Last week it was revealed that President Obama will not be keeping his promise to lift the ban on needle exchange funding.
A White House spokes person assures that Obama is still committed to this change: "We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said. "We are committed to doing this as part of a National HIV/AIDS strategy and are confident that we can build support for these scientifically-based programs."
The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim lets us know that the White House website no longer features the president's support of the program, however. See the before and after here.
Hmmm... I think LEAP's Tom Angell sums things up perfectly: "It's hard to imagine how removing mention of support for a proven lifesaving program from the White House website is part of a grand strategy to 'build support' for syringe exchange."
If Obama wants to build more support for lifting the ban he shouldn't be removing his own support from his website. He should have more information about needle exchange programs and their success at reducing the spread of HIV.
I, like many others, found myself scrambling this week to get my taxes filed on time. My home state of North Carolina is one of about 22 states that have taxes on illegal drugs. Several other states have had their illegal substances tax laws struck down in court, mostly due to their violation of the Double Jeopardy clause of the Constitution. The Reason Foundation did a really cool report on this issue last year, and DRCNet has published some good analysis about illegal substances taxes in The Chronicle.
I'm not very familiar with other state laws, but North Carolina's law was overhauled in 1995 to comply with a 1994 Supreme Court ruling, Montana v. Kurth Ranch, which struck down Montana's tax on illegal drugs. Some of the changes include ensuring that the purpose of the tax is generating revenue and not punishment, revising the tax structure to ensure the tax is never more than the retail value of the drug, and creating a smaller tax rate for unusable parts of the marijuana plant such as seeds and stalks. If you're interested in a more detailed explanation, check out this PDF.
The changes to NC's tax law were good changes. They represent very commonsense elements that should be involved in drug taxes, except for one very crucial point. You must be arrested to be subject to this tax. It's a testimony to how absurd our public policy regarding drugs is when just about the only people in the country who actually ask to be taxed are given such strong legal incentive not to pay.
The ideal solution is to legalize all drugs and collect the taxes from the peaceful, legal transactions. Check out LEAP's report by Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University which estimates that the tax revenue from legal drugs combined with the no longer having to pay to enforce current drug laws, will create a gross increase of about 76.8 billion dollars a year. That is roughly equal to the Department of Health and Human Service's entire budget. With that money, we could double what we spend on treatment and prevention programs, and still have money left over.
Derek Copp, a student at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, was shot in the chest during a drug raid where police admit, only a small amount of marijuana was found. Copp, who was unarmed and alone in his apartment, was shot in the chest when he reportedly lifted his hand to sheild his eyes from an officer's flashlight.
SSDP chapters at Grand Valley State University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and Michigan State University protested the shootings and spread the word about the need for more sensible policies. Watch the video above to see SSDP members like Jonathan Beagly and Chris Chiles in action!
Thankfully, Derek is alive and recovering and is at home trying to get back to his studies. During a press conference after the shooting, Derek said "This isn't going to change who I am. I'm still the same person." "That's me. I'm Derek. That's all I can be."
To help Derek during this difficult time, SSDP is accepting donations to help cover some of Derek's medical or legal costs. You can make a donation at http://www.ssdp.org/derek
The HCLU does it again! Here is an update on Dr. Polak's efforts to get a straight answer from Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime regarding rates of cannabis use in the Netherlands compared with countries that have prohibited the drug.
Costa claims to have answered the question here. What do you think?
Rosalio Reta and his friend, Gabriel Cardona, were members of a three-person cell of American teenagers working as cartel hit men in the United States, according to prosecutors.
...In interviews with CNN, Laredo police detectives and prosecutors told how Cardona and Reta were recruited by the cartel to be assassins after they began hitting the cantinas and clubs just across the border. [CNN]
The Mexican drug cartel, fueled by the constant demand for illicit drugs and armed with guns supplied by America has unsurprisingly been recruiting American teenagers to fight their bloody battles, starting as early as 13 years old.
Both teenagers received six-month military-style training on a Mexican ranch. Investigators say Cardona and Reta were paid $500 a week each as a retainer, to sit and wait for the call to kill. Then they were paid up to $50,000 and 2 kilos of cocaine for carrying out a hit.
The teenagers lived in several safe houses around Laredo and drove around town in a $70,000 Mercedes-Benz.
So let’s get this straight. They have our guns, they have our money, they supply us with our drugs, they control our border, and now they have more power over our kids than parents ever would. I doubt you’d find a parent out there who’d be willing to pay their child $500 a week for sitting around, though at this point, maybe they should start looking into it.
I hate to be repetitive in my posts, but how are people not panicking? Do they not understand the idea of cause and effect, or do they need their North American geography refreshed?
There are sleeper cells in the U.S.," said Detective Garcia. "They're here, they're here in the United States.
Think about it, what else could the cartel sell that would give them so much easy money and an overwhelming amount of control? Chocolate candy bars? I don’t think so. Everyone wants drugs. No matter how many “Just Say No” campaigns we may feed our tax dollars into, we will not be able to turn American into a “drug free” nation. Instead, we need to legalize, regulate, control, and educate the public about the real harms drugs can cause and how to use responsibly if they’re going to use.
The solution is right in front of us, but some of us are too scared to even talk about it. Unfortunately at this point, there's so much more to be scared about than the word "legalization".
Why the hell is Stephen Baldwin debating Ron Paul? Probably because support for marijuana prohibition has dwindled so badly, Pauly Shore's co-star was the only one willing to debate a former Presidential Candidate. I'm not convinced he even knew who Ron Paul was.
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I was in stitches folks. "Marijuana leads to worse things. That's just a fact. I don't care what anybody says." Balding confidently states, citing alcohol abuse and abuse of harder drugs as inevitable consequences of smoking marijuana.
Stephen Baldwin doesn't really get a word in edgewise throughout the entire interview. And for each dumb reason he throws out (check out his response to medical marijuana around 4:25), the congressman has a field day quickly refuting and following up with a short rant on drug prohibition.
I don't know why I'm writing about Stephen Baldwin. I wish I wasn't. That guy is an ass. Now Ron Paul; that's one sensible man.
Barry McCaffrey just said something sensible. Actually, he says a few sensible things about the importance of drug treatment in this interview from 2000. McCaffrey came around to see that treatment access and quality needed to improved in the U.S. Unfortunately little has been done to actually shift law enforcement resources to treatment and education.
It makes sense to me. If you earn a high school degree, become an adult, smoke marijuana responsibly, and don't hurt anyone else... who cares? Not Barry McCaffrey thank goodness!
On March 11-13, 2009 SSDP Executive Director Kris Krane participated in the High Level Segment of the United Nations annual Committee on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, Austria.
At this meeting, every country in the world was asked to approve a political declaration and action plan that would guide the world’s drug policy for the next ten years. This was the culmination of a yearlong review process that included the first ever global meeting of NGO’s from around the world last summer, in which SSDP was a participant.
While the world’s NGO community unanimously approved a forward thinking set of recommendations, that stressed harm reduction and the fundamental human rights of drug users, the final declaration approved by the United Nations ignored most of these recommendations. Instead, they approved a document that can only be described as “more of the same.”“Harm reduction” refers to common-sense, life-saving programs and policies that don’t rely on an abstinence-only messaging (like contraceptives, but for drugs).
But due to the urging of a number of countries, including the United States, the words “harm reduction” were completely left out of the final declaration. After the unanimous approval of the declaration, a group of 26 countries including Great Britain, Germany, and Australia, made a statement to the United Nations that they would officially interpret the phrase “related support services” in clause 20 to mean “harm reduction.”
This ignited a firestorm of debate on the floor of the UN, with countries standing up to denounce the “group of 26.” Among the countries that chose to publicly denounce harm reduction were Russia, Cuba, Pakistan… and the United States of America.
Over 100 countries chose not to speak in support or opposition to harm reduction, yet the United States willingly chose to align itself with countries that are responsible for some the worst human rights abuses perpetrated in the name of the War on Drugs, rather than staying silent or aligning with America’s traditional allies.
The Obama administration has promised to rebuild America’s traditional alliances, yet they willfully set this process back in order to continue the disastrous global war on drugs and drug users. Clearly, this behavior will not change unless President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton hear a loud message from citizens that global drug policy must be based in science, reason, evidence, and human rights, rather than worn-out ideology and Drug War orthodoxy.
Please take a moment to send a message to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton expressing your outrage at the United States’ behavior at the United Nations last week, and urge them to correct this mistake by joining with our traditional allies in promoting harm reduction practices around the world.
To be fair, despite the U.S. delegation's shameful behavior at the end of the U.N. meeting, their position has progressed from previous years. While the U.S. opposed the term harm reduction, for the first time ever they publicly supported needle exchange programs and methadone treatment at the global level. With some encouragement from citizens like you, we can continue to move the new administration’s position on drug policy forward in the coming years.
And if you thought that silly alien ad was bad, get this. The ONDCP's newest angle on getting young people to not smoke pot is... it makes you suck at video games. And then, obviously, a poorly animated Zelda look alike will make you feel bad about yourself for losing level 3. He'll also suffer a broken arm and play chess instead. By himself.
This is just plain silly. This is what we're spending $60million a year on? I've seen Kung-Fu movies that are voiced over better than this piece of shit.
Just another offensive and likely counterproductive advertisement from the folks at Above the Influence. At least with Stoners in the Mist, you could actually play a game.
Let's compare that video with Safety First's Lets Talk About Meth and Other Drugs:
Remind me again. Which one had a budget of $60million dollars?
Last week it was revealed that President Obama will not be keeping his promise to lift the ban on needle exchange funding.
