Drug War Chronicle, Issue #524 -- 2/21/08
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, http://stopthedrugwar.org/user/psmith
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524
A Publication of Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
David Borden, Executive Director,
http://stopthedrugwar.org/user/borden
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"
Three New Book Premiums for Our Members:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/three_new_book_offers_for_our_members
Table of Contents:
1. EDITORIAL: POLITICIANS ARE TOO SCARED TO TALK ABOUT DRUG
PROHIBITION, SO WE MUST TALK
How many more lives will be ruined by the drug laws before our
leaders are willing to talk sense about them? Too many, here and
everywhere.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/the_US_should_learn_from_the_lessons_of_colombia_about_the_drug_war
2. TOP DOCTORS ASSOCIATION SAYS "YES" TO MEDICAL MARIJUANA IN
HISTORIC ENDORSEMENT
The nation's second largest doctors' organization endorsed the
medicinal use of marijuana in a major policy statement released
last week.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/american_college_physicians_medical_marijuana_policy_statement
3. STOP FILLING PRISONS, CALIFORNIA -- ADVOCATES TO TAKE
SENTENCING REFORM CASE TO VOTERS
California's prison system is the nation's second largest,
behind only the federal prison system. Now, an initative that
would dramatically expand Proposition 36-style "treatment not
jail" programs, as well as other systemic reforms, is headed for
the November ballot.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/california_nora_initiative_headed_for_ballot
4. IN MEMORIAM: DR. JOHN P. MORGAN
Dr. John P. Morgan, coauthor of "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana
Facts" and a leading academic advocate for drug policy reform,
died suddenly last Friday. He will be sorely missed.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/memorial_for_doctor_john_p_morgan
5. APPEAL: THREE EXCITING NEW BOOK OFFERS FOR OUR DONATING
SUP****TERS
We are pleased to offer the works "Over the Influence: The Harm
Reduction Guide for Managing Drugs and Alcohol," "Women Behind
Bars: The Crisis of Women in the US Prison System," and
"Cannabis: Yields and Dosage," as our latest member****p premium
gifts.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/three_new_book_offers_for_our_members
6. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
Slim picking on the corrupt cop front this week, but we still
have a Los Angeles probation officer rounded up in a major bust
and a small town Pennsylvania cop about to pay for his big
ambitions.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/police_drug_corruption
7. MARIJUANA: NEW HAMP****RE DECRIMINALIZATION BILL HITS BUMP
A bill that would decriminalize marijuana possession in New
Hamp****re is hitting some bumps. Last week, a subcommittee
slashed the quantity from one ounce or less to one-quarter ounce
or less, and this week a committee voted not to recommend the
bill. But it will still go to the House floor and a possible
roll-call vote.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/new_hamp****re_decriminalization_marijuana_bill_hits_bump
8. LATIN AMERICA: COLOMBIAN SOLDIERS CONVICTED OF KILLING
COLOMBIAN NARCOTICS POLICE
A judge in Cali has found a Colombian army colonel and 14 of his
troops guilty of murder for killing 10 elite Colombian anti-drug
police and their informant at the request of drug traffickers.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/colombia_colonel_guilty_killing_anti_drug_police
9. EUROPE: GROW OPS POP UP IN SOUTHERN NORWAY
Scandinavia tends toward harsh drug policies, but that isn't
stopping marijuana growers in Norway. Police there re****t a
series of recent grow up busts.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/norway_marijuana_grow_op_raids
10. AUSTRALIA: QUEENSLAND P***** TOUGH NEW DRUG LAW
The drug laws just got tougher in Australia's Queensland. The
parliament there passed a bill increasing penalties for Ecstasy,
PMA, and a number of other drugs, added "analogues" to the list,
and made it a crime to provide items used to make drugs.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/australia_queensland_new_drug_law_ecstasy
11. SOUTHEAST ASIA: METHADONE MAINTENANCE COMING TO HO CHI MINH
CITY
While Vietnam is generally noted for dealing with its heroin
problem by sentencing traffickers to death, one methadone
maintenance program for users is already underway and another
one is set to open in Ho Chi Minh City.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/vietnam_ho_chi_minh_city_methadone_maintenance
12. EUROPE: POLL FINDS BRITONS PREFER STATUS QUO ON MARIJUANA,
BUT ONE QUARTER WOULD SUP****T NO PENALTIES AT ALL
As the British government prepares for a seemingly inevitable
up-scheduling of marijuana, a new poll finds that a plurality of
Britons like the penalties for pot possession as they are, and
about one quarter would just like to see it legalized or
decriminalized.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/britons_prefer_marijuana_status_quo_angus_reid_poll
13. WEEKLY: THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of
years past.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/drug_war_history
14. WEEKLY: BLOGGING @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
THE SPEAKEASY
"Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Will Only Cause Horrible
Problems," "Rule #1 of Drug Legalization is Don't Talk About
Drug Legalization," "Judge Throws Out DEA Agents' Lawsuit
Against 'American Gangster'," "A Big Bump on the Road to the
Mexico," more coming soon...
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/blogging_at_the_speakeasy
15. STUDENTS: INTERN AT DRCNET AND HELP STOP THE DRUG WAR!
Apply for an intern****p at DRCNet for this fall (or spring), and
you could spend the semester fighting the good fight!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/drcnet_intern****ps_to_stop_the_drug_war
16. FEEDBACK: DO YOU READ DRUG WAR CHRONICLE?
Do you read Drug War Chronicle? If so, we need your feedback to
evaluate our work and make the case for Drug War Chronicle to
funders. We need donations too.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/do_you_read_drug_war_chronicle
17. WEBMASTERS: HELP THE MOVEMENT BY RUNNING DRCNET SYNDICATION
FEEDS ON YOUR WEB SITE!
Sup****t the cause by featuring automatically-updating Drug War
Chronicle and other DRCNet content links on your web site!
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18. RESOURCE: DRCNET WEB SITE OFFERS WIDE ARRAY OF RSS FEEDS FOR
YOUR READER
A new way for you to receive DRCNet articles -- Drug War
Chronicle and more -- is now available.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/drug_policy_RSS_feeds_now_available
19. RESOURCE: REFORMER'S CALENDAR ACCESSIBLE THROUGH DRCNET WEB
SITE
Visit our new web site each day to see a running countdown to
the events coming up the soonest, and more.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/drug_reform_calendar
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today!)
================
1. Editorial: Politicians Are Too Scared to Talk About Drug
Prohibition, So We Must Talk
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/the_US_should_learn_from_the_lessons_of_colombia_about_the_drug_war
David Borden, Executive Director,
http://stopthedrugwar.org/user/borden
Each week, as many of you know, our editor Phil Smith compiles a
list of the latest re****ts on police corruption relating to the
drug laws: "This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories." Phil has been
writing these for more than five years -- I won't let him stop
-- and in all that time I can only remember a single week in
which he was unable to find any relevant news articles. Whatever
one thinks of the police, the bottom line is that the drug laws
corrupt some of them, and so long as we have these drug laws
they always will.
To the south, a court in the nation of Colombia dealt with the
perpetrators of a particularly troubling incident of government
corruption at a level I hope we never see here. In May 2006, a
judge found, an Army colonel and 14 of his troops massacred 10
Colombian narcotics police, ambu****ng them outside the city of
Cali as they prepared to seize 220 pounds of cocaine to which
they had been pointed (rightly or wrongly) by an informant.
Mexico may even have it worse right now. In 2006 and 2007
roughly 4,000 people have been murdered in drug trade violence,
and police are among the many suspects. While police corruption
and drug trade violence have certainly taken their toll on our
country here in the north, we should by no means rule out the
possibility that things could get even worse.
And so the US government should take a lesson from the
experience of Colombia, both for their sakes and for ours.
Colombia is fighting the drug war in the way it does, in part
because they have been pushed into it by US diplomatic pressure.
Colombian cognoscenti in significant number understand that it
is prohibition which causes drug trade violence, and that
Colombia would be better off with some form of drug legalization
-- The understanding may fall short of an outright consensus,
but it is an understanding that is widely held nonetheless. Many
US policymakers privately understand this too, but for reasons
both political and ideological they not only refuse to deal with
it, but in many cases continue to actively push other countries
in the wrong direction. To be fair, drug warrior politicians in
Colombia presumably find the drug laws useful for political
purposes as well.
The situation is a wrongful one, and should be changed. Colombia
doesn't deserve to be torn apart by flawed drug policies that it
didn't invent, and it is our users here who buy most of their
product anyway and thereby make it possible. There are viable
options for reducing the harms of substance that don't involve
prohibition, and which therefore don't cause drug trade
violence, don't cause corruption, don't place addicts into the
hell we've all seen, and that could actually work. Just because
we talk about making drugs legal doesn't mean we won't still
offer treatment, that the addicted won't organize for self-help,
that we can no longer seek to discourage drug use or do harm
reduction for those who don't listen. The exact best regulation
system or set of programs is hard to tell, and every possible
scenario has both pros and cons. But they all have in common
that they are preferable to prohibition for almost every
im****tant measure one can construct.
The victims of the drug laws -- in Colombia, here, everywhere --
don't deserve what is being done to them. Since our politicians
are mostly too scared to talk about this, it is therefore up to
us to press the case. Bit by bit, the public will hear our
ideas, and eventually turn our way. It is only an unfortunate
matter of how many lives get ruined in the meanwhile.
================
2. Top Doctors Association Says "YES" to Medical Marijuana in
Historic Endorsement
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/american_college_physicians_medical_marijuana_policy_statement
In a position paper
(http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/other_issues/medmarijuana.pdf),
a leading American medical association has endorsed the
medicinal use of marijuana, called for more studies of its
medical uses, and urged the US government to get out of the way.
The position paper from the American College of Physicians was
released last Friday after being approved by the group's
governing body.
The American College of Physicians (http://www.acponline.org)
is
the nation's second largest doctors' organization, behind only
the American Medical Association. It is made up of some 124,000
internal medicine specialists dealing primarily with adults.
The college pointed to strong evidence that marijuana has proven
useful in treating AIDS wasting syndrome, glaucoma, and the
nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy
treatments. The college also noted that there is anecdotal
evidence for many other medical uses of marijuana, but that
research had been stymied by "a complicated federal approval
process, limited availability of research grade marijuana, and
the debate over legalization." The science of medical marijuana
should not be "hindered or obscured" by the controversy over
legalizing the plant for personal, non-medical use, the group
said.
"This is a historic statement by one of the world's most
respected physician groups, and shows the growing scientific
consensus that marijuana is a safe, effective medicine for some
patients, including many battling life-threatening illnesses
like cancer and AIDS," said former US Surgeon General Dr.
Joycelyn Elders in a press release
(http://www.mpp.org/news/second-largest-doctors-group.html)
from
the Marijuana Policy Project (http://www.mpp.org).
"Large
medical associations move cautiously, and for the American
College of Physicians to note 'a clear discord' between
scientific opinion and government policy on medical marijuana is
a stinging rebuke to our government. It's time for politicians
and bureaucrats to get out of the way of good medicine and solid
research."
"This statement by the American College of Physicians recognizes
what clinicians and researchers have been seeing for years, that
for some patients medical marijuana works when conventional
drugs fail," said Dr. Michael Saag, director of the Center for
AIDS Research at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. "One of
the challenges in HIV/AIDS treatment is helping patients to
adhere to drug regimens that may cause nausea and other noxious
side effects. The relief of these side effects that marijuana
provides can help patients stay on life-extending therapies."
"This statement by America's second largest doctors' group
demolishes the myth that the medical community doesn't sup****t
medical marijuana," said Marijuana Policy Project executive
director Rob Kampia. "The ACP's statement smashes a number of
other myths, including the claims that adequate substitutes are
available or that marijuana is unsafe for medical use. 124,000
doctors have just said what our government refuses to hear, that
it makes no medical or moral sense to arrest the sick and
suffering for using medical marijuana."
While the ACP position paper consists of 13 closely reasoned
pages, the group summarizes its medical marijuana positions
thusly:
Position 1: ACP sup****ts programs and funding for rigorous
scientific evaluation of the potential therapeutic benefits of
medical marijuana and the publication of such findings.
Position 1a: ACP sup****ts increased research for conditions
where the efficacy of marijuana has been established to
determine optimal dosage and route of delivery.
Position 1b: Medical marijuana research should not only focus on
determining drug efficacy and safety but also on determining
efficacy in comparison with other available treatments.
Position 2: ACP encourages the use of non-smoked forms of THC
that have proven therapeutic value.
Position 3: ACP sup****ts the current process for obtaining
federal research-grade cannabis.
Position 4: ACP urges review of marijuana's status as a schedule
I controlled substance and its reclassification into a more
appropriate schedule, given the scientific evidence regarding
marijuana's safety and efficacy in some clinical conditions.
Position 5: ACP strongly sup****ts exemption from federal
criminal prosecution; civil liability; or professional
sanctioning, such as loss of licensure or credentialing, for
physicians who prescribe or dispense medical marijuana in
accordance with state law.
Similarly, ACP strongly urges protection from criminal or civil
penalties for patients who use medical marijuana as permitted
under state laws.
"The richness of modern medicine is to carefully evaluate new
treatments. Marijuana has been in a special category because of,
I suppose, its abuses and other concerns," Dr. David Dale, the
group's president and a University of Wa****ngton professor of
medicine, told Reuters
(http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1560610120080215)
in a phone interview.
An uncharacteristically terse David Murray, chief scientist for
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, could
only appeal to science in an interview with Reuters. "The
science should be kept open. There should be more research. We
should continue to investigate," he said.
Dale Gieringer, executive director of California NORML
(http://www.canorml.org)
had a few nits to pick with the ACP's
statement, but approved overall. "This is an im****tant step," he
said. "But when they say they sup****t the existing federal
supply system, it suggests they are unaware of all the
systematic blockage of independent research caused by the NIDA
monopoly and DEA interference."
Similarly, said Gieringer, while government licensing and
regulation of medical marijuana makes sense, that doesn't mean
we have to maintain the existing NIDA monopoly. "It just doesn't
make sense to do that," he said.
Where Gieringer was pleasantly surprised was with the ACP's call
to end the criminal persecution of medical marijuana patients,
providers, and doctors. "They came out really forcefully against
criminalization," he noted. "That's very impressive. No one else
has been willing to address that. All of these apologists for
the government run around saying you can't have unregulated
medical marijuana, but that doesn't mean you need to throw
patients and doctors in jail."
The medical community's embrace of medical marijuana has been
timid and hesitant, with a number of im****tant organizations,
including the American Medical Association, lagging behind. This
policy statement by the nation's second largest medical
association should give that process an im****tant boost.
================
later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)
--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.
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