What to Watch for in the Question 2 Campaign August 28, 1953: California Attorney General Edmund (Pat) Brown announced that the fight against marijuana was "showing marked results." Voters have become accustomed to seeing and hearing the truth shaved in political campaigns. Yet it often comes in a subjective form. Yes, Candidate A is misrepresenting Candidate B about Issue C, but it's done in a way that it hangs from the edge of truth by the fingernails and no one can actually say it was a case of lying. That word is rarely used in political campaigns. [continues 2823 words]
Illegals Aren't The Only Worry Americans Encounter With Open Borders The two groups with the most to lose with a Donald Trump victory on Nov. 8 would be the Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese suppliers. The reason is pretty simple: Mr. Trump has made securing the border his principal campaign theme. If the border is secured by a wall or some combination of means against the flood of illegal aliens and potential terrorists, then it automatically puts a major hit on the flow of narcotics across the border. If they can't get the illegals in, they can't get the dope in, either. [continues 700 words]
Yasmin Hurd raises rats on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that will blow your mind. Though they look normal, their lives are anything but, and not just because of the pricey real estate they call home on the 10th floor of a research building near Mount Sinai Hospital. For skeptics of the movement to legalize marijuana, the rodents are canaries in the drug-policy coal mine. For defenders of legalization, they are curiosities. But no one doubts that something is happening in the creatures' trippy little brains. [continues 3003 words]
Professional reformers, longtime activists, and stakeholders in the marijuana industry attended an invitation-only meeting at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland January 9 to discuss plans for a marijuana 'legalization' initiative to be on the ballot in California in 2016. The invitations came from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform (CCPR), a group led by Dale Sky Jones that was formed after the defeat of a legalization measure in 2010, and the Drug Policy Alliance, represented by lobbyist Jim Gonzales The keynote speaker was Bill Zimmerman, a Los Angeles campaign consultant who is widely credited with masterminding the 1996 Proposition 215 campaign, which legalized marijuana for medical use in California. [continues 3333 words]
Local and State Officials at Fault America's drug abuse woes have been exacerbated by a lack of leadership from above and at the local level, four former drug czars told a gathering of some 2,500 anti-drug activists Tuesday. Still, they said, the nation has repelled other illegal drug crises, such as crack cocaine and methamphetamine, and can do it again, even with marijuana. The keys are national leadership, public education and support for frontline opponents of drug abuse. [continues 548 words]
The American Comeback of Industrial Hemp After serving nearly 80 years on narcotics charges, hemp is back, semi-legalized in the 2014 Farm Bill. Its new age is a chemical renaissance. Experimental medicines extracted from hemp seed oil will treat epilepsy, migraine headaches, glaucoma, and diabetic and other nerve pain; there may even be applications for multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. The plant's rough outer bast fibers, formerly waste, can be used in super-capacitors to store energy for electronic devices; these cooked carbon nanosheets, at least as efficient as current materials including graphene, were unveiled at the annual exposition of the American Chemical Society, held last summer in San Francisco. [continues 3054 words]
As Narcotic Trade Shifts Toward Caribbean, More Coordination Is Possible The river of illegal drugs rushing north through Central America and the Caribbean tends to avoid one conspicuous hook-shaped obstacle. Cuba is surrounded by countries used as cartel way stations. But it has distinguished itself as a tough place to traffic drugs - and as an unlikely behind-the-scenes partner with its decades-long rival, the United States. While the U.S. and Cuban governments have squared off over politics and the American economic embargo for generations, they have also quietly cooperated on drug-enforcement issues, passing information on movements of suspected drug boats through the Caribbean. As relations may be warming between the United States and Cuba, and Latin American drug flows to the United States are shifting away from Mexico and toward the Caribbean, the narcotics issue could be a source of further cooperation between the two countries. [continues 1055 words]
San Bernardino, Calif. - In the "medication area" of the nation's biggest marijuana exposition, scantily clad young women hand out marshmallows they've dipped into a rushing fountain of pot-laced chocolate. A few steps away, Anthony Ramirez offers free hits from a bong filled with the waxy marijuana extract that his family started producing when a friend's mother needed relief from the pain of lupus. Across a vast outdoor plaza lined with hundreds of booths, this month's Cannabis Cup gathering in Southern California has attracted more than 10,000 visitors at $40 a ticket. By mid afternoon, some of them are sprawled on overstuffed couches that merchants have thoughtfully provided. Others move from booth to booth, sampling wares from businesses that have risen from the underground economy to create a burgeoning industry of hazy legality. [continues 4456 words]
The War on Drugs has dragged on longer than the war in Afghanistan and nearly as long as the War on Poverty. And with the same debatable - and costly - results. President Nixon was first to declare war - a "global war," he said. Elvis Presley enlisted as a celebrity volunteer. The King of Rock 'n' Roll himself later succumbed to drugs. With increasing military, law enforcement and prison costs, the war raged on through succeeding presidencies down to this day. In 1982, President Reagan said there would be a "Drug-Free America" by 1995. [continues 328 words]
Drug Czars Join Effort to Stop States From Superseding Federal Laws DENVER - The Obama administration is facing rising national and international pressure to nullify efforts in Colorado and Washington state to implement new laws legalizing recreational marijuana use. Nine former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs and four former drug czars are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee this week to "encourage Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to adhere to long-standing federal law and policy in this regard" at its Wednesday oversight hearing. [continues 461 words]
When The Register-Guard endorsed a no vote on Measure 80 in its Oct. 3 editorial, "Marijuana legalization: No, Measure 80 over-reaches, under-regulates," the editors erred in favor of big, over-reaching government. No policy in our nation wreaks as much havoc as does the drug war. In fact it is an international travesty that drives nearly 10 percent of annual global trade into the coffers of international drug syndicates or cartels. The drug war has created an incarceration system so huge that former federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey called it the "new gulag." [continues 693 words]
LAREDO -- The official welcome for the Logistics and Manufacturing Symposium here last week was delivered by Mayor Raul Salinas, who gave a rousing endorsement of his booming border city. "Laredo is open for business. Make sure you enjoy this safe and wonderful city," he told the assembled customs brokers, manufacturers and transporters, American and Mexican, and all involved in the auto industry. Salinas spoke with passion about the importance of cross-border cooperation and friendship, and Nuevo Laredo Mayor Benjamin Galvan offered similar sentiments. The two mayors then shared a hearty "abrazo." [continues 1474 words]
Twenty-Five Years After 'Miami Vice' Became Part of the Country'S Cocaine Culture Lore, Miami Is Leading the Nation in the Beginning Of the End of America'S Three-Decade Cocaine Epidemic, Say Experts In these rough economic times, another pricey extravagance appears to be waning in South Florida: cocaine. The city that gave rise to Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs has seen a decline in people seeking treatment for cocaine addiction or dying from the drug. Twenty five years after Miami Vice became part of the country's cocaine culture lore, Miami is leading the nation in the beginning of the end of America's three-decade cocaine epidemic, say experts. [continues 777 words]
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Last year, after more than two decades of debate, Congress finally addressed a gross disparity in sentencing for crimes involving different types of cocaine, crack and powder. Now, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has adopted federal sentencing guideline revisions that would allow thousands of convicted drug offenders to petition for reduced prison terms. It's not a universally popular move, but it's a revision that makes sense. The federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine were well-intentioned but turned out to be an overreaction to drug-related violence in the mid-1980s. Lawmakers, concluding that crack was far more dangerous than the powered form of the drug, made mandatory minimum sentences for crack 100 times higher than those for powder. [continues 435 words]
Last year, after more than two decades of debate, Congress finally addressed a gross disparity in sentencing for crimes involving different types of cocaine, crack and powder. Now, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has adopted federal sentencing guideline revisions that would allow thousands of convicted drug offenders to petition for reduced prison terms. It's not a universally popular move, but it's a revision that makes sense. The federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine were well-intentioned but turned out to be an overreaction to drug-related violence in the mid-1980s. Lawmakers, concluding that crack was far more dangerous than the powered form of the drug, made mandatory minimum sentences for crack 100 times higher than those for powder. [continues 536 words]
The Public Understands How Disastrous It's Been -- Now It's Time for the Politicians and Law Enforcement to Change Course. The "War on Drugs" was launched by President Richard Nixon 40 years ago this week. In 1980, at the end of its first decade, I began a nine-year career as a "captain" in the war on drugs. I was the attorney in the U.S. House of Representatives principally responsible for overseeing DEA and writing anti-drug laws as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. [continues 2280 words]
You hear few if any arguments that the dangers and devastating effects of methamphetamine are overstated. The evidence of meth's toll is everywhere. Jails and prisons are increasingly crowded with meth users and meth makers. The Georgia Meth Project's dramatizations of meth tragedies are as graphic and uncompromising as any public-service spots that have ever appeared on television; yet nobody is saying -- as has been said of other, earlier anti-drug campaigns -- that the approach is hyperbolic to the point of being counterproductive. You don't hear people accuse the anti-meth campaign of crying wolf. [continues 376 words]
Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general, was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton from 1996 to 2001. He was in that role when methamphetamine use began to spread rapidly in the United States. He knows the extent of the problem and the ways the government and law enforcement are combating it. On a recent visit to Columbus, McCaffrey sat down with the Ledger-Enquirer to discuss meth, its use and its growth as a recreational drug. [continues 932 words]
Government Balks at Covering Treatment for Painkiller Dependency BRAINTREE - In the space of a few hours, on bomb-clearing patrol near Balad, Iraq, US Army Corporal Eric Small and his unit were rocked by three separate roadside explosions. He sustained serious injuries to his head, back, neck, and hip. Small's combat days were over. It was the summer of 2008, and Small spent 10 months convalescing in military hospitals. He came home to Massachusetts with two lasting wartime souvenirs: a Purple Heart medal and a painkiller addiction. [continues 1318 words]
Legalizing Marijuana Through Prop. 19 Would Only Add to the State's Problems. Californians will face an important decision in November when they vote on whether to legalize marijuana. Proponents of Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, rely on two main arguments: that legalizing and taxing marijuana would generate much-needed revenue, and that legalization would allow law enforcement to focus on other crimes. As experts in the field of drug policy, policing, prevention, education and treatment, we can report that neither of these claims withstand scrutiny. [continues 752 words]
