Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago And The Results Are Staggering

The why and the where escapes me, but I mentioned Portugal's decriminalising of all recreational drugs, not some few days ago.

But given that: In a country like America, which may take the philosophy of criminalization a bit far (more than half of America's federal inmates are in prison on drug convictions) I do have to say, nobody, anywhere in the world should be in jail for simple possession of any drug.

And if we are going to philosophise a spell, what right, in a country that purports to have a government of the people, by the people, for the people, does the establishment have to lock people up in such vast numbers, often for obscene lengths of time, sometimes for even life.

Philosophising further, one our one blessed experience of having a life on this planet, what right has anybody, individual or government, to dictate what a person might, or might not, experience on his or her journey through this unique and never repeatable existence. (See clips below)

That said, methinks a few 'toons are in order on a post such as this.

Portuguese moggies.

Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago And The Results Are Staggering
Samuel Blackstone
July 17, 2012

On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge.

Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong.

Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy from labeling drug users as criminals to labeling them as people affected by a disease. This time lapse has allowed statistics to develop and in time, has made Portugal an example to follow.

First, some clarification.

Portugal's move to decriminalize does not mean people can carry around, use, and sell drugs free from police interference. That would be legalization. Rather, all drugs are "decriminalized," meaning drug possession, distribution, and use is still illegal. While distribution and trafficking is still a criminal offense, possession and use is moved out of criminal courts and into a special court where each offender's unique situation is judged by legal experts, psychologists, and social workers. Treatment and further action is decided in these courts, where addicts and drug use is treated as a public health service rather than referring it to the justice system (like the U.S.), reports Fox News.

Still bearing their original title, Killer Cannabis, one could almost believe these were the work of the Daily Mail, where one toke will turn you into a paranoid shambling wreck. 1 - 2 - 3 Or failing that, it will definitely give you cancer.

The resulting effect: a drastic reduction in addicts, with Portuguese officials and reports highlighting that this number, at 100,000 before the new policy was enacted, has been halved in the following ten years. Portugal's drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states, according to the same report.

One more outcome: a lot less sick people. Drug related diseases including STDs and overdoses have been reduced even more than usage rates, which experts believe is the result of the government offering treatment with no threat of legal ramifications to addicts.

While this policy is by no means news, the statistics and figures, which take years to develop and subsequently depict the effects of the change, seem to be worth noting. In a country like America, which may take the philosophy of criminalization a bit far (more than half of America's federal inmates are in prison on drug convictions), other alternatives must, and to a small degree, are being discussed.

For policymakers or people simply interested in this topic, cases like Portugal are a great place to start. businessinsider.com

Related: Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? Time Science











Words From The Grave: Aldous Huxley Thirty minute interview between Mike Wallace and Aldous Huxley 1958. And if you think George Orwell was a prophet, you really should watch this.

Illegal Everything in the US, by John Stossel: A Review

On the same day that I published the post below this one, Mayor Bloomberg Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, a post where I had this to say: I don't think I know of any other country in the world that legislates about every aspect that governs citizens lives. I later stumbled upon the featured video, which I can only describe as the perfect foil for the post.

But after having watched the thing, and in spite of it being a Fox News presentation, and in spite even more, it being presented in a typical American, whiny voiced, hi-lo manner more suited to addressing children or fucking idiots, it still has a certain, must watch, appeal about it.

I suppose the three most recognisable areas of this forty five minute film, are three traits or characteristics that go hand-in-glove with each other, an interdependent little eco-system, so typically American, they being of course, hypocrisy, the abuse of power and moral crusading.

The hypocrisy becomes immediately apparent as the program gets under way. The time money and resources expended on protecting people from kids selling lemonade, folk selling unpasteurised milk, or lobster tails in plastic bags as opposed to 40Lb boxes, (guns drawn in both the later cases and eight years in the slammer for the lobsterman) would be all very well if only half of those resources went into protecting people from fracking or mountain-top removal. (See below) Both activities constituting a crime against nature, let alone the poor schmucks whose lives are effectively destroyed by such goings on. But as you are probably aware, the only protection going on around these activities, is that of protecting Big Energy by modern day Pinkertons, the cops.

The second item on the agenda, that of police, not just abusing their power, but of being totally out of control, is dealt with quite adequately in the program. Let's face it, we have become almost blasé about cops abusing their power. Blasé I suppose, as long as your not on the receiving end of such activities. As one housewife described a cop; 'high on his own power' or as we would describe it in this country, 'pissed with power.' It rolling off the tongue somewhat easier. As long as you understand that is, that 'pissed' is more commonly used to describe someone who is drunk, rather than pissed, as in pissed off.

Ever America, ever the moral crusader, who, just like the cops protecting the world from kids selling lemonade, want to protect everybody from drugs, soft or hard, and to protect (legal) sex workers from themselves by locking them all up. In fact as you watch two such crusaders, prosecutors in fact, you can almost feel them bristling with (their own) morality.

Incidentally, and I know it will be of interest to some, but Portugal got a few minutes mention over their recent and successful decision to legalise all drugs, soft or hard.

Illegal Everything in the US, by John Stossel

This Fox News documentary shows how crazy the law system in the US became and how police is abusing its’ power. Kids are not allowed to sell lemonade, Taxi drivers get kicked out of the market by regulations implemented through the help of lobbyists, small stores selling natural raw milk get invaded by police squads, hunters can not shoot a dear and sell the meat to their neighbours, housewives get arrested for filming policemen from their own backyard and many more silly laws exist and make it difficult for people in the USA to be really living legal or living their live as freely at is was written down in the constitution many years ago. Now prisons in the US are full of people who broke silly laws, with politicians like Obama in power, that smoked marijuana themselves and didn’t got punished for it at all.

In actual fact, these two short clips are of far more import than the above.

Cannabis and the Kool-Aid Cop

Hopefully I'm back in the saddle as of old, I have been rather preoccupied with my mother after she suffered a fall recently. Glad to say though, she is much recovered.

When I read this story, I thought, hmm, this sounds familiar, but rather than the subject matter being pot, the items in question in this particular instance were vibrators.

After you have read the doomsday scenario, courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department’s Robert McMahon, and then watched the clip, not Reefer Madness, but rather, Marijuana Will Get You, which probably says the same in three minutes as the original movie said in ninety, you can read below what Republican Representative Ralph Davenport of South Carolina, had to say about vibrators. And no, I'm not making it up.

Reefer Madness: CA Cop Worries Legalizing Pot Will Make Window Washers Fall From High-Rises -- And Kill Passersby
By Kristen Gwynne
November 22, 2011

Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department’s Robert McMahon has been drinking the Kool-Aid, and he is very worried about how decriminalized pot may affect California's future. His vision is straight out of a 1930s pot propaganda film.

“What will happen to our kids if this stuff is legal? Think about 20 years from now what L.A. will look like?” he asks RollingOut.com.

McMahon is of the following opinion:

“We’re talking about loss of work and collisions, work-related industrial injuries. Somebody comes to work stoned, and they are working some heavy equipment or up on a high-rise — a window washer that’s stoned — not only could he [or she] injure himself, but some of his or her negligence could cause someone else to be injured.” (emphasis added)

Of course, marijuana is not nearly as impairing or dangerous as alcohol. And legalizing marijuana does not necessarily mean more people will smoke it, or that more window washers will smoke it, or that more window washers will smoke it before work and then fall from a giant high-rise only to land on a mother pushing her infant in a stroller. Okay, so I added that last part.

But when I imagine a California where marijuana is legal, I don't see any of this at all. Instead, I imagine 1,401 fewer people in California jails. I imagine a more racially just society because California’s African-American population faces 10 times greater odds of being imprisoned for marijuana than other racial/ethnic groups. If marijuana were legal nationally, I would go so far as to imagine a Mexico with less inter-cartel violence and fewer drug-related deaths. I imagine adults smoking marijuana in the comfort of their own homes, or on the street, without facing ramifications that may ruin their lives in ways that pot alone never could have. I imagine kids with futures not defined by the fact that they were caught smoking weed, locked-up, and trapped by criminal records that hammer away at educational and employment opportunities. I imagine more possibilities, more justice -- not the marijuana-induced mayhem that McMahon and fellow prohibitionists can only dream of, because weed is not the demon they believe it to be. AlterNet

Republican Representative Ralph Davenport of South Carolina on the subject of vibrators.

He said some constituents had asked him to introduce the bill, and he hoped that if someone is caught kidnapping someone and using these devices on an unwilling victim, that this would be another offense with which they could be charged.

Whoa boy,whoa whoa whoa, say that again.

if someone is caught kidnapping someone and using these devices on an unwilling victim,

Full story: It's A Funny Old World

Think Twice Before Travelling To Dubai

Look upon this post as a public information article. I'm posting this as a warning, not to the party animal that's off his face, but to the public at large.

Irrespective of the developing technology mentioned in this article, Dubai already has in place a drug policy so ridiculous that anyone, and I mean anyone, your granny included, can fall foul of.

If you are travelling to Dubai, these previous posts are essential reading and a warning.

Mandatory Minimums Gone Crazy: Dubai

Dubai. Four Years In Jail, It Could Be You

Travelling To Dubai? Don't

Fingerprint scanner can detect drugs in sweat

It knows if you’ve been bad or good
By Iain Thomson
11th November 2011

A prototype fingerprint scanner has been developed that can detect the presence of opiates, cannabis, or cocaine in the sweat on a user's fingertip.

The device uses special cartridges to take a fingerprint, which are then processed using both chemical testing and a unique photo scanning system. This takes a high resolution image of the fingerprint and its residue, so that the output from individual sweat pores can be measured.



We were concerned if you touched a spliff, or shook hands with someone who had, it would leave a residue on the hands,” Dr Paul Yates, business development manager at University of East Anglia (UEA) spinoff firm Intelligent Fingerprinting, told The Register. “By using this system you can correlate the metabolites directly to the sweat pores on the fingerprint and avoid false positives.

The testing mechanism is sensitive enough to pick up substances with a molecular weight of between 100 and 600, and initially the team is focusing on illegal drug detection. Looking forward, however, it would be possible to use the scanner for detecting hormonal markers, opening up a variety of medical uses from detecting pregnancy to early-onset cancer.

The device was originally developed at UEA and was first tested on students – but not for illegal drugs. Professor David Russell from UEA’s chemistry department, and Intelligent Fingerprinting’s CTO, used the machine to detect cotinine, the metabolite of nicotine, on fingerprints, and then matched them to smokers.

Sadly for students, the laws of the land don’t allow researchers to feed them opiates or cocaine, so the testing for illegal drugs was carried out in association with Kings College’s drug rehabilitation unit. Sweat samples from drug users were taken for testing and cross-matched against urine samples.

So far the device is still in the prototype stage, but with a million or so in funding, Dr. Yates said that the scanner could move into production very quickly. If the device takes off, it will make travelling in certain locales quite risky, since some countries – notably Dubai – have such strict anti-drug laws that even having drugs in your bloodstream counts as importation. Register

America: The Enemy Within

Is You.

SWAT Teams, Flash-Bang Grenades, Shooting the Family Pet: The Shocking Outcomes of Police Militarization in the War on Drugs

There are more than 50,000 police paramilitary raids in the US each year – more than 130 every day. Virtually all are for prosecution of drug warrants.
By Norm Stamper
November 11, 2011


In the forty years since Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” Americans’ perceptions of that war are finally beginning to shift.

Receding support for Prohibition is happening in large part because of virally circulated news accounts and videos of law enforcement’s disturbingly harsh tactics in the drug war. My former colleagues are making clear that besides causing thousands of deaths worldwide and costing billions of taxpayer dollars, the drug war’s most serious collateral damage has been to undermine the role of civilian law enforcement in our free society.

In one of the most widely viewed videos, a tiny single-family home is descended upon by a Columbia, Missouri Police Department SWAT team. After pounding on the door and announcing themselves, the cops waste no time. They smash open the door and charge into the unsuspecting family’s home.

After what sounds like multiple explosions or gunshots, we hear the sound of a dog yelping sharply, as if in pain.

We then hear several more gunshots or explosions amid the general pandemonium.

The camera follows the heavily armed and armored officers inside. We watch as they order a woman and a small child, still woozy from being suddenly awakened, into their living room.

As they are forced onto the floor, a young male is brought into the room. He is handcuffed and pushed against a wall.

“What did I do? What did I DO?” he shouts, as the woman and the child cower on the floor nearby.

We then learn the source of the dog’s pained cries.

“You shot my dog, you shot my DOG!” the man suddenly shouts. “Why did you do that? He was a good dog! He was probably trying to play with you!”

He, the woman and the child all break into pitiful sobs.

As of late October, just five months after it was posted, the Columbia police raid video has been viewed nearly two million times on YouTube. The clip quickly ricocheted across cyberspace, generating emotionally charged, outraged calls for the officers to be fired and prosecuted. Or subjected to the same kind of treatment that terrorized their fellow citizens.

Public indignation over the incident intensified when it was learned that the Columbia SWAT team was executing an eight-day-old search warrant, and that the only things seized were a pipe containing a small amount of marijuana residue. Since possession of small amounts of pot had long ago been essentially decriminalized in Columbia, the man was charged with simple possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.

The reaction of Fox Business Network’s Andrew Napolitano was telling. In a segment about the raid that also found its way onto YouTube, the retired New Jersey Superior Court judge says, “This was America – not East Germany, not Nazi Germany, but middle America!”

Yet as former Cato staffer Radley Balko, who wrote about the Columbia video, has noted, what’s most remarkable about the raid is that it wasn’t remarkable at all. The only thing that made it unusual was that it was videotaped and made public, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper.

There are more than 50,000 police paramilitary raids in the United States each year – more than 130 every day. Virtually all are for prosecution of drug warrants, the vast majority involving marijuana. Many jurisdictions use SWAT teams for execution of every search warrant for drugs.

Just like in Columbia, these drug raids are typically staged in the middle of the night by officers equipped similarly to those depicted in the video: Darth Vader–style Kevlar helmets and body armor, black uniforms, military boots, night vision goggles. The officers are armed with automatic weapons and are sometimes deployed from armored personnel carriers or rappelling from helicopters. Doors are smashed open with battering rams or are ripped from their hinges by ropes tied to vehicles. And, to further disorient those inside, officers are trained to use explosives—“flash-bang” grenades—upon entry. The slightest provocation, including any “furtive” moments on the part of the residents, often results in shots fired.

Since drug dealers sometimes use dogs to protect their stash, family pets are shot, kicked, or, in the recent case of a New York City raid, thrown out the window.

At least in Columbia, no human was injured or killed in the crossfire, and (unlike dozens of cases every year across the country), the SWAT team got the address right—even if the huge stash of drugs and money they thought they’d discover was nowhere to be found.

How did local police departments in a free society ever reach this point?

Nixon’s use of the word “War” was no accident. From the outset, Washington’s approach to the problems of drug use and addiction has been overtly militaristic in nature.

“It’s a funny war when the ‘enemy’ is entitled to due process of law and a fair trial,” the nation’s first “Drug Czar,” William Bennett, told Fortunemagazine. Never known for moderation, he later famously urged repeal of habeas corpus in drug cases and even went on to recommend public beheading of drug dealers.

The federal government has instituted policies that have encouraged local law enforcement agencies to increasingly blur the roles of soldiers and police.

SWAT, a specialized paramilitary force used in especially dangerous situations—think armed robberies, barricaded suspects, hostages, the Columbine school shootings—had been in existence before the drug war. But today, their mission is almost exclusively the execution of search warrants in drug cases.

Criminologists Peter Kraska and Louis Cubellis have documented that, as of 1997, 90 percent of American cities with populations of greater than 50,000 had at least one paramilitary or SWAT unit, twice as many as the decade before.

In the post-9/11 era, paramilitary police units have been formed in such unlikely places as Butler, Missouri (population 4,201); Mt. Orab, Ohio (2,701) and Middleburg, Pennsylvania (1,363). Even college campuses like the University of Central Florida have their own campus police SWAT units, operating independently from state and local police departments or civil authorities.

The federal government has given local SWAT units access to highly sophisticated equipment, encouraging its use in an ever-more aggressive War on Drugs.

Beginning with the Military Cooperation and Law Enforcement Act of 1981, the Pentagon gave local and state police access to surplus military equipment for purposes of drug interdiction. By 1997, local police departments around the country had stockpiled 1.2 million pieces of gear, including thousands of military-style M-16 automatic rifles, body armor, helmets, grenade launchers, night vision goggles, even armored personnel carriers and helicopters.

But the military equipment transfers to local police for drug enforcement were just the first step in Washington’s intensification of the drug war.

Throughout the 1980s, Congress and the White House together eagerly chipped away at the Civil War–era Posse Comitatus Act, which for more than a century had forbidden use of the military for civilian law enforcement purposes.

Following Ronald Reagan’s 1986 National Security Directive declaring drugs a threat to national security, Congress ordered the National Guard to aid state drug enforcement efforts. The effect has been to order the American military to search for marijuana plants.

By 2000, as the Cato Institute’s Diane Cecilia Weber documented, Posse Comitatus had been all but repealed with respect to drug interdiction. The first President Bush went so far as to institute a program of “regional task forces” to facilitate civilian-military cooperation in areas of intelligence sharing, equipment transfers, and training of local police in advanced military assault tactics. Go to page three

Police Planting Evidence Widespread

This is scary stuff and very disquieting. The paragraph starting, Forgotten in that lays out just what being arrested might cost a fellow, yet the cops seemingly have no compunction in planting evidence to fulfil 'unofficial' arrest quotas.

I say it's disquieting for all manner of reasons, but this line struck me in particular. If it sounds familiar, it is because it is.

Cop: "It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it," Anderson coolly admitted to a reportedly stunned Brooklyn courtroom.

Former Narcotics Detective Admits Drug Planting Common
by Allison Kilkenny
9 November 2011

Stephen Anderson, a former New York Police Department (NYPD) narcotics detective, recently testified that he regularly saw police plant drugs on innocent people as a way for officers to meet arrest quotas. While the news may shock many civilians, the custom is so well known among officers that it has a name: "flaking."

This practice has reportedly cost the city $1.2 million to settle cases of false arrests.

"The corruption I observed ... was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators," said Anderson.

And if anyone is an expert on planting drugs, it's Anderson. This is a man who was busted back in 2008 for planting cocaine on four men in a Queens bar.

"It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it," Anderson coolly admitted to a reportedly stunned Brooklyn courtroom. "They're going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway - nothing is going to happen to them."

Forgotten in that detached assessment, obviously, is the horrific experience of being in jail; the financial burden of having to pay up to a $500,000 fine; and, oh, having a criminal record possibly wreck one's chances of future employment - not to mention dealing with the social stigma of being in jail; the travel restraints; the loss of voting rights; difficulty in finding affordable housing; and dealing with barriers to education (the Higher Education act was amended in 1998 to delay or deny federal financial aid to students on the basis of any drug offense,) among other hurdles too numerous to list.

Perhaps the most disconcerting details concerning the practice of police drug planting is that we have no idea how prevalent the problem is. There is no national database tracking the number of cases dismissed because of this kind of illegal behavior.

Jason Williamson, staff attorney with the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, admits that his knowledge of the issue is "fairly restricted." He has been working on a case for close to a year and a half based in Camden, New Jersey, that concerns drug planting by police. These kinds of individual cases are all litigators really have to work with since there has not thus far been an effort to track national trends.

"Some of these issues never make it out of the Internal Affairs department," says Williamson. "Even cases that make it to court might not get very far." Let alone make it to some kind of neat Microsoft Excel sheet for journalists to comb through.

However, in speaking with the ACLU and former police officers, it becomes clear that drug planting is not only common knowledge among those in the know, but it is a highly prevalent problem that affects poor minorities fairly regularly.

"I think that it happens more than people would like to think," says Williamson. He adds that in Camden and in New York, there is a certain degree of pressure to make arrests, and even if a department doesn't have a specific written quota policy, there is always an expectation that a productive police officer makes arrests and hauls in contraband off the streets. "There's a natural temptation for police officers to [plant drugs]."

It's difficult for the ACLU to take on the issue of arrest quotes precisely because they are oftentimes unofficial understandings between supervisors and officers. There's not a giant plaque posted at headquarters that reads, "Each police officer is responsible for X arrests per month," or, "When in doubt, plant evidence!" but rather, officers understand they're meant to bust drug deals and bring in enough "bad guys" to win them praise.

In the past, New York City (NYC) police have confirmed the existence of ticket quotas, and NYC officer Adil Polanco told WABC that precinct commanders relentlessly pressure cops to make more arrests and give out more summonses.

However, officially, these quotas don't exist, and since official quotas "don't exist," then the instances of drug planting are always presented as isolated cases of bad apple officers gone rogue instead of natural byproducts of a high-pressure system of quotas.

"We would be naïve to believe it's not happening on a pretty widespread basis around the country," Williamson says about drug planting.

Tracking how far rot extends up the ladder of a department is also extremely difficult to determine. Unless someone like Anderson steps forward to spill the beans about corrupt brass, supervisors and investigators almost always deny they knew this kind of behavior was ever going on.

And that might be true, Williamson offers, but even if supervisors are indeed naïve about this behavior, then "the question is what kind of mechanisms should a department have in place in order to catch this kind of thing before it gets out of control?”

The victims of drug planting are, unsurprisingly, poor minorities. "Police officers aren't stupid," says Williamson. "They're not planting drugs on the nun walking up and down the street. They're finding people who they think they can make a credible case against. So you have people who have prior convictions, or people who a court or a jury is likely to believe was involved in this sort of thing."

These "undesirables" are the ones society believes belong in prison, in the sense that the privileged members of communities don't raise concerns even when it becomes clear poor minorities are being incarcerated at extremely high rates for questionable reasons. Well, they were probably guilty of SOME crime. Throw away the key! seems to be their reasoning.

On August 2, 2008, rank-and-file police officers in Camden who were "familiar with the community," according to Williamson, planted drugs on a young, poor black man named Joel Barnes, who ultimately spent 419 days in prison.

The ACLU sued five police officers, and all five were indicted in federal court. During a separate criminal investigation, three of the five (Jason Stetser, Kevin Parry and Dan Morris) pled guilty and admitted to the drug planting, and the other two officers are going to trial in November. The three officers who pled guilty will be testifying against them.

These five officers are responsible for locking up 185 individuals by planting evidence on them. Once the officers were indicted, the district attorney's office oversaw the release of all 185 people.

"Lest anyone think this is a figment of our imagination, or that it's unclear if this is happening, in this case, at least, it happened," says Williamson.

The ACLU is seeking both damages and injunctive relief to force the Camden police to change the way they track arrests and monitor the behavior of individual police officers.

"Over the years, there have been studies on this kind of corruption, but I don't know of any national database," says former Deputy Chief Stephen Downing, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), who was in charge of implementing Nixon's War on Drugs in Los Angeles.

Downing makes reference to the Rampart scandal, a case of widespread corruption in the Community Resources Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit of the LAPD. In the late '90s, more than 70 officers from CRASH were implicated in misconduct, including charges of planting evidence and framing suspects.

"Nobody was really watching over them," says Downing. "So they just went wild. They turned into a bunch of cowboys ... When they become free of supervision and then you impose this quota thing, they're driven to cheat."

In May 2000, Capt. Robert B. Hansohn told the Daily News that CRASH did not have arrest quotas before bragging that Rampart led the city's LAPD division in that category. In that short interaction, Hansohn unwittingly highlighted the central problem of policing in the United States: perhaps official numbered quotas don't exist, but arrests - regardless of their merit - are rewarded.

Since Nixon declared the War on Drugs, part of the $1 trillion the government has spent in the last 40 years has been to finance "drug task forces." The federal government handed out money to police departments all over the nation to form High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) task forces authorized by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1998. In 2000, HIDTA's annual budget was projected to be $186 million.

"Corruption is always rearing its ugly head in these task forces because it's taking local police officers and putting them in small units, supervised by people not in their own department, and many times supervised by people who are in the quota system," says Downing.

Downing talks about when he first learned of these task forces back in the '70s and discovered the Drug Enforcement Agency gave their agents bonuses for arrests and seizures.

"I said, no way. We're not going to be involved in that at all because that is a corrupting influence."

But that kind of protection is not widespread. Googling "drug task force corruption" reaps 7.5 million results, and the lawsuits and cases of corruption are too plentiful to list.

"This has been going on for forty years," Downing states simply. "These corruptions are emerging all over the country. It's not systemic to a police department, per se, but it is systemic to the War on Drugs in the context that the federal government is basically corrupting local government with their funds and the helter-skelter way of putting these task forces together and diverting local police from their basic public safety duties to the priorities of the federal government in terms of the War on Drugs."

Then, cities get "hooked," as Downing puts it, on federal drug money and asset seizures (the federal government splits seizures with local communities) to fulfill their budgets.

There is another layer to the quota system. For example, a city manager might say to the chief of police that the department's budget is $5 million, but officers will have to go out and earn a million of it in asset drug seizures. The natural result is that instead of allocating officers to fight crime, they're instead sent on a fundraising drive via seizures.

Downing says it's "difficult to prove" arrest quotas even exist. "Police administrations have become savvy to the criticism that can come from a stated quota policy."

So for example, in California, there is a law against quotas for traffic tickets. Yet, ten LAPD officers sued the department in August because they allege their supervisors retaliated against them for resisting traffic-ticket quotas. According to Downing, this is a rare case because most officers won't speak out against enormous pressure to act as whistleblowers.

"There is no official policy," says Downing, but what happens is a supervisor will say to an officer charged with finding traffic violations, "how can you possibly be out there eight hours a day and not see at least ten violations?"

Downing says that same model can be applied to drug law enforcement. "You're only coming up with twenty drug arrests a month? You're not working very hard, are you bud? We're not going to keep you around," says Downing in the voice of a hypothetical supervisor.

You won't read these quotas in any police manual, but you will see them at the supervisory level. Anderson was the inevitable conclusion of a corrupt system. It was only a matter of time before an officer got caught planting drugs and rolled on the department.

Anderson testified under a cooperation deal with prosecutors and admitted what poor minorities and police have known for years: officers sometimes (more frequently than people like to believe) plant drugs on individuals to frame them. And these aren't the acts of a few bad apples. This behavior is institutionalized.

In the United States, more white citizens use drugs, yet more black people are imprisoned for drug offenses, according to a Human Rights Watch report released in 2000. With this in mind, it makes sense that privileged (usually white) sects of society would find Anderson's testimony shocking. White people are generally unfamiliar with the shady underbelly of police tactics like stop-and-frisk policies and drug planting.

Even though police departments across the country continue to deny the existence of these quotas, what's become clear through the deluge of corruption cases is that these are not exceptional situations, but rather the expected consequence of a system of skewed priorities beginning 40 years ago that has only served to enrich underground drug pushers and destroy local communities. ICH

And In Contrast To Justice Clarence Thomas....

We have this.

Somehow they manage to call it justice.

Five Years for Pot? Multiple Sclerosis and Medical Marijuana Patient Faces Bail Hearing Tomorrow

John Ray Wilson has multiple sclerosis, a disease, like many others, for which medical marijuana is proven to be incredibly beneficial: It helps to control symptoms like pain and spasticity and slows the disease's disabling progression.

The medical benefits of marijuana have prompted many states to allow MS patients access to the plant. For John Ray Wilson, however, the legislation came too late. Tomorrow, Somerset County, New Jersey Judge Marino will determine whether Wilson will be released from prison or wait, incarcerated, until the Supreme Court reviews his case.

In August of 2008, Wilson was arrested in New Jersey for growing 17 marijuana plants. Two years later, in January of 2010, New Jersey legalized marijuana for multiple sclerosis patients. Shockingly, around the same time as the new legislation, a judge convicted Wilson of marijuana "manufacturing." Even more disturbing is that Wilson was barred from disclosing his MS diagnosis in court. The judge gave him the minimum sentence for growing marijuana - five years behind bars.

After five weeks in jail, Wilson was released on bond, pending the results of his appeal to an astounding five-year prison sentence. But in late July of this year, an Appellate Court upheld Wilson's conviction, despite the recent medical marijuana laws (have not yet taken effect) that would qualify Wilson to legally use marijuana. He was incarcerated on August 24, 2011.

According to a press release,

Attorney William Buckman has filed a petition to the State Supreme Court. The bail hearing tomorrow will determine if Wilson can remain with his family as the Supreme Court appeal is considered. Mr. Buckman’s office reports that the State intends to vigorously oppose the release of Wilson.

“New Jersey already has some of the most draconian laws in the nation with respect to marijuana, costing taxpayers outrageous sums to incarcerate nonviolent, otherwise responsible individuals-- as well as in this case -- the sick and infirm,” said Buckman. “As it stands, the case now allows a person who grows marijuana to be exposed to up to 20 years in jail, even if that marijuana is strictly for his or her own medical use. No fair reading of the law would ever sanction this result.”

Wilson told NBC he used marijuana because alternative medications were too expensive. He is currently incarcerated at the Central Reception and Assignment Facility for the New Jersey State Prison system in Trenton, New Jersey. According to the press release, Wilson's father, Ray, says Wilson is scheduled for transfer to maximum security Northern State Prison in Newark, NJ, where he may serve the remainder of his ludicrous five-year sentence.
Alternet

Clarence Thomas

Social Networking May Be Injurious To Your Health

Jeebus!

Woman Decapitated In Mexico For Posting On Internet

MEXICO CITY — Police found a woman's decapitated body in a Mexican border city on Saturday, alongside a handwritten sign saying she was killed in retaliation for her postings on a social networking site.

The gruesome killing may be the third so far this month in which people in Nuevo Laredo were killed by a drug cartel for what they said on the internet.

Morelos Canseco, the interior secretary of northern Tamaulipas state, where Nuevo Laredo is located, identified the victim as Marisol Macias Castaneda, a newsroom manager for the Nuevo Laredo newspaper Primera Hora.

The newspaper has not confirmed that title, and an employee of the paper said Macias Castaneda held an administrative post, not a reporting job. The employee was not authorized to be quoted by name.

But it was apparently what the woman posted on the local social networking site, Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, or "Nuevo Laredo Live," rather than her role at the newspaper, that resulted in her killing.

The site prominently features tip hotlines for the Mexican army, navy and police, and includes a section for reporting the location of drug gang lookouts and drug sales points – possibly the information that angered the cartel.

The message found next to her body on the side of a main thoroughfare referred to the nickname the victim purportedly used on the site, "La Nena de Laredo," or "Laredo Girl." Her head was found placed on a large stone piling nearby.

"Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites, I'm The Laredo Girl, and I'm here because of my reports, and yours," the message read. "For those who don't want to believe, this happened to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy. Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl...ZZZZ."

The letter "Z" refers to the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel, which is believed to dominate the city across from Laredo, Texas.

It was unclear how the killers found out her real identity.

By late Saturday, the chat room at Nuevo Laredo en Vivo was abuzz with fellow posters who said they knew the victim from her online postings, and railing against the Zetas, a gang founded by military deserters who have become known for mass killings and gruesome executions.

They described her as a frequent poster, who used a laptop or cell phone to send reports.

"Girl why didn't she buy a gun given that she was posting reports about the RatZZZ ... why didn't she buy a gun?" wrote one chat participant under the nickname "Gol."

Earlier this month, a man and a woman were found hanging dead from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo with a similar message threatening "this is what will happen" to internet users. However, it has not been clearly established whether the two had in fact ever posted any messages, or on what sites.

Residents of Mexican border cities often post under nicknames to report drug gang violence, because the posts allow a certain degree of anonymity.

Social media like local chat rooms and blogs, and networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, are often the only outlet for residents of violence-wracked cities to find out what areas to avoid because of ongoing drug cartel shootouts or attacks.

Local media outlets, whose journalists have been hit by killings, kidnappings and threats, are often too intimidated to report the violence.

Mexico's Human Rights Commission says eight journalists have been killed in Mexico this year and 74 since 2000. Other press groups cite lower numbers, and figures differ based on the definition of who is a journalist and whether the killings appeared to involve their professional work.

While helpful, social networking posts sometimes are inaccurate and can lead to chaotic situations in cities wracked by gang confrontations. In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, just south of Tamaulipas, the state government dropped terrorism charges last week against two Twitter users for false posts that officials said caused panic and chaos in late August. HuffPo

Drugged Out America

I can relate to a few things in this article, but having recently being diagnosed as diabetic, none more so than sugar and chocolate. Sugar is a bugger!

Drugged Out America
The Failed War on Drugs
September 2, 2011
by David Rosen

In 1982, Nancy Reagan formally launched the post-modern prohibition movement, the war on drugs. While begun under President Richard Nixon, her infamous “Just Say No” speech at the Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, CA, officially established the war on drugs as national policy.

Her original campaign sought to address an assortment of alleged youthful vices, including alcohol and drug use, peer violence and premarital sex. However, shrewd moralists, clever politicians and opportunists within the police-corporate system (the domestic corollary to President Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex) used the speech to capture the new cash cow, the war on drugs.

During the last three decades, the war on drugs has proven an ever-deepening failure. Like 1920s Prohibition that fashioned the modern crime syndicate, this “war” established a new service business for corporate capitalism, the prison-industrial complex.

While it is impossible to tabulate the full costs of drug use in the U.S., even the most conservative estimates are staggering. Millions of people (some estimates run as high as 20% of the population) either regularly abuse or are addicted to “drugs,” whether legal or illegal, whether a commercial or underground product. One estimate places the costs associated with of drug addiction/abuse at “over $484 billion per year” that includes costs for policing, healthcare, crime and lost earnings.

In 2010, the U.S. government spent an estimated $15 billion waging its fruitless war on drugs. Two academic experts, Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock, estimate that de-criminalizing (i.e., regulating) currently illegal drugs would save Americans approximately $41 billion a year in federal and state government expenditures relating to drug enforcement.

In the years since Mrs. Reagan uttered her dubious words, the total costs of the war on drugs is estimated at $1 trillion. According to a study released by the Associated Press in 2010, the $1 trillion expenditure covers: border efforts at interception drug trafficking; foreign drug wars in Afghanistan, Mexico and Columbia; arrest and prosecution of those in federal prisons for drug offenses; arrest and prosecution nonviolent drug offenders at the state and local levels; and marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other abstinence programs.

The AP concludes its report with the following cautionary words: “This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.”[http://nevergetbusted.com/2010/articles/ap-us-drug-war-has-met-none-of-its-goals]

The line between the legal and the illegal, like that between the moral and immoral or the licit and illicit, is arbitrary. It is a terrain of social conflict that changes over time through popular struggle. At any one time, the line appears “fixed” as much by moral authority as by formal legal regulation and enforcement practice. However, the appearance of “fixed,” to the extent that it can be, is in name only.

The failed temperance campaign that culminated in the passage of the 18th Amendment establishing 13 years of Prohibition (and which was repealed by the 21st Amendment) unraveled after the 1929 stock market crash. Today’s “war on drugs” is unraveling. Its failure is evident in the ever-growing costs related to enforcement, at the federal, state and city levels, as well as the social and personal costs incurred by those who succumb to their drug of choice.

It appears that a goodly proportion of Americans, either just once for fun or on a more continuing basis, have taken an illegal substance or have a family member, friend or neighbor whose been arrested due to a drug-related offense (including alcohol-related acts). This common awareness underlies the nationwide effort to establish a new drug policy, one from the bottom up. It is defined by efforts to legalize medical marijuana clinics (now legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia) and to decriminalize “non-hard” drugs like marijuana and some party drugs (e.g., LSD). In the wake of the fiscal crises faced by many states, there has been a move to reduce the nonviolent prison population, particularly those arrested for a nonviolent drug-related offense.

In the wake of the Great Depression, America ended Prohibition, an unworkable and expensive moralistic campaign masquerading as public policy. (The church had taken control of the state, imposing its temperance beliefs as national policy.) As economic and social pressures mount during the aftermath of the Great Recession, there will likely be a significant increase in all manner of drug taking throughout the nation. This will, hopefully, lead to a rethinking of the nation’s failed “war on drugs.” Lets hope.

* * *

America is a drugged-out nation. To appreciate the enormity of drug use, one needs to acknowledge the scope of “drug” taking. The first step in this process is to give up the fiction that separates the legal from the illegal, the regulated from the un-regulated and the over-the-counter from backstreet drugs. A second step is to map out the labyrinth-like world of the abused and/or addictive drugs and see how they saturate social life.

Ken Liska, in “Drugs and the Human Body,” defines a drug as “any absorbed substance that changes or enhances any physical or psychological function in the body.”

The following overview of drug taking in America is necessarily cursory, outlining the boundaries to this (in a 1950’s film noirsense) underworld. Information is drawn predominately from federal sources, including the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Legal unregulated “drugs”

Today, coffee, sugar and chocolate are widely enjoyed products that some considering harmful “drugs.” Many, many Americans can’t image starting the day without that first cup of java, cut with a hearty dose of sugar and topped off with a tasty chocolate donut.

Coffee

One of the first “drugs” to take hold of the West was coffee, introduced into Europe in 1645. In England, for example, coffee houses flourished, serving as the era’s “speakeasies,” inebriating the new merchant class. Over the next century, efforts by the powers-that-be to close these houses of ill repute were repeatedly rebuffed. It was not until 1820 that coffee’s active ingredient, caffeine, a psychoactive stimulant, was identified. Between 2001-2004 some 265 cases of caffeine overdoses ended up in Emergency Rooms visits. While medical authorities do not list caffeine as an addictive drug, some Christian religious groups do so and encourage their members to avoid it

Sugar

Coffee drinking is aided by another often-alleged addictive substance, sugar. Sugar has been in the West since the Crusades, brought back from the Holy Lands as a new spice. In the U.S, sugar is considered a food but has no nutritional value. However, withdrawal from sugar can be as difficult as cutting coffee or alcohol. Many warn that people couldn’t get enough sugar and that it made people hyperirritable. Research shows that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be addictive. Some researchers have found that cocaine and methamphetamine addicts eat a lot of sugar.

Chocolate

While Columbus first brought back cocoa beans to Europe, Cortès popularized it in Spain in the 1520s; a century later it spread to the rest of Europe. Chocolate, along with other sweet and high-fat foods, releases serotonin that makes people happier. Cocoa products contain neuroactive alkaloids common to wine, beer and liquor. Today, many people, but especially woman, are called “chocoholics” and, when denied their “drug” of choice, suffer withdrawal symptoms, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and pre-menstrual syndrome.

Legal regulated drugs

Three other legal drugs, alcohol, tobacco and prescription medications, are regulated to varying degrees by individual states, localities and/or the federal government.

Alcohol

Alcohol, like tobacco, is an over-the-counter consumer product regulated principally by buyer age requirements. With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, alcohol has become a huge industry. According to an alcohol-industry trade association, “the U.S. beverage alcohol industry contributed nearly $382 billion to the U.S. total economic activity in 2007.” (“Contributed” includes wages, taxes and a nebulous category dubbed “economic activity” seems to mean sales.) Its legality comes with a significant social cost.

Ethyl alcohol (or ethanol) is the intoxicating ingredient found in beer, wine and liquor. A standard drink contains 0.6 ounces of pure ethanol; this is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer, 8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces (a “shot”) of 80-proof distilled spirits.

In 2009, 52 percent of Americans age 12 and older are considered regular drinkers, having consumed alcohol at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey. More revealing, federal data shows that 24 percent of drinkers had binged (5+ drinks within 2 hours) and 7 percent drank heavily (5+ drinks on 5+ occasions).* However, per capita alcohol consumption has declined over 12 percent over the last three decades, to 2.31 in 2007 gallons from 2.64 gallons in 1977.

Since 1982, the number of alcohol-related driving fatalities has been cut nearly in half: in 2008, 13,846 people died in car crashes due to drunk drivers compared to 26,173 in 1982. Mirroring the decline in drunk-driving fatalities, the rate of drunk driving for the 2006-2009 is estimated at 13.2 percent, a decline from the 14.6 percent for the 2002-2005 period.

In 2008, 70 percent of the an estimated 189,000 alcohol-related emergency room visits made by patients aged 12 to 20 involved alcohol only;

30.0 percent involved alcohol in combination with other drugs. Between 1975 and 2005, deaths due to liver cirrhosis has remained relatively consistent at approximately 12,900 deaths per year.

[*Data drawn from National Survey on Drug Use and Health at www.samhsa.gov]

Tobacco

Cigarettes have (almost) lost their cool. Of Americans 18 years and older, an estimated 46 million still smoke cigarettes. Smoking is more common among men (24%) than women (18%). In the U.S., cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths (or 1 of every 5 deaths) each year.

In the nearly half century since the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report linking smoking to cancer in 1964, there has had a dramatic decline is smoking. Since 1998, tobacco sales in the U.S. have declined by 2 percent a year; since 2000, there has been an 18 percent decline in the number of cigarette packs sold: 17.4 billion packs were sold in 2007 compared to 21.1 billion packs in 2000.

However, this has taken place with a significant uptick in the number of “cigarette pack equivalents” (CPE’s), non-cigarette nicotine product, totaling 1.10 billion CPEs. These include: 714 million moist snuff, 256 million roll-your-own tobacco and 130 million small cigars.

Prescription medications

A doctor’s prescription is required to “legally” purchase a pharmaceutical medical drug. In 2009, 16 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the prior year prior. From 2004 to 2008, the reported incidents of prescription drug overdoses more than doubled to 305,885 from 144,644.

Among the leading abused prescription drugs are: opioids (for pain), depressants (for anxiety and sleep disorders) and stimulants (for ADHD and narcolepsy). Opioids include OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet; depressants or tranquilizers include barbiturates such as pentobarbital sodium (e.g., Nembutal) and benzodiazepines such as diazepam (aka Valium) and alprazolam (aka Xanax); and stimulants include dextroamphetamine (e.g., Dexedrine), methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin and Concerta) and amphetamines (e.g., Adderall).

With regard to antidepressants, in 2008, adolescents made 23,124 visits to an emergency room for drug-related suicide attempts, and young adults made 38,036 such visits; of these visits, 23 percent of the adolescents and 18 percent of young adults did so for “OD-ing” on an antidepressant.

Since 1998, there has been a significant increase in the hospital admissions of benzodiazepines tranquilizers like Valium and Xanax. While hospital admissions over reactions to depressants increased 11 percent between 1998 and 2008, benzodiazepine-related admissions nearly tripled.

Prescription steroids, which increase muscle mass and may be prescribed for muscle-wasting conditions like cancer and AIDS, are also subject to abuse by athletes and non-athletes. Most often, they are taken to improve the user’s appearance or performance. Good luck.

Washington’s Attorney General, Rob McKenna, among a growing number of state and federal law-enforcement officials, has called the rise in prescription drugs an “epidemic.” Federal data shows that among young people ages 12-17, prescription drugs have become the second most abused illegal drug, behind marijuana. Teens report they get prescription drugs from parents’ medicine cabinets, other people’s prescriptions and that they are “available everywhere.”

Unregulated illegal drugs

These drugs make up what are known as the “hard” drugs, easy to abuse and seriously addictive. They include cocaine, heroin and marijuana; many consider marijuana a “soft” drug, like alcohol, and should be decriminalized and its sale regulated like tobacco.

Cocaine

Cocaine, also known as coke, snow and flake, is a powerful stimulate that can be snorted, injected or smoked; crack is cocaine hydrochloride powder processed to form a rock crystal that is then smoked. Cocaine gives people a real high, making them feel euphoric and energetic; however, it increases blood pressure and heart rate, often leading to heart attacks, strokes and seizures. In 2009, 4.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused cocaine in some form and 1.0 million had abused crack at least once in the previous year.

Heroin

Heroin, also known as H, smack or junk, is the hardest of the “hard” drugs. Processed from morphine, it usually appears as a white or brown powder or as a black, sticky substance. Injecting, snorting or smoking H makes one feel euphoric; however, it depresses breathing, thus, an overdose can be fatal. In 2009, 605,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused heroin at least once in the prior year.

Marijuana

Marijuana, derived from the dried parts of the Cannabis sativa hemp plant, is the most commonly used illegal drug in the U.S. In 2009, 28.5 million Americans age 12 and older had smoked marijuana at least once in the previous year. Known as pot, mary jane, ganga, weed or grass, smoking it makes one feel euphoric, often distorting perceptions, memory recall and conventional linear thinking. One feels high.

Unregulated club drugs

These drugs make up what are known as the “party” drugs, taken at bars, nightclubs and concerts; they are even easier to abuse and can lead to serious abuse. While club goers might take cocaine, heroine and marijuana to enhance a good time, a crop of specialty drugs have emerged designed tp enhance a singular good time. These include LSD (aka acid), MDMA (aka ecstasy) and PCP (aka angel dust) as well as Rohypnol (aka roofies), GHB (aka liquid ecstasy) and ketamine (aka special K, vitamin K, jet). And there’s also methamphetamine that is really in a class by itself.

LSD

Acid became popular during the oh-so psychedelic ‘60s, altering perceptions and invoking a world of hallucinations. Acid “trips” can last about 12 hours and, for some, fostering enormous pleasure, for others terrifying delusions. In 2009, 779,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused LSD at least once in the prior year.

MDMA

MDMA (aka 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) better known as ecstasy, is a synthetic stimulate with psychoactive properties. In 2009, 2.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused MDMA at least once in the prior year. Most disturbing, a 2010 NIDA study found that 4.5 percent of 12th graders had used MDMA at least once in the prior year.

PCP

PCP (phencyclidine) is a synthetic drug popularly known as angel dust, ozone, wack and rocket fuel and can be snorted, smoked or eaten. It is a “dissociative” drug, distorting perceptions of sight and sound. However, many users complain of unpleasant psychological effects that mimic schizophrenia, including delusions, hallucinations and extreme anxiety. In 2009, 122,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused PCP at least once in the prior year.

Methamphetamine

Methamphetamine is a very addictive stimulant that goes by a variety of street names, including meth, speed, chalk, ice, crystal and glass. More revealing, it has become known as white people’s crack and is very toxic to the central nervous system. In 2009, 1.2 million Americans age 12 and older had abused methamphetamine at least once in the prior year.

* * *

Abstinence was imposed on the nation in 1920 and repealed in 1933; the 18th Amendment establishing Prohibition is the only Amendment to be repealed. In the early 20th century, Americans could get ripped on good-old Coca-Cola. Originally intended as a patent medicine, Coke once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. By the ‘20s, the coke was out but caffeine gave the drink a jolt.

In 1937, just four years after the passage of the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act. During the ‘30s, hemp was popular and profitable, used for a variety of commercial purposes, including the smoking kind. The Act sought to garner the federal government much needed tax revenues without outlawing marijuana production or consumption.

In 1970, President Nixon championed the Controlled Substances Act that superseded the Marihuana Act and started the war on drugs. In a 1970 speech, he declared, “this nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people.” A year later, he upped the ante: “Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” America’s war on “domestic terrorism” had begun.

Now, four decades later, the forces of moral order, in league with the police-corporate complex, have scooped up $1 trillion and left behind a failed, second temperance movement, the “war on drugs.” These drug-opportunists have left wrecked lives in their wake. An untold number of drug-related dead bodies and destroyed lives litter the national landscape.

Nationally, prescription drug abuse is killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined. Now, as the Great Recession begins to draw out to (dare I say) a possible second Great Depression, financial reality might force those in power (whether moralist, politician, police or greedy corporate con-artist milking the drug scam) to abandon the prohibitionist mindset that has been in-force since Nixon.

As the Great Recession drags on and misery intensifies, the ab/use of both legally-regulated and illegal drugs will likely increase. It’s time to rethink America’s failed drug policy. Get ready for the coming drug tsunami. Counterpunch

David Rosen can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net.

Mexico Roundup

Documents: Feds allegedly allowed Sinaloa cartel to move cocaine into U.S. for information

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court. more



How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored. more



Mexican public warming to US military aid in drug war?

Although a broad majority of Mexicans still oppose US troop support to maintain law and order in Mexico, a new survey indicates a growing percentage of the Mexican public support US assistance. more



U.S. bears blame for Mexico drug violence

Two and a half minutes.

That is the time it took for several armed men to storm a casino in northern Mexico, order the patrons to get out and torch the place with gasoline. Fifty-two people died in the blaze, mostly women and senior citizens who enjoyed playing bingo. more


Around and About
One Man's Angle on Mexico (Fred Reed)

Lives Down The Tubes: The War on Drugs

I might have passed this over as just another, ''yes we know that already'' story, but for the numbers involved. I don't think I quite realised just how staggering the number arrests there have been since Nixon declared his war on drugs.

Forty Million arrests effectively equates to forty million lives on the scrapheap, see second article below.

And America wonders why it has the social problems that it does.

ACLU: 40 Years and Over 40 Million Arrests Later, War on Drugs Still Harming Our Communities
By: ACLU of Ohio
Posted by Mike Brickner, ACLU of Ohio, Jun 16th, 2011

June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
Cleveland, Ohio, is known for many things: we have a world-class art museum, three professional sports franchises, and we're home to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.

However, one fact you won't find in Cleveland's tourism brochure is that we are ground zero for the failed war on drugs. After 40 years and over 40 million arrests, the drug war has devastated many communities across the nation — and nowhere is that more evident than Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland.

That's why the ACLU of Ohio issued a report today on the effects of the war on drugs in Cleveland. Overcharging, Overspending, Overlooking: Cuyahoga County's Costly War on Drugs sheds new light on the vast racial http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdisparities in Cuyahoga County's justice system treats drug offenders.

Two factors have emerged as determining whether drug offenders in Cuyahoga County are sentenced to jail: geography and race. For instance:

White offenders from the suburbs or out-of-town are 77 percent more likely than African-American city residents to receive a misdemeanor charge rather than a felony.
Whites account for nearly three-quarters of the participants in jail diversion programs, such as treatment and job training, in the county. African-Americans only account for a quarter of participants, despite the fact they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system.
While African-Americans are only about a quarter of the county's total population, they make up nearly three-quarters of those sentenced to prison from Cuyahoga County.

The result has been far too many people, particularly African-Americans, incarcerated because of drugs. Locking up a person costs much more than a diversion program. The annual cost to house an Ohio prisoner is $25,097.40, while diversion costs $1,812. This has become a major drain on state resources, as the state prison system is at 133 percent of its capacity, with the sixth largest prison population nationally.

Those who are sentenced to prison for drug offenses emerge with little access to rehabilitation and educational programs, and struggle to find employment because of their felony convictions. As a result, many of those who serve time because of felony drug convictions end up back in the community with no resources, continued drug problems and little hope to turn their lives around.

The net result of 40 years of "lock 'em up politics" and the war on drugs has been the devastation of communities where people need a hand up, rather than a jail cell. If Cleveland, and the nation, wish to begin to rebuild these neighborhoods, we must put an end to the war on drugs. Prison Watch Ohio

The Conviction That Keeps On Hurting -- Drug Offenders and Federal Benefits

Some 15 to 20 million people have been arrested on drug charges and subjected to the tender mercies of the criminal justice system in the past two decades. But, thanks to congressional drug warriors, the punishments drug offenders face often extend far beyond the prison walls or the parole officer's office. A number of federal laws ostensibly aimed at reducing drug use block people with drug convictions from gaining access to federal benefits and services. These laws have a disproportionate impact on society's most vulnerable or marginalized members -- the poor, people of color, and women with children -- and in some cases, do not even require that a person actually be convicted of a drug offense to be punished.

A growing number of groups and individuals ranging from the American Bar Association to welfare rights organizations, public health and addiction groups, drug reform organizations, and elected officials have called for changes in these laws or their outright repeal, saying they are cruel, inhumane, counterproductive, and amount to "double jeopardy" for drug offenders trying to become productive members of society.

"We feel that these laws are discriminatory and tend to focus on an illness as opposed to a crime," said Alexa Eggleston of the Legal Action Center, one of the key groups in the movement to adjust those laws. "We also think that if you have a conviction, you should be able to serve your time and come out and resume your life. We say we want people to get sober, get treatment, get a job, get housing, but then we set up all these barriers and roadblocks that seem designed to stop them from moving forward. These lifetime bans are very destructive of people's ability to reintegrate into society and move forward with their lives as productive citizens."

"These discriminatory laws represent incredible barriers in terms of people getting on with their lives, which is why they are part of our platform for change," said Pat Taylor, director of Faces and Voices of Recovery, a national alliance of individuals and organizations committed to securing the rights of people with addictions. "If you can't get housing, can't get a job, it's really hard to get your life back on track."

"One of the problems we constantly face is helping people who have been convicted of a drug crime," said Linda Walker of All of Us or None, a California-based initiative organizers prisoners, ex-prisoners, and felons to fight the discrimination they face because of their criminal convictions. "Why do they ask about that on the student loan applications? Why do they face lifetime bans on public housing? These are people did their time, paid their restitution, they've moved on and matured, and now, because of something they did in their twenties, they can't get into senior housing."

Walker knows a bit about the plight of the ex-con. She was convicted not a drug offense, but for a crime committed in an effort to get money to buy drugs. While Walker's status as a non-drug offender means she is not barred from receiving food stamps or public housing, she still wears the scarlet letter of the ex-con. "I currently work for a county office, and each time I go up for a position or promotion, this becomes a problem," she explained. "I've been out of the criminal justice system for 14 years now, but I'm still being told that because of my criminal history I can't be considered for this job or that."

These "double jeopardy" laws have been formulated in the last 20 years as part of the ratcheting-up of the war on drugs and include:

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, under which local housing agencies and others who supervise federally assisted housing have the discretion to deny housing when any household member uses alcohol in a way that interferes with the "health, safety or right to peaceful enjoyment" of the premises by other tenants, illegally uses drugs, or is convicted of drug-related criminal activity. People who are evicted or denied housing under the law are cut off from federal housing assistance for three years.

According to a GAO report on the working of laws designed to deny benefits to drug offenders, some 500 individuals or families were evicted under the act in 13 large public housing agencies GAO surveyed in 2003 and about 1,500 were denied admission by 15 agencies in the same year. The agency reported that public housing agencies nationwide evicted about 9,000 people and denied admission to another 49,000 because of criminal convictions in 2003, with drug convictions consisting of some unknown but significant subset of those. While concrete numbers are hard to come by, it seems clear that tens of thousands of people are adversely affected by laws barring drug offenders from receiving public housing or Section 8 assistance.

Subsequent changes in federal laws and accompanying regulations have enshrined housing authorities' discretion and it was further solidified in a 2002 Supreme Court decision. In that case, the high court upheld an Oakland public housing authorities right to use its discretion to evict 64-year-old long-time tenant Pearlie Rucker, her mentally disabled teenage daughter, two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild after the daughter was caught with cocaine three blocks from the building.

Only one class of drug offender is specifically prohibited from obtaining public housing -- persons who have been convicted of manufacturing methamphetamines. They, along with society's other favorite demonized group, registered sex offenders, are the only groups of offenders singled out for prohibitions.

The 1990 Denial of Federal Benefits Program, which allows state and federal judges to deny drug offenders federal benefits such as grants, contracts, and licenses. According to the GAO, some 600 people a year are affected by this program in the federal courts.

Section 115 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (more familiarly known as the welfare reform act), under which persons convicted of a state or federal felony offense for selling or using drugs are subject to a lifetime ban on receiving cash assistance and food stamps. Convictions for other crimes, including murder, do not result in the loss of benefits. Section 115 affects an estimated 92,000 women and 135,000 children.

The welfare reform act contains a provision allowing states to opt out, although if they fail to act, the lifetime bans remain in effect. In 14 states where legislators have not acted, drug felons still face the federal ban, even though their sentences may be long-finished and their offenses decades old. But in 36 states, legislators have acted to limit the ban in some fashion, allowing drug offenders to get public assistance if they meet certain conditions, such as participating in drug or alcohol treatment, meeting a waiting period, if their conviction was for possession only, or other conditions.

Public Law 104-121, which blocks access to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) for people whose primary disability was alcohol or drug dependence. This 1996 law replaced a 1972 SSI "Drug Abuse and Alcoholism" program that allowed people in drug treatment, which was mandatory, to designate a payee to manage benefits to ensure they would not be used to purchase drugs or alcohol. The Social Security Administration estimates that more than 123,000 people lost benefits when this law went into effect, while another 86,000 managed to retain them by virtue of age or by being reclassified into a different primary care disability category.

The 1998 Higher Education Act's (HEA) drug provision (also known as the "Aid Elimination Penalty"), which states that people with drug convictions cannot receive federal financial aid for a period of time determined by the type and number of convictions. This law does not apply to others with convictions, including drunk-driving offenses, violent crimes, or other criminal offenses. Last year, the provision was reformed to limit its applicability to offenses committed while a student is enrolled in college and receiving federal aid. Since the law went into effect in 2000, some 200,000 have been denied student financial aid.

The Hope Scholarship Credit, which allows for income tax deductions for people paying college tuition and fees. The credit allows taxpayers to take up to a $1,000 credit for tuition and additional credits for related expenses. It specifically excludes the credit for students who were convicted of a drug offense during the tax year in question, or their parents paying the bills. more stop the drugwar

Global War On Drugs a Failure

One trillion dollars later.

Global war on drugs 'a failure'
High-level panel declares international anti-drug measures a failure and suggests legalising cannabis and other drugs.

A high-level international commission has declared the global "war on drugs" to be a failure, and has urged countries to consider legalising certain drugs, including cannabis, in a bid to undermine organised crime.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy, in its report released on Thursday, called for a new approach to the current strategy of reducing drug abuse by strictly criminalising drugs and incarcerating users.

It said the new approach should focus on battling the criminal cartels that control the drug trade, rather than targeting drug users.

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world," the report said.

The study urged "experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs", adding: "This recommendation applies especially to cannabis, but we also encourage other experiments in decriminalisation and legal regulation."

Illegal drug use

About 250 million people worldwide use drugs that are currently deemed illegal, with less than a tenth of them classified as "dependent". Millions are also involved in the cultivation, production and distribution of drugs, according to the United Nations estimates quoted in the report.

The study said decriminalisation initiatives have not been accompanied by a significant spike in drug use, citing the implementation of such policies in Australia, Portugal and the Netherlands.

"Now is the time to break the taboo on discussion of all drug policy options, including alternatives to drug prohibition," Cesar Gaviria, the former Colombian president, said.

The commission called for the urgent implementation of fundamental reforms in national and international drug control policies.

In particular, it recommended that the focus of drug control policies be moved from users as well as "farmers, couriers and petty sellers", and onto the large criminal organisations involved in the drug trade.

It called on governments to "end the criminalisation, marginalisation and stigmatisation of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others".

"Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organisations," the report said.

Treatment services recommended

It said that drug users who need health and treatment services should be offered them.

"Let's start by treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing drug demand through proven educational initiatives and legally regulating rather than criminalising cannabis," Fernando Cardoso, the former Brazilian president, said.

The changed approach would focus law enforcement resources more against violent organised crime and drug traffickers, while providing alternative sentences for small-scale or first-time drug dealers.

The report said "vast expenditure" had been spent on criminalisation and repressive measures.

"Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use," it said.

The 19-member panel includes current Greek prime minister George Papandreou, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, British businessman Richard Branson and former US secretary of state George Shultz.

Other members include former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss, former EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and former US Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. Al Jezera + video