Drug War Chronicle, Issue #503 -- 9/28/07
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503

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

Massive increases to our web site traffic have increased our
costs -- will you help us continue it?
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/massive_increases_in_web_site_traffic_ha...

Students: Intern at DRCNet to help stop the drug war!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

Table of Contents:

1. EDITORIAL: LET'S GET REAL ALREADY ABOUT ENDING DRUG
PROHIBITION
Record-high drug arrest rates have failed to stem the drug trade
or reduce violence. It's time to get real and talk about
legalization of drugs.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/its_time_to_get_real_about_drug_legaliza...

2. FEATURE: MARIJUANA, DRUG ARRESTS HIT ALL-TIME HIGH -- AGAIN
The FBI released its annual Uniform Crime Report, and both
marijuana and all drug arrests are at an all-time high -- again.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/marijuana_drug_arrests_all_time_high_aga...

3. FEATURE: ISRAELI POLICE WILL NO LONGER ARREST FIRST-TIME DRUG
USERS
In a shift in policy, Israeli police have announced they will no
longer arrest first-time drug possession offenders.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/israel_no_arrest_first_time_drug_offende...

4. 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/503/massive_increases_in_web_site_traffic_ha...

5. WEEKLY: BLOGGING @ THE SPEAKEASY
Why Do Police Really Oppose Marijuana Legalization? Missouri
Police Chief Promises Not to Oppose Marijuana Decrim Initiative.
Prohibition Causes Violence: Medical Marijuana Murders in
California and Colorado. Obama Bad on Drug Policy. Mike Gravel
Talks Drug Legalization. Asset Forfeiture Hurting Inner City
Investment. More.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/blogging_at_the_speakeasy

6. 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/503/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

7. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
Cops planting drugs, cops stealing drugs, cops stealing and
doing drugs, cops stealing drugs and money--just another week of
drug prohibition-related corruption.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/drug_police_corruption

8. MARIJUANA: FOUR INITIATIVES MAKE NOVEMBER BALLOT IN IDAHO
TOWN
After a three year struggle with recalcitrant local officials, a
dedicated and persistent activist has managed to get a package
of marijuana initiatives on the ballot in a small Idaho town.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/hailey_idaho_marijuana_initiatives_make_...

9. DRUG COURTS: NEW JERSEY SUPREME COURT BROADENS ELIGIBILITY
The New Jersey Supreme Court has issued a ruling that will
extend drug court eligibility to any nonviolent offender who is
likely to receive a sentence of probation.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/new_jersey_supreme_court_widens_drug_cou...

10. LATIN AMERICA: CITING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, MEXICAN OFFICIAL
CALLS FOR PULLING ARMY OUT OF DRUG WAR
Citing cases of human rights violations by soldiers prosecuting
Mexico's drug war, the country's top human rights official has
called for an end to the military's role.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/mexico_top_human_rights_official_calls_n...

11. EUROPE: GERMAN STATES WANT HEROIN MAINTENANCE FOR ADDICTS
German state governments are urging the federal government to
extend a successful heroin maintenance pilot program across the
country.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/german_states_want_heroin_maintenance

12. AUSTRALIA: SOUTH AUSTRALIA WANTS TO BAN MARIJUANA GROW
RECIPES, EQUIPMENT
The state government of South Australia is supporting a bill
that would make possession of drug-making recipes or possession
of "drug making equipment" (grow lights) without a good reason a
serious crime.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/south_australia_grow_lights_drug_recipes...

13. IN MEMORIAM: DR. JOHN BERESFORD
An LSD pioneer and drug reform activist is memorialized by
groups that knew him well.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/john_beresford

14. 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/503/do_you_read_drug_war_chronicle

15. WEB SCAN
Esquire on MedMJ and PTSD, drug lord getting less time than
typical nonviolent offenders, DrugTruth Network.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/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/503/drug_war_history

17. 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/503/drug_policy_content_syndication_feeds_no...

18. 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/503/drug_policy_RSS_feeds_now_available

19. 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/503/drug_reform_calendar

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

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

1. Editorial: Let's Get Real Already About Ending Drug
Prohibition
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/503/its_time_to_get_real_about_drug_legaliza...

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

The annual FBI Uniform Crime Report came out last week, and the
news it brought about drug arrests in 2006 was no surprise.
Unsurprisingly, drug arrests again hit a record level --
1,889,810 this time, 829,625 for marijuana, more than eight out
of ten for just possession. Almost nine out of ten marijuana
arrests were for possession alone.

This all transpired in a year when violent crime was on the
increase, 1.9%% over 2005 and the second year in a row after a
decade's decline. One should not exaggerate a relatively small
number like 1.9%%. But at a minimum an opportunity may have been
lost to reduce violent crime. Why do we continue to plough such
vast resources into drug enforcement that could otherwise be
used to protect us from attacks -- attacks of whatever kind?

Despite a small uptick in the street price of cocaine recently
-- due only to short-term operational challenges facing the
industry -- all of this drug enforcement has been a massive
failure. On Wednesday I attended a lunch talk at a DC-based
foreign policy think tank given by Arnold Trebach, founder of
our modern drug policy reform movement (he started the Drug
Policy Foundation) and a professor emeritus of American
University. In order to make the point about the futility of
drug war, Arnold called a friend of his who is knowledgeable
about the heroin scene prior to coming downtown for the talk. He
wanted to know where one would go now in order to acquire
heroin. After all, it's been awhile since he researched his 1982
work, "The Heroin Solution"
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/486/book_review_arnold_trebach_heroin_soluti...).

Things have indeed changed since then, but despite perhaps
millions of drug arrests over the years (10 million? 15? 20?),
heroin has not become less available. In fact, it's easier to
obtain it than ever before, at least if one knows the right
people. According to Arnold, his friend told him that now you
wouldn't go out to buy it, you'd just call the delivery service,
and if you have any references to vouch for you, they would get
it to you in about 20 minutes.

20 minutes. We could have finished our lunches, listened to half
of Arnold's talk, _then_ ordered some heroin, received it before
the end of the talk and consumed it with dessert. (Of course for
a variety of reasons, not limited to our need to get work done
the rest of the day, we didn't do that and instead just took
Arnold's friend's word that we could have.)

The diversion of resources away from more important -- and more
feasible -- tasks is only one of many reasons to go with
legalization. The money being spent on the illicit drug trade --
estimates globally are in the hundreds of billions of dollars --
is fueling violence, both global and local. I don't know whether
the increase in drug arrests in the US played a role in the
increase in violence last year, but it's clearly possible. Far
more importantly, a chunk of the violence that we have suffered
with throughout the years is directly or indirectly related to
the drug trade.

And the money is warping society. How many young people have
been lured into lives of criminality through the promise that
the drug trade appears to offer? Most of them don't end up
making great money doing so. But it's there, there's a prospect
for advancement, and depending on your outlook it's glamorous
and it lets you be part of something larger than yourself. Money
from the drug trade is also helping to support those who want to
carry out terrorist attacks, and in some places is fueling civil
wars. All of this is happening because drugs are illegal, not
because of any intrinsic properties of the drugs.

But would the sky fall if drugs were legal? Would so many more
people use and get addicted to drugs that the harm would be
greater from that than from the criminality created now by
prohibition? Arnold told the audience that he believes we can
devise a system for controlling a licit drug trade; that it
would not be unduly difficult to do so (we do this already for
the currently legal drugs, after all), and "we would survive."
We could still help people with drug problems, we can regulate
the drugs any number of different ways, we can face that
challenge.

I in fact think the overall public health harm from drugs would
decrease, not increase, even if more people experimented with
them. After all, most people don't destroy themselves with drugs
today, legal or illegal, despite their widespread availability,
simply because they don't want to destroy themselves. For those
who do get addicted to drugs like heroin, but who don't earn a
fairly generous personal income, the artificially high prices
that prohibition brings about for the drugs is a big part of
making the habit so disruptive to their lives. I believe that on
the public health side as well as on the criminal justice side,
legalization will overall be a winning move, despite the harms
that some drugs can have.

It can be hard to advance this discussion in circles of power.
Arnold commented that at least eight people in US officialdom
told him they would be glad to meet with him, they appreciated
what he was doing, but they preferred not to meet him in their
offices. They wanted to meet at one restaurant or another, where
they hopefully would not been seen with him and thereby get in
political hot water. That was a long time ago, but it is still
the situation in many ways today.

And yet we do advance -- this organization and newsletter are
here, for example, and the movement is growing in diversity and
experience and size. Now it's time for the leaders to get real
-- drug legalization is viable and it's the right thing to do.
So stop demonizing it and start _talking_about_it_. Because
sometimes leadership means actually leading.

[Signed copies of Arnold's two re-released books -- "The Heroin
Solution" and "The Great Drug War" -- as well as his new work,
"Fatal Distraction: The War on Drugs in the Age of Islamic
Terror," can be obtained as membership premiums by donating to
DRCNet (http://stopthedrugwar.org/donate).]

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

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.