CBC News Aug 19, 2011
Alberta health officials will no longer hand out free crack pipes to addicts in Calgary.
For three years Alberta Health Services [AHS] has been quietly handing out clean crack pipes to drug users on the street through a mobile van program called Safeworks.
Continues: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/08/19/calgary-crack-pipes-street-health.html
According to The New York Times, America’s war on drugs has entered a new phase: It’s so successful that the CIA is planning to send retired military personnel and private contractors to Mexico to bring the battle to the doorstep of the organized crime cartels. Well, that’s not quite the story. The decision to deploy mercenaries in Mexico is definitely from the Times, but the part about the success of the drug war is pure Washington spin.
Indeed, the idea that the federal government is prepared to commit more money and more lives – and that Mexican officials are prepared to let Yanquis join the fight – is testament to desperation on both sides of the border. The war on drugs, now in its fifth decade, was never winnable. All that’s keeping it going is bureaucratic inertia, and a lot of politicians who would rather destroy civil government in Mexico than admit that it takes more than true grit to prevail.
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.
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?
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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 – 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.
By David Ferguson
Saturday, July 9th, 2011
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office estimates that it saved the city two million dollars in revenue through a new program designed to deal with individuals arrested with less than 30 grams (slightly more than one ounce) of marijuana.
According to The Philadelphia Daily News, new sentencing guidelines have meant that the city no longer has to foot the bill for court-appointed defense attorneys, prosecutorial fees, lab tests, or overtime wages paid to police officers who appear in court. Additionally, says the article, legal personnel at all levels are freed up to concentrate on more serious crimes.
Thousands of cases have been diverted to through Philadelphia’s so-called Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program, which is designed to process marijuana users quickly through the system and leave them with a clean record. The effort might have been doomed to failure had it not received the support of law enforcement personnel, who say that efforts to take marijuana off the streets use up resources and do little to dent the supply available to users.
In the year since the policy has gone into effect, police say that they’ve noticed no discernible change in the city’s quality of life.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/09/softer-pot-laws-saved-philadelphia-2-million-in-2010/
Check out the new Drug War Facts flyer called “Hemp Facts from Drug War Facts.” It references a number of Facts in the expanded Hemp Chapter to provide an overview of the industrial hemp issue.
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.
Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-3-11
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-3-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3449
Question of the Week: What is the Posse Comitatus Act?
A definitive report from the Congressional Research Service released in 2000 states,
“Americans have a tradition, born in England and developed in the early years of our nation that rebels against military involvement in civilian affairs. It finds its most tangible expression in the nineteenth century Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. 1385.”
Another Congressional Research Service report released in 2011 indicates that,
“The term “posse comitatus” means the “force of the county.” Its doctrine dates back to English common law, in which a county sheriff could raise a posse comitatus to repress a civil disturbance ….”
The Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878 during post-Civil War reconstruction and amended in 1981. According to the CRS, the act reads,
“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
The 2000 CRS report noted that,
“The language of the Act mentions only the Army and the Air Force.” However, “Express statutory exceptions include the legislation which allows the President to use military force to suppress insurrection, and sections which permit the Department of Defense to provide federal, state and local police with information and equipment.”
According to the Washington Office on Latin America, the 1981 amendment,
“made the military the permanent “single lead agency of the Federal Government for the detection and monitoring of aerial and maritime transit of illegal drugs into the United States.”
These facts and others like them can be found in the Military Participation Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.