Doesn’t exist.
The Concord Monitor seems to think it does. Editorial: The right drug war, and the wrong one
The right drug war, as the appearance of a member of the ultra-violent Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel in U.S. District Court in Concord yesterday demonstrates, is essential and remains under way. Hard drugs, like the ton of cocaine the gang hoped to distribute, destroy lives and fuel crime and corruption. Meanwhile, the wrong drug war, the half-century-long prosecution of people who possess small amounts of marijuana, is winding down, thanks to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is attempting to bring sanity to drug laws that put far too many people behind bars. Both of Holder’s efforts deserve support.
It’s nice to see them realize that the drug war against marijuana users is wrong, but they’re misguided in their approach to the “other drug war.” Why are they having to deal with the Sinaloa cartel? Why is cocaine linked to crime and corruption? Drug war.
The right drug war is also being fought in Manchester, where a raid on an auto repair shop recently led to the arrest of five people and the seizure of 100 grams of heroin, the biggest smack bust in that city’s history. One of the men arrested gave the police a Concord address. The heroin the group planned to sell creates the addicts who are responsible for thefts from homes and cars and other crimes. The right drug war also needs to be fought against the makers and sellers of the drug known as Molly, an amphetamine with hallucinogenic properties. That drug is blamed for the recent deaths of several dance club patrons, including a young woman from Londonderry and a UNH student from Rochester, N.Y. It is drugs like these, which can easily kill the unwary, and hard drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, that deserve to be targets if a war on drugs is conducted.
Again, it’s the drug war that results in dangerous drugs of uncertain purity that can result in death, or in pushing addicts into crime to support their habit.
Yes, the drug war, when used against casual marijuana smokers, is wrong. But it’s not wrong because marijuana is relatively harmless. It’s wrong because the use of a drug war is always harmful, regardless of the drug involved.
the article just assumes there would be no drugs or drug users in concorde without folks like the sinaloa cartel and that removing them would end the problem. the editor is childishly naive. or even worse thought up a catchy headline and wrote an article to fit it
“Yes, the drug war, when used against casual marijuana smokers, is wrong. But it’s not wrong because marijuana is relatively harmless. It’s wrong because the use of a drug war is always harmful, regardless of the drug involved.” (excellent Pete).
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Bang! There it is, right there.
Now if you took that finely carved piece of wood to a legislative hearing, it would be kept for a few days then returned to you — as a box full of saw dust.
We don’t need thousand page reports. We don’t need moldy suits chewing on words for hours on end. We don’t need every single loose end (real and imagined) tied up to perfection. No mas. No more #$%& drug war.
http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Police-Search-warrant-turns-up-3k-in-marijuana/OipzUBGLwUqcimrPOwPWUA.cspx One question about the article, How many more Ks than proceeds from asset forfeiture shared by the armadas, local state and federal?!
Drugs are dangerous but turning the manufacturing and distribution over too criminals is deadly and will always do more harm than the drugs alone could ever cause.
I used to remove posts from sites I monitored that even mentioned any other drug and since it was a marijuana site it made sense to me that the policy was mandated,,I now know that as long as prohibition lives we are going to be losing friends,family and neighbors needlessly too the criminals,,the ones making and selling the drugs and the ones keeping prohibition alive,,
“I now know that as long as prohibition lives we are going to be losing friends, family and neighbors needlessly to the criminals.”
This points to what is likely Kevin Sabet’s most egregious deceit. You’ll recall during yesterday’s senate hearing Kevin mentioned something along the lines of “being concerned about public health” with respect to commercial cannabis businesses. But if prohibitionists were really concerned about public health, they wouldn’t be prohibitionists. Their positions and actions are completely contrary to any notion of a healthy public. Yet another reason why their days are numbered.
“Drugs are dangerous but turning the manufacturing and distribution over too criminals is deadly and will always do more harm than the drugs alone could ever cause”.
Generalizations be damned; I think it’s pretty safe to say that every prohibitionist on earth abhors this with religious fervor. They literally cannot imagine that corrupt criminal organizations and misapplication of law hurts more people than the drugs themselves. The burden of proof is on them to prove drug use outside of prohibition is more harmful. Some of the social costs they continually whine about are either exaggerated like healthcare or completely made up (and irrelevant) productivity!
Did anyone else notice the changes in Grassley?
Grassley didn’t mention that Iowa had already moved cannabis too schedule 2 in their states version of the CSA,,,noticed he wasn’t asking the DoJ why they weren’t going after Iowa for changing a federal policy.
I have “high hopes” that his display of prohibition support at the hearing was now seen by his constituents and the cannaphiles in Iowa,,,that man has shot down every reform bill that ever hit the Senate Judiciary committee for decades.
I expect him to retire this time,,his fire has died down and if you had seen him speak on the dangers of marijuana 10 or 12 years back you would had seen him grasping the microphone and leaning forward in an aggressive manner as if daring anyone on the pro side of the witness panel to challenge his opinion,,now he sat there and sounded like he was just reading a statement about the corn crop.
In light of Dr. Kevin Sabet’s irrelevance to the committee members at the September 10 Leahy Senate hearing, it’s time to talk about human outreach programs that focus on treatment programs for ex-drug-enforcement personnel.
Everyone has their Ex-this.org and Ex-that.org to turn to in times of life’s little transitions, so it’s the obvious next step as America and the world emerges from the Great Prohibition. I offer the following recommendations:
Now that America is changing its mind on cannabis its time for India to do the same
http://tinyurl.com/oqcygqf
But India’s is a peculiar case. The US had been pushing for a global law against drugs since 1961. India resisted until 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to American pressure and enacted the irrational and draconian Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
The act failed to distinguish bhang and ganja from hazardous hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. It clubbed all of them together, the minimum punishment for violation being 10 years.
The Act backfired. Drug dealers switched from selling ganja to selling smack and other hard drugs.
This was so because while the risk was the same, the profits from selling smack were several times higher. Smack proliferated in Indian cities.
Jeet Thayil writes with acuity about this period in his Booker-shortlisted novel Narcopolis. Middle class kids were doing it. Rickshaw pullers were doing it.
The song ‘So Gaya Ye Jahaan’ from Tezaab became the smack anthem of a generation. There were anti-drug serials on Doordarshan.
The irony was that this was a drug problem solely spawned by the Indian state. It was under American pressure that we criminalised what was culturally acceptable in our country. Now that America has changed its mind, maybe the time has come for us to do the same too. ‘snip’
Thank you CO and WA.
Here’s what happens in a country like India when government distortion of the market through prohibition, and/or black-market levels of taxation push the product out of reach of ordinary people:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16197280
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WTF??? These people have the nerve to palm off Eric Holder as my friend? If I look up total asshole in the dictionary I’ll betcha there’s a picture of Mr. Holder. Christ on a crutch, could we at least try to operate in the realm of factual reality?
/endrant
So… now there are two things called “the War on Drugs”? A right one and a wrong one?
Sounds confusing. Perhaps we should consider changing the nomenclature.
Then again, “the war against violent international cartels trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and violence for pay” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. And then you have to acknowledge that the first one is awfully important to their funding… which creates some problems. And a potential diplomatic response: you “embargo” them by taking away their core means of international funding i.e. drugs.
Problem being… most drugs just grow in the right environment. So that means we’d have to… buy them up, huh? We should call the CIA! They know all about getting competitive pricing out of the producers.
If they would just grow the drugs in the prisons they would have secure grows and the price would be the taxes,,the post office could deliver them and cut out any distribution costs plus the post office needs something to save their ass,,we would probably have volunteers for prisons and violence in prisons would drop substantially… WIN_WIN_WIN
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clay, how many times have I told you that these things just won’t work if they make any sense?
N.T. I’ve never understood why there’s no domestic poppy production. Even countries where the primary export is rocks harvested by starving peasants for 20 cents a ton are able to bring in bumper crops of opium poppies. If I had any interest whatever in opium I’m sure that I would have growb my own at some point in my life.
If we include Hawaii and Alaska the United States has every sort of climate imaginable. If Americans can bury truck trailers to raise a crop of reefer it’s not our imagination that’s standing in the way.
Duncan, I’ve grown opium poppies, didn’t know they were opium poppies until after they were preparing to go to seed, when I looked them up in my gardening encyclopedia to see how to harvest the seed. The seed packet was labeled “bread seed poppies” and I bought them locally at a farm supply store. They were an annual, like Shirley poppies (and unlike the oriental poppies I have in my garden), and they were quite pretty. I did harvest the seed, used it for almond/poppy seed muffins (um, um good). I looked for them at the same store the next year and they weren’t available, and I haven’t seen the seed since; wish I would have saved some of that seed to replant the next year (buying the seed in bottles, like pepper and other spices, is expensive; so is pepper, actually). I prefer to make foods from scratch as packaged mixes contain all sorts of stuff I don’t want to eat or feed to my family. I’ve read it is not illegal to grow opium poppies unless one scores the seed pods before they develop seeds (in order to harvest the sap/opium), but I wouldn’t swear to that, the writer could have been mistaken.
PS they were easy to grow, easy care.
No drug war would have not created the financial structure and thus the outcome surrounding this particular day of memorial and remembrance. I have no idea why they only talk about what’s going on in Mexico or a couple of grams of smack at a shop . . . can they not focus on the other huge Drug War that is also currently happening at the Walter Reed Medical Center (the one that is as big as the one in Mexico)? You know, the one that Brown University and the NY Times say will cost America a few trillion and has already cost well over a trillion already. Today every American is reminded of the Drug War in NYC and DC and some remote farm field in Pennsylvania . . . we’ve been reminded every year on this date for the past 13yrs.
Drug abuse center NIDA on why it’s supporting medical marijuana research
http://tinyurl.com/pyrqxqf
The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has issued a statement outlining its commitment to medical marijuana research. The statement, penned by NIDA Director Nora Volkow, includes a pledge to supply research-grade marijuana to researchers for scientific purposes.
NIDA is part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which acts as the U.S. medical research agency).
The Medical Marijuana Review spoke with Dr. Volkow to discover more about the recent med-cannabis research projects the organization is supporting.
Over the past five years, Dr. Volkow explains, NIDA has funded a wide range of research on and related to marijuana; the main psychoactive ingredient, THC; and chemicals related to THC (cannabinoids, non-psychoactive components of cannabis).
They are trying to cover up their LACK of medical research.
the name alone precludes open minded research on the benefits
Bill Piper has a beaut:
Is it time to get rid of the DEA?
http://tinyurl.com/nwpfn5t
Congress should consider merging the scandal-plagued DEA with the FBI, writes guest columnist Bill Piper.
THIS year is the 40th anniversary of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Already plagued by scandals, the agency has recently been revealed to be collaborating with the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on unsuspecting Americans. More than 120 groups from across the political spectrum and around the globe have called on Congress to hold hearings on the DEA.
There is no doubt the agency should be reformed. It is also worth asking if it should continue to exist.’snip’
When the foundation of your organization is based on lies and bigotry “rotten to the core” takes on a whole new meaning.