.. the whole drug policy and those laws have to be repealed."
- Sister Marion Defeis, Catholic prison chaplain, ret.
