Drug Czar Kerlikowske has rather famously pronounced on numerous times that he ended the war on drugs (basically by disavowing the term). This is part of his effort to pretend that the current administration is more focused on treatment and prevention than the proven failures of supply-side drug control policy.
Yet the budget has shown that this is all misdirection. Sure, there have been a few extra dollars thrown into treatment, and the drug czar makes an effort to travel around the country visiting treatment centers, but the truth is that we’re still fully funding and supporting the enormous drug war that the U.S. has been fighting for ages.
Now the drug czar has announced the appointment of Marilyn Quagliotti as Deputy Director of Supply Reduction. Check out the qualifications that he brags about for someone joining an agency that is supposedly no longer fighting a war…
…previously served 32 years in the United States Army, rising to the rank of Major General. She was the first woman to attain the rank of General Officer in the Signal Corps and first woman to command a battalion in a combat division. As an Army officer, she served multiple tours throughout the continental United States, South Korea, Germany and Panama. In Panama, she was the Brigade Commander, in command of a unit supporting interdiction efforts to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. Deputy Director Quagliotti holds a M.S degree from the National War College in National Security Strategy…
Nope. No wars here.
“I think there’s something analogous to the war on drugs,” Saatchi & Saatchi S CEO Judah Schiller declared Wednesday at a Brainstorm Tech discussion on the state of the advertising industry. “We’re spending tens of millions of dollars over the decades. We know it doesn’t work, but at least we know what we’re getting!”
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/20/why-offline-ad-spending-like-the-war-on-drugs/?section=magazines_fortune
They’ve taken a page from the Klinton years of appointing a military officer, a general, in order to appear tough on drugs.
(Facepalm) More proof that the ‘anti-drugs’ organizations ran out of anything even remotely appearing to be original in their approaches to this non-problem. Now they’re resurrecting the Klinton era’s pointless policies. Another ideological retread.
Retreads are never as good as new. And there’s nothing new in drug prohibition. SS, DD.
Disgusting.
Stuff as that only serves to show the military as complete idiots that will lead us to disaster.
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/01/drug-statutes-infinitely-worse-than.html
It was the military that pushed virginia bright leaf, causing many health problems.
I am running a campaign for The United States Congress AGAINST the War on Drugs. http://www.romainforcongress.com/
Other than those who have vested financial interests in not seeing the truth –such as the Pharmaceutical, Tobacco, Alcohol, and Prison /forced “Treatment†industries, -most people who talk about The War on Drugs agree that it is a failure on every front but what to do…? What can any one person do…? On the day that I or anyone else who subscribes to my plan takes office in a position with pardon power, THE DRUG WAR IS OVER in that jurisdiction. While a Governor or a President (I am not currently seeking these positions but with strong support I will switch gears) can’t write law or usually even determine what on the books is enforced, pre-emptive online pardons for drug law violations from that day forward will stop it on day one. When coupled with a requirement that any distribution have occurred in warning covered packages while banning advertising promotions, usage will drop, -with a precipitous decline in the murders, corruptions, overdoses, environmental poisonings, funding of terrorist/criminal elements, wrong or “right” house raids, horrific imprisonments and other problems caused by the War on Drugs. -Marc Romain
.
.
So do you think that your the first political candidate in history to employ Internet spam as part (all?) of your political campaign? Careful now, that’s a trick question.
Marc, why don’t you try challenging the incumbent for the Republican nomination? Given the Republican tilt of your district (and the extreme rarity of 3rd-party electoral victories anywhere), this would seem to offer a better shot at actually taking office.
Encourage your supporters to register as Republicans and support you at the nominating convention.
“Drug Prohibition does exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. Drug Prohibition creates violence; it creates more addicts; it creates more dysfunction in society.â€
– Constable Gil Puder, Vancouver City Police
Deputy Director Major General.Marilyn Caligula
To fill the needs of a perverted war on drugs…
SWAT Reporting Bill Filed in Michigan
State bill would force more transparency on SWAT team operations that involve the use of violence to persons or property full story
ATF’s Fast and Furious Seems Colored With Shades of Iran/Contra Scandal
The Congressional inquiry into the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun scheme is raising the specter of spooks in the soup.
full story
Study: Marijuana Not Linked With Long Term Cognitive Impairment
The idea that “marijuana makes you dumb” has long been embodied in the stereotype of the slow, stupid stoner, seen in numerous Hollywood movies and TV comedies and going unquestioned by much of American culture. full story
Forbes: Ending the War on Drugs Could Help Fix the Federal Budget
Great editorial from Forbes by E.D. Kain: “Too many people are locked up and not contributing to the economy, and too many problem users are treated like criminals rather than medical patients. All of this drains human capital and does nothing to solve the problem of addiction. Meanwhile, entire communities are ravaged by violence that could otherwise be peaceful communities with businesses and jobs. Instead of spending so much on police and welfare, we could be spending money on rebuilding badly dilapidated infrastructure and juicing up stagnant inner-city economies.” full story
Drug prohibition does EXACTLY what it was MEANT to do — furthering the careers of lawmakers and law enforcers by destroying the lives of the people they are elected to serve and sworn to protect.
The scary part. These morons think this is good.
It is good to those “morons” receiving the trillion dollars. Just a typical cold war. Scare the people and then sell them protection. That includes intelligence from Dyncorps and Sikorski helicopters and lots of bullets in case people have dogs. Jail space rental is another good investment. Rehabilitation’s including whiz quizzes ain’t chopped liver. The drug war is about maintaining dysfunction. Keeping renewable resources out of the profit of Wall St. Fossil fools, Big Ag and Pharma, which is redundant. Selling out a segment of the population for profit and cheap labor. Along with outsourcing jobs.
Gutting service jobs, prison slave labor and taxing service workers. All take local funds and diverts them to Obombo or Multinational Corporations. In both cases it isn’t spent locally, generating local business. It assists in gutting the governments power to regulate pollution and workers safety. It guts the workers salaries competing with disposable labor. For the profit of Boosh’s thousand points of light America has sold out her Sovereignty. By the traitor morons jerking the flags at the kids headed to Iraq because Neocon’s lied and the free press has been bastardized. Flags bought at Wallmart, made in China feeding their economy and sweatshops. China uses plastic made from Iraq and Iranian crude oil. So the pseudo patriots are paying for the bullets they were shooting at American kids. Paying for Iran’s
unclearnuclear proliferation. Paying China along with the interest on the loans they lent us to bail out Wall St firms.Two trillion spent in for profit police actions, two trillion spent bailing out Banksters and another trillion dollars on this neverending story of drugs and corruption keeping benign plants outlawed from the people. Yet they blame the seniors and sick or disabled vets on fixed incomes. All revolving around a message to the kids that is so confusing their Hemp blue jeans are listed as schedule#1 narcotics, comprising 98% of the DEA “marihuana” eradication statistics. No I think we are the morons and they are cut throat murdering Fascists Neocon’s and now they pull the strings of the GOP. To serve and obey the World Banksters and Global economy many Freedom Fighters support in the name of unverified trust and good intentions. If we just open the southern and northern borders then we have cheap labor and plenty of resources. Mexamericanada coming to a country you knew. Doing their part for the New Weird Odor of the World Trade Orchestrations. What do we do… stop feeding the beast for a start. Until we deal with the disease we will continue treating the symptoms. Then go smoke a joint for Liberty!
Drug War Clock
Cost of War to the United States Since 2001
$1,225,840,331,536
Higher Ground By by John Sinclair
Pot’s new Cold War
After 40 years, $1 trillion, US War on Drugs has failed to meet any of its goals
Damn, Ddc. Well said.
Watching a Video about Hemp oil on You Tube and how it heals and helps with Cancer very interesting,informing, one part in Canada a friend dispensaries I believe is raided by Police,then later on,one of officers comes to him for medicine for his father,They are arresting folks but then know it really is medicine,have they no shame.It was uploaded back in 2009 maybe some of you have seen it.If the sincerity of these folks does not move you nothing will,I guess,Pro-hibs.
When will this insanity stop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWjdOG67gtg&feature=related
.
.
At least the jack boots’ Canadian victims can often find relief from the judiciary.
A local man, 23, is currently in Harborview Hospital in Seattle (the regional trauma center for most of the NW corner of these uSofA) with severe burns from his house exploding yesterday, shortly after midnight, while he was trying to make “hash using butane” (according to the news stories), or hash oil (judging by the method, which is like Rick Simpson’s from the movie you linked).
Happened on my neighbor’s route (she’s a mail…person). He was doing BHO extraction INSIDE HIS HOME WITH NO VENTILATION beyond an open window. Vapors built up (duh) and of course, bits of his house are still raining down. Sad, but stupidity is sad. BHO extraction MUST be done outside or with one hell of a lot of moving, ventilated air, or the results are what this gentleman got. Rick Simpson uses Naphtha as his solvent, IIRC, still volitile, still dangerous, still NEEDS to be done OUTSIDE, but somewhat easier to control. Also, Naphtha is dirtier and more difficult to purge from the finished product.
As with ANY laboratory procedure involving volatiles, you MUST follow protocols.
Oh, to clarify, Windy and I live in the same town. One of these days I’m gonna corner her to go get coffee somewhere….
😉
I’m game, darkcycle. When and where?
Howabout Sunday? I’ll be at the Woods coffee at Bay and Prospect, about 1:30pm. I’m easy to spot. I’m wearing a DrugWarRant Incarceration Nation T-shirt.
My daughter will be visiting this weekend and if she’s gone by 1 PM on Sunday, I’ll be there; otherwise another time, but soon.
That’s fine, I have some work to do and doing it at home just isn’t in the cards, so I’ll be there anyway and I’ll be there for an hour at least…otherwise, soon.
.
.
I think that pilot lights are likely culprits in a lot of cases. Water heaters have them close to the ground and I can see a lot of people just never having it cross their minds until they wake up in the hospital covered in medical maggots. It’s been a long time since I’ve sworn off doing anything that could blow the roof off of my house.
The Feds use liquid CO2 down at U-Miss. Just like the proverbial government drones after they harvest their GI bunkweed they extract the oils, and then reapply it to the now THC free vegetable matter. But they’re very anal retentive you see, this is how they makes certain that every joint that they send to Irv, George and Elvy are all of identically poor quality cannabis.
I prefer 190 proof grain alcohol but I am interested in the CO2 method. Do you think that would require some kind of high dollar lab equipment?
One other question, why the heck do they say that grain alcohol is drinking alcohol? It’s drinking alcohol if you enjoy gastrointestinal distress and feel that you don’t have any particular use for your esophagus. But I’m very attached to mine.
OOOOOH Duncan, CO2, you don’t want to go there, you can’t AFFORD to go there. CO2 is weird stuff. It goes directly from a solid to a gas (it “sublimes”) in our atmosphere, no liquid involved. CO2 requires special pressure vessels that can run at the something like 10,000 atmospheres in order to maintain a liquid state. The vessels are huge, heavy and thick, as are the specially machined fittings and high pressure valves. There is highly specialized training that goes along with that type of work. It is beyond the average lab-rat’s level of funding and training. There are many ways to kill yourself in a laboratory, blowing yourself to smithereens doesn’t need to involve fire. BTW, All EXTRACTIONS involve some level of risk. You are extracting volatiles from a plant using solvent. Even glycerin is explosive under the right conditions. Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOSdx8tgTRs
….and nitric acid and glycerine….boom.
darkcycle, see you today, daughter wasn’t able to make it up this weekend after all, so I’m free.
Well, great actually meeting a ranter face to face. Windy, awesome meeting you! coffee (tea) again soon!
darkcycle, yes, soon. It was fun and such a nice day to sit outside having a great conversation.
OOPS, I meant Hash oil damn,not stoned,today just sleepy,the heat not sleeping well lately.
Oh hey did you hear Discovery Channel will be doing a reality Marijuana show,I’ll definitely be watching.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/20/discovery-channel-plans-marijuana-reality-show/
Also Frontline PBS will be airing The Pot Republic on July 26&29 I think its new.
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/07/frontline_the_pot_republic_airs_on_pbs_july_26_29.php
Maybe some Pro-Hibs will watch and get an epiphany? maybe OH we can only hope.
OMG. They’ll turn it into a combination of “American Chopper” crossed with “Big Brother”. They’ll take every pot cliche, every single bad stoner joke ever and put it on TV and tell people it’s “reality”. My stomach just turned in anticipation….
I’m not surprised a major general in the U.S. Army has been chosen to direct drug supply reduction. What a joke. As if supply reduction has any chance.
But then Major General Quagliotti won’t focus on real drug reduction, will she? Heaven forbid. Without drugs, how would the U.S. justify its intervention into the political and economic affairs of Central and South America? The drug war is the ultimate cover and the last vestige of U.S. gunboat diplomacy in the southern tropics.
That the Major General is a woman does nothing to boost women’s equality or arguments favoring such equality. She should know better. General Quagliotti should think like a general who knows she is now on the wrong side of a lost war, a war on U.S. citizens, no less. You don’t start a war on your own countrymen with any realistic expectation of being protected by international law. There is simply no place left to hide once justice prevails.
In the meantime, General Quagliotti may want to consult the writing of another general, a U.S. Marine, and winner of two separate Medal(s) of Honor: Major General Smedley Butler, who in 1935 wrote the classic expose, War is a Racket.
Here are the first two opening lines:
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
Re: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Sound familiar? The description applies to all wars; most emphatically the so-called war on drugs, or citizens, in this case.
Not necessarily a bad thing. The military can be ruthlessly practical at times. From that perspective it is obvious that brute force has failed and a strategy of at least partial-legalization would be much more effective at limiting the harms from drug abuse and the systemic violence generated by the black market. Legalizing the more benign drugs would also be logical from this purely practical standpoint because fighting a multi-front war will exhaust limited resources and reduce the effectiveness of efforts aimed at more harmful drugs.
Of course, drug warriors are not practical; they are ideological zealots and they do not care that their ideas have failed.
Oh Ok Darkcyle and Windy I just hope everyone is OK.
I’m just confused by video I heard them refer to Hemp oil,but I thought it hash that has the active THC antioxidants for disease curing and relief.
Wow solvents can butane anything flammable can be explosive without out release or venting,I paint in oils in doors and use the least flammable oil thinner,and paint thinner and make sure I have ventilation when I paint rags with solvent can even ignite I keep it clean,and then still worry a little.
Watched Oreilly last night,he says Booze and Pot use is up and believes it always been up,and even more so,maybe more are using cause of economy,but the conservative gal not Leslie Marshall on talk radio.M Hoover thinks drug use is down and thinks Medical Marijuana is a joke to her she repeated that did not add much to conversation.They also talked about free birth control.
Mrs Hoover could find plenty of great info on Cannabis out there,I think she just does not want to. does not for her fit her template at moment for what ever reason.
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/oreilly-many-women-are-blasted-out-of-their-minds-when-they-hav
V.V.,the gentleman in question is most definately NOT alright. He just had a massive life changing injury…if he survives. He’s in a trauma center….
10 years after Portugal’s 10 years of decriminalization of all drugs has done more good than their 30 years of criminalization.
HIV infections are down 17%
Drug deaths reduced by 50 %
Marijuana use is down to 10% of adults – the lowest rate in the European Union
Herion use is dramatically lower
Addiction is in decline
Decreased youth drug use
Lower crime rates
Reduced court expenditures
Greater access to drug treatment
Safer and healthier communities
According to the Cato Institute, “Drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country. By freeing its citizens from the fear of prosecution and imprisonment for drug usage, Portugal has dramatically improved its ability to encourage drug addicts to avail themselves of treatment. The resources that were previously devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts are now available to provide treatment programs to addicts.”
Portugal simply made small amounts of drugs a civil offense instead of a criminal offense.
-A study by the RAND Corporation found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7.46 in societal costs.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3spent on enforcement.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $10.8spent on border control.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $23 spent trying to persuade Colombian farmers to grow crops other than coca.
Tell your Congressional Representatives –
It is time to “Change the Schedule of Cannabis, Cannabis Laws, and Drug Czar Laws”
Read and Sign the petition at
http://www.change.org/petitions/change-the-schedule-of-cannabis-cannabis-laws-and-drug-czar-laws
After you sign the petition, email your friendlies, share on facebook, or twitter from the petition page. If you have a website grab the widget so your visitors can sign it without leaving your website.
This petition uses laws passed by Congress to point out that by their laws, the laws must change.
Obama threw us all under the bus real good!
I doupt that the inmates of Bedford Hills or Albion will feel any sense of empowerment any time soon.