Drug WarRant

Quite busy right now with “Spring Awakening” opening on Friday…

$3.4M settlement in deadly 2011 SWAT raid near Tucson

“The Pima County Sheriff’s Department strongly believes the events of May 5, 2011, were unfortunate and tragic, but the officers performed that day in accordance with their training and nationally recognized standards,” Deputy Tracy Suitt wrote.

Um, yeah. That’s exactly the problem.

The shooting was a terrible, unfortunate situation costing taxpayers a huge amount of money, Supervisor Richard Elías said.

Yeah, it’s unfortunate when armed thugs break down your door and shoot you in your own home.

Brazil

A man carrying 500 kilos of pot in his car lost his life when the illegal merchandise in the back of the vehicle slammed into him during an auto accident.

Marijuana. Harmless?

Nice to see this brought up at the Emmy Awards:

Michael Douglas slams U.S. prison system after Emmy win

Continued Douglas: “Obviously at first, I was certainly disappointed in my son. But I’ve reached a point now where I’m very disappointed with the system. And as you can see from what Attorney General Eric Holder has been doing regarding our prison system, I think things are going to be revived, regarding nonviolent drug addicts. My last comment on that is the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population and we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.”

Some day, we will look back at this era of using the criminal justice system to deal with drugs in much the same way we now look at barbers’ use of bloodletting to balance the humors.

Sky is falling nonsense from McClatchy — Can states protect kids from recreational marijuana? with some of the usual players…

But to legalization opponents, such promises are a pipe dream, destined to fail. They say it is more likely the U.S. government will unleash a new industry that will try hard to attract young users and turn them into “addicts.” […]

Sabet said he hopes history will repeat itself and that the tide will turn against legalization, as it did in the late 1970s when baby boomers began questioning how the drug would affect kids.

“A retailer needs a modest sign on the outside of the building and a website listing what it has to sell,” said consultant Mark Kleiman, who is also a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There is no need to tolerate anything more than that.” […]

Sabet predicted that attracting more young users will be necessary for the economic survival of the industry.

“This is about making sure that kids are hooked early, because that’s the only way that addictive industries make money,” he said. “They don’t make money off casual users, and in order to get addicts, you have to start people young.”

Feel free to have at it in comments, and destroy their arguments, but my favorite response came in the article:

“These people have too much free time and they need to get a job,” countered Steve Horowitz, who runs a medical-marijuana dispensary in Denver but hopes to make the switch to a full recreational operation.

That’s one of the biggest whoppers in drug policy enforcement.

A clear disdain for the law and the will of the people, along with a concerted effort by law enforcement to push for marijuana prohibition point of view in legislation, is evident in all their lobbying efforts and public relations activities. It’s also clear that those who profit from prohibition are working overtime to insure that this view is maintained within the law enforcement rank and file.

Poor Training of Narcotics Officers Contributes to Culture of Ignorance by LEAP member Diane Wattles-Goldstein.

Because of the influence the CNOA [California Narcotic Officer Association] has had on legislation through lobbying in Sacramento they have been able to subvert laws, direct public policy through their paid lobbyist, while using one-dimensional training to further their own goals.

Despite the overwhelming support for medical marijuana in California as evidenced by recent polling, public and legislative support, not to mention science, the CNOA continues to be the lead training organization that, by design, will not support or acknowledge the rule of law.

This opposition is disingenuous by not admitting to the many fiscal benefits that they receive by maintaining the status quo. The narcotic officers receive public money through their certified continuing education classes, (a lot according to their taxes as listed on the Attorney General Charitable Registry website) that contributes to training which undermines the intent of medical marijuana laws.

Their courses are designed around the premise that there is no such thing as “medical marijuana” despite the growing body of academic research that shows the opposite.

This is probably the must-see music video of the year.

As FUSE reports, the “video is a commentary on America’s War on Drugs, dedicated to Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the seven-year-old who was shot and killed during a Detroit police raid. Cole stars as a drug dealer who, despite his illegal line of work, is a doting father to an adorable little girl. A DEA agent, with a charming young daughter of his own, co-stars and leads a raid to arrest Cole on his daughter’s birthday. The final shot shows the two daughters together, coloring pictures for their daddies in a classroom with the message: ‘Please reconsider your War on Drugs.'”

The lyrics aren’t particularly connected to the story being told in the video, so much as simply providing a background for it.

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón Admits Errors in Handling Drug War

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón lamented the label of the crisis his country faced – and continues to face – between government forces and the country’s drug cartels as a “war” and not a drug strategy. […]

Calderón admitted that his administration failed in clearly communicating his security policy toward drug cartels, according to news agency Agence France-Presse.

Maybe he should have sent a memo.

This USA Today piece, which focused on binge drinking, had some advice:

Pediatrician Patricia Kokotailo, director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on alcohol use by youth and adolescents, says parents should: […]

• Set a firm policy: No alcohol, drugs or tobacco until age 21. Use the new research on the teenage brain to explain that this is about keeping those maturing brains safe and enabling them to keep on maturing. “We now know that the brains of adolescents continue to mature at least into their mid-20s, especially in the frontal cortex and pre-frontal cortex areas which are involved with emotional regulation, planning, organization and inhibition of inappropriate actions,” Kokotailo says. “The immaturity of the adolescent brain confers greater vulnerability to toxic and addictive actions of alcohol.”

Clearly Patricia has never been a teenager or spent much time around them. 21? Sure, that’s the law for alcohol, and it’s a nice idea if young people wait until then, but few will (and they’ll see right through a lecture on adolescent brain development, knowing that it has nothing to do with abstinence — that argument is better served in a discussion about moderation).

Setting a firm policy of 21 merely means that you’ll be the last to know what your children are doing.

Because, quite frankly, the opportunities will be there and young people are going to try things. It’s their job, built in to their DNA and part of their development into adults.

I think back to my own teenage years, and I led a pretty sheltered life in some ways. My parents were strictly against even alcohol use for adults, and certainly they were strongly against tobacco or other drugs, and there was never any alcohol or tobacco in our house. And I had absolutely no interest in them.

Yet, I had my first beer while in high school, provided by other members of a church youth group I was working with on a charitable project. My first cigarette came from one of my first jobs; my first hard alcohol while visiting college as a prospective student; and marijuana and other drugs from friends in college.

Fortunately, my use was careful and moderate, and I never had any problem with any of it. But that came entirely from me, not from the strictures laid upon me by my parents, nor from any real knowledge. And yes, I made damned sure my parents didn’t know what I was doing.

For a mature and responsible approach to parents talking to their youth about drugs and alcohol, read this letter from Marsha Rosenbaum to her son and his response 8 years later. It’s a powerful lesson.

Feeding young people simplistic messages like “Just say no,” or “nothing until you’re 21,” is much like abstinence-based sex education — a dangerous fantasy. You can wish that your child will remain innocent until they are an adult, but turning that into how you parent can result in tragedy when the young person inevitably fails to wait, and now isn’t well-enough informed.

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This means even more to me know because of my current project: I’m the music director for our production of the Broadway musical “Spring Awakening,” which opens next week.

The musical is based on an 1851 play by Frank Wedekind (which was banned for 100 years) about the sexual awakening of teenagers, and it deals with a host of very frank issues. The adults in the play (all the male adults played by one actor and all the female adults by one actress) wish to maintain strict control over their charges, while the young people are desparate to know more.

In an early scene, young Wendla, who no longer believes in the stork, asks her mother how babies come to be. The parent, flabbergasted by such frankness, finally gives her this:

For a woman to bear a child, she must… in her own personal way, she must… love her husband. Love him, as she can love only him. Only him… she must love — with her whole… heart.

There. Now you know everything.

Ultimately, that lack of parenting leads to tragedy.

Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater have taken this powerful (and both humorous and tragic) play and added an amazing folk-rock score that represents the inner monologues of the young people.

I’m conducting and playing both piano and harmonium on stage, with a band including violin, viola, cello, bass (acoustic and electric) two guitars (acoustic and electric) and percussion.

We have an incredible cast (see below), director and design team. If you’re in the vicinity of Central Illinois, I suggest you check it out. It runs September 27 through October 5.

Note: the title of this post is the title of one of the songs in “Spring Awakening,” dealing with young people trying to understand how they fit in the world around them while dealing with their biological urges.

This morning at 10 am Eastern:

Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Witness List

• The Honorable Rand Paul, United States Senator, State of Kentucky
• The Honorable Brett Tolman, Shareholder, Ray Quinney & Nebeker, Salt Lake City, UT
• Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime Initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Austin, TX
• The Honorable Scott Burns, Executive Director, National District Attorneys Association, Alexandria, VA

Note that Scott Burns has been added to the list. He’s likely to be a challenge to the hearing.

Of course, this is an interesting hearing as it focuses on the conservative arguments for sentencing reform. Something that’s good to see in the Senate.

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This is an open thread.

For the most part in this country, we’ve gotten past the moral argument against overall drug legalization, although that still exists. Today, it’s all about addiction. We can’t legalize drugs because they enslave people and cause them to be addicts, and if we legalize drugs their availability will insure that there will be a massive increase in addicts destroying society.

Of course, none of the actual evidence supports that view, yet the logic of drugs as enslaver still dominates.

A good article in the New York Times Science section yesterday: The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts by John Tierney talks about the work of Dr. Carl Hart (with video as well). Hart has been featured in “The House I Live In” and has also written the book “High Price.”

We’ve talked here before about the Rat Park experiments that showed if you provided rats with a positive environment as an alternative to self-administering drugs, they were less inclined to the ravages of addiction.

Hart did the same with human subjects.

“Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted,” said Dr. Hart, an associate professor of psychology. “And the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures.” […]

Yes, he notes, some children were abandoned by crack-addicted parents, but many families in his neighborhood were torn apart before crack — including his own. (He was raised largely by his grandmother.) Yes, his cousins became destitute crack addicts living in a shed, but they’d dropped out of school and had been unemployed long before crack came along.

“There seemed to be at least as many — if not more — cases in which illicit drugs played little or no role than were there situations in which their pharmacological effects seemed to matter,” writes Dr. Hart, now 46. Crack and meth may be especially troublesome in some poor neighborhoods and rural areas, but not because the drugs themselves are so potent. […]

A similar assessment comes from Dr. David Nutt, a British expert on drug abuse. “I have a great deal of sympathy with Carl’s views,” said Dr. Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. “Addiction always has a social element, and this is magnified in societies with little in the way of work or other ways to find fulfillment.”

So why do we keep focusing so much on specific drugs? One reason is convenience: It’s much simpler for politicians and journalists to focus on the evils of a drug than to grapple with the underlying social problems. But Dr. Hart also puts some of the blame on scientists.

“Eighty to 90 percent of people are not negatively affected by drugs, but in the scientific literature nearly 100 percent of the reports are negative,” Dr. Hart said. “There’s a skewed focus on pathology. We scientists know that we get more money if we keep telling Congress that we’re solving this terrible problem. We’ve played a less than honorable role in the war on drugs.”