"Our American Medical Association (AMA) urges that marijuana's status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines," the AMA's statement (PDF) reads. "This should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product."
If for some reason you haven't been convinced that the marijuana legalization and regulation movement currently has more momentum than ever before, the above statement should be convincing enough. It signals the common sense understanding that at the very least, the scheduling of marijuana should allow for scientific research.
The last time the American Medical Association criticized the prohibition of marijuana was in 1937, when the plant was made illegal through the Marijuana Tax Act. The new statement comes on the heels of a medical marijuana victory in Maine and the legalization of marijuana for adults in Breckenridge, CO. Let's not forget the Gallup poll showing 44% of American's support legalizing pot and the new memo from the DoJ telling the feds to back off those in compliance with state medical marijuana laws.
I don't need any more convincing - marijuana law reform is happening. I'm in Albuquerque, NM for the Drug Policy Alliance International Drug Policy Reform Conference. Getting off the plane at ABQ, I headed down to the baggage claim to see a huge blue banner welcoming the DPA conference attendees to Albuquerque. Thanks Albuquerque.
Tim Lincecum, pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, was arrested this week for possession of marijuana and a pipe after being pulled over for speeding. He'll only have to pay a fine for paraphernalia possession and speeding however.
I like Tim Lincecum. I get the same warm and fuzzy feeling watching him pitch that I used to get watching Roger Clemens pitch for the Red Sox. At only 25 years old, Lincecum is one of the best pictchers in the NL and MLB. In 2008 alone he won the Cy Young Award, was named the MLB Starter of the Year, and led the MLB in strikeouts. Quite a year.
Good thing we have marijuana prohibition and government hysteria to stop our youth from turning out like Tim Lincecum and Michael Phelps!
SSDP's office is located literally across the street from AT&T Park. Maybe Tim can join us at SSDP's conference in March?
The above special is part of Current TV's vanguard series and examines the legal and illegal market for prescription pills like oxycodone while telling the story of an oxycodone addict and his family in Broward County, Florida, where the Oxycontin Express begins its travel to Appalachia. It focuses on the ease in which people are able to legally purchase large amounts of pharmaceutical drugs there. Overall, I like the special and think it is fairly objective in showing the diversion of pharmaceutical drugs, the toll of addiction, and intentional or not, the shortcomings of law enforcement in drug policy.
Still, the documentary lacks any information about the legitimate uses for these drugs. It almost certainly incites a sense of worry and hysteria in those who haven't heard much else about this problem. There is no discussion of possible solutions other than the underlying suggestion that increasing law enforcement resources is the only answer. No treatment facilities are explored and no treatment or addiction professionals are interviewed.
The problem
DEA officials say doctors in Broward County wrote prescriptions for more than 6.5 million oxycodone pills from June to December 2008, making it the nation's top supplier. In under 2 years, 70 pain clinics opened in Broward and Palm counties. These clinics write the prescriptions and some also sell the drugs they prescribe. Because the state has no pill tracking system, patients doctor shop. Doctor shopping refers to patients with a prescription going from pain clinic to pain clinic to get their prescriptions filled and often coming away with thousands of pills because without a tracking system there is no way for a pharmacy to know if scripts have already been filled. Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, signed a bill earlier this year that would set up a pill tracking system for the state but it won't take effect until next year.
In Florida, an average of 11 people die every day from prescription drug overdoses. In Kentucky, 877 people died of overdoses last year.
There is a problem with how many pills are being handed out but I'm not convinced that these pain clinics need to be shut down. They provide an alternative to street drug dealing which is more dangerous and leaves money going only to criminals. As the special documents an addict's attempts to buy the drugs from a pain clinic, he is unable to do so and must go to a friend's home where he is sold 30 pills from a 70 year old grandmother. So as crooked as these places are painted to be (and I have no doubt some of them are) others are following what rules are in place. And it isn't until we see the pills leaving the state of Florida where they become significantly valuable. In other states where obtaining the drug is not as easy, pills can be worth 10x what they are bought for in Florida. A bottle of pills bought for $500 can be worth $5,000 in Kentucky. That's money worth protecting. In the attempt to rid their communities of this diversion, the police focus on arresting small time dealers and addicts, a common short fall of the U.S. war on drugs.
The addicts and the law
You'll meet Todd, a man whose addiction to oxycodone, which he smokes, persists even after his brother and wife died from overdoses. You'll briefly meet Terry, another oxy addict who sells small amounts of drugs to support his addiction and as he put it, "do what you gotta do to support your family." You'll also meet women incarcerated for selling prescription pills and a young couple who are convinced by police to sell them some medication outside a pharmacy in an undercover bust.
At the end of the day, are Todd and Terry (the man arrested for selling prescription drugs) and all of the women who are incarcerated, really people that belong behind bars? The sheriff of the Greenup says himself that the pill problem isn't getting any better - despite the fact that jails are overflowing with people convicted of prescription drug offenses. I took notice to the many marijuana posters in the sheriff's office. The America's Most Wanted (pot) poster, news articles covering the departments pot busts, and an old dried up pot leaf that likely came from a grow-op bust, show that he has been dedicated to fighting a war on drugs (or at least on marijuana) and not only has the drug problem not gotten better, its become worse. Even a neighboring county's deputy sheriff was recently arrested for distributing oxycontin.
These areas need better treatment and prevention services not just more law enforcement. When you look at Todd's unsuccessful attempts to quit oxycodone which includes 7 visits to rehab and 15 detoxes, you begin to realize the seriousness of this addiction. I don't see the problem as being these clinics alone. In fact, I think the legalization of drugs with strict regulations (varying for different substances) is a smart move but isn't the answer to our addiction problems. It is the answer to taking away funds from criminal enterprises and taking a market that unfortunately isn't going away and putting into a regulated and controlled system. The problem I see with the prescription drug distribution profiled in this video, is that there is not a pill tracking system. Furthermore, the police are focused on busting small time drug addicts. The couple busted in the special faces a 3 year mandatory minimum sentence after being convinced to sell some of their drugs to an undercover police officer pretending to be someone in serious pain but unable to get their prescription filled. I think this is ineffective and inhumane, and does little to stop the diversion of drugs. Even the police admit this is just a drop in the bucket and I think it's a waste of their resources. I also think these arrests just make the problem worse. Now you have addicts who can't get a job, who will use drugs in jail, who will lose their families, and who will lose their support systems (if they even have any). They just end up more likely to continue using.
Just last week, Kentucky law enforcement arrested more than 300 people in the largest prescription drug bust that the state has ever seen. Those arrested are accused of creating a "pipeline" for pharmaceutical diversion, doing exactly what is shown in the Current TV special. That is a huge bust but it's unlikely to have any long lasting effect.
I have to say I found it ironic as Mariana van Zeller, the narrator of this special, lights up a cigarette outside one of the pain clinics. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs in the world, right up there with opioid addiction and the drug kills far more people than oxy's ever will, even with the Oxycontin Express. But no one is suggesting she belongs in prison, nor should they be. Hulu has a blog interview about the special with Mariana van Zeller who is originally from Portugal. Some irony here as well. Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs and since then has seen a reduction in drug addiction, overdose deaths, HIV rates, drug use/abuse, and an increase in those who seek treatment for their addictions - all outcomes the U.S. could only dream of obtaining.
So if we can't get rid of the drugs all together, what can be done? Ponder the question: What is so wrong about allowing drug addicts to buy drugs?
Harm reduction.
Harm reduction information is so incredibly important to these areas. Abstinence is absolutely the best way to go if you want to avoid all of the possible harms associated with drug use; there is no surer way to steer clear of addiction or overdose. But just like with sex education, the abstinence only messaging isn't working. These communities need improved information on the harms associated with prescription drug abuse including dosage guidelines and accurate descriptions on dangerous drug combinations.
Good Samaritan policies could likely save the lives of many people in states like Kentucky, especially young people. If young people are going to be severely punished for calling 911 when a friend overdoses, you can expect it to be unlikely that they will make such a life saving call. Instead you have needless situations like this:
Karen Shay, a dentist in Morehead, Ky., also knows too well the cost and pain of prescription drug abuse. Two years ago, her 19-year-old daughter, Sarah, died from an overdose after partying with friends, who dropped her body off at a hospital and drove away.
What's the government's response to all this? To his credit, the new director of the ONDCP, Gil Kerlikowske has admitted that America's largest drug problem is pharmaceutical abuse. Under the reign of Drug Czar John Walters, you would have heard marijuana was the real threat. The House Appropriations Committee also reduced the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign's yearly funding by 71% from $70 million to $20 million - a smart move considering that the focus of the ads has been almost entirely on marijuana use among youth and that they have been shown to be ineffective and even counterproductive. I'm not opposed to having PSA's on the dangers of drug abuse. They seem to have helped in reducing tobacco use among young people and we didn't have to arrest a single person to do so. If the ONDCP's ads on prescription drug abuse are realistic and evidence based, they could help to steer young people away from abusing and even using drugs like oxycodone. If harm reduction information is made accessible than those who do choose to use may make smarter choices about their use.
There needs to be acceptance that such a problem will never go away completely and that drug free communities, and countries, and schools are simply impossible to achieve. The prime example of this; America can't even keep drugs out of our prisons. This is not a problem we can arrest our way out of and it's a problem that will likely come and go in waves.
Here is an excerpt from a report by the Human Rights Coalition on New York's prison system and drug treatment services. Drugs can't be kept out of the prisons and if you're an addict who gets caught using, you'll end up in solitary confinement (the box) and be denied treatment even if it is available.
Meet Nathan. He was identified as needing drug treatment when he entered the New York state prison system with a 16-year sentence. But because prisoners close to their release date get treatment first, Nathan faced the possibility of years in prison without help for his drug problem.
When he continued using drugs in prison, he was sentenced to the box, though no violent or other disruptive behavior was involved. With each relapse, he received harsher punishment. When we interviewed Nathan, eight years after he entered prison, he was serving a 34-month sentence in the box -- 14 months for one drug-related incident and 20 months for another. He had never received any drug treatment.
In New York, prison officials say that three of four inmates need substance abuse treatment. Treatment programs are filled to capacity. As inmates wait months, even years, for treatment, many are caught in a Catch-22: at high risk of relapse, but punished and denied access to treatment if they do.
Is there a solution? I think there are combinations of solutions; incremental changes that can be made to rework this system of pill distribution. But I don't think locking more people up and ignoring treatment resources while funding futile law enforcement attempts is going to get us anywhere. This special has done a great job at shedding light on the situation but I wish they hadn't almost exclusively interviewed police and politicians as experts on how to fix it.
It has been ingrained into our minds, and you can see this in the Current TV special, that drug addicts are considered bad people and the only way to deal with them is to get tough on drugs. Just look at Todd. His brother dies from an overdose. His wife dies from an overdose. He's pretty much lost everything. Yet he still uses the same drug and is stuck In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. And there are countless others who are brothers, sisters, moms and dads and they're addicted to all sorts of drugs, to gambling, to sex, to food. Where should they be sent? The box?
The NH Senate wouldn't budge on overriding Gov. Patrick Lynch's veto of the law which had passed both the House and Senate earlier this year. The 14-10 vote was in favor of the bill but didn't give the 2/3 majority needed for the override.
Matt Simon, executive director NH Compassion ran a fantastic campaign that brought medical marijuana legislation farther than it had ever been in the state. When Gov. Lynch said that he had 11 concerns with the bill that if left unaddressed, would leave him to veto the bill, NH Compassion compromised and addressed all of the points. Still, Lynch carried out this veto threat despite medical marijuana legalization having the support of 71% of NH residents.
SSDP chapters at Franklin Pierce University, Keene State College, UNH, Southern NH University, and Nashua High School South did all they could to draw attention to the need for legislation to help protect sick and dying NH residents who found marijuana helped to improve their quality of life.
For the past year, NH Compassion told the stories of numerous ill people in NH and the positive impact medical marijuana has had on their lives. Sadly, one of those NH residents, Scott Turner, passed away before the override vote had happened. Please read more about the patients that Gov. Lynch and NH Attorney General Kelly Ayotte believe NH should waste tax dollars and law enforcement resources to put behind bars.
We'll be back to ensure that these people will not face arrest for trying to improve their lives.
A huge thank you from SSDP goes out to Matt Simon and all NH medical marijuana patients.
Alex Woon and Kraig Negrete of the San Jose State University chapter joined UC Berkeley chapter members Matt Kintz, Rishi Malhotra, and alumni Suzy Sim to witness the hearing and give a 30 second "elevator argument" on why they support taking marijuana out of the black market and putting it into a legal and regulated system. I'm so proud to work with such bright and motivated students who took the time out of their day make sure that their voices were heard.
After attending the committee hearing and giving public opinion, we grabbed a quick lunch with our colleagues from DPA, MPP, CA NORML and others before running around the state house to lobby CA Assembly members for their support of AB 390.
Both Alex Woon and Rishi Malhotra gained lobbying experience last year when they attended SSDP's International Conference and Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. If you're interested in learning more about lobbying, be sure to RSVP for SSDP's 2010 International Conference in San Francisco, March 12-14.
This is a special guest blog by SSDP intern and UMD SSDP chapter member, Greg Hansch
The Boston Globe recently released a grisly series of photos that portray many of the the negative consequences associated with drugs. Some photos show drug addicts living in meager conditions or attempting to piece their lives back together. Others depict people who were murdered as a result of their involvement in the drug trade. A third variety contains images of law enforcement attempting to eradicate drugs.
For proponents of the drug war, these images reinforce their narrow understanding: Drugs are harmful. Therefore, our public policies need to combat this scourge with punitive laws. And in one respect, they are right: drug abuse is a devastating problem for people all around the world.
However, drug war supporters fail to recognize that prohibition exacerbates the negative impact of drugs. Most of the murder victims shown were drug dealers killed in turf struggles with rival cartels. These murders currently plague Mexico because prohibition has made drug trafficking a massively profitable illicit industry. Cartels (who count on marijuana for 60% of their profits) are willing to use lethal force in order to secure their smuggling routes and distribution territories.
Law enforcement agencies around the world are engaged in an endless struggle to rid the world of drugs. Despite their efforts, drugs are still available all over the world and murder is commonplace among drug traffickers.
These graphic images are disturbing but necessary for our movement. They clearly illustrate that decades of drug prohibition have led to uncontrollable violence in Mexico, addicts who are unable to find treatment, and fruitless attempts at stopping the drug trade. Every day, more and more people are starting to interpret these images as a product of drug prohibition rather than drugs themselves.
I recommend you look at these photos and consider, "what terrible consequences are we willing to tolerate in the name of our ill-fated War on Drugs?" Supporters of our current drug laws need to own the horrible unintended consequences their preferred policy creates, and the general public needs to be cognisant of the multi-faceted, international consequences of the Drug War.
I lived in Keene, NH for one year before moving to San Francisco to work for Students for Sensible Drug Policy. For 3 years before that I was going to to school at Franklin Pierce University, about 30 minutes from Keene. Recently some members of the Keene community have taken to the city's center at 4:20 in the afternoon to host "smokeouts" where they smoke marijuana to protest the plant's prohibition.
To be honest, I was surprised to see people smoking in Keene's center of town's Main Street. I was stunned to see the protest taken right into the police station. Still, I was more surprised at the behavior of the people in attendance who did more than just smoke marijuana in pubic. They called police officers names, stood in front of a police cruiser trying to drive away, hurled insults and even spit at Keene police.
Insulting police officers has nothing to do with legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Police officers have a job to do and arresting people for possessing marijuana is part of that job. If you intentionally draw the attention of the police department and then smoke marijuana in front of them, they have to arrest you. If this were a Utopian world or a Kevin Smith film, the police officer would of course quit his job on the spot and start smoking the joint with you - but it's not. When you show up in front of a police station in large numbers to smoke marijuana with plenty of video cameras aimed at the officers, what do you expect is going to happen? Would you quit a job during a recession?
I'm 110% on board with legalizing marijuana (just in case you haven't read anything I've written before). But the "protesters" took it to another level when they started being offensive. Their methods are simply ineffective at best and detrimental at worst.
I wonder how many of these people are aware that NH has passed a medical marijuana bill and that the bill was vetoed by Gov. Lynch. I would hope that they have all taken 5 minutes to write or call the Governor to say as a NH resident, "I disapprove of your veto of HB 648." I seriously wonder if any of them realize how close we are in NH to legalizing marijuana for some of the seriously ill people that need marijuana to live. As they call police pigs during the protest, I can't help to assume that most of these people probably have know idea that their county's superintendent of corrections happens to be a member of LEAP.
In college, my senior internship was with the Marijuana Policy Project's Granite Staters For Medical Marijuanacampaign. The campaign followed around presidential candidates during the primaries and put them on the spot about medical marijuana. I got yelled at by John McCain and Mitt Romney. But more importantly I met NH residents like Clayton Holton and Linda Macia who used marijuana for their serious illnesses. I had never actually seen marijuana help people before that internship. Clayton suffers from muscular dystrophy and at the time was a 22 year old man who weighed about 88lbs. He couldn't eat or keep weight on. If he did eat, he got sick. Clayton was literally wasting away and had to live in a nursing home where he could not smoke marijuana but was instead given oxycontin.
I witnessed Clayton smoke just a small amount marijuana and eat himself a big hamburger and fries and keep it all down. Something he just couldn't have done without cannabis. From that day on - I was sold on medical marijuana. It just made no sense to me that this young man would be punished for trying to relieve his suffering and that my tax dollars would pay to punish him. It didn't make sense that police resources would be used to punish him in an effort to continue a prohibition policy that has failed since its inception and was passed largely because of corruption and outright lies in the first place!
NH Compassion is fighting for NH residents like Clayton and many others to have the right to use medical marijuana. Matt Simon, the campaign's Executive Director, outlines his concerns about the rallies in a letter to the editor published in the Union Leader. I echo his thoughts. The point that needs to be made is that we should be working together and following the instruction of a campaign that has been successful at getting the NH legislature to support medical marijuana. These smokeouts haven't done jack. If the veto stays or it's overturned - that's the time to for these protesters to get back out and do what they believe is right - but this is about strategy.
We have come a long way in NH friends. I ask that you put your efforts toward overriding the veto of HB 648, the medical marijuana bill, in a responsible and sensible way. Those serious about changing the law should contact NH Compassion and ask you can help out - and actually follow the advice you are given.
We are so close to protecting, at the very least, some seriously ill NH residents. I couldn't agree more that those who responsibly use cannabis for recreational purposes do not deserve to be criminals - but the people at the 420 rallies should realize that the freedom of those who use medical marijuana at the recommendation of their doctors to improve the quality of their life comes even before your right to get high in the middle of the street.
The title actually read "Drug-Related." We know better. Just like the U.S-Mexican border, this isn't violence caused by people taking drugs and going out on murderous rampages. These murders are fueled by a desire to control the drug trade. Something that is worth quite a bit of money.
University of Puerto Rico researcher Hector Colon said that the island’s drug users collectively spend nearly $3 million a day to feed their habits.
Colon also said that keeping an addict incarcerated costs between $28,000 and $30,000 per year, to which must be added other costs pertaining to medical attention when the inmates have AIDS or hepatitis.
The DEA, FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Puerto Rico police recently arrested 38 people on drug trafficking charges. It's estimated that about 30% of illegal drugs coming into the U.S. are coming from Puerto Rico and the islands. There is good reason for this:
As American soil, it is attractive because drugs leaving here do not have to clear customs to reach the U.S. market.
Marie Clairemagazine's recent article, Stiletto Stoners, has touched a nerve with professional women across the country. A recent study showed an estimated 8 million American women used marijuana last year (those are the ones that admitted to it) and we're not talking about the 16 year old girl buying grass in the school parking lot after she "discovered" Janis Joplin.
Sure, it's no surprise to most people that you can be successful and smoke marijuana. Just look at our past presidents... eh, on second though, look at Michael Phelps or Rick Steves. But Marie Claire doesn't stop there and touches on how pot prohibition has negative effects on families around the country that marijuana use alone could never have. Looking for life insurance to protect your family? Well, you'd better not test positive for even trace amounts of THC.
The Today show covered the article, bringing onto the show Dr. Julie Holland, a psychiatrist at the New York University School of Medicine and Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles to discuss the article and the "growing trend" of professional women smoking pot. The segment is definitely pro regulation and filled with common sense and honesty about responsible marijuana use by adults. It seems the discussion has made this demographic feel good about what they're doing. Watch the video to hear Dr. Holland get the last word.
Just like he did with the Michael Phelps interview, Matt Lauer plays devils advocate, acting as if he just can't believe that women who smoke marijuana are successful and contributing members of society and not the deflated, lazy stoners we see running over children on bikes in a Wendy's drive-thru (as seen on TV of course). He makes sure to ask about the "dark side" of this story and I think it's clear that there is a very dark side; marijuana is illegal even for responsible adults to use in the privacy of their own home after a hard day at work.
Here's an example of an attempt at harm-reduction gone terribly wrong:
MADD announces an exclusive license agreement with Hill Street Marketing Inc. to produce a line of alcohol-free beverages, MADD Virgin Drinks, which will provide American consumers with a delicious and socially responsible alternative to alcoholic beverages.
Cool. I'm down with non-alcoholic beverages (although I prefer a nice, frosty, alcoholic Guinness myself). I'm definitely NOT down with drunk driving. But whatever you think about alcohol, MADD, or this campaign, you have to admit that dubbing these beverages "virgin" is just a dumb marketing move.
After all, if you're trying to get 19 year old college guys to buy your product, you're not going to have much luck asking them to carry a bottle around a party with the word "virgin" on it.
Once again, this shows that MADD is entirely out of touch with the constituency they claim to protect, and is more interested in promoting prohibitionist, puritanical "values" than actually saving lives. They've made a product that might be popular with the already-cautious "abstinence-only" crowd, but will do nothing to actually reach those who are most likely to engage in risky behavior.
Whether or not you're a virgin, SSDP strongly recommends that you stay safe and sensible by carrying around some Screw the Drug War condoms... just in case.
