Drug Policy Reform

fuckyeahdrugpolicy:

May 4, 2012: Nine bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border from the Laredo, Texas. Police could not confirm who was responsible for the murders but a message seen with the bodies indicated it may have been an attack by the Zetas cartel against the rival Gulf cartel.

Brutal Drug War Consequences

The Houston Chronicle is carrying a story with startling revelations of drug gang brutality in Mexico. Among other things, it reports of kidnapping young men and forcing them to engage in contests to the death in order to find and recruit killers. This made me wonder what kinds of things deter people from behaving like this, and what kinds of conditions produce this kind of behavior. 

1. The state forbids something, like drugs.

2. Production MUST therefore be illegal, and production will occur because the demand doesn’t disappear when the drug is made illegal.

3. Going illegal is a necessary condition for all those who are willing to produce and supply the drug. The profit motive remains, even heightens, and so there will always be people who will go illegal.

4. The people attracted into the illegal business are going to be the people who already have the least inhibitions about doing anything immoral and illegal. They are the ones most willing to take risks.

5. Competition is all within illegality. This means that moral rules that govern peaceful competition do not prevail among the suppliers. They therefore select among any actions and rules that bring them survival, profits, and growth. The most effective means of gaining market share and preventing the incursion of rivals within a situation of illegal rivalry will include a reputation and readiness to kill and maim so as to enforce one’s will.

6. The means include corrupting law enforcement. This is virtually a necessity and always occurs in these conditions. The results include gang warfare. It also includes uneasy peace among gangs and division into territories and fiefdoms.

7. The competition need not lead to the practices mentioned in this article whose aim is to find and groom the most merciless killers. Yet it probably happened in the 1920s gangs that this mode of competition also prevailed as the many stories of Capone suggest. Most gangster movies also depict that the more brutal gangsters rise to the top.

I don’t claim that this is a complete explanation of what’s going on, but I did want to make the point that what’s going on in Mexico is not a random thing and not a peculiarly Mexican thing. These things often have rational explanations. It’s akin to terrorism and assassination and other forms of violence in that respect. There are often reasons that we can find that explain it even if the behavior is awful. 

fuckyeahdrugpolicy:

This is a still from an LSD experiment in the Fifties. Watch the video

As weed goes mainstream, hallucinogens are making a scientific and cultural comeback | The Philly Post

It wasn’t really until the early 1960s that psychedelics, specifically psilocybin and LSD, began to be demonized en masse. Timothy Leary’s initially admirable attempt to spread information about psychedelics devolved into cult-of-personality-based recreational drug use. The Leary contingent’s rabble-rousing from their Millbrook, NY estate, coupled with Leary’s egotistical quest to become a countercultural icon (remember “turn on, tune in, drop out”?), ultimately helped to contribute to the poor perception psychedelics have faced historically by providing reference material for the Drug War propaganda machine.

Prior to the Leary Hour in psychedelic history, scientists enjoyed years of unfettered study and experimentation with drugs like LSD, mescaline and psilocybin. With the discovery of LSD in 1938 by chemist Albert Hoffman and its subsequent mass production by Sandoz Laboratories in 1947 as a psychiatric drug, the psychedelic study floodgates opened. Scientists examined psychedelics as treatments for everything from alcoholism and addiction to anxiety and depression. So popular was the study of hallucinogens that throughout the ’50s and ’60s, scientists administered psychedelics to some 40,000 patients across 1,000 clinical studies.

full article

Connecticut lawmakers have decided in favor of legislation that allows for the limited use and distribution of cannabis as medicine. The majority of the new law, once signed by the Governor, will take effect on October 1, 2012.

Last year, Connecticut NORML took a lead role in the passage of separate statewide legislation that decriminalized the possession of marijuana by adults from a criminal misdemeanor (punishable by one year in jail and a $1,000 fine) to a non-criminal infraction, punishable by a fine, no arrest or jail time, and no criminal record. Since then, the state has seen a dramatic reduction in the total number of marijuana arrests.

Erik Williams, Executive Director of Connecticut NORML: “When I formed Connecticut NORML 18 months ago, I wrote a five-year plan with the goal to decriminalize possession and legalize medical marijuana. I would have never dreamed we could do it as quickly as we did.”

The U.S. House of Representatives will be voting soon —  possibly today — on an amendment that could finally end the federal assault on medical marijuana! Urge your representatives to end the attack on medical marijuana today.

This amendment would prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Justice from spending taxpayer money to undermine state medical marijuana laws that allow patients to safely access their medicine.

This promising legislation has a real chance of passing. Medical marijuana patients are counting on you to help protect them from these cruel federal attacks.

Tell your representatives to support this amendment that will ban the federal government from using taxpayer money to shut down voter-approved medical marijuana programs!

Over the past two years, federal prosecutors and police agencies have dramatically escalated their assault on medical marijuana. Legal medical marijuana dispensaries are being raided and threatened. Medical marijuana patients are needlessly suffering without their medicine. State laws are being trampled by the federal government. If this legislation passes, it will hopefully end the medical marijuana raids and ensure that patients have safe access to their medicine.

fuckyeahdrugpolicy:

Undercover Cops Seduce Teens, Bust Them for Drugs? | Opposing Views

Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other.

One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn’t smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn’t want the money — he got it for her as a present.

A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students — including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Justin has been convicted of selling pot inside a school, a felony in Florida. He is no longer eligible to join the Armed Forces as he had planned to do upon graduation and is now attending community college.

This is not an isolated incident. Click to continue reading.

sign the petition: Palm Beach Mayor Gail Coniglio: Stop sending undercover officers into your high schools

In Palm Beach County the police have already used this tactic to arrest and convict over 80 students at numerous high schools. And sadly, this tactic is not unique to sunny Palm Beach.

In the Huffington Post, Tony Newman likened this story to that of 18-year-old Mitchell Lawrence, a student from Great Barrington, Mass. who served two years in jail for selling a joint to an undercover cop. According to Newman, “the officer befriended Lawrence and his friends, hanging out with them after school. One day the cop asked if Lawrence had any weed. Lawrence gave the cop a joint and the cop handed him $20. Lawrence hesitated, but the cop insisted on giving him the money. Because they were less than 100 feet from school, “selling” the joint carried a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.”

No police department should expend taxpayer money to trick kids into becoming one-time drug dealers just to slap a felony conviction on their record. It’s shameful and robs too many of a better future.  Nancy Reagan once told us that the drug war was fought to protect our kids, but with these tactics it’s more often taking away their future.

We can’t change this disgraceful practice across the country with one campaign, but we can start the ball rolling by changing them in Palm Beach. Tell Mayor Gail Coniglio to stop sending undercover police officers into her high schools.  Beefing up the county’s drug conviction rate is not worth robbing more kids of their future.