The War On Drugs Destroys Lives But Does Nothing To Mitigate The Abuse Of Drugs In This Country OUR OBSESSION WITH drugs and our national failure to distinguish among them - equating the effects of pot, for instance, with those of heroin - have corrupted our criminal-justice system. Consider the following: as of 2000, United States prisons held 458,131 people incarcerated for drug offenses alone. That's 100,000 more inmates than the 356,626 people incarcerated throughout the European Union for all offenses combined. [continues 813 words]
I was the person that asked Howard Dean at his Madison rally if he could justify jailing patients who use marijuana for medical purposes. I was not a heckler, as your story characterized me. What I actually said was "Multiple sclerosis patients in England will have prescription marijuana (in the form of a sublingual spray) this year that MS patients here would be arrested for having." When Mr. Dean responded that his position on this issue "is a little complicated" I added "my wife died in June after battling multiple sclerosis for 32 years and marijuana was of great help to her." It was then that he decided to talk about medical marijuana for a couple of minutes. [continues 251 words]
Administrative Law Judge Jonathan Lew has rejected a motion to dismiss the state Medical Board's case against Tod Mikuriya. The Berkeley psychiatrist, who has approved cannabis use by some 7,500 patients in recent years, will have to defend his handling of 17 cases at a hearing that's scheduled to start Sept. 3 in Oakland. According to Mikuriya, all the patients involved have benefited from cannabis use, and none have reported adverse effects. In case you've just joined us, the Medical Board of California is the state agency that issues licenses to physicians -and can revoke or suspend them. Mikuriya, who will turn 70 next month, not only approves cannabis use by patients, he has devoted his whole career to studying its applications. In 1995-96 he was medical advisor to the organizers of the Prop 215 campaign. When it passed into law and Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey warned California doctors not to recommend marijuana, he specifically ridiculed Mikuriya's claims as to its versatility and usefulness in a wide range of conditions. [continues 1102 words]
The war on terror may be too new to declare victory or defeat. But this nation has been fighting a war on drugs for more than a quarter-century, ever since New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller mandated harsh drug sentencing in 1973--and it may be time to announce that this is one war we've lost. More than a million people are serving time in our prisons and jails for nonviolent offenses, most drug-related, at a cost to the public of some $9.4 billion a year. Many billions more are spent by the states and the federal government on drug interdiction, drug-law enforcement and drug prosecutions. Harsh laws that require lengthy minimum sentences for the possession of even small amounts of drugs have created a boom in the incarceration of women, tearing mothers away from their children. Much of the country's costly foreign-policy commitments--especially in Latin America and the Caribbean--are determined by drug-war priorities. And yet drug use has actually soared, with twice as many teenagers reporting illegal drug use in 2000 as in 1992. [continues 3122 words]
The Bush administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that bars the federal government from taking prescription licenses from doctors who recommend marijuana to patients for medical reasons. After the passage of California's medical marijuana initiative in 1996, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the drug czar, then Gen. Barry McCaffrey) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) moved to strip licenses to write prescriptions for drugs from physicians who recommended that their patients use marijuana for medical purposes. [continues 773 words]
Democrats Also on Attack Against Drug Czar, Drug War in General A series of recent votes on Capitol Hill suggest that the medical marijuana issue is causing fissures in what is becoming an increasingly shaky consensus in support of harsh anti-drug measures in Congress. While none of the votes resulted in victories for drug reformers, they appear to signal a growing acceptance of medical marijuana in Congress and the emergence of a partisan divide on drug policy, at least at the national political level. [continues 1542 words]
"We believe we have turned a corner, particularly with the coca crop, in Colombia." - Paul E. Simons, the U.S. State Department's top counternarcotics official, quoted by the Associated Press June 3, 2003 - see http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n831/a13.html For at least 30 years, the United States has repeatedly turned corners in the drug war. Back in 1973, it was President Richard Nixon who metaphorically strolled down the street of drug policy before veering off at an intersection. "We have turned a corner on drug addiction," said Nixon. [continues 496 words]
WASHINGTON -- If kids watch them often enough, ads warning about the dangers of smoking pot or taking Ecstacy can persuade them to stay away from drugs, according to a study released by an advocacy group Thursday. A survey of teens conducted for the Partnership for a Drug Free America found kids who see or hear anti-drug ads at least once a day are less likely to do drugs than youngsters who don't see or hear ads frequently. Teens who got a daily dose of the anti-drug message were nearly 40 percent less likely to try methamphetamine and about 30 percent less likely to use Ecstacy, the study found. When asked about marijuana, kids who said they saw the ads regularly were nearly 15 percent less likely to smoke pot. [continues 298 words]
WHEN DR. ANDREA Barthwell of the White House drug czar's office addressed the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco last month, she threw out an intriguing statistic: 16 million Americans use illegal drugs, 6 million of them need treatment. There are more than 291 million people in this country. The numbers, which come from a national survey, made me wonder whether the drug war is worth the cost. There's the dollar cost, and then there's the social cost of placing 16 million Americans outside the law. [continues 528 words]
The level of alcohol and drug dependency in this country is at crisis levels. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, of the 27 million Americans who now are abusing illegal drugs or alcohol regularly, 16 million need treatment, but only 3 million get it. The future looks equally bleak if we do not take action: Nearly one-fourth of eighth-graders say they have been drunk; and in addition to their alcohol use, 10.8 percent of youth aged 12-17 used illegal drugs last year. [continues 577 words]
Three physicians and about a dozen cannabis-using patients attended the May 8 meeting of the state Medical Board's Enforcement Committee to decry investigations of doctors who have made a subspeciality of monitoring cannabis use. The Board's chief Investigator, David Thornton, sought to reassure the Committee (and the concerned citizens) that his agents were not out to persecute doctors who approve marijuana use. Thronton described one "egregious example" of a physician whose "medical office contained a computer, a printer and a cash register. [continues 2629 words]
Perhaps one has to give some die-hard prohibitionists points for brazenness and for honesty of a sort. Last Thursday, a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee specifically authorized the "drug czar" to use taxpayer money in political campaigns - as long as it is "to oppose an attempt to legalize the use" of any currently illegal drug. Previously, the "drug czar," formally the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, was legally barred from using the money appropriated for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign for "partisan political purposes." [continues 357 words]
The State Of America's War On Drugs It was November 6, just after last fall's election, and John Walters was crowing. Three ballot initiatives seeking to legalize or decriminalize marijuana in Arizona, Nevada and Ohio all went down in defeat. "These failed initiatives represent the high-water mark of the drug-legalization movement. Common sense has prevailed," he declared. Unlike his predecessor Barry McCaffrey, Walters -- director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy -- is not a military man. But this day, Walters sounded very much like a commander who seizes upon success in one skirmish to galvanize the troops: "From now on, the tide turns our way," he said. [continues 1380 words]
Lawyers for Tod Mikuriya, M.D. - a psychiatrist who has lived and practiced in Berkeley since 1970 - have filed a motion to dismiss the case against him brought by the Medical Board of California (MBC). If the motion fails, Mikuriya will spend the week of May 19 in an Oakland courtroom defending his handling of 17 cases in which medical board investigators claim he "departed from the standard of care." Mikuriya, 69, is a leading authority on the medicinal use of cannabis. He has edited an anthology of pre-prohibition scientific papers and reported extensively on his own clinical observations. Since Proposition 215 passed in 1996, legalizing marijuana for medical use in California, he has approved and monitored its use by more than 7,000 patients, most of them seen at ad hoc clinics arranged by cannabis clubs in rural counties. [continues 1052 words]
The Marijuana Policy Project Leads A New Wave Of Local And National Drug Policy Reform Organizations Looking To Mainstream The Image Of The Anti-Prohibition Movement For 10 years or so I have had the privilege of being closely involved with the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MassCANN), the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law (NORML). I have volunteered as both producer of the Boston Common Freedom Rally and served as chair of the local chapter. Recently, I have had to curtail my involvement with MassCANN due to the demands of this paper and also due to a realization of the limitations that often plague non-profit, volunteer-based, grassroots organizations. Most anyone who has spent time involved with grassroots lobbying efforts is familiar with how a lack of funds, permanent management and full-time employees can hamper the efforts of dedicated people trying to affect local and national policy. [continues 3614 words]
"House Republicans Thursday unveiled a package of bills to combat drug abuse and vowed to make America virtually drug-free by 2002."- Reuters, May 1998 Welcome to America, 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free where President George Bush insists that casual drug users are financing terrorism, while his niece is caught with crack cocaine in drug rehab. Where one person is arrested approximately every 44 seconds on a marijuana charge. Where 77% of Texas drug convictions are found to involve less than one gram of a drug. [continues 3852 words]
The drug czar's Office of National Drug Control Policy (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov) has teamed up with the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) as part of its escalating war on marijuana. In letters sent to every prosecutor in the country on November 1, NDAA president Dan Alsobrooks and the drug czar's Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs, Scott Burns, hoisted the battle flag against pot, signaling prosecutors that they should make the prosecution of marijuana crimes a high priority and urging them to fight efforts to reform the drug laws. [continues 1038 words]
I read with concern your Dec. 29 article headlined "Drug traffic's newest wave." Even though it does not seem intentional, its orientation harms the Latino community settled in this region, especially those of Mexican origin. It is very unfortunate that the article attempted to analyze an extremely complex subject through a stereotyped vision that was overcome several years ago in the bilateral agenda between Mexico and the United States. It is true that in Mexico there are important criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking, which are being firmly fought under President Vicente Fox's administration, and it is also true that some Mexican workers are being used to smuggle drugs into the United States. However, as Andrea Bazan-Manson, executive director of El Pueblo, Inc. [a Hispanic advocacy group in Raleigh] was quoted as saying, the vast majority of Latino immigrants come to this country to work arduously in order to forge a better future for themselves and their families. It is true as well that the drug activity has no nationality, that the most attractive market for the trafficking organizations is on this side, and that thousands of individuals participate in the distribution chain, mainly American citizens. [continues 101 words]
"Meth Among Us, part three: The best weapon against meth? You!"(Dec. 4), contained a comment by Burnett County Sheriff Tim Curtin: "What D.A.R.E. teaches is alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are gateway drugs. They open the door to other, more serious drugs." The so-called "gateway theory" has been questioned for years. The Institute of Medicine report on marijuana, commissioned by ex-drug czar Barry McCaffrey and released in 1999, found it very dubious, and interestingly enough, the RAND Corporation just released a study concluding that marijuana use does not lead to experimentation with harder drugs, instead finding that teens begin using marijuana, simply because it is the most available substance. [continues 225 words]
Activists Rethink Strategy, Target Drug Czar Dec. 7 -- Regrouping after state initiatives to relax marijuana laws were defeated last month, some by crushing margins, advocates plan to build on public support for medical marijuana programs and have mounted an aggressive campaign to discredit federal officials who have made opposition to any tolerance of marijuana -- even for medical purposes -- a cornerstone of national drug policy. Supporters managed to get initiatives that would loosen prohibitions or penalties on personal use of marijuana on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, South Dakota and the District of Columbia. [continues 1530 words]
