Drug WarRant

Alison Pill: I Want Marijuana for My Birthday

“The best birthday in the world is to have, at most, five people over for a barbeque and to make tofu because it’s my birthday and they have to like it.” Leaning toward The Cut’s audio recorder she elaborated, “I want a birthday that involves me and the movie Oliver and Company and some Champagne and some marijuana— and I’m speaking into the microphone because it should be legal.”

Her birthday, she said, is on November 27. If you’d like to send her a care package, “that would be awesome!” Her voice rising to a shout, she concluded, “Yeah, put this shit in the magazine! Give me the best birthday ev-ah!”

Alison’s a great actress – I’ve seen her in a couple of plays in New York, and now she’s on “Newsroom.”

I think I might even put up wtih the tofu.

In a truly bone-headed move, CU regents expected to oppose marijuana legalization measure on Colorado ballot

This is one they should stay out of, because it’s likely to backfire on them, as Mason Tvert is quick to note.

“This seems a bit hypocritical coming from a university that sees no problem with naming buildings after beer companies and sanctioning alcohol-fueled tailgate parties before football games,” Tvert said. “Nobody wants people who are underage to use marijuana, but there is absolutely no denying the fact that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol.” […]

The Boulder campus — which is where CU’s regents met Tuesday and will reconvene Wednesday — has gained national rankings from publications such as Playboy magazine, Princeton Review and Newsweek for its “reefer madness” and being a party school.

So opposing a measure that regulates with an age limit?…

And now, for something completely different…

A feature on the still from M.A.S.H. [Thanks to Transform for the link]

I’ve always been a M.A.S.H. fan.

[Note: This post isn’t strictly drug policy, but I posted it elsewhere and thought I would share it with you as well.]

Today is a day I remember extraordinary sacrifice and also remember the truly amazing spirit that existed around the world in those immediate days following the tragedy. There was nothing we couldn’t do to rebuild and regroup, because we had the spirit of America and the entire world supported us. The French newspaper of record, Le Monde, ran a front-page headline reading “Nous sommes tous Américains”, or “We are all Americans.”

I flew to Seattle on the first day that flights were allowed again. We didn’t need no stinkin’ TSA — the elderly couple in bermuda shorts in line ahead of me would have taken on any terrorists who showed up on our plane (and they said so). Nobody on that day was going to let the terrorists defeat our spirit.

9/11, unfortunately, is also a time when I curse the political leaders who, in the years following, turned us into a nation of sniveling cowards, eager to give away essential liberties for imagined security. Political leaders who turned America into a nation that arrests people without charges, without trial, without proper representation, and then leaves them to rot in prison until they die. Political leaders who turned America into a nation that drops bombs on innocent people around the world and imagines that there will be no consequences; who use the tactics of terror in a fight against what will now be a never-ending battle against terror. Political leaders who spy on Americans without judicial oversight and use national security as a means of avoiding accountability, punishing those who shine a light on government abuses while refusing to hold accountable those who tortured in our name. Political leaders who changed America from being a leader in human rights into a hypocritical bully. Political leaders who exploit the insecurities of people, intentionally diminishing the power of America in order to profit from its fears.

It’s time for America to truly remember 9/11 and say “We will not be cowed by the threat of terror, nor will we let our political leaders do the work of terrorists and take away our liberty, our soul, and our pride.”

Mayor and police at odds over cannabis approach

Frank Jensen, Mayor of Copenhagen, wants cannabis legalized, but he’s getting no help from Parliament, or the police who continue to arrest people for possession of small quantities.

Jensen gives one of the more astute comments I’ve ever heard from a mayor. It’s nice to see this kind of intelligence in public roles (even if the rest of the bureaucracy is thick as a brick).

“As long as parliament continues to abandon the cannabis market to the gangs, there is not much more that police can do other than push the problem around and make confiscations. But this hasn’t reduced the quantity that comes in to Denmark,” he said. “As long as there is a market, there will always be someone to satisfy that market.”

An outstanding piece in the New York Times… human and honest.

How Pot Helps Parenting by Mark Wolfe.

But the best part is an amazing off-label benefit I call Parental Attention Surplus Syndrome. […]

I swear I am a more loving, attentive and patient father when I take my medication as prescribed. Perhaps this isn’t surprising. As anyone who inhaled during college can attest, cannabis enhances the ability to perceive beauty, complexity and novelty in otherwise mundane things (grout patterns in your bathroom floor, the Grateful Dead, Doritos), while simultaneously locking you into a prolonged state of rapt attention. You not only notice the subtle color variations in your cat’s fur, you stare at them in loving awe for 20 solid minutes.

I submit that this can be enormously salutary to the parent-toddler relationship. Beyond food, shelter and clothing, what do small children need most from their parents? Sustained, loving, participatory attention. Thank you, Doctor.

The family that giggles together, loves together.

If this doesn’t bring out the concern trolls, I don’t know what will. Often when I write about Kevin Sabet, I get some concern troll comments, usually saying that I shouldn’t be so mean to Kevin (while calling me childish).

For instance, in this post where I merely pointed out the pointlessness of Kevin commenting in a Reuters article about what Eric Holder might think about something, I got comments like:

Pete, your jerkishness and name calling to Kevin is inappropriate.I don’t like his policies but lay off the personal attacks.

and “another” commenter

Dude, you are guys are so angry at Kevin but you should direct your ire at DEA. you’re such little children sometimes

If they didn’t like what I said in that post, they’re going to love the title of this one.

First, I need to take a moment to apologize… to all the honest hard-working whores out there, for being compared to Kevin Sabet.

Let’s take a look at Kevin’s latest: In 3 views on whether states should legalize marijuana in the Christian Science Monitor, Kevin takes the “middle” ground (opposing legalization, but calling for that unattainable “kinder and gentler” prohibition).

This was right near the top:

Marijuana should not be sold on the open market. Legal alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs kill more than 500,000 people a year.

It’s hard to get any more blatant than that in your lying. Kevin knows full well that marijuana is entirely different in death risk than the other drugs. He is intentionally putting that in there to lie to you.

The thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even think it was a lie. After all, he could claim, the first sentence is merely a viewpoint and the second sentence can be backed up with fact.

The ONDCP has long loved to use this kind of lie, as if the technical structure of sentences defined lies, as opposed to attempts to decieve.

It’s like a young man telling his father that he want to apply for a position with the Department of Education, and his father says “Whoa, you’d better think that over. After all, over 1,000 people die each year in the armed services and that’s a federal agency too.”

The fact that Kevin Sabet is a public figure who trades on his connections to get into the media and lie to people in order to pursue a political agenda makes him a dishonest whore, which makes the title of my post merely factual.

And boy, is he ever in the media. It seems like he’s constantly being quoted as the poster boy for anti-legalization, and he churns out completely meaningless columns, like this one where he seems to argue that since politicians from both major parties have supported prohibition, legalization isn’t the answer, and this widely ridiculed article: Legalization is not the answer.

Let’s return to the Christian Science Monitor piece for one other comment. Sabet writes: “…big tobacco showed that legal industries can play down harmful health effects of their products.”

As opposed to illegal industries? The argument there appears to be that we shouldn’t legalize marijuana becuase legally regulated companies can’t be trusted to not poison it… so we need to keep distribution in the hands of the trustworthy drug trafficking organizations! Right.

…

Look, I realize that even some drug policy reform supporters may be uncomfortable with phrases like “Kevin Sabet, dishonest whore,” but remember that this is Drug WarRant, not the New York Times.

To be honest, I don’t do justice to the insulting that should occur.

I would like you to read a letter written by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe to a politician who needed a wake-up call: They Won’t Magically Turn You Into a Lustful CockMonster: Chis Kluwe explains gay marriage to the politician who is offended by an NFL player supporting it. It’s a different topic, but Chris Kluwe says it right.

No surprise here.

In some of the border areas in the Netherlands there was concern among some political leaders about the amount of “pot tourism” — people from other countries coming to enjoy the cannabis cafes — and so they started implementing rules limited the cafes to local residents and establishing a database of users.

This was seized upon by prohibitionists here in the states as “proof” that legalization (or the Netherlands’ version of it) was a failure and that they wanted to reverse their experiment.

Here’s Kevin Sabet practically gloating just recently:

We know a few things about the Netherlands. First and foremost, we know that in that country officials and the public have become increasingly uneasy with their de facto legalization policies. In fact, they are completely reversing them – closing down pot shops, restricting who can buy marijuana (Sorry, American college students!), etc.

Of course, all the proposed changes actually proved was that there was a problem with neighboring countries’ prohibition policies that caused excess traffic in the Netherlands.

And now…

Maastricht mayor does u-turn over cannabis club membership

Locals in Maastricht should no longer have to formally register as marijuana users to buy soft drugs from the city’s cannabis cafes, mayor Onno Hoes said in a letter to councillors on Wednesday. […]

At the same time, so few locals have registered as cannabis users that changes need to be made in the way the membership system works. Because locals are reluctant to register, ID and an official council certificate stating where they live should be sufficient to buy marijuana, the mayor is quoted as saying.

Nos says Hoes also hopes this will reduce the number of street dealers who have appeared since the ban was introduced.

So, to recap, despite what prohibition advocates claim, there has never been any significant interest in re-criminalizing marijuana use in the Netherlands, but rather only to reduce pot tourism and add regulations. Now, even those efforts are being re-considered because if you clamp down too hard, it causes the black market to re-surface.

The Netherlands continues to be a powerful demonstration of the advantages to society of providing a legal framework for marijuana, and the disadvantages when you do not.

Former DEA heads urge Holder to speak out against pot ballots

Nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration urged Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday to take a stand against possible legalization of recreational marijuana in three western states, saying silence would convey acceptance.

All nine spent their time on the public dole working to make drugs profitable to criminals at great cost to the people. They not only built the black market narcotics business into a massive world-wide industry, they also built the DEA into a $2.4 billion agency with office all over the world.

Legalization? Yeah, that’s like telling oil executives you’ve come up with an alternative fuel.

Naturally, perennial prohibition prop Kevin Sabet is called upon to add his completely useless 2 cents to the article.

[Source of the title euphemism.]

Some things have already been mentioned in comments but are worth checking out.

The Marijuana Myth: What If Everything You Think You Know About This Plant Is Wrong? by Laurel Dewey. A fascinating story of someone who set out to find the dangers of marijuana and instead discovered its benefits and wrote a book about it.

A video reponse to President Obama’s hypocritical Harold and Kumar phone call video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hO5meenaso

Very well done. But next time, Shaleen, please get an actor. I’ve got all sorts of connections in theatre and could find you one.

So where’s that campaign against legalizing marijuana? by Patrical O’Callahan

Prediction for November: Washington’s going to legalize marijuana.

As far as I can tell, there’s little credible opposition to Initiative 502. (I’m not counting the “medical marijuana” people – who have a mercenary stake in its defeat – as credible.)

Last Wednesday, we were supposed to do a joint television interview of the initiative’s opponents and supporters. For something like this, we normally call the campaigns, and they eagerly supply the speakers.

The sponsors of I-502 responded immediately. But it proved hard even to find opponents willing and able to make their case in front of TVW’s cameras. […]

We wound up canceling the event.

Prior to elections, we often run point-counterpoint opeds about ballot measures. Today, my colleague Cheryl Tucker went looking for someone to write the counterpoint opposing I-502.

She called Anthony Martinelli, a medical marijuana guy whose name appears at the top of the “statement against” in the voters pamphlet. It turns out Martinelli has dropped out of the battle.

Take that back. There is no “battle” over legalization in Washington, except among marijuana users who want it legal in different ways and for different reasons. I think the initiative is going to pass by default.

Former Drug Czar Blasts Obama Pot Policy as ‘Insane’

I had forgotten about Dr. Peter Bourne, drug czar under Carter

But the urbane British-born psychiatrist is also disappointed. In a rare interview, he says the Obama administration’s approach to marijuana is “totally insane.” He thinks “they should be bolder,” urging Congress to decriminalize and considering an executive order if necessary. Currently, what they’re doing—raiding medical-marijuana dispensaries, defending pot’s classification as a drug as bad as meth—“doesn’t make any sense at all.”

That ain’t gonna happen, either.

The World Federation Against Drugs and the Swedish Society for Sobriety and Social Upbringing has published a rather massive (134 page) volume titled: The Protection of Children from Illicit Drugs – A Minimum Human Rights Standard — A Child-Centered vs. a User-Centered Drug Policy by Stephan Dahlgren & Roxana Stere.

Robert DuPont says “This book is a major landmark in human rights and international drug policy.” (Of course, if you have to turn to hack Robert DuPont for a book review, you’re in trouble.)

This rather interminable paper goes on and on — first in parsing various U.N. documents to support the position that the human rights of the child are the paramount consideration and that the various agreements don’t just mean that children should be protected from using dangerous drug themselves, but that they should essentially be protected from any societal use of those drugs deemed “illicit.” This justifies, to the authors, today’s prohhibition efforts.

The book then goes on to rail against the various harm reduction efforts world-wide, which it mostly dismisses as efforts to paint the drug user as a victim.

Where is really gets into the crux of the matter, however, is when they talk about the drug-free society.

The authors acknowledge that the notion of a drug-free society has been ridiculed as completly unrealistic and utopian. But that doesn’t bother them:

Nevertheless, the achievement of a “drug- free society” is an aspiration and the only reasonable one in the context of the present international legal framework.

As long as the UN drug conventions impose the limitation “exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs”; CRC Article 33 requests States Parties “to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties, and to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of such substances” and International Labour Orga- nization Convention 182 defines “the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and traf- ficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties” as one of the worst forms of child labour, a “drug-free world” is the appropriate goal.

But of course, it does matter whether a drug-free society is a utopian ideal.

If a drug-free society is realistic and achievable through prohibition, then a prohibition regime could theoretically protect children from being exposed to illicit drugs, illicit drug use, and trafficking.

However, we know that a drug-free society is as impossible as a sex-free society. We also know that prohibition does little (or nothing) to
reduce illicit drug use (and any harms that may come from that use). Additionally, prohibition causes a laundry list of additional harms that can damage children, including:

• Empowering criminals, who have no compunction about selling to children, to control the sale of illicit drugs
• Breaking up and destroying families through excessive incarceration
• Turning children around the world into agents of drug trafficking organizations, due to the profitability of the black market and the fact that prohibition makes it advantageous to use children

It is admirable that the authors and the groups they represent care about the children, but it would be better if they actually promoted policy that helped children, rather than destroying the lives of children while chasing some utopian fantasy.