Only you can prevent forest fires

This post by our friendly neighborhood Drug War Rant blogger, Pete Guither, was so hilariously on-target that I had to pass it along. The post makes an analogy between drugs and fire. Here's an excerpt:

Like fire, drug use can be very beneficial or it can be harmful, depending on how it's used, but with a little common sense, it can be quite safe.

In this particular analogy, the establishment has decided that only fire in corporate-sold furnaces is acceptable, and all other use of fire must be extinguished.

Prohibitionists (again, in this analogy) decide that the way to accomplish this is to destroy the fire utterly... by throwing dynamite at it. On occasion, the resulting explosion will temporarily suppress the fire from the lack of oxygen, but more often, it spreads the fire further in an unchecked manner -- plus it causes enormous collateral damage.

[snip]

Conversations with prohibitionists tend to go like this:

Prohibitionist: How can you sit there and actually promote the use of fire? Don't you know about the little girl that was burned to death in a house fire?
Reformer: Uh, ... you threw dynamite at that fire.
Prohibitionist: She was burned to death. Fire caused that, not the dynamite.
Reformer: Uh, no. They were having a cook-out on the grill. You threw dynamite on the charcoal and the explosion spread the fire to the house...
Prohibitionist: See? It was fire. How dare you promote the death of little girls, you pyromaniac!

Read the full post here.

Shoot first, get statistics later...

Today, the CATO Institute released an in-depth study on the rise of paramilitary police raids in America. The report was researched and written by libertarian blogger, Radly Balko. From the report's executive summary:

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Link

The quashing of the drug policy reform movement in the SUNY system

The Albany-installed Administration at SUNY New Paltz is very scared. In the past year, two major successes for the student drug policy reform movement occured. One was my election to the Student Presidency. I, of course, ran on a platform which emphasized the counter productive nature of sanctions for drug possession on campus.

The other was much more significant. Dan Curtis, a newcomer to the movement but a passionate drug policy reformer nonetheless, was elected to the Presidency of the SUNY Student Assembly - the student government for the whole state. That's the highest office a student can hold in the SUNY system.

Now, the Administration at SUNY New Paltz, no doubt taking the call from above, has pressed 14 charges against us and 3 other student leaders and is trying to suspend us for one year - effectively preventing us from taking our positions. They also expelled my Vice President and dear friend - another serious voice in the call for campus drug policy reform.

All the local papers have written about it. The New Paltz Times wrote a fairly in depth piece in which the Mayor of New Paltz and several other prominent figures back us. They write:

The principal charge against the three student leaders was harassment of resident life director Corinna Caracci. The students deny the charge, which they say is disproved by a videotape made during the incident in question.

The extent of the due-process rights of the students to defend themselves is at issue. The university has refused to permit the students to question the witnesses against them. Civil-rights attorney Michael Sussman, who is defending the students, has put the college on notice that they intend to file a lawsuit based on violation of due process if their appeal is denied.

If you are wondering whether or not we do indeed have evidence that this Administrator lied on two police reports, please visit this page, which contains her deposition, statements from witnesses, and the video.

Wanna hear the best part?

After they saw we had the video to prove her deceit, they came at 6:30 in the morning to my office and arrested me again. This time is was for possession.... OF A "STOLEN" SLEEPING BAG!

The sleeping bag had been moved down the hall, by a colleague of mine, about 50 feet from one room to another. It had been in our office for almost a year. It was one of twelve of them, and the Administration knew they were there. They only chose to call them "stolen" and have me arrested days after the election.


Jason West, the Mayor of New Paltz, sees right through this crap and has also been a strong supporter of drug policy reform on our campus.

Village mayor Jason West said he was prepared to defend the students. "The village [government] has not yet officially taken a position on this situation," said West, who supported Holmes and fellow student leaders more than a year ago when they staged a protest against the administration's marijuana expulsion policy. "But I've been following it closely, and I plan to write a letter in their defense. I've spoken with the students involved. They have great lawyers on board, and only a year ago I saw how students charged with marijuana use were expelled without due process. They were not afforded legal representation. They were not allowed to cross-examine witnesses." It appeared to West that "they are being targeted for their political activism and that is intolerable."

The mayo emphasized that his feelings were "not directed at anyone in the administration personally. "I have great respect for president Poskanzer and work well with him," he said. "But I feel compelled to criticize certain actions that the SUNY administration takes when I believe that they violate the rights of my constituents."

The student leaders were being "negatively portrayed by the administration as troublemakers," said West, when in fact they were "highly effective, well-organized political activists who have done everything right."

I don't know if we have done everything right, but we have definitely fought hard to make drug policy a serious issue in student politics and New York State, and now the possibility of invalidation of all our efforts over the last two years is a very real one.

The ONDCP Can't Type!

Why is the government so afraid of Graham Boyd?
On the blog for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Pushing Back, they published large sections of yesterdays USA Today article on drug testing, but just happen to leave out the quote from Graham Boyd, executive director of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. I am sure that this was merely a typing mistake, and will be rectified by the ever vigilant and ethical folks at the ONDCP. I would hate to think that they might be afraid that people will fall out of goose step with drug testing if exposed to even the tiniest amount of the scientific and logical explanations of its harms.

Pee in this cup...

USA Today had two articles today both about drug testing and both by Donna Leinwand. The first features a New Jersey Principal extolling the effectiveness of testing students, while offering pretty poor examples.

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“Steffner says, she's a cheerleader for random drug testing of students. She tells other principals about the testing program she helped oversee for the past two years at Hackettstown High School, a 700-student campus in northern New Jersey.

During the program's first year, 10% of Hackettstown's students were tested randomly from a pool of students who took part in after-school activities or who drove to school. One student tested positive, she says. Last year, 25% of the students were screened. No one tested positive.” (From one positive to none, the war of drugs can be won)

“The results show testing deters teen drug use, Steffner says: "It works in the workplace and it works in the military. Why wouldn't it work in a school?"”

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Principal Steffner, how are your textbooks? Your teacher’s salaries? Your funding for after-school activities which have been shown to actually prevent drug use in the first place? Where did you gain this magical ability to rationalize causation without any evidence that it was this wholly intrusive policy that lead to a massive reduction in students use of drugs?

Principal Steffner, didn’t Time Magazine run an article not five days ago about how businesses are turning away from drug testing employees, largely because the tests don’t help? We went down this road in 1986 when President Reagan called on business to fight the war on drugs. Let not go down that same costly, ineffective road again.

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“Little research has been done on testing's impact on student drug use because it's difficult and expensive to study, says Lloyd Johnston of the Monitoring the Future study at the University of Michigan, which surveys 50,000 students a year. And yet, concern about student drug use — including recent increases in the use of prescription drugs and steroids — has led hundreds of systems to embrace testing.”

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Two things here. Dr. Johnston was also quoted in the ACLU booklet, Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No, “[The Study] suggest that there really isn’t an impact from drug testing as practiced… I don’t think it brings about any constructive changes in their attitudes about drugs or their belief in the dangers associated with using them.”

If a study funded by the federal government says that the testing doesn’t work, why does the Bush administration want to throw away $15 million on a plan that doesn’t actually protect children from drug abuse?

The second part, and most important point is this. The same study that said that drug testing doesn’t work also pointed out something that is a continual problem. ALCOHOL! In the 2005 Monitoring the Future Study, 47% of 12^th graders had used alcohol in the last 30 days, compared to less than 20% for marijuana. Alcohol is out of the blood stream in hours, cocaine and amphetamines in a few days, but marijuana can take up to month. What do you think kids are going to switch to when you start testing?

The second article, entitled “More Schools Test for Drugs” weakly asserts that there is a growing number of schools stepping up to save the children.

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“In the 2005-06 school year, 373 public secondary schools got federal money for testing, up from 79 schools two years ago, U.S. Department of Education records show. The government has not tracked the rise of locally funded programs as closely, but the White House estimates that an additional 225 schools have them.

President Bush has asked Congress to increase grant money for testing by 45% next year, to $15 million.

The number of public secondary schools with testing programs remains a tiny percentage of the 28,000 such schools nationwide. Many districts have been reluctant to impose drug testing, fearing they could face challenges in state courts. Several states' constitutions include privacy rights that go beyond what federal courts have granted, says Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project in Santa Cruz, Calif.”

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If you have two poorly planned ideas that intrude upon privacy, and you get two more poorly planned ideas that intrude upon privacy, you have a 100% increase in your poor ideas. Point is, just because more schools are doing it, doesn’t hold a candle to the fact that most everyone else is not! They realize that drug testing doesn’t work, undermines the trust between students and faculty, and is only a feel good response to a serious problem of teen drug abuse.

Framingham High School Policy Allows Seizure and Search of Cell Phones.

Students at Framingham High School were fuming over a new school policy that allows administrators to seize cell phones and search their contents. The policy, administrators say, is to improve security and stop the sale of drugs and stolen goods, but students said that the edict is an invasion of privacy. The rule complies with federal law, which says a school can conduct searches when there is "reasonable suspicion" that a student has contraband.

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Just another reason to create animosity between students and faculty, or youth and adults. Even if this new policy is enforced to extremes there's not too much that would come about of searching cell phones. It is certainly not going to bring an end to drug use at the school. And if a student is being searched under "reasonable suspicion" for possession of contraband, how is looking through the contact list of a cell phone going to find it?

We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were to have a notebook. We ha’ve had instances of graffiti. We ha’ve looked through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti."

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I would say its quite different Principal Welch. You just want to look through the contact lists and play Columbo with other administrators. Better yet, maybe its the picture galleries from camera phones that your interested in. Find a picture of a student smoking marijuana on a cell phone and suspend him/her from school or extra-curricular activities. You could probably suspend students that are just in the background of the picture as well. The same would probably be true about pictures considered to be of sexual nature.

Stop alienating students and treat them as your equals. It is as if none of these teachers might have some contraband in their homes or cars, or maybe even in their pocket at school. Shouldn't the policy apply to them as well?

In other Framingham news from earlier this week, shockingly high bacteria counts from animal feces in Learned Pond have dropped far enough to reopen the beach, according to the Board of Health. Testing showed E.coli bacteria at 2,800 parts per million -- nearly 12 times the acceptable maximum limit for safe swimming....

Maybe it's from all the bullshit coming out of Framingham High School...

Obsess Much?

Citizens against Government Waste released a report claiming that the Drug Czar's "obsession" with marijuana has led to failure of addressing "harder drugs". The report can be read here in PDF.

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The White House Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP) has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars since its formation in 1988 on ineffective and counter-productive policies that fail to meet the agency's core objectives, according to a report released this week by the non-partisan Washington, DC think-tank Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).

"The federal government and the ONDCP have chosen to ignore evidence suggesting that the methods being used in the war on drugs are not effective," the report says. "[T]he federal government has become so obsessed with marijuana use that it is spending money unwisely.

"The government has thrown more than $1 billion at a campaign that has only succeeded in increasing the number of teenage marijuana users," the report states, noting that reviews of the media campaign have found that it often encourages - rather than discourages - cannabis use among viewers.

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The ONDCP is not as concerned with reducing the few possible harms associated with marijuana but are obsessed with altering the opinion of youth and American's in general that marijuana is in fact a useful medicine or at least a safer alternative for enjoyable recreation.

We know they are lying and find most of their TV ads more amusing than anything else. The ONDCP commercials never contain any facts or realistic scenarios, because there aren't any that really support their claims. So they make up ads about teenage girls that smoke pot and become pregnant, or another teenager that apparently made a hat out of ground beef after smoking a joint (he may have some other issues aside from marijuana use that should be looked into...). The ground beef ad is probably the best I've seen because it ends in the worst possible effect of marijuana use...ARREST.

Citizens Against Government Waste issued a similar critique of the ONDCP last year, calling the agency a "federal wasteland" that fails to show objective results.

The ONDCP: Not as useful as you thought.

Oh Calvina...

A couple of weeks ago I was watching The Drug Years on the Sundance Channel, when the ever vigilant warrior in the War on Drugs, protector of America and outspoken, opinionated executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation Calvina Fay reaffirmed her tactlessness and obtuseness when she declared something akin to "Some people say the war on Drugs is failing and we should give up. To me, that's like saying we haven't found a cure for AIDS and cancer so we should stop our medical research."

Despite the irrationality and ignorance of such a brass statement, I’m almost tempted to agree to an extent. Please do not misunderstand my point, here. Unlike the search for a cure to cancer and AIDS, the Drug War has had purely negative and deleterious effects on individuals and society at large. Despite spending billions of dollars every year, and locking up hundreds of thousands of non-violent, otherwise law-abiding citizens, there has been no progress or improvement in solving the nation’s drug problem. True, despite decades of research, cancer and AIDS still kill millions of people each year. However, progress is being made. New treatments and drugs are discovered on a continual basis, making the lives of those afflicted with these ailments more bearable and enjoyable. What headway has been made in the thirty year-long, ineffective War on Drugs?

Wherein lies my agreement, then? I support a search for a cure, much to the chagrin of Ms. Fay, involving further research into the therapeutic value of many drugs in the medical arena. Cannabis has been shown to effectively help many patients left weak and wasting away after chemotherapy and other current treatments for cancer and AIDS. It has other properties that help mitigate pain and nausea associated with the drug cocktails prescribed to many patients with these ailments. People with other diseases such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis can also benefit from the use of marijuana.

Of course, Ms. Fay and her supporters would have us believe that legalizing the medical use of cannabis and other drugs would lead to an increase of use among the general population. However, in 1999 the Institute of Medicine concluded that, “At this point, there are no convincing data to support this concern. The existing data are consistent with the idea that this would not be a problem if marijuana were as closely regulated as other medications with abuse potential.” The current prohibition policies in America take control of these substances out of the government’s hands. Legalizing the medical use of these drugs would put the supply in the hands of physicians and doctors instead of street-dealers, greatly reducing the supply to children and the possibility of abuse. Furthermore, as the IOM said, “this question is beyond the issues normally considered for medical uses of drugs, and should not be a factor in evaluating the therapeutic potential of marijuana…”

All substances, including morphine (an opiate closely related to heroin) and cocaine, already legally prescribed and used by doctors, have the potential to be misused and abused. However, drugs that can ease the pain and suffering of millions should be administered and regulated. But, doesn’t that send the wrong message to children – that it is ok to use drugs? Would a better message be sending seriously ill people with terminal diseases to prison instead of allowing themselves and their doctors to determine the best possible treatment?

There is indeed a drug problem in this country. It’s called prohibition. Calvina Fay was right in saying the War on Drugs is failing. She was wrong in saying we should stop medical research for a cure to the plagues of cancer and AIDS. We should, however, broaden the scope of our research to include honest investigation into the therapeutic potential of drugs for medical use. Doctors, not “I-know-better-than-you” Congressmen and women, are the only qualified people to determine what should and should not be used to help their patients cope with illness. Yet, with the unsuccessful Hinchey-Rohrabacher Medical Marijuana amendment yesterday, it appears that many politicians feel truly ill people need a prison sentence more than their medicine. So, does compassion still mean anything on Capitol Hill? Of course, compassion for prison guards, parole officers, police, and their jobs; not for seriously ill people who only want to make their lives better.

Soccer Moms for Sensible Drug Policy

Having trouble talking with mom and pop about drug policy? This editorial, written by a Republican mother from Colorado, offers all the right arguments for why conservative soccer moms should support the repeal of marijuana prohibition. The entire piece is a must-read, but here are just a few choice quotes:

Politicians whisper quietly behind closed doors about the insanity of the drug war. Neither party, however, has had the courage to take a stand against prohibition publicly. Just imagine if the $2 billion invested in these ads - or the billions more spent prosecuting peaceful marijuana users every year - had been diverted instead into tuition grants for needy students or back to taxpaying parents who could directly invest in college funds.

[snip]

Democrats and Republicans alike believe they would gain nothing by advocating an end to prohibition, but both have failed to consider that they might just gain votes if they could learn to speak to mothers about drugs in a way that they could relate to.

Parents across America are trying to find a way to fund college. By legalizing marijuana, taxing it, and turning this revenue into college scholarships and treatment programs, the future of every child could be just a little bit brighter.

[snip]

At the end of the day, our government knows it cannot enforce marijuana prohibition. In the absence of being able to do so, it sends the damaging message to our young people that marijuana should be illegal simply because "I'm the government, and I said so." Moms know better - and may ultimately be the single key to bringing sanity back to American drug policy.

Well said, Jessica.

Link

Call Congress right now for medical marijuana patients

Last week I told you about the important medical marijuana amendment that Congress is getting ready to vote on. Well, the time is NOW! The House will vote this Wednesday, June 28, on whether or not the DEA should be able to spend money arresting seriously ill patients in states that have made medical marijuana legal.

We need you to call your member of Congress RIGHT NOW and urge them to support this sensible and compassionate amendment.

Here are the instructions and phone script that the Marijuana Policy Project put out:

"It's easy: Just call the Capitol switchboard operator at (202) 224-3121. Give the operator your zip code and ask to be connected to your U.S. House member; you don't even need to know your U.S. representative's name to do this.

When the receptionist for the congressperson — not the Capitol switchboard operator — answers, say something like: "Hi, this is [name]. I live in [city], and I'm calling to ask that my representative vote for Congressman Maurice Hinchey's medical marijuana amendment to the Justice Department's spending bill, which I understand will be considered on the House floor in a few days. The amendment would prohibit the Justice Department from spending taxpayer money to arrest medical marijuana patients in the 11 states where medical marijuana is legal."

Please call now: (202) 224-3121"

If you don't call, who will?