On Tuesday January 25 at 9 p.m. ET, President Obama will deliver his 2011 State of the Union Address, which will be streamed live at http://www.youtube.com/worldview
You can submit your questions for the President for an exclusive YouTube Interview that will take place just two days later, on January 27.
What would you like to ask the President about the most important issues our country faces? You have until Wednesday January 26 at midnight ET to submit your question.
Strong-arms Other Countries to Follow Suit
By Daniel Ernesto Robelo, Alternet
Why is the United States formally objecting to Bolivia’s request to the UN to allow its ancestral practice of coca leaf chewing?
Last week the United States formally objected to Bolivia’s request to the United Nations to allow the ancestral practice of coca leaf chewing. In doing so, it revealed the corruption, hypocrisy and futility of the global war on drugs, which it clearly values over the rights of indigenous peoples.
Bolivia’s proposal is modest. It would strike two clauses from the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs, which require that coca chewing “be abolished within twenty-five years” after taking effect. The existing system of cocaine prohibition would remain.
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso
SAO PAULO-The war on drugs is a lost war, and 2011 is the time to move away from a punitive approach in order to pursue a new set of policies based on public health, human rights and common sense. These are the core findings of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy that I convened, together with former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia.
We became involved with this issue for a compelling reason: the violence and corruption associated with drug trafficking represents a major threat to democracy in our region. This sense of urgency led us to evaluate current policies and look for viable alternatives. The evidence is overwhelming that the prohibitionist approach, based on repression of production and criminalization of consumption, has clearly failed.
After 30 years of massive effort, all prohibitionism has achieved is to shift areas of cultivation and drug cartels from one country to another (the so-called balloon effect). Latin America remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana. Thousands of young people continue to lose their lives in gang wars. Drug lords rule by fear over entire communities.
We ended our report with a call for a paradigm shift. The illicit drug trade will continue as long as there is demand for drugs. Instead of sticking to failed policies, that do not reduce the profitability of the drug trade – and thus its power – we must redirect our efforts to the harm caused by drugs to people and societies, and to reducing consumption.
DrugSense recognizes Allan Erickson of Eugene, Oregon for his three
published letters during December, which brings his total published
letters that we know of to 152. Allan is a frequent MAP newshawk and
writes a blog at http://morningdonut.blogspot.com/
You may read his published letters at:
http://www.mapinc.org/writers/Allan+Erickson
WAR ONLY ON CERTAIN DRUGS
Re: “Losing the drug war,” by Charles Guerriero, Saturday Letters.
Guerriero writes, “American drug policy toward marijuana yields
nearly one million arrests annually; nine of 10 are for personal
possession. We have nothing to show for all this madness, as
marijuana is easier to obtain than alcohol for minors and use has
only risen since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.”
I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, and I do not believe
that the War On Certain Drugs has helped this country one bit. Study
after study proves that tobacco and alcohol kill millions and that
marijuana kills no one.
Paraphrasing the words of a columnist from years ago: “Alcohol makes
people violent. Marijuana just makes people hungry and boring.”
Alcohol is legal and should be. So should marijuana.
There is no reason whatsoever for our government to spend time,
resources, or manpower fighting against it. Republicans, wake up. You
drink beer or wine or whiskey.
You know you do. Those who smoke marijuana are doing the same thing.
Duh. Stop spending my money on the War On Certain Drugs.
Michael Casey, Garland
Pubdate: Fri, 14 Jan 2011
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n000/a002.html
Activist Boot Camp, February 19-20, 2011
The National Call to Action is the nation’s first medical cannabis virtual skill-building conference. Re-pledge your commitment to safe and legal access by joining thousands of your fellow activists for two days of community-building, skill-sharing, and strategic planning.
For nearly a decade ASA has been hosting trainings and workshops to build capacity among our base and mobilize our activists. When we began this work, ASA focused on the battles in California. Today our scope is national, and we get pleas from almost every state asking us to help them activate their base and build a strategy to ensure safe access.
ASA is hosting this conference virtually to better reach the thousands and thousands of patients and activists who need our trainings – we know that in these tough economic times we’ll train with more breadth and depth if we’re able to bring ASA to the masses, rather than the masses to ASA.
The campaign to legitimize what is called “medical” marijuana is based on two propositions: first, that science views marijuana as medicine; and second, that the DEA targets sick and dying people using the drug. Neither proposition is true. Specifically, smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science–it is not medicine, and it is not safe. Moreover, the DEA targets criminals engaged in the cultivation and trafficking of marijuana, not the sick and dying. This is true even in the 14 states that have approved the use of “medical” marijuana.
As Mexico drowns in drug related bloodshed — suffering almost 12,000 murders in 2010 — it is perhaps unsurprising that government critics turn up their screaming that the war on drugs isn’t working. But it was a bit of a bombshell when former president Vicente Fox added his voice to the chorus. The cowboy-boot wearing leader, who ruled Mexico from 2000 to 2006, had once declared the “mother of all battles” against crime and rounded up drug kingpins. But before he left office, he had witnessed the first big spike in violence as the narcos retaliated. In August of 2010, evidence surfaced that his vision had changed when he wrote on his blog that prohibition wasn’t working. Now, in a recent interview with TIME in his hometown in Central Mexico, he explains that his views have moved on to the other end of the spectrum: favoring full-on legalization of production, transit and selling of prohibited drugs. Fox is most explicit about marijuana, but argues that the principle applied to all illegal drugs.
Drug Policy Question of the Week – 1-22-11
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 1-22-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3238
Question of the Week: Does the National Drug Control Strategy achieve its goals?
A 2008 Congressional Research Service report describes a document released annually by the Office of National Drug Control Policy:
“Since 1999, the Administration has developed an annual National Drug Control Strategy, which describes the total budget for drug control programs and outlines U.S. strategic goals for stemming drug supply and demand.”
Goals have varied. The 1999 Strategy proposed
“a ten-year conceptual framework to reduce illegal drug use and availability 50 percent by the year 2007.”
The 2002 to 2005 Goals were roughly the same, with the 2003 Strategy calling for a two-year goal of
“A 10 percent reduction in current use of illegal drugs by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders,”
and a five-year goal of
“A 25 percent reduction in current use of illegal drugs by adults age 18 and older.”
The source for the first percent was to reference a Monitoring the Future survey, which found that current use of illegal drugs by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders for the two years following 2003 declined by –5.2%. The other source, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, reported that illicit drug use by adults age 12 and older during the five years following 2003 grew by +4.3%. By 2009, the increase was +9.7%.
The National Drug Control Strategy 2010 revised the goals slightly to
“Decrease the 30-day prevalence of drug use among 12–17 year olds by 15%,”
and to
“Reduce the number of chronic drug users by 15%.”
The National Drug Control Strategy FY 2011 Budget Summary says,
“The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 National Drug Control Budget requests $15.5 billion to reduce drug use…”
These facts and others like them can be found in the Drug Usage and United States policy chapters of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.
Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected]