• Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - International - Law Enforcement & Prisons - Question of the Week

    What was the Rainbow Farm?

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 9-11-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network in loving memory of all victims of the tragic events that converged on 9-11-01. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3534

    Question of the Week: What was the Rainbow Farm?

    Paraphrasing a January 2002 Washington Post article entitled “Was Rainbow Farm another Waco?”, the Rainbow Farm was a …

    “34-acre farm and an adjoining 20-acre wood near Vandalia, [Michigan]. [Tom] Crosslin bought the farm … as a place where he and [Rollie] Rohm could escape their urban life. … He turned Rainbow Farm into a campground and began holding pro-pot festivals every Labor Day and Memorial Day weekend.”

    On Friday, August 31, 2001,

    “the building where bands waited to go onstage — was burning. … A helicopter from WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana shooting fire footage for the evening news [was told to] leave because the cops said somebody was shooting at them. … On Sunday, the FBI arrived, more than 50 strong, summoned to the scene because the helicopter shooting was a federal crime … John Bell, head of the FBI’s Detroit office … sent three FBI SWAT teams, each composed of three sharpshooters …

    in the woods … at a campsite … two agents fired, one of them shooting Crosslin through the forehead, killing him instantly.”

    Early the next day,

    “two state police snipers fired from 150 yards away.  One missed.  The other shot through the stock of Rohm’s rifle and into his chest, killing him.”

    The Rainbow Farm might have simply been counted among estimated 40,000 paramilitary SWAT raids that occurred in 2001, but in the context of history, it was no ordinary raid.

    It was the harbinger of what was to come.

    Eight days later on September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airliners, flying two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into a Pennsylvania cornfield, killing a total of 2,977 people.

    The 9/11 Commission Report released in 2004 found that FBI priorities were

    “driven at the local level by the field offices, whose concerns centered on traditional crimes such as white-collar offenses and those pertaining to drugs and gangs. … In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism.”

    The report concluded,

    “In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. … The terrorists exploited deep institutional failings.”

    Perhaps one failing was the drug war.

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Interdiction Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Parents Using Pot

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-20-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-20-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3512

    Question of the Week: How many parents use marijuana?

    The U.S. Census estimates that families in households with minor children – married and single parent male or female – comprised roughly 62 million persons in 2010. An average of the percentage use figures in the 2010 Monitoring the Future study indicate that around 15% of those within the childbearing years of age 20-35 consume cannabis monthly, with about 5% being daily users. Daily use likely equates to medical use. Simple multiplication of these two percentages times the estimated 62 million persons heading family households places the number of marijuana using parents in the United States at least as high as 9.5 million and patient parents near 3 million.

    The U.S. Census also estimates the number of children ages 12-17 at 24.8 million. Monitoring the Future projects the percentage of adolescents who currently use cannabis at 13.8%. The result of multiplying the two figures is roughly 3.4 million young people who use cannabis at least monthly.

    Ironically, the aforementioned Monitoring the Future percentages indicate a steep decline in cannabis consumption during childbearing years. The prevalence of those using it within the last 30 days drops from 20.6% of 18 year-olds to 12% of 29-39 year-olds.

    “The Social Epidemiology of Substance Use” report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health confirms this trend, finding that, “in the context of family relations, it is primarily the assumption of greater family responsibilities that has been associated with cessation of use. For example, becoming a parent for the first time has been associated with cessation of marijuana use.”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Families and Youth chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Coca Leaf vs. Cocaine

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-3-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-3-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3488

    Question of the Week: What is the difference between coca leaf and cocaine?

    According to a paper from Yale University,

    “Coca leaves are grown from bushes native to the Andes. The leaves contain alkaloids that can be extracted to produce commercial cocaine.”

    The Transnational Institute says,

    “Coca leaf consumption is an integral part of Andean cultural tradition and world view. The principle uses are [as an] energizer, medicinal, sacred, and social.”

    And goes on to describe,

    “One of the main properties of the coca leaf, which has been and continues to be used industrially, is its medical potential as an anaesthetic and analgesic.”

    Accion Andina recounted that,

    “A new use for the leaf was discovered between 1855 and 1860. Two German scientists …are given credit for having first extracted the pure cocaine alkaloid from coca leaves.”

    A Fordham University Law Review article describes the leaf’s conversion to cocaine hydrochloride.

    “After pulverizing [the leaves] into a coarse powder, alcohol is added and distilled off in order to extract the most pure form of cocaine alkaloid.” Cocaine anesthetizes and stimulates the central nervous system.”

    However, according to Accion Annida,

    “The prophetic “Legend of the Coca Leaf” presages us of the difference between the way the leaf is used traditionally in the Andes, and the corrupted form used by Western conquerors. As the Sun God said to the Andean wise man Kjana Chuyma: “[coca] for you shall be strength and life, for your masters it shall be a loathsome and degenerating vice; while for you, natives, it will be an almost spiritual food, for them it shall cause idiocy and madness”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the new Coca Leaf subchapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Single Convention Treaty

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-27-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-27-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3481

    Question of the Week: What is the Single Convention Treaty?

    A 2008 article in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics describes three key multilateral drug conventions in force today with the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as the centerpiece.

    The Organization of American States goes on to describe the Single Convention as a

    “universal system (replacing the various treaties signed until then) to control the cultivation, production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of narcotic substances, paying special attention to those that are plant-based: opium/heroin, coca/cocaine and cannabis.“

    However, the 2010 report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur Anand Glover found that

    “The primary goal of the international drug control regime, as set forth in the preamble of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs … is the “health and welfare of mankind”, but the current approach to controlling drug use and possession works against that aim.”

    A 2007 report from another United Nations Special Rapporteur found that,

    “Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals.”

    Two weeks ago, the International Drug Policy Consortium reported that, citing the rights of indigenous peoples,

    “Bolivia presented a formal notification of denunciation of the Single Convention to the UN General Secretary in New York” effectively withdrawing from the treaty.

    The Consortium concluded,

    “The 50th anniversary of the Single Convention this year in fact is an opportune moment to start considering a revision of some of its out-dated and misplaced provisions.”

    This 7-27-11 program represents the 50th segment I have produced for Dean Becker’s remarkable Drug Truth Network. Many thanks to all listeners for tuning into these programs and to Dean for broadcasting them.

     

     

  • Drug Policy

    Mistakes of the Past

    WHAT’S NEW @ Drug War Facts

    Feature Article: Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.

    In the spirit of a paraphrased quote from noted philosopher George Santayana, a new section concerning the history of illicit drugs in the United States has been created in Drug War Facts. Travel from the “International Policy” home page link to the “United States” chapter under it, and you’ll find seventeen Facts from thirteen sources that overview the history of the drug war.

    The short version (sources in parentheses):

    • “Probably indigenous to temperate Asia, C. sativa is the most widely cited example of a ‘camp follower.’ It was pre-adapted to thrive in the manured soils around man’s early settlements, which quickly led to its domestication … Hemp was harvested by the Chinese 8500 years ago. … The crop was first brought to South America in 1545, in Chile, and to North America in Port Royal, Acadia in 1606 … From the end of the Civil War until 1912, virtually all hemp in the US was produced in Kentucky.” (1)

    • “For most of American history, growing and using marijuana was legal under both federal law and the laws of the individual states. By the 1840s, marijuana’s therapeutic potential began to be recognized by some U.S. physicians. From 1850 to 1941 cannabis was included in the United States Pharmacopoeia as a recognized medicinal.” (2)

    • “The use of cocaine has persisted for centuries: sixteenth century Incan tribes’ use of cocaine [*] fascinated conquistadores … Until the end of the nineteenth century, cocaine was a prominent feature of U.S. medical journals … By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the dangers of addiction became apparent, and a movement to outlaw cocaine was born.” (3)

    • “Crude opium has been available for thousands of years, but with the expansion of British opium trade in Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries and the development of the hypodermic syringe in the late 1860s, the abuse of opioids rose dramatically. By the late 19th century, global concern with opium consumption and trade reached a critical juncture, which led to public and professional pressure to restrict medical access to opioids for pain relief.” (4)

    • “MDMA is not a new drug. It was first synthesized by the German pharmaceutical firm Merck in 1912. Human experimentation, however, has been traced back to the early 1970s.” (5)

    • “The United States has sought to control the use and trade of drugs since the adoption of the Harrison Act in 1914, which confined the distribution of heroin and cocaine to physicians. Drug policy focused on public health issues until the 1920s when the Temperance movement, in conjunction with ‘attitudes of nationalism, nativism, fear of anarchy and of communism’ shifted public perception to view drug abuse as a national security threat. This era saw the enactment of the Volstead Act, enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition on alcohol, and the establishment of the Federal Narcotics Bureau.” (6)

    • “By all estimates, the Eighteenth Amendment was a costly blunder. Between 1920 and 1930, the federal government spent an average of twenty-one million dollars enforcing the Volstead Act. During the same period, the United States lost an estimated $1.25 billion in potential tax revenues annually.” (7)

    • “In 1971, President Nixon officially declared a  ‘war on drugs,’ identifying illegal drug use as ‘public enemy number one.’ Over the past forty years, the War on Drugs has caused momentous transformations in crime policy, magnifying racial disparities in incarceration and amplifying the prison population.” (8)

    • “A myriad of high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful campaigns against drug abuse defined President Reagan’s strategy to combat the drug epidemic. Reagan officially launched the ‘War on Drugs’ on June 24, 1982, with the creation of the White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy. First Lady Nancy Reagan joined the movement, announcing the ‘Just Say No’ campaign in 1982. … By the end of Reagan’s first term, however, drug abuse had not declined in any appreciable sense.” (3)

    • “The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 National Drug Control Budget requests $26.2 billion to reduce drug use and its consequences in the United States. This represents an increase of $322.6 million (1.2 percent) over the FY 2010 enacted level of $25.9 billion.” (9)

    What was that quote about repeating the mistakes of the past?

    ===

    The sources for these quotes can also be found in the July 2011 edition of the “WHAT’s NEW @ Drug War Facts” e-newsletter.

    * Editor’s Note. It is likely that this source is referring to coca leaf, and not processed cocaine as cocaine alkaloid was not extracted from coca leaves until around 1860. (10)

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Swiss drug policy

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-11-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-11-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3461

    Question of the Week: Has Swiss drug policy been effective?

    In a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Joseph Califano and former drug czar William Bennett decried Swiss drug policy, saying,

    “In the 1990s, Switzerland experimented with what became known as Needle Park, a section of Zurich where addicts could buy and inject heroin without police interference.  Policy makers saw it as a way to restrict a few hundred legal heroin users to a small area.  It soon morphed into a grotesque tourist attraction of 20,000 addicts that had to be closed before it infected the entire city.”

    However, according to the Open Society Institute, in the 1970s

    “The response of the Swiss authorities to more widespread use of narcotics was to revise the federal law on illicit drugs to define rigorous criminal sanctions…”

    Then, “Increasingly desperate to find a way to control crime and social and health harms associated with injection drug use, in 1987 the Zürich authorities allowed people who used illicit drugs to gather in a defined space [that] came to be known as the “needle park.”

    According the Beckley Foundation, in

    “an official document dated September 7, 1994, the Swiss government defined the Four Pillars as constituting the foundation of its national drug strategy. [Pillars include] prevention, therapy, risk reduction and enforcement—to which innovative measures, such as drug treatments using prescription heroin, were added.”

    The Open Society Institute concluded,

    “The introduction of the Four Pillars strategy …. brought about a significant reduction of deaths directly attributable to drug use, such as overdose, and of deaths indirectly related, such as HIV and Hepatitis. Between 1991 and 2004, the drug related death toll fell by more than 50%”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Switzerland Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Military and the Drug War

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-6-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-6-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3454

    Question of the Week: Does the military participate in the drug war?

    According the Washington Law Office on Latin America (WOLA), in 1986 …

    in 1986,  “…Bolivia became the scene of the first major antidrug operation on foreign soil to publicly involve U.S. military forces. One hundred sixty U.S. troops took part in Operation Blast Furnace…”

    Three years later, in 1989 per the Department of Defense, Joint Task Force 6 was formed under the U.S. Army …

    “to support local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies within the Southwest border region to counter the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.”

    That same year per the Air Force Law Review,

    “President George H. W. Bush’s so-called ‘Andean Initiative… involved the deployment of seven Special Forces teams and approximately 100 military advisors to Colombia, Bolivia and Peru…”

    Unfortunately, in 2001,

    “… a Peruvian A-37 interceptor, operating as part of a joint U.S.-Peruvian counternarcotics mission fired two salvos of machine gun fire into a small Cessna float plane. … Two people on the aircraft were killed, a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter.”

    In 2006, according to WOLA,

    “President [George W.] Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops to assist the Border Patrol for a two-year period in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.”

    That same year, he signed a repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, but under public pressure, it was restored in 2007.

    In 2010, “President Barack Obama announced the intention to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the border again. These troops will join the 340 already there under the ‘State Counter Drug Programs,’”

    These troops remain there today.

    These facts and others like them can be found on the “Brief Chronology of Domestic Military Involvement” table in the Military Participation Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.