Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2009
Subject: #417 Los Angeles Prepares For Clash Over Marijuana

LOS ANGELES PREPARES FOR CLASH OVER MARIJUANA

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #417 – Sunday, 18 October 2009

Today the New York Times focused on the issue of medicinal marijuana
dispensaries in Los Angeles but also covered the growing battle over
the dispensaries across the state.

As stated in the article State Attorney General Jerry Brown’s
guidelines, which you may read at http://drugsense.org/url/kKMJR2lu ,
do “allow for nonprofit sales of medical marijuana” by cooperatives or
collectives properly established in accordance with the state’s laws.

Letter writing activists may find targets for their efforts both in
California and other states at http://www.mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries
and articles about California marijuana issues at http://www.mapinc.org/find?115

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Source: New York Times (NY)

Copyright: 2009 The New York Times Company

Contact: [email protected]

Author: Solomon Moore

LOS ANGELES PREPARES FOR CLASH OVER MARIJUANA

LOS ANGELES — There are more marijuana stores here than public
schools. Signs emblazoned with cannabis plants or green crosses sit
next to dry cleaners, gas stations and restaurants.

The dispensaries range from Hollywood-day-spa fabulous to
shoddy-looking storefronts with hand-painted billboards. Absolute
Herbal Pain Solutions, Grateful Meds, Farmacopeia Organica.

Cannabis advocates claim that more than 800 dispensaries have sprouted
here since 2002; some law enforcement officials say it is closer to
1,000. Whatever the real number, everyone agrees it is too high.

And so this, too, is taken for granted: Crackdowns on cannabis clubs
will soon come in this city, which has more dispensaries than any other.

For the first time, law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have
vowed to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries that turn a profit,
with police officials saying they expect to conduct raids. Their
efforts are widely seen as a campaign to sway the City Council into
adopting strict regulations after two years of debate.

It appears to be working. Carmen A. Trutanich, the newly elected city
attorney, recently persuaded the Council to put aside a proposed
ordinance negotiated with medical marijuana supporters for one drafted
by his office. The new proposal calls for dispensaries to have
renewable permits, submit to criminal record checks, register the
names of members with the police and operate on a nonprofit basis. If
enacted, it is likely to result in the closing of hundreds of
marijuana dispensaries.

Mr. Trutanich argued that state law permits the exchange of marijuana
between growers and patients on a nonprofit and noncash basis only.
Marijuana advocates say that interpretation would regulate
dispensaries out of existence and thwart the will of voters who
approved medical cannabis in 1996.

Whatever happens here will be closely watched by law enforcement
officials and marijuana advocates across the country who are threading
their way through federal laws that still treat marijuana as an
illegal drug and state laws that are increasingly allowing medicinal
use. Thirteen states have laws supporting medical marijuana, and
others are considering new legislation.

No state has gone further than California, often described by drug
enforcement agents as a “source nation” because of the vast quantities
of marijuana grown here. And no city in the state has gone further
than Los Angeles. This has alarmed local officials, who say that
dispensary owners here took unfair advantage of vague state laws
intended to create exceptions to marijuana prohibitions for a limited
number of ill people.

“About 100 percent of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city
are operating illegally,” said Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County
district attorney, who is up for re-election next year. “The time is
right to deal with this problem.”

Mr. Cooley, speaking last week at a training luncheon for regional
narcotics officers titled “The Eradication of Medical Marijuana
Dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County,” said
that state law did not allow dispensaries to be for-profit
enterprises.

Mr. Trutanich, the city attorney, went further, saying dispensaries
were prohibited from accepting cash even to reimburse growers for
labor and supplies. He said that a recent California Supreme Court
decision, People v. Mentch, banned all over-the-counter sales of
marijuana; other officials and marijuana advocates disagree.

So far, prosecutions of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles have
been limited to about a dozen in the last year, said Sandi Gibbons, a
spokeswoman for Mr. Cooley. But Police Department officials said they
were expecting to be called on soon to raid collectives.

“I don’t think this is a law that we’ll have to enforce 800 times,”
said one police official, who declined to speak on the record before
the marijuana ordinance was completed. “This is just like anything
else. You don’t have to arrest everyone who is speeding to make people
slow down.”

Don Duncan, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a leader in the
medical marijuana movement, said that over-the-counter cash purchases
should be permitted but that dispensaries should be nonprofit
organizations. He also said marijuana collectives needed more
regulation and a “thinning of the herd.”

“I am under no illusions that everyone out there is following the
rules,” said Mr. Duncan, who runs his own dispensary in West
Hollywood. “But just because you accept money to reimburse collectives
does not mean you’re making profits.”

For marijuana advocates, Los Angeles represents a critical juncture —
a symbol of the movement’s greatest success, but also its
vulnerability.

More than 300,000 doctors’ referrals for medical cannabis are on file,
the bulk of them from Los Angeles, according to Americans for Safe
Access. The movement has had a string of successes in the Legislature
and at the ballot box. In the city of Garden Grove, marijuana
advocates forced the Highway Patrol to return six grams of marijuana
it had confiscated from an eligible user. About 40 cities and counties
have medical marijuana ordinances.

But there have also been setbacks. In June, a federal judge sentenced
Charles C. Lynch, a dispensary owner north of Santa Barbara, to one
year in prison for selling marijuana to a 17-year-old boy whose father
had testified that they sought out medical marijuana for his son’s
chronic pain. The mayor and the chief of police testified on behalf of
Mr. Lynch, who was released on bail pending appeal.

And last month, San Diego police officers and sheriff’s deputies,
along with agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, raided 14
marijuana dispensaries and arrested 31 people. In an interview, Bonnie
Dumanis, the district attorney for San Diego County, said that state
laws governing medical marijuana were unclear and that the city had
not yet instituted new regulations.

Ms. Dumanis said that she approved of medical marijuana clubs where
patients grow and use their own marijuana, but that none of the 60 or
so dispensaries in the county operated that way.

“These guys are drug dealers,” she said of the 14 that were raided. “I
said publicly, if anyone thinks we’re casting too big a net and we get
a legitimate patient or a lawful collective, then show us your taxes,
your business license, your incorporation papers, your filings with
the Department of Corporations.”

“If they had these things, we wouldn’t prosecute,” she
said.

Marijuana supporters worry that San Diego may provide a glimpse of the
near future for Los Angeles if raids here become a reality. But many
look to Harborside Health Center in Oakland as a model for how
dispensaries could work.

“Our No. 1 task is to show that we are worthy of the public’s trust in
asking to distribute medical cannabis in a safe and secure manner,”
said Steve DeAngelo, the pig-tailed proprietor of Harborside, which
has been in business for three years.

Harborside is one of four licensed dispensaries in Oakland run as
nonprofit organizations. It is the largest, with 74 employees and
revenues of about $20 million. Last summer, the Oakland City Council
passed an ordinance to collect taxes from the sale of marijuana, a
measure that Mr. DeAngelo supported.

Mr. DeAngelo designed Harborside to exude legitimacy, security and
comfort. Visitors to the low-slung building are greeted by security
guards who check the required physicians’ recommendations. Inside, the
dispensary looks like a bank, except that the floor is covered with
hemp carpeting and the eight tellers stand behind identical displays
of marijuana and hashish.

There is a laboratory where technicians determine the potency of the
marijuana and label it accordingly. (Harborside says it rejects 80
percent of the marijuana that arrives at its door for insufficient
quality.) There is even a bank vault where the day’s cash is stored
along with reserves of premium cannabis. An armored truck picks up
deposits every evening. City officials routinely audit the
dispensary’s books. Surplus cash is rolled back into the center to pay
for free counseling sessions and yoga for patients. “Oakland issued
licenses and regulations, and Los Angeles did nothing and they are
still unregulated,” Mr. DeAngelo said. “Cannabis is being distributed
by inappropriate people.”

But even Oakland’s regulations fall short of Mr. Trutanich’s proposal
that Los Angeles ban all cash sales.

“I don’t know of any collective that operates in the way that is
envisioned by this ordinance,” said Mr. Duncan, of Americans for Safe
Access.

Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for State Attorney General Jerry
Brown, said that after Mr. Trutanich’s comments in Los Angeles, law
enforcement officials and advocates from around the state had called
seeking clarity on medical marijuana laws.

Mr. Brown has issued legal guidelines that allow for nonprofit sales
of medical marijuana, she said. But, she added, with laws being
interpreted differently, “the final answer will eventually come from
the courts.”

**********************************************************************

PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
[email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
Center

http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

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Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009
Subject: #416 Writing Letters To The Editor Works!

WRITING LETTERS TO THE EDITOR WORKS!

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #416 – Wednesday, 7 October 2009

September ended with 1,805 letters published in support of drug policy
reform. If the trend continues this will be the largest number of
published letters since 2005. Please click this link to see the counts
http://www.mapinc.org/lte/ as shown in our published letters archive.

Please check out the Published Letters Awards page
http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm and the letter of writers
recognized for the best letter of the week at http://www.mapinc.org/lte_awards/weekly.php

We will leave it up to you to speculate as to why there is a surge in
LTE writing this year.

Most drug policy reform organizations encourage writing LTEs, for
example:

How To Mount An Effective Letter Writing Campaign http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3464

Letters to the Editors http://ssdp.org/resources/media.php

Letters to the Editor How-To http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=310

How to Write Letters to the Editor http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/activist/howlte.htm

Tips from MAP’s most successful letter writers include How to Write a
Letter to the Editor http://www.mapinc.org/resource/how2lte.htm and
Tips for Getting Letters to the Editor Published http://www.mapinc.org/resource/tips.htm

As suggested by MAP’s top letter writers recent newspaper opinion
items make the best targets for your letters. These may be found at
http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm Other recent articles which could
be letter writing targets may be accessed from the MAP home page
www.mapinc.org

Since you are reading this you have the best tool to write LTEs
already – internet access. Please help sustain the activism
represented by all the reform oriented letters published so far this
year.

Your letters to the editor are always helpful. Even if a newspaper
does not publish your letter you have let that newspaper know that the
issue you write about is important to you.

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Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009
Subject: #415 Canada’s Prince Of Pot Becomes A Marijuana Martyr

CANADA’S PRINCE OF POT BECOMES A MARIJUANA MARTYR

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #415 – Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Former DEA administrator Karen Tandy in a press release on the day of
Marc Emery’s arrest, July 29th, 2005, stated:

“Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture
magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a
significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the
U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement….
Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely
on.”

Philanthropist Marc Emery funneled millions of dollars in resources
and funds to the marijuana legalization movement on both sides of the
border.

The Vancouver Sun’s columnist Ian Mulgrew covers what is happening to
Marc and why below.

Monday, September 28th marks another infamous event in the history of
the efforts to suppress the cannabis culture.

To read current and future press items about Marc please use this
link: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Marc+Emery

Your letters to the editor are always helpful.

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Pubdate: Mon, 28 Sep 2009

Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)

Copyright: 2009 The Vancouver Sun

Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html

Author: Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun

PRINCE OF POT’S SENTENCE REEKS OF INJUSTICE AND MOCKS OUR SOVEREIGNTY

Emery’s Jail Term Longer Than for Some Violent Crimes

After two decades as Canada’s Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender
himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country’s first
Marijuana Martyr.

Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind
bars as Uncle Sam’s prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have
earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow.

It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our
sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis.

Emery hasn’t even visited America but he was arrested in July 2005 at
the request of a Republican administration that abhorred his politics.

He is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are
loath to prosecute because we don’t think selling seeds is a major
problem.

There are at least a score of seed-sellers downtown and many, many
more such retail outlets across the country.

In the days ahead, once the federal justice minister signs the
extradition papers, Emery will be frog-marched south to Seattle where
his plea bargain will be rubber-stamped and he will be sent to a U.S.
penitentiary.

For comparison, consider that the B.C. Court of Appeal last year said
a one-month jail sentence plus probation was appropriate punishment
for drug and money-laundering offences of this ilk.

The last time Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, back
in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine.

In July, his co-accused Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams were given
two years probation for conspiracy to manufacture marijuana.

They were indicted along with Emery for their role in what the
authorities described as a $3-million-a-year business.

Rainey, 38, worked for Emery from 1998 to 2005, helping him operate
the B.C. Marijuana Party and his mail-order business.

The 54-year-old Williams took phone orders.

Emery flouted the law for more than a decade and every year he sent
his seed catalogue to politicians of every stripe. He ran in federal,
provincial and civic elections promoting his pro-cannabis platform.

He championed legal marijuana at parliamentary hearings, on national
television, at celebrity conferences, in his own magazine, Cannabis
Culture, and on his own Internet channel, Pot TV.

Health Canada even recommended medical marijuana patients buy their
seeds from his company.

From 1998 until his arrest, Emery even paid provincial and federal
taxes as a “marijuana seed vendor” totalling nearly $600,000.

He was targeted because of his success, targeted as surely as pot
comic Tommy Chong — who spent nearly a year in U.S. jail because his
son ran a company selling glass pipes.

Emery challenged a law he disagrees with using exactly the
non-violent, democratic processes we urge our children to embrace and
of which we are so proud.

“The same seeds I sold are being sold right in America,” Emery
complained. “The people in California are doing it the same way I did
so there’s a terrible hypocrisy at work here.”

He’s right.

Emery recently wrapped up a 30-city “farewell tour” of speaking
engagements across Canada.

And, he’s banking on the transfer agreement that allows Canadians
convicted and jailed in America to serve their time here and take
advantage of our very liberal early-release laws.

If that happened, he could be out within a few years. But Ottawa has
regularly rejected drug offenders for the program and I doubt Emery
will find any sympathy.

I suspect he’s likely to moulder in a violent, overcrowded U.S. jail
for probably his full five-year sentence.

“I’m going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders,” he
noted.

“There isn’t a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and
say, ‘I was hurt by Marc Emery.’ No one.”

He’s right again.

Emery is facing more jail time than corporate criminals who defraud
widows and orphans and longer incarceration than violent offenders who
leave their victims dead or in wheelchairs.

Whatever else you may think of him — and I know he rankles many —
what is happening to him today mocks our independence and our ideal of
justice.

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Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009
Subject: #414 How Pot Became Legal

HOW POT BECAME LEGAL

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #414 – Friday, 18 September 2009

Marijuana specific magazines have been around, and come and gone,
since Michael R. Aldrich, Ph.D., published the first magazine “The
Marijuana Review” in the early 1970s. These magazines reach an
audience which believes marijuana should be legal.

It is when mainstream magazines publish articles which may lead those
skeptical about legalization to become legalization supporters that
reform progress is made.

On the news stands now and until September 28th is a good example, the
current issue of Fortune. You may read the article as printed at
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n872/a03.html The dozen photos and
three graphics with the article may make it worth buying. Please
consider writing a LTE to the magazine.

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Source: Fortune (US)

Page: 140

Cover: article, title “Is Pot Already Legal”

Copyright: 2009 Time Inc.

Contact: [email protected]

Author: Roger Parloff

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The Following Are Paragraphs Excerpted From the Article.

When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport,
his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local
brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana
cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says.

That’s probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld
exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his
weed directly from the United States government.

Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300
federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for
him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse ( NIDA ), acting with
approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

[snip]

The acceptance of medical marijuana has implications that extend far
beyond helping those suffering from life-threatening diseases. It is
one of several factors — including demographic changes, the financial
crisis, and the widely perceived failure of the war on drugs —
reopening the country’s 40-year-old on-again, off-again shouting match
over whether marijuana should be legalized.

This article is not another polemic about why it should or shouldn’t
be. Today, in any case, the pertinent question is whether it already
has been — at least on a local-option basis. We’re referring to a
cultural phenomenon that has been evolving for the past 15 years,
topped off by a crucial policy reversal that was quietly instituted by
President Barack Obama in February.

[snip]

As a result, in most of California’s coastal metropolitan areas,
marijuana is effectively legal today. Any resident older than 18 who
gets a note from a doctor can lawfully buy the stuff, and doctors
seemingly eager to write such notes, typically in exchange for a $200
consultation fee, advertise in newspapers and on websites.

There are an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 medical marijuana patients
in the state now, and the figure is rapidly growing.

More astonishingly, there are about 700 medical marijuana dispensaries
now operating in California openly distributing the drug.

[snip]

Marijuana activists thought they were close to legalization once
before. From 1973 to 1978 activists won decriminalization in 11
states. (“Decriminalization” is a grab-bag term but usually refers to
schemes under which first-time possession of small quantities of
marijuana becomes a noncriminal violation, akin to a parking ticket.
Decriminalization falls short of legalization, in that sale and
distribution remain serious felonies.)

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter endorsed a federal decriminalization
bill. But the bill went nowhere, and soon the movement was all but
obliterated by the return swing of the cultural pendulum, now known as
the Reagan Revolution. There would be no new state or federal
marijuana reforms for the next 16 years.

“Here’s what’s different now,” asserts Ethan Nadelmann, the head of
the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors marijuana legalization on a
tax-and-regulate model. “First, in the late 1970s no more than 30% of
the American public supported making marijuana legal. Now it’s
breaking 40%.”

That jump reflects an important demographic change, Nadelmann notes.
“Back then there was a whole older generation of Americans who didn’t
know the difference between marijuana and heroin,” he says. “Now that
generation is mostly gone. The people in power are baby boomers, a
majority of whom actually smoked marijuana.”

[snip]

“I think the next five or six years are going to be incredibly
exciting for this issue,” says Stroup, who founded the National
Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws 39 years ago. “I honestly
believe we’ll stop arresting individual smokers in almost all states
and start to see the first one or two states experiment with a
legalization bill.”

Although Stroup originally wanted the “R” in NORML to stand for
“Repeal,” he was later talked into softening it to “Reform” by cooler,
more politically savvy advisers. Now he thinks society might finally
be closing in on his original goal.

Could be. Just watch out for those swinging pendulums.

**********************************************************************

PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
[email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
Center

http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

**********************************************************************

Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009
Subject: #413 Prohibition’s Failed – Time For A New Drugs Policy

PROHIBITION’S FAILED – TIME FOR A NEW DRUGS POLICY

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #413 – Sunday, 6 September 2009

One of the top ten British Sunday newspapers, The Observer, published
four items of interest today. The Observer is the UK’s only full-color
Sunday newspaper and has an audited readership of about 1,374,000.

Below is today’s editorial. The OPED by Fernando Henrique Cardoso is
at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a08.html The Latin American
Commission on Drugs and Democracy website is at http://drugsanddemocracy.org/

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor for The Observer, wrote a separate
article “Former President of Brazil Says Hardline War on Drugs ‘Has
Failed'” http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a09.html which also
is about the Cardoso OPED.

Not as directly related as the three items above is an article by Ed
Vulliamy writing from Tijuana “Is America Ready to Admit Defeat in Its
40-Year War on Drugs?” http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a06.html

Each Observer item, or some or all taken together, are worthy of your
letter to the editor. The Observer website lists their email address
for letters as [email protected]

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Source: Observer, The (UK)

Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Contact: [email protected]

PROHIBITION’S FAILED. TIME FOR A NEW DRUGS POLICY

IN JUNE 1971, US President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs”.
Drugs won.

The policy of deploying the full might of the state against the
production, supply and consumption of illegal drugs has not worked.
Pretty much anyone in the developed world who wants to take illicit
substances can buy them. Those purchases fund a multibillion dollar
global industry that has enriched mighty criminal cartels, for whom
law enforcement agencies are mostly just a nuisance, rarely a threat.
Meanwhile, the terrible harm that drug dependency does to individuals
and societies has not been reduced. Demand and supply flourish.

“It is time to admit the obvious,” writes Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
former president of Brazil, in the Observer today. “The ‘war on drugs’
has failed.”

Earlier this year, Mr Cardoso co-chaired the Latin American Commission
on Drugs and Democracy with former presidents of Colombia and Mexico.
They endorsed a collective shift in policy from repression of drug use
to harm reduction. Last month, Argentina’s supreme court declared the
prosecution of individuals for the possession of small amounts of
drugs to be unconstitutional. Colombia’s constitutional court came to
a similar conclusion in 1994.

The trend towards decriminalisation in Latin America is born of
desperation. The continent is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine
and marijuana. Its economies and criminal justice systems have been
corrupted by the trade; in some areas the power of the drug gangs
rivals that of the state. Something had to change.

Something must change also in the countries that buy Latin America’s
biggest export. In Britain, more than half a million people aged 16-24
took cocaine last year, according to Home Office statistics. More than
a third of all Britons aged 16-59 have taken drugs at some point in
their lives; one in 10 in the last year.

Not all of those people are a menace to society. Most of them are not
even a menace to themselves. Most who take drugs in their youth stop
later on. A generation that has grown up with normalised recreational
drug use now occupies the commanding heights of business, media and
politics. They might not take drugs themselves, but they are not
morally outraged by them.

That is a significant cultural change. The political fixation on drugs
prohibition really took hold in the west in the 1960s as much from
moral panic about a subversive counterculture as from analysis of the
harm caused by particular drugs.

Since then, the law has tried to maintain a distinction between
reputable and disreputable substances that neither users nor medical
research recognise. Scientific attempts to classify drugs in terms of
the harm they do to the body and society routinely place tobacco and
alcohol ahead of cannabis and ecstasy. The point is not that the wrong
drugs are banned, but that the law is nonsense to anyone with real
knowledge of the substances involved.

One point of general agreement is that heroin is the big problem. It
is highly addictive and those who are dependent up to 300,000 in
Britain tend to commit a lot of crime to fund their habit. But then it
is hard to tell how much of the problem is contained by prohibition
and how much caused by it.

Leaving gangsters in charge of supply ensures that addicts get a more
toxic product and get ever more ensnared in criminality.

Those arguments do not prove that the solution lies in legalisation,
or even just decriminalisation. But as Mr Cardoso argues: “Continuing
the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous.”

The entire framework of the debate must change. In Britain, we operate
with laws that start from the premise that drug use is inherently
morally wrong, and then seek ways to stop it. Instead we must start by
evaluating the harm that drug use does, and then look for the best
ways to alleviate it; and we must have the courage to follow that
logic wherever it leads.

**********************************************************************

PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER

Please post copies of your letters to the sent letter list (
[email protected] ) if you are subscribed.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches.

To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see

http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism
Center

http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

**********************************************************************

Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009
Subject: #412 Decriminalization – A Better Approach?

DECRIMINALIZATION – A BETTER APPROACH?

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #412 – Sunday, 30 August 2009

Alan Bock in today’s column discusses the impact of decriminalization
of drugs in Mexico and Portugal. He then shows the United States
failing in it’s drug war efforts and concludes that decriminalization
is not a complete solution.

Glenn Greenwald’s White Paper “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies” may be
obtained from http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080

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Pubdate: Sun, 30 Aug 2009

Source: The Orange County Register

Copyright: 2009 The Orange County Register

Contact: [email protected]

Author: Alan Bock, Sr. editorial writer, The Orange County Register

IN DRUG-RAVAGED MEXICO, A NEW APPROACH

Mexico on Aug. 21 officially decriminalized possession and use of
small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
Specifically, a police search that turns up a half-gram of cocaine
(about four lines) five grams of marijuana (about four cigarettes), 50
milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamines or 0.015
milligrams of LSD will not bring any jail time.

This might seem counterintuitive, given that Mexico is in the throes
of a real, live shooting (and torturing and decapitating) drug war
that has seen the deaths of 12,000 people since 2006. If Mexico has
been getting serious about trying to stop drug trafficking and
disassemble the vicious cartels that supply drugs, why “send the
message” that possession of small amounts of drugs is OK? Doesn’t that
undermine the larger anti-drugs effort?

Aside from the fact that police and prosecutors in practice seldom
send small-time drug users to jail, given the resources required to do
so, there are reasons to hope, based on experience in other countries,
the decriminalization just might reduce the prevalence of drug usage
and help society get a better handle on drug addiction and related
problems, such as deaths due to drug overdose and transmission of AIDS
and other infectious diseases through dirty needles.

Indeed, there is considerable evidence, though it falls short of a
straight-line cause-and-effect relationship, that the more heavily a
country criminalizes the use of drugs, the greater the usage of those
drugs is.

It is important to make a distinction between decriminalization and
legalization. Under decriminalization possession and use of certain
drugs is still illegal, but evidence of such usage is handled
administratively rather than through the criminal courts system.

Being caught with drugs therefore does not create a criminal record,
with the symbolic and concrete impact this can have on peoples’ lives.
It turns out that under such a regime more drug users, freed of the
fear of a prison sentence or the stigma of a criminal record, seek
treatment, which is usually recommended and in some cases mandatory
for those caught repeatedly.

The country that has most completely instituted a decriminalization
regime is Portugal, which on July 1, 2001, decriminalized all drugs,
including cocaine and heroin. Constitutional lawyer and Salon.com
commentator Glenn Greenwald did a comprehensive study of the effects
of decriminalization in Portugal earlier this year, and found that the
drug abuse situation for most previously illicit drugs, including
overdose deaths and disease transmission, had improved significantly,
compared with the predecriminalization period and compared with other
EU countries.

In Portugal the consumption, possession and acquisition of drugs
amounting to a 10-day supply for an average user is an administrative
offense. Trafficking, defined as possessing more than a 10-day supply,
is still punished through the criminal law. Those caught with small
amounts of drugs are referred to what is called a Dissuasion
Commission, which has wide discretion as to whether to impose a fine
or other penalty. While the commissions cannot impose mandatory
treatment, they can make suspension of a fine conditional on entering
treatment.

Users found to be addicts can be subject to a wider range of sanction,
including suspension of the right to practice a licensed profession
and a ban on visiting high-risk locales or associating with certain
individuals. But the emphasis is on treatment.

One might suppose that decriminalization was instituted because
authorities had developed a laissez-faire attitude toward drug use. In
fact, as Greenwald writes, “the political impetus for
decriminalization was the fact that drug abuse – both in itself and
its accompanying pathologies – was an uncontrollable social problem.”
Drug usage, drug deaths and drug-related disease all skyrocketed
during the 1990s under criminalization. A commission convened in 1998
came up with decriminalization as the most effective strategy to get
these pathologies under control.

Most EU countries have adopted more harm-reduction-oriented policies
than the U.S. has, including several that have depenalized (no jail
time) marijuana possession. But Portugal is the only country that has
gone all the way to decriminalization.

Some predicted a dramatic increase in drug usage and “drug tourism.”
Paulo Portas of the conservative Popular Party said: “There will be
planeloads of students heading for [Portugal] to smoke marijuana and
take a lot worse, knowing we won’t put them in jail. We promise sun,
beaches and any drug you want.” Didn’t happen. Since decriminalization
roughly 95 percent of those cited for drug offenses have been Portuguese.

In fact, the results have been dramatic – in the other direction.
Since decriminalization lifetime prevalence rates (any consumption
over a lifetime) have decreased, especially for the critical
adolescent-young-adult population cohort. For 13-15-year-olds the rate
decreased from 14.1 percent in 2001 to 10.6 percent in 2006. For
16-18-year-olds, the lifetime prevalence rate, which had increased
from 14.1 percent in 1995 to 27.6 percent in 2001, fell to 21.6
percent in 2006. Perhaps most significantly, heroin use, which
officials felt was the most socially destructive drug, fell from 2.5
percent to 1.8 percent from 1999-2005.

The number of drug-related HIV and AIDS cases has declined
substantially every year, as have Hepatitis B and C infections and
drug-related mortality rates.

When compared with the rest of the EU, usage rates in Portugal, which
had been among the highest in Europe, are now among the lowest.
Portugal now has the lowest lifetime prevalence for cannabis
(marijuana) usage in Europe, 8.2 percent, while in Europe generally it
is 25 percent. Portugal has a lifetime rate of 1.6 percent for
cocaine, compared to 4 percent for Europe generally.

For whatever bundle of reasons, we should start getting accustomed to
the idea that harsh anti-drugs laws are often correlated with a
worsening of drug problems and decriminalization with bringing them
into manageable bounds. Mr. Greenwald cites a 2008 survey of 17
countries showing that the U.S. had by far the highest level of
cocaine use over a lifetime (16.2 percent to second-place New
Zealand’s 4.3 percent) and the highest level of cannabis use. As
Greenwald writes, “stringent criminalization laws do not produce lower
drug usage, and some data suggest the opposite may be true.”

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the pro-reform Drug Policy
Alliance, told me that while Mexico’s move is encouraging, it would be
a mistake to expect the results to replicate Portugal’s exactly.
Portugal prepared the ground with a thorough commission report and
achieved commitment from law enforcement, while Mexico decriminalized
smaller amounts, still has a culture of corruption, and may be less
prepared to implement the new law, especially when it comes to
offering treatment.

I would add that Mexico makes no provision for acquisition of drugs,
which is likely to leave the black market largely undisturbed and
still powerful. Decriminalization combined with a determination to end
trafficking can leave users still dependent on the black market as is
still the case for all too many medical patients in California. The
way to undermine a black market is to allow a white market to emerge.

Nonetheless, Mexico’s move, combined with a court decision in
Argentina last week that will have a similar impact on small-time
users, has the potential to put a significant dent in the religion of
prohibitionism. Now if we can just get politicians in the U.S. to pay
attention.

**********************************************************************

Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009
Subject: #411 Tide Turns In Favour Of Drug Reform

TIDE TURNS IN FAVOUR OF DRUG REFORM

**********************************************************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #411 – Thursday, 27 August 2009

Some DrugSense FOCUS Alerts are produced because of targets worthy of
letters to the editor.

Others because a news clipping is worthy of the attention of a wider
audience – like the OPED below by Doctor Alex Wodak.

More information about the work of Doctor Wodak appears on the
International Harm Reduction Association website on this page
http://www.ihra.net/HistoryandFounders#AlexWodak

**********************************************************************

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

Copyright: 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald

Contact: [email protected]

Author: Alex Wodak

Note: Alex Wodak is director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St
Vincent’s Hospital.

TIDE TURNS IN FAVOUR OF DRUG REFORM

One hundred years ago, the US convened the International Opium
Conference. This meeting of 13 nations in Shanghai was the beginning
of global drug prohibition.

Prohibition slowly became one of the most universally applied policies
in the world. But a century on, international support for this blanket
drug policy is slowly but inexorably unravelling.

In January, Barack Obama became the third US president in a row to
admit to consumption of cannabis. Bill Clinton had admitted using
cannabis but denied ever inhaling it. George Bush was taped saying in
private he would never admit in public to having used cannabis. When
Obama was asked whether he had inhaled cannabis, he said: “Of course.
That was the whole point.”

Obama has candidly discussed his drug use. “Pot had helped, and booze;
maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it.” He has also
admitted the “war on drugs is an utter failure” and called for more
focus on a public health approach.

In February, a Latin American drug policy commission similarly
concluded that the “drug war is a failure”. It recommended breaking
the “taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalisation”.
The same month, an American diplomat said the US supported
needle-exchange programs to help reduce the transmission of HIV and
other blood-borne diseases, and supported using medication to treat
those addicted to opiates.

In March, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs met in
Vienna as the culmination of a 10-year review of global drug policy. A
“political declaration” was issued which, at the urging of the US,
excluded the phrase “harm reduction”. This omission caused a split in
the fragile international consensus on drug policy and resulted in 26
countries, including Australia, demanding explicit support for harm
reduction in a footnote.

In April, Michel Kazatchkine, of the Global Fund to Fight Aids,
Tuberculosis and Malaria, argued in favour of decriminalising illicit
drugs to allow efforts to halt the spread of HIV to succeed. The same
month, a national Zogby poll in the US provided evidence of changing
opinion on the legalisation of cannabis: 52 per cent supported
cannabis becoming legal, taxed and regulated.

In May there was movement on several fronts. The Governor of
California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “I think it’s not time for
[legalisation], but I think it’s time for a debate.” He was supported
by a number of other American politicians, while Vicente Fox, a former
Mexican president, said he was not yet convinced it was the solution
but asked: “Why not discuss it?” The Colombian Vice-President,
Francisco Santos Calderon, is already convinced. “The only way you can
really solve the problem [is] if you legalise it totally.”

Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, said he wanted to banish the idea of
fighting a “war on drugs”, while the United Nations Secretary-General,
Ban Ki-moon, said criminal sanctions on same-sex sex, commercial sex
and drug injections were barriers for HIV treatment services. “Those
behaviours should be decriminalised, and people addicted to drugs
should receive health services for the treatment of their addiction,”
he said.

In Germany, the federal parliament voted 63 per cent in favour to
allow heroin prescription treatment.

In July, the Economic and Social Council, a UN body more senior than
the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, approved a resolution requiring
national governments to provide “services for injecting drug users in
all settings, including prisons” and harm reduction programs such as
needle syringe programs and substitution treatment for heroin users.
This month, Mexico removed criminal sanctions for possessing any
illicit drug in small quantities while Argentina is making similar
changes for cannabis.

Portugal, Spain and Italy had earlier dropped criminal sanctions for
possessing small amounts of any illicit drug, while the Netherlands
and Germany have achieved the same effect by changing policing policy.

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law
enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America,
while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing.
Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

**********************************************************************

Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009
Subject: #410 Why It’s Time To End The War On Drugs

WHY IT’S TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

**********************************************************************

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #410 – Tuesday, 3 August 2009

There are many good books available about various aspects of the War
on Drugs. Short read summaries printed by newspapers are less common.

Below is a column printed this past weekend in the Financial Times
Weekend Magazine.

As a 501(c)3 educational non-profit the Media Awareness Project and
DrugSense seeks to educate our audience about the War on Drugs — in
addition to it’s well known news clipping service.

It is why we post to MAP some of the best articles from web only
sources like AlterNet, the Huffington Post, Reason Online and Salon –
items marked with Web: in the subject line.

Each Friday evening we distribute our on-line DrugSense Weekly which
includes the Hot Off The ‘Net section. The section points to a variety
web-only information – an average of about 10 links each week.

Each week the current issue may be accessed at http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm

**********************************************************************

Pubdate: Sat, 1 Aug 2009

Source: Financial Times Weekend Magazine (UK)

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2009

Contact: [email protected]

Author: Matthew Engel

Note: Matthew Engel is a regular contributor to FT Weekend Magazine

WHY IT’S TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

Carlisle Racecourse, near the border between England and Scotland, is
not usually regarded as one of the world’s great centres of
progressive thought. It is not even one of the great centres of
British horse racing. But in a hospitality room there in June, the
director of public health for Cumbria, Professor John Ashton, startled
a room full of local delegates at a conference entitled “Tackling
Drugs, Changing Lives” by calling for total legalisation. “The war on
drugs has failed,” he said. “We need to think differently.” He said
that heroin, and everything else now banned, should be available over
the counter in chemists’ shops.

At any rate, he certainly startled the reporter from the Carlisle News
& Star who made a splendid splash with the story, giving just a
paragraph to the counter-argument from Detective Superintendent Paul
Carter of Cumbria Police. “Class A drugs destroy the fabric of
people’s lives,” he responded. “We have to do everything we can to get
people away from drugs like heroin and cocaine.” Well, “Cop Backs Drug
Laws” hardly sounds like news, does it? But actually it is Carter who
seems increasingly out of step.

For decades many academics and professionals have regarded the current
blanket prohibition on recreational drugs (though not alcohol or
tobacco) as absurd, counter-productive and destructive. But there has
never been any political imperative for change, and a thousand reasons
to do nothing.

For nearly 40 years, since the habits established in the 1960s took
root in society, there has been a stand-off. Across the free world,
and most of the unfree, anyone seriously interested in smoking,
snorting, swallowing or injecting illegal substances can acquire the
wherewithal with a little effort, and proceed without much fear of
retribution, particularly if they are wealthy enough. Police and
politicians say they are interested in punishing the suppliers and not
the users. This is an intellectual nonsense, but it has suited
everyone who matters. The drug users don’t care; governments have felt
no pressure to attempt a politically dangerous reform; and above all
it suits the international gangsters who control the drug business,
which offers massive rewards and for them minimal risks.

But 2009 has seen a change: among the academics and professionals who
study this issue, from Carlisle Racecourse to the think-tanks of
Washington, there is growing sense that reform is possible and
increasingly urgent. The argument is not that drug use is A Good
Thing. It is that the collateral damage caused by the so-called war on
drugs has now reached catastrophic proportions. And even some
politicians have started to think this might be worth discussing. The
biggest single reason (as with so much else this year) is the Obama
Effect. In one way, this may be short-lived since the president’s
reputation will eventually be tarnished by reality. But the chief
barrier to reform has been that the international agreements barring
the drugs trade have been enforced primarily by threats of retaliation
from the White House.

Obama is the third successive president believed to have used illegal
drugs: Bill Clinton famously did not inhale; in a conversation that
was secretly taped when he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush
didn’t deny that he had smoked marijuana or used cocaine; Obama has
admitted using both dope and “a little blow”. Unlike the other two, he
is also on record as favouring decriminalisation of cannabis and more
generally addressing the problem. The president having other
preoccupations, there is no sign of him proposing the Do What The Hell
You Like Bill to Congress any time soon. There is every sign that the
blanket ban on other people’s initiatives has been partially lifted.

Obama has also come to power amid a growing sense of alarm about the
US prison population. Nearly four million Americans are either
physically in jail (including almost 5 per cent of all black males) or
under some form of state or federal jurisdiction. About 20 per cent of
these are listed as having committed drug offences. But this must be a
gross underestimate of reality. I recently asked a British judge what
percentage of the defendants in his court were there for drugs-related
crimes: not just direct breaches of the drug laws, but also crimes
committed by those whose behaviour was affected by drug use or who
were trying to obtain money to buy them. He thought for a moment then
said: “Sixty per cent. And most of the rest involve alcohol.” We may
assume that, in the more drug-pervasive American culture, the figure
would be higher than this.

At the same time, Americans have seen on the nightly news the brutal
wars between -Mexican drug gangs reach their border. And afterwards
they have watched The Wire, which has given them a serious dose of
daily inner city reality. Some observers see the collective shrug that
greeted the admission of dope-smoking by the Olympic swimming hero
Michael Phelps as a sign that attitudes are changing in middle America.

What would be less clear to TV watchers is the extent to which, under
harsh and prescriptive sentencing guidelines, the wrong criminals are
locked up. According to Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy
Studies in Washington: “There have been judges who’ve been literally
in tears because they have been forced to sentence girlfriends of
low-level dealers to 20 years. Perhaps they fielded a call for their
boyfriends. And then the kingpin walks out in six months depending on
how much information they’ve given.”

. . .

Attitudes are certainly changing elsewhere. Several countries,
especially in South America, are starting to flirt with liberalisation
Portugal decriminalised all drug use in 2001 and the policy is said to
have widespread acceptance. Now the former president of Brazil,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has called for the decriminalisation of
cocaine and says that many serving politicians quietly agree with him.

The South American shift ties in with a growing belief that the
US-backed policy of coca eradication has been useless if the crop
disappears from one remote valley, it pops up in another. Meanwhile,
the once trumpeted poppy-eradication mission in Afghanistan is
increasingly perceived as a strategy that could strengthen the Taliban
by curbing overproduction. “We’re fighting over minimally processed
agricultural commodities,” says Tree. “Heroin, cocaine and marijuana
are incredibly cheap to produce. There is an inexhaustible resource of
poor farmers to grow these crops and an undiminished supply of
consumers. The more we increase law enforcement the greater the
risk-reward for the traffickers. It’s an exercise in futility.”

Tree is by no means a lone voice in the Washington policy nexus. Jim
Webb, -the Democratic senator for Virginia, said in April that the
issue of marijuana legalisation should be “on the table”. There is
interest too from rightwing libertarians such as the Texas congressman
and sometime presidential candidate Ron Paul. Indeed a leading
pro-reform voice in Washington is the Cato Institute, usually
associated with the Republicans. And the campaign is backed by
well-organised pressure groups.

It is hard to find coherent advocates on the other side of the
argument. On the web, I came across Drug Watch International, based in
Omaha, promising “current information … to counter drug advocacy
propaganda”. The lead item on its site dates from 2002. I did track
down its president, Dr John Coleman, formerly an undercover agent at
what is now the Drug Enforcement Administration. He proved an amiable
interviewee who offered me an intriguingly contrarian defence of the
American alcohol prohibition years: unpopular though the law was,
—drink-related diseases fell. The drug prohibition, he felt, also
worked.

“In the US, the levels of drug use in most categories are lower than
in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. There’s a lot of social change, a lot of
ageing out,” he said. “We have a more intelligent law enforcement
system. The confiscation laws are very effective. I don’t think we
should be surprised if public policies work. We do have drug problems,
I’m not minimising them. But if we ignore the progress we’ve made,
we’re short-changing ourselves.”

It is the practical men who seem most disposed to support the status
quo. The most eloquent I discovered was back in Carlisle – Paul
Carter, the cop at the racecourse conference. “I joined the police 28
years ago and I went to the deaths of many young people who had
overdosed on heroin, particularly, and each one is an utter tragedy. I
think there are fewer now and that we are beginning to make a difference.

“There’s a cycle of life when you’re on heroin when you’re either
asleep or not aware of what’s going on around you. If society
sanctioned that effect on another generation, what does that say about
us all?”

The policy wonks arguing for change have not, as a rule, attended a
dead body in a dingy flat, but the macro-argument tends to lead in
another direction even among senior police officers like Norm
Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, who told The New York
Times: “We’ve spent a -trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs.
What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at
lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

. . .

The drug laws were dingy from the start: Congress made marijuana
illegal in 1937 after a farcical debate, due to pressure from -western
farmers who wanted their Mexican labourers to work harder. The user
community keeps discovering “legal highs”, governments promptly ban
them whereupon their popularity increases.

In Britain, there is something close to despair among academics about
the political process. Drugs are classified A, B and C, allegedly
according to the degree of harm. But the theory ignores the immutable
constitutional provision that laws are subject to the approval of the
editor of the Daily Mail. Cannabis was downgraded from B to C and then
back again, to meet the government’s political needs; this had no
effect on either suppliers or users.

Ecstasy (which alarms the Mail) is deemed a class A drug, the most
dangerous rating, although – according to a major study published by
The Lancet in 2007- it ranks 18th in degree of harm among 20
well-known substances, ahead only of poppers and khat (both legal) and
well behind alcohol and tobacco (ditto). “We’re supposed to have
evidence-led policy formulation,” says Mike Levi, professor of
criminology at Cardiff University, “but it often doesn’t happen in the
drugs area.”

At the conferences Levi attends, the argument has shifted. “The
question of a more rational drug policy is certainly being debated.
There aren’t many old-fashioned zealots for the old methods of drug
control even in the police, who are more open to change than recent
home secretaries. But however good an idea it might be in the abstract
it would take a more mature political and media conversation about it
before it is likely to happen. Always keep ahold of nurse, for fear of
finding something worse, that’s where we are now.”

In Britain, with its top-down system of government, a notionally
left-of-centre but illiberal administration and a hysterical press,
reform is improbable, although Gordon Brown recently had a brief
meeting with Danny Kushlick, from the pro-legalisation group
Transform. But there is a new atmosphere in the US, where the change
in emphasis in Washington is enough to allow initiatives to come from
below. Already, dope-smoking is de facto legal in California thanks to
the lifting of the ban on medical marijuana. Purchase requires a
prescription – but anyone who wants a joint but can’t find a
Californian medic who thinks it will help backache just isn’t trying.
This system may well spread.

Strangely, all this is happening just as Holland, the country that has
been out on a limb for years with its coffee-shop culture, is
beginning to row backwards. Once again, though, it may well be an
anomaly. The Dutch are starting to tire of their exceptionalism and
the drugs tourism that has resulted, just as they have tired of their
liberal immigration policies. And the coffee shops have fallen foul of
the indoor-smoking taboo.

Drug use generally in Holland seems to be low. But then you can prove
almost anything with selective use of drug statistics: it is also low
in Sweden, which is surprisingly stern. The main source for these
stats is the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which maintains a huge
bureaucracy to fight the drug problem, or at least to collect
astonishingly detailed statistics: 3.8 per cent of Scots aged 15-64
use cocaine every year; 21.5 per cent of the same cohort of Ghanaians
use cannabis; opium prices in the Phongsaly and Huaphanh provinces of
Laos range between $556 and $744 per kilo … You might think that,
knowing all this, they might be able to do something.

The UNODC’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, has been the
chief proponent of continued prohibitionism. But, even as he
introduced his 2009 report which, as ever, trumpeted evidence of
success, he seemed a little rattled, repeating the new White House
line about treatment rather than enforcement while warning that
legalisation would be “a historic -mistake”. He went on: “Proponents
of legalisation can’t have it both ways. A free market for drugs would
unleash a drug epidemic, while a regulated one would create a parallel
criminal market. Illicit drugs pose a danger to health. That’s why
drugs are, and must remain, controlled.”

. . .

Of course drugs need to be controlled, just as alcohol, tobacco,
firearms, prescription drugs, food additives and indeed UN bureaucrats
with massive budgets need to be controlled. But the whole point is
that illicit drugs are not controlled. The international -pretence of
prohibition sees to that. One of the major arguments advanced for
continuing the ban on -cannabis is that the currently available
strains of the drug do not offer the gentle highs of the hippie years
but are intensively cultivated and far more potent, with potentially
serious psychological effects. The analysis is correct, according to
my stoner friends. But the logic is 180 degrees wrong. Imagine a total
ban on tobacco, which is no longer so unthinkable. Among the
consequences would be an immediate return to the unfiltered
full-strength gaspers of the 1950s, just as American alcohol
prohibition produced moonshine. One benign -consequence of drug
legalisation would be that users would have a guarantee of quality and
strength/mildness: an end to heroin flavoured with brick dust (many
believe adulteration is the real killer), and the type of -marijuana
they actually want.

But the case for legalisation is not about allowing baby-boom couples
to enjoy a joint after a dinner party without drawing the curtains or
being obliged to visit a dodgy bloke called Dave. Decriminalisation or
even legalising cannabis on its own would achieve little. Something
more radical is required. The crucial issue concerns the supply chain:
the way prohibition has enriched and empowered gangsters, corrupt
officials and indeed wholly corrupt narco-states across the planet. It
was a point made -eloquently by the Russian economist Lev Timofeev,
when interviewed by Misha Glenny for his book about global organised
crime, McMafia. -“Prohibiting a market does not mean destroying it,”
Timofeev said. What it means is placing a “dynamically developing
market under the total control of criminal corporations”. He called
the present situation a threat to world civilisation, which
international public opinion had failed to grasp.

Proper reform means legitimising production and supply, precisely so
it can be controlled. Would it unleash a drug epidemic worse than the
one we now have? Well, it would be an unusual child of the 1960s who
did not mark the moment with a celebratory joint. But the novelty
would soon wear off. And from then on, the places where it is easiest
to obtain drugs would no longer be the inside of jails and inner-city
school playgrounds.

Imagine a situation – as John Ashton started to do at Carlisle
Racecourse – where all drugs were sold in pharmacies licensed for the
purpose. Taxation could be set at a level that brought in revenue but
still made illegal dealing uncompetitive. For the more dangerous and
addictive drugs there would be compulsory medical supervision.
Identity checks and strict record-keeping would be required. There
would be laws (which could actually be enforced) against advertising,
adulteration, use in public, driving under the influence and supply to
minors.

In what way would that be worse than the present situation?

[sidebar]

4000BC

Sumerian text refers to the poppy as “hul gil”, “plant of
joy”

2727BC

First recorded use of cannabis in Chinese medicine

c. 0AD

Psychotropic effects of cannabis mentioned in Chinese
texts

1569

First medical account of the coca plant

c. 1660

Thomas Sydenham, “the father of English medicine”, standardises
laudanum tincture of opium as a cure-all

1800 Napoleon bans his troops in Egypt from following the local custom
of smoking hashish

1860

Opium trade legalised in China after the end of the second opium
war

1884

Freud recommends cocaine for various ailments

1886 John S. Pemberton invents Coca-Cola, containing cocaine and
caffeine

1903

Cocaine removed from Coca-Cola

1909 US bans import of opium for non-medical uses

1912

Opiates banned internationally under Hague Convention

1914

US regulates use of cocaine

1915

Utah becomes first US state to ban cannabis

1920

Opiates and cocaine banned in UK

1922 Diary of a Drug Fiend is published, a fictional account of
addiction

1928 Recreational use of cannabis banned in UK

1936

Film Reefer Madness is released

1937

US effectively bans cannabis

1966

LSD banned in UK

1967

“Legalise Pot” rally held in Hyde Park

1977

Ecstasy banned in UK

1980s

US starts funding coca crop eradication in South America

1984

US first lady Nancy Reagan begins “Just Say No” campaign

Mid-1980s

Crack cocaine becomes widespread in US cities

1992

Bill Clinton says he smoked marijuana, but did not
inhale

1993

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar dies in a police shoot-out in
Medellin, Colombia. Four years earlier, Forbes magazine had listed him
as the seventh-richest person in the world, with a personal fortune
close to $25bn

1998

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan announces 10-year plan for real
progress to eliminate drug cultivation

2001

Portugal decriminalises drug use

2004

UK government downgrades cannabis from class B to class C, making it
officially less harmful

2009

UK restores cannabis to class B, against the recommendations of its
scientific advisers

**********************************************************************

Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

=.

Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009
Subject: #409 Marijuana … Has No Medicinal Benefit – Kerlikowske

MARIJUANA … HAS NO MEDICINAL BENEFIT – KERLIKOWSKE

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #409 – Sunday, 2 August 2009

On the 23rd of July The Fresno Bee http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n000/a144.html
quoted our drug czar:

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske
said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS – Save Our
Sierra – a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno
County.

Since then the remark has spread to other newspapers.

Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop wrote a column which has appeared in
newspapers from the East Coast to Hawaii which quotes Kerlikowske’s
remarks. Today it was printed in a Georgia newspaper, below.

Any time a newspaper prints anything which mentions drug czar Gil
Kerlikowske the item is likely to be a worthy target for a letter to
the editor.

Bookmark this page to spot the articles and opinion items
http://www.mapinc.org/people/Kerlikowske

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Pubdate: Sun, 2 Aug 2009

Source: Athens Banner-Herald (GA)

Copyright: 2009 The Providence Journal Company

Contact: http://www.onlineathens.com/feedback.shtml

Author: Froma Harrop

OBAMA BLOWING SMOKE ON MARIJUANA

The popular TV series “Weeds” is about a widowed suburban mother who
deals pot to preserve her family’s cushy California dream. Not a few
Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state.

California has legalized medical marijuana, its cannabis crop is
valued at $17 billion a year, and people there smoke pot openly. But
the state can’t collect a penny of revenues from the enormous enterprise.

As California faced budget Armageddon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
called for “a debate” on the potential of tapping marijuana as a
source of tax revenues. That’s all he can do, because federal law
still criminalizes marijuana use.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron already has calculated the sort of
revenues California and other states could see were marijuana taxed
like cigarettes and alcohol. California’s taxes would easily top $100
million a year.

But that’s the least of it. Miron puts California’s costs of enforcing
the marijuana ban – policing, the courts, jail time – at $981 million
a year.

Nationally, legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion a year on
drug-war spending, according to Miron. And government could raise $6.2
billion annually in tax revenues.

A vain hope rose that President Obama’s naming of Gil Kerlikowske as
drug czar would lead to a more rational and humane policy on drugs. As
Seattle’s police chief, Kerlikowske oversaw the city’s annual Hempfest
(a giant and mellow smoke-in) without bothering the celebrants.

But Kerlikowske announced this month that “marijuana is dangerous and
has no medicinal benefit.” And to end any idea that the hip, liberal
Obama administration would ease up on pot, he added, “Legalization is
not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine.”

Obama readily admits having used marijuana in his youth (in addition
to cocaine). And each year, many thousands of Americans are arrested
and their lives ruined for doing what he did. Does Obama get to be
president only because he wasn’t caught?

Miron is a libertarian who sees all drug prohibition as interfering
with people’s private lives. But he well understands the politics that
stop politicians from taking the no-brainer position on marijuana.

“Democrats know that the potheads are going to vote for them anyway,”
he told me, “and the people on the other side who care about this
stuff know that this is really a big deal.” If marijuana were
legalized, and the sky didn’t fall in, many drug laws would crack.

In previous economic downturns, state and local governments had turned
to casinos and other gambling for revenues. These tough times may push
legislators to ease their umbrage over additional “sinful” activities.

If they want to tax marijuana, they’ll have to legalize it. But even
the lesser step of decriminalization – whereby people may possess
marijuana but not sell it – would save the billions of dollars spent
going after users.

Selling the public on expanded gambling and legalized marijuana
require different arguments. For one thing, marijuana never was part
of the official culture. But it does have an advantage over gambling
as a revenue source: It doesn’t compete with other taxed businesses.
Casinos take entertainment dollars away from restaurants, amusement
parks and movie theaters. Legal marijuana would take business away
from foreign drug gangs.

A bill to “tax and regulate” marijuana like alcohol now before the
California legislature has strong support. But it’s not going anywhere
as long as “legalization” is not in Obama’s vocabulary. The word
“hypocrisy” apparently has made the cut.

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Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org

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