Wow – won’t this be fun…
The 3rd World Forum Against Drugs
Stockholm, Sweden – May 21-23, 2012World Federation Against Drugs is rooted in the Swedish experience with the drug abuse epidemic and the resulting balanced and restrictive Swedish drug policy that enjoys broad support across the political spectrum in Sweden.
No, I won’t be attending.
Gil Kerlikowske will. It’s sad to see the U.S. practically tripping over itself to be connected with the oppressive Swedish drug policy regime.
Here’s the part that really pisses me off.
There will be three main themes:
» Human rights and the right of the child to be protected from illicit drugs
» Illicit drug use and trafficking problems of Latin America
» Primary prevention and its role in drug policy
Human rights and the right of the child to be protected from illicit drugs. Really? And what is it about restrictive drug policies that actually protects children from illicit drugs? Are criminals more likely to demand proof of age than legitimate businesses?
And what about the children killed in Mexico? Or those who die from heroin overdoses in this country? How have restrictive drug policies helped them? Or the millions who have lost their fathers to the criminal justice system? Or the teenagers being recruited into drug gangs?
And… human rights? Locking up people for using a plant is human rights? Busting down their doors and shooting their dogs? Frisking black men, maybe? Or pulling over hispanic drivers and ripping apart their cars while everyone driving by watches?
Wow. Just-wow.
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Fun stuff. A couple of days ago I read an article which pointed out that fatal overdoses of heroin almost never are, and that this information has been available to the public since at least 1972 since the publication of “The Consumers Union Report – Licit and Illicit Drugs. The assertion is that prohibition is a major contributor, if not directly responsible for those deaths which are labeled fatal overdoses of heroin in the press. Indeed I do know that most overdose deaths are from the combination of two or more drugs, but I had it stuck in my head that this was limited to diverted FDA approved drugs, perhaps with drinking alcohol involved. So, the theory is that because of widely publicized “danger” of overdose many heroin users add other drugs in order to minimize the amount they need to get high or fixed. The result being a higher chance of death because of the sympathetic effect. Hysterical rhetoric backfires all the time, so I don’t know why this would be surprising. The war on (some) drugs kills people every day of the year.
I can’t for the life of me recall where I read this but I’m certain it was in the last week and that it had to do with the Insite brouhaha in Canada. Anyway, here’s a link to the CU report. Gosh it makes me wax nostaglgic. I recall reading this back in the late 1970s just after I enjoyed cannabis for the first time. It actually had a fairly ubiquitous place on the bookshelves of people who liked getting high.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm
P.S. Amy Winehouse’s coroner’s inquest is coming up soon. That could turn into a circus sideshow. I’ll have my fingers crossed.
Wow. Thanks Duncan. I read the overdose myth section. Ya know, it seems I was aware of this but never thought about it much in context of the drug war. The article brought the point home again. I was aware that “overdoses” that occurred quite rapidly (where the addicts are sometimes found with the syringe still in the arm) weren’t really overdoses, but Systemic injection reactions- a result of massive systemic shock from the injection. But I had not realized their prevalence in the overdose statistics.
This very sort of reaction is a cause of death in a certain percentage of people who take COX inhibitors by I.V. infusion. (Rofecoxib is one, there are others- they’re used primarily for Rheumatoid Arthritis) They don’t call it overdose in that case, then it’s called “infusion reaction”.
It is sick that there has been no effort to look into this phenomenon, or to provide lifesaving information to addicts. Pretty much lets you know they don’t give a rat’s ass about the deaths as long as they work in the prohibitionist’s favor.
All this talk of human rights. We’re forgetting the right for some group of self appointed gods to be spared exposure to the inherent messiness of our complex humanity. Won’t some one think of the power players?! How dare we even suggest new courses of action that trample that age old human right to be able to abuse, neglect, twist, oppress, and violate?
*sigh* Sweden is SUCH a pretty country. But Norway has the fjords and Finland has Perkele.
thanks to Maria we have a reminder of the white rose
Yes, that’s the famous image of three of the members, Hans and Sophi Scholl and Christoph Probst. I sadly know that I could never be as brave as they where, even (especially) when they knew they where lost. Even then, they never gave up on the hope that the world would see the light.
they were real war heroes even though they didn’t have a bunch of medals and badges. they didn’t need no stinking badges. our couchmates might want to google them.
Yes, heroin “overdose” is often a combination of heroin + alcohol or heroin + benzodiazepines rather than high purity heroin (of course, simple opiate overdose is possible). It is thought that much of the recent increase in prescription opiate deaths is due to not sufficiently warning patients about drug interactions. Another common misconception about opiate overdose — people don’t typically just fall over dead with a needle in their arm, there are often multiple hours in which to seek medical help (delayed out of fear) or for a friend to administer an opiate-blocker like naloxone (unjustifiably banned in many places).
http://peele.net/lib/heroinoverdose.html
Emma- read the piece that Duncan linked to.
Just how many people died of heroin overdose in the ten years prior to 1953 (the year heroin was banned in Australia)?
A big fat ZERO:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=g9XM5JqWeQ8C&lpg=PP1&dq=alex%20wodak%20prohibition&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false
Posted that link to my FB page. Thanks.
I watched the movie V for Vendetta last night. We need some…. I take that back LOTS of this movie in this country. For REAL!
How much seriously dark shit can a whole nation take?
Under the heading: “I know it’s not an open thread but this is good”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/10/07/feds-targeting-ca-pot-clubs-to-deflect-heat-on-fast-furious-scandal/
Unfortunately too few people will realize how absurd the crackdown on the medical cannabis industry is as a “deflection” attempt. It also has the direct result of empowering the cartels and fueling violence! But for some reason Fast and Furious is considered a scandal while our drug policies are not.
or possibly a deal?
That’s plausible, Moose.
Prohibitionists point to Sweden as the beacon on a hill when it comes to justifying the dispensing of draconic punishments for illicit drug possession. And yet, like most countries, Sweden continues to fail to stamp out marijuana and other types of drug use:
“Nearly 40 percent of boys in certain inner-city secondary schools in Stockholm have tried drugs at some point, showed a recent survey. This figure has risen by 10 percent in just 4 years.
At Maria Ungdom, the Stockholm clinic that handles drunkenness and drug use among young people, this development is referred to as an ‘epidemic’.
‘We’re seeing historically high figures,’ said Stefan Sparring, manager of Maria Ungdom, to newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
‘When enough people are using it, you reach a point where it’s considered socially acceptable. I think we’re nearing that point. Marijuana is no longer seen as stigmatising, since so many are using it. The same kids who’re trying alcohol are now trying marijuana,’ he explained.â€
See: http://www.thelocal.se/34992/20110717/
Sweden has gangland shootings over disputed drug territories just like the United States:
See: http://www.thelocal.se/34112/20110601/
Statistics for Swedish marijuana seizures are up:
See: http://www.thelocal.se/29674/20101018/
Police corruption involving drugs is widespread in Sweden:
See: http://www.thelocal.se/36578/20111006/
One more thing about Sweden: any country that prohibits eating a sandwich containing two or more different types of meat should be the last country anyone considers for leading the world in drug prohibition policies. It’s true. According to a Swedish custom that originates with Charlemagne (742-814), it’s strictly uncool.
Seriously. Any country where Bacon Cheeseburgers are taboo is OFF my list of places to visit!
It may be useful to add that Sweden also has an acute drunken Moose problem.
Thanks Servetus for the very useful info & accompanying links!
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Drunken meese are one thing. In Africa they have to deal with drunken elephants. I’m sure everyone knows what a drunken elephant does.
But it seems that the only drunken elephants that they deal with are those that steal alcoholic beverages from human beings. There are claims that the assertion that herds of elephants wait until fruit has fermented in trees in order to get drunk and disorderly is just a myth, and that the alleged fermented fruit preferred by alcoholic elephants just don’t have enough alcohol to get even a pygmy pony drunk.
That moose looks dead to me. If you hit Bambi just right with a big enough box truck those things can become airborne and fly a lot further than people think. Yes, as a matter of fact I did hit a deer with a 14 foot box truck at 50 MPH. Bam! Pow! to the moon indeed. That collision caused $6500 of damage. I was totally shocked.
I recall reading in the Washington Post about a deer collision in Centreville VA which killed a woman. A man was driving on the same road going the opposite direction and hit a deer which became airborne and then landing on the poor woman’s hood and going through her windscreen, killing her. Talk about bad luck.
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The fatalities were drunken elephants with the munchies, not people:
Sweden- a disgrace to Lutheranism.
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Lutheranism is associated with serial murder. Dennis Rader was both a devout Lutheran, elected to, and serving on the Congregation Council of his church and the BTK killer in his spare time. I’ve always said that religionists are up to no good, at least since I started saying it.
i prefer to think sophie scholl is more representative of what a lutheran can be.
Will Transform be attending this conference? Or will any non-governmental drug policy organization be attending at all?
If not, I have a strong urge to sabotage their circle jerk.
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Sand in the Vaseline?
— Thomas Sowell
World’s Largest Pro-Drug Policy Reform Conference
Do you believe the drug war is doing more harm than good? Are you outraged that the US government still won’t recognize the medical benefits of marijuana? Whether you’re an expert on drug policy or a newcomer, your voice should be heard at this year’s International Drug Policy Reform Conference from November 2-6 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, California.
The title forces me to suspect they may have been infiltrated.
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Shape shifters or pods?
Going on recent form, I would have thought that was rather obvious
That happened to me.
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Isn’t Indonesia in Sweden? …or is that vice versa? You’ll have to pardon my incompetence with geography but I am an American, born and bread. It’s hard enough to find Canada, and the true reason that most Americans aren’t worried about the Mexican Civil War is because they just don’t realize that Mexico is right next door. They think it’s off in the 3rd world somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesian-police-say-14-year-old-australian-boy-likely-to-be-released-without-prison-sentence/2011/10/10/gIQAsg9cZL_allComments.html#comments
I thought that the death penalty for dealing “dope” was supposed to scare anyone that thought about it into choosing to use drinking alcohol. But it says in the article that Indonesia has the death penalty for that, but still there are people rejecting government approved swills for substances on the naughty list. So what went wrong?
OK, OK, that’s a rhetorical question, I admit that I know what went wrong, but do the Know Nothing prohibitionists? Oh wait a second, I guess they wouldn’t be Know Nothings if they had a clue. It must be why they’re married to the epic failure of public policy which we call the war on (some) drugs. My bad, please disregard this note.
Toodles!
“… So the federal government legally provides medical marijuana to her and three others (100 pounds of it, since 2005), while at the same time insisting that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use,” and while threatening to treat state and local governmental officials as the worst criminals possible for trying to unravel this massive federal legal doublethink. If the Department of Justice’s legal reasoning is correct — anyone facilitating such activities as distributing marijuana should be federally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law — then the entire federal government is a drug trafficker, too.”
Marijuana Prohibition’s Legal Insanity Continues
A møøse once bit my sister.
Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti..
Glory is fleeting, but møøse are forever!
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The victims, who are all in their 70s and 80s, were attending a funeral in Huntington Beach, Calif. During the service, they each partaked of the pot brownies, which were passed around on a tray according to KTLA.com.
Soon after, the trio were admitted to a local hospital after complaining of “nausea, dizziness, and inability to stand unassisted.”
http://tinyurl.com/64ym5kt