WorldNetDaily's poll last Saturday concerned whether pot should be legalized. The final tally of respondents was 56 percent pro and 43 percent con with variation among those answers. An unqualified yes hit the charts at 32 percent. One percent answered "other." While not scientific and prone to problems, the response didn't surprise me much. There has always seemed a receptive attitude regarding changes to our current drug policies among WND readers. Since my first column on the subject, I've received overwhelmingly positive feedback to criticism of current policies and recommendations for change. [continues 833 words]
It's nice when folks tell the truth. It's just a shame when you have to go to a foreign country to do it. Speaking in Jamaica on Monday, Raphael Perl, international narcoterrorism expert for the Congressional Research Service, came right out and said what drug-law reformers have been saying for years: Legalizing drugs cuts crime. The less glamorous trade-off is equally well known: More drug use. "It is very clear that there is a direct correlation between decriminalization and legalization, and levels of addiction and drug use in a society," said Perl, according to the April 30 Jamaica Daily Gleaner. For "the societies that have experimented in this area, drug use goes up ... but crime goes down." [continues 703 words]
Kentucky Blue Reading about police corruption is standard fare for those following the drug war, but every now and then a singular sort of sleaze emerges. Such is the latest case out of Kentucky, where a pair of detectives have just been slapped with an indictment that reads like a paean to unscrupulous behavior, listing hundreds of alleged no-nos. The 472-count indictment includes allegations of tampering with drug evidence, stealing money from informants and even forging judges' signatures on warrants. Recalling the recent police-corruption scandals in Los Angeles, can anyone say "Rampart 2.0"? [continues 872 words]
Would You Like Fire Sauce Or Pot With That? In a different twist on Montezuma's Revenge, a restaurant worker in Minnesota has been busted for allegedly slipping marijuana into a policeman's taco, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Before scarfing down his lunch, Officer Joe Spark caught an eyeful of something that wasn't lettuce and took a whiff. Spark's assessment: It "looked and smelled like marijuana." To get confirmation, the "doobious" victual, purchased at a place called Taco John's in Little Canada, was taken to the police lab and tested. Bingo for bud! The results came back pot positive. [continues 839 words]
Goodbye Muddah, Goodbye Faddah Tough love kills, as the parents of Anthony Haynes found out when their 14-year-old son died last summer in a boot-camp-style drug-treatment program outside of Phoenix, Ariz. Camp director Charles Long II was busted earlier this month and charged with second-degree murder, according to a Feb. 16 Associated Press story. And if Long were looking for mitigating circumstances to endear him to the authorities, the quarter-pound of pot found in his bedroom closet and the account of his pulling a knife on another camper didn't help matters much. [continues 712 words]
The international war on drugs is the redheaded stepchild in the war-on-terror family. So far, while a vital factor in terrorist efforts at boosting bank balances funding bloody campaigns the world over it has received little attention from the Bush administration. This is somewhat puzzling. As David T. Courtwright explains in "Forces of Habit," "Mao's dictum, that all power flows from the barrel of a gun, presupposes the means to buy the gun and to pay the soldier who wields it. Trafficking flourishes wherever private armies, endemic conflict, proxy warfare and weak states are found." [continues 727 words]
A family in Pueblo, Colo., is suing the DEA and the Colorado Bureau of Investigations after a no-knock raid resulted in their two sons being arrested and jailed despite the fact no drugs were found on the premises. According to the suit, "black-masked, black-helmeted men brandishing automatic weapons and wearing all-black uniforms with no insignias suddenly burst into the house unannounced, kicked the family's dog across the floor, ordered the entire family to 'get on the [expletive] floor,' held them at gunpoint, searched the house, found no drugs or contraband, but nevertheless carted off the family's two sons, Dave and Marcos, and imprisoned them illegally and without charges." [continues 661 words]
Usually when you hear about women protesters stripping to get attention for "the cause," they're the hairy-legged, Volvo-driving, Birkenstock type (as one of my psych profs used to say), going topless to stymie loggers from chopping down trees. The age-old tradition - just think of Lady Godiva going nude to get burdensome taxes lightened - has other practitioners as well. Most recently, Zambian women have sloughed shirts to protest political corruption in their government. And just this week, "Medical Marijuana Barbie" doffed her top - and everything else - on Oxford St. in London, one of the busiest shopping centers in all of Britain. [continues 509 words]
So let's say we scrap the drug war. What then? Yesterday, I discussed an age and culture that dealt with dope with hardly any government interference; controls on drug abuse were primarily social, cultural. The drug war, however, supplanted all of that. Albert Jay Nock, the great American individualist, was concerned with one basic thing: That the government kept growing while other institutions in society kept shrinking. "If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs," he wrote, "we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between the society and the State," which he both saw and lamented as "an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power." [continues 1029 words]
The perennial question aimed at those of us who want drugs legalized (besides this rhetorical wonder: "You just want to smoke pot, right?") is "What then? What do you do to stem drug abuse once the legal and political sanctions are kaput?" It's a fair question, considering that most Americans labor under the assumption that the drug war helps to curb abuse in some meaningful way. The fact that more and more drugs are available with smaller and smaller price tags puts the lie to that notion, but, for the many millions of Americans who still take it as gospel, an answer may help to elucidate a deeper dynamic of drug control - one that operates without legal strictures and governmental regulations. [continues 1321 words]
The international war on drugs is the redheaded stepchild in the war-on-terror family. So far, while a vital factor in terrorist efforts at boosting bank balances - funding bloody campaigns the world over - it has received little attention from the Bush administration. This is somewhat puzzling. As David T. Courtwright explains in "Forces of Habit," "Mao's dictum, that all power flows from the barrel of a gun, presupposes the means to buy the gun and to pay the soldier who wields it. Trafficking flourishes wherever private armies, endemic conflict, proxy warfare and weak states are found." [continues 726 words]
Citizens in Northern California are sleeping easier now that a major drug ring has been handily dealt with by the long, plainclothes arm of the law. Earlier in the year, alerted by parents to Lindhurst High School's "rampant drug use and sales" problem, the Yuba County Sheriff's Office decided to send an undercover cop into the school to flunk a few locker-side dealers. According to the April 25 Appeal-Democrat, a 27-year-old agent of the state Alcohol Beverage Control was enrolled in classes and began attending on a daily basis near the start of the semester -- "21 Jump Street" for the new millennium (though, ironically, Johnny Depp more recently starred as infamous narco-trafficker George Jung in the movie, "Blow," instead of a troubled teen version of Dudley Do-Right). [continues 664 words]
What kind of periodicals and books would you expect to litter the library shelves and bathroom stalls at the Drug Enforcement Administration? Apparently to keep a finger on the pulse (or, more likely, thrust a thumb in the eye) of the drug culture, the DEA regularly forks over taxpayer money for High Times -- multiple copies according to a report obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information request, filed by the guys at the Smoking Gun. "The narcs must have been fighting over each month's copy," Smoking Gun opined, "because the Drug Enforcement Administration's in-house library is shelling out for three copies a month of the drug bible. " [continues 506 words]
What kind of periodicals and books would you expect to litter the library shelves and bathroom stalls at the Drug Enforcement Administration? Apparently to keep a finger on the pulse (or, more likely, thrust a thumb in the eye) of the drug culture, the DEA regularly forks over taxpayer money for High Times -- multiple copies according to a report obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information request, filed by the guys at the Smoking Gun. "The narcs must have been fighting over each month's copy," Smoking Gun opined, "because the Drug Enforcement Administration's in-house library is shelling out for three copies a month of the drug bible. =85" [continues 506 words]
Dead Dope While looking for new ways to get high, some marijuana smokers have decided to get low, six feet under to go metaphorical on you. Taking the expression "stiff joints" in a whole new direction, some pot users dip their marijuana cigarettes in embalming fluid to increase the potency and length of the high. A mixture of alcohol, moisturizers and anti-clotting agents, among other things, embalming fluid's most important ingredient is formalin, formaldehyde diluted in water. A blunt treated with the fluid is commonly dubbed an "illy," "wet" or "fry." [continues 985 words]
Ever think about taking up gardening? When I say forget about it, you might wonder why. After all, according to Vita Sackville-West, "The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world." Sure, but the trouble isn't well-meaning sodbusters and seed-tossers, it's "well-meaning" drug warriors. Cops have a hard enough time distinguishing between marijuana and hemp plants (one will get you high, the other won't); now they're diversifying their ignorance to include standard garden produce something Glen Coberly found out the hard way. [continues 958 words]
Since China finally finagled the Olympic games for 2008, the New Republic is again recommending the torch be thrust into a pile of dung. Echoing a similar call the magazine made last year when the torch went out in Sydney, TNR wrote Friday, "Defenders of Beijing's bid maintain that the Olympics will open Chinese society and give its leaders a reason to protect civil rights." Mind repeating that? Sports will push Beijing to protect civil rights? Are these guys bucking for Chris Rock's job? [continues 604 words]
If you suffer from chronic pain, you'd better get used to it; the drug warriors are about to make life more difficult for you and your doctor. In an attempt to quell illegal sales and use of OxyContin, a popular prescription opiate, patients in Pulaski, Va., will be forced to submit to fingerprinting at local pharmacies to get their pain reliever. The July 11 Washington Post called the new hoop through which chronic pain sufferers must jump "part of a novel law enforcement effort to curb widespread abuse of the prescription painkiller." [continues 699 words]
Authorities in England announced last week that they would no longer bother chasing after smugglers and dealers of cannabis. Apparently, time, personnel and resources are better spent elsewhere -- maybe, if I might suggest it, knocking some sense into the hard heads of American drug warriors. Next time you hear about a neighbor robbed, a shop burgled or see the mug of some victim of violence flashed on the TV news, be thankful that your local law enforcement are on the case, "searching trenches, roadways and farm fields for suspects." [continues 895 words]
Strange Fruit Here is an interesting spin on the recent mass execution of narcotics offenders in China: Only a day after Beijing bumped off 50-plus drug offenders in celebration of the United Nations' antidrug day, Chinese doctor Wang Guoqi was in Washington, testifying before a congressional human-rights panel about how he harvested skin from nearly 100 executed prisoners to be used in transplants for burn victims and the like. During his testimony, in which he explained the grisly process (you know approximately how it works if you've ever skinned a deer or seen it done), he also passed on the horrific story of a prisoner, still breathing, whose kidneys were removed just after being shot. [continues 1367 words]
