Drug WarRant

After U.S., Sweden, United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark and Germany objected to Bolivia’s amendment yesterday, President Morales is making it clear that he’s not going to sit back and give up.

Evo quiere presentar recurso para despenalizar el acullicu

Someone with a better knowledge of the language can perhaps help out with the nuances, but even Google’s mangled translation of the page shows a pretty clear intent…

President Evo Morales intends to submit an appeal (complaint) against the 1961 United Nations prohibits acullicu [ceremony of the coca] after at least six countries objected to the request Bolivian coca decriminalization of chewing.

The announcement was made yesterday by the Head of State at their annual meeting with the diplomatic corps in Palacio Quemado.

“The Government will continue to seek other mechanisms to take other courses of action to decriminalize consumption. If no objection is raised to chewing coca, will go to a conference (international) and we are also exploring another way is to denounce the 1961 Convention, “he said.

Morales said it is a right of all states to appeal to this type of mechanism to recognize the acullicu.

“I feel that some countries have been confused, we would be in the campaign to decriminalize the coca plant, we have established very clearly that the traditional consumption of coca leaf.”

He will appeal any effort that member countries make to oppose his amendment, and, failing that, he will consider withdrawing from the Single Convention. And it appears that he is suggesting that course of action to other countries as well.

from the Drug Czar’s “blog”

These consultations, across the country and across government, helped highlight an important truth — that public safety isn’t the only thing threatened by drug use; drugs also pose an extremely complex and dynamic challenge to public health. And the public safety community cannot bear the full weight of addressing drug use and its consequences. The result of our engagement with the American people is the Obama Administration’s National Drug Control Strategy — a shift in how we address drug control, by restoring balance in our efforts and treating drug addiction as a brain disease rather than a moral failing.

Tourette syndrome is a brain disease. That doesn’t mean we arrest everyone who says “fuck.”

Despite recent calls to do so, legalizing drugs is not the answer. Our opposition to legalization is not born out of a culture-war or drug-war mentality. It is born out of the recognition that our drug problem is a major public health threat, and that drug addiction is a preventable and treatable disease. Already drug use — legal and illegal — is the source of too many of our Nation’s problems. Why would we implement policies that would make these problems worse?

As President Obama said — we’ve made huge strides in reducing smoking, drunk driving, and other public health problems through a policy approach that stresses prevention and changing public attitudes about dangerous behavior. There’s no reason we can’t build on those successes and achieve the same results with drug use and its consequences.

We can’t change public attitudes about dangerous behavior as long as we give the control of it to criminals.

From an interview in Mexico

QUESTION: Okay. In several occasion, you have recognized that the partial explanation to the violence in Mexico can be found in the elevated drug consumption and the tolerance towards arms selling in your country. The consumption has not diminished. On the contrary, I hear it’s, like, reached a historical maximum and arms selling continue. And it’s very unlikely that it would – this will change. So why would – should we continue giving this battle? And when I say we, it’s like our country, Mexico.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we are making some progress. There has been some decrease in drug use. But more than that, there’s been greater cooperation across the border. We are stopping more people and finding not only drugs, but guns, money for money laundering. We have much better law enforcement cooperation across the border. I don’t think either of us could do this without working with the other. And I don’t think either of us wants to let a drug kingpin and his gang behead people or addict people on either side of the border.

QUESTION: In Mexico, there are those who propose not keeping going with this battle and legalize drug trafficking and consumption. What is your opinion?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don’t think that – you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped. They can’t be given an even easier road to take, because they will then find it in their interest to addict even more young people. Mexico didn’t have much of a drug problem before the last 10 years, and you want to keep it that way. So you don’t want to give any excuse to the drug traffickers to be able legally to addict young people.

QUESTION: But in the United States there [is] more and more tolerance for marijuana, right?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: So this doesn’t seem right. Like the tolerance in the United States, and here we are killing each other for this product.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, the tolerance is in a very limited arena. It is for medical –

QUESTION: Medical use.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Medical use. And there are lots of regulations on it. So it’s not accurate to say, as I’ve heard some say, well, we’re legalizing marijuana. We are not. We are – the biggest – we have more people incarcerated, unfortunately, than any country in the world, and most of them are there because of some drug-related offense. So we know that this is not an easy struggle. We’ve been at it ourselves. But we also believe that you have to keep the pressure on the criminals; otherwise, they will just expand their operations, and then you do have to worry about more corruption, more problems with institutions.

What mindset does it take to keep claiming that legalization means the illegal traffickers get to have the profits?

Martin Jelsma has an excellent write-up of the political maneuverings and hypocrisy regarding opposition to the Bolivian amendment regarding coca chewing. Definitely worth reading.

D-Day for Bolivia’s coca chewing amendment

Meanwhile the U.S. turned to its allies in the European Union, where especially the UK tried to rally support for the US objection. But the European Union was unable to agree on a coordinated position, and the divide only deepened further last week. The controversy appeared on the agenda of many EU coordination meetings in Brussels, Vienna and New York. Spain had made clear from the beginning they were not going to object; to the contrary, they would strongly support Bolivia’s proposal. Most other EU countries – all under heavy U.S. pressure to object – were undecided, and for several months Spain remained isolated in its explicit support, in spite of broad sympathy for their position from many EU officials in the corridors.

With the deadline of January 31st approaching, last week several other EU countries (Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Belgium, Austria and Finland) made clear that they would not be objecting either. Norway and Switzerland (non-EU members) also made clear they had no objection to the amendment. On the other hand, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and a few others, said they still intended to submit an objection and made a final appeal to others to join them. Germany and Denmark indeed sent their notification on Friday. For the EU, aspiring to reach common positions on international issues, it was a painful process to see the divide deepening.

Chuck Schumer wants to ban the latest media-fueled drug craze: “bath salts.”

As long as we have prohibition for drugs like marijuana, there will be a lucrative market for legal (and possibly dangerous) alternatives, and technologically savvy opportunists will create new ones faster than the idiot politicians can ban them.

And what about all the other things that haven’t been banned yet? When I was in High School, two kids died from huffing kerosene. When is Schumer going to ban kerosene?

Steve Elliott nails it in The Great ‘Marijuana’ Debate: What’s In A Word?

There are those within the cannabis movement who will tell you with a straight face that the reason the plant is still illegal is because it is called “marijuana.” That’s overreaching wildly.

And you have to ask yourself: How much chance do we stand of changing the minds of the general public about cannabis, when we spend most of our energy fighting amongst ourselves about what to call the damn stuff?

Yes, I personally know of activists that spend way more time and energy attacking other activists — with whom they should be strategizing — for using the word “marijuana”!

This creates another problem, as well. When members of the public at large see some members of the cannabis community shushing and shaming other members for using the word “marijuana,” that sure makes the whole enterprise look iffy to an outsider.

Steve does a great job of looking at the history of the words and the silliness of fighting for one over another.

Yes, I try to use “cannabis” when I’m writing formally, but there’s no way I’m going to stop using “marijuana.”

Just a fun little video segment on a somewhat controversial radio ad featuring stoned students promoting a greasy burger joint. Talk about reaching your target audience!

Narconon, part of the Scientologist empire, is one of the more bizarre and unprincipled outfits profiting from the marijuana treatment scam.

Their latest effort has me mostly scratching my head in puzzlement.

In this press release by the organization I love the way they try to look like they’re the balanced source of factual information

There is so much controversy over the long term and short term effects of weed that it can be hard to get at the truth. Well-financed figures on both sides display their opposing views about the drug’s harm or safety. If a person, young or old, wanted the facts on weed, where would they turn?

Now Bobby Wiggins, a spokesperson and drug educator for Narconon International, explains one of the key problems related to the effects of weed consumption in a clear, three-minute YouTube video. Mr. Wiggins has educated hundreds of thousands of children on the dangers of drug use and recorded the video about the long-term effects of weed to continue the education about the effects of weed use on a broader scale.

In the video, Mr. Wiggins claims that marijuana depletes your magnesium levels, putting you on downward-tracking cycle of highs and lows.

My first thought was that, if this is true, there’s an obvious and easy solution — eat vegetables, beans and nuts that contain magnesium to restore magnesium levels (or use supplements). But is it true?

I haven’t found any reliable information on cannabis and magnesium levels, other than magnesium deficiency in plants, which can cause a yellowing in the older leaves.

I’m assuming this is just more Narconon quackery that they’ve pulled out of their ass. Perhaps we’ve done such a good job of debunking all the normal marijuana scares that they felt the need to make up a new one. Does anybody know anything else on this?

I’m generalizing, of course. I know that there are good prosecutors and state’s attorneys out there who are interested in finding justice. I’ve even heard of one.

And yet, for the most part, particularly given the news I cover, the overwhelming view I tend to get of prosecutors is the justice-be-damned, power-hungry official who is looking to maximize convictions and make themselves look good.

A lot of this has been attributable to the drug war, where it became impossible, due to the sheer number of cases, to actually provide a jury trial for all defendants. Prosecutors soon discovered that they could ramp up their convictions without spending a day in court as long as they had enough “tools” in their arsenal to force a plea. Soon, prosecutors realized that having these “tools” made them the equivalent of God — judge, jury, and executioner, and they lobbied for more of them, with legislators eager to rush to their cause and pass more “pile-on” laws, particularly in drug cases.

Now that they have this power, they won’t easily give it up.

Case in point. Proposal to shrink drug-free school zone draws ire

A proposal by Gov. Deval Patrick to shrink the drug-free zone around Massachusetts schools is drawing fire from police and prosecutors who say they need the 1,000-foot area and the tougher prison terms that go with it.

We’ve talked about these drug-free zones before. The 1,000-foot zones are absolutely ridiculous, particularly in inner cities where there’s almost no place that isn’t inside one of these overlapping zones. They do absolutely nothing to deter drug sales to children since most people don’t know if they’re in a zone or not (which may include their living room) and there are separate laws against selling drugs to children. The only purpose they serve is as a “pile-on” charge.

And prosecutors don’t even seem to care to hide that fact anymore.

Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said prosecutors already use discretion when adding a school zone violation to a suspected drug dealer’s charges and generally don’t use the law for first-time offenders with small amounts of drugs a safe distance away from schools. But he said the law gives prosecutors leverage in getting suspected drug dealers to plead guilty to other charges and to give authorities information about larger dealers.

“Why would we want to take away that tool for prosecutors instead of giving them more tools?” Cruz said.

Maybe because justice is about something different than giving prosecutors more power. And maybe someone should let him know that the role of prosecutor is to serve the people, not to rack up conviction numbers.

Of course, we also need to do a better job of educating people about how our justice system is supposed to work, and that adding more laws and more sentences doesn’t make us safer.

Yellow Journalism in action. Check out this article in the Daily Mail: Legal but lethal: So-called ‘legal highs’ are every bit as deadly as heroin and cocaine. It’s so quintessentially Daily Mail in tone. Actually, the research done for the article is relatively impressive — assuming any of it is to be believed — and I may have learned something. But the breathless melodramatic automatic condemnation of anything drug-related makes the article almost unreadable.

---

The General’s Drug Problem in USA Today is an interesting article about the apparent rampant use/addiction to prescription drugs in the military.

Standing before a packed hall of 700 military doctors and medics here, the deputy commander of the nation’s elite special operations forces warned about an epidemic of chronic pain sweeping through the U.S. military after a decade of continuous war. […]

An internal Army investigation report released Tuesday revealed that 25% to 35% of about 10,000 soldiers assigned to special units for the wounded, ill or injured are addicted to or dependent on drugs, according to their nurses and case managers. Doctors in those care units told investigators they need training in other ways to manage pain besides only using narcotics.

I suppose they could try cannabis.

---

Coca-chewing Bolivians press for end to UN ban

Article about the Bolivian protests against the United States for opposing the amendment that would remove coca chewing from the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The real kicker is in the closing paragraph.

The US embassy, in a statement reaffirming US opposition to the proposed amendment to the UN convention, said it was willing to work with the Bolivian government “out of respect for these millennial practices.”

Translation: We know it’s not enforced and there’s no way to enforce it, but we want to have it on the books so we can use it against you whenever we want to complain that you’re not doing enough in the drug war.

---

Increased Violence as a Drug War Metric by Steven Taylor at Ouside the Beltway. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve seen someone say that the violence in Mexico is a sign that we’re winning. Here’s another one:

Via the BBC: Hillary Clinton backs Mexico drug war comes the following:

The Mexican authorities argue that the rising violence shows that the gangs are being weakened and turning increasingly on each other, but critics argue the use of troops has only served to provoke increasingly gruesome murders.

Taylor usefully provides a chart to show how well we’re doing.

That’s a whole lotta “success” there.

---

Scott Morgan reminds us: If You Have Drugs, Don’t Agree to a Police Search. For obvious reasons if you read the article. And actually, the same is true if you don’t have drugs. Never consent to a search. There are tons of good reasons not to consent regardless of whether you have drugs.

Scott says: “It seems like such a simple concept, but for some irrational reason, a lot of people still don’t get it.” Exactly. I still run into people like that all the time. They somehow think that it’s better not to antagonize the officer and let them search. But every defense attorney will tell you two things: Never consent to a search, and shut the f#ck up.

(I think I’d have a harder time with the second one, actually. I’d have a desire to try to “convert” them.)

---

This is an open thread (as if that made any difference).