In 2009, the United Nations Member States decided to make further and decisive progress, within a decade, in controlling illicit drug supply and demand. Many illicit drug markets have reached global dimensions and require control strategies on a comparable scale. In that context, there is a need to better understand these transnational markets and the manner in which they operate. This year’s World Drug Report is a contribution towards that objective. It opens with an analytical discussion of three key transnational drug markets: the markets for heroin, cocaine and amphetamine-type stimulants. The market discussion is followed by a presentation of statistical trends for all major drug categories. The latest information on drug production, seizures and consumption is presented. Finally, there is a discussion on the relationship between drug trafficking and instability.
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My First US Federal Prison Visit With my Heroic Political Prisoner Husband, Marc Emery by Jodie Emery – Friday, June 18 2010
I went to visit Marc today for the first time at SeaTac FDC. Thankfully, I’m able to visit him even while he’s in SHU (“segregated housing unit”, solitary confinement). When I arrived at 1:30pm, it was very nerve-racking. I stepped up to the massive building’s entrance, got buzzed in, then found myself in a big lobby with a reflective glass booth and a little hole to pass ID and paperwork through.
There was a table with the paperwork to fill out for visiting, but no pen. Thankfully there were some visitors there who had been through it all before and helped me figure out the process (and loaned me a pen), because you don’t get any answers from the staff. Visiting officially begins at 2pm on Fridays, but by 2:15 they just started processing, which took a very long time itself.
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A 62-year-old grandmother in Washington, DC tells AP that police came to her home serving a drug warrant for her 28-year-old grandson. The grandma asks to put her dog in the back yard or the bathroom. The cops tell her the bathroom would be fine. Later, the cops open the bathroom door, claim this 13-year-old dog named “Wrinkles” attacked them, and they shoot it multiple times. By the way, the grandson hasn’t lived in the home for a dozen years and the only drugs cops found were what they claimed was “drug residue” on some baggies, which the grandma contends is the residue of fortune cookies.
Watch the video here http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/23934405/index.html
Please take a moment to sign the petition at http://CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com/animals to protest the cruelty of the unnecessary killing of pet dogs by police during encounters with citizens.
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #637, 6/18/10
A 21-year-old father-to-be was killed last Friday night by a Las Vegas Police Department narcotics officer serving a search warrant for marijuana. Trevon Cole was shot once in the bathroom of his apartment after he made what police described as “a furtive movement.”
Trevon Cole with fiance Sequoia Pearce (photo from Sequoia Pearce via the Las Vegas Review-Journal Police have said Cole was not armed. Police said Monday they recovered an unspecified amount of marijuana and a set of digital scales. A person identifying herself as Cole’s fiance, Sequoia Pearce, in the comments
section in the article linked to above said no drugs were found.Pearce, who is nine months pregnant, shared the apartment with Cole and was present during the raid. “I was coming out, and they told me to get on the floor. I heard a gunshot and was trying to see what was happening and where they had shot him,” Pearce told KTNV-TV.
According to police, they arrived at about 9:00pm Friday evening at the Mirabella Apartments on East Bonanza Road, and detectives knocked and announced their presence. Receiving no response, detectives knocked the door down and entered the apartment. They found Pearce hiding in a bedroom closet and took her into custody. They then tried to enter a bathroom where Cole was hiding. He made “a furtive movement” toward a detective, who fired a single shot, killing Cole.
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June 19, 2010
Joe Califano: Just as stupid as ever; after all these years.
Joseph A. Califano, Jr., is a native New Yorker, Harvard educated lawyer, and career bureaucrat who entered federal service in 1961 after a stint in the Navy and soon became a behind-the-scenes power in the Johnson Administration after JFK’s assassination. He later served as Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Health Education and Welfare between 1977 and 1979.
Unfortunately, a misguided interest in Medicine has apparently kept him enamored of the false notion that criminal prohibition can be rehabilitated into good public policy, thus he founded the Center for Addiction and Drug Abuse at Columbia University (CASA Columbia) which has since become entrenched as a drug war propaganda machine with a prestigious Ivy League address. While editing a low-budget drug policy newsletter between 1997 and 200I, I became very familiar with an unending stream of CASA “studies” that inevitably found evidence in favor of coerced “treatment” while decrying the money spent on criminal prosecution. In fact, one of the more pleasant consequences of my recent immersion in a study of cannabis users had been not having to deal with the conundrum represented by Mr. Califano and his ilk: are they evil or just stupid?
Sadly, the latest evidence has me leaning more toward evil. Yesterday afternoon, during my return from Oakland after interviews with nine typical victims of cannabis prohibition had left me more convinced than ever of the policy’s stupidity, good old clueless NPR provided me with nearly ten minutes of teeth-gnashing evidence of its fecklessness: a report on the latest carnage in Mexico followed by a typical witless endorsement from Joe C.
Now I get it. Like anything human it’s not all or none, but a combination of the two: thus anyone who takes Joe Califano seriously must be as evil AND stupid as he is.
Doctor Tom
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By Ed Rosenthal
Why Californians Should Vote In Favor of Tax & Regulate In Northern California there is a debate raging among commercial marijuana growers over whether they should vote in favor of the Tax & Regulate proposition that is on the November 2nd ballot in California. Some growers fear that legalization will bring in major corporations that will dominate the industry, reducing Humboldt into an Appalachian-type county once again They say, why should we vote for this? It might be putting us out of business.
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