Drug War Chronicle, Issue #500 -- 9/7/07

A Publication of Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

Welcome to Drug War Chronicle issue 500!

Massive increases to our web site traffic have increased our
costs -- will you help us continue it?
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/massive_increases_in_web_site_traffic_have_increased_our_costs

DRCNet executive director David Borden in the Huffington Post!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-borden-and-paul-armentano/why-do-people-the-governm_b_63031.html

Students: Intern at DRCNet to Help Stop the Drug War!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

Table of Contents:

1. EDITORIAL: WHY WE ARE FIGHTING TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS
We in the drug reform movement have so many good reasons to
stand on, that it is hard to know where to begin when telling
people about them. When we succeed in ending prohibition, the
world will become a better place, in ways that are urgently
needed.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/why_we_fight_to_end_the_war_on_drugs

2. FEATURE: AS AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION GOES THROUGH THE ROOF,
PRESSURE FOR AERIAL ERADICATION, INCREASED WESTERN MILITARY
INVOLVEMENT MOUNTS
The UN announced last week that Afghan opium production had
increased yet again. Now, pressures to combat it with aerial
spraying and increased Western military involvement are
mounting, but the experts say that's a path to nowhere.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/afghanistan_opium_production_record_eradication_military

3. FEATURE: STIRRING THE POT IN DENVER -- "LOWEST LAW
ENFORCEMENT PRIORITY" MARIJUANA INITIATIVE TO GO TO VOTERS AS
ACTIVISTS BEDEVIL COUNCIL, MAYOR
A lowest law enforcement priority initiative for adult marijuana
use is headed for the ballot in Denver, and local officials who
oppose it are taking a beating from its proponents.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/denver_lowest_law_enforcement_priority_marijuana_initiative_makes_ballot

4. REVIEW AND CRITIQUE: METHAMPHETAMINE MICE STUDY FALLS FAR
SHORT
The science of methamphetamine is contested terrain. Here,
occasional contributor John Calvin Jones dissects a recent piece
of methamphetamine research and finds it lacking.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/mcginty_methamphetamine_study_critiqued_by_john_calvin_jones

5. APPEAL: MASSIVE INCREASES TO OUR WEB SITE TRAFFIC HAVE
INCREASED OUR COSTS...
Massive increases to our web site traffic, particularly during
the last three months, have forced us to upgrade our web server
-- not once, but twice -- and have increased our costs. We need
your help to pay for it.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/massive_increases_in_web_site_traffic_have_increased_our_costs

6. WEEKLY: BLOGGING @ THE SPEAKEASY
Marijuana critics who take beer company money, drug testing and
hard drug use, Obama and New Orleans drug war, feds raid
paraplegic, "Don't Smoke Pot in Your Car," John McCain and
another lost war, more...

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/blogging_at_the_speakeasy

7. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
Busy, busy, busy. Take a week off, and look what happens: Cops
peddling pills, guards stealing pills, cops shaking down housing
project residents, jail guards smuggling drugs, a DEA agent
giving information to suspected mobsters, and more.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/law_enforcement_police_corruption

8. ASSET FORFEITURE: ACLU SUES DEA OVER TRUCKER'S SEIZED CASH
The ACLU is challenging the seizure of nearly $24,000 dollars
from a New Mexico trucker by the DEA as part of its asset
forfeiture program.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/aclu_sues_DEA_over_truck_drivers_seized_cash

9. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: WAMM LAWSUIT HITS BUMP
A lawsuit filed by a Santa Cruz medical marijuana co-op and the
city and county of Santa Cruz to try to block federal raids on
providers in California is down but not out after an adverse
ruling by a federal judge.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/wamm_santa_cruz_lawsuit_partial_defeat_medical_marijuana

10. HARM REDUCTION: PENNSYLVANIA MOVES TO END PRESCRIPTION
REQUIREMENT FOR BUYING NEEDLES
The Pennsylvania Pharmacy Board has unveiled a proposed rule
that would allow for the purchase of up to 30 needles without a
prescription. The move is a harm reduction measure intended to
reduce the sharing of injection equipment by drug users and
thereby reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/pennsylvania_moves_lift_needle_prescription_requirement

11. EUROPE: CZECH MARIJUANA USERS TO GET LESSER PENALTIES
Legislators in the Czech Republic are preparing an amendment to
the penal code that should lessen penalties for marijuana
possession and growing.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/czech_marijuana_lesser_penalties

12. LATIN AMERICA: NICARAGUAN LEADER ASKS FOR $1 BILLION IN
ANTI-DRUG AID
Despite his publicly expressed reservations about the DEA -- and
the demonstrated failure of the war on drugs -- Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega is bellying up to the counter-narcotics
assistance trough. He wants a billion dollars from Washington to
fight the Central American drug trade.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/nicaragua_president_ortega_asks_one_billion_in_anti_drug_aid

13. AFRICA: GUINEA-BISSAU THREATENS TO SHOOT DOWN DRUG PLANES
Faced with a thriving cocaine trade using its territory as a
stopover on the way to European markets, the government of the
West African nation of Guinea-Bissau is threatening to blow drug
planes out of the sky.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/guinea_bissau_threatens_shoot_down_drug_planes

14. CONFERENCE: DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE, NEW ORLEANS, DECEMBER 2007
A major gathering of drug reform forces is planned for late this
year, and special registration rates are available for those who
plan early.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/international_drug_policy_reform_conference_in_new_orleans_this_year

15. WEB SCAN
Tierney blog on legalization and pain prosecutions,
Transnational Institute on Colombian coca and Afghan opium, drug
offense death penalties as international human rights violation,
net Asian Drug Users Network, DrugTruth Network update.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drug_policy_links

16. WEEKLY: THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of
years past.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drug_war_history

17. FEEDBACK: DO YOU READ DRUG WAR CHRONICLE?
Do you read Drug War Chronicle? If so, we need your feedback to
evaluate our work and make the case for Drug War Chronicle to
funders. We need donations too.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/do_you_read_drug_war_chronicle

18. STUDENTS: INTERN AT DRCNET AND HELP STOP THE DRUG WAR!
Apply for an internship at DRCNet for this fall (or spring), and
you could spend the semester fighting the good fight!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

19. JOB LISTING: DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, MPP
The Marijuana Policy Project is hiring for their Director of
Government Relations position based in Washington, DC.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/director_of_government_relations_marijuana_policy_project

20. JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JUSTICE POLICY
INSTITUTE
The DC-based think tank is hiring a new leader as it moves
forward seeking to end society's reliance on incarceration and
promoting effective solutions to social problems.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/job_opportunity_at_justice_policy_institute

21. PROPOSALS: IHRD PROVIDING SMALL GRANTS ON HEALTH AND HUMAN
RIGHTS, 2008 UN DRUG SUMMIT
The International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) of
the Open Society Institute (OSI) is offering small grants to
support the collection and presentation of information that
evaluate the health and human rights consequences, with regard
to injection drug use-driven HIV infections, of the resolutions
taken at the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/ihrd_grants

22. WEBMASTERS: HELP THE MOVEMENT BY RUNNING DRCNET SYNDICATION
FEEDS ON YOUR WEB SITE!
Support the cause by featuring automatically-updating Drug War
Chronicle and other DRCNet content links on your web site!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drug_policy_content_syndication_feeds_now_available

23. RESOURCE: DRCNET WEB SITE OFFERS WIDE ARRAY OF RSS FEEDS FOR
YOUR READER
A new way for you to receive DRCNet articles -- Drug War
Chronicle and more -- is now available.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drug_policy_RSS_feeds_now_available

24. RESOURCE: REFORMER'S CALENDAR ACCESSIBLE THROUGH DRCNET WEB
SITE
Visit our new web site each day to see a running countdown to
the events coming up the soonest, and more.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/drug_reform_calendar

(Not subscribed? Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org to sign up
today!)

================

1. Editorial: Why We Are Fighting to End the War on Drugs
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/500/why_we_fight_to_end_the_war_on_drugs

David Borden, Executive Director,
http://stopthedrugwar.org/user/borden

On the frequent occasions when I am asked why I oppose the drug
laws, I face a quandary -- where do I start? There are so many
important reasons:

* Half a million nonviolent drug offenders clog our prisons and
jails. Mandatory minimum sentences, and inflexible sentencing
guidelines, condemn numerous low-level offenders to years, even
decades behind bars, often based solely on the word of
compensated, confidential informants. With two million people
behind bars, the US leads the world in incarceration, at a level
radically beyond any time in our history before a quarter
century ago.

* Prohibition creates a lucrative black market that causes
violence and disorder, particularly in our inner cities, and
lures young people into lives of crime. Laws criminalizing
syringe possession, and the overall milieu of underground drug
use and sales, encourage needle sharing and increase the spread
of HIV and Hepatitis C. Thousands of Americans die from drug
overdoses or poisonings by adulterants every year, most of their
deaths preventable through the quality-controlled market that
would exist if drugs were legal.

* Our drug war in the Andes fuels a continuing civil war in
Colombia, with prohibition-generated illicit drug profits
enabling its escalation. Opium growing, and attempts to stop it,
both hurt Afghanistan's attempts at nation building and help our
enemies.

* Patients needing medical marijuana, and the people who
provide it to them, go without or live in fear of arrest and
prosecution. Physicians' fears of running afoul of law enforcers
causes large numbers of Americans who need opiates for chronic
pain to go un- or under-treated.

* Profiling assaults the dignity of members of our minority
groups, and of the poor, denying them equal justice.

* From drug testing in our schools, to SWAT teams invading our
homes, privacy has been gutted.

* Ethics in our criminal justice system are virtually the
exception rather than the rule, with perjury, violations of
constitutional rights, corruption and general misconduct endemic
and largely tolerated -- all of it driven by the drug war.

* Frustration over the failure of the drug war, together with
the lack of dialogue on prohibition, distorts the policymaking
process, leading to ever more intrusive governmental
interventions and ever greater dilution of the core American
values of freedom, privacy and fairness.

And that isn't even all of it, and it isn't a pretty picture.
And so we oppose the drug laws -- so we fight for an end to
prohibition, for legalization -- because of the harm and the
injustice that prohibition is inflicting on so many different
people in so many ways. And because we understand that freedom
is not just the right to control our bodies and what we put in
them, even though that ought to be enough. Because freedom is
the right for all people on this earth, not having infringed the
freedom of others, to walk down the street, to go about their
business, to live as they choose not confined to a prison cell
just because their personal behavior was not officially
approved.

And so for so many reasons that I almost don't know where to
start -- to save the lives of the addicted, so patients can be
treated, for privacy, for peace, for safety, to restore ethics
to government, to end the injustices large and small -- for all
these reasons and more, we seek to end drug prohibition. Our
views are correct, our cause is just, and we fight for it to
make this a better world for all.

================

later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.

date: Fri, 07 Sep 2007 07:48:31 -0700 author: sellers