Drug WarRant

The Pope landed in Mexico today and doubled down on the failed drug war.

“We must do whatever is possible to combat this destructive evil against humanity and our youth,” he told reporters, referring to the some 50,000 people killed since 2007 as rival drug trafficking cartels fight each other and the state.

“It is the responsibility of the Church to educate consciences, to teach moral responsibility and to unmask the evil, to unmask this idolatry of money which enslaves man, to unmask the false promises, the lies, the fraud that is behind drugs,” he said. […]

The pope’s strong words on the drug menace should offer comfort to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his reputation on beating down the cartels.

The fraud that is behind drugs? Drugs aren’t beheading people. As far as unmasking the idolatry of money, well, it wasn’t really masked.

Identifying the traffickers as evil doesn’t do anything. It isn’t even news. Calling for “whatever is possible to combat it” is exactly what got us in this mess.

Maia Szalavitz has an interesting piece in Time: How Getting Tipsy May Inspire Creativity

In it, she talks about a recent study that discovered that a little alcohol actually helped stimulate inspiration and creativity and resulted in a better job answering word-association tests.

Increasingly, science is confirming that altered states of consciousness — whether induced by drugs, alcohol, sleepiness, travel or anything else that removes us from our usual way of seeing the world — do indeed improve creative thought. The inhibition of what researchers call executive functioning, which includes focus and planning — abilities that decline when we’re under the influence — may be what lets us generate new ideas and innovative solutions, instead of remaining fixed on the task at hand.

Of course, that’s not a surprise in any way to us. And you can bet that if the study involved marijuana instead of alcohol, they’d find even stronger positive effects.

Artists have long found their creative juices stimulated by drugs. The entire field of jazz exists in part because of cannabis.

This doesn’t mean you have to use drugs to be creative. Of course not. And many creative people spend their entire careers successfully without using anything. But as Maia notes, the inhibition of “executive functioning” can be critical in opening your mind to new things. And for many people, the use of mind-altering substances helps open that door.

I have spent most of my life around creative people. I’m an artist, a musician, a theatre professional and have an incredible number of artistic friends. I’ve also met a lot of creative people in other fields.

In my experience, people who are creative, or lean toward creative thinking, are less likely to be boring assholes. People who are unable to turn off their “executive functioning” are more likely to be boring assholes.

Our world needs artists, musicians, poets, and creative thinkers in all disciplines. We don’t need boring assholes.

And if marijuana or a glass of wine helps a few more people find their creative muse, the world will be a better place.

Yesterday, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition endorsed I-502 – Washington’s marijuana legalization initiative

A group of police officers, prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals – including Seattle’s former chief of police – is endorsing I-502, the Washington initiative to regulate and tax marijuana that voters will decide on this November.

Norm Stamper, the former Seattle chief and a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), said, “Everyone knows that marijuana prohibition has failed. When even those who once worked to enforce these laws are saying this, the only logical next step is to enact a system that legalizes, regulates and controls marijuana. Doing so will not only take money away from the gangs and cartels that sell marijuana now, but will generate new, much-needed revenue that can be used to pay the salaries of police officers and teachers and for substance abuse prevention and education.”

This came shortly after Gary Johnson endorsed it this weekend.

Former New Mexico governor and U.S. Presidential candidate Gary Johnson has endorsed Washington State Initiative Measure No. 502 (I-502) to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and over. Visiting Washington for the state Libertarian conference, Johnson stated that “Washington’s I-502 is fiscally responsible and socially pragmatic.”

Links:

• Yes on I-502 site
• Text of the initiative

I haven’t really talked about any initiatives out there this year — I’ve left the wrangling over language and specific provisions to others.

I’m not a fan of the 21 age limit, either for marijuana or for alcohol. I’ve spent too many years working at a university to be deluded into believing that such a limit is practical or workable. All it does is drive the use underground.

However, that said, at this point I’m in favor of any initiative or law that legalizes marijuana for anyone in any way. Until we crack that wall and have some real legalization out there, I’ll take anything — even an initiative legalizing marijuana use for people aged 47-51 on alternate Tuesdays in their bathrooms, if that’ll help it pass. Might as well start somewhere.

Perhaps the Pope will prove me wrong. But I doubt it.

Good article at Religion Dispatches: A Pope, a Poet, and a Drug War: Will Benedict stoke flames of culture war, or will he attend to the conflict that is truly devastating Mexico?

With the Pontiff’s upcoming trip to Mexico, there is a real opportunity to make a major statement about the most pressing concern today, and Mexican poet Javier Sicilia has been pushing for exactly that.

“I still believe, but these days it’s a naked belief, it’s a belief that’s in a very dark place. I can’t really comprehend or rationalize it right now, because my grief has been so all-consuming—but the faith is still there inside me.” It is this profound faith that motivated Sicilia to write the pope, hoping that his presence might console a troubled nation.

“In their name, for this us, for this body, I have come to Rome, Benedict, to ask that in your visit to Mexico you embrace it, before anyone, as the Father embraced the pained and murdered body of Christ, that you might carry it in your arms and console it: to help us know the response of resurrection in the face of death and pain that the criminals, a fractured State administered by governments and corrupt parties and a Church hierarchy that seems always attentive to its own political interest, have imputed to us.”

But,

Mexico’s ambassador to the Vatican, Héctor Federico Ling Altamirano, has said that the pope’s agenda will touch on the family, abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and the morning-after pill.

Morning-after pill. Really?

That’s what you have to offer? Talking about the morning-after pill?

John 11:35

DirecTV has a series of ads that essentially parody the gateway theory (although they may not realize it themselves). Here’s my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZYIdmdx14

• When you have cable and can’t record all your shows, you feel unhappy.
• When you feel unhappy, you go to happy hour.
• When you go to happy hour, you’re up for anything.
• When you’re up for anything, you head to a Turkish Bathhouse.
• When you head to a Turkish Bathhouse, you meet Charlie Sheen.
• And, when you meet Charlie Sheen, you reenact scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen.
• Don’t reenact scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.

Hey, every single person I know who has reenacted scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen started with being unable to record all their shows. It must be true!!!

I voted yesterday. Got one of those stickers to wear showing that I participated in democracy. Sometimes that makes me feel good. Unfortunately, many times it leaves me hollow.

The good thing yesterday was that I actually got to participate in a Presidential primary vote. It’s so rare that the nominations aren’t already completely locked up by the time it gets to Illinois.

The rest of the ballot was pretty depressing. A lot of “Vote for One” items with only one person listed. Even sadder, the same thing will be true in the general election in my area.

It seems to me that we need more people to participate by running for office. We need more and better choices. Unfortunately, politics has gotten so ugly that, for the most part, only those who want to take advantage of that ugliness sign up.

A local store has a billboard where they often display cute or inspiring messages. Yesterday, it was “Bad politicians are elected whenever good people don’t vote.” Nice sentiment, but in reality it seems more like “Bad politicians are elected whenever someone is elected.”

Are you willing to do more than vote? Are you willing to actually be a detested politician, but be there to attempt to make a difference? I’ve actually considered it myself for when I retire. What office would you try for?

O’Malley gets it wrong on medical marijuana by Eric E. Sterling

On March 9, Gov. Martin O’Malleysaid he is likely to veto a medical marijuana law if the Maryland General Assembly passes one. His spokeswoman said he is concerned about a Feb. 9, 2012 letter from Charles Oberly, Delaware’s U.S. attorney, to Gov. Jack Markell, threatening to prosecute Delaware officials as common drug traffickers if they carry out their state’s medical marijuana law.

Governor O’Malley should look carefully at this letter. After reading the law and analyzing the letter, I believe Mr. Oberly dishonestly manipulated Governor Markell by threatening prosecutions he is forbidden to bring in order to block a valid state law he doesn’t like.

Then Eric really lays it down:

… an appointed federal official has misused the authority of his powerful office to dishonestly manipulate a state into not following its own laws. That violates the Constitution. Article IV, Section 4 provides that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a Republican Form of Government.” Mr. Oberly made legally baseless threats in order to undermine Delaware’s “republican form of government.” He violated the Constitution in order to block Delaware from protecting medical patients whose doctors recommend marijuana.

The intimidation of Governor Markell, and now possibly Governor O’Malley, through a bluff about a prosecution that is actually barred by the federal drug law is outrageous misconduct that should be investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility of the Department of Justice.

Go Eric!

Time for a truce in the war against drugs?

Arguing that a drug-free society is unattainable, a commission of global figures – including a former Swiss minister – are promoting a radical change in drugs policy. […]

In November 2011 came another controversial publication. Under the title War against drugs: intoxicating contradictions?, two doctors of law from Neuchâtel University proposed nothing less than the total legalisation of all illicit drugs.

Ludivine Ferreira and Alain Barbezat also support the view that the drugs war has totally failed. “Repression is ineffective, in Switzerland as elsewhere,” Barbezat told swissinfo.ch.

America Needs to Open Up the Debate on Decriminalization by Richard Branson

The laws against drug use cannot be enforced, and the failure of this approach continues to cause crime and suffering. With Mexican drug cartels operating in 230 American cities, prison populations beyond bursting, and addicts unable to get the medical help they need, it does not take an Einstein to see that it’s time for U.S. leaders to embrace drug policy reform and end the war on drugs.

Marijuana Must Be Legalized by Robert Corry

A government this large, this powerful, this intrusive, this belligerent, is necessary to fight this modern-day prohibition against a simple herb that approximately half of the American adult population has consumed at some point in their lives. There are so many reasons this must change: …

Excellent editorial in the New York Times: Police Powers in New York

Attorney General Eric Holder is rightly reviewing the constitutionally suspect surveillance practices that the New York City Police Department has employed against law-abiding Muslims. The Justice Department should also review other practices — chief among them, stop-and-frisk — that have virtually eliminated the presumption of innocence and that treat citizens, and even entire communities, as suspect even after they are proved innocent.

What the New York Times editors get is that it isn’t just one practice that got some press that’s the problem, but rather a whole series of practices by the police.

The Police Department’s tendency toward blanket surveillance is on vivid display in its stop-and-frisk program, which results in the stopping of more than 600,000 mainly minority citizens on the streets every year. The department credits the program with reducing crime, but there is no proof that it does. […] In addition to criminalizing the victims of these stops, the program has undermined respect for law enforcement in the very communities where it is most needed. […]

Like stop-and-frisk, the city’s marijuana arrest initiative has also raised profound civil rights concerns. […] The department tacitly admitted wrongdoing last year, in a memo telling officers to arrest people only if the drug was in plain public view. But it could take years before the rank and file embrace the change. […]

The dangers associated with the program were underscored last month in the Bronx when an overzealous drug detail pursued an unarmed teenager into his home and shot him to death. A packet of marijuana was found at the scene.

Since 9/11, courts have broadened the Police Department’s investigative authority in the vital interest of protecting the city from terrorist attack. The department should not interpret that as a license to run roughshod over the Constitution.

This is important. 9/11 greatly hampered our ability as reformers to make the case that enforcement as a means of drug policy is damaging both to individual rights and to society as a whole. People were so consumed by the fear (whipped up by those who sought to exploit it) that they blindly acceded to any enforcement outrage as if that would give them safety.

It’s good to see a major media outlet calling for proper, restrained, and yes, even… Constitutional policing.

[Thanks, Tom]

The Air Force, the Army, the Senate…

Voice of America

Two high-ranking U.S. military commanders say Mexico’s violent war against drug cartels has moved into other parts of Central America.

Air Force General Douglas Fraser, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that transnational organized crime rings are threatening to overwhelm law enforcement and are “seriously impacting civilian safety” in the area.

“Senator, it is – is an effort that we see is moving down through Central America,” Gen. Fraser said. “As Mexico increases their pressure, we see that the networks from especially Los Zetas and Sinaloa are moving into Central America. Guatemala is obviously that first location, but we see their – their footprints further down into Central America as well.”

More than 50,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a massive military crackdown against the cartels in 2006.

But U.S. Army General Charles Jacoby, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, told the committee the violence has risen despite Mr. Calderon’s strategy of strategy of targeting the leaders of the cartels.

“I also believe the decapitation strategy – they’ve been successful at that: 22 out of the top 37 trafficking figures that the Mexican government has gone after have been taken off – taken off the board, but it has not had an appreciable effect – an appreciable positive effect,” he said.

I was particularly amused by the ironic “Related Articles” blurb at the end…

Yep. The government knows that our drug war is bad drug policy and causes harm to the world, but is not about to change it for anything. Not for 50,000 deaths. Not for a million.

And it is this disconnect between reality and policy that leads to the most amazing abuses of logic and the English language that you could ever imagine.

Just read Gil Kerlikowske’s offensively ugly presentation to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week. Read the whole thing (breakage alert).

It is staggering dishonesty to break the drug policy debate down as he does:

So what should drug policy look like moving forward? Surely it should chart a middle course—we do not have to choose between the extremes of harsh punishment and labor camps on the one hand, and acceptance of destructive and dangerous drug use on the other.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition reports from the UN Drug Policy Meeting in Vienna.

Even while several Latin American presidents are calling for an outright debate on drug legalization, delegates at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting this week failed to even discuss a change in the global prohibitionist drug treaties, reports a group of judges, prosecutors and jailers who were at the meeting in Vienna to promote reform.

During consideration of a U.S.-sponsored resolution to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first laws banning opium, Norway’s delegation attempted to insert the phrase “while observing human rights,” but even this move encountered resistance from the US delegation, which preferred not to mention human rights.

“Fundamentally, the three UN prohibitionist treaties are incompatible to human rights. We can have human rights or drug war, but not both,” said Maria Lucia Karam, a retired judge from Brazil and a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

Richard Van Wickler, currently a jail superintendent in New Hampshire, adds, “I suppose it’s not shocking that within the context of a century-long bloody ‘war on drugs’ the idea of human rights is a foreign concept. Our global drug prohibition regime puts handcuffs on millions of people every year while even the harshest of prohibitionist countries say that drug abuse is a health issue. What other medical problems do we try to solve with imprisonment and an abandonment of human rights?”

The UN meeting, the 55th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, comes amidst a rapidly emerging global debate on the appropriateness of continuing drug prohibition and whether legalization and regulation would be a better way to control drugs. In recent weeks, Presidents Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica and Felipe Calderon of Mexico have added their voices to the call for a serious conversation on alternatives to drug prohibition.

“Unfortunately, none of these powerful Latin American voices were heard during the official sessions of the UN meeting,” says Judge Karam. “In the halls of the UN building in Vienna we did speak to delegates who agree that the drug war isn’t working and that change is needed, but these opinions were not voiced when they counted the most. During the meetings, all the Member States remained voluntarily submissive to the U.N. dictates that required that all speak with a ‘single voice’ that mandated support for prohibition.”

Apparently the U.N. drug policy discussions have forgotten the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which supposedly is to have supremacy over all other U.N. treaties…
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