... the annual ritual in the UK where the government asks a panel of scientific advisors about the link between the legal classification of drugs and the scientific evidence for their harm, and then ignores them.

This recent review is being headed up by psychopharmacologist David Nutt who was also involved in the government commissioned report that used the scientific evidence to rank recreational drugs, both legal and illegal, by their dangerousness. As is traditional, the list bore no relation to the legal classification and was ignored.

Not that it matters, as a recent World Health Organisation study that found that drug laws in any particular country were not related to the extent of drug use by the population.

There's nothing like an evidence-based drugs policy.

"Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco," says the report by the Foundation's Global Cannabis Commission. [...]

The Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust, claimed only two deaths worldwide have been attributed to cannabis, while alcohol and tobacco use together kill an estimated 150,000 people in Britain alone.

"Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment," it said.  [Emphasis mine]

I'm not sure what the situation is in Britain, but here at least, it's been clear to all informed observers  - for the last decade, at least - that the "war on drugs" is a miserable failure.  Not only in terms of its impact on the use of illegal drugs, but also in terms of it's staggeringly negative impact on communities.  Not to mention the fact that the "drug war" is responsible for a massive expansion in the domestic police apparatus.  All in all, the whole enterprise has been bad news bears.  Unfortunately however, since promising to crack down on drug use is a surefire political winner, there's little chance that anyone from either party will attempt to introduce reform.

Jacob Sullum notes:

According to FBI figures released today, about 873,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in the United States last year, 5 percent more than in 2006 and a new record. This is the fifth year in a row that marijuana arrests, which are up 167 percent since 1990, have increased. In 2007 marijuana arrests accounted for nearly half of the 1.8 million drug arrests; as usual, the vast majority of the pot busts, about 775,000, were for simple possession.

Application of the Hegelian Dialectic to the Gun

Control issue is very interesting in its result, that a

defenseless public is equivalent to slavery.

HEGELIAN DIALECTIC DESIGNED TO INSTITUTE UN MARTIAL LAW

]]> http://annieshreff.wordpress.com/?p=110 Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:37:21 +0000 annieshreff http://annieshreff.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/uncle-sam-doesnt-want-the-fat-stupid-and-criminal/ [/caption]

I smelled something funky right away in Larry Littlefield's post that includes the tiresome phrase "Youth of Today" in the title (so we know right away where this is going).  He's gracious enough to qualify his finger pointing by suggesting that while the 70% youth are apparently too slack to be military material, it may not be ALL their fault:

So there you have the youth of today. They are starting out bankrupt in a bankrupt country. That’s what I was worried about before. In addition, a majority are stupid, fat, sick, addicted or criminals. But others are more socially engaged as citizens, and as Grimm [Dr. Robert Grimm, the Director of Research and Public Policy for the Corporation for National and Community Service] pointed out, those who are socially engaged as citizens, statistically, are far more active and healthy. I had heard that all the social indicators – from teenage pregnancy to drug use to high school graduation rates – had improved compared with 30 years ago when I was in high school, so the 70% figure came as something of a shock. It sounds like the uneven distribution of income and institutional collapses are just part of the problem. We have a personal collapse as well.

Can we back up a minute? Littlefield is concerned about this figure given by Lt General Benjamin C. Freakley (I love the surname), a recruiter for the U.S. Army. I suppose this guy has it tough right now, trying to defend a poor recruiting rate. If you were him, would you blame it on today's youth being unattracted to the situations they see our troops facing (roadside bombs, "100 more years" in Iraq, high survival and amputee rate of injured troops), or would you blame the low signing rate on kids playing too much X-Box and eating too many Doritos?

A 2003 report by the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences and Education (BCSSE ) called "Additutes, Aptitudes and Aspirations of American Youth: Implications for Military Recruitment" looked at a variety of factors in order to advise the military on how they may improve recruitment. NOTE: The date is important, as it is pre-Surge and may not reflect an even greater shift in attitude away from signing up for those fat military bonuses. The report says, for example:

In light of the September 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent terrorist threats to the United States, it seems unlikely to us that force sizes will be reduced in the near term from their current levels. We also do not see clear evidence of factors that would result in a significant increase in net force size.

Just keep that in mind.

So kids these days...in light of the competitiveness of college applications, the opportunities to learn just about anything on the internet, the creeping social advances towards multicultural awarenes that can put cracks in glass ceilings.....are they really less intelligent? Hard to believe. In fact, it turns out the military want to raise the testing bar as weapons technology becomes more advanced. They'd prefer recruits with computer experience.  From the report, it sounds like the BCSSE thinks the military should do what they promise in  ads that say, "The Army strengthens you, and your future, with expert training in one of over 150 different jobs for Soldiers on Active Duty and over 120 in the Army Reserve" by following the reports advice:

There have been few major changes in the occupational distribution of first-term personnel in the past 10 years, but future military missions coupled with advances in technology are expected to require military personnel to make greater use of technology.

Recommendation: We urge that the Services resist the notion that recruit aptitude and education targets must continue to be raised, and we recommend that they continuously review their performance requirements and the related training of new recruits to ensure that beginning knowledge gaps are filled when necessary and that unnecessary training is abandoned quickly. To the extent possible, training changes should be anticipatory, especially for new systems.

It also turns out that too many kids are too smart for the military, not too stupid. The report acknowledged the military recruiters' goal of grabbing youth right out of high school, and posed the problem that, of the 4.5 million kids now growing up in the U.S., most have moms that spend a lot of time making sure they learn at home and in school. That inspires them to go to college, not basic training!

The socioeconomic characteristics of parents, such as their levels of educational attainment, have a large effect on the aspirations and decisions of youths, especially concerning higher education. Average levels of maternal education for teenagers have increased markedly and will continue to do so over the next two decades, a result of increases over time in educational attainment in the population. This is important, given the positive relationship between maternal education and the educational aspirations of youth....Within the next two decades, the majority of youth will be raised by mothers who have completed at least some college.

The proportion of young adults who have had one or more parents with military experience has fallen dramatically and will continue to fall in the coming years....Although the annual number of births has increased in recent years, children are increasingly raised by highly educated parents and by parents who have no direct experience with the armed forces, factors that are negatively related to interest in military service.

Then there's the problem of the military not being all it's cracked up to be. That can hurt recruitment and discourage those that took the bonus from coming back for more. Troops don't reenlist as much as they used to, according to the report, but the surveys are new and there isn't much historical data to determine why. The researchers offer this:

We reviewed data on attrition rates across the services at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months and observed that attrition rates at each of these points in time have consistently increased over the past 15 years....Personnel who are dissatisfied with their Service experience return to their home towns spreading word about negative aspects of military service, which makes the job of the recruiter much more difficult....the messages the military sends to its members also find their way to potential recruits, and vice versa. Also, the messages veterans pass along to friends and family members can either encourage or discourage enlistment.

May I offer some possible POST-2003 reasons of my own: Guantanamo Bay, Walter Reed and PTSD.

Still thinking we just have a lazy, slacker population of youth who don't deserve the privilege of serving in the military? I don't deny for a second that we have serious social problems to address involving obesity, sweetened beverages, McDonald's, Wii as a substitute for sports and an continued propensity for marijuana to be condoned in spite of harsh first offender drug laws. I just ask writers like Littlefield to consider for a moment why he's so shocked when he hears a military officer say 70% of our kids don't "qualify" for service. Perhaps it isn't because the're unqualified, fat little horrors. Perhaps it's because the military recruiter's new tactic is to make military service seem elite and exclusive in an attempt to drive up his numbers.

As both a U.S. Attorney and Member of Congress, I defended drug prohibition. But it has become increasingly clear to me, after much study, that our current strategy has not worked and will not work. The other candidates for president prefer not to address this issue, but ignoring the failure of existing policy exhibits both a poverty of thought and an absence of political courage. The federal government must turn the decision on drug policy back to the states and the citizens themselves.

My change in perspective might shock some people, but leadership requires a willingness to assess evidence and recognize when a strategy is not working. We are paying far too high a price for today's failed policy to continue it simply because it has always been done that way.

It is obvious that, like Prohibition's effort to eradicate alcohol usage, drug prohibition has not succeeded. Despite enormous law enforcement efforts -- including the dedicated service of many thousands of professional men and women -- the government has not halted drug use. Indeed, the problem is worse today than in 1972, when Richard Nixon first coined the phrase "War on Drugs."

Whether we like it or not, tens of millions of Americans have used and will continue to use drugs. Yet in 2005 we spent more than $12 billion on federal drug enforcement efforts. Another $30 billion went to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.

These people must live forever with the scarlet letter P for prison. Only luck saved even presidents and candidates for president from bearing the same mark, which would have disqualified them from not only high political office, but also many more commonplace jobs.

The federal drug laws affect even those who have never smoked (or inhaled!) a marijuana cigarette. One of the lessons I learned while serving in Congress is how power tends to concentrate in Washington, and how that concentration of power begets more power and threatens individual liberty. The ever-expanding drug war is a perfect illustration of this principle.

Continue reading.

A whistleblower is coming forth against John and Cindy McCain, and the picture he is painting is not a pretty one.  You've probably heard about Cindy McCain stealing prescription drugs from her charity in the 1990s.  Today, Tom Gosinski, her former employee and a close friend of the McCain's, came out on the record about the entire sordid episode.  And it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover up Cindy's drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's theft of illegal prescription drugs.  John McCain certainly used his political connections to begin a campaign of intimidation against Gosinski, because at the time - this was after the Keating 5 scandal - another major scandal would have derailed his career.  Gosinski stayed quiet out of fear until today; a recent fight with cancer has strengthened his resolve.  As he told me today, if he can beat cancer, he can go on the record regarding how the McCain's do business.

There's more (and also video) at the link, so keep reading. And note this post which asks why the Washington Post apparently pulled a story on the same thing.

Drugs and alcohol are essentially the same thing, i.e. both are psychoactive substances (something that affects the mind). It is illogical and hypocritical for the government to make one psychoactive substance legal - alcohol - and outlaw other psychoactive substances - drugs. Why don't they also make other psychoactive substances  illegal while they're at it? There's coffee, tea, cigarettes, cheese, cola drinks, and others; turkey has a small psychoactive effect. Why are psychoactive pills like antidepressants and sedatives legal when "recreational" drugs are illegal? There is no rational defence for arbitrarily making certain drugs illegal.

Arbitrarily making certain drugs illegal also harms society, just as the US Prohibition did. Making something illegal increases the price of it, and the gangs  that the government bleats about get a huge amount of their power and money through the sale of drugs. The quickest and simplest way to give gangs a kick in the family jewels is to make drugs legal. Just as in the Prohibition, the gangs flourish because they can supply something that people want and are prepared to live outside the law: ironically, the law of supply and demand is proven right due to Socialist laws. If drugs were legal, anyone could sell them and there would be competition: prices would come down and the gangs would find something else to occupy themselves in between benefit days because there wasn't any serious money to be made in drugs.

Then there is the fact that taxpayers are wearing the huge cost of the enforcement of drug laws, and of the imprisonment of offenders for committing a victimless crime.

"Drugs are harmful" you say. Yes, drugs are harmful, but that is not a rational reason for making them illegal. Cigarettes are harmful, and no one seriously proposes making them illegal; it is a double standard to support the illegalisation of drugs because they are harmful unless you also support making everything else that is harmful illegal. If you support making everything that is harmful illegal, you have to answer this question: what is the definition of 'harmful'? There is nowhere you can go to find an objective definition, thus any definition is subjective and simply an arbitrary decision: now that you've made an arbitrary decision about what is harmful you've arrived at the point that the State is at, so you should re-read the second paragraph of this post.

"Drug dealers are harming drug users" you say. If a drug dealer holds someone down and injects drugs into them, then he is harming someone. If someone buys drugs of their own free will and injects them, then the seller of the drugs is no more harming the user than the seller of cigarettes is harming the smoker. The key here is 'free will': the drug user and the smoker are only harming themselves. If you support the illegalisation of drugs because "drug dealers are harming others" then you should also support the illegalisation of the sale of icecream to obese persons, otherwise you are exercising a double standard.

I could go on about the harms and illogicalities inherent in making drugs illegal, but that is ignoring the transcendent issue. What is the transcendent issue? It is this: the government is telling you what you can and cannot put into your body. The State has the temerity and the utter arrogance to tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, which is a highly intimate invasion of personal freedoms.

I am reminded of the book '1984', where citizens were forced to do exercises every morning in their apartments, and the instructors ensured compliance by watching the citizens through a video camera. That government was also telling people what was acceptable treatment of their bodies.

**********

♦A good article on the issue can be found here, and after you've read that my post here will have relevance.

♦Some people will be thinking "This blogger is just a pot head trying to justify his habit". I have never tried any illegal drugs; my only in interest in this matter is one of principles.

]]> http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/?p=14243 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:22:44 +0000 LeisureGuy http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/psychoactive-drug-use-why-not-permit-it/ I blogged yesterday about the puzzle of why some want to outlaw sativa, a plant that is (so far as one can tell) totally harmless---no evidence to date of any problems. The Cato Institute broadens the question. The article begins:

Psychoactive drugs are everywhere. Any discussion of drug use needs to take this into account. The broad category of “psychoactive drugs” consists of natural and synthetic substances that alter a person’s thoughts or feelings. There exist hundreds of plants, which, if eaten, smoked, snorted, or injected, will affect the mind—whether acting as a stimulant, depressant, or psychedelic. Thousands of known chemicals will do the same. Used recreationally, medicinally, or for work, some are illegal and others not: They include coffee, wine, and tobacco; prescription pain medications, sleep aids, and antidepressants; as well as cannabis, LSD, and heroin. Psychoactives are in the kitchen, in the hardware store, in the greenhouse, in home medicine cabinets, and in fuel tanks across the country.

Everyone uses them. Would you believe that nearly 90% of 45-year-olds in the United States have tried an illegal drug in their lifetime?[1] As of 2006, more than 35 million Americans had taken an illicit drug in the previous year.[2] Monitoring the Future (MTF), the best current survey about illegal drug use in the United States,[3] reports that one in five college students used an illicit drug in the past month. Nearly all adults in the U.S. have tried alcohol, while over 80% use caffeine daily.[4] Last year there were over 180 million prescriptions written for opiates alone,[5] and a diverse assortment of psychoactives are increasingly used by older Americans from coast to coast.[6]

They are not going away. Humans have used psychoactive substances for as long as we have records[7] and some of the largest corporations in the world are actively developing new ones for the future. There is no magic bullet that will suddenly make these compounds disappear from our society. If there were, the past century of ever-increasing penalties for possession and sale of recreationally used drugs, along with massive anti-drug “education” campaigns, would have reduced use. But they have not.

The United States has implemented random drug testing of junior high and high school students who participate in chess club. No-knock warrants allow police to invade private homes with guns drawn in case a suspect might try to flush illegal drugs down the toilet. Taxpayers spend 8 billion dollars each year to incarcerate drug law offenders,[8,9] and pay for ideologically driven, abstinence-only education programs that are so factually misleading that they often fail to acknowledge the pleasurable or useful effects of the substances they teach about.

Despite these extreme measures, a majority of the population age 18-65 has chosen to try an illegal drug.[10] The mainstream reaction is to continue the calls for “getting tougher.” Instead of working towards unrealistic, naïve goals such as a “drug free century,” our response has been to step back and reassess, asking: How can society adapt to the realities of the communication age and develop more sophistication and balance regarding the use of psychoactive drugs?

Modern humans must learn how to relate to psychoactives responsibly, treating them with respect and awareness, working to minimize harms and maximize benefits, and integrating use into a healthy, enjoyable, and productive life. But above all else, in a world filled with materials and technologies that affect the mind, adults must have the robust education and accurate, pragmatic information necessary to help them take charge of their relationships with psychoactives and teach their children how to do so from an early age.

EVERYONE MAKES CHOICES

Many people would agree that drug culture reform is needed, but we must recognize that “the drug culture” now includes everyone. Modern life involves daily decisions about psychoactives. The option of caffeine use is encountered multiple times a day. It is rare to watch an hour-long television show without seeing an advertisement for a mind altering pharmaceutical or a legal recreational drug. Late night coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics was sponsored by Ambien, a popular sleep aid with memory-scrambling side effects whose commercials enticed audiences nationwide with comforting images of dreamy, refreshing, sedative-assisted sleep. A large portion of the population is exposed to the possibility of taking LSD, even if only 10-20% ever try it.[11,12] In today’s world, everyone must choose how they relate to innumerable psychoactive drugs. Whether or not one decides to use a specific drug, that decision should be made with skill, knowledge, and self-awareness, supported by accurate information.

Struck by the quantity and complexity of choices being made about psychoactives, and dismayed by the poor quality of accessible information, in 1995 we began a project called Erowid. Dedicated to providing an online library of information about psychoactives to the public through its website Erowid.org, the project has grown to serve over 60,000 visitors per day.[13] In 2008, Erowid became an educational 501(c)(3) non-profit under the name Erowid Center.

In thirteen years of learning about both legal and illegal psychoactives, we have collected over 30,000 documents and 75,000 self-reports that catalog the choices people make and provide insight into the results of those choices. These reports include everything from pedestrian recreational use to life-changing spiritual experiences and personal tragedies. We have also learned that there are many subcultural niches in which responsible use of psychoactive drugs is taken very seriously. These communities disapprove of recklessness, and consider care a top virtue, regardless of whether use is for recreational, medicinal, self-improvement, work-productivity, or spiritual purposes.

WHAT DOES RESPONSIBLE USE LOOK LIKE?

...

Continue reading. There's lots more...

Pain is one of the most common symptoms of cancer patients, yet many of them do not receive adequate therapy for the pain caused by their disease or treatments, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. For cancer patients, pain can come from the cancer itself, chronic inflammatory changes or infections. Standard cancer treatments, such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy can also cause pain, but despite its common occurrence, pain is a frequent source of patient anxiety due to improper management.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia and the Radiation Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., sought to determine the main reasons that patients fail to receive optimal pain therapy.

Between November 2005 and April 2006, 106 radiation therapy patients responded to an Internet-based questionnaire that evaluated their medication use, pain control and attitudes toward pain medication, including prescription and over-the-counter pain medications. Fifty-eight percent reported pain from their cancer treatment and 46 percent of patients reported pain directly from their cancer, yet 80 percent of those patients said that they did not use medication to manage their pain.

Most patients said the main reason they did not take pain medication was because their healthcare provider did not recommend it. This reason was followed by a fear of addiction or dependence and the inability to pay. Some patients also reported using alternative therapies for pain relief, including physical therapy, massage and acupuncture.

"To eliminate barriers to optimal pain management for cancer patients, healthcare providers should talk with their patients about pain symptoms and pain medications," Charles Simone, M.D., a resident at the National Cancer Institute Radiation Oncology Branch in Bethesda, Md. and lead author of the study, said. "At our institution we have taken these steps by transitioning to an electronic medical record system that has been designed to require an evaluation and documentation of patient pain levels and pain medication responses by healthcare providers at each patient encounter."

Source: American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology

On August 23, Sen. Barak Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, announced his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.

What follows is a statement on the choice from Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network (DPA Network), the nation's leading organization promoting policy alternatives to the drug war that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights:

“Sen. Joe Biden is unquestionably one of the chief architects of the modern war on drugs, but is also an unlikely ally in many important fights. He has been at the center of many of our national campaigns; perhaps more so than any other Senator.

“Earlier this year, Sen. Biden surprised many by introducing legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, to completely eliminate the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, leapfrogging more modest reforms put forth by Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Sessions and others. Like many members of Congress, he voted for the legislation in the 1980s that created the disparity. Unlike most though, Sen. Biden has the guts and humility to admit he was wrong.

“Sen. Biden’s groundbreaking bill has seven co-sponsors, including Sen. Obama. It is a sign of how politically popular drug policy reform has become among voters that a major presidential candidate not only co-sponsors a reform bill but nominates the bill’s sponsor as his running mate.  That Sen. Biden is willing to be on the same ticket with Sen. Obama, who has indicated he understands the war on drugs isn’t working and called for a new paradigm, may be evidence that his views on drug policy are shifting.

“Sen. Biden has been a strong supporter of treatment and prevention. For instance, he helped write the Drug Addiction Treatment Act, which makes it easier for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine and other replacement medication from their offices rather than special treatment clinics. He was one of only five Senators to vote against confirming President Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, who has a history of short-changing treatment.

“On the other hand, Sen. Biden played a major role in enacting the draconian mandatory minimum sentences, in the 1980s, which have filled our prisons with nonviolent drug law offenders. And he sponsored the law creating the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), giving Bill Bennett and other drug war extremists a national stage and increased power. More recently, he passed the RAVE Act, which makes it easier for the government to prosecute bar and nightclub owners for the drug law offenses of their customers.

“The Drug Policy Alliance Network’s relationship with Sen. Biden has certainly been rocky. No matter who wins the White House in November or what positions they take, we’ll keep fighting for drug policies that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. We’ll thank policymakers when they’re right and criticize them when they’re wrong."

California's compassionate medical marijuana laws recently received major vindication in the courts. In the case County of San Diego v. San Diego NORML, et al., San Diego County — along with San Bernardino County — sued the state in an attempt to overturn most of the provisions of the state's medical marijuana laws. Both counties refused to comply with state law by issuing ID cards to qualifying patients and caregivers and asserted that doing so would violate federal drug laws, which ban all marijuana use.

The California Attorney General's Office argued that for counties to issue ID cards to medical marijuana patients is not a violation of any federal law and that failure to do so would amount to a violation of state law. Patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Drug Policy Alliance all intervened in the case on behalf of patients.

After the trial court ruled against the county and upheld the state's medical marijuana laws, the county appealed to the Fourth District Court of Appeals. On July 31, 2008, the appeals court unanimously upheld the lower court's decision that federal law does not preempt the ID card program. It ruled that the counties did not have legal standing to challenge the other aspects of the state's medical marijuana laws.

Both counties have decided to seek an appeal in the state Supreme Court.

The state ID cards are voluntary for patients and caregivers but prove very helpful during law enforcement encounters. The county-issued ID cards offer legal protections from arrest anywhere in California, while physician recommendations and private ID cards do not.

Visit the California medical marijuana program Web site to find out more about the ID cards and how patients and caregivers can apply for them.

If you live in a county that isn't issuing the cards, contact me at asmith@mpp.org to find out how you can help bring this important program to your area.

A Maryland mayor is asking the federal government to investigate why SWAT team members burst into his home without knocking and shot his two dogs to death in an investigation into a drug smuggling scheme.

"This has been a difficult week and a half for us," Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, said Thursday. "We lost our family dogs. We did it at the hands of sheriff's deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing."

The raid last week was led by the Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, after a package of marijuana was sent to Calvo's home.

Authorities say the package was part of a scheme in which drugs are mailed to unknowing recipients and then intercepted.

Calvo said he had just returned home from walking his two Labrador retrievers, Chase and Payton, when his mother-in-law told him a package had arrived for his wife, Trinity Tomsic.

Moments later, Calvo was in his room changing for a meeting when he heard commotion downstairs.

"The door flew open," he said. "I heard gunfire shoot off. There was a brief pause and more gunfire."

Calvo said he was brought downstairs at gunpoint in his boxer shorts, handcuffed and forced onto the floor with his mother-in-law near the carcass of one of dead dogs. Watch Calvo describe the raid »

"I noticed my two dead dogs lying in pools of their own blood," Calvo said.

Calvo said his mother-in-law is still recovering from the incident.

Continue reading.

A police SWAT team raided the home of the mayor in the Prince George's County town of Berwyn Heights on Tuesday, shooting and killing his two dogs, after he brought in a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been delivered to his doorstep, police said.

Mayor Cheye Calvo was not arrested in the raid, which was carried out about 7 p.m. by the Sheriff's Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers. Prince George's police spokesman Henry Tippett said yesterday that all the residents of the house -- Calvo, his wife and his mother-in-law -- are "persons of interest" in the case.

The package was addressed to Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic, said law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

Tippett said police are working to determine for whom the drugs were meant.

Calvo said yesterday that he did not know how the drugs wound up on his doorstep. He works part time as the mayor and serves as director of expansion for the SEED Foundation, a well-known national nonprofit group that runs urban public boarding schools.

"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don't think they really ever considered that we weren't."

Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he -- wearing only underwear and socks -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs' carcasses and pools of the dogs' blood, Calvo said.

Spokesmen for the Sheriff's Office and Prince George's police expressed regret yesterday that the mayor's dogs were killed. But they defended the way the raid was carried out, saying it was proper for a case involving such a large amount of drugs.

Sgt. Mario Ellis, a Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the deputies who entered Calvo's home "apparently felt threatened" by the dogs.

Continue reading.

We need Federal law to be changed to allow medical marijuana use---or simply to end prohibition, as they did on alcohol. Prohibition obviously does not work---not that this consideration seems to occur to lawmakers, too often an ignorant lot (US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for example, thinks that marijuana is made of opium---when I emailed her about medical marijuana, she wrote to me that she didn't think narcotics should be used medically. Wonder what she thinks about the medical use of morphine.)

At any rate: the finding---and note that the study was carefully done.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to assess the impact of smoked medical cannabis, or marijuana, on the neuropathic pain associated with HIV, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine found that reported pain relief was greater with cannabis than with a placebo. The study, sponsored by the University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR) based at UC San Diego, will be published on line, August 6 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Led by Ronald J. Ellis, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine, the study looked at 28 HIV patients with neuropathic pain not adequately controlled by other pain-relievers, including opiates. They took part in the controlled study as outpatients at the UCSD Medical Center. The proportion of subjects achieving pain reduction of 30 percent or more was greater for those smoking cannabis than those smoking the placebo.

"Neuropathy is a chronic and significant problem in HIV patients as there are few existing treatments that offer adequate pain management to sufferers," Ellis said. "We found that smoked cannabis was generally well-tolerated and effective when added to the patient's existing pain medication, resulting in increased pain relief."

Each trial participant participated in five study phases over seven weeks. During two five-day phases, randomly selected participants smoked either cannabis or placebo cigarettes made from whole plant material with cannabinoids (the psychoactive compound found in marijuana) removed, both provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Outcome was tested by standardized tests measuring analgesia (lessened pain sensation), improvement in function and relief of pain-associated emotional distress.

Using verbal descriptors of pain magnitude, cannabis was associated with an average reduction of pain intensity from 'strong' 'to mild-to-moderate' in cannabis smokers, according to Ellis. Also, cannabis was associated with a sizeable (46% versus 18% for placebo) proportion of patients reporting clinically meaningful pain relief.

The study's findings are consistent with and extend other recent research supporting the short-term efficacy of cannabis for neuropathic pain, also sponsored by the CMCR.

"This study adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that cannabis is effective, in the short-term at least, in the management of neuropathic pain," commented Igor Grant, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the CMCR.

Source: University of California - San Diego

I blogged about the Charlie Lynch case here. Reason Hit and Run has an extensive coverage on the matter, which I highly recommend.

I don't have much to say. It's one of those deeply jarring events -- so unjust and wrong that words are pretty nigh superfluous.

In the beginning of the last century, when my country was strugling for her independence, there were brave men and women who fought the good fight for all of us. Some of them went to prison, some died. Every war for freedom that has ever taken place has had its martyrs.

This is a war too, a war to end the most absurd war ever conceived. Charlie Lynch is not its first casualty, nor will he be the last. However, Charlie's suffering will not be in vain, for every miscarriage of justice they commit strengthens our cause. In the end, the forces of reason and freedom will win, as they eventually must.

[Edit]: Do watch this video too.

Is Afghanistan a narco-state? This question was raised last Sunday in a NYT Magazine article by a former US senior counter-narcotics representative in Afghanistan. The facts presented:

1) Hamid Karzai is actively protecting poppy growers in Pashtun areas against effective eradication programs.

2) Farmers with other crop options are switching into more lucrative poppy cultivation; this is not a case of subsistence farmers with no crop alternatives.

3) The US military, the civilian Pentagon, and the Bush National Security Council have effectively opposed effective eradication and disincentive programs -- as recently as 2007 (so this cannot be blamed on Donald Rumsfeld).

4) Poppy money is filling the coffers of the Taliban.

Obviously some nuance is required to not needlessly undercut Karzai, but the account makes clear that there was never a high level calculation of what an optimum strategy might be.

Congressional staffers and members of the press packed a hearing room on Capitol Hill Wednesday for Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) announcement of the first federal marijuana decriminalization bill in decades.

The bill, H.R. 5843, would remove federal criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use, so that federal law enforcement agencies can concentrate on violent offenders and major drug traffickers.

Three members of Congress spoke at the press conference in support of the bill. Frank spoke of the misuse of resources represented by current marijuana enforcement practices, while Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) condemned the drug war's disproportionate impact on people of color.

Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs, highlighted the collateral consequences of marijuana arrests. Piper explained that people convicted of a marijuana charge often lose their jobs and are denied school loans and other forms of public assistance.

Last year alone, the police made almost 830,000 arrests for marijuana law offenses in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of those arrests were for posssession for personal use.

CNN covered Wednesday's event with a story quoting Piper and other advocates. You can watch a CNN clip of Rep. Frank speaking on the bill here.

DPA supporters have been advocating for H.R. 5843 since it was introduced this spring. If you have not yet taken action, urge your member of Congress to support the bill.

EVERY TIME gardaí make a big drug seizure - and there have been plenty of them recently - they must have mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is another victory in the "war on drugs". Good police work seems to be getting results. On the other hand, though, everyone - especially gardaí - knows that however many battles are won, the war was lost a long time ago. The reality is that the amount of seizures is largely a function of the amount of drugs being imported; that when one gang is broken, there will always be another hungrier, more vicious one ready to step into the breach; and that for all the millions spent here and the trillions spent worldwide, illegal drugs are cheaper and more ubiquitous than they have ever been.

The real issue is, of course, demand. If people want mind-altering substances, there will be big money in supplying them. We lose sight of this reality because we have a distorted narrative in our heads. The story we assume to be true is that, while Irish people always drank alcohol and took enthusiastically to tobacco, illegal drugs are essentially a recent phenomenon. They came in during and after the 1960s, along with all the other moral and social laxities of that decade. They are an outside influence, a downside to the modernity that we adopted. They cling, therefore, to the surface of Irish culture and can, with enough persistence, be scraped off.

It is weird that we should think this, because there are few western European societies in which the consumption of illegal, mind-altering substances was so open, and so socially acceptable for so long. I doubt that there are many readers who haven't drunk, or been present when others drank, the primary Irish illegal drug of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is called poteen. How odd that we forget about it, and forget, too, that 400 years of law enforcement failed to stop people making and drinking it.

Poteen became prominent in Irish society after 1661, when excise duty on Irish whiskey was re-introduced. As duty went up and the price of "parliament whiskey" rose, the native Irish responded by making their own alcohol. Originally, this was generally decent malt whiskey. But as time went on, poteen developed in a way that we are familiar with from cocaine or heroin. With a thriving, unregulated trade in which price was the key factor, poteen makers turned to whatever was available - molasses, sugar, treacle, potatoes, rhubarb. The more unscrupulous of them added bite to an adulterated product with meths or paint stripper.

The stuff became dangerous, unreliable and of often poor quality. The authorities came down heavy, sending armed soldiers against the distillers. Illegal distillers were shot, imprisoned, transported. None of it made a blind bit of difference.

Neither did the threats of the IRA in the early 1920s or the creation of a native government. The "war on poteen", as we might call it, continued in the 1930s, during which there were 500 stills detected every year by the Garda. But it was social change - emigration, relative prosperity, urbanisation - and cheaper official whiskey, that eventually killed the poteen trade. It was not law enforcement.

Poteen, it might be objected, is unusual, because it represented a displacement of an existing demand. How, then, could one explain the huge demand for another mind-altering substance: ether?

In his classic historical essay, Ether Drinking in Ulster, KH Connell disclosed the extraordinary story of the widespread and open consumption of this hallucinogenic industrial solvent, especially in the North. In the 1890s, it was estimated that 50,000 people in counties Derry and Tyrone were "etheromaniacs". The burning, unstable liquid, which turns to gas at body temperature, was not pleasant to drink (it made the uninitiated violently ill) but its effects seem to have been rather like those of LSD: "You always heard music and you'd be cocking your ears at it . . . Others would see men climbing up the walls and going through the roof . . ." Again, like today's illegal drugs, ether was widely consumed even though it harmed people's health, led to deaths by accidental overdoses, and encouraged some addicts to steal in order to supply their habit. And again, law enforcement was relatively ineffective. Ether-drinking died out largely because of social change and the availability of alternative intoxicants.

The point of this brief history lesson is simply this: there has been a demand for illegal and unapproved mind-altering substances for at least the last 350 years in Ireland. That demand has been channelled into different substances - poteen, ether, hash, LSD, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy - but there is no great evidence that it is actually higher now, as a proportion of the population, than it was a century ago.

Law enforcement (even when it was much harsher than it is now) and church sanction (even when the churches were far more powerful than they are now) had little success in combating this trade, so long as the demand made it a lucrative one. Why do we imagine that things are any different now?

Source: Irishtimes.com

The Tibetan prayer flags suspended on a string over the sleeping body of Captain Blue rose and fell in fluttering counterpoint to the wheezy rhythm of his breath. Lifted by a gentle breeze off the Pacific Ocean, each swatch of red, white, yellow, or green cotton bore a paragraph of Asian script. Every time a flag flaps in the breeze, it is thought, a prayer flies off to Heaven. Blue’s mother says that when her son was an infant he used to sleep until noon, which is still the time that he wakes up most days, on his platform bed in a one-bedroom apartment overlooking Venice Beach, a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, and Captain Blue was dozing after a copious inhalation of purified marijuana vapor. (His nickname is an homage to his favorite variety of bud.) His hair was black and greasy, and was spread across his pillow. On the front of his purple T-shirt, which had slid up to expose his round belly, were the words “Big Daddy.” With his arm wrapped around a three-foot-long green bong, he resembled a large, contented baby who has fallen asleep with his milk bottle.

Captain Blue is a pot broker. More precisely, he helps connect growers of high-grade marijuana upstate to the retail dispensaries that sell marijuana legally to Californians on a doctor’s recommendation. Since 1996, when a referendum known as Proposition 215 was approved by California voters, it has been legal, under California state law, for authorized patients to possess or cultivate the drug. The proposition also allowed a grower to cultivate marijuana for a patient, as long as he had been designated a “primary caregiver” by that patient. Although much of the public discussion centered on the needs of patients with cancer, AIDS, and other diseases that are synonymous with extraordinary suffering, the language of the proposition was intentionally broad, covering any medical condition for which a licensed physician might judge marijuana to be an appropriate remedy—insomnia, say, or attention-deficit disorder.

The inside of Blue’s apartment, where he spends most of his time, measures less than four hundred square feet. It opens onto a huge wraparound terrace that offers mind-bending views of the ocean and the Hollywood Hills. The apartment, which is in the vicinity of Washington Boulevard, used to be occupied by another pot dealer, who moved out a few years ago, leaving Blue with his crash pad and a list of about a hundred patients. The building is near Abbot Kinney Boulevard, the commercial drag in Venice that, in recent years, has been transformed from a low-rent strip of bars and secondhand-clothing stores into a destination for well-heeled shoppers and restaurant-goers. The building retains a funky seventies vibe, with white wood floors, murky brown walls, and faded Morrison Hotel-style carpets. The sounds of “Tom and Jerry” episodes blare through locked doors in the middle of the day.

I recently spent six months, off and on, with Blue—at his apartment, in private homes, on farms, in pot grow rooms, and in other places where “medical marijuana” is produced, traded, sold, and consumed in California. During that time, I saw thousands of Tibetan prayer flags. The flags identify their owners with serenity and the conscious path, rather than with the sinister world of urban dope dealers, who flaunt muscles and guns, and charge exorbitant prices for mediocre product. For Blue and tens of thousands of like-minded individuals, Proposition 215 presented an opportunity to participate in a legally sanctioned experiment in altered living. The people I met in the high-end ganja business had an affinity for higher modes of thinking and being, including vegetarianism and eating organic food, practicing yoga, avoiding prescription drugs in favor of holistic healing methods, travelling to Indonesia and Thailand, fasting, and experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. Many were also financially savvy, working long hours and making six-figure incomes.

Continue reading.

The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in Progressive Inflammatory brain Disease) study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth has reached an important milestone with the news that the full cohort of 493 people with multiple sclerosis (MS) has been recruited to the study. CUPID is a clinical trial which will evaluate whether tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of many compounds found in the in the cannabis plant (and the main active ingredient) is able to slow the progression of MS.

This is an important study for people with MS because current treatments either target the immune system in the early stages of MS, or are aimed at easing specific symptoms such as muscle spasms or bladder problems. At present there is no treatment which slows progression of the disease.

The CUPID trial follows an earlier study – Cannabinoids and Multiple Sclerosis (CAMS) – which suggested a link between THC and the slowing of MS. The CAMS trial saw participants take THC for a year – the CUPID trial will last for longer and aims to assess the effect of THC on progressive MS.

It has taken two years to recruit the 493 participants who will each take part in the trial for three years, and in some cases three and a half years. After data cleaning and analysis the results should be available by spring/early summer 2012.

Professor John Zajicek from the Peninsula Medical School, who heads the team carrying out the CUPID study, said: "We are delighted to have achieved the correct number of patient participants for this trial. Patients have been recruited from 27 sites across the UK. If we are able to prove beyond reasonable doubt the link between THC and the slowing down of progressive MS, we will be able to develop an effective therapy for the many thousands of MS sufferers around the world."

The CUPID trial is funded by the Medical Research Council, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Multiple Sclerosis Trust.

Chris Jones, chief executive of the MS Trust, commented: "The MS Trust is delighted to be supporting this study on behalf of people with MS. The ability to halt progression in MS is what we dream of - the Holy Grail for those whose condition deteriorates year on year. This study should give us the definitive answer as to whether cannabinoids will prove to be such an agent."

Dr Laura Bell, research communications officer for the MS Society, said: "People affected by MS are keen to know whether there's any truth in the suggestion that elements of the cannabis plant can help ease the symptoms and slow down progression of the condition.

"The MS Society is supportive of safe clinical trials investigating the medicinal properties of cannabis and it's great news that this trial is going ahead. We look forward to the results of this exciting study."

Source: The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry