Drug WarRant

Philip Greenspun details the amusingly kafkaesque inflexibility in drug testing regulations.

Finally, the FAA inspector looked at my random drug testing program to make sure that everything was in place. I’m subject to the same drug testing requirements as United Airlines. I am the drug testing coordinator for our company, so I am responsible for scheduling drug tests and surprising employees when it is their turn to be tested. As it happens, I’m also the only “safety-sensitive employee” subject to drug testing, so basically I’m responsible for periodically surprising myself with a random drug test. As a supervisor, I need to take training so that I can recognize when an employee is on drugs. But I’m also the only employee, so really this is training so that I can figure out if I myself am on drugs. As an employee, I need to take a second training course so that I learn about all of the ways that my employer might surprise me with a random drug test and find out about drug use. But I’m also the employer so really I’m learning about how I might trap myself.

Ah, but that was just the beginning.

Five minutes after the FAA inspector left, I received a phone call. “I’m from the FAA and we’d like to schedule an audit of your drug testing program.” I remarked that a fully qualified FAA inspector was barely out of the driveway and had just gone through every document that I had on the subject. “He was from the FSDO (Flight Standards District Office)? That’s a completely different department. We’re going to send two inspectors up from Atlanta next month.” Why two? “We always send them in pairs.”

Terry Gilliam couldn’t have written it better.

Good OpEd in the L.A. Times by Stephen Gutwillig and Bill Piper: Medical marijuana: A science-free zone at the White House [Blowback]

President Obama came into office promising to reverse George W. Bush administration practices and elevate science over politics. He explicitly applied that principle to drug policy, an area long driven by ideology and prejudice. […]

But as The Times’ July 9 article makes dismayingly clear, the White House is putting the “science-free zone” sign back up.

Just got back from a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles to visit with alumni of our theatre program (including some very famous ones). Saw excellent productions of “Superior Donuts” at the Geffen Playhouse and “Blackbird” at Rogue Machine Theatre as well.

Challenging the DEA’s War on Medical Marijuana – outstanding piece by Conor Friedersdorf

Can I interest you in a cross-country trip? Its theme is Anti-Empiricism in America. The tour bus leaves from The Bay Area, where a lot of people still think rent control works. It proceeds through Salt Lake City, where the Evergreen Institute claims to cure same sex attraction, passes through Petersburg, Ky., home of the Creationist Museum, and terminates in Springfield, Va., where the DEA, a liberty impinging branch of the federal government, insists against overwhelming evidence that a plant called marijuana “has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision.”

ABC News/Health (Courtney Hutchison, ABC News Medical Unit) has more on the lawsuit against the feds regarding medicinal marijuana — an otherwise OK article marred by the bizarre need to add the terms “Weed” and “Mary Jane” in the beginning of the article, as if ABC readers wouldn’t know what “marijuana” was without those clarifications.

At Time, the excellent Maia Szalavitz has U.S. Rules That Marijuana Has No Medical Use. What Does Science Say?

Although the DEA judgment sounds like a setback for medical marijuana advocates, in one important sense it is an advance. The government had long delayed making a judgment on the petition, but now that it has, it makes it possible for advocates to appeal it in federal court. Now, that process can be set in motion.

Disturbing news from Thailand: Rights groups fear wave of deaths as Thailand faces new drugs crackdown

As you may remember, an earlier crackdown on drugs in Thailand resulted in over 2,500 people dying, many of them innocents in extra-judicial killings.

…many of those killed in the 2003 crackdown had been “victims of personal revenge or sloppy categorisation”. One couple was shot dead after acquiring suspicious wealth; it later emerged that they had won the lottery.

Now a new crackdown is potentially coming.

The pathetic part of this is that much of the population apparently doesn’t understand that these crackdowns do no good long term.

But the campaign was hugely popular and as drug use rises, many want a return to tough action.

“Personally, I think the killings were a good thing. If you leave it to the courts [dealers] just cycle in and out of prison,” said Aminna Bedinlae, 84, who lost her son to drugs and now runs anti-abuse programmes in Klong Toey, where 46 residents were shot.

Fox News’ ‘The Five’ talks legalizing drugs and gambling.

I can rarely watch Fox News, but they actually had a discussion about legalization. And some of it was good. Of course, Dana Perino was horrible as usual, but others on the show actually had some glimpses of sanity.

Bob Beckel rightly understood the need to legalize cocaine and opiates, but bizarrely opposed legalization marijuana.

I found this quote funny/infuriating/sad:

“The problem with pot, is that they don’t have an inspirational leader. There is no Nelson Mandela, because you’re about to go protest and the next thing you know you’re just microwaving a burrito.”

More lazy (and false) reporting by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

The most recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3 percent of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half of them high on marijuana.

False.

Just as a reminder… the NHTSA found that 16.3 percent of drivers in the study tested positive for various legal and illegal drugs, and half of them tested positive for marijuana.

That study specifically stated:

“The reader is cautioned that drug presence does not necessarily imply impairment. For many drug types, drug presence can be detected long after any impairment that might affect driving has passed. For example, traces of marijuana can be detected in blood samples several weeks after chronic users stop ingestion. Also, whereas the impairment effects for various concentration levels of alcohol is well understood, little evidence is available to link concentrations of other drug types to driver performance.”

“Caution should be exercised in assuming that drug presence implies driver impairment. Drug tests do not necessarily indicate current impairment. Drug presence can be measured for a period of days or weeks after ingestion in many cases. This latency of drug presence may partially explain the consistency between daytime and nighttime drug findings.”

The drug war affects every sector of society, straining our economy, our healthcare and criminal justice systems, and endangering the futures of our young people. The United States cannot afford to continue paying the devastating toll of the drug war and its consequences. In 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, the economic impact of the drug war on American society totaled more than $193 billion.

A powerful and true statement. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what the introduction to the long overdue 2011 National Drug Control Strategy actually says:

Drug use affects every sector of society, straining our economy, our healthcare and criminal justice systems, and endangering the futures of our young people. The United States cannot afford to continue paying the devastating toll of illicit drug use and its consequences. In 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, the economic impact of illicit drug use on American society totaled more than $193 billion.

As we’ve discussed here before, the $193 billion calculation, even in its most favorable light, refers almost exclusively to the costs of prohibition on society.

Only in government can you point to a massive financial black hole that you’ve caused and use it for justification for a budget to do more of the same.

Reading the strategy is a pretty depressing thing — it is, of course, based on justifying prohibition in any way possible.

In the section titled The Facts About Marijuana, the report starts going into this long involved diatribe about legalization and the medical marijuana movement

Making matters worse, confusing messages being conveyed by the entertainment industry, media, proponents of “medical” marijuana, and political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana use is harmless and aim to establish commercial access to the drug. This significantly diminishes efforts to keep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from addiction. […]

Despite successful political campaigns to legalize “medical” marijuana in 15 states and the District of Columbia, the cannabis (marijuana) plant itself is not medicine. While there may be medical value for some of the individual components of the cannabis plant, the fact remains that smoking marijuana is an inefficient and harmful method for delivering the constituent elements that have or may have medicinal value. […]

The Administration steadfastly opposes drug legalization. Legalization runs counter to a public health approach to drug control because it would increase the availability of drugs, reduce their price, undermine prevention activities, hinder recovery support efforts, and pose a significant health and safety risk to all Americans, especially our youth.

Many “quick fixes” for America’s complex drug problem have been presented throughout our country’s history. In the past half-century, these proposals have included calls for allowing the legal sale and use of marijuana. However, the complex policy issues concerning drug use and the disease of addiction do not lend themselves to such simple solutions. […]

Advocates of legalization say the costs of prohibition, mainly through the criminal justice system, place a great burden on taxpayers and governments. While there are certainly costs to current prohibitions, legalizing drugs would not cut costs associated with the criminal justice system (see figure). Arrests for alcohol-related crimes, such as violations of liquor laws and driving under the influence, totaled nearly 2.7 million in 200857—far more than arrests for all illegal drug use. These alcohol-related arrests are costly. Legalizing marijuana would further saddle government with the dual burden of regulating a new legal market while continuing to pay for the negative effects associated with an underground market whose providers have little economic incentive to disappear.

That last paragraph is really incredible. It takes a special level of mendacity to put such a load of crap out there.

And the administration makes it very clear that they are sabotaging the medical marijuana movement in order to help their friends in the pharmaceutical industry.

This Administration joins major medical societies in supporting increased research into marijuana’s many components, delivered in a safe (non-smoked) manner, in the hopes that they can be available for physicians to legally prescribe when proven to be safe and effective. Outside the context of Federally approved research, the use and distribution of marijuana is prohibited in the United States.

There’s a whole lot of stupidity in here, and I’m sure I’ll talk about more of it later. But I do want to also point out that the strategy is pushing the “drugged driving” meme again, even to the extent of setting a goal of “reducing the prevalence of drugged driving by 10%” by 2015. They even state the completely irresponsible “Preventing Drugged Driving Must Become a National Priority on Par with Preventing Drunk Driving.”

So, here’s a problem that they haven’t even defined yet. Nobody knows whether drugged driving is a serious problem at all, and all evidence is that “drugged driving” as defined by the administration is far less serious drunk driving. They don’t even know how many of these people are driving impaired. And yet they want to shift focus to spend as much effort on this unknown issue rather than focusing on the known one. And they want to reduce a number by 10% when they don’t know what it means.

Lots of nonsense dressed up in fancy-sounding statistics that mean nothing.

More of the same.

The October 9, 2002 Petition to Reschedule Marijuana has been officially denied by Michele Leonhart and the denial placed in the Federal Register today.

Interesting timing, given the recent DOJ letter regarding medical marijuana prosecutions. Looks like all-out federal war.

Time for our Rapid Response Team to spring into action!

From The Thinking Policeman: A Police Officer’s Blog: The Drugs Debate

Apparently he’s already expecting to hear from the “usual hysterical pro drugs legalisation brigade.”

He’s heard all the legalization arguments and can recite them, but can’t quite put together the pieces. Besides, he gets caught into some of the worst traps:

• “Until there is a clear strategy and model the pro legalisation lobby will not be taken seriously.”
• “Drugs are far more addictive and potentially harmful [than alcohol]”
• “Using the same argument there is a better case to legalise all crime.”
• “Drug users have a false belief that more people are using drugs than in fact are.”
• “In my view the risks of a liberal experiment of lawful drug supply by way of regulation coupled with lawful possession far outweigh any potential benefits. Liberalisation of possession in countries such as Portugal and Holland has done little to address drugs and crime. The Swedish model of strict enforcement with investment in prevention and treatment works better.”
• “For example, there are 1.5 million bikes in Amsterdam and every year 600,000 are stolen.”

Someone may want to inform him about Transform’s Blueprint, among other things…

Your tax dollars on drugs.

A professionally printed ad sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse being seen on the El trains around Philadelphia contains the following:

“contact the Family Trainging Program” […] “The Parents TRanslatoinal Researg Center.” [emphasis added]

It makes the advertised phone number — 877.i.WORRY.2 — all the more appropriate.

Ethan Nadelmann will be on “Real Time with Bill Maher” tonight.

I’ll be at my Dad’s for the next couple of days with no WiFi, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post.

Have fun in comments. Whenever I leave you guys alone, you get some amazing stuff going!

The INCB (International Narcotics Control Board) is an international terrorist organization with influence in more countries than al-Qaeda. It even receives material support for its activities from the U.N.

The INCB has members from around the world who meet in secret and whose stated goal is to impose their interpretation of drug treaties on the rest of the world (especially their holy text — The Single Convention), even to the point of coercing entire governments to function as assassins and kidnappers on their behalf.

These governments, acting under an agreement with the terrorist group, have kidnapped millions of peaceful citizens, often keeping them confined for years, executing some, and applying the tactics of terror on innocent victims (shooting their dogs, etc.), using fear to promote their agenda.

In addition to their government puppets, the INCB terrorists are allied with Mexican cartels and other criminal organizations who couldn’t exist without the holy warriors of the Single Convention.

This terrorist organization has released a statement indicating their disappointment with the government of Bolivia for denouncing the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs:

Such approach would undermine the integrity of the global drug control system, undoing the good work of Governments over many years to achieve the aims and objectives of the drug control conventions, including the prevention of drug abuse which is devastating the lives of millions of people.

The international drug control conventions are the corner stone of international efforts to prevent the illicit production, manufacture, traffic in and abuse of drugs while at the same time ensuring that licit drugs are available for medical and scientific purposes. The almost universal adherence to these conventions is testimony to Governments’ trust in the international drug control system and a pre-requisite for the treaties’ effectiveness to prevent drug trafficking and abuse. […]

The Board has the responsibility to bring any threat to the international drug control system to the attention of States parties.

The way to stop these terrorist organizations is to stop giving them power.

What a kidder…

The Obama Administration has made clear that science and research – not politics – should determine what is safe and effective medicine.

Right.

And, of course, he just can’t resist throwing out completely irrelevant treatment numbers.

… 150,000 people who showed up voluntarily at treatment facilities in 2009 reported marijuana as their primary substance of abuse.

The volunteerism of 149,999 of those had to do with choice.

“Either you show up at treatment, or you’re out of this house buster.”

“Either you go to treatment or you go to jail.”

“Either you sign up for treatment now, or the judge isn’t going to look at your case as favorably when you show up at court.”

The 150,000th person thought it would be a good place to pick up chicks.

Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say

Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

“There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered “problematic” — those who repeatedly use “hard” drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said. […]

Portugal’s holistic approach had also led to a “spectacular” reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.

Of course, the naysayers will tell you that Portugal is not the United States and so we can’t believe those numbers. Then they will proceed to give you numbers of increased addicts with legalization or decriminalization that they have produced from a darkened orifice.

An ACLU production.