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.
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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.
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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.
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Drug Policy Question of the Week – 6-26-11
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 6-26-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3440
Question of the Week: Who declared war on drugs?
“America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”
According to a recent report by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, President Richard Nixon spoke these words on June 17, 1971.
Ironically, a New York University Law Review article noted, “When
President Nixon first declared a national War on Drugs, the policy focused on treatment rather than incarceration … the Nixon era marks the only time in the history of the War on Drugs in which more funding went toward treatment than law enforcement.”
Pew Center on the States reports that there were about 174,000 state prison inmates in 1972.
Nixon’s declaration was just the first, according to a Fordham Law Review article,
“[President Ronald] 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.”
State prison inmates in 1982 approximated 300,000.
The NYU article suggests that,
“With the Obama administration comes hope for scaling down the War on Drugs, though the collateral consequences remain for those who are presently incarcerated. The current director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, has chastised the phrase “War on Drugs” as eliciting an inaccurate representation of the War on Drugs as a war on individuals.”
In 2010, there were over 1.4 million state prisoners, 1.2 million more than on June 17, 1971.
These facts and others like them can be found in the History section of the United States Chapter and in the Prisons & Jails Chapters of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.
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In response to concerns heard from Canadians, the Government of Canada announced on June 17, 2011 that it is considering improvements to the Program. The proposed improvements would reduce the risk of abuse and exploitation by criminal elements and keep our children and communities safe.
Health Canada would like to hear from Canadians about the improvements under consideration. Interested Canadians will have an opportunity to comment on the proposed improvements starting June 17, 2011. The comment period will close on July 31, 2011.
Interested Canadians are invited to provide feedback on a short discussion document by clicking on the link below titled “Consultation Document”.
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By JIMMY CARTER
Atlanta
IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
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“Time for a Change,” Says 9-Year Veteran
By Eric Sterling, AlterNet
The “War on Drugs” was launched by President Richard Nixon 40 years ago this week. In 1980, at the end of its first decade, I began a nine-year career as a “captain” in the war on drugs. I was the attorney in the U.S. House of Representatives principally responsible for overseeing DEA and writing anti-drug laws as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime.
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Drug Policy Question of the Week – 6-15-11
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 6-15-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3427
Question of the Week: What about international drug policies?
Several recent reports highlight the impact of the international War on Drugs and call for a reevaluation of it.
The first comes from a series called “Count the Costs: 50 Years of the War on Drugs,” by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. The report, “The War on Drugs: Are we paying too high a price?” lists seven definable and tragic costs of the drug war and supports each referencable international statistics. Did you know that that…
“Up to 1000 people are executed for drug offences each year, in direct violation of international law”?
A similar report in the Count the Costs series, “War on Drugs: Undermining international development and security, increasing conflict,” lists seven definable ways that the drug war affects international economic development and security, again documenting each with referencable statistics. Did you know that …
the demand for cocaine in Europe has “turned Guinea Bissau from a fragile state into a narco-state in just five years.”?
The recent “Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy” indicted international drug war failure and listed eleven actionable principles. The report was co-authored by notable commissioners that included former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan as well as three former Latin American presidents, among others. The report summary succinctly concluded,
“Break the taboo on debate and reform. The time for action is now.”
Some facts in the above reports and others like them can be found in the International Policy Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org. Listeners should note that there are seventeen Chapters and 341 Facts under this link on the Drug War Facts home page. Countries include U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico, a number of countries in the European Union, and Australia.
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Forty years after Nixon declared war on drugs, it’s time to give peace a chance.
By Jacob Sullum | June 15, 2011
Forty years ago this Friday, President Richard Nixon announced that “public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse.” Declaring that “the problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency,” he asked Congress for money to “wage a new, all-out offensive,” a crusade he would later call a “global war on the drug menace.”
The war on drugs ended in May 2009, when President Obama’s newly appointed drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, said he planned to stop calling it that. Or so Kerlikowske claims. “We certainly ended the drug war now almost two years ago,” he told Seattle’s PBS station last March, “in the first interview that I did.” If you watch the exchange on YouTube, you can see he said this with a straight face.
In reality, of course, Richard Nixon did not start the war on drugs, and Barack Obama, who in 2004 called it “an utter failure,” did not end it. The war on drugs will continue as long as the government insists on getting between people and the intoxicants they want.