TEACHABLE DRUG MOMENTS’? PLEASE

Regarding the Dec. 16 letter “Teachable drug moments”:

Shelley Mowrey of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America wants us to
be shocked at the video of Miley Cyrus smoking salvia divinorum.

Mowrey calls it a “teachable moment,” which we parents should use to
“initiate a conversation” with our children about “drugs and alcohol.”

Mowrey wants us to believe that her organization is privy to the
“single most effective way to raise healthy, drug-free children,” and,
at the same time, tells us that the average age for first drug use in
Arizona is 13, which is pretty much the same as it was 40 years ago
when this insane “war on drugs” started.

“Healthy, drug-free children”? “Teachable moments”?

Forty years.

Three generations.

A trillion dollars spent, millions imprisoned, Mexico literally
bleeding to death at our doorstep.

Tell me, what can we learn from watching a talented, successful,
charming young woman acting silly on YouTube that we don’t already
know?

Rita Stricker

Chino Valley

Pubdate: Tue, 28 Dec 2010

Source: Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a072.html

THE RIGHT TO SELF-MEDICATION

Re “Medical marijuana user free after plea deal” (News article, Dec. 14):

It seems to me that the right to self-medicate should be a fundamental
right. Adult citizens of a so-called free country should not have to
seek permission from their government to use a natural herb that
hasn’t killed anyone in the 5,000-year history of its use.

For those who oppose the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise, I
have some simple advice: Don’t buy it, don’t grow it and don’t use it.
Period.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

Pubdate: Fri, 24 Dec 2010

Source: Anniston Star (AL)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n1033/a01.html

TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

Kudos to William Dixon for speaking the truth about our absurd war on
drugs. A fact-based public discussion is exactly what is needed.

When questioned about the utter ineffectiveness of their efforts, drug
war bureaucrats crow about the latest seizures and arrest figures as
evidence of success.

In fact, the only legitimate measure of success for drug policy is
whether it saves more lives than it destroys. In that regard,
prohibition is an unmitigated disaster. The overwhelming scientific
consensus is that black market violence, adulterated drugs, and the
spread of HIV are all exacerbated by prohibitionist policies.

Yet when confronted with hard evidence, our politicians choose to
disregard scientific fact and mutter vaguely about “the message this
sends to our children”.

It’s time for drug policies based on scientific evidence, not
political dogma.

Anders Froehlich,

San Rafael, CA

Pubdate: Sat, 18 Dec 2010

Source: Gainesville Sun, The (FL)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n1038/a07.html

DRUG ADDLED

Re “Knocking down the kingpins,” Editorial, Dec. 5

Killing the heads of drug cartels has an effect similar to cutting
off the top of a weed. It will grow back stronger than ever.

The only way to get rid of any weed is to kill the root – and the
root of our problem is prohibition.

Law enforcement didn’t get rid of the alcohol cartels in 1933;
re-legalizing alcohol did.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

Pubdate: Wed, 8 Dec 2010

Source: Los Angeles Times

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n1005/a04.html

DISHEARTENING DEBATE ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

I spent Tuesday morning at the Capitol listening to the debate on the
medical marijuana bill. It saddened me to find that so many of the
representatives are so woefully behind times in their knowledge
concerning medical studies of cannabis.

One gentleman, who proclaimed himself a pharmacist, brought up
arguments that have been refuted for years, including claiming that
marijuana is an addictive drug. This gentleman, who didn’t mention
his own personal struggles with both prescription drugs and alcohol,
was happy to pontificate on a subject he knows nothing about. He
even brought up the canard about cannabis being a gateway drug.

These representatives have staff members to do research for them on
topics they may not be familiar with. I wonder how many of them
requested anyone to do a simple Internet search to find out the
current information available on the subject. My guess is that they
never asked because they didn’t want to know. I suspect the only
source they used is the DEA, which is forbidden by law from saying
anything positive about marijuana.

Another gentleman’s main worry was, “What message are we sending to
our children?” I will answer that question for him. When legislators
turn their back on their own constituents, denying them a substance
available to ease pain and suffering by using arguments they know —
or should know to be false — our children lose all respect for them
and decide to find out for themselves about drugs labeled dangerous,
which leads to some dangerous experimentation.

It is unfortunate that so many sick and dying people are deprived of
one of the best medications known because of myths, willful ignorance
and deliberate lies.

Dennis M. Garland

Chatham

Pubdate: Fri, 3 Dec 2010

Source: State Journal-Register (IL)

THIS IS NOT THE GOOD FIGHT

Re: “Perry backs drug war troops – Military should be an option if
Mexico approves, he says, because stronger tactics needed,” Friday
news story. Gov. Rick Perry wants to send American kids to Mexico to
risk being seriously injured or killed fighting drug gangs.

The reason for this fight is largely to keep these same kids from
smoking a plant that has never killed anyone in 5,000 years of
recorded use. In contrast, Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001
and put the money saved on law enforcement into education and medical
treatment.

Crime, drug use by teenagers, HIV, overdoses and heroin use all declined.

The percentage of Portuguese who have ever used marijuana dropped to
the lowest in the European Union, 10 percent.

The American rate is about 40 percent. What is Perry drinking?

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas

Pubdate: Wed, 24 Nov 2010

Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a061.html

WRONG ANTIDOTE

Apparently history has no lessons (Nov. 15). The legendary explosion
of violence in the 1920s was caused not by the decriminalization of
alcohol but by the criminalization of alcohol. It was not cured by
redoubling enforcement but by re-establishing a legal and regulated industry.

Had the nation continued Prohibition, the Herald today would be
reporting stories of murders caused by alcohol deals gone bad and
disputes among bootleggers while piously cautioning its readers that
drinking a beer is “not a victimless crime.”

Andy Gaus, Boston

Pubdate: Thu, 18 Nov 2010

Source: Boston Herald (MA)

Reference: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n937/a06.html

NO LEGAL AUTHORITY

By way of introduction, I had a 24-year career in federal law
enforcement and then worked for the state judiciary and the
enforcement branch of the Department of Land and Natural Resources
for 13 years. I am a strong supporter of law enforcement. Even so,
I was appalled by the piece in West Hawaii Today Oct. 31. It
appears a major travesty of justice is playing out here.

To see two medical marijuana patients improperly denied boarding on
an aircraft and then detained by the Transportation Security
Authority representatives for arrest by the local police is ludicrous
if I can accept WHT’s assurance that they were in full compliance
with state law. According to the article, a TSA spokesman stated
their only mission is to keep explosives off planes ( something they
have not done in nine years to the best of my knowledge ). That
amounts to tacit admission that TSA exceeded their statutory
authority in this case.

The local police then “stole” their legally owned property and
conducted what appears to be an illegal arrest. Worse the prosecutor
for whatever reason decided to levy criminal charges against the two
individuals that seem to have been in full compliance with the law,
and if so, they are victims and NOT criminals. Lastly, the judge in
the case failed to see the baselessness of this case and is pursuing it!

We all have to comply with various laws such as wear your seat belt,
comply with speed limits, don’t drive and use a cell phone, etc. If
we don’t like the laws, we must work within the system to change them
and follow them in the meantime. Law enforcement has the same
obligation and should be held to an even higher standard in this regard.

Yet in this case it appears we have the feds, the state and local
authorities who don’t agree with our medical marijuana laws, choose
to violate them and harass law-abiding citizens and try to prosecute them.

My advice to the two victims that now find themselves defendants is
to sue their butts off. Enforcement and the courts are not above the law.

For the record, the only marijuana I ever touched was samples of
evidence in a seizure case for illicit trafficking cases. Some
sanity needs to get interjected here, and if a cardiac patient is
driving down the road with prescription drugs in his or her car and
is stopped by police, would their medication be seized, that person
get arrested and face criminal charges? I think not.

I’d love to have someone in law enforcement advise us why in hell
people holding legal prescriptions are treated differently based upon
the particular drug.

We’ll get silence as none of the entities in this case have ANY legal
authority for their actions, nor a leg to stand on.

Keith King

Kailua-Kona

Pubdate: Mon, 8 Nov 2010

Source: West Hawaii Today (HI)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a055.html

SAFE DRUG

Buddy Sims, in his letter “It ain’t medicine” (Nov. 1), wrote, “The
American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a
Schedule I controlled illegal federal substance.”

The AMA recently passed a resolution urging the rescheduling of
cannabis as a Schedule II drug in the Controlled Substances Act.

Further, Kevin Sabet, as part of the ONDCP, is mandated by law to lie.

Cannabis has been in the human pharmacopoeia for thousands of years
with no known case — ever — of a human overdose.

When cannabis was discovered to have cancer-fighting potential in
1974, the study was buried.

The U.S. government owns U.S. Patent 6630507, Cannabinoids as
antioxidants and neuroprotectants.

The U.S. government also distributes half a pound of pre-rolled
medical cannabis cigarettes to the four remaining patients enrolled
in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program.

If science and truth were the standard, cannabis never would have
been made illegal in the first place.

Allan Erickson

Eugene, Ore.

Pubdate: Sun, 7 Nov 2010

Source: Vail Daily (CO)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n894/a01.html