Despite our numerous efforts to provide the Times with the facts, their editorial staff has chosen to ignore irrefutable data regarding the progress that has been made in making our nation’s drug problem smaller.
The bottom line? America’s drug problem is now half as big as it used to be.
Overall drug use America has been cut by about fifty percent since the peak year of illegal use in 1979. In that year, about 14% of Americans had used an illegal drug sometime in the past month. This compares to about 7 percent today. Declines in cocaine use are even more dramatic, with a two-thirds reduction in use since the mid-80’s. Moreover, since 2001 there has been a 24 percent decline in youth drug use (860,000 fewer youth using drugs today than in 2001) and is mirrored by record declines in positive workplace drug tests among the U.S. adult workforce.
Well, I’m a little bummed out that the Drug Czar chose to reply to the NY Times’ rather tepid criticism of the War on Drugs instead of my latest essay up at LewRockwell.com. Then again, they are the New York Times and I’m just an anti-prohibition blogger on the West Coast.
Nonetheless, go click the link and read their pathetic defense of their thirty-five-year, $31-billion effort to win the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs. I posted a nice rebuttal in their comments section that I doubt will ever see the light of day, so I reproduce it here for your reading pleasure:
Talk about “cherry picking”…
The DEA has existed since 1973, yet you want to claim success by comparing figures from the peak year of 1979 to today.
As for your use of punitive measures: drug war arrests tripled from 1973-2006 (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm), and your claims of “balanced” priorities including treatment and prevention are only achieved by Enron-style accounting, so that “only funding for agencies involved in so-called ‘primary’ drug war activities is now tabulated in the national anti-drug budget. As a result, more than two-thirds of the agencies included in past years’ budgets are conspicuously missing from this year’s financial totals!” (http://mises.org/story/1173)
Your readers (should you be honest enough to actually post critiques of your blog, which I doubt) can read my full review of the DEA’s “success” at LewRockwell.com (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/belville1.html) and stash.norml.org.
Today we visit with Philippe Lucas from the Vancouver Island Compassion Society. He fills us in on their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Health Canada medical marijuana program, and explans the history of Ottawa’s reluctance to get involved with medical marijuana.
Aaron Smith from the Marijuana Policy Project joins us from Fresno, California. He’s promoting a screening of the documentary “Waiting to Inhale” near Fresno in an effort to educate the public and policymakers. Fresno is considering how to adopt the state-mandated ID card system for medical marijuana patients.
The screening is free and hill be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno at 2672 E. Alluvial Ave., Clovis, CA. The date is next Monday, July 7th, at 7pm, and following the screening is a panel discussion.
Also, you get to hear my spiced-up rendition of my ode to the DEA’s 35th birthday today.
So, it’s Canada Day, eh? Enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash!
The Drug Enforcement Administration was created by President Richard Nixon through an Executive Order [on] July [1,] 1973 in order to establish a single unified command to combat “an all-out global war on the drug menace.” At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Furthermore, in 1974, the DEA had 43 foreign offices in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.3 billion and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries.
So the DEA turns thirty-five this week. That deserves a special celebration. Let’s bust out our handy-dandy calculator and the official government stats. Time to play Rate the DEA!
Today the DEA has twice the offices in twice the countries with four times the manpower than when it started thirty-five years ago. In 1973, the DEA had $0.075 billion to work with; today you have $2.3 billion. That’s an increase of 3,067%, or a dramatic thirty-fold increase. Just what have the American People received for this $31.4 billion dollar, thirty-five year investment?
The DEA and Afghanistan’s National Interdiction Unit, along with the U.S. military and NATO forces, captured and destroyed 262 tons of hashish June 9 in a two-year operation dubbed “Albatross.”
The DEA executed search warrants at five narcotics processing centers and discovered numerous underground bunkers in the Kandahar province, which is still under control of the Taliban. Afghanistan’s National Interdiction Unit and the DEA arrested 12 suspects during the operation and seizure of the drugs, which had an estimated value of $400 million.
Some officials estimate that the drugs would have filled 30 double-decker buses. Hashish is resin derived from marijuana plants.
Drug production has increased sharply in Afghanistan since 2001, with estimates, for instance, that more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin comes from the country. The DEA has been operating in Afghanistan since 2002 to train Afghan narcotic forces and gather intelligence.
“People have traditionally thought of Afghanistan having a vibrant heroin crop, but we’re seeing more marijuana,” DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney told ABC News.
Because local police don’t enforce laws against the growing of marijuana, it has become more of a cash crop in the region. In late 2006, Canadian forces on patrol in Afghanistan encountered dense marijuana forests with plants at least 10 feet tall that the Taliban used for cover and protection.
U.S. forces, the DEA and Afghan forces destroyed the massive stash with explosives.
The Taliban? Didn’t we oust those guys a few years ago? Looks like that War on Terror is proceeding as successfully as the War on Drugs.
Regardless, once again, the prohibition of cannabis creates a lucrative market for drug dealers. The Taliban wouldn’t be able to make much money off of hashish if Americans and others around the world could grow their own marijuana, press their own hash, or buy it at a liquor store. But it would be a crop with enough potential that legit farmers could grow it and sell it on regulated international markets - not enough profit for a terrorist, but plenty of profit for a small family farmer.
While the DEA continues to raid cooperatives in California that dare produce and sell a non-toxic palliative herb for state-authorized patients, and arrest, convict, and incarcerate the gardeners that supply those cooperatives, let’s take a look at how the DEA takes care of the really big drug dealers:
These drugs, especially hydrocodone and alprazolam, have come under increased US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) scrutiny in recent months because of their potential for abuse.
The administrative settlement, which resolves all DEA claims against McKesson, calls for a temporary suspension of distribution of the two drugs from two of McKesson’s 31 distribution centers. The pharmacy accounts served by the two affected facilities will continue to receive shipments of the two drugs from other nearby McKesson distribution centers, with no disruption of service. Shipments of the drugs to Federal governmental agencies will not be subject to the suspension.
In connection with the settlement, the company is implementing certain enhanced controls over the ways it monitors and reports orders for controlled substances. The two settlements are the result of McKesson’s collaboration with the DEA and the US Attorneys to resolve monetary, administrative and regulatory claims, while at the same time enhancing its monitoring of the distribution of the affected drugs in the future.
McKesson allegedly violated the law regarding the sales of tightly controlled substances like hydrocodone (Vicodin) and alprazolam (Xanax). Their punishment is a fine and a suspension at two distribution centers (but the rest of McKesson’s distribution centers can take up the slack and there will be no drop in sales) and a promise to try really hard next time to not violate the law, all after negotiations with the DEA - not raids, no seizures, no perp walks, no court trials, just talks.
What exactly, did McKesson do to earn this “punishment”?
Next president might be gentler on pot clubs
Ever since California voters became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the state has faced unyielding opposition from the federal government, which insists it has the power to prohibit a drug it considers useless and dangerous.
That could all change with the next presidential election.
As the candidates prepare for a May 20 primary in Oregon, one of 12 states with a California-style law, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana.
His Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is less explicit, recently softening a pledge she made early in the campaign to halt federal raids in states with medical marijuana laws. But she has expressed none of the hostility that marked the response of her husband’s administration to California’s initiative, Proposition 215.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has gone back and forth on the issue - promising a medical marijuana patient at one campaign stop that seriously ill patients would never face arrest under a McCain administration, but ultimately endorsing the Bush administration’s policy of federal raids and prosecutions.
Senator Obama seems to understand that there is legitimate medical use for marijuana, comparing doctor-prescribed morphine to doctor-recommended marijuana. Senator Clinton seems to have waffled a bit, saying first that the DEA raids in medical marijuana states should end, but later saying instead that DEA raids shouldn’t be a “high priority”, which leaves the possibility open that the DEA raids would be a priority to some lesser extent. She also seems unaware of marijuana’s proven medicinal benefits, calling for more research despite the dozens of studies that have confirmed marijuana as medicine. And Senator McCain has flip-flopped numerous times on this issue, telling one patient he’d never be arrested for using medical marijuana, but then stating that he would not end DEA raids in medical marijuana states.
I told you a couple of weeks ago about the new reality TV series, “DEA”, which just debuted last week on Spike TV. Now the reviews are coming in, and it’s not looking good for the Drug Warriors.
First from Michigan Daily, the state where “DEA” is filmed:
The central question of the series seems to be, “Are we winning the war on drugs?” The DEA’s answer is a pronounced “yes,” but the show contradicts itself. How can we be winning if we constantly let the criminal go for revealing his supplier? If anything, “DEA” exposes the problems within the drug enforcement system.
“DEA” may show the excitement of drug raids, but it also shows the long periods of waiting and scheming by the officers. The likeability of the cops and the undercover actions of the Drug Enforcement Administration don’t add up to much when placed next to a half hour of sitting in a van listening to a wired agent talking to a dealer. Even when the actual action takes place, it ends up being nothing more than three minutes of swearing, blurred faces and innumerable threats. Sitting through the majority of the show isn’t worth it.
It’s not easy to find the positives of “DEA” - unless you’re a dealer looking for an inside scoop. TV has always been a place for viewers to escape their ho-hum matters while living vicariously through others and possibly getting a laugh along the way. But “DEA” doesn’t do any of those things, and with its depressing premise and lackluster entertainment value, only a small demographic would find this enjoyable.
Undoubtedly, this was not the intended message of DEA (Spike TV, 11 tonight), a new six-part series that returns a spotlight to the battle that once occupied the zeitgeist before terror: the war on drugs.
In fact, since the DEA was created in 1973 by executive order of U.S. president Richard Nixon, 75 agents have been killed in the line of duty.
This isn’t mentioned tonight, nor is the cost of the war on drugs, estimated to be $500 billion over the past 35 years.
There’s no question these agents are brave.
But after one hour, you can’t help but wonder if they appreciate the intractable, cyclical and arguably winless nature of the war they’ve been asked to fight.
“These people that we target, they’re two- and three-time offenders,” says special agent Brad Ripken tonight. “You know, they’ve been through the prison system. They come back out and they go right back to it.”
In another scene, a 60-year-old suspect is arrested; we learn he’s been in and out of the system since 1974, when he first started dealing.
That those in the drug racket are particularly prone to recidivism is not surprising. What is surprising, though, is that communities, governments and law enforcement continue to fixate on supply, without adequately considering demand, which is to say, treatment for addiction.
I hope more people who watch this show come away with the same impression - not about “DEA’s” poor entertainment value, but about the DEA’s poor economic and public policy value. Maybe when people see the great effort and taxpayer expense needed for these shocking SWAT-style raids and officers armed like Rambo bursting into American homes, followed by releasing the person they just arrested if he “flips” on another suspect higher in the food chain, they’ll realize the futility of the current War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs.
Mary Irene Cooper: Inside The Real Drug War - Entertainment on The Huffington Post
When Spike TV begins airing their first ever original series, DEA, on April 2, viewers will see for themselves the shocking reality of the drug trade. This series is far more than just another cop show. This series puts the “real” in reality TV. There’s nothing scripted or predictable about this show. It shows the gritty reality of drug enforcement and the violent drug underworld: real DEA Special Agents, real cold-blooded criminals, real drug raids, and the very real dangers we face with every deal.
Never before has DEA let cameras this deep into the drug trade. Viewers live the DEA creed to expect the unexpected. As much as we prepare, plan, and train, we can’t control everything on a drug raid or undercover deal. All the planning could change the minute the reality of the street hits. You never know what’s on the other side of the door until you go through it, and as we say, anytime dope and money come together, there’s a good chance of violence.
You may ask DEA agents why we chose this career — one of the world’s most dangerous: why would anyone put themselves in a risky situation like buying dope from volatile dealers, or crashing through doors of stash houses not knowing what we’ll find on the other side. The humble answers you get will include “Because it’s fun,” or “I didn’t want a desk job.” But the real reason we do it is because we believe in our mission. We believe it’s a calling to do this job. We believe that we are the only line of defense standing between law-abiding citizens who deserve to live in drug-free neighborhoods and bad guys driven by greed to line their pockets with the blood-soaked riches of a destructive trade.
What you won’t be seeing on the new DEA series? Body-armored agents with automatic weapons drawn, bursting into a legal medical marijuana dispensary or garden in California, forcing disabled people to the ground with guns at their temples, handcuffing terminally ill patients in wheelchairs, all for abiding by the will of the voters in their state and the opinion of their doctor that marijuana can help relieve the symptoms of their debilitating condition.
Rather than being the line of defense protecting Americans from the “bad guys driven by greed”, the DEA is actually the line of offense in the prohibition that causes all of the “blood-soaked riches” and “violent drug underworld”. They are the decendants of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables who policed alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s - a time of a bootlegging underworld where bad guys driven by greed used violence to secure their blood-soaked riches. We learned then that eliminating the prohibition eliminated the violence - why can’t we re-learn that lesson yet regarding drugs?
This press release begins by explaining the trial and conviction of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer in California. Dr. Fry has been helping medical marijuana patients in California by writing recommendations for the therapeutic use of the herb, and Mr. Schafer has been growing the plants and providing the buds to patients. Let’s take a look at how our federal law enforcers view the plight of these compassionate caregivers, (and note how they always use quotation marks around “medicinal”, because in the bizarro world of the DEA, a plant found to be medicinal by the American College of Physicians and the Institutes of Medicine and twelve US states isn’t medicinal):
News from DEA, Domestic Field Divisions, San Franciso News Releases, 03/20/08
These recommendations enabled the holder to avoid arrest under California’s “medicinal” marijuana law, Proposition 215. The proposition provides a legal defense to state (not federal) criminal charges when marijuana is possessed for treatment of a serious medical condition.
Evidence introduced at trial, however, showed that FRY sold these recommendation statements to people for diagnoses such as asthma, alcoholism, and sore elbow.
California’s law allows a doctor to recommend marijuana for any condition for which he or she believes marijuana will help. It may seem counter-intuitive, but vaporized marijuana is a bronchodialator that helps some asthmatics, it can definitely help as an analgesic for a chronically sore elbow, and yours truly will testify that without marijuana, I’d have been in some severe trouble with the alcoholism of my youth.
MyFox Los Angeles | Citizens Learning about Being a DEA Agent
The Drug Enforcement Administration wants people to know exactly what it’s like to do some of the dangerous work that agents do every day… so the DEA started the “Citizens Academy” program.
You’ve really got to click the link and watch the short video. It features one of those “shooter simulations” that police use for testing. Various encounters are role played with the subject either shooting or not shooting at targets that represent dangerous criminals and innocent bystanders. It’s a bit scary when one of the reporters guns down one of the innocents and the drug warrior laughs about what bad headlines that will produce. Ha ha ha, innocent person gunned down by heavily armed police trying to stop weed smoking. Very funny.
Complaints about agent date to start of his career
In 1991, shortly after his 22nd birthday, Lee Lucas became an undercover agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He quickly built international drug investigations stretching from his Miami base to the Bahamas, Brazil, Bolivia and beyond.
Over the next five years, in every major case the long-haired undercover operative and son of a Cleveland cop worked, there were charges of deceit, perjury, missing drugs and money, questionable associations with criminal informers and allegations that sting operations he orchestrated were rife with fraud.
At the time, none of the complaints resulted in any public disciplinary action, but several individuals who have complained about his tactics say they were recently questioned by U.S. Department of Justice officials investigating Mr. Lucas for his work in a Mansfield, Ohio, drug sting that led to 26 arrests. Twenty-three of those cases were dismissed or ended in acquittals after a federal informant who worked with Agent Lucas said he had framed innocent people.
It’s an old pattern with Agent Lucas.
It dates to the mid-1990s, when Gary J. McDaniel, president of Pretext Services Inc., a private investigative firm in North Palm Beach, Fla., joined a group of defense lawyers and defendants who complained about Agent Lucas to the DEA, the Justice Department and members of Congress.
Mr. McDaniel called the cases made by Agent Lucas “a textbook example of the abuse of power of which appear to be endorsed by senior management of the DEA.”
The story outlines many of the cases worked on by this DEA agent that further demonstrate how the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs corrupts our law enforcement. Seizure laws have created a profit motive for police and too many of these police are tempted by the easy money and the lawlessness of black market drug markets.
Pass the Stash: win 311+Snoop tix; Dr. Mitch Earleywine on teens + marijuana = nature?; Paul Armentano on "whole plant" Italian medmj study; music by Dubmatix.
Massachusetts: Pot Decrim Initiative Qualifies For November Ballot Measure Would Replace Criminal Penalties With A $100 Fine; Congress Moves Forward On Cannabis 'Candy' Crackdown; Rhode Island: Governor Vetoes Bill To Study Feasibility Of State-Licensed 'Compassion Centers'; Hawaii: Governor Vetoes Medical Marijuana Task Force Measure.
US Leads The World In Illicit Drug Use; US Drug Enforcement Administration ‘Celebrates’ 35 Years Of Failure; Marijuana, Cocaine Have Contrasting Effects On Driving Performance, Study Says; Loretta Nall on AL judge's son's special treatment for felony drug charges.
Oral Pot Preparation Effective For Depression, Journal Reports; New Zealand: Most Pot Consumers Not Frequent Users; Cannabis Agonist Reduces Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Tumor Growth, Study Says; California: County Officials Finalize Mendocino Vote Count; Interview with Mason Tvert on proposal of cannabis smoking lounges in Denver airport to combat air rage incidents with alcohol.
John Wesley Hall, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, describes the case precendent in roadside traffic stops and search and seizure.
Seattle, Washington attorney Doug Hiatt explains the latest medical use issues in Washington State, including denial of transplant organs for medmj patients.
