Drug WarRant

Tech week for my show in Chicago, which opens on Friday. It’s going great, but keeping me busy. I’ll be posting more about it later, but in case you’re interested, it’s The Living Canvas: Eureka! running June 29 – August 11 at National Pastime Theater.

The Alternative World Drug Report

The Alternative World Drug Report, launched to coincide with publication of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2012 World Drug Report, exposes the failure of governments and the UN to assess the extraordinary costs of pursuing a global war on drugs, and calls for UN member states to meaningfully count these costs and explore all the alternatives.

After 50 years of the current enforcement-led international drug control system, the war on drugs is coming under unparalleled scrutiny. Its goal was to create a “drug-free world”. Instead, despite more than a trillion dollars spent fighting the war, according to the UNODC, illegal drugs are used by an estimated 270 million people and organised crime profits from a trade with an estimated turnover of over $330 billion a year – the world’s largest illegal commodity market.

In its 2008 World Drug Report, the UNODC acknowledged that choosing an enforcement-based approach was having a range of negative “unintended consequences”, including: the creation of a vast criminal market, displacement of the illegal drugs trade to new areas, diversion of funding from health, and the stigmatisation of users.

It is unacceptable that neither the UN or its member governments have meaningfully assessed these unintended consequences to establish whether they outweigh the intended consequences of the current global drug control system, and that they are not documented in the UNODC’s flagship annual World Drug Report.

This groundbreaking Alternative World Drug Report fills this gap in government and UN evaluations by detailing the full range of negative impacts resulting from choosing an enforcement-led approach.

Legal Aid Society Sues New York City over Bogus Pot Arrests

The lawsuit filed against the city and the Police Department Friday seeks the court to declare the practice illegal under state law and forbid officers from making the bogus arrests for which they should already be punished.

UAE death sentence for British man on ‘drugs charge’.

21-year-old man sentenced to death for selling 20 grams of pot.

The DEA head’s performance in the House hearings has been getting play all over.

Chart: What The DEA Refuses To Admit About Drugs in U.S. News and World Report is just one example.

Having it as the top story on the Huffington Post with the huge headline “Is She High?” was priceless.

Politico: DEA chief deflects pols’ pot questions

And the comments at all these places is overwhelmingly… unsupportive of Michele Leonhart.

All it takes is some members of Congress willing to do the right thing and stand up and ask for the truth. Of course, Leonhart can’t answer the question truthfully, because if she did, she’d negate the reason for much of her budget while also undermining many of the unscientific and self-serving administrative rulings made by the DEA. And so she has to answer as an ignoramus, because looking stupid is less of political suicide than telling the truth.

It’s another step toward the ultimate dismantling of this destructive agency.

Top DEA agent won’t admit heroin more harmful than marijuana

During a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart repeatedly refused to admit that anything was more addictive or harmful than marijuana.

Democratic Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado pressed Leonhart on whether illegal drugs like methamphetamine and crack, as well as legal prescription drugs, caused greater harm to public health compared to marijuana. But within a three minute time-span, Leonhart dodged his questions eleven times.

“Is crack worse for a person than marijuana?” Polis, who has called for an end the prohibition on marijuana, asked.

“I believe all illegal drugs are bad,” Leonhart responded.

“Is methamphetamine worse for somebody’s health than marijuana?” Polis continued. “Is heroin worse for somebody’s health than marijuana?”

“Again, all drugs,” Leonhart began to say, only to be cut off by Polis.

“Yes, no, or I don’t know?” Polis said. “If you don’t know this, you can look this up. As the chief administrator for the Drug Enforcement Agency, I’m asking a very straightforward question.”

Let’s have some fun.

Somebody tipped me to this bizarre piece saying “worth a read”…

END THE VIOLENCE, LEGALIZE ALL DRUGS – A PIPE DREAM by Devvy, The Dynamite Redhead (!) Yep. She describes herself as an independent voter and a “constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party.”

“Worth a read” is true, but only if you’re looking for some really silly and strange fiction.

Even the first paragraph gives you a clue to the lack of actual… facts you’re likely to find in the piece.

There has been a major push in this country for many years to legalize all drugs – especially by Libertarians and two presidential candidates, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and Gary Johnson (who dropped out early on):

I suppose “dropped out” is one way of looking at it. “Won the Libertarian nomination for President” is probably a better way. And Johnson has only been pushing for legalization of marijuana, while pointing out the problems with the rest of the drug war.

She does have the sense to realize that legalization will eliminate the profits for Mexican “cartels.”

Legalizing drugs will stop the drug cartel wars spilling over our borders, but it will not stop the violence in this country by drug addicted Americans.

Um. How is that a bad thing? Let’s say we legalize and we still have the problems of violent drug addicts (unlikely) that we have under criminalization, but we’ve eliminated all the problems of the black market… isn’t that a net victory?

And then comes the Reefer Madness…

“Mother, 28, who was hooked on cannabis found hanged next to the body of her six-year-old daughter.” [Quick – guess which newspaper she got that from!] […]

“Inside America’s meth capital: “The town where a mother gunning down her children comes as no surprise in a tragic drug war. [Quick – guess which newspaper she got that from!] […]

In Oklahoma, authorities charged Lyndsey Fiddler with second-degree manslaughter after an aunt found her infant daughter in a washing machine thudding off balance in the spin cycle. The aunt told authorities that Fiddler had been up for three days using meth. In Albuquerque, N.M., last month Liehsa Henderson, high on meth, claimed to be God and told police God wanted her son to die after allegedly stabbing him in the neck with a screwdriver. The boy survived.

“Last Sunday, Fresno police found Mendez dead on the bathroom floor of her home. Her children – 17-month-old Aliyah Echevarria and Isaiah Echevarria, 3 – were in the bathtub. Mendez’s cousin was dead in the kitchen. She had shot each in the head. […]

Lee Moss was serving 12-month suspended sentence for growing a cannabis farm when he launched vicious attack. […]

Missing & Murdered Montana Teacher Sherry Arnold Choked to Death and Buried in Random Abduction. The killers admitted to doing crack cocaine the entire weekend.

Anslinger would have absolutely loved this woman. Take a bunch of sensational stories and link them to drugs without any sense of causality.

Do you want to be sitting across from some crack head on public transit, the subway or a bus who suddenly decides you looked at him wrong?

No, I don’t. And that’s much more likely to happen under prohibition, than under regulated legalization.

Don’t we have enough man hours lost to employers every year because of drug use that interferes with a person’s job performance?

I don’t know. How many do we have? And this is under prohibition. What evidence do you have that there would be more under legalization?

“Effects of additives to heroin. Sometimes heroin dealers mix the drug with other substances to stretch supply and make more money. This can be very dangerous. Some of the additives do not dissolve as well as heroin does, and this can lead to blood vessel clogging. This can lead to heart, lung and kidney problems

And your point? That seems to be an argument for legalization.

But wait! She’s not done with the madness…

Toddler found high on heroin during mother’s arrest in Washington. [Guess. No Daily Mail, this time.] […]

“Florida mom accused of selling sex with daughter, 6, to buy drugs.

But then, our Dynamite Redhead comes to her senses briefly with a rant about how bad the war on drugs is, until she become unhinged again with some more falsehoods. This time, the “Constitutionalist” defends the seizure of Camp Zoe(!)

Tebeau knew the sale of “pot”, LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms was against the law, yet he did it anyway. Oh, heck, say Libertarians, it’s all about freedom as long as you don’t hurt someone else. So what if LSD fries your brain?

Um, did you miss the part where the Feds admitted that Tebeau never sold drugs or profited from their sale?

I’m’ not even going to try to parse the end of the piece, which is a combination of reefer madness, conspiracy theories, anti-government rants all somehow wrapped up into a plea to end the drug war but keep drugs illegal.

…

Note: Before you make too many wisecracks about redheads, remember that I am a ginger.

Upgraded WordPress and the theme tonight. May have been a few glitches. Let me know if anything isn’t working right. Thanks!

On one hand, we have No on 64 – website aimed at stopping marijuana legalization in Colorado. What’s on top of the webpage?

Amendment 64 would:

• Make Colorado the first state to try to profit from the legalization of marijuana at the expense of its children.
• Make Colorado the only state where it is legal to grow, transport and sell marijuana for recreational use.
• Make it legal for anyone twenty-one years or older to possess and consume up to one ounce of marijuana (the equivalent of 60 joints or eight pans of pot brownies).
• Permit opening marijuana retail stores, growing facilities, manufacturing facilities and testing facilities in your community.

A huge picture of kids, the words “Expense of its children” with nothing to support it, and yet the law clearly keeps it illegal for those under 21. So why are kids on the webpage? And why does the page go on to spout lies about kids and marijuana?

Because these people are using kids for their own political purposes.

On the other hand…

NORML blog today has: There is Nothing ‘Complicated’ About Telling Your Kids the Truth

Here are responsible people talking about education and realities.

Education gives children the tools and understanding to help them cope with the challenges they have already experienced, and will continue to face further down the road. Creating a government regulated system for marijuana legalization, which will include everything from age limits to promotional and advertising restrictions (and obviously impaired driving regulations), will actually help parents address this issue with their kids […]

Children need accurate information to make informed decisions. They need to be educated on how consuming marijuana can effect their body’s development specifically, and how to reduce any harms associated with its use – as well as how to distinguish between use and abuse. Just as it is socially acceptable for parents to speak with their children openly about their use of alcohol, with an emphasis on that fact that it is only appropriate for adults in moderation, the legalization of marijuana will allow parents to openly discuss their (possible) past or current use and be able to objectively and rationally speak to their children about pot. The controlled regulation of marijuana will send a message of moderation and responsible use. It will also undercut the black market, which in turn will reduce teen access. It’s as simple as that, and it’s a win-win for everybody.

So, who has the best interests of children in mind? The prohibitionists or the “potheads”?

The Chicago Sun-Times discusses the proposal to decriminalize minor possession of marijuana in Chicago.

Thanks to Dan, who pointed out this bit:

From the DEA’s perspective, the battle over drugs in Chicago is on a much higher level.

“I am at war with the Mexican cartels,” Riley said.

Chicago’s drug market run by street gangs is directly tied to those cartels, which see the city as a hub for doing business and as a launching pad to deliver drugs throughout the country, he said.

Somebody didn’t get the message to Jack that our Drug Czar ended the war on drugs.

A must-read in yesterday’s L.A. Times: A former L.A. cop calls for legalizing drugs

Of course, we’re all familiar with the excellent Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and Stephen Downing does an excellent job making their case.

The way he sees it, the war on drugs hasn’t reduced drug use and the violence that accompanies it; it’s made matters worse. Law enforcement and the drug lords have been in an arms race for more than 40 years, perpetuating their own existence in a never-ending escalation that has bloated prison budgets and robbed us of funding for education and basic human services. The killing fields hold the bodies of cops, dealers and innocent victims. And still, after incalculable costs in blood and money, neither the supply nor the demand has abated. […]

“When I started, the show-and-tells for the media were a kilo or two, a couple of handguns and a few thousand dollars in cash,” Downing wrote, referring to the news conferences called by the LAPD to celebrate its busts. “Today it’s warehouses full of dope, pallets of cash and tens of thousands of war level weapons. That alone should tell us something about failed policy.”

When Downing talks about legalizing drugs, he means we should “legalize, regulate and control” illicit substances. But he isn’t referring only to marijuana, even though he finds it illogical that marijuana is illegal while alcohol and tobacco — proven killers — are perfectly legal. He’s talking about legalizing cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, Ecstasy, the whole underground kaleidoscope.

The whole article is well-written, and good to have in the oft-prohibition-cheering L.A. Times.

I was also interested in the response to reporter Steve Lopez from Mark Kleiman:

I asked UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, who teaches courses on drug policy, what he thought about all of this, and he sounded a more cautious note.

“If we legalized all drugs,” he said, “there’d be smaller illegal profits, less violence among dealers, safer drugs and fewer people behind bars.”

“We’d also have vastly more drug addiction and more crimes and accidents due to intoxication,” Kleiman added. “There’s no magic formula to end the drug problem. Details matter, and not all drugs are alike. I’d like to see cannabis made legally available for use by adults. I don’t want to extend that to cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine.”

This was good to see. I mean, we all know that Kleiman doesn’t support legalizing hard drugs, but if it wasn’t for the fact that he comes over here in comments now and then to tell us, many of you wouldn’t know that he supports marijuana legalization (and certainly most people wouldn’t), and that he accepts the fact that criminalizing other drugs causes incarceration, violence, and danger. Invariably when he’s in the media, he’s promoting HOPE and ridiculing legalizers (without the marijuana clarification).

Downing also replies appropriately to Mark:

OK, said Downing. Let’s start with pot, regulate and control it as we do the wine industry (which would be a vast improvement over the current hodgepodge of medical marijuana laws), study the results, and learn what we can from countries that are decriminalizing other drugs.

Exactly. Start somewhere and learn from it. You’d think that academics would like having the data.

Note: I have to pass on this one comment from the article, because it was so hilarious in this day and age. And yet, I think the author may have been serious?

PeteMalloy at 9:28 PM June 17, 2012

Downing fell down and broke his crown… You can’t compare alcohol and cocaine. I can have a beer and not be drunk. You do do a hit of Meth without getting high.The addiction rate of alcohol and Crack are night and day. And we all know about the multidude of studies that show people who start with Pot are likely to try harder drugs.

People involved with the manufacturing and selling of various drugs aren’t PTA members. What makes anything think they’re going to start abiding by some new law and give up their profits to the IRS?

If you think legalizing drugs will stop all types of crimes associated with them, then why do middle class or well to do people still commit crimes while high? If we allow drug to be legal dont we increase the chances of DUI’s and Zombies eating peoples faces (on a bad trip)?

Remember, we encourage what we tolerate. But theres not enough time to talk about the Occupy Hippies and Illegal Immigration right now. . .

I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with Camp Zoe in Missouri (owned by James Tebeau) and the travesty going on there. I’ve written about it here before. If it’s new to you, it’s a good idea to learn more about it (if you can do so without becoming consumed with rage). It’s a horrendous case of outright theft by the feds of 350 acres of property that was used for concerts.

The case is back in the news again as there has been a settlement.

It’s a pretty sweet deal (for the feds). Despite agreeing that Tebeau didn’t sell drugs or profit from their sale, they get to keep his 350 acres, and, in exchange, Tebeau gets to…. go to prison.

In my imaginary future where an outraged population finally comes to its senses and demands reparations for drug war crimes, not only does Tebeau get his property back, but he’s paid from the tainted assets of all those agents and officials involved in the seizing of his property.

I had to include this video, because the subject matter is extremely important to all of us, regardless of its specific relevance to drug policy, and because when the government decides it is above the law it affects all policy, and finally, because I really wanted to say “smokable beer.”

Note: this is entirely different than “smoked beer,” of which Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is my favorite.