Drug WarRant

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.

Just to clarify, the federal government cannot go after everyone, so it helps to know where you stand if you’re thinking about breaking federal law.

1. For those involved in ordering torture, approving it, and even for the vast majority of those who committed brutal torture that went all the way to murder, they are now permanently and fully immunized by the Department of Justice from any form of criminal investigation and prosecution.
2. For those involved in supplying marijuana for sick people in full compliance with state law, they are “subject to federal enforcement action, including potential prosecution,” including civil or criminal action, and utilization of federal money laundering statutes and other federal financial laws.

Over at the Agitator

Self explanatory.

A lot of suffering. A lot of grief. A lot of injustice. This damned drug war.

I guess I’m just ready to share all this love that I have built up inside of me all these years. No more late nights or days just wishing I can hold my kids & tell them that their daddy loves them with all his heart. I’m sure my not being physically present has affected them in many ways. I just pray that it’s not too late, and together we can work on healing one another.

And finally, a little relief.

The “clarification” of the Attorney General memo on medical marijuana (AKA the “Ogden Memo” has arrived. No big surprise. This administration, like the others before it, has hitched its wagon to the drug warriors.
Continue reading →

Press release from Drug Policy Alliance:

WASHINGTON, DC—Today, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to provide retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act, which Congress passed last year and narrowed a decades-old disparity in federal sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The Commission’s decision to apply the sentencing guideline changes retroactive could benefit as many as 12,000 people in federal prison who could be released early, saving taxpayers as much as $240 million over the next 30 years. The Commission’s commitment to reforming this egregious practice is consistent with its history.

“Since 1995, the US Sentencing Commission has, in four reports to Congress, requested that Congress raise the threshold quantities of crack that trigger mandatory minimums in order to ease the unconscionable racial disparities in sentencing,” said Jasmine L. Tyler, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, who testified in front of the Commission on June 1, 2011 in support of retroactivity. “This vote to provide retroactive relief to the thousands of defendants whose sentences the Commission has consistently condemned for the past seventeen years.”

The Commission received more than 43,000 pieces of mail urging them to apply the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively to alleviate overcrowding in the Bureau of Prisons – currently operating at 140% capacity, and to relieve the unwarranted racial disparities in federal sentencing that has led civil rights leaders, criminologists, elected officials, and whole communities to criticize the criminal justice system. Some Republican members in the House and Senate opposed retroactivity, however, setting up a possible fight over the issue in Congress.

The historic bipartisan passage of the Fair Sentencing Act was an acknowledgement by Congress of the racial disparities that grew out of the old law. Advocates argued that a decision to not apply the law retroactively would continue an openly unequal practice.

“Imagine that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had upheld segregation in existing schools and only mandated integration for new schools being built,” Tyler added. “Without retroactivity, that’s exactly what would happen to the Fair Sentencing Act. The Commission should be lauded for their commitment to ensuring racial justice and fairness in the federal system.”

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It’s still only a step, but an important one.

Tweet of the day from Maia Szalavitz:

116 million in chronic pain. 23.5 million with addiction. 2 nat instits on adxn, none on pain

There’s nothing wrong with caring about addicts, but there’s something extraordinarily perverse when we’re so concerned about preventing addicts from having access to drugs that we destroy the lives of many times more people, either through untreated pain or other drug war damage.

Here’s her article on chronic undertreated pain.

“I’m shocked and surprised at the magnitude of [the problem],” said Dr. Perry Fine, president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, while attending the press conference on Wednesday announcing the release of the IOM report. He was not associated with the research.

Yet the reports’ authors said they believed that they had actually underestimated the incidence of chronic pain — that which lasts 30 to 60 days or more and takes a toll on personal and professional life — because their data didn’t include people living in settings like nursing homes. Further, as baby boomers age, the rate of chronic pain increases daily.

In a related story over at Points, Siobhan Reynolds talks about the Unconstitutional perversion of medical authority admitted to by the Department of Justice.

When questioned by District Judge Robert Jones as to why federal prosecutors believed they possessed the authority to use the CSA to criminalize the actions of DEA registrants, otherwise empowered by Oregon state law to assist in patient suicides, the DOJ offered the following justification, citing language found in a House Committee Report discussing the possible implications of the CSA for the federal regulation of medicine, using the criminal code:

“Although the Committee is concerned about the [in]appropriateness of federal prosecutors determining the appropriate method of the practice of medicine, it is necessary to recognize that for the last 50 years this is precisely what has happened, through criminal prosecution of physicians whose methods of prescribing narcotic drugs have not conformed to the opinions of federal prosecutors of what constitutes appropriate methods of professional practice.” Defendants’ Memorandum, pp. 16-17….” (Emphasis added)

District Judge Jones offered the following rebuke:

“Defendants [DOJ] cannot seriously conclude from the above- quoted language that Congress delegated to federal prosecutors the authority to define what constitutes legitimate medical practices. [FN15] To state the proposition is to refute it. Federal prosecutors have never possessed such powers, and the vagueness of the reference would render any alleged violation based on a prosecutor’s subjective views about medical practice patently unenforceable.”

And yet, to this day, prosecutors have regularly exercised such powers with impunity even though they don’t have them.

Jesse Jackson, Black Leaders Are Right About Ending the War on Drugs by Dr. Boyce Watkins in the Huffington Post

Powerful stuff:

Jesse Jackson said it best during the recent forum on the drug war.

“This is a crime against humanity. War on drugs is a war on Black and Brown and must be challenged by the highest levels of our government in the war for justice,” said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

“This is government-sponsored terrorism,” Jackson said. “It raised the price on Black existence; it is an attack on the Black family; it has destroyed a generation. Those who are the least users have paid the most price because of race; those with money and attorneys have paid the least price. Those without attorneys remain behind bars today.”

“I’m here to tell you that one of the most fundamental pillars of what we see going on in our communities, this combustible caldron of genocide and death, is this war on drugs,” said Ron Daniels, CEO of the Institute of the Black World, which held the forum at which Rev. Jackson was speaking. “Why? It’s because it’s a racist war on drugs…I know many people are out there saying, ‘Why are you Negroes still talking about racism?’ That’s because we’ve been targeted for the police action – the war on drugs is a war on us.” […]

It’s time for all of us to wake up and attack the problem of mass incarceration and the drug war. If there were ever a set of realities that are reflective of the persistent racial divides that continue to plague America, this one would be it. As a man who’s biological father and older brother figure both spent time in prison, this issue is personal to me. I, like so many millions of black people across America, have experienced the hurt and pain that is caused by mass incarceration. It’s time for this system of Americanized apartheid to be brought to an end.

This is just part of a recent trend – Al Sharpton has been on news shows speaking out against the drug war. The fact that LEAP’s director Neill Franklin can speak as both a police officer and an African American is powerful as well.

Getting the black community to mobilize against the drug war is a potent step.