California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, but like the pimply-faced stoner dude you may have known in high school, it hasn't had the healthiest of relationships with Mary Jane. The Golden State differs from most others with medical pot laws in that it doesn't actually regulate production and sale of the herb. Instead, it lets cities and counties enact their own laws-though in practice most haven't. The result has been the Wild West of weed: Almost any adult can score a scrip and some bud from a local dispensary, assuming, of course, that it hasn't yet been raided and shut down by the feds. [continues 477 words]
Harvard man Felipe Calderon is headed back to his alma mater, much to the chagrin of his detractors. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who led a controversial military crackdown on drug cartels, is moving to the United States to take an academic fellowship with Harvard University. But protesters, both Mexican and American, say that given Calderon's political past, he shouldn't be offered this prestigious position or even allowed to work here. "It's a total disgrace to the families of Mexican citizens who lost their lives because of the drug war," says John Randolph, who worked for the US Border Patrol for 26 years before retiring, and has posted a petition on Change.org asking Harvard to rescind Calderon's fellowship. [continues 525 words]
Have You Ever Looked at Our Marijuana Policy? I Mean, Really Looked at It? WHEN WE THINK of the drug war, it's the heavy-duty narcotics like heroin and cocaine that get most of the attention. And why not? That's where the action is. It's not marijuana that is sustaining the Taliban in Afghanistan, after all. When Crips and Bloods descend into gun battles in the streets of Los Angeles, they're not usually fighting over pot. The junkie who breaks into your house and steals your Blu-ray player isn't doing it so he can score a couple of spliffs. [continues 2407 words]
How Right-Wing Posses Started the Crack Trade, and Other Tales That Will Blow Your Mind. Vivian Blake's War In the late 1970s, a young Jamaican man named Vivian Blake, a scholarship kid from the Tivoli Gardens ghetto of Kingston, arrived in New York as part of a traveling cricket exhibition, stuck around, and began selling marijuana. One of the last great political proxy fights of the Cold War was then unfolding in Jamaica: Both the left-wing party, friendly to Castro, and its right-wing opponents built violent electioneering posses to persuade friendly voters and attack unfriendly ones--800 Jamaicans died. Blake was affiliated with the right-wing Shower Posse. He helped funnel pot and, later, cocaine to the United States and sent guns back home to help the posses intimidate voters. After the election, the new government tried to drive the posses off the island, and many arrived in New York and Miami, fully formed, violent organizations, deprived of their political purpose and looking for something to do. [continues 1329 words]
Since 1998, the Drug Czar Has Been Mandated to Lie to the American People. So What Would a Fact-Based Drug Policy Look Like? AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who's been the biggest liar? There are all too many contenders, yet one is so floridly surreal that he deserves special attention. Nope, it's not Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo. It's a trusted authority figure who's lied for 11 years now, no matter which party held sway. (Nope, it's not Alan Greenspan.) This liar didn't end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lie--as a prerequisite for holding the job. [continues 803 words]
There hasn't yet been a tin or copper war, but there once was a nitrate war, and in the past decade Bolivia has seen both a water war and a gas war-the latest struggles over the nation's only real riches, the lucrative resources granted by God and geology. In this country nearly twice the size of France, where Amazonian jungles butt against 12,000-foot plateaus, the winners have always come from elsewhere. The Inca royalty of Cuzco (in modern-day Peru) took power from the local Aymara; the Spanish took gold and silver; the British took tin; recently, multinationals Bechtel and Suez tried to privatize the water supplies of Cochabamba and El Alto, while other foreign companies fought for control of Bolivia's prodigious supply of natural gas; cartels continue to take the coca and its profits. [continues 903 words]
If Passed, a Fall Ballot Initiative With Some Unlikely Supporters Could Turn Reno and Vegas into American Amsterdams. Voters have been losing their taste for the war on drugs lately; in the past few years, states from Arizona and Alaska to California and Hawaii have moved toward making marijuana, in particular, a low priority for law enforcement, with first-offense possession cases often dismissed with small-time fines and medical-marijuana measures on the books in several states. But the initiative voters in Nevada will be considering this fall goes much further: The "tax and regulate" measure, whose supporters got it on the ballot by collecting 86,000 signatures, would allow anyone over 21 to possess up to one ounce for personal use, would set up a system of pot shops (at a specified distance from schools), and would tax marijuana in a manner comparable to alcohol. [continues 859 words]
The U.S. Drug Czar's Battle With Canada's Prince Of Pot If you were the guy everyone called the prince of pot and the U.S. drug czar came to town rattling his saber, you'd probably have the sense to stay out of his way. At the very least, you wouldn't go out of your way to antagonize him, let alone pay $500 for the privilege. But that's exactly what Marc Emery did. Emery is a Canadian entrepreneur who presided over the world's largest marijuana seed sales business. [continues 810 words]
October 17, 2005 -- Gary Greenberg, a Mother Jones contributing writer, is a psychotherapist and professor of psychology, and the author of "Respectable Reefer," in the November/December issue of the magazine. Lester Grinspoon, M.D., is associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the author of Marihuana Reconsidered, and Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine. Lester Grinspoon: Sativex is the kind of thing I was concerned about when I first spoke of the concept of pharmaceuticalization in 1985 to describe Marinol.. At the time the federal government was under a lot of pressure to look at the medical uses of marijuana. So the government supported this little company Unimed to create Marinol, which is simply synthetic THC [tetrahyrdrocannabinol], which is identical to the THC that you find in cannabis. So Unimed comes out with it. It was very expensive, and I have yet to have a patient or to hear from a patient who thinks Marinol is as good as whole smoked herbal marijuana. With Sativex, Geoffrey Guy went to the home office and said in effect, "Look, everybody knows that cannabis has medicinal utilities," and the British government, just like the U.S. government, was being pressed to do something about it. He then said, "I have the plans for a product which will deliver all the medical capacities of cannabis, but at the same time not impose on the medical user the two most frightful things about cannabis -- the high and the pulmonary effect." To me, that was based on a deception because we know now that the pulmonary problems are minimal. As for the high, I don't believe that the high is a big problem in people with Crohn's Disease or Multiple Sclerosis, who feel better when they smoke cannabis-that's probably a function of the anti-depressant effect of this substance. What's the problem with that? [continues 3814 words]
How a Pulverized, Liquefied, and Doctor-Prescribed Form of Marijuana Could Transform the Drug-War Landscape IF IT WEREN'T FOR the little photo gallery on the wall, the office where Dr. William Notcutt's research assistants keep track of their patients would be just like any other cubicle at the James Paget Medical Center in England. As phones ring and stretchers wheel by and these three women go about their business, the snapshots--Cheryl Phillips, one of Notcutt's staffers, gently holding an emerald green bud of marijuana; a group of people in lab coats smiling for the camera, sinsemilla towering over their heads; a hangar-sized greenhouse stuffed to the gills with lush pot plants--are about the only evidence that this hospital in East Anglia is at the epicenter of one of the most extensive medical marijuana research projects in the world. [continues 5295 words]
LG: Sativex is the kind of thing I was concerned about when I first spoke of the concept of pharmaceuticalization in 1985 to describe Marinol. At the time the federal government was under a lot of pressure to look at the medical uses of marijuana. So the government supported this little company Unimed to create Marinol, which is simply synthetic THC [tetrahyrdrocannabinol], which is identical to the THC that you find in cannabis. But that THC they put into Schedule II -- it's so ridiculous! So Unimed comes out with it. It was very expensive, and I'll tell you Gary, I have yet to have a patient or to hear from a patient who thinks Marinol is as good as whole smoked herbal marijuana. With Sativex, Geoffrey Guy went to the home office and said in effect, "Look, everybody knows that cannabis has medicinal utilities," and the British government, just like the U.S. government, was being pressed to do something about it. He then said, "I have the plans for a product which will deliver all the medical capacities of cannabis, but at the same time not impose on the medical user the two most frightful things about cannabis -- the high and the pulmonary effect." To me, that was based on a deception because we know now that the pulmonary problems are minimal. As for the high, I don't believe that the high is a big problem in people with Crone's Disease or Multiple Sclerosis, who feel better when they smoke cannabis-that's probably a function of the anti-depressant effect of this substance. What's the problem with that? Secondly I question whether one can, in all instances where cannabis is useful as medicine, bring that utility in below the level at which one gets some degree of a psychoactive effect. [continues 3917 words]
If you were the guy everyone called the prince of pot and the U.S. drug czar came to town rattling his saber, you'd probably have the sense to stay out of his way. At the very least, you wouldn't go out of your way to antagonize him, let alone pay $500 for the privilege. But that's exactly what Marc Emery did. Emery is a Canadian entrepreneur who presided over the world's largest marijuana seed sales business. [continues 815 words]
Long before the War on Terror started driving U.S. foreign policy, Washington set out to win the War on Drugs, with a particular focus on nations like Colombia, which exports up to 90 percent of America's cocaine. But, as recent developments there illustrate, victory is still proving elusive. On Monday, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe offered more concessions to rightist paramilitary groups, promising to create additional "haven" areas where two warring organizations can negotiate with the government. In such havens, paramilitary leaders and troops can speak with government representatives without fear of arrest or extradition to the United States on drug-trafficking charges. In exchange, Uribe wants the groups to declare a cease-fire and begin disarming. [continues 604 words]
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and four of his Republican cronies are out to make the word "narco-terrorism" a household term. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post reports that a draft of the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act (that's VICTORY as an acronym) would make broad changes to drug trafficking laws, allow for expanded FBI and local police wiretapping, and clamp down on a traditional Middle Eastern form of money transfer. According to Ryan Singel at Wired News, a draft of the bill defines narco-terrorism as "the crime of selling, distributing or manufacturing a controlled substance with the intent of helping a terrorist group." Essentially, the Victory Act would make it easier for Ashcroft and his minions to charge drug offenders with aiding terrorists, and could potentially freeze the assets of a suspected offender. Though Hatch's spokespersons refused to comment on the legislation, she did acknowledge the push to investigate the drug-terrorism link, stating that Hatch "is continuing to look at all legislative options for combating the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism." [continues 636 words]
Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use By Jacob Sullum. - Tarcher/Putnam. In 1914, Henry Ford published a tract inveighing against a substance that was enjoying a spike in popularity. He gathered testimonials from a host of luminaries, including Booker T. Washington, who said that the drug caused "a blunting of the moral sense," and Thomas Edison, who said it "has a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is permanent and uncontrollable." "I will employ no person," Edison concluded, "who smokes cigarettes." [continues 1016 words]
When it comes to public-health appointments, the administration has its own litmus test. As the nation's premier research center, the National Institutes of Health is supposed to be insulated from politics. The agency has long appointed respected health professionals -- regardless of their political beliefs -- to advisory councils that help direct the nation's medical research on everything from genetic disorders to the common cold. "The NIH casts a broad net and deliberately creates a diverse council that can give them input," says Steven Hayes, a University of Nevada professor who sits on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse at the NIH. [continues 839 words]
The federal Drug Enforcement Agency ratcheted up its crackdown on medical marijuana clubs this week, confiscating thousands of plants and arresting four men in the San Francisco Bay Area. While the DEA has raided medical marijuana clubs several times in recent months, the arrests on Feb. 13 mark the first time suspects have been taken into custody. Just hours before DEA head Asa Hutchinson was scheduled to speak in San Francisco, DEA agents seized 600 marijuana plants from the Sixth Street Harm Reduction Center, a well-known medical marijuana club located in a gritty section of downtown. [continues 382 words]
Washington is warning Americans that drug addicts help support terrorists. But what about the nation's other habit -- cheap oil? Buy drugs, support terrorism. That was the unsubtle message from federal drug policy officials as they launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign during Sunday's Super Bowl. Certainly, they have some evidence on their side. Terrorist groups from southeast Asia to South America are in the drug trafficking business. But in the meantime, another hazardous American addiction goes unchallenged. No crusade has been launched against a national dependency that delivers billions of dollars each year to foreign powers whose support for terror is far from fanciful: Oil. [continues 809 words]
Your article "Surgical Strike" (November/December) quotes people who look at our organization, Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), as anti-poor and anti-black because we offer drug addicts $200 to accept long-term birth control or sterilization so they won't produce more addicted babies. An NAACP official says, "How can you come in and say that you are concerned with the welfare of the mothers...?" Good question. We don't say we're concerned with the welfare of the mothers. CRACK's mission is to stop them from having more doomed babies. [continues 180 words]
With the confirmation of John Walters as the new drug czar, the US is committing itself to a punishment-based War on Drugs -- even as most of its allies are declaring cease-fires. In America's cities, punishment remains the rule in the War on Drugs. Last December 5th marked the 68th anniversary of the effective end of Prohibition, drawing to close this nation's "noble experiment" with criminalizing alcohol. So it seems ironic that it was also the day on which the United States Senate confirmed John P. Walters as the new director of the Office of National Drug Policy -- the nation's drug czar. [continues 1574 words]
East African Immigrants Are Risking Prison For A Taste Of Home. Mohamad Jama was crossing a street in downtown Minneapolis when a police officer stopped him. It was rush hour and Jama was hurrying to send money to his brother back in Somalia. "It was my fault," says Jama. "I was jaywalking." But he was surprised when the officer told him to freeze, turned him against a wall, and started searching him -- he says -- without his consent. The officer then reached into his belt and pulled out two small bundles of khat leaves. Suddenly, Jama was under arrest for possessing what to him were like tea leaves. But to the officer they were a Schedule I narcotic, equivalent to heroin or LSD. And that, depending on state laws, can mean prison, deportation, and serious problems for an immigrant who suddenly finds himself a convicted felon. [continues 457 words]
For Small Farmers In Isolated Settlements, La Coca Is The Only Viable Cash Crop - And Leftist Guerrillas Are The Only Government. THE DUSTY VILLAGES along the banks of the Caguan River are among scores of settlements in Colombia's sparsely populated southern reaches that have been thrown together with wood planks and tin roofs. These frontier towns serve as home to the campesinos who make their living from coca, the raw material for cocaine. Most arrived within the past decade in search of land and economic opportunity, fleeing the fighting that has splintered the country for 37 years. As coca cultivation shifted from Peru and Bolivia to the hinterlands of Colombia, settlers cleared swaths of virgin rain forest in the Caqueta province, and remote outposts along the region's main rivers now bustle with life and commerce. [continues 526 words]
Is A Group That Pays Addicts To Be Sterilized Defending Children Or Exploiting The Vulnerable? Barbara Harris was eager to become a foster mother when she received a call from a social worker in 1990, asking her to take in an eight-month-old girl born to a woman addicted to crack cocaine. Harris, a waitress at a pancake house, agreed. Over the next two years, she and her husband provided a foster home in Orange County, California, for three more children born to the same woman, including one boy who suffered violently from his mother's addiction. "He shook," Harris recalls. "His eyes looked like they would pop out of his head. He'd sleep a few minutes and he'd wake up screaming." [continues 923 words]
Immigrants Are Risking Prison For A Taste Of Home. Mohamad Jama was crossing a street in downtown Minneapolis when a police officer stopped him. It was rush hour and Jama was hurrying to send money to his brother back in Somalia. "It was my fault," says Jama. "I was jaywalking." But he was surprised when the officer told him to freeze, turn him against a wall, and started searching him - he says - without his consent. The officer then reached into his belt and pulled out two small bundles of khat leaves. Suddenly, Jama was under arrest for possessing what to him were like tea leaves. But to the officer they were a Schedule I narcotic, equivalent to heroin or LSD. And that, depending on state laws, can mean prison, deportation, and serious problems for an immigrant who suddenly finds himself a convicted felon. [continues 457 words]
Federal agents have destroyed Alex White Plume's industrial hemp crop for the second year running. But the courts may soon decide whether Native Americans can grow THC-free cannabis. For the second year in a row, the War on Drugs has come to the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian reservation. On the morning of July 30, federal agents arrived at tribal member Alex White Plume's farm outside Manderson, South Dakota, cutting down and hauling away three acres of industrial hemp. [continues 655 words]
Bush's Education Secretary Is Aiming To Take The High Out Of Higher Education -- By Cutting Off Financial Aid To Convicted Drug Users. Tens of thousands of American students may be denied federal financial assistance this year, as the Bush administration steps up enforcement of a 1998 law barring aid to applicants with past drug convictions (see our story Smoke a Joint, Lose Your Loan). Last year only 8,620 students were denied assistance after admitting to a drug conviction on their aid applications. Another 300,000 left the "drug question" unanswered, but had their forms processed anyway. This year, however, the Education Department has announced that failing to answer the question will result in a rejected application. So far, with nearly 4 million applications processed out of an expected total of 10 million, almost 15,000 students have left the question unanswered, and some 27,000 have admitted to a drug offense. [continues 206 words]
Caught between the War on Drugs and federal adoption law, growing numbers of women prisoners are facing the permanent loss of their children. Karen knows that it was her own mistakes that got her into trouble: "I messed up," she admits. She was arrested in 1999 for intent to manufacture methamphetamine, a charge that kept her in jail for three months. Her son, then three months old, was placed in foster care. To get him back she would have to abide by a "reunification plan" that required parenting classes and regular drug testing after her release. For several months, Karen (who asked that her real name not be printed) progressed well, according to her lawyer. [continues 660 words]
The desperately ill members of a Santa Cruz marijuana club aren't growing pot to get high or make money. They just want to find some relief. Dorothy Gibbs is lying in bed in her trailer, barely able to move. It is a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Santa Cruz, the October sun as full as July's. The curtains in Gibbs' room are half open; she is squinting as though the light stings her eyes. But her 90-year-old face, framed by a snowy froth of hair, looks cheerful, almost youthful. "I woke up in pain this morning," she says, "but then I took the marijuana and it made things better." [continues 2573 words]
The Desperately Ill Members Of A Santa Cruz Marijuana Club Aren't Growing Pot To Get High Or Make Money. They Just Want To Find Some Relief. DOROTHY GIBBS IS LYING IN BED in her trailer, barely able to move. It is a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Santa Cruz, the October sun as full as July's. The curtains in Gibbs' room are half open; she is squinting as though the light stings her eyes. But her 90-year-old face, framed by a snowy froth of hair, looks cheerful, almost youthful. "I woke up in pain this morning," she says, "but then I took the marijuana and it made things better." [continues 2572 words]
For Community Workers On Colombia's Cocaine Frontier, The War On Drugs Is Getting Personal. Community organizer Eder Sanchez pulls away from a breakfast of liver, rice, and plantains and uncaps his pen. He's sitting in a roadside cafeteria near the farming pueblo of La Hormiga in the southern Colombian state of Putumayo. Groves of plantain and yucca cut into the tropical forest here alongside fields covered with bushy coca plants. Putumayo is the world's cocaine frontier, the source of 50 percent of Colombia's coca crop. Sanchez is here to talk to local farmers about a new, U.S.-funded anti-narcotics offensive targeted primarily at this remote region. He knows that they fear for their future-and he's concerned about his own. [continues 960 words]
Efforts To Curtail The Production And Distribution Of Cocaine In Colombia For community workers on Colombia's cocaine frontier, the war on drugs is getting personal. Community organizer Eder Sanchez pulls away from a breakfast of liver, rice, and plantains and uncaps his pen. He's sitting in a roadside cafeteria near the farming pueblo of La Hormiga in the southern Colombian state of Putumayo. Groves of plantain and yucca cut into the tropical forest here alongside fields covered with bushy coca plants. Putumayo is the world's cocaine frontier, the source of 50 percent of Colombia's coca crop. Sanchez is here to talk to local farmers about a new, U.S.-funded anti-narcotics offensive targeted primarily at this remote region. He knows that they fear for their future--and he's concerned about his own. [continues 954 words]
Frankly, this sounds like a bad science-fiction movie. There are scientists in Florida who are scared of this stuff and what it might do. Why can no one else understand this? Is money blinding them to the fact that their own families could be affected? By the time the average Joe hears about something like this, the deed has already been done. Next, we'll read that hundreds of people are dying because of this stupid mistake. Linda G. Klein [end]
RE: "Drug Control or Biowarfare?" In response to your article, "Drug Control or Biowarfare?," I am dumbfounded at the lengths that some industrialists will go to secure profits at all costs. Dr. Sands is truly a criminal, and so are his US-government accomplices. I am a Hawaii resident, and I was also troubled to learn of the mycoherbicide research on the island of Kauai. I wonder how much damage has already been done to the island's ecosystem, and what is yet to come. Apparently innocent Colombians (as well as Americans) are expendable in the War on Drugs. Eric J. Hoagland [end]
By the time the average Joe hears about something like this, the deed has already been done. Next, we'll read that hundreds of people are dying because of this stupid mistake. Linda G. Klein [end]
MYTH: Marijuana is a gateway drug. FACT: For every 104 people who have used marijuana, there is only one regular user of cocaine and less than one heroin addict. (1) MYTH: Marijuana is addictive. FACT: Less than one percent of people who consume marijuana do so on a daily or near daily basis. An even smaller minority develop dependence on marijuana. Withdrawal symptoms, if experienced at all, are mild. (2) MYTH: Marijuana lowers motivation. FACT: For twenty five years, researchers have searched for a marijuana- induced amotivational syndrome and have failed to find it. Of course, people who are constantly intoxicated, no matter what the drug, are not likely to be productive. (3) [continues 329 words]
When the bombs stopped falling over Yugoslavia last June, a flood of humanity swept through the Balkans as thousands of Kosovar Albanians returned home from refugee camps. But over the craggy mountains separating Yugoslavia and Albania, a far less innocent traffic returned. A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels such as the Rogner in Tirana, the Albanian capital. It was time for criminal elements with close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan Road-one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. [continues 2895 words]
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- In March 1968, three Army platoons searched a small South Vietnamese village for Viet Cong. They didn't find any, but they killed 347 unarmed men, women and children. Investigative journalists unearthed the secret of the My Lai massacre more than a year later. The stories spilled across front pages and filled the airwaves, sealing America's revulsion to the war. The body count at My Lai represents roughly one-third the number of Americans who die each day from diseases linked to tobacco. Yet for much of this century, the dangers of smoking received scant attention from journalists who usually revel in ferreting out government scandals or corporate malfeasance. [continues 2659 words]
