Still not perfect, but here are two examples of drug policy that help to drive home just how incredibly horrendous is U.S. policy.
Netherlands: ‘You will not be arrested for using drugs’: What a sane drug policy looks like
Now a truly good policy would have cocaine legally regulated so you don’t unexpected ingredients in your cocaine, but this is far better than what we would do.
Canada: Canada Begins Prescribing Heroin to Those Already Addicted
Canada has become the first country in North America to implement a medically prescribed heroin dispensing program. Often called ‘heroin maintenance programs,’ these initiatives help heroin addicts who fail to respond to conventional treatment, typically methadone.
This kind of program has been proved effective for years, and yet we still are unwilling to consider anything like it in the U.S.
From time to time legal products are contaminated (food, pharmaceutical products etc) and need to be recalled. It’s pretty common to see ‘product recalls’ broadcast on TV. Companies want to put things right as soon as possible.
This doesn’t happen on the black market.
Another failure of drug prohibition.
Michigan legislature has in spite of rulings enacted screening the poor. The bottom line; Both parties are not enacting these practices. What next, whiz survey lance for a firearm license?
Sorry to go ot quite so soon but I watched Pot Cops for the first time last night. The program focussed on the cops raiding grows in Humbolt county.
This was a totally biased piece of propaganda. Focussing on the “fun” the cops were having doing overnight stake outs etc, (no mention of the massive overtime payments though). At one point one of the cops referred to growers as “cockroaches” who only come out when the cops turn the lights on. At one point, when it seemed there would not be enough evidence to bring charges, the cops decided that they’d take the kids into care…some “what about the chilluns” talk. The cops kept complaining that the law prevents them from fighting the drug war (nobody goes to jail etc.)
Needless to say there was no discussion whatever about how the drug laws create dangers to all concerned, including the cops. Programs like these are probably Kevin Sabet’s main source of information on cannabis and prohibition. If the makers had any sense of balance or presenting reality, they would have interviewed some reformers like Ethan Nadelson. I would also be interested to learn how this show is funded (clearly there is a substantial contribution from the tax payer in the form of police time and access.
In November 2008, 68 percent of Swiss voters approved the legalized regulation of heroin.
Results:
In many cases, patients’ physical and mental health has improved, their housing situation has become considerably more stable, and they have gradually managed to find employment. Numerous participants have managed to reduce their debts. In most cases, contacts with addicts and the drug scene have decreased. Consumption of non-prescribed substances declined significantly in the course of treatment.
Dramatic changes have been seen in the situation regarding crime. While the proportion of patients who obtained their income from illegal or borderline activities at the time of enrollment was 70%, the figure after 18 months of HAT was only 10%.
Each year, between 180 and 200 patients discontinue HAT. Of these patients, 35-45% are transferred to methadone maintenance, and 23-27% to abstinence-based treatment.
The average costs per patient-day at outpatient treatment centers in 1998 came to CHF 51. The overall economic benefit – based on savings in criminal investigations and prison terms and on improvements in health – was calculated to be CHF 96. After deduction of costs, the net benefit is CHF 45 per patient-day.
Good video about that here: http://youtu.be/Cco4BT-KDK8
The reduction in numbers from the ’90s to present day are incredible, (heroin users, violent crimes related to heroin use, and deaths) related to this program. This is taking thinking to a whole other level. Applause, applause leaders in Switzerland!
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The prohibitionist cohort hasn’t managed to get past the failure of “Needle” Park when the conversation turns to the non-medicinal use of heroin in Switzerland.
Prohibitionist: Don’t you know that the Swiss have admitted that the “Needle” Park program was a failure and had to be cancelled. [insert gratuitous mention of the Opium Wars]
Non lunatic: “Needle Park” was in fact a gross failure of public policy and had to be shut down. What the Swiss didn’t do was they didn’t revert to a different gross failure of public policy which they also acknowledge is a proven failure. They kept on looking for a public policy which works. Why is it that the American Ignorati refuses to admit that its favorite failed public policy is in fact a proven, epic failure of public policy and is determined to keep our society stuck in the muck of their preferred political pigpen? [insert gratuitous snark about how Chairman Mao financed the communist revolution by selling opium and opium derivitave products.]
Here’s some Duncan produced boilerplate to chew on:
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Whenever I mention the Swiss vote in 2008 I like to point out that Swiss voters were voting to make the 15ish year old Swiss HAT program permanent. The voters weren’t taking a leap of faith in that vote. They had a decade of first hand observation of the policy so they knew exactly what they were doing.
Granted this is just a clip, and maybe his anti-Nazi ways won’t make him popular with other cops in other jurisdictions, but I think he gets it, I really do.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?
v=10152479789514117
https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCBD69FNdXeR6BD&w=418&h=413&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FB3_LVwOCEAAHarQ.jpg
Too many similarities, not funny but ironically true.
Dang nab it! here is a better link to the video
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152479789514117
Ya the prescription heroin program in Vancouver is a good program but they had to sue the federal government to continue this and a safe injection site (Insite) as the ruling CON party has been trying to shut them down for years.
This is the same CON federal government that eliminated MMJ patients’ right to grow their own in favor of a regulated oligopoly of for-profit corporate growers.
The only way to overcome this kind of unjust dominion by reactionary authoritarians is to keep fighting and use the Citizens’ initiative process. And vote Liberal in 2015 in Canada and throw out the CONs!
I’d say vote NDP in Canada in 2015 but they are prohibitionists – their leader, Tom Mulcair, is categorically against legalization of the herb.
Mulcair said if he was in power he would rescind the LP’s growers licences.
The only choice in Canada if you want some chance at enacting sensible cannabis laws is the Liberals.
As a business model, killing off your customers is a short-term strategy at best.
But seriously, what kind of CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE or STUPIDITY would perpetrate a Heroin-for-Cocaine scheme?
Insane law enforcement? Street dealer turf war? Some opportunistic but incredibly stupid kids who found someone’s stash? WTF?
This is a story that I’d really like to know the ending and who was responsible. I suspect this was NOT an accidental act and that intrigues the fuck out of me.
Totally agree. The motive behind swapping heroin for cocaine escapes me. The market does not support it, and when you go against the market – you lose.
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Pulp Fiction?
Oh wait a minute, that movie was fiction. My bad. Carry on.
Yeah, I can’t escape the gut-feeling that somehow/someway = the local gov/authorities are getting “Punk’d” (in a very Ashton Kutcher tv show sense…) 😕
Amsterdam’s health policies rest on a civilized approach to government, a recognition outlined in the Dutch constitution that defines the government’s role as helping to ensure the health, happiness, and wellbeing of Dutch citizens.
In international dealings, a country’s national character is judged by how it treats its citizens. A nation that belittles its own people for simple and harmless acts of non-conformity can be expected to mistreat other countries and other people the same way. This idea has underwritten U.S. foreign policy since it was introduced with the Marshall Plan in 1947. Today, it correctly depicts how the United States treats much of the rest of the world, along with other citizens of the world, and it explains the dissension the U.S. experiences in its current foreign relations.
In the United States, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, not its Constitution. That is unfortunate. The constitutional oversight allows corporatist entities controlling the government to reap huge profits by making war on American citizens and engaging in solutions that are purely eliminationist. Eliminationism is the tool of tyrants – “No man, no problem,†as Joe Stalin liked to say. Unfortunately for governments, it can also be a tool of revolutionaries.
Ending prohibition and the drug war will make for a more humane country for its citizens. It will encourage civilized and more humanitarian treatment of other foreign peoples and countries. It’s not just about the drugs.
Well spaketh brother.
Brought joy to my heart to read that.
nice
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From time to time I wonder why the heck didn’t the Founding Fathers include a specific right to privacy in the Bill of Rights. My thoughts are split two ways. 1) The FFs thought that the right to privacy is so cut and dried that they didn’t need to actually spell it out. -or- 2) When considered in its totality the Bill of Rights actually does protect the citizens’ right to privacy because they protected every element that constitutes a right to privacy. I think they weren’t aware of the cohort of people who are committed adherents to the Humpty Dumpty school of sophistry.
They did include life and liberty in the 5th. I’m sitting here trying to come up words to protect a right to the pursuit of happiness. I often ruminate about how the absolute prohibition of cannabis has severely diminished my pursuit of happiness. But couldn’t it be argued that re-legalization impacts the sycophants of prohibition pursuit of the same? Wouldn’t it impact Ozzy Fudd’s pursuit of happiness if he couldn’t strive to kill the wabbit? That made me remember that only the pursuit of happiness would be protected. It’s not a guarantee that you will in fact get to kill the wabbit.
Also, it annoys me that they didn’t even mention the pursuit of trivia.
PS Ozzy is Elmer’s son.
Actually, Thomas Jefferson preferred to use the unalienable right to life, liberty, and property in the Declaration of Independence, but deferred to others by changing it to “pursuit of happiness”. But the right to property IS mentioned in the BoR,in the 4th Amendment.
IIRC, This was more a philosophic argument about the phrasing (most of them would have founf the two concepts very closely linked and *nearly interchangeable*, but they didn’t want to appear “shallow” (or whatever this exact term would be?
They wanted to it to sound less materialistic & avoid the notion that they had anything improper in their lives or behaviors/habits/etc that might be construed as improprietary (?) = Such that they needed to spell out their right to keep it private.
And, you’re right that most of this would be covered by the 4th Amendment. There was very similar language in writing of the day and that these men were (almost certainly) familar with:
aka – John Locke’s – “Second Treatise on Government” and therein his views on Both the State of Nature and Property to quote the wiki = to help make my point here and in case of editing
Although, I’m (in a way) more a fan of his thoughts on Self-Ownership…
But,that’s also a very closely connected concept = Locke uses it to anchor his theory that even without government – we would – at the very least own ourselves.
Which is my foundation for the argument of cognitive liberty- and the right each of us has to seek ‘altered states of consciousness’, And that no one has the right to publically belittle another over such choice as one of selfishness or hedonism = that somehow harms society via some etheric “message” sent to their children, their children are not my concern.
If they feel a need to isolate their kids from society and/or popular culture – that too is not my problem.
Nor (IMO) is that a particularly wise ‘parenting strategy’, but that’s a whole other topic… Then again they might dispute that as well, at which point I drop the politeness and pleasantries. And tell them where they can take their opions and shove’em!
B.C. judge gives absolute discharge for man caught growing 414 pot plants http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/1228736/b-c-judge-gives-absolute-discharge-for-man-caught-growing-414-pot-plants/ via @vancouvermetro
OT… so why the hell is Mark K Lieman involved in this?
January 13, 2015
Medicinal Marijuana and Cancer: An Expert Panel
Thomas Strouse, MD; Garth Terry, MD, PhD; Mark Kleiman, PhD
Is he the cancer they will be discussing?
Two psychiatrists and a public policy academician walk into a cannabis dispensary….
Don’t you go mocking those PhDs! Jeremy Hilary Boob was a Phud!
Part of the answer must be that the event is at UCLA.
Uruguay Registers Cannabis Growers’ Clubs,
Taking Another Step Towards Legal Pot
Back in the Untied States of Anemica
Report: Federal Monopoly Obstructs Medical Marijuana Research
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”
~ Federal Bureau of Narcotics Chief Harry J. Anslinger, 1948
California Cops Are Trained ‘Marijuana Is Not A Medicine’
“[Marijuana] is highly intoxicating and constitutes an ever recurring problem where there are Mexicans or Spanish-Americans of the lower classes.”
~ New York Times- Dec. 3, 1933 – Pg. 6, Sec. 4.
“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”
~ Hearst newspapers nationwide, 1935
“We have spent over a trillion dollars trying to eradicate the world’s most beneficial plant off the face of the earth. Imagine what a better world this would be if that money had been spent on treatment, education and studying the medical benefits of marijuana.”
~ Steve Hager – High Times Editor (1988 – 2003)
“The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents.”
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
“Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas.”
~ Robert Ingersoll, then Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in a column by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post, June 24, 1972, p. 31 (Ingersoll became the first director of the DEA in 1974)
“Does not think that the narcotic [Marihuana] can be used here to any extent. If it were being sold in wholesale quantities, somebody would be getting violent,â€-
~ Chief of Detectives Herbert A. Schultz
BELOIT DAILY NEWS (Beloit, Wisconsin) Feb. 10, 1938 pg1.
Houston Police Chief Says Drug War Is A ‘Miserable’ Failure,
Feds Need To Step Up http://huff.to/1zwoDo5 via @HuffPostPol
St. Louis police post tips on how to keep your child from being shot by police http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/04/1349395/-St-Louis-police-post-tips-on-how-to-keep-your-child-from-being-shot-by-police … via @dailykos
Americans Killed by Cops Now Outnumber Americans Killed in Iraq War
http://po.st/Zzl3W7 via @po_st
What went wrong? In the 19070’s SWAT teams were estimated to be used just a few hundred times per year, now we are looking at over 40,000 military style “knock and announce†police raids a year.
The police presence in this country is being turned into a military with a clearly defined enemy, anyone who questions the establishment.
If we look at the most recent numbers of non-military US citizens killed by terrorism worldwide, that number is 17. You have a better chance of being killed by a bee sting, or a home repair accident than you do a terrorist. And you are 29 times more likely to be murdered by a cop than a terrorist!
Got SqWAT?
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1775
“Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.”
— Daryl Gates
Father of SWAT Founder of DARE
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/565
Sort of O/T, sort of not.
Center for Cannabis and Social Policy does a great job of sorting through the Nixon Tapes and laying out the actual motives and process behind Nixon’s creation of NIDA and the Controlled substances act.
Hint (as if you needed one): It was hate, racism, and political expediency. Science and scientists were the enemies.
http://cannabisandsocialpolicy.org/health-scientist-blacklisting-and-the-meaning-of-marijuana-in-the-oval-office-in-the-early-1970s-2/
I knew Nixon was nuts, but not as bad as this. There is a lot of new material here. Enough to make a movie about Nixon’s personal war on drug consumers.
My friend Dominic (Dr. Corva) runs the center. He’s the Anti-Klieman, and well worth following.
interesting indeed, back in ’71 dope was 5 bucks an oz. if you bought a kilo. nixon was a crook evil enough to bedevil america long after he died. drunks only want to have fun and socialize? here’s evidence to the contrary: http://tinyurl.com/mwyucu7
I would help cloudfund that.
In regards with this, I think the best thing is that for the prohibitionist is relegate them to a religious cult where their opinions and lies are liable for public scrutiny from the public and even the scientific profession itself, they are a cancer to society and will do anything to back up their own lies and agenda to keep prohibition going, there is a article that I have seen on the Internet that illustrates this kind of mentality from the prohibitionists, I believe the time to stop funding these anti cannabis groups should be seriously considered:
http://thecannabisgeek.com/is-prohibitionism-religious-cult/
Great analysis on the prohibitionist mindset and why good and decent drug policy is so hard to achieve.
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It seems that Santa Clause voted against Measure 2 in Alaska. Well that’s just dandy. I’ve had the book I’m writing sitting on the shelf neglected for far too long. Actually he isn’t in the book except for the title: “Santa Clause Is A False God”. I think I’m going to write a chapter just for him. Somebody has to expose the truth about this creep. Why in the world would anyone let the patron saint of prostitutes sneak into their home in the dead of night to ply their children with candy and toys?
Is this what some people might call snowballing?
Despite objections from the Spanish central government The Autonomous Community of Navarra have passed a law that legally regulates cannabis clubs. The law was brought before the Navarra Parliament as a Popular Legislative Initiative and with more than the needed 10,000 signatures.
The law has already been approved, and is just waiting to be published in the Official Gazette of Navarra, and shall enter into force on the same day. Once this happens, possibly next week, the central government delegate for the National Plan on Drugs has promised to give an official response.
The Autonomous Community of Navarra is the first region in Spain to pass such a law.
clubs-cannabis-legales-Navarra
And on the Prohibitionist front, here’s what the Canadian government is wasting taxpayer dollars on: a non-functional link from a paid ad concerning how powerful the dreaded marijuana has become:
http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/drug-prevention-drogues/index-eng.php?utm_source=globeandmail&utm_medium=banner_en&utm_content=marijuana_dhtml_combo&utm_campaign=drug_prevent1415
Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The right to property is not absolute and states have a wide degree of discretion to limit the right to property in the public interest.
Forfeiture $quads
eminent domain
The power of a government to take private property for public use without the owner’s consent, provided just compensation is given.
Regardless how it ends, the entire phrase is a series of prerequisites one must have to reach either a chance to pursue happiness or to own property. Can’t Pursue happiness or own property without having Liberty. One can’t have Liberty until one has Life and therefore the prerequisites of Life are also gauranteed. Food, Clothing, Housing, Healthcare, Education and a means of sustaining them or having them sustained.
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is a well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence. The phrase gives three examples of the “unalienable rights” which the Declaration says has been given to all human beings by their Creator, and for which governments are created to protect.
Hemp and Ganja provide the prerequisites for Life. So the government is obligated to let the people grow it.
High on Hemp
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1659
Hemplastic or Fossil Fools Crud
there is no reason for their war on “drugs” except to wage war on nixon’s percieved enemys. the reason for wasting a trillion dollars is a politcal snit by the republicans. no real science behind any of it. just hate. who would have thought that?
Wasting a trillion dollars is not considered wasted by those on the receiving side of it. As long as shadows can be cast to create enough doubt to keep it going. Win or lose prohibitionists stop getting paid. Their money is in keeping the war. Tax dollars or keeping out competition. State by state incremental illness doesn’t stop it. Obama can remove it as a controlled substance. If he lowers it then Fat Pharma keeps the profits and the war on us will continue. Since the gitgo it has always been corporate profits and government taxes paying those to maintain the war. No different today. I seriously have to question their sanity on spending a trillion dollars to keep me safe from Ganja and I’m still a happy toker. Probably better spent elsewhere. Nixon was a Neocon with the Blue Dawgs and Dixiekrats wearing a GOPer title. Like Bidon and Clinton with Krats. Probably Obama but I don’t see him as having much clout. Now they own the Neocongress and most of the Supremest Court. I see no logical way to fight a corrupt system within a corrupt system. Could be why it has lasted 3/4th of a century.
A very lucrative hoax…
A Trillion spent on the Ganjawar is a Trillion in the Pockets of Prohibitionists.
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/434
not to mention another trillion in law enforcements pockets.