Drug WarRant

More and more, the attempt by the U.S. government to hide and obfuscate the truth about marijuana and the drug war just isn’t working.

Not that many years ago, this kind of editorial in an American newspaper would be unthinkable.

Colorado Springs Gazette: OUR VIEW: Government tells a big fat lie

Once again, government servants have told Americans that marijuana ranks right up there with heroin. The Drug Enforcement Agency ruled on July 8 that marijuana has “no accepted medical use” and will continue as a schedule 1 drug — the most forbidden category.

The DEA is a law enforcement bureaucracy. The medical opinions of law enforcement bureaucrats should be of little interest. We do not ask cops to make laws; we pay cops to enforce the laws established by constitutions or enacted by the people or the decisions of their representatives. […]

Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government, let alone a lone bureaucracy such as the DEA, to regulate drugs. […]

This is the type of insanity that led President Ronald Reagan to say: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” […]

It seems clear that DEA officials want to demonize marijuana because it guarantees the DEA’s ongoing funding and growth. This ruling does nothing to harm the reputation of medical marijuana, and everything to diminish the reputation of the DEA. We must demand that government employees stop lying to the Americans they are paid to serve with integrity and truth.

The Gazette still has a rather backward view of recreational marijuana, but a very healthy suspicion of the veracity of our government drug warriors.

Add this data point to the Cole memo, the DEA re-scheduling rejection notice, and the ONDCP diatribe in the National Drug Control Strategy…

Feds Propose Clean-Up Language To Drug Regulations

July 11, 2011—The FMCSA [Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] is proposing new language that will clean up several misconceptions that a driver using a Schedule I controlled substance under a doctors care is allowed to operate a commercial motor vehicle (CMV).

The FMCSA has always considered Sections 382.213, 391.41(b)(12), 391.43(f), and 392.4 to prohibit any and all use of Schedule I drugs by CMV drivers. In fact, Federal law prohibits Schedule I drugs from being prescribed in the United States (75 FR 16237, March 31, 2010). Schedule I drugs have a high potential for abuse and no medically accepted therapeutic use. Currently, Federal law only allows for their use in research, chemical analysis, or manufacture of other drugs.

Unfortunately, some MROs [Medical Review Officers] have misinterpreted FMCSA’s regulations and have permitted drivers to use Schedule I drugs while under the care of a physician and drive a CMV. This action puts the FMCSRs in direct conflict with DOT’s comprehensive drug testing program under 49 CFR, Part 40, which does not permit drivers to use Schedule I drugs. The FMCSA does not believe this is a reasonable interpretation of the regulations.

To avoid any confusion, this rulemaking would harmonize Sections 382.213, 391.41(b)(12), 391.43(f), and 392.4 with DOT-wide regulations and DEA regulations, and make it clear that drivers may not use Schedule I drugs under any circumstances.

It’s really pretty silly how they so carefully avoid even mentioning medical marijuana though that is clearly what they’re addressing (perhaps to fly below the radar?), and how they sidestep the fact that it has nothing to do with impairment or when you’ve used the drug.

They just want to make it flat out prohibited by federal law for any commercial motor vehicle to be driven by someone who uses medical marijuana at all, regardless of state law.

One more piece of the federal war on marijuana.

Talking about ending the drug war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRl1NxtpOkg

Didn’t get all his facts exactly right, but close enough, and definitely making good points.

Oh, and kudos to whoever got him the suit and haircut.

Farmers in Afghanistan are finally finding something to grow that will make them more money than opium.

Cannabis.

IDPC reports on a UNODC survey…

The findings confirmed Afghanistan’s role as a major grower of cannabis, but also discovered that the country produced more cannabis resin or hashish than any other nation.

Cannabis gross income shot up for farmers between 2009 and 2010 from $3,900 per hectare (about 2.5 acres) to $9,000 per hectare. Opium was at $4,900 and wheat at $770.

That drug war really is effective, isn’t it?

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!