Call for authors: Encyclopedia of Drug Policy

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 | | 0 comments

 
Call for authors: Encyclopedia of Drug Policy
Academic editorial contributors are being sought for the Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, a new 2-volume reference to be published in 2011 by SAGE Publications
 
 

SALOME staff to set up free-heroin clinic before Olympics

| | 0 comments

http://www.theprovince.com/health/SALOME+staff+provide+free+heroin+addicts/2355445/story.html

CUT JOHN HOWARD FUNDING - response by craig jones

Monday, December 21, 2009 | | 0 comments

The following is a response from Craig jones  Executive Director of the John Howard society to a  letter written to the Winnipeg sun.
 


 

 

 Dear Mr. Banek:

Thanks for writing to the Winnipeg Sun.

People need to understand that there is more than one option where illicit drugs are concerned.

Here’s mine: Not legalization, RE-regulation. The difference is important.

I have never endorsed legalization — but I do call for re-regulation.

In public policy, “regulation” means management according to some rational and revisable criteria, rather than by random, chaotic chance.

Most of the modern world regulates everything that comes into contact with citizens: from securities to radio bandwith, from milk to banks to air-travel safety to telecommunications to food production to children’s toys to drinking water. Everything that touches us is regulated according to some criteria embedded in laws, enforceable – ultimately – by the state.

These things are all legal, but they’re also heavily regulated. Just try to sell unpasteurized milk from your own cows to your next door neighbour.

By and large, most regulations work pretty well. We do have our Walkertons and our Dr. Charles Smith events, but these are few and far between. Regulation has its critics but it prevents a lot of McCain food-like disasters.

We regulate everything according to criteria specific to the product or service and its impact on public well being. Different forms of regulation for different products and services, whether Goodyear Tires or Tupperware.

These regulations are informed by statistics and other forms of evidence. We would never consider regulating something – like smoke alarms or baby formula – without having a great deal of evidence about how those regulations will or will not produce benefit rather than harm.

Regulation is about rationality and predictability. It’s about understanding the balance of harms and benefits and creating the conditions to maximize benefits and minimize harms.

This, at least, is how political scientists (like me) understand regulation.

With regard to illicit drugs, we use a form of regulation called “prohibition.” Prohibition relies on punishment and threat of punishment through the criminal justice system.

Prohibition is supposed to work through the magic of deterrence. You won’t touch drugs because you know that if you get busted you’ll get a criminal record and your life chances will be negatively affected.

We do with illicit drugs, in other words, what was once done with alcohol – and with the same results: violence, corruption, graft and death.

In essence -- and this is the point – we regulate the production, distribution and consumption of illicit drugs by handing it over to the contest between organized crime and police.

As a consequence, organized crime is thriving. Prices to users are lower, supply is better and purity is higher than 40 years ago when Richard Nixon declared his “war on drugs.”

Quoting from a recent court ruling here in Ontario: “People have been going to jail for drug offences for – for a couple of generations now and the drug – the drug plague is worse than it ever was ... If something doesn't work, do I try doing it again and again to see if it does work? Isn't that the definition of insanity?”

The big crime syndicates have Spanish names today. Instead of Al Capone it’s Miguel Caro Quintero. Instead of alcohol, it’s cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis and meth.

Big seizures are made on a weekly basis, yet supply is unaffected – and a handful of powerful organized criminal groups get fabulously wealthy: enough to literally outgun police and military forces in Mexico and to purchase the government of Afghanistan.

Illicit drug profits constitute the oxygen of organized crime – globally, nationally and locally.

These are facts you can confirm with the UN World Drug Report

www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html

Prohibition fails because it attempts to negate the iron laws of supply and demand.

So this form of regulation – called prohibition -- enriches organized crime but does nothing to address demand, i.e., reduce the flow of drugs to users on the street. It brings with it lots of violence, deaths by overdose, disease transmission, police corruption, swollen prisons, etc.

Prohibition is a policy choice, not a law of nature like gravity. We chose to use prohibition in 1908 for racist purposes and we’ve only added to it and built on it since.

The worst effect of drug prohibition is that it creates incentives for our political leaders to lie to us – and to make promises they know they can’t keep.

And the same is true of police: in private they admit that (in their words), “We’ll never arrest out way out of our drug problems” but in public they have to play the prohibition game even though they will admit (in private) that drug prohibition corrupts cops and destroys the profession.

Prohibition CREATES crime. Always has and always will.

Don’t take my word for it: see www.leap.cc/cms/index.php – these people are not nut-cases. They have seen the harm of drug prohibition and have crossed over.

See this excellent essay by Gil Puder – who used to work to the downtown eastside of Vancouver: www.leap.cc/publications/puderempirestrikes.pdf

More recently, see this video of the Senate Testimony of Constable David Bratzer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=173LZbyWCOU


My claim here is that prohibition -- as a form of regulation -- produces so many undesirable consequences that we ought to abandon it and choose a form of regulation that gives us more of what we want and less of what we don’t want.

What I want less of – much less of – is organized crime, drug gangs and drug-business criminality.

What I want more of – much more of – is education, prevention, harm reduction, public health and community safety.

So I favour a form of regulation that would NOT create incentives for organized criminal gangs to control the drug trade – because, for me, organized crime and drug gangs are the worst of all evils.

Not everyone will agree with this. Everyone who studies this issue agrees that prohibition gives rise to organized criminal violence – but some people are willing to tolerate a certain amount of violence by organized crime because they think that, eventually, we’ll figure out how to apply the right police resources to eradicate it once and for all.

I’m doubtful. We’ve been at it for 101 years and we’re no closer. Not even the Americans, who employ much greater police force and violence, have been successful.

So I would endorse a system of RE-regulation – there are many models on offer – that took the production, distribution and consumption of currently illicit drugs out of the hands of organized crime.

Does this imply legalization?

It could, for some substances, but it does not HAVE to.

It all depends on what we – as a society – choose to regulate in the interests of public safety versus that which we leave to organized crime.

And that depends on how much we are willing to tolerate the participation of organized crime because – on the evidence of the last 101 years – they are going to meet a market demand whatever the penalties enacted in prohibitionist laws.

Virtually every government-commissioned analysis of drug policy in the 20th-Century has agreed that cannabis should never have been criminalized in the first place.

So cannabis should – on the evidence – be decriminalized and regulated so as to control for quality, purity and access to young persons.

My preference is to regulate AGAINST the interests of organized criminal gangs – but there are other ways to regulate too, to trade off competing values where drugs are concerned.

So that’s it: if it were up to me I would design a system of regulation which sucked the oxygen out of the black market and took the profit out of supplying the market for currently illicit drugs. That would be my priority.
--

Craig Jones, Ph.D. | Executive Director
The John Howard Society of Canada
809 Blackburn Mews, Kingston, Ontario, K7P 2N6
email: cjones@johnhoward.ca
Tel: 613.384.6272 | Fax: 613.384.1847
http://www.johnhoward.ca/
--

"I think what was truly depressing about my time in [the UK’s] Anti-Drug Coordination Unit was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, the government and voluntary sectors held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves.”
    ~ Julian Critchley, former director of the Cabinet Office's Anti-Drug Coordination Unit, quoted in “Ex-drugs policy director calls for legalisation,” The Manchester Guardian, Wednesday, August 13, 2008.

 

 

From: ccc-members@yahoogroups.com [mailto:ccc-members@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of paquettemarc
Sent: December-17-09 6:16 AM
To: ccc-members@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CCC] MB: LTE: CUT JOHN HOWARD FUNDING

 

The Winnipeg Sun

Letters to the Editor: letters@wpgsun.com

Thursday, December 17, 2009


CUT JOHN HOWARD FUNDING


Re: 'What's their plan?' Tom Brodbeck, Dec. 13.

Why are tax dollars being used to fund a group committed to the legalization of hard core drugs?

The John Howard Society is a collection of misfits who have been running interference on law and order by advocating for criminals and their lawyers.

If they want to take that position in public that's their right and they are free to do so, but we are not obligated to pay for it.

Use your head for a change and cut their funding Harper, or do you secretly agree with them?

BARRY BANEK

WINNIPEG

Misfits? We don't agree.


__._,_.___
********************************
All private messages posted to this list are considered confidential - not to be forwarded or redistributed without prior permission of the original author.
********************************
List Guidelines:
http://cannabiscoalition.ca/info/ccclistguidelines.htm
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Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook.

JOB POSTING: VCH Parent/Family Prevention Specialist

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Please circulate.

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is focused on three integrated components of health care: Acute, Community and Primary Health. VCH operates 102 health care centres in 17 municipalities, including BC's largest hospital and one of Canada's largest research institutes. Our specialties include Trauma, Neurosciences, Bone Marrow Transplants, Burns and Plastics, Solid Organ Transplant, Public/Community Health and Mental Health. Our talented, dedicated health care teams characterize the cultures and lifestyles of our coastal mountain communities and the city of Vancouver.



Job Title:

Parent/Family Prevention Specialist

Work Site:

Youth Alcohol & Drug - 520 West 6th - Vancouver, BC

Status:

Regular Full-Time

Start Date:

As Soon as Possible

Salary:

$27.18 - $33.88 per hour

Hours:

0800 - 1630 (Mon-Fri)

Reference#:

031300


JOB SUMMARY:

Within the context of a client and family centered, strengths-based care model, and in accordance with established standards of professional practice and the vision and values of Vancouver Coastal Health Youth Addictions & Prevention Services, the Parent/Family Prevention Specialist will plan and implement proactive approaches to support the prevention of youth’s problematic substance use by working primarily with parents and families. Partners with prevention initiatives in schools and allied staff to develop and implement relevant programming that will strengthen parent/family awareness, knowledge and skills to prevent, delay and intervene with respect to adolescent substance use. Provides brief intervention counseling services as required.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Bachelors Degree in an Allied Health discipline from a recognized program. Two (2) years recent related experience providing counseling/treatment of substance misuse to children/youth. Valid BC Drivers License. Local area travel requires the use of a personal vehicle.

Thorough knowledge in child/youth care development, behaviour management as it relates to addiction and substance misuse.
Ability to develop and implement strength-based, client-centered prevention programs or related programming.
Ability to perform a range of needs assessments with both individuals and groups.
Knowledge of community development, adult education and health promotion practices.
Ability to develop, facilitate workshops.
Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain supportive, trusting and professional relationships with youth and adults.
Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain effective work relationships.
Demonstrated ability to prepare and maintain a variety of charts, records and reports.
Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing.
Demonstrated ability to organize and prioritize workload and adapt to a changing community.
Physical ability to perform the duties of the position.

Successful applicants may be required to complete a Criminal Records Review Check.

Short-listed candidates will be contacted; others will be kept in our database for future consideration.

***Employees of VCH who apply to this posting using this site will be considered with other external candidates. Seniority will not apply.***

Thank you for your interest in Vancouver Coastal Health.

JFTHP WS2 WS4 City_Vancouver

 

Job posting online here: http://jobs.workopolis.com/jobshome/db/vcha.job_posting?pi_job_id=9477842

 

 

After the War on Drugs - film

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Dear Colleagues,

I would like to call your attention to HCLU's new video, "After the War on Drugs", filmed at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Mexico:


Please distribute it among your peers.

Best regards,

Peter Sarosi
Drug Policy Program Director
Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
Tel.: +36 1 279 2236
P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

Czech gov't legalizes personal hallucinogen growth/possession

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in the news

| | 0 comments

 

SALOME staff to set up free-heroin clinic before Olympics
By Elaine O'Connor
The Province
December 18, 2009

The legal drugs trade is pulling in high profits
By Eithne Shortall
Times (UK)
December 20, 2009

Teens Think Smoking More Dangerous Than Drinking, Drugs
Survey results suggest they might be more likely to try alcohol, illegal drugs
BusinessWeek
December 17, 2009

Throwing some light on the marijuana grow-op problem
By Mindelle Jacobs
The Kingston Whig Standard
December 20, 2009

Police plan cannabis raids

| | 0 comments

The Prague Post
December 9, 2009

Police plan cannabis raids

'Alarming' rate of use among young Czechs puts country at top of EU study's list

By Tom Clifford - Staff Writer

The police are preparing a nationwide crackdown on cannabis in the new year in the wake of a European Union report that puts the Czech Republic at the top of the league for cannabis use among 15- to 24-year-olds.

The police have already sent out 30,000 letters to residents of the Karlovy Vary region in west Bohemia, where many cannabis farms are located, asking people to report suspicious activity.

The government is preparing tougher anti-drug legislation to be introduced in the new year, but the specific amounts a person may have on them deemed for personal use will be decided in the coming weeks.

The report by the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction estimates cannabis has been used at least once by around
74 million Europeans - more than one in five of all 15- to 64-year-olds.

Almost 44 percent of Czechs in the 15-24 age bracket have used cannabis at least once, the highest prevalence in the EU, the report states.
France, Denmark and Germany are the next highest.

More than 29 percent of this demographic admit to using cannabis in the past year, again placing the country at No. 1, ahead of Spain, Italy and France.

While Education Ministry spokesman Tomáš Bouška described the report's findings as "alarming," he said the drug problem is an issue for society in general and not just the education authorities.

"Combating drug abuse among students is a top priority of the ministry, but this cannot be done in isolation. We need the help of families to tackle this menace," he said.

Combating cannabis use requires manpower the police admit they do not have.

"We are trying to locate and close the cannabis farms that have been spreading around the Czech Republic," said Michal Hammer, spokesman for the National Drug Squad. "The people who run them are mostly Asians, and the quantities are huge. For example, one farm we closed produced 1,500-2,000 plants annually. We sent 30,000 letters to people in the Karlovy Vary region telling them what is going on and how they can help prevent it. In total, there are 450 police officers in the National Drug Squad, which is obviously not enough, but we still closed 79 farms last year and 50 so far this year."

Police are gearing up to enforce a tougher line against drug users in 2010 when legislation, yet to be introduced, comes into force. But, while the police are on the frontline in the battle, the root cause is society's tolerance of drugs, according to squad head Jakub Frydrych.

"Unfortunately, the Czech Republic is undergoing a period when drug availability and usage is tolerated not only by a large part of society, but also by the media. The drug-taking situation is not only a matter for the police department."

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Tom Clifford can be reached at
tclifford@praguepost.com
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Marijuana poll - democrats

Friday, December 18, 2009 | | 0 comments

 

Washington rethinking the war on drugs

| | 1 comments

IPS
Thursday, 17 December 2009

Washington rethinking the war on drugs

BY MATTHEW BERGER
IPS NEWS AGENCY

WASHINGTON - As the war on drugs moves closer to home and a new administration presents new ideas, policymakers in Washington are taking notice of 30 years' worth of ineffectual drug policy and beginning to think about different ways of addressing the northward flow of narcotics.

The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill recently that would create an independent commission to re-evaluate and make recommendations on domestic and international drug policies. This is being seen as an acknowledgement that current strategies meant to control illicit drugs are not working - and have not worked for a while.

"The premise of the commission is not, of course, that we're doing great but that our policies aren't working and we need a rethink," says John Walsh, who works on drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). He says actions like this "speak to the level of frustration" over the impotence of past drug policies.

WOLA released its own recommendations on new directions these policies could take. Their report says past policies that have focused on eradication of coca and opium crops are counter-productive unless they are preceded by rural development. "Proper sequencing is crucial:
development must come first," it reads, or else, without alternative livelihoods firmly in place, people will have no choice but to return to growing crops for illicit markets.

Just as development is a precondition for preventing illegal crops, it says, effective governance and a reduction in violence are preconditions for development. But development assistance should not be contingent on prior elimination of illegal crops - that would merely deny aid to the communities that need it most.

Even with recent actions in Washington, the U.S. is likely still far from a policy like this.

The House bill does, however, establish a Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission which will have two million dollars to investigate and research independently of the political process.

"Billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between,"
said Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, who introduced the legislation.

"You need to take it to the level of an independent commission to get it out of the crevices of politics," says Walsh.

Walsh says there has been a shift in Washington's public attitude toward status quo drug policies, especially among Democrats.

One possible factor in this shift is the way in which the war on drugs has moved closer to home for the U.S.

The State Department has estimated that in 1990 just over half the cocaine in the U.S. came from Mexico, but by 2007 that figure had risen to over 90 percent. This has been one side effect of President George W.
Bush's expansion of the Plan Colombia military and fumigation
operations: to displace it from Colombia to elsewhere in the Americas, or even beyond.

Drug violence in Mexico, which has surged since Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón began to cooperate in combating trafficking, is reported to have claimed the lives of over 16,000 people in the past three years; more than 7,000 so far in 2009 alone.

In April, Caribbean leaders asked the U.S. to expand the Mérida Initiative, by which U.S. support is given to counter-trafficking efforts in Mexico and Central America, to include their countries since the escalation of efforts in Mexico could cause traffickers to move their operations elsewhere.

"We have succeeded in moving things around, but we haven't really stemmed the traffic and it may be worse now," says Walsh, explaining that trafficking is spreading to places with weaker institutions, like West Africa.

"The only concrete outcome of [current] strategy is to shift drug cartels from one region to another," said former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso Thursday. Cardoso joined former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia earlier this year in signing a declaration calling for greater emphasis on reducing drug consumption and a reconsideration of the criminalization of marijuana.

Washington seems to finally be open to suggestions. The first sign came when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly acknowledged the role of the U.S. in the fuelling the violence in Mexico and elsewhere.

"We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States and that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States," she said in a March visit to the U.S.'s southern neighbor.

Now Congress appears somewhat ready to try a new tack. Assuming it is approved by the Senate - consensus is mixed on the likelihood of this, but it did gain bipartisan support in the House - one of the aspects the drug policy commission will look at is domestic treatment programs, which have been neglected in the past relative to enforcement and action targeting supply.

Congress is also in the process of passing spending bills this week and next. Included amongst the various items in these "omnibus" bills are measures that would allow federal funding for syringe exchange programs and legalization of medical marijuana in Washington, DC - which voters had approved in 1998 before a Congressman withheld its funding.

The bill, however, includes further funding for the Mérida Initiative and other aspects of the war on drugs, including, controversially, money for Honduras, which remains under the rule of a government that came to power in a June coup.

These drug policies may change soon, though, following the commission's eventual report and the Obama administration's unveiling of its new National Drug Control Strategy, expected in the first few months of 2010. This strategy is expected to have more of a focus on demand reduction than its predecessors.

In some ways, like the plan to use Colombian bases to launch attacks against narcotics operations there, President Barack Obama has continued the supply- and military-focused policies of Bush, says Walsh, but domestically his priorities seem to be different.

"New leadership is emerging that is not afraid ask questions and look for answers," he said, citing Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who he says does not have to worry about his "tough" credentials and who wants a committee to look at criminal justice reform, including as it regards drug policy.

Criticism of the war that was launched by President Richard Nixon and has continued over three decades appears to have become mainstream and it is nearly common knowledge that its approach has failed.

Despite the billions spent on efforts like Plan Colombia, retail cocaine prices have gradually declined since the early 1990s after sharply dropping in the previous decade, according to graphs based on numbers from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that WOLA presented to a Congressional briefing Tuesday. The purity, which should bring higher prices at higher levels, has remained about the same since increasing sharply as prices declined in the 1980s. This is the opposite of what policies aimed at eradication of supply intended or expected.

Obama's drug chief said in May that the new administration would move away from terms like "war on drugs." Its approach would be to deal with the problem as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice, ONDCP director Gil Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal. He also said federal agents would no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries in states that had legalized it.

The U.S. criminal justice system has long been criticized by some for coming down too hard on minor drug-related offenses and thus overwhelming the country's prison systems.

There have also been issues like the discrepancy between the sentencing guidelines for powder cocaine and crack cocaine - five grams of the latter, which is predominantly used by African-Americans, carries the same penalty as 500 of the former. A Senate bill under consideration would make the penalty five years for 500 grams of either; a House version would simply eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for the offenses.

"I think we're going to see an evolution in terms of talking more about demand and containing harms rather than just focusing on prevention of use," says Walsh.

IPS NEWS AGENCY
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.tni.org/mailman/listinfo/dd-world

Seattle City Council Unanimously Votes to Support Marijuana Decriminalization

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 | | 0 comments

Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 11:05 AM

Subject: Seattle City Council Unanimously Votes to Support Marijuana Decriminalization

Yesterday, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to pass Resolution 31174, which sets the 2010 state legislative agenda for the city. The agenda includes support of SB 5615 and HB 1177, the bills introduced by Sen.
Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Rep. Dave Upthegrove that would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying mandatory jail time to a civil infraction imposing a $100 fine payable by mail, similar to a parking
ticket:

"In addition, we support reclassifying possession of small amounts of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction."

The full text of the resolution can be viewed here:
<http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?s1=&s3=31174&s2=&s4=&Sec
t4=AND&l=20&Sect2=THESON&Sect3=PLURON&Sect5=RESN1&Sect6=HITOFF&d=RES3&p=1&u=
%2F~public%2Fresn1.htm&r=1&f=G
>. The relevant language appears in the "Law & Criminal Justice" section.

The video of yesterday's Full Council meeting can be viewed here:
<http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2020949>. The discussion of Resolution 31174 begins at 66:08; the vote takes place at 75:53.

Alison Holcomb
Drug Policy Director

ACLU OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION
705 2ND AVENUE, 3RD FL.
SEATTLE, WA 98104
T/206.624.2184 ext. 294
holcomb@aclu-wa.org
www.aclu-wa.org

Convictions of Police in Drug Campaign Abuse a First Step (Human Rights Watch)

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Human Rights and Drugs
15 December, 2009

Thailand: Convictions of Police in Drug Campaign Abuse a First Step (Human Rights Watch)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HumanRightsAndDrugs/~3/At8dAOrYuJc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email


(New York, December 14, 2009) - The conviction of eight police officers for crimes in anti-drug operations should be a catalyst for the Thai government to end police abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.

On December 8, 2009, the Talingchan district court in Bangkok found Police Captain Nat Chonnithiwanit and seven other members of the 41st Border Patrol Police (BPP) unit guilty of assault with weapons, illegal detention, and extortion. Each was sentenced to five years of imprisonment.

"The trial of Captain Nat and his team revealed just how casually police commit abuses," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "This conviction needs to be followed up by clear action to put an end to police abuses once and for all."

Nat and his BPP team were arrested in Bangkok in January 2008 for serious offenses committed over a period of three years. To date, 61 people have filed formal complaints that they or their family members were abused by BPP police under Nat's command.

In the case that led to the convictions, Nat's squad arbitrarily arrested Jutaporn Nunrod in Bangkok on February 8, 2007, and then took her to a "safe house" at the Green Inn Hotel. She was stripped half-naked, subjected to electric shock, severely beaten, and had a plastic bag placed over her head for two days in order to extract a confession that she was involved in drug trafficking. Jutaporn and her family were also forced to give cash and a gold necklace worth 100,000 Thai baht
(US$3,000) to Nat.

Other victims of Nat and his squad claim they were subjected to electric shock, had plastic bags placed over their heads, and were severely beaten.
Many also claimed they were forced to pay bribes in order to be released or to have lesser charges filed against them.

"These convictions were not an isolated case of rogue officers, but part of chronic problems in police operations that use violence and illegality to fight crimes," said Pearson. "Police in Thailand have long had sweeping powers and have rarely faced punishment for often horrendous misconduct."

Thailand saw the worst police abuses after then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched his notorious "war on drugs" campaign in 2003. During this campaign, Thaksin openly pushed police to adopt unlawful measures against drug traffickers.

"There is nothing under the sun which the Thai police cannot do," Thaksin said on January 14, 2003, adding, "You must use iron fist against drugs traffickers and show them no mercy. Because drug traffickers are ruthless to our children, so being ruthless back to them is not a bad thing...If there are deaths among traffickers, it is normal."

In January 2008, a special committee chaired by former Attorney General Khanit na Nakhon found that 2,819 people were killed in 2,559 murder cases between February and April in 2003 as part of Thaksin's "war on drugs."
But despite many promises by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to bring those responsible for the "war on drugs" murders and related abuses to justice, no action has ensued. Many police officers implicated in this inquiry and follow-up investigations by the Justice Ministry's Department of Special Investigation remain in office. Many have even been promoted.
The failure to hold abusive police accountable makes it more likely that killings, torture, and extortion will happen again, especially in the context of drug suppression operations, said Human Rights Watch.

Thailand continues to face a boom in the use and trafficking of methamphetamines. For that reason, harsh measures against traffickers are politically popular. On December 3, Interior Minister Chavarat Charnvirakul launched a new nation-wide campaign, called "Clean and Seal." This campaign will initially go on for three months and seek to thoroughly "clean up" 16,106 communities of drugs users and traffickers.
While traffickers will be arrested and prosecuted, those caught using drugs will be sent to a rehabilitation program at military-style camps run by the Interior Ministry.

"Unrealistic targets set by politicians, combined with deep-rooted police brutality and impunity raise grave concerns about this 'Clean and Seal'
campaign," said Pearson. "To prevent his government from going down the same road as Thaksin, Prime Minister Abhisit should set a new standard by ensuring that abusers will be prosecuted."


--
Drugs & Democracy Info <drugs@tni.org>
Transnational Institute (TNI)
De Wittenstraat 25 1052 AK
P.O.Box 14656 1001 LD
Amsterdam - The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 662 6608 / Fax: +31 20 675 7176 http://www.tni.org/drugs


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in the news

| | 0 comments

 


Science advisers given right to dissent
By Mark Henderson
Times (UK)
December 16, 2009

Cocaine and rebels haunt Peru's remote jungle
By Terry Wade
Reuters
December 15, 2009

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
By Rajeev Syal
Guardian (UK)
December 13, 2009


Editorials / Éditoriaux

Editorial only worsens drug problem
By Evan Wood MD, PhD
Prince George Citizen
December 14, 2009

The slippery slope of marijuana regulation
Social attitudes toward the drug have moved beyond legal and political thinking. No wonder the L.A. City Council is having such a tough time.
Tim Rutten
LA Times
December 16, 2009

Legal highs are not a police matter
The penalties meted out to children using legal substances such as mephedrone are outrageous, as is the police involvement
By Geoffrey Alderman
Guardian (UK)
December 14, 2009

in the news

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 | | 0 comments


Swift action sought on medical marijuana
D.C. Council chairman ready to begin crafting policy with lifting of ban
By Tim Craig
Washington Post
December 15, 2009

Pot measure has enough sigs for 2010 ballot

| | 0 comments

Subject: US: Group: Pot measure has enough sigs for 2010 ballot

The Associated Press
Monday, December 14, 2009

Group: Pot measure has enough sigs for 2010 ballot

By MARCUS WOHLSEN

SAN FRANCISCO -- A group campaigning to put a marijuana legalization measure before California voters said Monday it has enough signatures to qualify for the 2010 ballot.

The measure has far more than the nearly 434,000 signatures needed to make the statewide November 2010 ballot, said Richard Lee, an Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur and the initiative's main backer.

"We'll keep our organizers on the street to keep the momentum going strong, but today we're declaring an overwhelming victory," Lee said.

The proposal would legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and older. Residents could cultivate marijuana gardens up to 25 square feet. City and county governments would determine whether to permit and tax marijuana sales within their boundaries.

County election officials across the state must still validate and count the signatures before the California Secretary of State places the measure on the ballot. Campaign organizers say they will submit more than 650,000 signatures of registered voters next month.

A Field Poll conducted in April found that 56 percent of California residents supported legalizing and taxing marijuana to help bridge the state budget deficit. Still, pro-legalization advocates are divided over whether the ballot measure is being pushed too soon.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. But some legal scholars have argued the U.S. government could do little to make California enforce the federal ban if the drug became legal under state law.

Opponents of the measure contend legalization of marijuana will lead to more drug abuse among minors.

"If you increase the availability of a drug, you increase its use in youth. If you decrease the perception of harm, you increase its use in youth," said John Redman, executive director of Californians for Drug Free Youth. "Legalizing marijuana does both."

Supporters point to provisions in the legalization measure that call for jail time for anyone who sells or gives marijuana to children. It forbids smoking pot in a public place or in front of minors.

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Jamaica lawmaker calls for legalizing small amounts of marijuana for private use

Monday, December 14, 2009 | | 0 comments

 

Jamaica lawmaker calls for legalizing small amounts of marijuana for private use
Winnipeg Free Press
December 12, 2009

Hallucinogenic Herb Under Legislative Eye

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Washington Post
September 30, 2009

Hallucinogenic Herb Under Legislative Eye

By J. Freedom DuLac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

On 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan, just past the yellow "Drug Free Zone"
sign, the B&K News Stand sells hookahs, rolling papers and "Purple Sticky Salvia."

The psychedelic Purple Sticky label warns that the contents of the cylindrical package -- dried leaves of the hallucinogenic herb Salvia divinorum and a chemical extract of the drug -- are to be used as incense only. But at $29.95 for a pillbox the size of a small jar of lip balm, that's some awfully expensive fragrant foliage.

It's perfectly legal to sell, possess and ingest salvia in the District.
But the same stuff, long used for medicinal and mystical purposes by Mazatec Indians in Mexico, will get you arrested in Virginia, where a ban on salvia passed unanimously in both the House and Senate last year.

Last month, after police reported multiple instances in which officers had to restrain people under the influence of salvia, the Ocean City Council passed emergency legislation to ban salvia products, which were being sold at almost 20 shops on the resort town's boardwalk. An identical ban followed suit in Worcester County on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and state Del. Jim Mathias, the former mayor of Ocean City, plans to push for a statewide ban when the General Assembly meets in Annapolis this winter.

Salvia has been gaining popularity over the past decade as a smokable drug whose psychotropic extract provides a short-lived but potent hallucinogenic trip. The 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 1.8 million people in the United States had tried salvia, "and it's probably even more now," said Matthew W. Johnson, a psychopharmacologist at the Johns Hopkins University medical school, where he studies salvia and its active ingredient, salvinorin A. "It's really hit a critical mass in the last couple of years."

There's ample evidence online: Salvia, which is widely available for purchase on the Internet, has become a popular theme on YouTube, where countless bong-smokers in their teens and 20s have posted videos of themselves stumbling, laughing uncontrollably, talking nonsensically and just plain freaking out. (Video titles include "Jess' Journey To Space,"
"Worst Salvia Trip bad bad bad" and "!!!Hilarious Salvia Trip!!!!!!")

"It's an unpredictable drug that clearly alters rational behavior and alters your psyche," said Mathias, who sponsored an earlier anti-salvia bill that stalled in the Senate. Watching YouTube videos of kids flying high on salvia, "you see how panicky and paranoid and fearful they become. But if somebody for whatever reason decides this drug is something they want to partake in, they can buy it like they're buying a comic book or chewing gum. You don't even have to be 18. . . . I just don't think you should be able to buy salvia like you'd buy a Mounds bar."

Researchers worry that a rush to regulate the drug could interfere with efforts to learn whether salvinorin A can be used to treat cocaine addiction and Alzheimer's disease, among other conditions. But total or partial salvia bans have been imposed in 16 states; North Carolina will make it illegal in December. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has labeled salvia "a drug of concern" and is considering adding it to the list of drugs banned under the Controlled Substances Act. (It's illegal in at least a dozen countries.)

But fret not, green thumbs: Salvia divinorum is not the same as the ornamental species of salvia you've been planting all these years.
They're family, but Salvia divinorum is the hippy-trippy uncle of the genus. "Salvia, the flowering plants, are backbones of the garden," said Ginny Rosenkranz, a commercial horticulture educator at the Maryland Cooperative Extension. "Salvia divinorum is a different species entirely. It's not know for its flowers; it's not considered ornamental."

The genus salvia is part of the mint family and is commonly called sage, hence the trippy nicknames for "Sally D": Magic Mint, Diviner's Sage, Sage of the Seers.

Although its hallucinogenic qualities were known by ethnobotanists and in psychedelic drug circles for many years, salvia had a low profile in this country until the late 1990s, when word spread that concentrating the active compound, salvinorin A, and smoking it was like a legal ticket to a magic carpet ride.

"That's when things started changing, around 1998, 1999, and you started seeing mail-order companies offering it," said Daniel Siebert, creator of the Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center, a salvia Web site. Siebert has experimented with the drug himself, "though I haven't done it in a couple of years," he said.

He describes his experience as a journey to another place. "If you take a high dose, you get immersed in this dreamlike trance state," he said.
"You're seeing this narrative scene unfold, like you do when you're asleep, and you're not aware of your body or the room you're in. You think you're someplace else."

Siebert said traditional Indian use of salvia was reserved for occasions "when they have a real reason to consult with their inner selves or with divine beings . . . usually a problem they're trying to gain insight into. It's a solemn, sacred thing."

Today, however, "more and more people are smoking excessively high doses and being careless," Siebert said. They "are experimenting with it in a party atmosphere while drinking with a lot of friends around, and they're finding it confusing and disorienting."

But is it dangerous? Johnson, the psychopharmacologist, said emergency rooms aren't reporting an increase in salvia overdoses or other issues related to the drug -- in part because "it's very short-acting, lasting five to 10 minutes."

Salvia doesn't appear to be addictive, nor is it particularly toxic, Johnson said. "The science is pretty clear. . . . Salvia is not the next methamphetamine or the next cocaine or heroin."

But, he warned, "this is a powerful drug. If someone were to drive on it, that would be a very bad thing."

In Delaware, Brett Chidester, 17, committed suicide in 2006 after becoming a salvia smoker. There was no evidence that Chidester was under the influence of salvia when he killed himself, but within four months, state legislators passed "Brett's Law," making salvia a controlled substance.

A dozen states have put salvia on Schedule I, the most restrictive class of drugs, including heroin, LSD and marijuana.

That has made research into the drug's possible therapeutic uses more difficult, said Thomas E. Prisinzano, a University of Kansas researcher who has been studying modifying salvinorin A to treat drug addiction.

"I'm concerned about the rush to regulate," Johnson said. Putting a substance on Schedule I "disincentivizes pharmaceutical companies that might pour millions of dollars into the development of a potential medication for cocaine dependence or Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia."

Worcester County Commissioner Linda Busick shrugged off such concerns.
She recalled walking down the Ocean City boardwalk and wondering when and how the summer resort became an open-air drug market, with Purple Sticky Salvia and other brands offered at multiple levels of potency and in various flavors at the ubiquitous T-shirt shops.

"There's some feeling out there that we made a rush to judgment," Busick said. "But this is bad stuff. I had a youngster tell me that . . . you might think you can fly when you're on it and you'll need somebody to hold you back. Kids were having really bad experiences with it, and it was legal. We needed to stop it."


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DVD - The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

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The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
A recommended DVD which explores that Marijuana industry in British Columbia.
 
 

Opium cultivation on the rise in Golden Triangle

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DPA
December 14, 2009

Opium cultivation on the rise in Golden Triangle

Bangkok : Opium cultivation in South-East Asia rose 11 percent this year as soaring prices in Laos and political instability in Myanmar drew more farmers to the illicit poppy crop, a UN report revealed Monday.

Cultivation increased to 33,811 hectares from 30,388 hectares last year in the Golden Triangle - comprising parts of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand
- which two decades ago accounted for more than 70 percent of the world's supply of heroin, a refined derivative of opium.

After years of crop-substitution and development projects that reduced the acreage under cultivation in the region, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) now acknowledges a "worrisome" trend towards increased cultivated in the illicit crop since 2006.

"We are worried about the trends, especially in Myanmar where we see potential for an unravelling of much of what containment has produced over the past two decades," said Gary Lewis, UNODC regional representative for the Asia Pacific.

According to the report Opium Cultivation in South-East Asia, between
1988 to 2006, poppy growing in Laos, Myanmar and Thailand dropped from 157,900 hectares to 24,157 hectares in 2006.

But cultivation has since been on the rise, increasing 47 percent in Myanmar and 19 percent in Laos. Thailand, historically a minor opium grower although a major conduit for heroin from the Golden Triangle, saw its cultivated acreage drop 27 percent this year to only 211 hectares.

Myanmar accounts for the lion's share of opium cultivation in the region, with more than 50 percent coming from the Shan State, a base for several ethnic minority groups such as the Wa and the Shan.

"The eastern Shan State has seen a really dramatic increase in opium cultivation over the past four years, from 3,000 hectares to 11,000 hectares," Lewis said.

Myanmar's military regime has little control over the east Shan State, although it has demanded that all minority groups place their armed militias under state control this year. Few have complied.

In Laos, where opium sells for $1,327 per kg, up 8 percent from 2008, the increase in cultivation is market driven.

"It's all about supply and demand," said Leik Boonwaat, UNODC country representative for Laos. "In Laos, the price is high because of the scarcity of supply, while demand remains high."

By comparison, this year's the price for a kg of opium was $317 in Myanmar and $48 in Afghanistan, now the world's leading provider of the drug.

Leik estimated that there were at least 12,000 opium addicts in the land-locked country.

-----

Opium poppy cultivation in South-East Asia - Dec 2009 (pdf) http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/SEA_Opium_survey_2009.pdf
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You can't handle the truth

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The Boston Globe
December 13, 2009

You can't handle the truth

A respected scientist set out to determine which drugs are actually the most dangerous -- and discovered that the answers are, well, awkward

By Mark Pothier

In the long and tortured debate over drug policy, one of the strangest episodes has been playing out this fall in the United Kingdom, where the country's top drug adviser was recently fired for publicly criticizing his own government's drug laws.

The adviser, Dr. David Nutt, said in a lecture that alcohol is more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the United Kingdom might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana smokers in jail. His comments were published in a press release in October, and the next day he was dismissed. The buzz over his sacking has yet to subside: Nutt has become the talk of pubs and Parliament, as well as the subject of tabloid headlines like: "Drug advisor on wacky baccy?"

But behind Nutt's words lay something perhaps more surprising, and harder to grapple with. His comments weren't the idle musings of a reality-insulated professor in a policy job. They were based on a list - a scientifically compiled ranking of drugs, assembled by specialists in chemistry, health, and enforcement, published in a prestigious medical journal two years earlier.

The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title "Mean Harm Scores for 20 Substances," ranked a set of common drugs, both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness of different substances.

That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for saying out
loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking, and LSD is less damaging yet.

Nutt says he didn't see himself as promoting drug use or trying to subvert the government. He was pressing the point that a government policy, especially a health-related one like a drug law, should be grounded in factual information. In doing so, he found himself caught in a crossfire that cost him the advisory post he had held for a decade.

The same issue is becoming a hot one in America - this fall the Obama administration took a baby step toward easing federal scrutiny of medical marijuana use, and a policy report due early next year is expected to emphasize addiction prevention and treatment over criminal enforcement. Opponents are already attacking the administration for its laxity, but Thomas McLellan, a newly installed White House drug official, has begun loudly pushing for policy that incorporates more science.

"We must increase the use of evidence-based tools at our disposal,"
McLellan said in an interview last week.

But as Nutt's case illustrates, that is tough to do. The more data we accumulate about drug harmfulness, the more it seems like the classification systems used by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other governments need to be dismantled - and the more it becomes clear that societies can't, or won't, take that step. Drug laws are rooted in history and politics as much as science. Our own culture embraces one intoxicant - alcohol - that Nutt's ranking deemed far more dangerous than 15 other harmful substances. And even if it were possible to divorce drug politics from drug-use facts, some policy specialists say, letting science call the shots would be a bad idea.

Intoxication has been part of human culture since before recorded history. So have its consequences. A drug can cause all sorts of harms, some devastating, some minor: It can ravage the body of an addict, or simply make a user late for a meeting with the boss. Drugs can impoverish families, trigger deadly violence, cause cancer. In modern society, drugs drive crime and increase health costs for everyone.

To Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at London's Imperial College who chaired the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, it made sense that laws and policies should take into account the harmfulness of the drugs themselves. But when he considered ways to improve the system, he discovered a problem.

"It became clear that [the government] didn't have any systematic, transparent way of assessing drugs at all," he said. "If you say drug laws are based on reducing harm, you have to actually know what kind of harm they cause."

So about a decade ago, he and some colleagues set about to gauge the dangers of 20 substances as objectively as possible. This would not be a measurement with calipers and a scale - drug risks are inevitably subjective, depending on factors like an individual user's tolerance, the amount used, and the duration of use. But Nutt also knew he could create better data than anything the government was currently employing.

He and his colleagues assembled a range of independent experts and asked them to score each drug in three categories - its physical effects on the user, the likelihood of addiction, and its impact on society. The group included addiction specialists registered with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as well as people with expertise in chemistry, forensic science, and police work.

They gave the specialists a detailed list of parameters to consider. In assessing the addictiveness of, say, cocaine, they would separately rate its pleasure, psychological dependence, and physical dependence, and the ratings would be combined to create an overall risk factor. After a series of meetings and discussions, the rankings were determined by averaging scores across all the categories. The result was a paper published in the public-health journal The Lancet in March 2007.

Number one on the experts' list was an easy call: heroin. It's extremely addictive and, by any measure, destructive to the user and the society around him. Cocaine came in second, followed by barbiturates and street methadone.

Then the list got interesting. Alcohol, which has always been legal in England and was only briefly outlawed in the United States, took the fifth position, above tobacco (9), marijuana (11), LSD (14), and ecstasy (18). The least harmful drug in all respects was khat, a stimulant derived from the leaves of an African shrub.

Included in the Lancet paper was the authors' recommendation that the government should reclassify drugs to reflect the harms they cause. "We saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances," they wrote, suggesting "a more rational debate" on drug policy, based on "scientific evidence."

The ranking - nicknamed the "drug league table," after the British term for sports standings - lay quietly, more or less ignored by the public and politicians, until King's College issued a press release in October based on a lecture Nutt had given in July. Nutt thought he was making much the same point he made in the medical journal two years earlier: If we looked at harm objectively, we would engineer a drastically different set of drug policies than the ones we now use.

He was swiftly booted from his government position. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Nutt had crossed a line. He "cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy," Johnson told The Guardian newspaper.

"It was a funny, kind of petulant reaction," Nutt told the Globe, "all about machismo and politics. We're harder on drugs than you, we're tougher."

Suddenly, Nutt was everywhere - the papers, the BBC, YouTube, a Facebook page started by his backers. Critics accused him of sending England's youth a mixed message about drug use. Supporters charged the government with stripping the professor of his right to speak freely.

Amid the charges and countercharges, others wondered whether, beneath all the controversy, the government shouldn't just start paying more attention to that list.

If Nutt's list is accurate - if we really do know which drugs are really bad and which are relatively benign - the next step is figuring out how to make use of that information.

It might seem obvious that the most harmful drugs should receive the most attention from the government, with beefed-up prevention and treatment programs, and tougher punishments for producers and distributors. And to conserve their limited resources, it might make sense for drug officials to stop worrying about the least harmful substances, even decriminalizing or legalizing them.

But real-world drug policy is not like that. To a certain extent, say analysts, legal drugs are acceptable and illegal ones are dangerous because, well, because they're already illegal.

"There's a crazy kind of logic that argues, about some currently illegal drug, 'Look how dangerous it is! You couldn't possibly legalize a drug as dangerous as that!' " said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA. The fact that a drug is against the law makes people overestimate its risks, he said, while legal status causes them to underestimate dangers.

Politicians tend to follow that same line of thinking, leaving socially acceptable legal drugs alone, while making easy prey of would-be liberalizers. In the United States, for instance, it would be politically insane to call for the legalization of the least harmful drugs on Nutt's list - khat, GHB, and steroids - while campaigning to outlaw tobacco.

One indisputable fact that emerged from Nutt's study is this: We have assigned a high social value to booze. Alcohol causes many of the harms associated with "harder" drugs - lots of people die or become deeply dysfunctional because of drinking - yet it has been entrenched in society for so long that scientific evidence of its hazards relative to other intoxicants doesn't get much of a public hearing.

Kleiman and other experts - including Nutt - are not suggesting that either Britain or the United States should ban alcohol. America tried that once, and even during Prohibition, people didn't stop drinking - they simply built a system of illegal manufacturing and distribution big enough to satisfy their thirst. Instead, Kleiman believes a good strategy on alcohol should include increased taxes to discourage drinking - young people and heavy drinkers are price-sensitive - and an outright ban on sales to people who have been convicted of drunken driving or other alcohol-fueled crimes.

Of course, that would require new laws, and more political wrangling.
How many convictions? How long of a ban? If the science is complicated, the politics would be more so. The fight would last more than a few rounds.

Nutt, for one, seems ready to go the distance. "The majority of people in [Britain] are more damaged by alcohol than any other drug," he said.
"Let's get the scaling of harm right."

For drugs that are currently illegal, he said, that means having prevention efforts and laws that are proportionate to their dangers. For instance, British law allows up to five years imprisonment for marijuana possession, a penalty Nutt called "infantile and embarrassing."
McLellan, the White House drug adviser, echoed him, saying jailing pot smokers "is idiocy, a really bad use of resources."

But drug law will never be as simple as making a list, and even experts say it shouldn't be. At a certain point, scientists should excuse themselves from the discourse, Kleiman said. Intoxicants are part of our culture in ways that a list can't sort out for us.

"Science gives you facts about the world," he said, "and you have to assign values to those facts. It doesn't tell you what's worth having and what's not worth having."

Mark Pothier is the Globe's senior assistant business editor. He can be reached at mpothier@globe.com.

(c) Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

----------------------------------------------------
The online version includes the graph "Ranking drugs":
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/13/you_cant_handle_the_truth/#

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MARIJUANA IS NOW A PERSONAL MATTER FOR CZECHS

Friday, December 11, 2009 | | 0 comments

Pubdate: Fri, 11 Dec 2009
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Page: A7
Copyright: 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Author: Sean Carney

MARIJUANA IS NOW A PERSONAL MATTER FOR CZECHS

The interim Czech government, led by chief statistician-turned-Prime Minister Jan Fischer, early this week took a step towards making casual marijuana smoking a less worrisome affair.

Mr. Fischer's cabinet defined on Monday what constitutes "small amounts" of cannabis for personal use, clarifying the country's new penal code that from next year decriminalizes cultivation and possession of the plant by individuals, according to Czech news agency CTK.

As of Jan. 1 ordinary Czechs can grow up to five marijuana plants or have several marijuana cigarettes in their pockets without fear of criminal prosecution. Previously what constituted a small amount wasn't specified.

The government's approval of a table specifying what amounts of drugs are permissible is a vital part of the country's new penal code that was last year approved by both houses of parliament and in January of this year was signed into law by President Vaclav Klaus. Without the just-approved table of amounts that will be used by Czech police, the January decriminalization of the drug would be difficult to judge by courts and investigators.

The plant still remains illegal, however, though from the new year possession of five or less plants is merely a misdemeanour, and fines for possession will be on par with penalties for parking violations.

There is also an interesting lifestyle footnote: Czechs are Europe's biggest drinkers of hops-infused beer and are also the continent's leaders in smoking pot. Czechs consume 320 pints of the golden brew per person annually. Also 22% of Czechs between the age of 16 and 34 smoke cannabis at least once a year, according to a recent report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Czech decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis possession does not, however provide greater clarity to the country's policy on medical marijuana. "Konopi Je Lek," a Czech non-profit organization promoting medical marijuana recently co-founded the country's first marijuana dispensary in Prague despite there being no medical marijuana laws on the country's books. The grand opening of the dispensary on Sept. 28 was attended by Prague's Mayor Dr. Pavel Bem, who is also a physician and proponent of sensible use of the herb. Since then, however, Prague police have raided it, hauling away the cannabis meant for patients, and the dispensary is now looking for growers to help restock its supply.
 
 

U.S. may take new look at `war on drugs'

Thursday, December 10, 2009 | | 0 comments

US may take new look at `war on drugs'
MiamiHerald.com
... take a new look at US anti-drug programs such as Plan Colombia and the M�rida Initiative for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. ...
See all stories on this topic



THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT

U.S. may take new look at `war on drugs'

aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com

If you had asked me 10 years ago whether the United States will ever change its interdiction-focused counternarcotics policies -- and perhaps even decriminalize marijuana consumption at home -- I would have told you, ``never.'' Today, I say, ``perhaps.''

Earlier this week, in a tacit admission that current U.S. anti-drug policies are not working, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill to create an independent commission to review whether the U.S. anti-drug policies of the past three decades in Latin America are producing positive results.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where supporters say it has a good chance to pass, given its bipartisan support in the House. The 10-member panel, modeled after the 9/11 Commission that made recommendations to Congress and the White House after the 2001 terrorist attacks, would have to issue its report in 12 months.

REASON FOR CHANGE

What's interesting about the planned independent drug policy commission is that the idea didn't come from a pro-legalization advocate, nor any leftist or libertarian crusader. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), opposes decriminalization of drugs for non-medical use, and is as mainstream as members of Congress come.

But Engel's frustration over the results of the U.S. war on drugs is symptomatic of Washington's growing skepticism about U.S. anti-drug policies these days.

Since 1980, the United States has spent nearly $14 billion trying to stop drug-smuggling from Latin America, the bill says. While U.S. drug consumption has declined significantly as a percentage of the population, there are still 25.7 million users of marijuana, 5.3 million users of cocaine and 453,000 users of heroin. Meanwhile, U.S. law enforcement and prison systems are overwhelmed by prosecutions on drug-consumption charges.

Interdiction-focused policies have not changed Latin America's status as the world's largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana, and drug-related violence in the region has -- if anything -- increased. In Mexico alone, 5,661 people died in drug-related violence last year, more than double the previous year's total.

``Billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between,'' says Engel, who chairs the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee. ``Clearly, the time has come to take a fresh look at our counternarcotics efforts.''

The proposed commission will, among other things, take a new look at U.S. anti-drug programs such as Plan Colombia and the M�rida Initiative for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Engel said that it will ``assess all aspects of our drug policy,'' although he clarified in an e-mail to me that decriminalization of marijuana is not part of his intentions for the commission.

Earlier this year, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia signed a joint declaration suggesting that the time has come to consider decriminalization of marijuana -- studies show that it's not more harmful than alcohol and tobacco, they said -- and to focus on education and prevention to reduce drug consumption.

If I had any doubt that the public mood toward anti-drug policies in the United States is changing, a conversation with former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, convinced me of that. Rocha, who was known as a hard-line enforcer of U.S. anti-drug policies when he headed the 950-strong embassy staff in Bolivia until 2002, told me that he supports the Cardoso-Zedillo-Gaviria statement.

``Things have changed,'' Rocha told me. ``We have to be intellectually honest, and reach the conclusion that the time has come to change the focus of our failed policies.''

OPEN CONVERSATION

My opinion: Washington is on the verge of beginning a taboo-free discussion on its drug policies that was unthinkable a few years ago.

There are three main reasons for this: First, the U.S. focus on ``the war on drugs'' of the 1990s has been replaced by the war on terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Second, the 2008 economic crisis is moving U.S. lawmakers to review how government funds are spent. Third, the drug-related violence in Mexico is creating growing anxiety in U.S. national security circles.

Most likely, the proposed independent commission will not recommend decriminalization of marijuana, but will install the issue as a legitimate debate. Meantime, the Obama Administration will soon announce a new National Drug Control Strategy that will focus more on demand reduction than its predecessors.

At any rate, it's clear there is a growing sentiment that the war on drugs is not working, and that we need to further focus on drug consumers rather than drug producers.



--
XVIII International AIDS Conference
July 18-23 2010 | Vienna, Austria

Dr Marcus Day DSc
Director
Caribbean Drug & Alcohol Research Institute
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�Harm reduction� is often made an unnecessarily controversial issue as if there was a contradiction between prevention and treatment on one hand and reducing the adverse health and social consequences of drug use on the other. This is a false dichotomy. They are complementary.

Taken From UNODC (2008) Reducing the adverse health and social effects of drug use: A comprehensive approach.

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