What these laws mean is obvious: have the piece of paper, A-OK, lack the piece of paper, the state will destroy your life. The situation with certain firearms is quite similar, as explored in the Disarmament Agenda. These are the trappings of a vicious, intense police state.

From the bookshelf: Opiates and Political Power in America: The Story of How the Drug Enforcement Administration Came to Be., by Edward Jay Epstein, 1977

Few if any standing and enforced policies of the United States are more vicious and indefensible than the War on Drugs. The most immediate purpose of draconian drug policy is to keep from mainstream citizens, substances which foster disillusionment with the propaganda of the elite, render the citizen markedly less prone to follow the directives of the elite (and implement those directives with obedient productivity), and increase the likelihood that individuals will have innovative thoughts that threaten the hegemony of the dominant elite. Consider that dealers of LSD have been charged with "conspiracy to overthrow the government." Stated slightly differently, the principal objection of the conspirators to unfettered access to psychotropics is that the model of the human mind on which their psychological warfare campaigns are based is made substantially inaccurate, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of the campaigns. The conspirators, by making illegal those psychotropics they find objectionable, create a sharp division between those they have successfully consolidated into their power structure as reliable if unwitting operatives, and those they have not.

The War on Drugs serves to condition military personnel to accept and implement orders to police and oppress the domestic citizenry. It conditions domestic law enforcement personnel to accept and implement orders to harass, persecute, and brutalize the domestic citizenry on senseless, arbitrary grounds.

The War on Drugs is also used as an excuse for meddling in the internal policies and law enforcement activities of foreign nations (i.e. a veiled form of imperialism). The War on Drugs sweeps completely uninvolved citizens into crossfire - literal and figurative - that would not exist but for draconian drug laws. Even the ostensible and ostensibly noble objective of the War on Drugs - the eradication of drug addiction - is in fact unavoidably socialist, since it necessarily involves the transfer of wealth from the unafflicted - who can pay - to the afflicted, who cannot. The War on Drugs spontaneously generates organized crime wherever it is fought, and these syndicates of opportunity are then cited as an excuse for expansion of the law enforcement apparatus, an expansion which is inherently dangerous to civilian liberties. The War on Drugs raises the end-user price of drugs by an order of magnitude or more, causing some drug users to resort to theft from and robbery of uninvolved citizens to finance their addictions.

The War on Drugs keeps most recreational drugs medically dangerous (including the danger of blood-borne pathogen transmission) and socially stigmatized, assuring that only law-breakers (the disobedient) take them and those who get in trouble are likely to stay in trouble. The net effect is that law-breakers die that would not otherwise be law-breakers or be dead, and those who engage in sexual relations with certain drug users are at high risk for fatal infection that would not be at risk but for the War on Drugs.

Addictive personalities are easily manipulated by the establishment, because addiction constitutes a predictable and powerful vehicle for reward-punishment arrangements, but these people are also evidently susceptible to dangerous drug addiction. With the War on Drugs, the establishment exploits those with addictive personalities who are obedient, by forbidding use of dangerous and incapacitating drugs except with a formal (state-sanctioned) prescription. This is like a high-powered version of seatbelt laws: any reasonable person wears a seatbelt, but with seatbelt laws, even unreasonable people will wear them, if they are obedient.

The visibility of people using drugs - even, or even particularly, tobacco - is a glaring reminder to society's throngs of Utopian pseudomoral busybodies that their decades of determined campaigning have come to naught, with throngs of people still self-medicating with dangerous and injurious drugs, to make living in the pseudomoral busybodies' world less miserable and dreadful.

The War on Drugs is a perpetual engine of waste and control. It can be won only by the full, thorough implementation of an Orwellian control apparatus. In short, the War on Drugs is a drop-in replacement for conventional war, precisely as discussed in the satirical Report From Iron Mountain.

The War on Drugs was born many decades ago in a campaign by William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon, Du Pont, and others. This is explained in The Elkhorn Manifesto.

The Rockefellers have been key players in the War on Drugs, including its initial incarnation as Prohibition. This is detailed in chapter 2 of Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America by Edward Jay Epstein, mirrored from www.druglibrary.org.

from Human Rights & the Drug War, from http://www.hr95.org/dw101.htm:

A Brief History

It is called The Drug War, and it has been America's longest war.

The federal government had no role in the health and drug trades until early this century, when labeling requirements were placed on patent medicines. Prohibition was repeatedly ruled unconstitutional until:

• 1919 The 18th Amendment banned commerce in alcohol on a national level. The violent and corrupt "Roaring Twenties" ensued.
  
• 1933 The people had had enough. The 21st Amendment repealed the Volstead Act, ending Constitutional authority for Prohibition.
  
• 1937 Prohibitionists disguised the Marihuana Tax Act as a revenue bill and banned an entire plant species through regulation enforcement. The narcotics bureaucracy had found a gateway drug law.
  
• 1961 The UN adopted the Single Convention Treaty on Narcotic Drugs, opening the way for more stringent enforcement. The CIA went into Vietnam and heroin began to flow into America from Asia.
  
• 1968 The U.S. signed the Treaty. In the grips of the Vietnam War and the "generation gap," federal policy continued to harden.
  
• 1969 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Drug control authority was eventually written into a "scheduling" hoax that extended prohibition enforcement. Under this system, drugs are not officially 'prohibited'; they're 'illicit'. But people still go to prison for using them.
  
• 1970 Congressman George Bush joined the growing majority of office holders who opposed mandatory minimum sentences "because they remove a great deal of the court's discretion."
  
• 1972 President Richard Nixon appointed a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The panel, known as the Shafer Commission, called for decriminalizing marijuana and a policy of control based on medical risk, so Nixon denounced its report and declared a"War on Drugs". Nixon's war faltered amid a cloud of curruption when he resigned office during his second term, while facing impeachment charges.
  
• 1978 President Jimmy Carter publicly advocated decriminalizing up to an ounce of marihuana in his statement to Congress on drug policy, but behind the scenes moved to steer the Drug War back on course.
  
• 1980 Drug warrior Ronald Reagan assumed office and brought the military industrial comples into the battlefield. The CIA went to Central America and cocaine began to flow back to our cities.
  
• 1984 Reagan announced: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" and promptly militarized the Drug War. Zero tolerance became the stepping stone to widespread implementation of urine testing. His 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act went farther, adding property forfeiture law under Nancy's rallying cry: "Just say no."
  
• Late 1980s Democrats and Republicans vied to out do each other in criminalizing and punishing drug users. As Vice President and later as President George Bush supported the return of Mandatory Minimum prison sentences. Physical evidence was replaced by sentencing guidelines. No knock search warrants, hearsay evidence, and high-tech surveillance systems extended the realm of thought-crime into conspiracy laws.
  
• Early 1990s Baby Boom President Bill "I didn't inhale" Clinton campaigned on MTV, stating "The punishment should fit the crime." Once in office, he reversed gear and pursued yet another round of escalations in the Drug War, including, for the first time ever, the death penalty for growing marihuana in the 1994 Federal Crime Bill.
  
• 1995 The 10 millionth marijuana arrest since 1965 occurred in Ohio when Tod McCormick, a medical marijuana patient with a Dutch prescription, was pulled over in an illegal roadside search. A national survey found that 95% of police officers believed the US to be losing the Drug War.
  
• 1996 More than 60% of federal prisoners are locked up for drug offenses. While mandatory minimum sentences require that drug offenders serve full term sentences, mandatory release programs put violent felons back out on the streets to reduce prison crowding. Marijuana arrests are at an all time high, and citizens of California and Arizona vote overwhelmingly to legalize medical marijuana. Federal policy continues to lose support when appointed officials threaten to arrest doctors and patients.
  
• 1997 Business as usual. The Clinton administration begins the year with an all-out assault on doctors and patients for medical marijuana until a court orders them to desist. Malicious prosecution continues. The rate of incarceration for African American males hits a new record high, as does federal spending on the failed drug war. A new war is beginning to be waged on tobacco users. The National Istitute on Health reports that needle exchanges clearly save lives, and congress instantly forbids it from relaxing the ban on clean needles. Oregon legislators vote to recriminalize cannabis use, and a voters' referendum is launched to block it from taking effect.
  
• 1998 When confronted with scientific proof that needle exchange reduces infectuous disease without increasing drug use, Janet Reno and Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey decide to ignore the results and continue the ban. Clinton launches a multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign that uses federal tax money to purchase advertising time and space for the private sector's leading advocate of prohibition, the PDFA (Partnership for a Drug Free America). Congress takes time from its investigations of Clinton to pass ever more repressive legislation. Numerous new studies vindicate the medical marijuana reform position, and voters in five states pass initiatives at the ballot box to legalize it. Faced with an overwhelming favorable vote, Congress directly intervenes to block the vote count in Washington DC. At the same time, Oregon voters overturn the state legislature's attempt to reinstate criminal penalties for marijuana, and Arizona voters vote to medicalize all controlled substances (illegal drugs). California votes its leading drug warrior, Dan Lungren, out of office by a huge majority. Teenage use of all drugs levels off nationally.
  
• 1999 Public revulsion at the hypocrisy of the federal government is at a record high. Yet another drug warrior is elected speaker of the house, and Congress fights in court to suppress the count of the Washington DC popular vote to legalize marijuana for medical use.
  
• None of this has had a substantial effect in reducing drug use or making the public more safe - only in reducing respect for human rights. The Drug War is an abject failure, and it is time for America to cut its losses and change political course to solve its problems.

---

Your Home Is Your Castle:
The Right to Privacy

Privacy has long been considered an implied right of the Constitution, as described in the Fourth Amendment; but what this covers is vague and has been eroded dramatically by the Drug War.

Courts have ruled that chemical analysis of body fluids, and body cavity searches by police are not excessive. Government agents are allowed to pose as people's friends, rifle through their trash, monitor telephone and electrical bills, peer over fences, fly over homes, scan them with infrared sensors, heat detectors and even enhanced satellite surveillance photography to see what Americans are doing in their own backyards.

Is America Addicted to the Drug War?

The Drug War grinds on as a monotonous, dehumanizing routine:

News media play up public fears to sell copy. Politicians sell themselves as being "tough on crime." Every year, they ban more activities, and pass longer prison sentences, more forfeiture laws, and higher enforcement budgets. The next year they repeat this same ritual. Well paid bureaucrats scrutinize the legal system for glimmers of compassion, discretion and freedom to close the "loopholes." Drug warriors write Anti-This Acts and Omnibus That Laws and forbid discussion of reform. Human rights violations and conflicts of interest within the prison and law enforcement industries are accepted as a regrettable aspect of doing war. Another record size property seizure; more mothers in prison; one marijuana arrest every 49 seconds with over 11 million busts served; the biggest law enforcement budgets in history, the most sweeping and intrusive police powers ever.

Our government shows advanced symptoms of being addicted to its own Drug War. Politicians habitually increase their drug law dosage. Constantly looking for a stronger fix, they spend the nation into debt without getting satisfaction. Our leaders refuse to admit the destructive consequences of their behavior. Drug enforcement agents abuse the public trust. The media reinforce the negative behavior while living in morbid denial of their own role, like a co-dependent partner.

Lost in the frenzy is a simple fact. Illicit drug users are people, too. Most casual drug users are peaceful and productive members of society until they become casualties of the Drug War.

---

The Price Tag

Over the course of his eight years in office, Reagan spent $22.6 billion on his revived Drug War. Another major escalation was pushed through under George Bush, who spent $42.5 billion in a single term. Under Clinton, spending has continued to increase, with $16 billion for one year alone allocated in the 1998 fiscal budget. Those figures show federal spending only, not counting all unfunded mandates passed onto states.

Spending at other levels of government adds up to approximately the same as the federal budget, so in 1998 you can expect to see well over $30 billion spent on the Drug War.

In 1999, the federal Drug War budget alone is expected to rise again to $17 billion. Are we better off by wasting ever more money on the Drug War? Where will it end?

$$$ The average cost of incarcerating a federal inmate is $23,000 per year. (FAMM, Coalition for Federal Sentencing Reform, March, 1997.)

$$$ Almost 60% of federal inmates &emdash; 55,624 people! &emdash; are drug offenders. Half of these are first time, non-violent offenders. (Bureau of Prisons, 1997.)

$$$ To feed, clothe, house and guard these 55,624 prisoners costs taxpayers $3.5 million per day, or $1.27 billion annually.

And There's Lots More!

$$$ Public assistance or welfare for children of inmates who have lost a breadwinner,

$$$ Foster care for children who have lost their parents,

$$$ Unnecessary and inaccurate urine testing of employees, damaging both morale and job productivity,

$$$ Medical costs to treat people for diseases spread by sharing dirty needles due to bans on needle exchange programs,

$$$ Homes, property, cars, and savings forfeited from families of inmates,

$$$ Money, property stolen to support expensive illegal drug habits,

$$$ Money diverted from the open market to the underground market,

$$$ Tax dollars and untaxed incomes lost to the black market economy of drugs,

$$$ Tax dollars lost by giving tax-exempt status to Drug War propagandists such as: PRIDE, PDFA (Partnership for a Drug-Free America), Drug Watch International, DARE, etc.,

$$$ Other criminal justice system costs,

$$$ Hidden law enforcement budgets,

$$$ Paid informants,

$$$ Court costs,

$$$ Attorney fees,

$$$ Personal hardships

---

Caught in the Quagmire of
Another Vietnam?

The parallels between the Vietnam conflict and the Drug War are many. Some Drug War equipment is even leftover from Vietnam, such as night viewing equipment, the helicopters used for fly-over surveillance in marijuana eradication programs, etc.

Both wars have hidden political agendas and ambiguous military goals. And in both wars, government officials who disagree with the policy remain silent. Will it take 30 years for the equivalent of a Robert MacNamara to step forward and admit to knowing that the Drug War is terribly wrong?

Vietnam War Unwinnable war Innocent civilian casualties Grassroots opposition Indistinguishable enemy "Search and destroy" Same villages won and lost Body count "victories" Dehumanizing the enemy Fighting "Communism" $8.57 billion / year avg. 21 years (1954-1975) $180 billion total outlay

Drug War Unwinnable war Innocent civilian casualties Grassroots opposition Indistinguishable enemy "Search and destroy" Same streets won and lost Arrest & seizure "victories" Dehumanizing the enemy Fighting "Drugs" $18.4 b. / 2000 est. (federal only) 27+ years (1972-?) $??? billion (fed, state and local)

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-26, by David Luhnow:

Saving Mexico
To weaken the cartels, some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade

Mexico City

In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion.

A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government's war on drugs summed up recently what he's learned from his long career: "This war is not winnable."

[rest]

The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement
The drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward.

Beheadings and amputations. Iraqi-style brutality, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. More than 7,200 dead—almost double last year’s tally—in shoot-outs between federales and often better-armed drug cartels. This is modern Mexico, whose president, Felipe Calderón, has been struggling since 2006 to wrest his country from the grip of four powerful cartels and their estimated 100,000 foot soldiers.

[rest]

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-2, by Mary Anastasia O'Grady:

A Stimulus Plan for Mexican Gangsters
Obama's promise not to crack down on medical-marijuana use raises the stakes for traffickers.

Mexico City

Just when you thought the effects of U.S. drug policy couldn't get more pernicious, guess what? That's where we're headed.

[rest]

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-May-12, by Mary Anastasia O'Grady:

The U.S. Role in a Mexico Assassination

Stories of campus drug use in the U.S. are so common that last week's arrest of 75 alleged dealers at San Diego State University was shocking chiefly due to the number netted. The occasional big bust aside, the long running drug war has become almost background noise. At least in this country.

[rest]

Mexican marijuana cartels sully US forests, parks

PORTERVILLE, Calif. — National forests and parks — long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels — have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said.

[rest]

Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal, Florida Says

MIAMI — From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida's drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

[rest]

Casualties of the Corrupt Drug War

It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston.

They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they'd find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston's home. When police forced their way into Johnston's home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened fire, and killed her.

[rest]

How to beat the drug busts - by the best narcotics officer in America

Washington -- A former US policeman and undercover drug agent has appalled narcotics officials by introducing a Christmas video for drug users on how to avoid arrest and fool the police.

[rest]

from the Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2006-Dec-22, by Kenneth Dean:

FORMER DRUG COP'S DVD GETS WORLDWIDE ATTENTION

A former East Texas narcotics officer's plans to release a DVD titled "Never Get Busted Again" have generated reaction from around the globe.

"Is this a bloody hoax?" a reporter for The Times of London asked the Tyler Morning Telegraph Friday morning.

[rest]

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

[rest]

Marijuana! Supreme Court Just Says No
Now how can you relieve pain?

The Supreme Court's liberal bloc--Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer--ensured Monday with the support of Justices Kennedy and Scalia that people sick from cancer treatment will have to think first about a house call from the federal drug police before using marijuana to relieve their symptoms. Even the Court's language was unfeeling: "The case comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the. . . undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progeny foreclose that claim."

Liberalism to cancer patients: Drop dead.

[rest]

Analysis: Study shows U.S. losing drug war

Washington, DC, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- After 25 years and $25 billion the United States is further from winning the war on drugs, a study released Tuesday indicates.

[rest]

Altered Minds
Former drug warriors turn against prohibition

In the 1980s, not many people could plausibly claim stronger anti-drug credentials than Nancy Reagan. But Forest Tennant could.

[rest]

Ecstasy's after-effects

Following the retraction of a high-profile paper, the US research agency that supports research on drug abuse needs to ensure its independence from intense political pressure to prove that recreational drugs are harmful.

[rest]

So-called 'police' still seizing medical records

Last week, we examined the seizure of the records of more than 5,000 medical marijuana patients as drug police raided the home and office of Dr. Mollie Fry, a physician, in El Dorado County, California.

But it appears the Fry raid may be the tip of the iceberg. In a firsthand account of a similar raid on the office of Dr. William Eidelman in Santa Monica on Oct. 10, a medical marijuana patient writes:

[rest]

from NORML, Weekly News Bulletin, 2001-May-14:

Federal Statute Defining Marijuana As Having "No Medical Use" Forbids Manufacturing and Distributing Medical Pot, Court Affirms
State-Approved Use of Medical Marijuana By Patients Not Challenged By Decision

    Washington, DC: Parties who grow or distribute marijuana for medical purposes may not raise the defense of medical necessity under federal law, the Supreme Court ruled today. Their ruling reverses a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ruled federal law exempts third party providers who cultivate and supply marijuana to patients who would suffer "serious harm if they were denied cannabis."
    [...]

[rest]

For hemp foods, a decisive moment
Organic product makers fight new drug laws

Some of the latest substances the Drug Enforcement Administration wants to make illegal: cereal, soda, corn chips, muffins. Not all such products, of course, just those made with the seeds and oil of hemp, which in some forms can grow as marijuana. The DEA is concerned about traces of pot's active chemical; fans of these products laud them as a nutritional godsend. A federal court in California must now decide which argument holds.

[rest]

Opportunity for pot-law debate

My thanks go out to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for clearing away some of the smoke surrounding the marijuana debate.

[rest]

from TPDL 2000-Aug-8, from Arianna Online 2000-Aug-7, by Arianna Huffington:

A Turning Point In The War on Drugs

How long do you keep the lie going? This is the unstated question in the blossoming drug-war debate. Speaking last week at the Shadow Convention in Philadelphia, the Rev. Edwin Sanders of Nashville's Metropolitan Church was unequivocal in his answer: ``This needs to be the time when we collectively raise our voices and say that this is the end.'' Sanders' speech was part of a breakthrough day in the drug-policy-reform movement. Speakers as varied as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the biggest cheerleaders for the drug war in the 1980s, and Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.), the highest-ranking elected official ever to challenge our national drug policy, took to the stage to echo Sanders' sentiment that the time has come to declare an end to a war that has destroyed far too many lives.

In the audience, hundreds of parents, children and spouses of those incarcerated on nonviolent drug charges held placards with the pictures and stories of their loved ones. They had arrived on buses from around the country, representing the millions of Americans whose world has been torn apart by this disastrous war. [...]

[rest]

from LewRockwell.com, 2000-Sep-29, by William L. Anderson:

McCaffrey's War Against Athletes

Poor Barry McCaffrey. Not being satisfied with shooting surrendering Iraqis or ordaining the latest drug raids into the homes of unarmed senior citizens, the former general now wants to clean up sports. Where the rest of us have seen some great competition at the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, McCaffrey sees only drug addicts.

[rest]

Drug war hypocrites kill a troublesome author

Peter McWilliams, 50, author of the 1993 book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country," and accomplished public speaker on libertarian topics, died at home in Los Angeles June 14.. Struggling for breath in his bathtub, Peter choked to death on his own vomit.

But it was not an accident.

[rest]

The Drug Abuse State of the Union

While the national media has focused on the fatal effects of club drugs like ecstasy, many major U.S. cities find their drug problems are distinctly regional.

Texas health authorities are worried deadly "fry joints" - marijuana cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid - may contain the psychosis-inducing drug PCP: In rural Missouri, illegal production of the stimulant methamphetamine is rampant; and Washington, D.C. still faces a major crack cocaine epidemic.

[rest]

Over-the-Counter Is the Right Prescription

A government advisory panel recently decided that two cholesterol-lowering drugs should not be made available to consumers over-the-counter. Though the decision was in favor of the status quo, this was part of a larger process underway at the Food and Drug Administration with potentially far-reaching consequences.

[rest]

The following item is from the Lindesmith Center, as are some other items in this chapter. The Lindesmith Center is funded by George Soros. Soros is plausibly identified by William Engdahl as a Rothschild agent (see "The Secret Financial Network Behind `Wizard' George Soros" in the Corporate Transnationalism chapter). Apparently the House of Rothschild takes a progressive stance on psychoactives, likely because they view their liberal use as central to an effective Brave-New-World-like new world order-of-sorts. It appears that the House of Rockefeller still adheres to the traditional twentieth century policy, whereby drug prohibition is used as a mechanism of social marginalization, paramilitary preparation of the state, military-industrial complex empowerment, criminal syndicate empowerment, crypto-imperialism, and direct social control. That the drug war is still accelerating in 2000 is symptomatic of current Rockefeller ascendancy. Of course, that the House of Rothschild is a proponent of drug liberalization does not mean drug liberalization is bad, but most drug use is indeed bad, and instruments of the House of Rothschild claim otherwise, as detailed in the item by Rachel Ehrenfeld.

from TPD 1999-Nov-2, from the Washington Post p.A21, by Ethan Nadelmann:

Learning to Live With Drugs

This week's meeting in Washington of drug czars from throughout the Americas represents merely the latest charade in the ongoing war on drugs. Year after year, decade after decade, governments announce their latest drug control strategies, sign the latest bilateral and multilateral agreements and proclaim that the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter than ever.

[rest]

The Drug War Debate; The Drug War 'Cannot Be Won'; It's Time to Just Say No To Self-Destructive Prohibition

Like many people, I was delighted this past November when voters in California and Arizona approved, by substantial margins, two ballot initiatives that represent a change in direction in our drug policies. The California initiative legalized the cultivation and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The Arizona initiative went further, allowing doctors to prescribe any drug for legitimate medical purposes and mandating treatment, not incarceration, for those arrested for illegal drug possession. It also stiffened penalties for violent crimes committed under the influence of drugs.

[rest]

Cannabis Campaign - Soros adds weight to the cause
Now's the time to decriminalise, says the legendary financier.

GEORGE SOROS, the multi-billionaire financier and philanthropist, is supporting the Independent on Sunday's campaign to decriminalise cannabis.

Mr Soros, one of the world's richest men, is backing our drive to change the laws on the personal possession of cannabis for recreational and medical purposes through his New York-based research foundation, the Lindesmith Centre.

[rest]

Here is a selection of articles from DrugText (http://www.drugtext.nl/articles/contents.htm) related to the Drug War:

• The Drug War by Noam Chomsky: "When the Bush plan was announced, the American Civil Liberties Union at once branded it a ``hoax,'' a strategy that is ``not simply unworkable'' but ``counter-productive and cynical.'' (43) If the rhetorical ends were the real ones, that would be true enough. But for the objective of population control and pursuit of traditional policy goals, the strategy has considerable logic, though its short-term successes are unlikely to persist."
  
  
• The Drug War As A Socialist Enterprise by Milton Friedman: "When people talk about innocent victims of the war drugs, they very often forget the people who suffer robberies, theft, murder - not because they are caught in the crossfires of drug battles, not because they are victims of addicts who are trying to support their habit. but simply because so large a fraction of law enforcement resources are being used to try to control drugs that there are not enough resources left to prevent theft, burglary, and the rest in the community at large."
  
  
• Drug policy and human rights by Erik Fromberg: "The consequences of the structural illegality of drug use go however much further than only the criminalisation of the drug user. As the prohibition is contrary to the principles upon which our whole penal code is based, the normal functioning of the penal code and even the whole fabric of society is being eroded by a number of unavoidable developments that violate other articles of the Universal Declaration. Don't the U.S. mandatory minima and the way the indigenous indians of the Andes are treated not violate article 5 on inhumane treatment?"
  
  
• The Other Prohibition: The cigarette crisis in post war Germany by Henner Hess: "I must admit I felt some gleeful pleasure when I first came across this document, and I still enjoy the irony every time I quote from it. Here we have not some crazy drug policy reformer but the German government telling us that prohibition is not a rational choice of action - neither with regard to important liberal values (wertrational), nor with regard to the effective achievement of its proper goals (zweckrational). In a way, the German government is even more radical and profound than most present-day drug policy reformers. Those reformers often enough neglect the value-oriented argument and forget that it is the more important one of the two."
  
  
• Poisons and Prohibitions: The Persistance of Folly by John P. Morgan: "The Jake victims were derided and laughed at. It was widely held that they deserved what happened to them as did the thousands of blinded methanol drinkers. It is not enough to state that the laws of prohibition produce excluded marginal humans. In the United States it is clear that the marginalization of a group of despised people is the goal of the policy. To deny injectors clean needles and syringes ensures their harm. To spray marijuana fields with paraquat is a policy not solely for destroying plants, but harming users. American laws of prohibition often were generated by a fear and hatred of these perceived as dangerous: the Chinese immigrants smoking opium, the Southern European immigrants consuming alcohol and the non-white inner-city residents using heroin and crack."
  
  
• The War on Drugs is lost, ©1996 National Review with contributions by William Buckley, Ethan Nadelmann, Robert Sweet, Kurt Smoke, Joseph McNamara, Steven Duke and Thomas Szasz: "WE ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen -- yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. [...] Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority." "The war on drugs isn't a solution in search of a problem. It's a problem in search of a solution. How big a problem? Very big. As Mr. Buckley points out, ``More people die every year as a result of the war on drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing.''"
  
  
• From Prohibition to Regulation: Lessons from Alcohol Policy for Drug Policyby Harry G. Levine and Craig Rainerman: "Indeed, the use of drinking as a scapegoat explanation for social problems, which was so prominent in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century temperance and prohibitionist rhetoric, is reproduced today in antidrug campaigns. Long-standing problems like urban poverty, crime, and school Failures are nowadays frequently blamed on drugs like crack and heroin. In another parallel with the nineteenth century, abstinence ("just say no") and the utopian wish for truly effective prohibition are held up as the solutions to urban problems. Billy Sunday's panacea, quoted earlier, of solving America's economic and social problems through alcohol prohibition remains alive in the dream that effective drug prohibition and a rigorous war on drugs can now solve the problems of America's poverty-stricken, urban neighborhoods. The result is that the political conditions for drug policy reform today are more like 1900 - when the prohibition movement was growing - than like 1933 when prohibition was repealed."
  
  
• The Fatal Temptation: Drug Prohibition and the Fear of Autonomy by Thomas Szasz: "Since the most important practical consequence of our loss of the right to bodily self-ownership is the denial of legally unrestricted access to drugs, the most important symbol of the right to our bodies now resides in our reasserting our right to drugs - to all drugs, not just to one or another so-called recreational drug. At this point, we come face-to-face with our real drug problem - namely, that most Americans today do not want to have legally unrestricted access to drugs. On the contrary, they dread the idea and the prospect it portends."
  
  
• Towards the Dismantling of an Ideology by Marco Taradash: "But even the debate on how to halt the illegal drug market once and for all, on how to entirely avoid the forming (not the laundering) of dirty drug capital, and on how to cut with one blow the knot that ties drug addiction to delinquency remains taboo. Prohibition is experienced, even by those who criticize the results, not as a policy subject to revision and renunciation, but rather as an ethics of the state, a terrible but unavoidable government religion."
  
  

"The War On Our Children"

Once again, politicians have decided to blame children for many of society's problems. President Clinton wants municipalities to adopt curfews, threatening to place millions of law-abiding youth under virtual house arrest. Representative Bill McCollum (R.-Fla.) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) introduced legislation in the last session of Congress that would largely end the requirement of separating juvenile offenders from adult offenders. States across the country are making it easier to prosecute and punish juveniles as adults.

[rest]

Public Letter to Kofi Annan

June 1, 1998
Mr. Kofi Annan
Secretary General
United Nations
New York, New York
United States

Dear Secretary General,

On the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in New York on June 8-10, 1998, we seek your leadership in stimulating a frank and honest evaluation of global drug control efforts.

We are all deeply concerned about the threat that drugs pose to our children, our fellow citizens and our societies. There is no choice but to work together, both within our countries and across borders, to reduce the harms associated with drugs. The United Nations has a legitimate and important role to play in this regard -- but only if it is willing to ask and address tough questions about the success or failure of its efforts.

We believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.

Every decade the United Nations adopts new international conventions, focused largely on criminalization and punishment, that restrict the ability of individual nations to devise effective solutions to local drug problems. Every year governments enact more punitive and costly drug control measures. Every day politicians endorse harsher new drug war strategies.

What is the result? U.N. agencies estimate the annual revenue generated by the illegal drug industry at $400 billion, or the equivalent of roughly eight per cent of total international trade. This industry has empowered organized criminals, corrupted governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated violence, and distorted both economic markets and moral values. These are the consequences not of drug use per se, but of decades of failed and futile drug war policies.

In many parts of the world, drug war politics impede public health efforts to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators. Scarce resources better expended on health, education and economic development are squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts. Realistic proposals to reduce drug-related crime, disease and death are abandoned in favor of rhetorical proposals to create drug-free societies.

Persisting in our current policies will only result in more drug abuse, more empowerment of drug markets and criminals, and more disease and suffering. Too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of "surrendering." But the true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies. Mr. Secretary General, we appeal to you to initiate a truly open and honest dialogue regarding the future of global drug control policies - one in which fear, prejudice and punitive prohibitions yield to common sense, science, public health and human rights.

Sincerely,

[follow link for signatures, including Laurance Rockefeller, Walter Cronkite, Stephen Jay Gould, and not including David Rockefeller or Henry Kissinger :-]

from TPDL 2000-Jun-9, from Arianna Online 2000-Jun-8, by Arianna Huffington:

The Drug War's Unequal Justice

Throughout the 20th century, which saw more than its share of inhumanity, the most common excuse about why such things were allowed to happen was ``We didn't know.'' Well, after the report that Human Rights Watch released Thursday (June 8), we will no longer be able to use ignorance to shield us from the reality of the racial injustice being perpetrated every day in America in the name of the drug war -- completely ignored by national political leaders and barely acknowledged by the media.

[rest]

from DRCNet Special Features, from http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/media/smoke.htm:

  Smoke and Mirrors
    The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure

    Dan Baum
        Little, Brown and Company 1996, ISBN 0-316-08412-3

      A Review by Paul Wolf

---

In Smoke and Mirrors, Dan Baum's hard-charging prose breaks rank with conventional reporting to recount one of the biggest stories of our time - the story of the War on Drugs. This book spotlights the great actors on this greatest of all political stages - Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese, Bill Bennett, Rudy Giuliani - truly an all-star cast. One by one, the heavyweights step up to the plate, each one aiming for the bleachers, each one striking a blow at our civil liberties.

[rest]

The following item is from the perspective of a proponent of the war on drugs, driven largely by the House of Rockefeller, and condemns the proponents of the premise that drugs are good, driven largely by the House of Rothschild. I (the AMPP editor) recognize in the relationship between these two positions an obvious Hegelian dialectic, whose solution (which I support) is measured and tiered legalization of drug commerce among adults, paired with a widespread recognition in the culture that a habit or regimen of drug use is bad except if it is indicated to treat physiological illness.

from Capital Research Center, 1996-May, by Rachel Ehrenfeld, from http://www.capitalresearch.org/trends/ot-0596.html:

The Movement to Legalize Drugs in the United States:
Who's Behind It?

Give him drugs and give him candy
Anything to make him think he's happy
And he won't ever come for us
And he won't ever come.
-- Pop singer Tracy Chapman

Conspiracies involving traffickers in illegal drugs are covered extensively in the media. So are stories about individual drug users who would like to grow, obtain and use drugs legally. But very little has been written about the prominent individuals and nonprofit organizations that have made the legalization of drugs an issue in public policy. A worldwide network of people and groups is coalescing to work to end the criminal penalties attached to the sale and use of currently illegal drugs. Most Americans are not aware of how serious and determined these efforts are. But the public needs to realize that the availability of drugs, the extent of drug use, and even the corrupting effects of illegal drug trafficking are only part of the story. What has not been adequately discussed is the political influence of the pro-drug legalization movement and the economic, social, cultural and moral consequences of its activities.

[rest]

Treating addicts is the best way to put dealers out of business

Suppose your son or daughter became addicted to crack cocaine. Suppose he or she committed some nonviolent crime to support the habit. Suppose he or she was arrested.

At this point you may suppose that the police would notify you. It doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes cops, using prison sentences as a threat, will force a nonviolent first offender to become a confidential informant.

[rest]

Secret medical database

In a 1994 study, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research -- a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- found 42 percent of American cancer patients receive inadequate medication for pain.

"Physicians are reluctant to prescribe high doses of morphine for fear of drawing attention, and possible punishment, from agencies that regulate narcotics," the AHCPR reported, launching a nationwide campaign to get chronic pain sufferers the treatment they need.

Where are we now, more than five years later?

[rest]

from http://www.hrw.org/hrw/press/1999/jan/ny-drug0107.htm:

Official Data Reveal Most New York Drug Offenders Are Nonviolent

(New York, January 7, 1999) - Newly obtained official data confirm the need for reform of New York's drug laws, Human Rights Watch said today. Nearly 80% of the drug offenders who received prison sentences in 1997 had never been convicted of a violent felony and almost half had never even been arrested for a violent crime. One in four drug offenders in prison was convicted of simple possession, primarily of minute quantities.

[rest]

from the Drug Reform Coordination Network, from the London Daily Mail, 1998-Mar-10, from http://www.drcnet.org/cops/ellison.html:

Statement by Edward Ellison, former Head of Scotland Yard's anti-drugs squad

As a former drugs squad chief, I've seen too many youngsters die. I'm determined my children don't get hooked -- which is why I want all drugs legalized.

Seven years of my life was spent in Scotland Yard's anti-drugs squad, four as its head. I saw the misery that drug abuse can cause. I saw first-hand the squalor, the wrecked lives, the deaths.

And I saw, and arrested when I could, the people who do so well out of drugs; the dealers, the importers, the organizers. I saw the immense profits they were making out of human misery, the money laundering, the crime syndicates they financed.

We have attempted prohibition. All that happened was that courts became clogged with thousands of cases and small, individual users, and a generation of young people came to think of the police as their enemies. There were no resources left to fight other crime.

I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of business.

from the New York Times 1998-Jun-9 p.A26, by the editorial staff, from http://www.ndsn.org/MAYJUN98/UNSUMMIT.html:

Cheerleaders Against Drugs

Manhattan is filled this week with world leaders attending a well-intentioned but misdirected United Nations conference on drugs. With drugs more plentiful and cheaper than ever worldwide, the leaders are mostly extolling failed strategies to combat the problem. Pino Arlacchi, the Italian official who heads the organization's International Drug Control Program, is promising to eliminate coca leaf and opium poppies, the basis of cocaine and heroin, in 10 years. Such claims get in the way of effective programs to reduce drug use.

[rest]

America's misguided drug war

(March 8, 1999 10:44 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - No credible evidence exists showing that stringent enforcement of U.S. narcotics laws actually reduces drug use in this country. Indeed, the opposite seems true: Law-enforcement efforts actually promote illicit drug use.

[rest]

New Mexico governor supports pot, heroin legalization

SANTA FE, N.M. (September 30, 1999 9:38 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Gov. Gary Johnson has upped his controversial stance on drugs by announcing he supports the legalization of substances such as marijuana and heroin.

[rest]

Fighting The War Against Drug Policy

She was naked. She was dead. The Hartford cops found her under an abandoned car. It was a heroin overdose that killed her.

Cliff Thornton, two weeks short of graduating from Hartford Public High School, was brought to the scene to identify her. She was his mom.

It would take a team of psychiatrists to explain Cliff Thornton's odyssey from that day more than 30 years ago to today. Thornton calls it ``destiny.''

Eight years ago, the 54-year-old Thornton founded Efficacy, a nonprofit think tank and advocacy group that favors the legalization of drugs: marijuana, cocaine, the heroin that killed his mother.

[rest]

Drug War would be hilarious, if lives weren't ruined

Perhaps, if we wait a little longer, the War on Drugs will grow more insane ... though it would be hard.

In 1996, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 215, allowing medical marijuana use in that state.

But California cops have continued busting sick Californians and seizing their home-grown pot -- paying particular attention to those who dared exercise their First Amendment rights to promote Prop 15, like 1996 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Steve Kubby, an adrenal cancer survivor, and AIDS patient Peter McWilliams, author of the high-profile book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" (Prelude Press.)

[rest]

from http://www.fear.org/hr3164eh.html:

H.R. 3164 - Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act

posted 11/4/99 by Brenda Grantland
Board president, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights

Introduced on October 28, 1999 by Rep. Porter J. Goss, with no fanfare at all, H.R. 3164 passed in the House of Representatives on November 2, 1999 -- only four working days later!

Although S. 3164 claims to target "foreign narcotics kingpins" by allowing federal bureaucrats to blacklist people as "narcotics kingpins" (without any due process protections to ensure those people truly are guilty of drug trafficking) -- it also subjects persons who do business with those blacklisted to felony sentences, huge fines and property seizures and forfeitures. [...]

[rest]

Bill OK'd To Freeze Dealer Assets

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world's biggest drug traffickers may soon find themselves on a ``most wanted list'' prepared by the president because of a new House bill.

[rest]

Drug seizures suggest ecstasy flow becoming epidemic

NEW YORK -- A lawyer arriving from Paris is stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport for a routine customs inspection. Discovered in the false bottom of his bag are 21,000 ecstasy pills.

[rest]

Hollywood again makes drug use seem hip

WHEN TODAY'S PARENTS complain about Hollywood's influence on their kids, they usually focus on the excesses of violence, or the portrayal of irresponsible sex, or even the encouragement of rudeness and foul language. Unfortunately, they seldom note the most disturbing, destructive - and altogether irrational - movie trend of the past several months: the consistent glorification of illegal drugs.

[rest]

What is really happening here? First, I'll deal directly with the proper role of psychoactive drug use. Obviously, psychoactives such as opiates (codeine, morphine), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft), barbiturates (valium (diazepam) xanax (lorazepam)), tricyclic antidepressants (elavil, amitryptaline, imipramine, desipramine), MAO inhibitors, and amphetamines (methamphetamine, dextroamphetamine, and methylphenidate ("Ritalin")), are routinely prescribed to normal or nearly normal patients by licensed practitioners. Cocaine and heroin see occasional use in hospitals. In Switzerland, methyldeoxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy") and D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD, "acid") are used as aids in therapy. Sometimes these prescriptions and applications are appropriate, and often they are abusive. At any rate, it is wrong that the direction of a licensed practitioner is necessitated by law.

Occasional experimental, recreational, and self-therapeutic drug use, particularly involving such drugs as the cannabinoids and D-lysergic acid diethylamide, is often in the rational long-term self-interest of an individual. That practitioners direct the use of these and other drugs is in some cases simple evidence of this.

from the Drug Reform Coordination Network, from Stanford University's Campus Report, 1995-May-17, from http://www.drcnet.org/cops/question.html:

Police Chiefs Question Merits of Drug War Policies

Two years after he circulated and signed a petition calling for sweeping changes in national drug policy and the appointment of a commission to study altematives to the so-called "war on drugs," Hoover Research Fellow Joe McNamara hosted a two-day "Law Enforcement Summit on Drug Policy" at Stanford May 9 and 10.

[rest]

excerpts from War on Drugs: Military Perspectives and Problems, by Joseph Miranda, modtime 1998-Sep-8, from The Drug Reform Coordination Network:

[...]

In the name of these objectives, the United States has seen a gradual insertion of its armed forces into the war on drugs since the 1980s.

[rest]

No bathroom joke: South Carolina may make selling urine a felony

WASHINGTON, DC -- A proposed law in South Carolina that would make it a crime to buy or sell urine -- that's right, urine -- shows just how ridiculous the War on Drugs has become, the Libertarian Party said today.

[rest]

from the Environment News Service, 1999-Sep-30:

DEA Drug Hawks Swoop Down on Birdseed

DETROIT, Michigan, September 30, 1999 (ENS) - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized a tractor trailer of sterilized Canadian hemp seed on its way to a large U.S. company that has been selling hemp birdseed blends legally for years.

[rest]

One Juror's Convictions
Holdout in Colo. Case Found Guilty of Obstructing Justice

CENTRAL CITY, Colo.-When the jurors first filed into secluded room to begin their deliberations, Laura Kriho moved quickly to claim the chair at the head of the table. It was a signal to the others that she was up to something.

[rest]

from The Hemp Museum, from the High Desert News, from the Associated Press, 1997-Apr-15, by Michelle Rushlo, Associated Press Writer:

Pols Nix Ariz. Marijuana Referendum

PHOENIX (AP) -- Saying they must protect the public, Lawmakers pass bill Tuesday setting aside a voter approved law that allows medical uses for marijuana.

[rest]

from http://www.timesoft.com/ncnorml/news9811/reefer.htm:

California Marijuana Arrests Soar Despite 215's Passage

August 6, 1998, Sacramento, CA: California law enforcement arrested more citizens on marijuana charges in 1997 than in any year since 1985, newly released figures from the Bureau of Criminal Statistics revealed.

[rest]

High schoolers can get $1,000 bounty under new drug "snitch" program

WASHINGTON, DC -- A plan by three Oregon high schools to pay $1,000 bounties to teenagers who anonymously turn in other students on drug charges is a morally reprehensible program that will turn high schools into "schools for snitches," the Libertarian Party charged today.

[rest]

from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1998-Nov-27, by Mike Gray (author of Drug Crazy), from http://www.buyer-link.com/issues/jan1999/story_04.htm:

Medical marijuana initiatives shift the front of the drug war

The earthquake that rocked the Republican Party this month also jolted the foundations of another prominent ideological temple: the federal drug war establishment.

In nine separate ballots in six states and the District of Columbia, voters ignored the advice of former presidents and high government officials, opting instead for the most significant challenge to drug war orthodoxy since President Jimmy Carter called on Congress to decriminalize marijuana in 1977.

[rest]

from http://www.timesoft.com/ncnorml/news9811/reefer.htm:

Louisiana Governor Backs Unprecedented Drug Testing Plan Despite Costs, Legal Problems

August 27, 1998, Baton Rouge, LA: Governor Mike Foster vowed to implement random drug testing to nearly 30,000 state welfare recipients after criticizing the results of a questionnaire that determined few recipients used drugs. If approved, the state-sponsored drug testing program would likely be the largest in the nation.

[rest]

a collection of articles from NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), from http://www.timesoft.com/ncnorml/news9806/reefer.htm:

DEA Temporarily Ceases Threats To Subpoena Names Of Marijuana Book Buyers

January 2, 1998, Washington, D.C.: Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials are backing off attempts to subpoena the names of individuals who purchased a marijuana cultivation book. The agency withdrew its demands after legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and an acknowledgment from Assistant U.S. Attorney John Stevens that the subpoenas were "unduly burdensome."

[rest]

"Smoke A Joint, Lose A Limb?"
Pending Mississippi Bill Threatens Dismemberment For Convicted Drug Violators

January 8, 1998, Jackson, MS: Persons found guilty of possessing marijuana in Mississippi could face the removal of a limb if proposed legislation becomes law. House Bill 196, introduced by Rep. Bobby Moak (R-Lincoln County), authorizes "The removal of a body part in lieu of other sentences imposed by the court for violations of the Controlled Substances Law."

[rest]

House Speaker Calls For Increased "War On Drugs"

January 8, 1998, Washington, D.C.: House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) called on his fellow politicians to dramatically increase federal anti-drug efforts, at a January 5 speech to his constituents. "Just say, now, what does it take to seal off the border?" Gingrich asked. "What does it take to go after drug dealers? What does it take, frankly, to raise the cost for drug users?"

[rest]

House Republicans Declare: Damn The Science, Full Speed Ahead! Approve Resolution Opposing Any Use Of Marijuana As A Medicine

February 26, 1998, Washington, D.C.: A coalition of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, approved a "sense of the House of Representatives" resolution stating that "marijuana is a dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalized for medical use." The resolution -- introduced by subcommittee chair Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) -- won the approval of all seven Republicans present, while being opposed by the two Democrats at the mark-up, Reps. John Conyers (Mich.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas). Ironically, the subcommittee's action came just one day after the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM) held its third and final symposium on the merits of marijuana therapy. The IOM organized the conferences as part of a federally funded 18-month review of the scientific evidence demonstrating marijuana's therapeutic value.

[rest]

Republican Coalition Proposes Life Without Parole For Kansas Marijuana Growers

February 5, 1997, Topeka, KS: A Republican coalition of 38 state representatives is backing legislation that imposes a sentence of life without parole to any individual convicted of growing 100 or more marijuana plants.

[rest]

Empower America Conference Attacks Medical Marijuana

March 12, 1998, Washington, D.C.: A sparsely attended afternoon conference organized by Empower America repeated prohibitionist warnings about the dangers of relaxing federal drug policies and urged voters to reject initiatives legalizing marijuana for medical use.

[rest]

School Anti-Drug Programs Preaching "Zero Tolerance" Receive Failing Grade From National Research Journal

February 5, 1998, Thousand Oaks, CA: The most comprehensive collection of scientific evidence to date suggests that "zero tolerance" drug prevention programs such as D.A.R.E. fail to prevent drug use among America's youth, states the February issue of the national research journal Evaluation Review. Research published in the issue also indicates that "misleading or inadequate evaluation methods [are] being used to justify these programs' widespread application."

[rest]

Iowa Legislature Okays Bill Enhancing Marijuana Penalties, Granting Police Power To Drug Test Drivers

April 16, 1998, Des Moines, IA: The Iowa Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill enhancing marijuana penalties for repeat offenders, and enabling police officers to conduct drug tests on drivers who appear to be operating under the influence of marijuana. Senate Bill 2391 now awaits action from Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.

[rest]

Oklahoma Legislature Poised To Authorize National Guard To Engage In State Marijuana Enforcement

April 2, 1998, Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma politicians are in unanimous support of legislation that would allow the National Guard to join forces with state law enforcement officers in anti-drug operations. The measure, introduced by Rep. Dale Wells (D-33rd District), previously passed the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee without any opposition. The Senate is expected to vote on the issue shortly.

[rest]

Former Marijuana Smokers Denied Entrance to the U.S., Canadian Paper Reports

April 29, 1998, Ottawa, Canada: American immigration inspectors are refusing to allow Canadians who admit they once smoked marijuana to enter the U.S., The Ottawa Citizen reported on April 23. The paper revealed that Canadians who tell U.S. border officials the truth about their past use of marijuana will be denied entry to America indefinitely.

[rest]

Need State Assistance In Florida? Better Pass a Drug Test Florida House Approves Measure To Drug Test Welfare Recipients

April 2, 1998, Tallahassee, FL: Recipients of state aid must prove that on Tuesday. House Bill 271 requires all state welfare recipients to undergo random drug testing, and denies entitlements to those who consecutively test positive for marijuana. The bill now awaits Senate approval.

[rest]

from http://www.timesoft.com/ncnorml/news9811/reefer.htm:

House Okays Legislation To Test Driver's License Applicants, Others For Drugs

September 24, 1998, Washington, D.C.: House members overwhelmingly approved legislation last week encouraging states to drug test all teenage driver's license applicants. The provision, included in H.R. 4550, further recommends that states adopt policies denying licenses to applicants who test positive for drug metabolites.

[rest]

from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, 1999-Jan-12, by Bill Steigerwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer, from http://www.postgazette.com/magazine/19990112front5.asp:

TV Review: 'Frontline's' 'Snitch' tattles on drug war debacle

Even if you think America's longest-running war, the War on Drugs, is a good war worth continuing no matter what the cost, tonight's installment of "Frontline" ought to make you wonder about what kind of a country we are becoming.

[rest]

excerpt from "Out of control Legal rules have changed, allowing federal agents, prosecutors to bypass basic rights," November 22, 1998, by Bill Moushey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staff Writer, from TPDX 1998-Nov-24:

Loren Pogue has served eight years of a 22-year federal prison sentence on drug conspiracy and money laundering charges.

Pogue, a Missouri native, never bought drugs, never sold them, never held them, never used them, never smuggled them, never even saw them.

[rest]

Libertarians blast Congress for spending
$23 million to develop anti-drug killer fungus

WASHINGTON, DC -- The United States government is spending $23 million to develop a killer fungus to wipe out marijuana plants -- a dangerous plan that could cause an environmental catastrophe, said the Libertarian Party today.

[rest]

WASTE & ABUSE

IG Report Says Disorder on the Border

Next up in our weekly reviews of inspectors-general semiannual reports is the latest from the Department of Justice, or DOJ, a digest of audits and investigations concluded between April and September 1998. As was the case in previous DOJ semiannual reports, corruption and incompetence in the immigration and naturalization process feature prominently, demonstrating how great the temptation can be to step over the line when you're standing on the border.

Among the report's most damning indictments:

[rest]

from the Vancouver Sun, 1999-Jan-4, updated 1999-Jan-7, from http://www.vancouversun.com/cgi-bin/newsite.pl?adcode=n-mm&modulename=national%20news&\
template=national&nkey=vs&filetype=fullstory&file=/cpfs/national/990104/n010445.html:

Cops raid house during kid's party

ABBOTSFORD, B.C. (CP) - An angry parent says he may sue police after officers raided a home during a birthday party and shot an attacking dog, splattering an infant with blood while the other kids looked on in horror.

[rest]

Canines Gnaw on Constitutional Roots
Sheriff Nourse's plan is a dog.

Unfortunately, it is a dog that gnaws at the roots of our Constitution. This is not about efficiency or about a drug war - it is about first principles. Those in favor of a suspension of the presumption of innocence and in favor of an atmosphere of continuous search without probable cause will detest the society they hand their children. These people want to ignore first principles, pick and choose their Constitutional rights, and pretend that lawful citizens today won't be redefined as lawbreakers tomorrow. History will, as always, prove them wrong.

[rest]

Residents of marijuana-growing area want curbs on drug raiders

REDWAY, Calif. (AP) -- For years, federal helicopters have buzzed over a lush stretch of Northern California in search of marijuana patches, scaring livestock and angering residents who don't like the noise.

[rest]

from Salon magazine, 1997-Mar-27, by Lowell Weiss, from http://www.salonmagazine.com/march97/news/news3970327.html:

CASUALTIES OF THE MARIJUANA WAR

It isn't just cancer and AIDS patients who are suffering because of America's anti-pot hysteria. Hundreds of small-time users are in jail -- for life.

Notes of sanity have begun appearing in the great marijuana debate. In the last election, Arizona and California voters passed, by wide margins, referendums allowing for the medical use of marijuana if recommended by a medical doctor. The Clinton administration, which had set its face firmly against any form of legalization, even for medical purposes, convened an expert panel under the auspices of the National Institute of Health to study the matter further. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized for a change of policy.

[rest]

from the Family Research Council, 1999-Apr-23, from http://www.frc.org/press/042399.html:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 23, 1999
CONTACT: Kristin Hansen, (202) 393-2100
FOR RADIO: Chad Nykamp
FOR SOUNDBITES: FRC's Direct Newsline, (202) 393-NEWS after 1p.m. ET

POSSIBLE APRIL 20 (420) CONNECTION TO POT SMOKING SUB-CULTURE IN LITTLETON TRAGEDY

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Littleton shooting suspects Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's connection with April 20 may go beyond its being Adolph Hitler's birthday. April 20 or ``420'' is a euphemism or code for smoking marijuana that is ``more widespread than ever and still growing…`420' events are almost worldwide,'' according to pro-marijuana magazine High Times, reported in April 1999.

[rest]

Presumed Guilty, a 1991 treatise from The Pittsburgh Press, by Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty, treats the Drug War forfeiture abuse issue in depth.

from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1998-Nov-20, by Molly Ivins, from http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/uq3221.html:

The war on drugs is just as disastrous a failure as was Prohibition

Heads up, team: I think we're starting to see a major change in the old Zeitgeist on the issue of drugs. This is one of those seismic shifts when the unsayable suddenly becomes sayable, when we notice that the emperor is wearing no clothes. The main problem with the war on drugs - you've probably noticed - is that we're losing.

[rest]

from Mother Jones, 1998-Nov/Dec, by Michael Castleman and Vicki Kratz, from http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/ND98/castleman.html:

The Other Drug War
The FDA is wasting its time impeding harmless rice imports while ignoring what may be the fourth-leading cause of death

Last spring, scientists at the University of Toronto announced the results of a new study: By their calculations, the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States is prescription drugs. They weren't talking about drug abuse or overdoses, but rather, appropriately administered, FDA-approved drugs. Side effects, they determined, cause close to 106,000 deaths per year. That's more deaths than the annual totals for AIDS, suicide, and homicide combined, and equal to an astonishing 290 deaths per day.

[rest]

from http://www.ralphmoss.com/burz17.html:

17. "Spectre of Fascism" in USA?
US Attorneys in Texas Imperil Patients Lives

From The Cancer Chronicles #27
© June 1995 by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

This summer [1995], the US government has stepped up its unrelenting attack on cancer pioneer Stanislaw R. Burzynski, MD, PhD. Assistant US attorneys in Houston, Amy Lecocq and George Tallichet, continue to recklessly wield the power of the Grand Jury subpoena in what looks like an attempt to hound the Burzynski clinic out of business. The attacks are coming so fast and furious that one hardly know where to begin.

[rest]

from http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/daily/poll/drug.html, results as of 1998-Jul-17 00:00Z:

	Poll Start: July 9, 1998 TIME Daily Poll Results The Drug War: A Winnable Proposition?

the poll (you can actually vote with this form, right now!):

The U.S. government launched a $195 million anti-drug campaign aimed at children Thursday. That's more money than the annual advertising budgets of mega-corporations American Express, Nike and Sprint. The government could spend $1 billion on the program over the next five years.

Few advocate permitting children to use drugs. Yet some people maintain that the general drug war -- projected 1999 cost: $17 billion-- is unwinnable and actually breeds crime by criminalizing the drug user and creating a more lucrative market for drugs. Both Republican and Democratic parties maintain that zero tolerance is the only responsible policy.

The U.S. should legalize marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other "recreational" drugs for adults over the age of 18

The U.S. should legalize marijuana only, for adults over the age of 18.

The U.S. should continue to prohibit the use of all illicit drugs.

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