… Alcohol serves at the pleasure of the players on both sides of the game, its virtues those indicated by Seneca and Martin Luther, its vices those that the novelist Marguerite Duras likens, as did Hamlet, to the sleep of death: “Drinking isn’t necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can’t drink without thinking you’re killing yourself.” Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren. “The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.”
The observation is in the same despairing minor key as Billie Holiday’s riff on heroin: “If you think dope is for kicks and thrills you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio and living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing.” She goes on to say that in Britain the authorities at least have the decency to treat addiction as a public-health problem, but in America, “if you go to the doctor, he’s liable to slam the door in your face and call the cops.”
Humankind’s thirst for intoxicants is unquenchable, but to criminalize it, as Lincoln reminded the Illinois temperance society, reinforces the clinging to the addiction; to think otherwise would be “to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree and never can be reversed.” The injuries inflicted by alcohol don’t follow “from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing.” The victims are “to be pitied and compassionated,” their failings treated “as a misfortune, and not as a crime or even as a disgrace.”
… Whether declared by church or state, the war against human nature is by definition lost. The Puritan inspectors of souls in seventeenth-century New England deplored even the tentative embrace of Bacchus as “great licentiousness,” the faithful “pouring out themselves in all profaneness,” but the record doesn’t show a falling off of attendance at Boston’s eighteenth-century inns and taverns. The laws prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the 1920s discovered in the mark of sin the evidence of crime, but the attempt to sustain the allegation proved to be as ineffectual as it was destructive of the country’s life and liberty.
Instead of resurrecting from the pit a body politic of newly risen saints, Prohibition guaranteed the health and welfare of society’s avowed enemies. The organized-crime syndicates established on the delivery of bootleg whiskey evolved into multinational trade associations commanding the respect that comes with revenues estimated at $2 billion per annum. In 1930 alone, Al Capone’s ill-gotten gains amounted to $100 million.
So again with the war that America has been waging for the last 100 years against the use of drugs deemed to be illegal. The war cannot be won, but in the meantime, at a cost of $20 billion a year, it facilitates the transformation of what was once a freedom-loving republic into a freedom-fearing national security state. [++]
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Nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration are standing in our way to legalize marijuana in three states this year.
In Colorado, Oregon and Washington, ballot initiatives will let the voters decide whether they want to legalize marijuana in their states. These former DEA officials are so scared that the public will vote to legalize that they sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to oppose all the ballot initiatives.
Let’s show the Attorney General that our voice is stronger than former drug war generals. Urge Attorney General Holder to let states decide their own marijuana policies this November!
In the past few years, the states have been on the front lines of marijuana legalization. We’ve seen 17 states and the District of Columbia legalize marijuana for medical purposes and 15 states have effectively decriminalized marijuana possession in small amounts. More than half of all Americans support marijuana legalization. And the ballot initiatives in Colorado, Oregon and Washington have promising chances of passing.
The people who want to maintain marijuana prohibition are afraid. That’s why supporters of the drug war status quo are urging Holder to speak out against marijuana legalization. They’re desperate to block our progress, and they want to overshadow all the work you’ve done getting to this historic moment. They know if even one of these states legalizes marijuana, it would change the future of drug policy in our country — and we know it would be change for the better.
"Nothing changes when it comes to the drug war. Just more death and destruction — and corruption, robberies, muggings, overcrowded prisons, gang wars, and violence, all with no impact on the supply of drugs. They kill one smuggler or they bust one drug cartel, and ten more pop up. Decade after decade after decade doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. Like the Energizer Bunny, the drug war just keep going and going and going."
The government is threatening and raiding even the most professional and well-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Recently, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban all dispensaries and the federal government threatened the nation’s largest dispensary, Harborside Health Center. This federal crackdown runs roughshod over the will of voters and the repeated promises made by President Obama, Attorney General Holder and the Department of Justice to defer to responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana. Take action and urge your legislators to support a new bill in Congress that could stop the federal threats on medical marijuana.
Wading into the debate over stop-and-frisk police tactics, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to ask legislators on Monday for a change in New York State law that would drastically reduce the number of people who could be arrested for marijuana possession as a result of police stops.
The governor will call for the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view, administration officials said. Advocates of such a change say the offense has ensnared tens of thousands of young black and Latino men who are stopped by the New York City police for other reasons but after being instructed to empty their pockets, find themselves charged with a crime.
In this case, the governor would be acting against the wishes of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and in spite of a September directive from the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, who instructed officers not to arrest people who take small amounts of marijuana out of their pockets or bags after being stopped by the police.
Though the governor’s legislation does not address the high number of stops by the police, it would take aim at what many black and Hispanic lawmakers as well as advocacy groups say has been one of the most damaging results of the aggressive police tactics: arrest records for young people who have small amounts of marijuana in their pockets.
“For individuals who have any kind of a record, even a minuscule one, the obstacles are enormous to employment and to education,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “When it’s really a huge number of kids in the community who go through this, and all have the same story, the impact is just devastating.”
The police in New York City made 50,684 arrests last year for possession of a small amount of marijuana, more than for any other offense, according to an analysis of state data by Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College. The arrests continued — one in seven arrests made in the city was for low-level marijuana possession — even as Commissioner Kelly issued his directive.
Chemists Outrun Laws in War on Synthetic Drugs | Gawker
“If you want any evidence that drugs have won the drug war, you just need to read the scientific studies on legal highs.”
The war on drugs has a new front, and so far it appears to be a losing one.
Synthetic mimics of marijuana, dissociative drugs and stimulants - such as the “bath salts” allegedly consumed by Rudy Eugene, the Florida man shot after a horrific face-eating assault - are growing in popularity and hard to control. Every time a compound is banned, overseas chemists synthesize a new version tweaked just enough to evade a law’s letter.
It’s a giant game of chemical Whack-a-Mole.
Pictured: A 2011 traffic stop seizure in South Carolina yielded bath salts and synthetic marijuana with a street value of $10,000.
"I guess I never caught that bug where you’re only supposed to care about your own country or your own local area. To me, 49 decapitated Mexicans is just as bad as 49 decapitated Americans and I know if there were 49 decapitated Americans in the street anywhere in the country, it would be like 9/11 all over again. It would be the largest news story for years - if it just happened once - but it happens time and time again in Mexico… and I guess as long as Americans aren’t getting decapitated, apparently the rest of the country, and especially our media, couldn’t give a damn and that’s part of what’s sick and wrong with this country’s media. And so, we march on as if nothing is wrong, as if everything is hunky dory, as if the war on drugs makes sense and hasn’t created these grotesque gangs that grow larger and more grotesque by the day - and it’s not because of the drugs. It’s because the drugs are illegal."
May 4, 2012: Nine bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border from the Laredo, Texas. Police could not confirm who was responsible for the murders but a message seen with the bodies indicated it may have been an attack by the Zetas cartel against the rival Gulf cartel.
The Houston Chronicle is carrying a story with startling revelations of drug gang brutality in Mexico. Among other things, it reports of kidnapping young men and forcing them to engage in contests to the death in order to find and recruit killers. This made me wonder what kinds of things deter people from behaving like this, and what kinds of conditions produce this kind of behavior.
1. The state forbids something, like drugs.
2. Production MUST therefore be illegal, and production will occur because the demand doesn’t disappear when the drug is made illegal.
3. Going illegal is a necessary condition for all those who are willing to produce and supply the drug. The profit motive remains, even heightens, and so there will always be people who will go illegal.
4. The people attracted into the illegal business are going to be the people who already have the least inhibitions about doing anything immoral and illegal. They are the ones most willing to take risks.
5. Competition is all within illegality. This means that moral rules that govern peaceful competition do not prevail among the suppliers. They therefore select among any actions and rules that bring them survival, profits, and growth. The most effective means of gaining market share and preventing the incursion of rivals within a situation of illegal rivalry will include a reputation and readiness to kill and maim so as to enforce one’s will.
6. The means include corrupting law enforcement. This is virtually a necessity and always occurs in these conditions. The results include gang warfare. It also includes uneasy peace among gangs and division into territories and fiefdoms.
7. The competition need not lead to the practices mentioned in this article whose aim is to find and groom the most merciless killers. Yet it probably happened in the 1920s gangs that this mode of competition also prevailed as the many stories of Capone suggest. Most gangster movies also depict that the more brutal gangsters rise to the top.
I don’t claim that this is a complete explanation of what’s going on, but I did want to make the point that what’s going on in Mexico is not a random thing and not a peculiarly Mexican thing. These things often have rational explanations. It’s akin to terrorism and assassination and other forms of violence in that respect. There are often reasons that we can find that explain it even if the behavior is awful.
The Flower: Drug War
Because of America’s ‘War on Drugs’ the death toll in Mexico alone is possibly exceeding 40,000 people since 2006. If you thought prohibition was merely our government saying “no you can’t have this, or that” think again. This shit funds real terror here and abroad, and not the type of terror they paint in news stations or our conventional press. I’m talking about leaving a severed head by a grade school as an ‘example’ to teachers who refuse to give up half their pay to the drug cartels who run rampant there. It is no exaggeration when I say if we continue this futile war, we’re no better than the dictators we constantly try to reprimand.
![fuckyeahdrugpolicy:
Mexico Updates Death Toll in Drug War to 47,515, but Critics Dispute the Data | NYT
January 11, 2012—The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.
[…] The number of drug-related deaths is the subject of much dispute. Government officials last gave a figure — 34,612 — at the end of 2010, promising to update their tally regularly. They did not follow through. A group of Mexican and American academics, including [Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington] began pleading with the Calderón administration for death figures, along with other data known to be collected, including violent episodes involving the military. But members of the group say they were ignored.
[…] “Since there are very few actual investigations, those are approximations at best,” Mr. Olson said. “They’re hunches. There is not really a way of knowing precisely if it was caused by organized crime or a drug trafficker or not.” Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University who closely tracks deaths in Ciudad Juárez and other parts of the country, said that given the investigative failures, the most reliable figures come from the Mexican census agency, which identified 67,050 homicides from 2007 through 2010, nearly double the government’s count of drug-related deaths for that period. +](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyvyasCEcP1qc1ca1o1_500.jpg)
Mexico Updates Death Toll in Drug War to 47,515, but Critics Dispute the Data | NYT
January 11, 2012—The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.
[…] The number of drug-related deaths is the subject of much dispute. Government officials last gave a figure — 34,612 — at the end of 2010, promising to update their tally regularly. They did not follow through. A group of Mexican and American academics, including [Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington] began pleading with the Calderón administration for death figures, along with other data known to be collected, including violent episodes involving the military. But members of the group say they were ignored.
[…] “Since there are very few actual investigations, those are approximations at best,” Mr. Olson said. “They’re hunches. There is not really a way of knowing precisely if it was caused by organized crime or a drug trafficker or not.” Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University who closely tracks deaths in Ciudad Juárez and other parts of the country, said that given the investigative failures, the most reliable figures come from the Mexican census agency, which identified 67,050 homicides from 2007 through 2010, nearly double the government’s count of drug-related deaths for that period. +
Get Vocal: Personalize, Industrialize, Socialize, Tax Cannabis for a Healthy Economy
The most important step you can take is to contact your elected officials at all levels of government (local, state and federal), and let them know you oppose arresting responsible marijuana smokers. As a constituent, you hold special influence over the politicians who represent your district. It is critical you let them know how you feel.
Because the marijuana smoking community remains largely “in the closet” and is all too often invisible politically, our core constituency currently exercises far less political power than our numbers would otherwise suggest. The only way to overcome this handicap is for more of us to take an active role, and routinely contact our elected officials.
A majority of the American public opposes sending marijuana smokers to jail, and 3 out of 4 support the medical use of marijuana. Yet many elected officials remain fearful that if they support these reform proposals, they will be perceived as “soft” on crime and drugs and defeated at the next election.
Tell your elected officials that you know the difference between marijuana and more dangerous drugs and between marijuana smoking and violent crime, and that you do not support spending billions of dollars per year incarcerating nonviolent marijuana offenders.
To make that easy, NORML has a program on our web site that will identify your state and federal elected officials, and provide a sample letter that you can e-mail to Congress and state legislators. Additionally, we encourage you to join NORML and help us with this fight for personal freedom. We depend on contributions from private individuals to fund our educational and lobbying campaign, and our ability to move reform efforts forward is partially a question of resources. Please join with us and let’s end marijuana prohibition, once and for all.
Support Marijuana Legislation In Your State
How To Mount an Effective Letter Writing Campaign
Action Alerts — Things To Consider
Support Federal Legislation To End Marijuana Prohibition
The removal of all penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, including cultivation for personal use, and casual nonprofit transfers of small amounts. This policy, known as decriminalization, removes the consumer — the marijuana smoker — from the criminal justice system, while maintaining criminal penalties against those who sell or traffic large quantities of the drug.
Marijuana, or cannabis, as it is more appropriately called, has been part of humanity’s medicine chest for almost as long as history has been recorded.
Of all the negative consequences of marijuana prohibition, none is as tragic as the denial of medicinal cannabis to the tens of thousands of patients who could benefit from its therapeutic use.
Modern research suggests that cannabis is a valuable aid in the treatment of a wide range of clinical applications. These include pain relief — particularly of neuropathic pain (pain from nerve damage) — nausea, spasticity, glaucoma, and movement disorders. Marijuana is also a powerful appetite stimulant, specifically for patients suffering from HIV, the AIDS wasting syndrome, or dementia. Emerging research suggests that marijuana’s medicinal properties may protect the body against some types of malignant tumors and are neuroprotective.
Hemp is a distinct variety of the plant species cannabis sativa L. that contains minimal (less than 1%) amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. It is a tall, slender, fibrous plant similar to flax or kenaf. Various parts of the plant can be utilized in the making of textiles, paper, paints, clothing, plastics, cosmetics, foodstuffs, insulation, animal feed and other products.
The following documents provide important information about drug testing.
Opponents of medical marijuana law reform often argue that few or no health authorities recognize cannabis as a legitimate therapeutic agent. Most recently, this notion was repeated by DEA Director Asa Hutchinson, who stated, “We all have sympathy for folks that need medication, but we have to listen to the scientific and medical community, and they’re saying that marijuana has no legitimate medical purpose.” This contention, however, is altogether untrue. In reality, numerous health and medical organizations from both the United States and abroad support the use of marijuana as a medicine.
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The drug war is not a failure; rather it works perfectly for its intended purposes. It generates billions of dollars for government agencies at all levels, employing millions of people. It created and supports whole industries such as drug testing, and has enhanced the drug rehabilitation industry.
The drug war also protects other industries such as tobacco and alcohol, and even legal medical drug companies. It also protects the lumber and oil industries. The drug war even drives this Nation’s foreign policy. The drug war also funds gang violence at home and terrorists abroad, creating even more American jobs needed to combat these threats.
The drug war also has the added benefit of conveniently side stepping Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and liberties, allowing government to control even the most intimate facets of citizen’s lives, increasing government’s control. The drug war also guarantees a ready supply of drugs for children, guaranteeing an endless supply of new participants to support the prison industry, lawyers, law enforcement, etc.
The drug war also provides government the opportunity to marginalize those considered undesirable, take away their ability to vote, find employment, get an education, take their children, seize their property, etc. Who in their right mind could possibly want to do away with this cash cow, and return to a time when there was no illegal drug use in this country?
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Genius Cops Caught Apparently Planting Evidence By Own Dash Camera
Here’s a video of two Utica, N.Y. police officers searching a car during a traffic stop. At 1:02, one officer pulls a small baggie of something out of his pocket and ducks into the car; at 1:31, he emerges again, holding the same baggie. Oops!
The video was obtained by the Utica Phoenix, which goes to great lengths to avoid specifically accusing the officers of evidence-planting. We understand! The cops are only “apparently” planting evidence: it’s also possible that they just completely and egregiously mishandled the evidence they found. Utica cops [are] also “apparently” really good at finding drugs on the property of black residents. +
Still Pushing the Failed Militaristic Approach to the Drug War | Antiwar.com
Via Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the blog for the Cato Institute, this graph illustrates how Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s militarized approach to the drug war not only didn’t quell the violence, but reversed the downward trend that had been going on for over a decade. +
