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

    What can hemp be used for?

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 3-2-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 3-2-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3289

    Question of the Week: What can hemp be used for?

    A 2010 report from the Congressional Research Service defines,

    “Hemp, also called “industrial hemp,”3 [as] cannabis varieties that are primarily grown as an agricultural crop (such as seeds and fiber, and byproducts such as oil, seed cake, hurds) …”

    According to the 2008 National Hemp Strategy from the Manitoba Agriculture,

    “The hemp plant has three primary components: bast fibre, hurd, and seed / oil.”

    The report goes on to describe the uses of each,

    “Hemp bast fibres are among the strongest and most durable of natural fibres, with high tensile strength, wet strength, and other characteristics favourable for various industrial products …including cordage (rope, twine, etc.), specialty papers, fabrics for clothing and other applications, and industrial textiles such as geotextiles and carpeting. The strength of hemp fibre also makes it ideal for use in a range of composites for applications such as moulded car parts and fibreboard for construction.”

    “The whole hemp stalk can also be used to produce various biofuels such as bio-oil (or pyrolytic liquid), cellulosic ethanol, (synthetic gas) and methane. … The processes by which hemp is converted to biofuels may also produce valuable chemicals and other materials as bi-products.”

    “Hemp oil is extremely nutritious, and is used in foods and nutraceutical products for humans and animals, as well as in personal care products. Hemp oil is also suitable for use in industrial products such as paints, varnishes, inks and industrial lubricants, and can be used to produce biodiesel. The crushed seed meal left over from oil production is frequently used for animal feed.”

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

  • Drug Policy

    Mandatory Sentencing for Drug Users: A F…

    By Ernest Drucker

    Bill S-10 currently being considered by the House of Commons calls for the introduction of mandatory sentences as deterrents to organized crime and large scale drug dealing in Canada. There are serious doubts about the value of this strategy , and many of the country’s health, research, and academic leaders have objected , aware of the many hazards of this approach . But there is also a body of evidence from the US that can inform Canada’s decision on S -10 and help avoid the disastrous mistake that mandatory drug sentencing has been for the US – in effect launching a 35 year epidemic of mass incarceration and collateral harms to million of Americans.

    During the first 20 years of mandatory drug sentencing I ran a large drug treatment program in the Bronx. Under our Rockefeller drug laws ( the model for mandatory drug sentencing laws in the US ) I watched New York State’s prison system grow from 12,000 to 73,000 – as drug offenders rose from 10% to over 40% of the prison population. Since their passage in 1973 over 150,000 drug users were sentenced to prison under these laws. After release most returned to drugs and related crime – with 1/3 back behind bars in 12 months and 2/3 by 3 years after release. Under such laws the US prison population exploded, reaching 2.5 million by 2009 – the highest incarceration rate in US history and in the world today – six times Canada’s imprisonment rate. Today, as a direct result of mandatory drug sentencing , there are more drug offenders in US prisons (over 600,000) than in all of the prisons of the EU for all offenses. Is this an experiment that Canada really wants to repeat?

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net - International

    Mexico Drug War a Lost Cause as Presently Fought

    By Sandy Goodman

    There’s a powerful new piece of evidence that, the way it is being fought, the war on drugs on the Mexican-American border is a lost cause. It comes in a report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations, a highly-respected foreign policy think tank, that recommends that, as an experiment, the federal government allow states “to legalize the production, sale, taxation and consumption of marijuana.” The report says authorities should redirect scarce law enforcement resources to stopping the importation of more dangerous drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The Wire producer: War on drugs is ‘a war on the underclass’

    By Eric W. Dolan
    Thursday, March 10th, 2011 — 7:04 pm

    David Simon, the creator and executive producer of HBO’s The Wire, said the war on drugs had devolved into a war on the underclass after actress Felicia Pearson was arrested in Baltimore on drug charges.

    Thirty-year-old Pearson had served a prison sentence for murder before join the cast of The Wire, an television drama series about inner-city life in Baltimore that premiered in 2002 and ended five seasons later in 2008.

    Pearson and over sixty others were arrested on Thursday as part of a five-month investigation by the DEA and Baltimore police, The Baltimore Sun [1] reported.

    “In places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral,” Simon told Slate [2].

    “Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers,” he continued. “But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter.”

    In an essay published by TIME [3]magazine in 2008, Simon and other writers for The Wire said the war on drugs caused more harm to society than the drugs it sought to eliminate.

    “What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has,” they wrote. “And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass… All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.”

    The writers called on juries deliberating on non-violent violations of drug laws to acquit despite the evidence, a legal tactic known as jury nullification.

    Although jury nullification may seem like a far-fetched tactic to stop the drug war, in December 2010 potential jurors refused to convict a Montana man for having a 1/16 of an ounce of marijuana regardless of the evidence.

    “I think it’s going to become increasingly difficult to seat a jury in marijuana cases, at least the ones involving a small amount,” District Judge Dusty Deschamps said at the time. He later decided he could not seat a jury and the prosecutor and defense attorney worked out a plea bargain.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Harper’s Faith-Based Drug War

    We should not pretend that Bill S-10 has anything to do with evidence – or with making our country a safer place in which to live.

    by Neil Boyd Associate Director, Criminology, Simon Fraser University.

    The Harper Conservatives are under fire for their extraordinarily expensive legislative initiative, Bill S-10. Among other things, the bill seeks to spend at least hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants. Most Canadians, experts and non-experts alike, have criticized the proposal as costly and counter-productive, noting that it will imprison individuals who are mostly non-violent and who sell to willing adult consumers.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    How many medical marijuana patients are there?

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 2-26-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 2-26-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3284

    Question of the Week: How many medical marijuana patients are there?

    The Congressional Research Service reported that,

    “A July 2005 CRS telephone survey of the state [medical marijuana] programs revealed a total of 14,758 registered medical marijuana users in eight states.”

    The report also noted,

    “More recently, an estimate published by Newsweek early in 2010 found a total of 369,634 users in the 13 states with established programs.”

    Medical cannabis programs are changing quickly. Applying the National Survey on Drug Use and Health or the Monitoring the Future survey to U.S. Census Bureau data can extrapolate national estimates.

    Using the legal state of Colorado as a basis, the Census Bureau calculated Colorado’s 2009 population age 18+ at 3.8 million. The 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health claims that 6.8% of Coloradans are current cannabis consumers. Applying that percentage to the population results in an estimated 260,000 “current users” in Colorado.

    According to the Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry, the

    “total number of patients who currently possess valid Registry ID cards [was] 95,477”

    as of 6/30/2010. Thus, these registered patients represented about 36% of the state’s “current” marijuana users.

    Assuming 36% to be a standard patient percentage and applying it to the estimated 16.7 million current marijuana users nationwide results in about 5 million U.S. patients.

    This count is supported by the Monitoring the Future survey, which apportions daily marijuana use percentages by age. Daily cannabis consumption implies medical use. Matching survey percentages to the middle series 2010 Census population computes an approximate total of 5 million patients between the ages of 18 and 55.

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

    Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected]

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    “How are women affected by the drug war?”

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 2-8-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 2-8-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3261

    Question of the Week: How are women affected by the drug war?

    According to the 2009 National Survey for Drug Use and Health, the percentage of women using drugs and alcohol is less than men. About 6.6% of American women are current users of marijuana vs. 10.8% for men. Men use more psychotherapeutics and cocaine than women. Men are also more likely than women to use alcohol and drink heavily. However, the small percentages for non-medical use of tranquilizers and for methamphetamine are about the same for men and women.

    Just because women are less likely to engage in substance use, doesn’t mean that they are spared arrest and incarceration for drug offenses.

    The Institute on Women and Criminal Justice reported that,

    “The number of women serving sentences of more than a year grew by 757 percent between 1977 and 2004 – nearly twice the 388 percent increase in the male prison population.”

    In 2008, 25,500 women were imprisoned under state jurisdiction for drug offenses of one year or more.

    While women often play relatively minor roles in the drug trade, they bring special issues to the criminal justice system.

    As the Institute noted,

    “More than 70 percent of women in prison have children. More than half of mothers in prison have no visits with their children for the duration of their time behind bars. Children are generally subject to instability and uncertainly while their mothers are imprisoned.”

    The Institute concluded,

    “Incarcerating women does not solve the problems that underlie their involvement in the criminal justice system. ”

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

    Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected]

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Anti-Stigma Week: Time to Reflect and Act

    It has been incredible to see a diverse group of people and organizations pool their skills and resources to mount Anti-Stigma Week, with activities that all have one goal – enhancing individual and community health and well-being by transforming stigma around drug use.

    This year’s Anti-Stigma Week theme is Drug Use, Dignity and Human Rights. Drug use, and especially illicit drug use, is associated with high degrees of stigma that hurt individuals’ health and access to health care and reduce community cohesion.

    Stigma is a societal process that marks people as outsiders. Those who are different -because of their behaviours or identities -are subject to disapproval and marginalization.

    They aren’t seen as people, as someone’s daughter or father, neighbours with their own stories and failings and hopes. This prejudice makes it easier for active discrimination to take hold, or to leave individuals fearing that others think them less worthy. The way systems are organized and accepted societal attitudes reinforce these tendencies.