Obama’s selection of Drug Warrior Joe Biden left me queasy about the future administration’s drug policy. Apparently I’m not the only one with concerns. Jacob Sullum writes:
The main danger with Obama is that his history of drug use, instead of making him more open to reform, will make him anxious to show he’s tough on drugs. Something like that seems to have happened with Bill Clinton, who bragged about ever-escalating drug war budgets and threatened doctors who recommended marijuana to their patients with jail, trampling the First Amendment in his rush to prove his anti-drug bona fides.
Obama on Drugs: Should reformers dare to hope? - Reason Magazine.
Still some of you remain hopeful and optimistic about the changes coming with the selection of Obama’s administration, but I’m not holding my breath.
American’s have spoken and they don’t think humans should be caged for marijuana. In fact the victories that cannabis law reform saw had higher margins of victory than Barack Obama.
I want extend personal congratulations to the people at the Marijuana Policy Project. No one organization has done so much for cannabis law reform in such a short amount of time. Sensible Fayetteville deserve honors for their work in Fayetteville, Arkansas. If we reformers can score 2 to 1 margins in the deep south I see hope for ending marijuana prohibition completely. We’re winning!
God has spoken to me, I think.
I was disenfranchised by broken Diebold machines today. The ballot was incomplete and left off the local referendums including the one that would bring Instant Runoff Voting to Shelby Co, TN (Memphis). After I was turned away from the polls, I got back in my car, listening to the volunteer radio station WEVL. They were playing the bluegrass gospel song, Daniel Prayed. The second verse started like this:
The cast him in the lions den because he would not honor men.
Now I don’t know if God sill talks to humans or not, but I think that message was too profound for me to ignore. I think the institution called government is broken by its very nature. No man has moral authority over any other man. I think natural laws rule the physical world as well as our interactions with each other and the choices we make. We see natural consequences of our actions all the time. Economist call these “market forces.” If people would allow their neighbors to be ruled by the natural consequences of their own actions the world would be a peaceful and prosperous place.
Some people say that anarchy is chaos, but that statement ignores the existence of natural law. It is the violent force of government that has always disrupted human tranquility. For this reason I am compelled to no longer participate in the system. If it is true that government rules by the consent of the governed then I hearby withdraw my consent. I do this under my nom de plume as to avoid hostility from the violent people that work to secure the institution of government. From now on anytime I do consent to government authority I do so under duress, for fear of loss of life or liberty, or to protect the life or liberty of another voluntary participant.
I don’t know if divine providence kept me from voting today or not. I do know that my decision is not reactionary. It is based on principle and humanity. I do not believe in the use of force, violence, or coercion to achieve political or social goals. Government by its nature is force monopolized.
The US must rethink its Latin American foreign policy, beginning with the drug war. Sponsoring a proxy war with drug cartels will only foster anti-American sentiment among the citizenry and the large profits of drug trafficking will continue drive public officials to corruption.
MEXICO CITY — In what could be one of Mexico’s worst cases of drug-related corruption in a decade, Mexican officials alleged that a drug cartel infiltrated the highest levels of Mexico’s attorney general’s office, paying people there as much as $450,000 a month to get sensitive information about antidrug activities.
Mexican Officials Allege Drug Cartel Infiltrated Attorney General’s Office - WSJ.com.
Is there hope for change? Drug Czar John Walters shows some signs of sanity.
Mr. Walters, a vehement opponent of drug legalization, backed a proposal by [Mexican President] Mr. Calderón not to prosecute people caught carrying relatively small amounts of illegal narcotics, including cocaine and heroin. Under Mr. Calderón’s plan, addicts would be treated differently from traffickers and would avoid jail if they agreed to undergo treatment, not unlike similar programs in some parts of the United States. “I don’t think that’s legalization,” Mr. Walters said.
Rice Visits Mexico for a Meeting About Its Drug War - NYTimes.com.
It’s a start. While the decriminalization of drugs is a baby step toward policy reform, it does nothing to address the profit motive that violent thugs have to traffic in illegal narcotics. A re-legalization of the bread-and-butter of narcotics traffickers, marijuana, would rip the financial rug out from under the gangsters that terrorize Mexico and the rest of Latin America. When American alcohol prohibition gave rise to gangsters like Al Capone and blood spilled on in our major cities we repealed the laws that caused the bloodbath. We should do the same for Mexico.
Unintended Consequences: Perhaps racist windbags like Lou Dobbs wouldn’t have some much “illegal” immigration to complain about if American foreign policy didn’t do so much damage to the Mexican economy. Mexicans have a right to keep their families safe from harm, just as Americans do.
Read this excerpt of the speech given by Paul Armentano at NORML’s 2008 Annual Conference:
Those who favor the continued prohibition of cannabis base their arguments on the false premise that the continued enforcement of said laws “protects our children.” This statement is nonsense. In fact, just the opposite is true.
The war on weed endangers the health and safety of our children. It enables young people to have unregulated access to marijuana — easier access than they currently have to legal, age-restricted intoxicants like alcohol and tobacco. It enables young people to interact and befriend pushers of other illegal, more dangerous drugs. It compels young people dismiss the educational messages they receive pertaining to the potential health risks posed by the use of ‘hard drugs’ and prescription pharmaceuticals because kids say: “If they lied to me about pot, why wouldn’t they be lying to me about everything else too.”
Most importantly, the criminal laws are far more likely to result in having our children arrested and placed behind bars than they are likely to in any way discourage them to try pot.
These are the facts, and it’s about time we start shouting them from the rooftops.
Full Text: The War on Pot Is a War on Young People | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Done.
The Whizzinator, despite the inaccurate description in the article below, is a prostetic penis used in conjunction with a synthetic urine that affords its user some personal privacy when subjected to a UDS, urine drug screen. The company’s officers are being pursued on charges of conspiracy because some people happen to use the things to protect themselves when tested by the federal government. When the government makes it their job to sift through the urine of average Americans we don’t live in a free country anymore.
Get your Whizzinator while you still can. They’re available at Tobacco King (map) on Whitten near I-40 for my readers in Memphis, TN.
The owners of the company that makes the Whizzinator, a prosthetic penis used to mask illegal drug use, were charged yesterday in federal court with conspiracy to defraud the government and are expected to plead guilty.
Gerald Wills, the president of Puck Technology, based in Signal Hill, Calif., and Robert D. Catalano, the vice president, are charged in a 19-page criminal information of conspiracy for selling two different products that mask illegal substances in a user’s urine.
‘Whizzinator’ makers to plead guilty.
HT: High Times
I have a friend that spent four days in jail in 1996 when a nutritional suplement tested positive for heroin. His attorney’s fees totalled nearly $10,000. All charges were dropped. The problem persists:
For decades law enforcement agencies including local police, DEA and U.S. Customs have used what is known as “presumptive field drug-test” kits to confirm that suspected materials are illegal drugs. The tests, which use powerful acids to react with suspected substances, change color to indicate the presence or absence of drugs. However, there is now conclusive evidence the field drug tests falsely indicate the presence of drugs when used on numerous natural products such as soap, soy milk, essential oils and chocolate. Developed over 60 years ago, these tests are made by the giant homeland security company Armor Holdings, a subsidiary of BAE Systems. At a cost of less than five dollars each, the field drug tests can be found in nearly every police car, border checkpoint, jail and in most schools.
Government’s Drug War Test Kits Give False Positives on Organic and Natural Products.
HT: Drug War Chronicle, et al.
Radley Balko has a great article up on Slate. Before you go pulling the lever for Obama, thinking he’ll bring change to drug policing think again. His selection of Drug Warrior Biden confirmed for me that Obama’s prior commitment to decriminalization was just political pandering to his left-wing base. To win this election Obama/Biden have to have the support of police unions.
Obama and Biden also want to revive the Byrne grant drug eradication program, another block grant initiative. At a speech last month in Florida, Obama promised to ensure funding for the Byrne program, adding that it “has been critical to creating the anti-gang and anti-drug task forces our communities need.” Although Byrne has not failed to achieve its stated goal (reducing the availability of illicit drugs), it has made drug policing more aggressive and militaristic and less accountable. And by prioritizing raw arrest statistics, the program tends to focus police efforts on low-level offenders instead of major distributors.
Because they tend to be multijurisdictional, no sheriff or police chief oversees the investigations of Byrne task forces. They are “effectively accountable to no one, least of all the communities they purportedly aim to serve and protect,” says Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project for the ACLU, which has documented abuses by Byrne-funded task forces all over the country.
Obama’s bad criminal justice ideas. - By Radley Balko - Slate Magazine.
The American Alliance for Medical Cannabis is debating medical marijuana on the Opposing Views forum. This is one of the rare places that drug warriors actually show up to debate. AAMC claims that medical marijuana treats the symptoms of ADHD. Without divulging too much of my personal life I’ll have to agree whole heartedly by saying that I’ve experienced the benefits first-hand.
After giving Jeffrey marijuana, the results were immediate.
“Within a half hour,” Debbie says, “I looked over at Jeffrey, and he just had this smile about him, this glow, and he said, ‘Mommy, I feel happy.’ And that’s the first time that he’s ever said that.”
“Jeff has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is ADHD; oppositional defiant disorder; conduct disorder; intermittent explosive disorder; bipolar disorder - any disorder you can think of,” says Debbie, a single mother.
American Alliance for Medical Cannabis on marijuana, cannabis: Marijuana Treats Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
It will be interesting to see how drug warriors can argue against these claims. Most ADHD symptoms are now treated with psycoactive drugs, antidepressants and stimulants as a first course of action. These drugs, Ritalin, Concerta, Straterra, Adderall, Wellbutrin, etc., have serious side effects and/or abuse potential. Ritalin and Adderall and their derivatives are scheduled narcotics.
Marijuana provides a non-toxic, effective alternative treatment for ADHD with a low potential for abuse (when compared with amphetamines.) There’s no logical reason why Ritalin is legally prescribed to children when people who provide medical marijuana to suffering children are treated like hardened criminals.
The FDA has decided not to ban pediatric OTC cold and cough medicine, even though it has been shown to be ineffective and even dangerous to our children. One of the major objections to the ban is a reasonable one. The FDA recognizes that in the event of a total ban some parents will opt to give their young children adult versions of the same drugs. I’m going to be bringing up this point anytime someone tells me that the War on Drugs keeps our children safe.
In many cases, the active ingredients in children’s cold medicines have never been studied in children. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that “several studies show that cold and cough products don’t work in children younger than 6 years and can have potentially serious side effects.”
An FDA official said the agency is wary of banning the drugs altogether, because that could lead parents to simply start giving their children adult cold medicine, the AP reports. “It really is a conundrum for us,” John Jenkins, who heads the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, said.
Health Blog : FDA Rejects Ban On Cough & Cold Medicines for Kids.
I think that’s a stunning admission for an agent of our government. Maybe Jenkins should be the next Drug Czar.
