• Hot Off The 'Net

    Amy Winehouse: Reflections from Two Drug Policy Activists

    By Tony Newman and Meghan Ralston

    Like many of you, we heard the sad news about Amy Winehouse’s death on Facebook. The news spread quickly. Her friend Russell Brand immediately issued an incredible tribute to her, which was one of the most widely discussed responses to her sudden death. Most people immediately assumed that a drug overdose must have taken Amy’s life. We don’t know how she died, and on some level, it doesn’t really matter. She was young, talented and apparently haunted with struggles none of us will ever understand. She used drugs. And now she’s gone.

    We have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance for many years and spend most days thinking about drugs, our country’s drug policies and the people whose lives are impacted by them. We spend most days advocating for, and trying to help, people just like Amy. Here are some of our reflections on the tragic death of Amy Winehouse.

  • Letter of the Week

    Apparently All States’ Rights Are Not Created Equal

    Citing federal interference, the legislature has exempted Texas from federal energy standards regarding light bulbs. Texas State Rep. George Lavender hopes incandescent light bulb manufacturers will move to Texas and create jobs and tax revenue.

    In contrast, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, says he will not give U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011” a hearing. This is a pure states’ rights bill. It makes no new law. According to Harvard economist Jeffery Miron, Texas spends $644,477,000 every year enforcing federal marijuana prohibition and loses potential tax revenue of $171,430,000.

    Where are conservative principles when we need them?

    Suzanne Wills

    Pubdate: Fri, 15 Jul 2011
    Source: Kerrville Daily Times (TX)
    Copyright: 2011 The Daily Times
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.dailytimes.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3035

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Swiss drug policy

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-11-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-11-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3461

    Question of the Week: Has Swiss drug policy been effective?

    In a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Joseph Califano and former drug czar William Bennett decried Swiss drug policy, saying,

    “In the 1990s, Switzerland experimented with what became known as Needle Park, a section of Zurich where addicts could buy and inject heroin without police interference.  Policy makers saw it as a way to restrict a few hundred legal heroin users to a small area.  It soon morphed into a grotesque tourist attraction of 20,000 addicts that had to be closed before it infected the entire city.”

    However, according to the Open Society Institute, in the 1970s

    “The response of the Swiss authorities to more widespread use of narcotics was to revise the federal law on illicit drugs to define rigorous criminal sanctions…”

    Then, “Increasingly desperate to find a way to control crime and social and health harms associated with injection drug use, in 1987 the Zürich authorities allowed people who used illicit drugs to gather in a defined space [that] came to be known as the “needle park.”

    According the Beckley Foundation, in

    “an official document dated September 7, 1994, the Swiss government defined the Four Pillars as constituting the foundation of its national drug strategy. [Pillars include] prevention, therapy, risk reduction and enforcement—to which innovative measures, such as drug treatments using prescription heroin, were added.”

    The Open Society Institute concluded,

    “The introduction of the Four Pillars strategy …. brought about a significant reduction of deaths directly attributable to drug use, such as overdose, and of deaths indirectly related, such as HIV and Hepatitis. Between 1991 and 2004, the drug related death toll fell by more than 50%”

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

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Drugs and the Meaning of Life

    By Sam Harris

    Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts. Every waking moment—and even in our dreams—we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.

    Drugs are another means toward this end. Some are illegal; some are stigmatized; some are dangerous—though, perversely, these sets only partially intersect. There are drugs of extraordinary power and utility, like psilocybin (the active compound in “magic mushrooms”) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which pose no apparent risk of addiction and are physically well-tolerated, and yet one can still be sent to prison for their use—while drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which have ruined countless lives, are enjoyed ad libitum in almost every society on earth. There are other points on this continuum—3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “Ecstasy”) has remarkable therapeutic potential, but it is also susceptible to abuse, and it appears to be neurotoxic.[1]

    One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting, and for what purpose, and which are not. The problem, however, is that we refer to all biologically active compounds by a single term—“drugs”—and this makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the psychological, medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding their use. The poverty of our language has been only slightly eased by the introduction of terms like “psychedelics” to differentiate certain visionary compounds, which can produce extraordinary states of ecstasy and insight, from “narcotics” and other classic agents of stupefaction and abuse.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Study: Marijuana Not Linked With Long Term Cognitive Impairment

    By Maia Szalavitz

    The idea that “marijuana makes you dumb” has long been embodied in the stereotype of the slow, stupid stoner, seen in numerous Hollywood movies and TV comedies and going unquestioned by much of American culture. But a new study says no: the researchers followed nearly 2,000 young Australian adults for eight years and found that marijuana has little long-term effect on learning and memory— and any cognitive damage that does occur as a result of cannabis use is reversible.

    Participants were aged 20-24 at the start of the study, which was part of a larger project on community health. Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.

    Light use was defined as smoking monthly or less frequently; heavy use was weekly or more often. Former users had to have not smoked for at least a year. Fully 72% of the participants were non-users or former users; 18% were light users and 9% were heavy current users. Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - What You Can Do

    Dispensaries are Indispensable

    As you may be aware, Health Canada last month announced some proposed amendment to the MMAR and are engaging in a consultation period this month. More information can be found on their website: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/index-eng.php.

    The Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries has launched a “Dispensaries are Indispensable” National Endorsement Campaign. The Campaign is aimed at collecting endorsements from medical cannabis patients who access their medicine at dispensaries across Canada. We want to send a message to Health Canada that dispensaries are providing patients with valuable and valued services and should be included in the legal framework of medical cannabis in Canada.

    Please sign an endorsement online if you access your cannabis at a dispensary in Canada, and please feel free to put a link to this campaign on your various websites: http://thecompassionclub.org/endorsementcampaign

  • Letter of the Week

    The U.S. Needs a Drug Policy That Works Much Better

    Obfuscation is the name of the game for Joseph Califano and William Bennett.

    The Netherlands has about half the marijuana use we do and, with no marketing link to cocaine, about one-eighth our cocaine use, according to a World Health Organization survey. Marijuana use is up 30% here in the past 20 years, and we have over a million teenage drug sellers in our schools. Legal drugs would be more available? Impossible! A federal government-sponsored report says that “marijuana has been almost universally available to American 12th graders over the past 31 years.”

    The pending bill in Congress would simply allow states to decide about marijuana. We used to call this approach the laboratory of democracy, but this pair prefers Chicken Little rhetoric to facts.

    According to the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey published July 2002: “Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.”

    Jerry Epstein

    Houston

    Pubdate: Fri, 08 Jul 2011
    Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
    Copyright: 2011 Jerry Epstein
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.wsj.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
    Note: Second of 4 letters in response to http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n431/a02.html

  • Letter of the Week

    Should Marijuana Be Legalized And Regulated?

    To the Editor:

    Sylvia Longmire misses the mark in focusing on how legalizing marijuana won’t put drug cartels completely out of business (“Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels,” Op-Ed, June 19).

    Sure, some cartel members will continue selling other illicit wares once marijuana is legalized, but since they currently earn about 60 percent of their profits from illegal marijuana sales, ending the prohibition of that cash crop will seriously undercut their ability to finance continued operations.

    And removing such a significant chunk of the cartels’ funding will make it significantly easier for law enforcement to isolate and destroy them. As a former border patrol officer once charged with enforcing prohibition, I never dared dream of such success. Each arrest only created a lucrative job opening for someone else to step in and fill the insatiable demand for illegal drugs.

    We can either keep going through an endless cycle of cartel bosses brought to justice, or if we really want to reduce the violence, we can legalize marijuana — and other currently illegal drugs — thereby evaporating the profit motive that causes the carnage.

    TERRY NELSON

    Granbury, Tex., June 20, 2011

    Pubdate: Mon, 27 Jun 2011
    Source: New York Times (NY)
    Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
    Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
    Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
    Author: Terry Newson, Board Member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.