• Letter of the Week

    Traumatic

    Re: “Grow op kids need help,” Editorial, July 30.

    I must take issue with your editorial regarding the removal of children from homes where there is illegal marijuana being grown.

    You spoke of the authorities and the parents, but you forgot the children themselves. What impact do you think it has on a child when the police storm a home, arrest the parents and then tell the children they are being taken away to a strange place by strangers for an unknown length of time? Where are those children going to be placed? Who will be caring for them? When can they see their parents again? Can you assure them the parents still love them? How do you assure those children they have done nothing wrong and are not being punished, as you hand them over to strangers?

    To remove a child from his or her known world is one of the most frightening things one can ever do to a child. It has a far deeper traumatic impact than does parental neglect or punishment and once it happens, that emotional trauma can never be erased. These are a few of the factors your editorial neglected to consider.

    Grace Isaak

    Calgary

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2011
    Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
    Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
    Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
    Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n495/a06.html

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The War on Drugs: Doubling Down on a Bad Bet

    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.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Majority of Americans Ready to Legalize Marijuana

    As was the case last year, most respondents believe the “War on Drugs” has been a failure.

    Many Americans continue to believe that marijuana should be legalized, but are not supportive of making other drugs readily available, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

    In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,003 American adults, 55 per cent of respondents support the legalization of marijuana, while 40 per cent oppose it.

    The groups that are the most supportive of making cannabis legal in the U.S. are Democrats (63%), Independents (61%), Men (57%) and respondents aged 35-to-54 (57%).

    However, only 10 per cent of Americans support legalizing ecstasy. Smaller proportions of respondents would consent to the legalization of powder cocaine (9%), heroin (8%), methamphetamine or “crystal meth” (7%), and crack cocaine (7%).

    Across the country, 64 per cent of respondents believe America has a serious drug abuse problem that affects the entire United States, while one-in-five (20%) perceive a drug abuse problem that is confined to specific areas and people. One-in-twenty Americans (5%) think America does not have a serious drug abuse problem.

    Only nine per cent of respondents believe the “War on Drugs”—the efforts of the U.S. government to reduce the illegal drug trade—has been a success, while two thirds (67%) deem it a failure.

  • Letter of the Week

    ‘War On Drugs’ Distracts From Fighting Crime

    Re: “Legal drugs and gangs,” July 1.

    The editorial on the failed “war on drugs” is music to the ears of the criminal justice professionals who make up Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We know, from personal experience, that prohibition enriches criminal gangs and fosters criminal activity while doing nothing to reduce drug use and the attendant violence in our cities.

    Forty years of the so-called “war on drugs” in North America has actually increased the supply and potency of illegal drugs. Countries which have removed criminal penalties for drug use, such as the Netherlands and Portugal, have achieved declines in use and addiction.

    Prohibition is a threat to public safety. Making drugs illegal has created a profitable black market, and participants in the underground economy can settle their disputes only by violence. Uninvolved bystanders and police officers often pay the price.

    So many police officers and prosecutors are bogged down in drug enforcement that serious crimes go unsolved. In 1963, before the “war on drugs,” all but 15 per cent of murder cases in the U.S. were solved. Today, 40 per cent of murders never lead to a conviction, even though law enforcement now has vastly better forensic tools and technology.

    Let’s legalize drugs and bring the trade above ground where we can regulate and control it.

    John Anderson
    Chair, Criminology Department
    Vancouver Island University

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jul 2011
    Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Times Colonist
    Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Crack Pipe Pilot Program Sparks Social Media Debate

    TORONTO – Crack addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will soon be able to pick up free, clean crack pipes from their local health authority as part of the city’s harm-reduction strategy to curb the transmission of diseases through pipe sharing.

    Advocates say the new pilot project, which hits streets in October, will help health care and social workers connect with at-risk drug addicts, potentially bringing them into the health care system and exposing them to rehab options.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Understanding Obama’s “War on Drugs”

    By Neill Franklin, Executive Director, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)

    Last month I was interviewed on CNN.com as part of the network’s coverage of the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon declaring the “war on drugs.” It was just one of thousands of articles, broadcasts and blog posts featuring the voices of police officers, politicians and scholars marking an anniversary that offers little to celebrate. Many commentators across the political spectrum eagerly welcomed the opportunity to seriously examine the failures of our drug policies, evaluate possible reforms and opine on what it all might mean.

    But not everyone was as excited by the opportunity for reflection on how we can make drug policy more effective. After reading my interview on CNN.com, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy apparently contacted the news organization and demanded equal time to defend the Obama administration’s continuation of U.S. drug prohibition policies.

    The published response presents a rare and revealing window into the thinking behind the nation’s drug policy at the beginning of the fifth decade of the “war on drugs.” The transcript is of great interest to anyone who wants to understand why — despite clear scientific evidence, real-world experience and political opportunity — a policy that is so obviously failed and is so profoundly harmful is able to continue year after year.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Single Convention Treaty

    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.

     

     

  • Drug Policy

    Mistakes of the Past

    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?

    ===

    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)

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    NAACP Calls For End To “War On Drugs”

    The NAACP on Tuesday passed what it called a “historic” resolution calling for an end to the war on drugs.

    The resolution comes as world leaders are taking a hard look at the 40-year “war,” and also as new data shows widened racial disparities within the U.S.

    “Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice and effective law enforcement,” NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said in a statement Monday. The resolution was approved by delegates at the annual NAACP convention in Los Angeles. “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidenced-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”

    The NAACP noted that African Americans are 13 times more likely to go to jail for the same drug-related offense than their white counterparts. The resolution endorses the expansion of rehabilitation and treatment programs as an alternative to sending drug offenders to prison. It also endorses the expansion of methadone clinics and other proven treatment protocols.