This week, the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of allowing drug sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops; Holland's right-leaning government considers reclassifying potent marijuana as a hard drug; two top Mexican police officials are arrested for protecting drug traffickers; a Texas District Attorney will face legal action for his role in the Tulia drug sting; and the White House drug "czar's" office begins a nationwide tour promoting random drug testing in schools. APRIL 6- The Boston Globe reports: The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to rule on the constitutionality of police using dogs to sniff for illegal drugs in vehicles stopped for routine traffic violations. [continues 639 words]
With the American public's attention firmly directed toward the daily events of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror," the US-led and exported "War on Drugs" continues to exact crippling costs to taxpayers, minority groups, the environment, civil liberties and struggling democracies around the world. While terror alerts rise and fall and states struggle to fund their law enforcement budgets, the total number of marijuana arrests far exceed the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. [continues 1235 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]
John Walters penned an op-ed piece so patently misleading it could only be the work of a national drug czar [" 'Harmless' Marijuana? Don't Bet Your Life on It," Viewpoints, May 3]. Some highlights: Leading off with the admission "After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories," Walters then launches into a set of "new" marijuana scare stories. Walters cautions that "marijuana is far from harmless." This is known as a "straw-man argument," or one that is set up to be easily knocked down. Who is saying that marijuana is harmless? Living in a free society means managing acceptable risks. That said, marijuana has the most benign record of any drug under the sun. Aspirin and caffeine kill far more people every year than marijuana ever has. [continues 107 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 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free. We are a people unanimous in our conviction to eradicate marijuana from the face of the earth. Or are we? Despite 13 million marijuana arrests since 1970, several hundred billion dollars spent, and the development of the largest prison system in the history of the world, a record 34 percent of Americans believe that marijuana should be legalized. [continues 1912 words]
Seattle's D.A. Norm Maleng shuts down the Green Cross Patient (Marijuana) Co-op on the same day that Canada "legalizes" medical marijuana nationwide. In separate stories, the DEA, CIA, and UN Office of Drug Control are under scrutiny for a wide range of fraudulent activities. July 29 -- UK's The Observer reports: Evidence of gross mismanagement and possible corruption at the Vienna headquarters of the United Nations agency fighting drug crime has been obtained by The Observer. It casts further doubt on the competence of the agency's executive director, Pino Arlacchi, a former Italian senator who made his name fighting the Mafia. His contract will not be renewed when it expires in February. [continues 618 words]
"We can fill the jails every day but that doesn't mean law enforcement is effective." - Ron Pitts, deputy director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics June 25 - The Southeast Missourian reports: A half-century past its prime as one of the nation's top lead-mining towns, the rural community of Bonne Terre envisioned newfound prosperity when it was chosen as home for the state's largest and costliest prison. Instead, the city is in debt, new businesses are near broke and euphoria has turned to disappointment. Six years after the grand announcement, the $168 million prison still has no inmates -- and no scheduled opening date. [continues 612 words]
Kudos to Ray Hartmann's brilliant opinion piece "The Media Go to Pot" [RFT, May 16]. There is no shorter explanation for the irrational longevity of marijuana prohibition than "bad journalism." Many major media outlets have long since forsaken their social contract to report news both fairly and honestly when it comes to marijuana-related issues. Progressive developments which counter orthodox drug-war ideology are ignored, ridiculed or reported selectively, or with a condescending editorial bias front and center. Puns and cliches like "pipe dream," "high hopes" and "up in smoke" are commonly built into headlines to condition the reader to not take the issue too seriously -- after all, it's only "medical" marijuana. [continues 111 words]
To the editor: Joseph Manhardt wonders which state will write back with a carefully-crafted letter to question his analysis of medical marijuana (May 24, "Pot hardly a wonder drug"). In this case it is Washington State. I read his letter on a Web site called the Media Awareness Project at www.mapinc.org. As of this writing, MAP has posted 58,813 drug-war related articles from newspapers, magazines and journals all over the world. The Web site is updated with new articles many times a day. Anyone with an interest in drug policy can get various perspectives from publications in Ireland, Thailand, Jamaica, Iran, Great Britain, Colombia and, yes, Bath, Maine. [continues 94 words]
In the letter "Cheap pot ahead?," John Flynn wrote, "I believe we should depend on the Food and Drug Administration to determine which drugs are safe for the treatment of various illnesses and conditions." According to a 1998 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 100,000 Americans die every year from bad reactions to FDA-approved drugs. Researchers from the Toronto study said: "Serious adverse drug reactions are frequent ... more so than generally recognized. Fatal adverse drug reactions appear to be between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death." [continues 73 words]
Number of Americans arrested since 1970 on marijuana-related charges: over 13 million Estimated U.S. deaths in year 2000 attributed to TOBACCO: 400,000 ALCOHOL: 110,000 PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: 100,000 SUICIDE: 30,000 MURDER: 15,000 OVER-THE-COUNTER PAINKILLERS: 7,600 MARIJUANA: 0 "One of the problems that the marijuana-reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer-madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could." [continues 2590 words]
Number of Americans arrested since 1970 on marijuana-related charges: over 13 million Estimated U.S. deaths in year 2000 attributed to TOBACCO: 400,000 ALCOHOL: 110,000 PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: 100,000 SUICIDE: 30,000 MURDER: 15,000 OVER-THE-COUNTER PAINKILLERS: 7,600 MARIJUANA: 0 "One of the problems that the marijuana-reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer-madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could." [continues 2272 words]
Twelve Months in the Life of Marijuana Prohibition One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could. --Richard Cowan, former head of NORML, now editor of Marijuana News. http://www.marijuananews.com/ [continues 1960 words]
"One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could." –Richard Cowan [continues 3296 words]
News that marijuana use among young people is down from last year would be good news, if it were true. When the Partnership for a Drug-Free America released its findings that teenage marijuana use had dropped to 40 percent from last year's 41 percent, most newspapers trumpeted the findings, blissfully ignoring the estimated margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent. In all actuality, marijuana use may have gone up. Why would the group stand behind such questionable numbers? The reasoning came out later in its press release that these "optimistic" findings justify the billion-dollar media awareness campaign begun by drug czar Barry McCaffrey. As with most new studies and findings supporting the counterproductive disaster of drug prohibition, spin is thicker than intellectual integrity. It seems that drug use is either "skyrocketing" or "plummeting" upon the fund-raising cycle of the organizations that butter their bread with drug prohibition. Kevin Nelson, Bow [end]
New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson certainly makes newspaper editorial boards uncomfortable. For the past 30 years, America's Noble Experiment Part II, Drug Prohibition, has suffered a lack of high-profile political opponents. Though other highly respected anti-prohibitionists have included Walter Cronkite, William F. Buckley Jr., Hugh Downs and Carl Sagan, a currently seated and highly vocal Republican governor is much harder to ignore. There is a reason why there are no publicized, national debates regarding the efficacy of the drug war paradigm - because it is intolerant of dissent. Survival of this counterproductive policy depends upon unquestioned obedience to hysterical claims, wholesale demonization of drugs and their users, and sole reliance upon government-approved experts who make their living off this experiment in mass incarceration of the poor. While Johnson certainly has a vast array of responsibilities to which he should be encouraged to attend, his courageous stance against an intellectually bankrupt policy should be applauded, not suppressed. KEVIN NELSON-Bow, Wash. [end]
You would have to be smoking some particularly "funny stuff" to ignore these facts: Tobacco kills 450,000 Americans per year, alcohol 125,000, marijuana 0. Yet 12 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana charges since 1970, with many going to jail and losing their cars, homes, and even custody of their children. If you don't think children can see through the hypocrisy of this "message," you are seriously out of touch with the intellectual prowess of children. Marijuana Prohibition is a counterproductive fraud. It is an intellectually bankrupt policy that is causing far more harm than legalized marijuana ever could. Hallelujah that the Democratic Party had the courage to make this a public issue. I'm sure our mainstream media will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into an open debate on this matter. Kevin Nelson, Bow [end]
The Democratic Party convention passed a resolution supporting the legalization of marijuana and The Seattle Times gasps. How dare anyone publicly challenge marijuana Prohibition orthodoxy. What will become of all our sacred cash cows? ("Democrats' pot plan," editorial, June 16.) You would have to be smoking some particularly "funny stuff" to ignore these facts: Tobacco kills 450,000 Americans per year, alcohol 125,000, marijuana 0. Yet 12 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana charges since 1970, with many going to jail and losing their cars, homes, and even custody of their children. If you don't think children can see through the hypocrisy of this "message," you are seriously out of touch with the intellectual prowess of children. [continues 65 words]
Mr. Howard asks: Why fight for marijuana legalization when there are so many other urgent concerns in the world today? For starters, America currently has the largest prison system in the history of the world. Twelve million Americans have been arrested [on] marijuana [charges] since 1970. Would you be better off today, Mr. Howard, if you had been among these hapless individuals - who may have lost their jobs, driver's licenses, college loans, or custody of their children? There are numerous laws that single out and punish marijuana smokers, uniquely, with no corollary statutes addressing violent crimes - i.e., California's "Smoke a Joint, Lose Your License". [continues 229 words]
So, George W. Bush Jr. allegedly snorted cocaine as a young man. Gee, what a surprise. Well, to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy, it seems that he has only two options of how to proceed from here. He can (A): End the arbitrary criminalization of non-violent drug users whose downfall was to get caught doing exactly what he did for many years as a member of the protected class (there, but for the grace of God, goes George); Or (B): As a show of good faith in the brutal drug laws he continues to support, estimate how much cocaine he snorted in his youth, then sentence himself to the appropriate number of years in prison- 10, 20, 30, life. [continues 70 words]
