DrugReporter

For the past 15 years, lawmakers have pursued tough-on-drugs policies in an effort to create a "drug free America," plowing billions of dollars into prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. Is it working? Not according to many drug policy observers o

What Will the Candidates Do to End the War on Drugs?
Posted by Johann Hari, Huffington Post on August 11, 2008 at 10:38 AM.

On January 20th 2009, either the president of the United States will be a man who used cocaine, or the First Lady will be a former drug addict who stole from charity to get her next fix. In this presidential campaign, there are dozens of issues that have failed to flicker into the debate, but the most striking is the failing, flailing 'War on Drugs.' Isn't it a sign of how unwinnable this 'war' is that, if it was actually enforced evenly, either Barack Obama or Cindy McCain would have to skip the inauguration -- because they'd be in jail?

At least their time in the slammer would feature some familiar faces: they could share a cell with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and some 46 percent of the US population.

The prohibition of drugs is perhaps the most disastrous policy currently pursued by the US government. It hands a vast industry to armed criminal gangs, who proceed to kill at least excess 10,000 citizens a year to protect their patches. It exports this program of mass slaughter to Mexico, Colombia and beyond. It has been a key factor in reviving the Taliban in Afghanistan. It squanders tens of billions of dollars on prisons at home, ensuring that one in 31 adults in the US now in prison or on supervised release at any one time. And it has destroyed an entire generation of black men, who are now more likely to go to prison for drug offenses than to go to university.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Pot Can Ease Pain for Some HIV Patients
Posted by Paul Armentano, NORML on August 7, 2008 at 5:25 PM.

Oh, so this is why the Feds do everything they can to discourage any investigation into the safety and efficacy of inhaled cannabis.

Medicinal Marijuana Eases Neuropathic Pain in HIV

via The Washington Post

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) — Medicinal marijuana helps relieve neuropathic pain in people with HIV, says a University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine study.

It included 28 HIV patients with neuropathic pain that wasn’t adequately controlled by opiates or other pain relievers. The researchers found that 46 percent of patients who smoked medicinal marijuana reported clinically meaningful pain relief, compared with 18 percent of those who smoked a placebo.

The study, published online Aug. 6 in Neuropsychopharmacology, was sponsored by the University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR).

“Neuropathy is a chronic and significant problem in HIV patients as there are few existing treatments that offer adequate pain management to sufferers,” study leader Dr. Ronald J. Ellis, an associate professor of neurosciences, said in an UCSD news release. “We found that smoked cannabis was generally well-tolerated and effective when added to the patient’s existing pain medication, resulting in increased pain relief.”

The findings are consistent with and extend other recent CMCR-sponsored research supporting the short-term effectiveness of medicinal marijuana in treating neuropathic pain.

“This study adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that cannabis is effective, in the short-term at least, in the management of neuropathic pain,” Dr. Igor Grant, a professor of psychiatry and director of the CMCR, said in the UCSD news release.   

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Feds Storm Medical Marijuana Operation on Day Court Rules DC Can't Undermine State's Law
Posted by Auguste, Pandagon on August 4, 2008 at 3:55 AM.

There’s not a single item in this article that doesn’t make me stuff-throwing, puppy-kicking angry.

Federal agents raided a Culver City medical marijuana dispensary and spent more than four hours there, making no arrests but leaving the shop in disarray, it was reported Friday.

Nice place you have here. Shame if anything were to happen to it...on the taxpayer’s dime.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrived about noon Thursday at Organica Collective in the 13400 block of Washington Boulevard, DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen told the Los Angeles Times.

“Marijuana remains a controlled substance, and it is illegal under federal law to possess, dispense or cultivate marijuana in any form,” she said.

Someone should probably teach DEA spokesperson Sarah Pullen a little bit about the timing of public statements:

The federal operation came on the day an appellate court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt the state’s law allowing the use of medical marijuana—a ruling touted by supporters of California’s medical marijuana law as a significant win.

Unless Congress passed that one law making DEA spokespeople pope-like in their infallibility, this is a real black eye for the feds. Or it would be, if I thought any of them cared. 

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

McCain Jokes About Killing Iranians With American Tobacco Exports
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on July 9, 2008 at 7:57 AM.

Last year, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) joked about bombing Iran to the theme of the Beach Boy’s “Barbara Ann.” McCain was widely criticized for the remark, but simply told critics to “lighten up and get a life.” The Washington Post notes that McCain tried joking about “killing” Iranians again today:

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, “Maybe thats a way of killing them.” He quickly caught himself, saying “I meant that as a joke” as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.

According to a report released today, U.S. exports to Iran “grew more than tenfold during President Bush’s years in office even as he accused Iran of nuclear ambitions and helping terrorists. America sent more cigarettes to Iran, at least $158 million worth under Bush, than any other products.”

NYC Cops Harass Club Owner Whose CCTV Footage Overturned Drug Conviction
Posted by , bOING bOING on July 4, 2008 at 9:10 AM.

Posted by Cory Doctorow

Law enforcement LOVES surveillance cameras -- except when those cameras are used to surveil dodgy busts and get them overturned:

Last year, New York police officers were seen dancing in the streets just before arresting four men in a city nightclub on charges of selling $100 worth of cocaine. It took six months and the men's life savings, but their names were finally cleared when prosecutors took the unusual step of announcing in court that the men had committed no crime.

That's because club surveillance video shows that the undercover cops had no contact with the accused men in the two hours they were in the club.

Now, club owner Eduardo Espinoza says the police are retaliating against him.

Link

[Photo by Joi]

Is the Department of Justice Tracking Your Mobile Phone Without a Warrant?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 11:35 AM.

Public Records Guy seizes on an interesting legal battle between the Department of Justice and the ACLU.

In 2007, some U.S. Attorneys Offices were quoted in the news saying that federal law enforcement didn't need warrants or probable cause to track people's movements using the signals emitted by their moble phones. The ACLU wasn't so sure about that. The Justice Department rebuffed the ACLU's FOIA request for more information on the program. Now, the ACLU is suing the DOJ to get some real answers:

WASHINGTON (CN) - The Department of Justice has violated open government laws, says the ACLU in a Federal Court action, by rejecting requests for information about the government's role in "tracking the location of individuals' mobile phones without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause."

The ACLU submitted the [FOIA] request after court decisions and media reports revealed that the United States Attorneys Offices were claiming not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information and that some field offices were violating a DOJ 'internal recommendation' that 'federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probably cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.' ... The information now in the public domain suggests that defendant may be engaging in unauthorized and potentially unconstitutional tracking of individuals through their mobile phones. ... The limited information currently available about the government's tracking practices raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with the law and the Constitution." [Courthouse News]

Julian Sanchez has many more details at Ars Technica.

Fake Federal Agent Fought Own Private Drug War
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 1, 2008 at 11:00 AM.

A mystery man came to Gerald, Missouri. Said he was sent from Washington, DC to fight our town's meth plague. Wouldn't take any money.  "Sargent Bill" said he didn't need a warrant to search people's houses because he worked for the federal government. Pretty soon, Sargent Bill was busting people left and right. It seemed almost too good to be true. Maybe we shoulda known:

GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this tiny town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.

Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s anti-drug campaign abruptly unraveled after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding-performing minister, a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

The strange adventures of Sergeant Bill have led to the firing of three of the town’s five police officers, left the outcome of a string of drug arrests in doubt, prompted multimillion-dollar federal civil rights lawsuits by at least 17 plaintiffs and stirred up a political battle, including a petition seeking the impeachment of Mr. Schulte, over who is to blame for the mess.
[NYT]

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for that pesky reporter Linda Trest from The Gasconade County Republican!

Pentagon Ramps Up Drug War in West Africa
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on June 30, 2008 at 8:00 AM.

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is ramping up the drug war in West Africa, including training programs for West African military officers:

The Pentagon is stepping up its counternarcotics programs in West Africa, in what can be considered the Defense Department's continuing expansion into the traditional territory of a civilian agency.

West Africa has experienced "a dramatic increase in drug smuggling and associated corruption and intimidation that turns weakly governed areas into nearly ungoverned spaces," according to Joseph A. Benkert, the nominee to become the first assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs.

"Currently the threat of the expanding illicit drug trade threatens Africa's fragile future," Benkert wrote in answer to a Senate Armed Services Committee questionnaire, which was released at his confirmation hearing last Wednesday.

The Defense Department already has a full menu of support for African governments, including training for top younger military officers, military assistance and foreign military sales support, and more recently, a new range of counterterrorism, troop-training and construction programs. [WaPo]

This questionnaire is part of an effort by the House Armed Services Committee to scrutinize the activities of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Cops and Teachers Hoax Drunk Driving Deaths to Scare Teens
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on June 17, 2008 at 10:00 AM.

Last month, police officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to inform teens that several of their classmates had been killed in drunk driving crashes over the weekend. Not surprisingly, the students were devastated by the news.

Several hours later, the adults revealed that it was all a hoax. Nobody died. There was no accident. Trusted authority figures cooked up the whole story to teach the kids a lesson.

Unfortunately, the lesson they learn is that adults have to lie to convince them that drinking and driving is dangerous. So, this cruel stunt precisely backfired. The take home message became: Don't trust adults who warn you about drinking and driving.

Great public health outreach, folks.

[HT: Ellen of The D'Alliance]

Soldiers Increasingly Take to Pill Popping to Cope with Fighting Bush's Wars
Posted by Jan Frel on June 12, 2008 at 6:00 PM.

Ah, the irony. Wired's Noah Schactman notes:

After years on patrol overseas, 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope, Time magazine reports in a cover story on "America's Medicated Army."

Drugs have always played a role in warfare, but anti-depressants are a new thing, as Scachtman highlights from the Time article:

"In the Persian Gulf War, we didn't have these medications, so our basic philosophy was 'three hots and a cot'" -- giving stressed troops a little rest and relaxation to see if they improved. "If they didn't get better right away, they'd need to head to the rear and probably out of theater." But in his most recent stint in Baghdad in 2006, he treated a soldier who guarded Iraqi detainees. "He was distraught while he was having high-level interactions with detainees, having emotional confrontations with them -- and carrying weapons," [Colonel Joseph] Horam says. "But he was part of a highly trained team, and we didn't want to lose him. So we put him on an SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, like Prozac and Zoloft], and within a week, he was a new person, and we got him back to full duty."

There are wonderful drugs out there that can take us to new understandings of reality ... and horrible realities that can only be dealt with by taking massive drugs. Check out Penny Coleman's AlterNet article on this subject, "Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War."