The blogs.salon.com server goes offline December, 2009. All content is moving to http://www.drugwarrant.com
Drug WarRant
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Odds and Ends and Open Thread
I'm preparing for a talk I'll be giving on the drug war to a Peace group tomorrow at 4 pm at the Unitarian Church, 1613 E. Emerson, Bloomington, Illinois. I'm sure anyone who was in the area and wanted to drop in would be welcome.
He acknowledged the nation's efforts to build a more "just and united ordering of society and to overcome the contrasts that continue to afflict the country."
In particular, the Holy Father noted Mexico's work to eliminate "violence, drug trafficking, and inequality and poverty, which are fertile ground for delinquency."
Yeah, the 10,000 dead must be a real feather in your cap. And how is that eliminating violence and drug trafficking going, huh?
In a hair-raising standoff that sent motorists scrambling for cover, municipal police pulled their guns on masked federal agents in one of Mexico's biggest cities -- a stark display of the tensions caused by a crackdown on drug corruption among the country's lawmen.
Getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, as too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy.
Calderon squeaked out a narrow victory against a third-party candidate in 2006.
The Harvard-educated lawyer and economist immediately and bravely took the fight to drug lords across the country, unleashing the military in a conflict that has so far killed more than 10,000 Mexicans with no end in sight.
And there are now serious issues -- as spelled out this week in The Washington Post -- involving allegations of torture, forced disappearances and other abuse by the Mexican military as it seeks to retaliate for the killing of soldiers and other terrorist acts committed by the drug cartels. [...]
Still, Calderon's war remains a noble battle for the soul of Mexico. [...]
...it's great news for the Mexican people, even if they don't know it. [emphasis added]
I know I'm late getting to this, but I just watched "Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey" with my parents tonight. I had not seen it yet, and it's a really excellent DVD. It's also great to sit down and watch with your family and friends.
Still on the road with very limited internet access.
A Patriot's Guide to Legalization by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. Not a bad overview. I think he significantly understates the costs of prohibition, but still good.
[Thanks, Scott]
Mike Gray's book "Drug Crazy" is now available for free online at Libertary.com.
Drug Crazy: How We Got Into this Mess and How We Can Get Out
My close friend coralsbey wrote a stranger about Glenn Beck's support of marijuana legalization under certain conditions.
It's amazing how people are afraid to talk about marijuana. Some California TV Stations consider a discussion that the Governor has asked for to be too controversial.
Previously, Daugé and her colleagues had shown that rats deprived of their mothers at birth become hypersensitive to the rewarding effect of morphine and heroin (substances belonging to the opiate family), and rapidly become dependent. In addition, there is a correlation between such behavioral disturbances linked to dependence, and hypoactivity of the enkephalinergic system, the endogenous opioid system.
To these rats, placed under stress from birth, the researchers intermittently administered increasingly high doses of THC (5 or 10 mg/kg) during the period corresponding to their adolescence (between 35 and 48 days after birth). By measuring their consumption of morphine in adulthood, they observed that, unlike results previously obtained, the rats no longer developed typical morphine-dependent behavior. Moreover, biochemical and molecular biological data corroborate these findings. In the striatum, a region of the brain involved in drug dependence, the production of endogenous enkephalins was restored under THC, whereas it diminished in rats stressed from birth which had not received THC.
Obviously, this is not a definitive statement about humans, but it's a very promising line of research.
Gee, I wonder... Will the mainstream media will jump all over this, like they do when studies with much flimsier support conclude some negative effect of cannabis?
My show opened very successfully this weekend, and now I'm off to visit the folks. My Dad is in Quincy, IL and my Mom is in Indianola, IA, and both turn 87 this week.
My internet access will be spotty this week, so blogging is likely to be light. Have at it in comments.
Here's something to kick things off. I'm not really sure what to make of this: Police Crackdowns May Encourage Drug Use. It's interesting, but I don't quite understand where they're headed with their conclusions.
Pope 
