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

    Marijuana Voters

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 11-4-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 11-4-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3616

    Question of the Week: What is the marijuana vote?

    An October Editorial from the Christian Science Monitor lauded the federal crackdown on California medical marijuana by stating,

    “Pot smokers are a small minority. They are containable … .”

    Are “pot smokers” indeed a small containable minority?

    According to the U.S. Census, 16 million voters in 2008 were Black, 12.3% of the total vote. About 8 million Hispanics and 3 million Asians cast their ballots respectively at 7.4% and 2.6% of the 2008 vote. The youth vote, those 18-24, numbered 12.5 million, 9.5% of the total 2008 vote.

    Applying the National Survey on Drug Use and Health to the Census voting data can compute the “marijuana vote” comprised of 2008 “past year” or “monthly” marijuana users. Because of its illegality, self interest may compel these individuals to vote for candidates who are more lenient toward pot.

    At respective 9.8% and 5.9% of the total 2008 vote, “marijuana voters” numbered about 13 million, with around 7.8 million making up the “medical marijuana vote.” These values are well within ranges that define minority voting blocs like Hispanics, Asians and youth.

    According to Northwestern University Searle Center article,

    “in 2004 less than 2.5 percentage points separated President Bush and Senator Kerry and the margin in 2000 between then-Governor Bush and Vice-President Gore was less than half a percentage point.”

    The Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan declared,

    “the minority support for Obama was instrumental in his success.”

    With almost 40% of the youth vote reporting past year marijuana use, perhaps pot smokers will be not be so “containable” when their support becomes instrumental to candidate success in the 2012 election.

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

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Prohibition

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 10-29-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 10-29-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3606

    Question of the Week: How similar is Ken Burns’ ‘Prohibition’ to the Drug War?

    Many aficionados have probably seen “PROHIBITION,” the

    “three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.”

    Viewers of this film can’t help but see strong similarities between this era and the 21st Century drug war.

    Substituting the word “drug” for “alcohol,” PBS states that prohibition was,

    “intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of DRUG abuse.”

    In bold letters, PBS declares,

    “Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit DRUGS to seem glamorous and fun…”

    The similarities between the Prohibition 1 and Prohibition 2 are substantiated by more than words. Consider these statistics. Despite the fact that 25 million people were made criminals by arrests for illegal drugs during the last 15 years, 120 million Americans – roughly half of everyone over age 12 – made a mockery of drug laws by reportedly using an illegal drug in 2010.

    As PBS concludes,

    “The film [Prohibition] raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago – about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, the proper role of government and finally, who is — and who is not — a real American.”

    These facts and others like them can be found in the Alcohol, Crime and Drug Usage Chapters of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org. Please visit the PBS website pbs.org to learn more about the Prohibition series.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net - International

    It’s time to make drugs legal, Nobel winners tell Cameron

    David Cameron has been urged to consider legalising drug use by a group of 60 major thinkers and celebrities including Sting, Yoko Ono and the former American president Jimmy Carter.

    By Rowena Mason, Political Correspondent

    In a letter to the Prime Minister and every member of Parliament, the public figures claim the “global war on drugs has failed”.

    The roll-call of eminent names includes seven former presidents, 12 Nobel Prize winners and six British MPs.

    Their letter says the illicit drug industry, worth £285 billion a year, is the third most valuable in the world after food and oil.

    It calls for a debate on “decriminalising” the world’s 250 million drug users and asks Mr Cameron to start a public conversation with other global leaders.

    The group claims that drug use should be treated as a medical problem, rather than a criminal one.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Missouri ballot measures proposed to legalize marijuana

    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Posted: Tuesday, November 8, 2011

    JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. • Advocates can begin collecting signatures for two proposed Missouri ballot measures that would legalize marijuana.

    The secretary of state’s office said Monday the initiative petitions have been approved for circulation to get them on the 2012 ballot.

    One proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to legalize cannabis for people 21 and older, allow doctors to recommend use of medicinal marijuana and release prison inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses related to cannabis. It would also allow the Legislature to enact a marijuana tax of up to $100 per pound.

    The second proposal is similar but would enact a state law instead of amending the Missouri Constitution.

    http://bit.ly/vvkkwV

  • Drug Policy

    Allegations Against UBC Researchers’ Study On Insite “Without Merit”

    An independent reviewer has dismissed concerns over a study that shows a 35-per-cent decrease in overdose deaths after the opening of Insite, North America’s only supervised injection facility.

    Published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet on April 18, 2011, the study, titled Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America’s first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study, was the first to assess the impact of supervised injection sites on overdose mortality.

    The study was led by Thomas Kerr, an associate professor at UBC and co-director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and Julio Montaner, director of the BC-CfE and Chair of AIDS Research at UBC.

    In a September 2011 letter to John Hepburn, UBC’s Vice President Research & International, a group called Drug Free Australia raised concerns over the interpretation of data in the study. Pursuant to UBC Policy 85 (Scholarly Integrity), Hepburn subsequently appointed Mark Wainberg, professor of medicine and director of the McGill University AIDS Centre, to review the matter.

    Wainberg is a past-president of the International AIDS Society, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the International AIDS Society and editor of various other academic journals. He was a recipient of the Canadian Medical Association’s 2009 Medal of Honour and was named a Public Health Hero by the Pan American Health Organization for his work in antiviral treatment of HIV/AIDS.

    After reviewing the submission by Drug Free Australia, the Lancet article and the authors’ response, Wainberg concluded:

    “In my view, the allegations that have been made by ‘Drug Free Australia’ are without merit and are not based on scientific fact. In contrast, it is my view that the work that has been carried out by the team of Thomas Kerr et al is scientifically well-founded and has contributed to reducing the extent of mortality and morbidity in association with the existence of the safer injection facility. . . . The University of British of British Columbia should be proud of the contributions of its faculty members to the important goal of diminishing deaths due to intravenous drug abuse.”

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

    Marijuana Arrests

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 10-10-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 10-10-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3581

    Question of the Week: How many people were arrested for marijuana last year?

    Every September, the FBI releases its annual “Crime in the United States” report that counts arrests in the United States according to a number of categories, among them drugs.

    This report doesn’t make marijuana arrests obvious. Instead, these numbers must be gleaned by computing them.

    To do so, one starts by referencing Table 29 of Uniform Crime Report, which lists the estimated number of arrests by category. Note that drug arrests for 2010 equaled 1,638,846. Those for reported categories like disorderly conduct, fraud and burglary equaled about 615,000, 189,000 and 290,000 each.

    Then, to compute arrests for marijuana, the separate parent webpage to Table 29 must be referenced. The “Download Arrest Table Excel” link on this page goes to a spreadsheet version of the “Arrests for Drug Abuse Violations Percent Distribution by Region, 2010” table at the bottom of the page. Here you will find percentages for total arrests by substance positioned against these percentages by region.

    Marijuana arrests must be computed by multiplying the percentages for possession and for Sale/manufacturing times that aforementioned total number of drug arrests for 2010.

    Doing the math, at 6.3% of total drug arrests, there were about 103,000 Americans arrested for selling or manufacturing marijuana in 2010. At 45.8% of total drug arrests, there about 751,000 Americans arrested for merely possessing marijuana in 2010. Together, arrests for both selling and possessing marijuana added to a total of 854,000 arrests in 2010.

    Sound complicated? Probably so for numbers of that magnitude.

    These facts and others like them can be found in the tables at the bottom of the Marijuana chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

     

     

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

    Federal Agencies

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 10-6-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 10-6-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3576

    Question of the Week: What federal agencies enforce drug laws?

    A new table based on a 2009 report from the RAND Corporation can be found in the Drug War Facts Interdiction chapter. This table lists a number of federal agencies that investigate and enforce drug laws. Among these are the United States Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy or ONDCP.

    Under the Department of Defense, the Defense Information Systems Agency and its Anti-Drug Network engage in information sharing and data mining. The U.S. Northern Command oversees the continental United States and Alaska. The Joint Task Force North under the Northern Command stops transnational threats like drug smuggling. The U.S. Southern Command operates counterdrug operations in Central and South America. Its Joint Interagency Task Force South prevents illegal trafficking within the Caribbean.

    The Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA has several divisions. Its National Security Intelligence Section interfaces with the intelligence community. The DEA’s Operation Pipeline targets private motor vehicles involved in drug trafficking, with its counterpart, Operation Convoy, handling commercial vehicles. The El Paso Intelligence Center is a major hub for disseminating drug related intelligence data. DEA Mobile Intelligence Units assist state and local drug-enforcement challenges.

    The ONDCP operates 31 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas or HIDTAs that collect counterdrug intelligence. Each HIDTAs has a Regional Intelligence Center associated with it.

    The Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force focuses major drug-smuggling and money-laundering operations, while the multi-agency National Joint Terrorism Task Force brings together more than three-dozen other government agencies that collect and process terrorist intelligence.

    A graphical map of these and other federal agencies created by the RAND Corporation can be found at the bottom of the aforementioned table.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Opiate Use

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 10-1-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 10-1-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3570

    Question of the Week: Is opiate use increasing?

    Each year around this time, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration releases its National Survey on Drug Use and Health that reports the prevalence of illicit drug use in the US population age 12 or older.

    Trendable from 2002 onward, the data measure “lifetime” and “monthly” use of various illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco. “Lifetime” use means having tried a drug just once. “Monthly” use equates to consuming an illicit drug at least once per month. NSDUH calls “monthly” use “current use.”

    What is striking about these data, but under reported in their analysis, is the growth in the use of opiates, specifically heroin and pain relievers, often opiates as well. In the nine years since 2002, among the drugs showing the largest “lifetime” growth in users were pain relievers at +17.4% over 2002 and heroin at +12.5% over 2002.

    “Monthly” usage of heroin at +44% and pain relievers +16.5% grew the most quickly over their 2002 respective user populations. There were an estimated 5.1 million users of illicit pain relievers in 2010, over 700,000 more than in 2002.

    The increasing use of these illicit drugs is tragically reflected in the headline of a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled, “Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the U.S.” Citing 2009 data in a 2011 National Vital Statistics Report and naming these drugs as the culprit, the article read,

    “Claiming a life every 14 minutes … This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.”

    These facts and others like them can be found in three data tables within the Drug Use chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.