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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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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

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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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

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

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
Winnipeg Free Press
December 12, 2009

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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The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

http://www.amazon.ca/Union-Business-Behind-Getting-High/dp/B0025XUTKQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1260807744&sr=8-1

A recommended DVD which explores that Marijuana industry in British Columbia.