Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

After pointing out the evidence of the Drug War’s failure to achieve “A drug free world by 2008″ as the UN’s general assembly crowed in 1998, The Economist points out:

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

The Economist then explains how legalization won’t be a tough sell at all in the producer countries, but it is faced with major political hurdles in the consumer countries:

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

Here at NORML we promote the legalization of cannabis.  Other drugs should require other measures that take into account the addictiveness and socially destructive capabilities of those drugs.  I personally don’t believe those measures should include locking up addicts — prison is a lousy rehab — but I also don’t think a regulatory scheme that treats marijuana similar to alcohol would be appropriate for, say, cocaine, meth, or heroin.

But when you say the word “Legalization”, immediately people conjure visions of “Maui Wowie”, “Colombia Flake”, “Crystal Energy”, and “Super Smack” sold on convenience store shelves next to the 24-oz beers and junk food snack cakes.  “Legalization”, though, can mean marijuana in adults-only stores with IDs checked for age 21 and limits placed on amount purchased while it can also mean much more stringent restrictions on other drugs like prescriptions and pharmacies and tight controls.

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News of the World in the UK is reporting that Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps is one of us!

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and shots of spirits. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says our source.

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

So, you wanna explain to me how marijuana smoking will make one a lethargic, unmotivated loser who will never get anywhere in life?  This should be fun, watching sponsors and Olympic and USA Swimming officials trip all over themselves.  I expect to see a special exemption or a sudden new rule that lets firt time offenders skate with some sort of class and community service.  Does anybody really think they are going to end Michael Phelps’ career, the greatest Olympian ever, and a huge marketing and endorsement cash cow, for a picture of him doing something that isn’t even criminal in thirteen states?

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“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Just south of the Portland, Oregon, metro area is a town called Molalla. Like most rural areas in Oregon, it is politically much more intolerant of cannabis than the liberal confines of Multnomah County.

An Oregon NORML member snapped this pic while driving on US Hwy 99E.  In case it’s unreadable (click pic for larger version) the message on this billboard from the Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime says:

MARIJUANA- A Gateway Drug to METH

This message is accompanied by a picture of a man smoking a joint on the left, and the now infamous Oregonian picture of the pock-marked female meth addict.  Then the message continues by asking people to call the county sheriff’s office anonymous tip line.

We’re not against community organizations who in good faith try to relieve their neighborhoods of crime.  It’s just sad that they’re trying to reduce the harm from hard drugs by lying about cannabis.  Marijuana is not a gateway to meth or any other drug, any moreso than coffee, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.  The gateway theory has been debunked by many independent organizations and even by our own drug-hating government:

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Drug use cost NZ society $1.3 bn, index shows – 24 Jun 2008 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news
The Drug Harm Index, released yesterday, will help police determine the socio-economic costs from drug seizures and track the value of the drug trade in New Zealand.

It found that 373,310 people used cannabis, but only 17 per cent of these were frequent users.

There were 38,390 cocaine users, of which 88 per cent were frequent users.

Nearly 23,000 people used crystal methamphetamine (36 per cent of them often) and 81,890 took Ecstasy (24 per cent often).

So 83% of New Zealanders who use cannabis use it infrequently and responsibly, and the 63,462 who use cannabis often are almost as numerous as those who use coke, meth, and X (61,717).  Plus, we can’t say how many of the frequent users use more than one drug.

Male cannabis users took about 8 per cent more sick days than the average male worker and opioid users took 40 per cent more days.

I’m curious about how many more sick days were taken by alcohol users?  No matter – I can’t speak for New Zealand, but in America, the average number of paid sick leave days for first year employees is eight.  So if cannabis smokers took 8% more, that works out to an extra five hours off for sick leave.

But I also doubt the reality of those numbers.  How do male cannabis users track across the various fields of endeavor?  For example, you’re going to find more cannabis smokers working in a restaurant than in a boardroom.  Drug testing restricts the fields where cannabis smokers can work.  Are there more overall sick days taken in those fields than others?

While stimulants contributed 41 per cent of the total costs, figures showed that in 2006, police and Customs seized 33,480kg of cannabis compared with only 155kg of stimulants.

And police dealing with drug offences spent 55.8 per cent of their time addressing cannabis, against 43 per cent of their hours dealing with stimulant-related issues.

Sounds like a lot of time and effort spent by the New Zealand authorities to fight cannabis, a relatively-safe, socially-benign drug that 83% of users are using infrequently, to the detriment of fighting meth, a very dangerous, socially-devastating drug that 36% of users are abusing.  Kinda like here, huh?

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