Smoking marijuana is 114 times safer than drinking alcohol – study

"safer" being a relative term...

Reuters/Marcos Brindicci

As the debate over marijuana legalization continues in the United States, a new study suggests that smoking the controversial plant is about 114 times safer than drinking alcohol.

In fact, alcohol was found to be the deadliest drug on an individual level, at least when it comes to the likelihood of a person dying due to consuming a lethal dose. Heroin and cocaine were the next most deadly substances, followed by tobacco, ecstasy, and meth. Trailing up the rear was marijuana.




 According to the team of international researchers behind the study, published in the journal 'Scientific Reports,' the findings suggest that marijuana risks – at least those related to mortality – are trumped when compared to substances like alcohol.

“The results confirm that the risk of cannabis may have been overestimated in the past,” the report reads. “At least for the endpoint of mortality, the [margin of exposure] for THC/cannabis in both individual and population-based assessments would be above safety thresholds (e.g. 100 for data based on animal experiments). In contrast, the risk of alcohol may have been commonly underestimated.”

 
As reported by the Washington Post, the study’s results aren’t exactly new, though they do confirm similar findings first reported a decade ago. In a separate story last year, the Post noted that Wayne Hall of the World Health Organization said it’s nearly impossible for even those who smoke large amounts of cannabis to overdose on the drug.

"The estimated fatal dose [of THC, the primary active compound in marijuana] in humans derived from animal studies is between 15 and 70 grams. This is a far greater amount of cannabis that even a very heavy cannabis user could use in a day," Hall wrote last year. 

Even alcohol’s unsafe margin of exposure (MOE) ratio isn’t all that surprising since, unlike heroin and cocaine, it is legal and much more readily available and accepted.

 

Marijuana legalization advocates are welcoming the new study, using it to suggest that America’s current ban on the drug is wrong and misguided, considering the mortality rates associated with alcohol and tobacco – both of which are legal and easily accessible to those of age. Marijuana, meanwhile, is still illegal on the federal level and largely illegal on the state level – except in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia.

Even the researchers noted that compared to other drugs, their findings support regulating pot as a legal substance instead of a banned one.

“Currently, the MOE results point to risk management prioritization towards alcohol and tobacco rather than illicit drugs,” the report reads. “The high MOE values of cannabis, which are in a low-risk range, suggest a strict legal regulatory approach rather than the current prohibition approach.”

 
Despite the new study, the American Academy of Pediatrics cautions that pot should not be smoked by children or teenagers, as there have been studies suggesting a link between youth smoking and impaired child development.

When Big Pharma Writes the Laws

Move Over ALEC!

by MARTHA ROSENBERG

Just like ALEC, Big Pharma is doing the job of elected officials by writing legislation-ready bills for no charge, says the New York Times.  The new bills seek to prevent health insurers from raising co-pay amounts to a price where patients are unable or unwilling to buy them, especially with expensive drugs. When co-pays rise too high, many people engage in what Pharma calls “prescription abandonment”–leaving the prescription at the pharmacy “altar” or not refilling future prescriptions.

Pharma is losing so much money from rising co-pays and prescription abandonment, it has launched cagey, public service announcement-sounding campaigns about “patients not taking the drugs they need,” as if it is a health and not revenue issue. Pharma has even instituted arrangements with some pharmacies to send visiting nurses to patients’ homes to ensure “compliance,” Big Brother overtones notwithstanding.

Prescription abandonment is an especially thorny issue for Pharma when the drugs are taken on faith, to reduce patients’ “risks” and patients do not necessarily feel them working. It is also a thorny issue when studies suggest the drugs being abandoned may not be necessary to begin with or working.

One such expensive placebo is the drug known by the brand name Risperdal. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $717 million on the drug to treat posttraumatic stress disorder in Afghanistan and Iraq troops with PTSD over nine years, only to discover it worked no better than a sugar pill! Veterans Affairs doctors wrote more than 5 million prescriptions from 2000 through June 2010 for naught, says a 2011 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Last month, Johnson & Johnson also agreed to pay $1.2 billion in fines for minimizing or concealing Risperdal’s  dangers. Many say unless a drug company’s chief officers go to prison or the company is banned from sales to Medicare and other government programs, penalties are a joke. Wall Street did not punish J&J stock after the Risperdal settlement and actually rewarded Abbott this week after a $1.6 billion settlement for mismarketing the seizure drug Depakote! Hello?

Nor did the JAMA revelations about Risperdal dry up government sales. Less than two weeks after the study was published, the VA awarded a contract for more than 200,000 bottles of generic risperidone, said published reports, containing more than $20 million pills.

Of course, people-aren’t-taking-their-drugs is not Pharma’s only faux PSA campaign. Big bucks are also going into a campaign to prevent patients “abusing” prescription drugs, as  if Pharma billions  in marketing

While no one wants sick people to go without their drugs, some say the Pharma-concocted bills are designed to change the debate over the cost of exorbitant drugs to coverage issues over who pays for them–thus giving “the drug companies a free ride to charge as much as they want.” Pharma is even using patient front groups to whip up a contrived demand for expensive drugs, some charge.

Patients may seem to benefit from the proposed co-pay legislation but health care costs and taxes actually skyrocket as Pharma tries to pass along the cost of expensive brand name drugs that may not even be necessary and are often less effective than cheaper drugs. Some don’t work at all.

An example of how Pharma is trying to play the co-pay card for its revenue stream is seen in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, called “Out-of-Pocket Medication Costs and Use of Medications and Health Care Services Among Children With Asthma.” Increased co-pay is resulting in less use of the asthma “controller medications” say the authors, who have links to Pfizer, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, three large drug companies. Asthma controller medications are drugs added on top of  rescue inhalers or inhaled corticosteroids like Advair, Singulair, Symbicort, and Accolate.  But data published by Medco, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager, says the controller drugs reduce neither trips to the ER or hospitalizations when taken by a large amount of patients. Worse–some reports say the controller asthma medications actually make asthma worse.

Do we really need laws written by Pharma to help “buy” drugs that may be worthless or even make us worse?

How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 by TomDispatch.com
The New Jim Crow

by Michelle Alexander

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

• There are more African American adults under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
• As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Excuses for the Lockdown

There is, of course, a colorblind explanation for all this: crime rates. Our prison population has exploded from about 300,000 to more than 2 million in a few short decades, it is said, because of rampant crime. We’re told that the reason so many black and brown men find themselves behind bars and ushered into a permanent, second-class status is because they happen to be the bad guys.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades -- they are currently at historical lows -- but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. The main driver has been the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system’s most dramatic expansion.

The drug war has been brutal -- complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods -- but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.

That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80%-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison.

This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That’s why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle-class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it’s all about violent crime.

Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term “a war on drugs,” but it was President Reagan who turned the rhetorical war into a literal one. From the outset, the war had relatively little to do with drug crime and much to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. 

In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.

The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes -- sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries. Another racially motivated factor is in the longer sentences imposed upon offenders charged with possession of crack cocaine (associated with blacks) vs. the lesser sentences for possession of powdered cocaine (associated with whites).

Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove that they could be even tougher on the dark-skinned pariahs. In President Bill Clinton’s boastful words, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.” The facts bear him out. Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. He and the “New Democrats” championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how minor the offense) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps, for life. Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal, if you’ve been labeled a felon.

Facing Facts
But what about all those violent criminals and drug kingpins? Isn’t the drug war waged in ghetto communities because that’s where the violent offenders can be found? The answer is yes... in made-for-TV movies. In real life, the answer is no.

The drug war has never been focused on rooting out drug kingpins or violent offenders. Federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses. What gets rewarded in this war is sheer numbers of drug arrests. To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use 80% of the cash, cars, and homes seized from drug suspects, thus granting law enforcement a direct monetary interest in the profitability of the drug market.

The results have been predictable: people of color rounded up en masse for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, only one out of five for sales. Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s -- the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war -- nearly 80% of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city.

In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time -- a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of color are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for.

Affirmative action, though, has put a happy face on this racial reality. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and become CEOs or corporate lawyers -- not to mention president of the United States -- causes us all to marvel at what a long way we’ve come.

Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that’s with affirmative action!

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our “colorblind” society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure: the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.

This is not Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. This is not the promised land. The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.

Supreme Court to rule on whether drug-sniffing dogs violate 4th Amendment

(Considering the NDAA wiped out the 4th amendment, as well as the 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, I would wager that the Roberts Court rules that drug dogs do not violate the 4th amendment--as it no longer applies to US citizens anyway.--jef)

______________________________________________________

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, January 6, 2012

 

 

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case to determine whether the use of police dogs sniffing for drugs outside homes is a violation of the constitutional rights of the residents.

The case involves a Miami homeowner accused of growing marijuana in his house, who contends the dog’s sniffing on his porch was the same as an illegal “search” of his home.

The Fourth Amendment requires police to present evidence to a judge that a crime has occurred, then obtain a warrant before they can search a home.

Miami-Dade police had no search warrant before Franky the dog signaled to his handler that he detected marijuana at the home of Joelis Jardines in December 2006.

Instead, they used Franky’s signal of sitting down as the primary evidence to obtain a warrant.

A subsequent police search found 179 marijuana plants in a hydroponic lab in the house. Jardines was arrested as he tried to flee out the back door.

The trial judge dismissed the evidence against Jardines, saying it was obtained through illegal search and seizure. A state appeals court reversed the ruling and reinstated marijuana charges against Jardines.

The Florida Supreme Court threw out the case again last April, saying lax restrictions on use of police dogs could lead to widespread abuse of homeowners’ privacy.

“There is simply nothing to prevent (police) agents from applying the procedure in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, or based on whim and fancy, at the home of any citizen,” the Florida Supreme Court majority opinion said.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Bondi argues in her legal filings that a dog breathing air outside a home is not the same as a search.

She also says a ruling that deprives police of using drug-sniffing dogs to gather evidence would seriously interfere with law enforcement.

“And most importantly, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision strips law enforcement of an irreplaceable tool in detecting those who grow marijuana in their living rooms; construct meth labs in their kitchens; hide bodies in their basements; or make bombs in their garages,” Bondi’s petition says.

“Dogs can detect all these activities by the simple act of breathing.”

Eighteen states and the territory of Guam filed briefs to support Bondi’s petition.

The Supreme Court has traditionally held that homes are entitled to greater privacy rights than public spaces or automobiles when police use dogs to search for illegal activity.

The justices are likely to issue a ruling by June.

Why Jurors Should Refuse to Convict Drug Arrestees

Jurors are not required to enforce unjust laws, and can legally refuse to convict a person, even if he or she appears to be guilty. 

By Tony Newman, AlterNet
Posted on December 22, 2011

 Should juries vote “not guilty” on low-level marijuana charges to send a message about our country’s insane marijuana arrest policy? Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor and law professor of George Washington University made a powerful argument for jury nullification in an op-ed in Tuesday’s New York Times.

Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. Butler explained that juries have the right and power to use jury nullification to protest unjust laws.

Mr. Butler points out that nullification was credited with ending our country’s disastrous alcohol prohibition as more and more jurors refused to send their neighbors to jail for a law they didn’t believe in. Butler says we need to do the same with today’s marijuana arrests.

There is growing recognition that today's drug laws are ineffective and unfair. For the first time ever, a recent Gallup poll found that 50 percent of Americans want legalize use of marijuana. Despite half of our country wanting to end marijuana prohibition, the war on marijuana users is as vicious as ever. There were more than 750,000 arrests last year for marijuana possession alone. In New York City, marijuana possession was the #1 reason people were arrested last year; making up 15 percent of all arrests.

People hoping for change should not expect it to come from our “leaders” in Washington. While most of our elected officials know in their hearts that our drug war is an utter failure that fills our prisons while doing nothing to help people struggling with addiction, there is deafening silence when it comes to offering alternatives to the war on drugs. Democrats and Republicans are both cowardly and opportunistic and don’t want to give up their “tough on crime” credentials.

Here is where jury nullification comes in. If our leaders are going to stop the madness, maybe it is up to our peers to say enough is enough.

In Montana last year, a group of five prospective-jurors said they had a problem with someone receiving a felony for a small amount of marijuana. The prosecutors were freaked out about the “Mutiny in Montana” and were afraid they were not going to be able convince12 jurors in Montana to convict. The judge said, in a major New York Times article, “I’ve never seen this large a number of people express this large a number of reservations” and “it does raise a question about the next case.”

The highest profile group to call for jury nullification for drug offenses is from the creators of the HBO hit series The Wire. David Simon and the other creators of The Wire wrote a passionate piece in Time magazine where they called on Americans to join them in the use of jury nullification as a strategy to slow the drug war machine.

From the article:

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right," wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.”

Forty years after President Richard Nixon launched the “war on drugs” the casualties continue to mount with no end in sight. We need to step up our efforts to end this war at home and stop sending our loved ones to cages because they have a drug problem. We have more power than we realize. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

The Failed War on Drugs

Drugged Out America

by DAVID ROSEN

 

In 1982, Nancy Reagan formally launched the post-modern prohibition movement, the war on drugs.   While begun under President Richard Nixon, her infamous “Just Say No” speech at the Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, CA, officially established the war on drugs as national policy.

Her original campaign sought to address an assortment of alleged youthful vices, including alcohol and drug use, peer violence and premarital sex.  However, shrewd moralists, clever politicians and opportunists within the police-corporate system (the domestic corollary to President Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex) used the speech to capture the new cash cow, the war on drugs.

During the last three decades, the war on drugs has proven an ever-deepening failure.  Like 1920s Prohibition that fashioned the modern crime syndicate, this “war” established a new service business for corporate capitalism, the prison-industrial complex.

While it is impossible to tabulate the full costs of drug use in the U.S., even the most conservative estimates are staggering. Millions of people (some estimates run as high as 20% of the population) either regularly abuse or are addicted to “drugs,” whether legal or illegal, whether a commercial or underground product.  One estimate places the costs associated with of drug addiction/abuse at “over $484 billion per year” that includes costs for policing, healthcare, crime and lost earnings.

In 2010, the U.S. government spent an estimated $15 billion waging its fruitless war on drugs.  Two academic experts, Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock, estimate that de-criminalizing (i.e., regulating) currently illegal drugs would save Americans approximately $41 billion a year in federal and state government expenditures relating to drug enforcement.

In the years since Mrs. Reagan uttered her dubious words, the total costs of the war on drugs is estimated at $1 trillion. According to a study released by the Associated Press in 2010, the $1 trillion expenditure covers: border efforts at interception drug trafficking; foreign drug wars in Afghanistan, Mexico and Columbia; arrest and prosecution of those in federal prisons for drug offenses; arrest and prosecution nonviolent drug offenders at the state and local levels; and marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other abstinence programs.

The AP concludes its report with the following cautionary words: “This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.”[http://nevergetbusted.com/2010/articles/ap-us-drug-war-has-met-none-of-its-goals]

The line between the legal and the illegal, like that between the moral and immoral or the licit and illicit, is arbitrary.  It is a terrain of social conflict that changes over time through popular struggle.  At any one time, the line appears “fixed” as much by moral authority as by formal legal regulation and enforcement practice.  However, the appearance of “fixed,” to the extent that it can be, is in name only.

The failed temperance campaign that culminated in the passage of the 18^th Amendment establishing 13 years of Prohibition (and which was repealed by the 21^st Amendment) unraveled after the 1929 stock market crash.  Today’s “war on drugs” is unraveling.  Its failure is evident in the ever-growing costs related to enforcement, at the federal, state and city levels, as well as the social and personal costs incurred by those who succumb to their drug of choice.

It appears that a goodly proportion of Americans, either just once for fun or on a more continuing basis, have taken an illegal substance or have a family member, friend or neighbor whose been arrested due to a drug-related offense (including alcohol-related acts).  This common awareness underlies the nationwide effort to establish a new drug policy, one from the bottom up. It is defined by efforts to legalize medical marijuana clinics (now legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia) and to decriminalize “non-hard” drugs like marijuana and some party drugs (e.g., LSD).  In the wake of the fiscal crises faced by many states, there has been a move to reduce the nonviolent prison population, particularly those arrested for a nonviolent drug-related offense.

In the wake of the Great Depression, America ended Prohibition, an unworkable and expensive moralistic campaign masquerading as public policy.  (The church had taken control of the state, imposing its temperance beliefs as national policy.) As economic and social pressures mount during the aftermath of the Great Recession, there will likely be a significant increase in all manner of drug taking throughout the nation. This will, hopefully, lead to a rethinking of the nation’s failed “war on drugs.” Lets hope.

* * *

America is a drugged-out nation.  To appreciate the enormity of drug use, one needs to acknowledge the scope of “drug” taking.  The first step in this process is to give up the fiction that separates the legal from the illegal, the regulated from the un-regulated and the over-the-counter from backstreet drugs.  A second step is to map out the labyrinth-like world of the abused and/or addictive drugs and see how they saturate social life.

Ken Liska, in “Drugs and the Human Body,” defines a drug as “any absorbed substance that changes or enhances any physical or psychological function in the body.”

The following overview of drug taking in America is necessarily cursory, outlining the boundaries to this (in a 1950’s film noirsense) underworld.  Information is drawn predominately from federal sources, including the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Legal unregulated “drugs”
Today, coffee, sugar and chocolate are widely enjoyed products that some considering harmful “drugs.”   Many, many Americans can’t image starting the day without that first cup of java, cut with a hearty dose of sugar and topped off with a tasty chocolate donut.

Coffee
One of the first “drugs” to take hold of the West was coffee, introduced into Europe in 1645.  In England, for example, coffee houses flourished, serving as the era’s “speakeasies,” inebriating the new merchant class.  Over the next century, efforts by the powers-that-be to close these houses of ill repute were repeatedly rebuffed.  It was not until 1820 that coffee’s active ingredient, caffeine, a psychoactive stimulant, was identified.  Between 2001-2004 some 265 cases of caffeine overdoses ended up in Emergency Rooms visits.  While medical authorities do not list caffeine as an addictive drug, some Christian religious groups do so and encourage their members to avoid it.

Sugar
Coffee drinking is aided by another often-alleged addictive substance, sugar.  Sugar has been in the West since the Crusades, brought back from the Holy Lands as a new spice.  In the U.S, sugar is considered a food but has no nutritional value.  However, withdrawal from sugar can be as difficult as cutting coffee or alcohol.  Many warn that people couldn’t get enough sugar and that it made people hyperirritable.  Research shows that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be addictive.  Some researchers have found that cocaine and methamphetamine addicts eat a lot of sugar.

Chocolate
While Columbus first brought back cocoa beans to Europe, Cortès popularized it in Spain in the 1520s; a century later it spread to the rest of Europe.  Chocolate, along with other sweet and high-fat foods, releases serotonin that makes people happier. Cocoa products contain neuroactive alkaloids common to wine, beer and liquor.  Today, many people, but especially woman, are called “chocoholics” and, when denied their “drug” of choice, suffer withdrawal symptoms, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and pre-menstrual syndrome.

Legal regulated drugs
Three other legal drugs, alcohol, tobacco and prescription medications, are regulated to varying degrees by individual states, localities and/or the federal government.

Alcohol
Alcohol, like tobacco, is an over-the-counter consumer product regulated principally by buyer age requirements.  With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, alcohol has become a huge industry.  According to an alcohol-industry trade association,  “the U.S. beverage alcohol industry contributed nearly $382 billion to the U.S. total economic activity in 2007.”  (“Contributed” includes wages, taxes and a nebulous category dubbed “economic activity” seems to mean sales.)  Its legality comes with a significant social cost.

Ethyl alcohol (or ethanol) is the intoxicating ingredient found in beer, wine and liquor.  A standard drink contains 0.6 ounces of pure ethanol; this is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer, 8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces (a “shot”) of 80-proof distilled spirits.

In 2009, 52 percent of Americans age 12 and older are considered regular drinkers, having consumed alcohol at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey.  More revealing, federal data shows that 24 percent of drinkers had binged (5+ drinks within 2 hours) and 7 percent drank heavily (5+ drinks on 5+ occasions).*  However, per capita alcohol consumption has declined over 12 percent over the last three decades, to 2.31 in 2007 gallons from 2.64 gallons in 1977.

Since 1982, the number of alcohol-related driving fatalities has been cut nearly in half: in 2008, 13,846 people died in car crashes due to drunk drivers compared to 26,173 in 1982.  Mirroring the decline in drunk-driving fatalities, the rate of drunk driving for the 2006-2009 is estimated at 13.2 percent, a decline from the 14.6 percent for the 2002-2005 period.

In 2008, 70 percent of the an estimated 189,000 alcohol-related emergency room visits made by patients aged 12 to 20 involved alcohol only; 30.0 percent involved alcohol in combination with other drugs.  Between 1975 and 2005, deaths due to liver cirrhosis has remained relatively consistent at approximately 12,900 deaths per year.
[*Data drawn from National Survey on Drug Use and Health at www.samhsa.gov]

Tobacco
Cigarettes have (almost) lost their cool.  Of Americans 18 years and older, an estimated 46 million still smoke cigarettes. Smoking is more common among men (24%) than women (18%).  In the U.S., cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths (or 1 of every 5 deaths) each year.

In the nearly half century since the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report linking smoking to cancer in 1964, there has had a dramatic decline is smoking.  Since 1998, tobacco sales in the U.S. have declined by 2 percent a year; since 2000, there has been an 18 percent decline in the number of cigarette packs sold: 17.4 billion packs were sold in 2007 compared to 21.1 billion packs in 2000.

However, this has taken place with a significant uptick in the number of “cigarette pack equivalents” (CPE’s), non-cigarette nicotine product, totaling 1.10 billion CPEs.  These include: 714 million moist snuff, 256 million roll-your-own tobacco and 130 million small cigars.

Prescription medications
A doctor’s prescription is required to “legally” purchase a pharmaceutical medical drug.  In 2009, 16 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the prior year prior.  From 2004 to 2008, the reported incidents of prescription drug overdoses more than doubled to 305,885 from 144,644.

Among the leading abused prescription drugs are: opioids (for pain), depressants (for anxiety and sleep disorders) and stimulants (for ADHD and narcolepsy).  Opioids include OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet; depressants or tranquilizers include barbiturates such as pentobarbital sodium (e.g., Nembutal) and benzodiazepines such as diazepam (aka Valium) and alprazolam (aka Xanax); and stimulants include dextroamphetamine (e.g., Dexedrine), methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin and Concerta) and amphetamines (e.g., Adderall).

With regard to antidepressants, in 2008, adolescents made 23,124 visits to an emergency room for drug-related suicide attempts, and young adults made 38,036 such visits; of these visits, 23 percent of the adolescents and 18 percent of young adults did so for “OD-ing” on an antidepressant.

Since 1998, there has been a significant increase in the hospital admissions of benzodiazepines tranquilizers like Valium and Xanax.  While hospital admissions over reactions to depressants increased 11 percent between 1998 and 2008, benzodiazepine-related admissions nearly tripled.

Prescription steroids, which increase muscle mass and may be prescribed for muscle-wasting conditions like cancer and AIDS, are also subject to abuse by athletes and non-athletes.  Most often, they are taken to improve the user’s appearance or performance.  Good luck.

Washington’s Attorney General, Rob McKenna, among a growing number of state and federal law-enforcement officials, has called the rise in prescription drugs an “epidemic.”  Federal data shows that among young people ages 12-17, prescription drugs have become the second most abused illegal drug, behind marijuana.  Teens report they get prescription drugs from parents’ medicine cabinets, other people’s prescriptions and that they are “available everywhere.”

Unregulated illegal drugs
These drugs make up what are known as the “hard” drugs, easy to abuse and seriously addictive.  They include cocaine, heroin and marijuana; many consider marijuana a “soft” drug, like alcohol, and should be decriminalized and its sale regulated like tobacco.

Cocaine
Cocaine, also known as coke, snow and flake, is a powerful stimulate that can be snorted, injected or smoked; crack is cocaine hydrochloride powder processed to form a rock crystal that is then smoked.  Cocaine gives people a real high, making them feel euphoric and energetic; however, it increases blood pressure and heart rate, often leading to heart attacks, strokes and seizures.  In 2009, 4.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused cocaine in some form and 1.0 million had abused crack at least once in the previous year.

Heroin
Heroin, also known as H, smack or junk, is the hardest of the “hard” drugs.  Processed from morphine, it usually appears as a white or brown powder or as a black, sticky substance.  Injecting, snorting or smoking H makes one feel euphoric; however, it depresses breathing, thus, an overdose can be fatal.  In 2009, 605,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused heroin at least once in the prior year.

Marijuana
Marijuana, derived from the dried parts of the Cannabis sativa hemp plant, is the most commonly used illegal drug in the U.S. In 2009, 28.5 million Americans age 12 and older had smoked marijuana at least once in the previous year.  Known as pot, mary jane, ganga, weed or grass, smoking it makes one feel euphoric, often distorting perceptions, memory recall and conventional linear thinking.  One feels high.

Unregulated club drugs
These drugs make up what are known as the “party” drugs, taken at bars, nightclubs and concerts; they are even easier to abuse and can lead to serious abuse.  While club goers might take cocaine, heroine and marijuana to enhance a good time, a crop of specialty drugs have emerged designed tp enhance a singular good time.  These include LSD (aka acid), MDMA (aka ecstasy) and PCP (aka angel dust) as well as Rohypnol (aka roofies), GHB (aka liquid ecstasy) and ketamine (aka special K, vitamin K, jet).  And there’s also methamphetamine that is really in a class by itself.

LSD
Acid became popular during the oh-so psychedelic ‘60s, altering perceptions and invoking a world of hallucinations.  Acid “trips” can last about 12 hours and, for some, fostering enormous pleasure, for others terrifying delusions.  In 2009, 779,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused LSD at least once in the prior year.

MDMA
MDMA (aka 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) better known as ecstasy, is a synthetic stimulate with psychoactive properties.  In 2009, 2.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused MDMA at least once in the prior year.  Most disturbing, a 2010 NIDA study found that 4.5 percent of 12th graders had used MDMA at least once in the prior year.

PCP
PCP (phencyclidine) is a synthetic drug popularly known as angel dust, ozone, wack and rocket fuel and can be snorted, smoked or eaten.  It is a “dissociative” drug, distorting perceptions of sight and sound.  However, many users complain of unpleasant psychological effects that mimic schizophrenia, including delusions, hallucinations and extreme anxiety.  In 2009, 122,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused PCP at least once in the prior year.

Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine is a very addictive stimulant that goes by a variety of street names, including meth, speed, chalk, ice, crystal and glass.  More revealing, it has become known as white people’s crack and is very toxic to the central nervous system.  In 2009, 1.2 million Americans age 12 and older had used methamphetamine at least once in the prior year.

* * *

Abstinence was imposed on the nation in 1920 and repealed in 1933; the 18^th Amendment establishing Prohibition is the only Amendment to be repealed.  In the early 20^th century, Americans could get ripped on good-old Coca-Cola.  Originally intended as a patent medicine, Coke once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. By the ‘20s, the coke was out but caffeine gave the drink a jolt.

In 1937, just four years after the passage of the 21^st Amendment repealing Prohibition, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act.  During the ‘30s, hemp was popular and profitable, used for a variety of commercial purposes, including the smoking kind. The Act sought to garner the federal government much needed tax revenues without outlawing marijuana production or consumption.

In 1970, President Nixon championed the Controlled Substances Act that superseded the Marihuana Act and started the war on drugs.  In a 1970 speech, he declared, “this nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people.”  A year later, he upped the ante: “Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”   America’s war on “domestic terrorism” had begun.

Now, four decades later, the forces of moral order, in league with the police-corporate complex, have scooped up $1 trillion and left behind a failed, second temperance movement, the “war on drugs.”  These drug-opportunists have left wrecked lives in their wake.  An untold number of drug-related dead bodies and destroyed lives litter the national landscape.

Nationally, prescription drug abuse is killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined. Now, as the Great Recession begins to draw out to (dare I say) a possible second Great Depression, financial reality might force those in power (whether moralist, politician, police or greedy corporate con-artist milking the drug scam) to abandon the prohibitionist mindset that has been in-force since Nixon.

As the Great Recession drags on and misery intensifies, the ab/use of both legally-regulated and illegal drugs will likely increase.  It’s time to rethink America’s failed drug policy.  Get ready for the coming drug tsunami.

New Drugs, Same Mistakes

Congress Chooses Criminalization Over Regulation
By GRANT SMITH
Partisan bitterness has become a familiar feature of Capitol Hill politics. But given the recent debt debacle, it was little surprise that two committee rooms full of congressional lawmakers were giddy at the chance to sing bipartisan praises and wave through legislation that criminalizes possession and sale of "K2," "spice," "bath salts," and other synthetic drugs.

Despite growing consensus that there is an urgent need for a new direction in our nation's drug policies, and recognition from the Global Commission on Drug Policy and others that the 40 year old war on drugs is a resounding failure, many lawmakers are still shy to question the wisdom of proposals to criminalize more people and the drugs they use.

Synthetic drugs that imitate the effects of marijuana and other illegal drugs have been sensationalized since they first appeared on store shelves. Many people are attracted to these products because the drugs do not show up in drug tests and it was not a crime to use or sell them until recently.

Much controversy has centered on the marketing of these drugs as incense or other household products even though they are often consumed. Rather than step in to regulate synthetic drugs, impose age restrictions and product labeling requirements, the government did nothing until several tragic events involving young people received extensive media coverage.

State and federal lawmakers have forged ahead with proposals to ban synthetic drugs before scientists could better understand and evaluate the products for health risks and benefits. Empirical evidence has yet to surface that shows synthetic drugs pose a threat to public health that warrants criminalization.

Lawmakers have a long track record of passing ineffective laws, and its unwavering support for the war on drugs is no exception. Enforcement of marijuana prohibition, in particular, has wasted billions of dollars subjecting millions of American citizens to arrest for nonviolent drug law violations. Marijuana law violations make up half of all drug arrests annually.

And just as we have seen with marijuana, criminalizing synthetic drugs will cede control of the drugs to the criminal market. Our policy should enable the government to enforce strict regulations and controls on a legal market for synthetic drugs that monitors production, minimizes public harm and generates tax revenue.

Congress continues to vigorously fund and escalate the drug war even as Washington seeks to reduce federal spending. Enforcing a federal ban on synthetic drugs won't be cheap. Moreover, organizations such as the Heritage Foundation have cautioned against creating unnecessary federal crimes that inappropriately expand the reach of the federal government into local affairs. Since the vast majority of drug enforcement is carried out by state and local agencies, Congress is essentially passing the costs of this legislation on to them.

Commenting on synthetic drugs during a committee session this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) remarked that "we are in a new era of drugs."

A new era calls for a new approach, and Congress has an opportunity here to provide for comprehensive drug education, rigorous scientific study to better understand what is in synthetic drugs, and a robust system of regulation and control of the synthetic drug market. Lawmakers need not look far for a successful model. The federal government's approach to dealing with tobacco has been enormously successful at reducing youth and adult tobacco use in recent decades and millions of people didn't have to be arrested and branded with criminal convictions to achieve success.

Lawmakers must put the brakes on this failed approach to drug policy, stop wasting taxpayer dollars and destroying people's lives.

Danish laws ban products fortified with vitamins--allege they are threat to public health

Thursday, June 02, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

So-called food safety laws enacted in Denmark back in 2004 have restricted the sale of any food products that contain added vitamins and minerals, and all on the outlandish premise that such nutrients are a threat to public health. And just recently, the country banned Marmite, a popular food spread sourced from the UK, because it contains added B vitamins.

Perfectly aligned with Codex Alimentarius and the recent EU ban of many herbal remedies, the Danish restrictions allow only the sale of fortified foods and dietary supplements that have been pre-approved by the government . And gaining approval works much the same way as it does in the US with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and pharmaceutical drugs -- pay a large sum of money to the regulatory body (mafia) in charge, and purchase approval for your product.

But apparently Marmite slipped through the regulatory cracks, as a single Danish shop that has been supplying the spread to mostly English customers for years was finally discovered by authorities. So the harmless product joins many breakfast cereals, beverages, and other consumer products with added vitamins that have already been banned in Denmark, as it will no longer be permitted for sale to Danish consumers -- unless, of course, the Marmite company decides to jump through the regulatory hoops and purchase approval.

"All the English people here are shaking their heads in disbelief and say that it is insane," said Marianne Orum, owner of the Danish shop that, up until recently, had been selling Marmite. "It's becoming impossible to run a business in this country. We are not allowed to do anything anymore. It is the way Denmark is going."

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to push the same highly-restrictive measures in the US. The recent passage of S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, represents a global effort to thwart national food sovereignty and bring all nations under the same type of regulatory system as that of Denmark .

++++

Marmite made illegal in Denmark
By Bruno Waterfield - 24 May 2011

According to the marketing slogan it is a taste that you either love or hate. But Danes will no longer get the chance to make up their own minds on Marmite after the British delicacy was banned under food safety laws.

The strongly flavoured dark brown spread made from brewer's yeast has joined Rice Crispies, Shreddies, Horlicks and Ovaltine prohibited in Denmark under legislation forbidding the sale of food products with added vitamins as threat to public health.

Many well known breakfast cereal and drink brands have already been banned or taken off supermarket shelves after Danish legislation in 2004 restricted foods fortified with extra vitamins or minerals.

But Marmite had escaped notice as an exotic import for a small number of ex-pats until the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration telephoned Abigail's, a Copenhagen shop selling British food, to ban the famous yeast spread.

"I don't eat it myself, I don't like it but Marmite was one of our best selling products. Not a day goes by without someone coming in and asking for it," said Marianne Ørum, the shop owner.

"All the English people here are shaking their heads in disbelief and say that it is insane. I agree but it is the law. It's becoming impossible to run a business in this country. We are not allowed to do anything anymore. It is the way Denmark is going."

The shop has now started a "Bring back Marmite" campaign to overturn a ban that is seen as discriminating against Britons living and working Denmark.

Lyndsay Jensen, a Yorkshire born graphic designer working in Copenhagen, told the British ex-pat RedHerring.dk website, that Britons would carry on spreading Marmite on their toast, even if it meant smuggling it in to Denmark.

"They don't like it because it's foreign," she said. "But if they want to take my Marmite off me they'll have to wrench it from my cold dead hands."

The sale of any foodstuff with the "addition of vitamins, minerals and other substances" must be first approved by the Danish authorities after a health scare over their effect on children or pregnant women when combined with other foods with high vitamin levels.

A spokesman for the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said: "I cannot comment on the Marmite case because our expert is away until Thursday."

Ron Paul jokes: ‘I don’t want to use heroin’ so I need drug laws

By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who are both libertarian-leaning Republicans, defended drug legalization during the Fox News presidential debate on Thursday night.

When questioned about why social conservatives should support him, Paul said they should vote for him because his defense of liberty includes their right to practice their lifestyle the way they want. The congressman said liberty needed to be protected "across the board."

"We don't have the first amendment so that we can talk about the weather," he noted. "You have a right to do things that are very controversial."

Government should not tell its its citizens what they can eat and drink, the congressman continued. "Up until this past century -- for over one hundred years -- [drugs] were legal."

"How many people here would use heroin if it were legal?" Paul asked. "Oh yeah, I need to government to take care of me, I don't want to use heroin so I need these laws," he joked, followed by a round of applause from the audience.

"I never thought heroin would get an applause here in South Carolina," quipped moderator Chris Wallace.

Johnson, who has admitted to using marijuana, noted that half of the money spent on law enforcement and prison is drug-related. Ninety percent of the problem is prohibition-related, not use related, according to the former governor.

"That's not to discount the problems with use and abuse, but [prohibition] ought to be the focus," he said.

Marijuana should be legalized and harm reduction strategies should be used for other illegal drugs, Johnson added. "Look at the drug problem as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue."

Incarceration Nation

America Behind Bars
By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Herman Garner doesn't dispute the drug charge that slammed him in prison for nine years.

Garner does dispute the damning circumstance that doing the time for his crime still leaves him penalized despite his having ended his sentence in the penal system.

Garner carries the "former felon" stain.

That status slams employment doors shut in his face despite his having a MBA Degree and two years of law school.

"I've applied for jobs at thousands of places in person and on the internet, but I'm unable to get a job," said Garner, a Cleveland, Ohio resident who recently published a book about his prison/life experiences titled Wavering Between Extremes.

Recently Garner joined hundreds of people attending a day-long conference at Princeton University entitled "Imprisonment Of A Race," that featured presentations by scholars and experts on the devastating, multi-faceted impact of mass incarceration across America.

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth, accounting for 25 percent of the world's prisoners, despite having just five percent of the world's population.

America currently holds over two million in prisoners with double that number under supervision of parole and probation, according to federal government figures.

Mass incarceration consumes over $50-billion annually across America – money far better spent on creating jobs and improving education.

Under federal law persons with drug convictions like Garner are permanently barred from receiving financial aid for education, food stamps, welfare and publicly funded housing.

But only drug convictions trigger these exclusions under federal law. Violent bank robbers, white-collar criminals like Wall Street scam artists who steal billions, and even murderers who've done their time do not face the post-release deprivations slapped on those with drug convictions on their records, including those imprisoned for simple possession, and not major drug sales.

"Academics see this topic of mass incarceration as numbers, but for millions it is their daily lives," said Princeton conference panelist Dr. Khalilah Brown-Dean of Yale University.

Exclusions mandated by federal laws compound the legal deprivations of rights found in the laws of most states, such as barring ex-felons from jobs and even stripping ex-felons of their right to vote.

"Mass incarceration raises questions of protecting and preserving democracy," Dr. Brown-Dean said, citing the estimated five-million-plus Americans barred from voting by such felony disenfranchisement laws.

Many of those felony disenfranchisement laws date from measures enacted in the late 1800s which were devised specifically to bar blacks from voting, as a way to preserve America's apartheid.

During the 2000 presidential election Republican officials in Florida fraudulently manipulated that state's anti-felon voting law to bar tens of thousands of blacks from voting. For example, many people with common names like John Smith who shared their name with a felon were also barred from voting, despite having clear records.

Yet George W. Bush won by Florida – the state where his brother Jeb served as Governor – by 537 votes. That victory in the state where George W.'s brother Jeb served as governor sent him to the White House.

Policies creating barriers to things like education and employment make it "increasingly difficult" for persons recently released from prison to "remain crime-free" according to a report released earlier this year by the Smart on Crime Coalition.

More than 60 percent of the two-million-plus people in American prisons are racial and ethnic minorities.

"The U.S. imprisons more than South Africa did under apartheid. A nation that promotes democracy has a racial caste in its prisons. We must break that caste system," said the special guest speaker at the "Imprisonment" conference, Pennsylvania Death Row Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who telephoned from prison.

Racism is written all over the economically/socially debilitating practices embedded in mass incarceration.

A recent University of Wisconsin study found that 17 percent of white ex-con job seekers received interviews, compared to only five percent of black ex-con job seekers – a race-based disparity that is additionally devastating for people of color like Garner.

Ohio State University Law Professor Michelle Alexander, the featured speaker at that Princeton conference streamed live on the internet, said a major reason why imprisonment rates soared during the past four decades despite decreases in crime rates is anti-crime policies craftily manipulated by conservative Republican officials for political purposes.

Harsh anti-crimes policies of the 1970s and 1980s were largely a "punitive backlash" to advances of the Civil Rights Movement, said Alexander, author of the hugely popular 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Pennsylvania's prison population, for example, soared from 8,243 in 1980 to 51,487 in 2010, while the California prison population leapt during the same period from 23,264 to over 170,000.

Incarceration costs are particularly obscene when compared to college costs.

A report released in January 2011 by Pennsylvania's auditor general that noted the Keystone State now spends $32,059 annually to imprison one person…a cost that exceeds the annual $20,074 tuition for the MBA degree program at Penn State University.

A report released in January 2010 by a UCLA professor noted that the Golden State spends over $48,000 annually to imprison one person, more than four times the tuition cost of UCLA for a California resident. Back in 1980, California spent more of its state budget on higher education than on prisons, but that had reversed by 2010, with more of that state's budget going for prisons than for higher education.

America's corrosive War on Drugs – a "war" that basically ignores drug kingpins – has devastated black families, author/professor Alexander said.

"A black child today is less likely to be raised in a two-parent household than during slavery," she said. "In major urban areas almost one-half of black men have criminal records. Thus they face a lifetime of legalized discrimination," encompassing exclusions from employment and access to financial assistance required to secure a viable quality of life.

African-Americans are 13 percent of America's population and 14 percent of the nation's drug users but are 37 percent of persons arrested for drugs and 56 percent of the inmates in state prisons for drug offenses, noted the 2009 congressional testimony of Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project and a conference panelist.

Both ex-felon Herman Garner and Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of Princeton's Center for African American Studies, which hosted the conference, expressed similar views on the impacts of mass incarceration.

Dr. Glaude said mass incarceration is a "moral crisis with political and social consequences for America's future," during his remarks opening the conference.

Garner, in an interview, described the US prison system as the "biggest problem" in the American black community.

While politicians pushing punitive policies help drive mass incarceration, its budget- busting persistence implicates the blind-eye of society, said one conference panelist, history professor Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the new director of the fabled Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

"Middle-class whites and blacks in the U.S. are a new kind of 'Silent Majority' regarding mass incarceration," Dr. Muhammad charged. "This 'Silent Majority' supports unjust policies of increased law enforcement and incarceration as the only way to address crime," ignoring proven alternative approaches like "jobs, education and ending societal inequities."

Famed Princeton Professor Dr. Cornell West criticized both the black middle class and black leadership for inaction on mass incarceration.

"The new black middle class and black leadership are not attuned to the suffering in poor black communities," West said during the conference's Keynote Conversation between him and Professor Alexander.

"We need more middle-class people with genuine respect for the poor. This is more than serving as role model mentors," he said.

Author Alexander said ending the "mind-boggling scale" of mass incarceration requires "a major social movement."

One attendee at the Princeton conference, Daryl Brooks, an activist in Trenton, NJ who operates the popular "Today's News N.J." blog, backs Alexander's suggestion.

"To fix this problem we need mass boycotts. America only understands money and violence. We need to shutdown businesses like during the 60s," said Brooks, who spent three-years in prison for a conviction he says was false and aimed at crushing his activism.

"Blacks leaders allowed this incarceration to happen by doing too little to challenge this repression," he said.

The Obama Administration is doing too little to address mass incarceration and its impacts, many of the Princeton panelists and conference attendees agreed.

These critics blast the Obama Administration for what they called its tepid approaches to the torturous scourge of 240 sexual assaults daily in state and federal prisons, charging it with foot-dragging on the Prison Rape Elimination Act which was approved by Congress during the administration of George W. Bush.

While Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge to address the sentencing disparity penalizing powder cocaine more harshly than crack cocaine (a drug derived from powder cocaine), Obama's proclivity for bipartisan consensus has resulted in legislation that lower but did not eliminate the disparity.

That legislation did not apply retroactively, thus failing to mitigate stiff ten-year-plus crack cocaine sentences that have already left many blacks and Hispanics languishing in federal prisons.

"Obama and [US Attorney General Eric] Holder have no courage when it comes to the prison-industrial complex," said Dr. Cornell West.

Obama's Drug War Strategy

Still a Long Way to Go
By ETHAN NADELMANN

The White House's 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, released this morning by President Obama and drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, is both encouraging and discouraging. There's no question that it points in a different direction and embraces specific policy options counter to those of the past thirty years. But it differs little on the fundamental issues of budget and drug policy paradigm, retaining the overwhelming emphasis on law enforcement and supply control strategies that doomed the policies of its predecessors.

First, to give credit where credit is due: The Obama administration has taken important steps to undo some of the damage of past administrations' drug policies. The Justice Department has played an important role in trying to reduce the absurdly harsh, and racially discriminatory, crack/powder mandatory minimum drug laws; Congress is likely to approve a major reform this year. DOJ also changed course on medical marijuana, letting state governments know that federal authorities would defer to their efforts to legally regulate medical marijuana under state law. And they approved the repeal of the ban on federal funding of syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, thereby indicating that science would at last be allowed to trump politics and prejudice even in the domain of drug policy.

The new strategy goes further. It calls for reforming federal policies that prohibit people with criminal convictions and in recovery from accessing housing, employment, student loans and driver's licenses. It also endorses a variety of harm reduction strategies (even as it remains allergic to using the actual language of "harm reduction"), endorsing specific initiatives to reduce fatal overdoses, better integration of drug treatment into ordinary medical care, and alternatives to incarceration for people struggling with addiction. All of this diverges from the drug policies of the Reagan, Clinton and two Bush administrations.

Director Kerlikowske told the Wall Street Journal last year that he doesn't like to use the term "war on drugs" because "[w]e're not at war with people in this country." Yet 64% of their budget - virtually the same as under the Bush Administration and its predecessors - focuses on largely futile interdiction efforts as well as arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating extraordinary numbers of people. Only 36% is earmarked for demand reduction - and even that proportion is inflated because the ONDCP "budget" no longer includes costs such as the $2 billion expended annually to incarcerate people who violate federal drug laws.

There's little doubt that this administration seriously wants to distance itself from the rhetoric of the drug war, but its new plan makes clear that it is still addicted to the reality of the drug war. Still missing is the full throttle commitment to treating drug misuse as a public health issue, and to harm reduction innovations that have proven so successful in Europe and Canada. Still present is the old rhetoric about marijuana's great dangers and the need to keep current prohibitionist polices in place, with no mention of the fact or consequences of arresting roughly 750,000 people each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

I had the pleasure of testifying a few weeks ago before the Congressional subcommittee charged with oversight of the drug czar's office. The subcommittee chair, Dennis Kucinich, broke new ground on Capitol Hill by challenging the drug czar, whose testimony preceded mine, on his continuing commitment to supply control strategies notwithstanding their persistent failure, and on his resistance to embracing the language of harm reduction notwithstanding its growing acceptance by governments elsewhere. In my testimony, I asked the subcommittee to reform the ways that federal drug policy is evaluated by de-emphasizing the past emphasis on reducing drug use per se and focusing instead on reducing the death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drug misuse and counter-productive drug policies.

So, yes, this administration is headed in a new direction on drug policy - but too slowly, too timidly, and with little vision of a fundamentally different way of dealing with drugs in the U.S. or global society. The strategy released today offers nothing that will reduce the prohibition-related violence in Mexico, Central America and Colombia, or seriously address the challenges in Afghanistan. It dares not take on the embarrassment of America's record breaking and world leading rate of incarceration, especially of non-violent drug offenders. And it effectively acknowledges that politics will continue to trump science whenever the latter points toward politically controversial solutions.

We still have a long way to go.

~-~=+o)x|0/X\0|x(o+=~-~

Is Obama Serious About Ending the War on Drugs?
By Coletta Youngers, Foreign Policy in Focus
May 15, 2010

The rhetoric has changed. According to new U.S. "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the Obama administration doesn't use the term "drug war" because the government shouldn't be waging war against its own citizens. In March 2009, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke described the opium poppy eradication effort in Afghanistan as "the most wasteful and ineffective program that I have seen in 40 years." He bluntly stated that the U.S. government had wasted millions of dollars on a counterproductive program that generates political support for the Taliban and undermines nation-building efforts. And in his trip to Peru this past April, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela noted that the fundamental problem is not coca cultivation itself, but poverty and inequality.

Yet the indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups along the Naya River on Colombia's Pacific coast tell a different story. For the past three months, coca fumigation operations have taken place in one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world. Despite myriad concerns – from its ineffectiveness to the damage done to human health and the environment – the Obama administration remains committed to this fumigation strategy as well as to the overall Plan Colombia. The rhetoric may have changed for the better, but the reality of the how the U.S. "war on drugs" is waged on the ground in Latin America has not.

That isn't to say that there are no new developments. Important domestic reforms have begun. Following Holbrooke's statements, the United States suspended funding for opium poppy eradication in Afghanistan. In its proposed fiscal year 2011 budget for assistance to Latin America, the Obama administration has shifted some resources from military to economic programs. Yet for now, given its other foreign policy priorities, the White House has little enthusiasm for taking on the entrenched "drug war" bureaucracy or in expending political capital in pushing for reform of international drug policy.

Policy Debate Ignites

To its credit, the administration no longer uses the "drug war" as a way to gain political points. It doesn't try to discredit opponents at home by branding those advocating alternative policies as "evil legalizers." If anything, apart from Mexico and Afghanistan, the administration hardly mentions international drug policy.

This has contributed to an opening up of the drug policy debate, for the first time in many years, at the local and national level. Across the country, Americans are showing frustration with the economic and social cost of burgeoning prison populations and are questioning the logic of marijuana prohibition. In stark contrast to even a year ago, articles on the marijuana issue are now routine in newspapers across the country. All eyes are now on California, where a referendum on the November ballot proposes a legal, regulated, and taxed market for marijuana use.

The renewed debate has gone hand in hand with increased acceptance among politicians in Washington – long loath to admit that billions of dollars have been wasted in attempting to keep illicit drugs from reaching U.S. shores — that the so-called drug war has failed. Despite some fluctuations in the data, illicit drugs are as plentiful and available as ever. In the U.S. Congress, proposals to create commissions to evaluate U.S. drug control policies are winding their way through both the House and the Senate.

On the Demand Side

Concern with U.S. demand has finally gained the prominence it deserves. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that as the world's major consumer of illicit drugs, the United States must take more responsibility in confronting the problem of demand. Kerlikowske emphasizes the importance of treating drug consumption as a public health issue. And for the first time in the drug czar's office, a well-known expert in treating problematic drug use, Tom McLellan, serves as deputy.

At the end of last year, Obama signed a law ending the prohibition on federal funding for needle-exchange programs, which have long proven effective in reducing HIV/AIDS transmission. During his presidential campaign, Obama also supported ending the tremendous disparity in federal sentencing for crack and powder cocaine. Presently, sentences for crack are 100 times higher than for cocaine and disproportionately affect poor African-American males. The Justice Department is now backing the elimination of the sentencing disparity, and legislation pending in the U.S. Congress would dramatically reduce, though not eliminate, the gap. The Justice Department also announced that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents would no longer raid medical marijuana facilities in states where they operate legally.

Despite all of the talk about beefing up effective demand-related programs, however, only very modest changes have been made to date in the budget. The first budget fully elaborated by the Obama administration — fiscal year 2011 — proposes a 13 percent increase for prevention programs and a 3.7 percent increase for treatment programs. Presently, supply control programs, including domestic law enforcement, account for nearly 75 percent of federal government funding for drug control programs.

On the Supply Side

Last year, the U.S. government ceased its funding for forced eradication in Afghanistan and is instead channeling that funding into interdiction and economic development programs. This U.S. policy development is in line with a growing number of countries and international donors advocating for an "alternative livelihoods" approach to reducing coca and poppy production by enhancing the welfare of poor farmers via comprehensive development strategies that include improving local governance and citizen security.

This change in approach, however, may already be on shaky ground. According to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, "Voices for eradication are strong in the United States. The Obama administration has failed to prepare Congress and the international community for how long it takes for rural development to take place and consequently for the likely outcome that — despite a good policy — we may not see deep reductions in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for several years."

Although the U. S. government may have learned a lesson about forced eradication in Afghanistan, it has yet to apply it to Latin America. On the contrary, U.S. officials have consistently stated that such an approach should not be adopted in Latin America, erroneously claiming that the existence of stronger institutions provides the conditions for successful implementation of forced eradication. Yet, as in Afghanistan, forced eradication in the Andean region has failed to achieve its desired objectives. Over the last two decades, coca production has remained remarkably consistent at about 200,000 hectares. And the program has pushed people deeper into poverty and generated human rights violations, social unrest, instability, and violence.

One key reason for this policy stagnation is that the drug war bureaucracy remains intact. Although new staff is working on demand-related programs at ONDCP, the same individuals from the Bush years are running U.S. international drug control programs. In particular, officials who work on supply-side policies at ONDCP, the DEA, and the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement bureau at the State Department strongly support the current forced eradication policies. Internal battles have resulted in a significant delay in the release of the National Drug Control Strategy Report (NDCSR), which is to lay out the Obama administration's approach to drug policy. ONDCP Deputy director McLellan has already announced his departure from the administration this summer.

A draft NDCSR leaked to the press fully endorses Plan Colombia, the cornerstone of U.S. drug policy in the Andes. During the 2008 campaign, Obama linked support for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia to improvement in its human rights record. By April 2009, however, the administration endorsed congressional approval of the FTA. Then in September 2009, the Obama administration "certified" that Colombia met the human rights requirements laid out in U.S. law to continue receiving U.S. security assistance (an assertion long contested by Colombian and U.S. human rights groups U.S. officials rarely miss an opportunity to praise Colombia for "its vigorous fight against the production and trafficking of illicit drugs." Many analysts concur that although Plan Colombia may have improved security in certain areas of the country, it has had little success in stemming the flow of cocaine out of the country and has had a devastating impact in certain rural areas, especially among the Afro-Colombian population.

Moreover, military-to-military ties, ostensibly for counternarcotics purposes, were further strengthened with the signing of an accord on October 30, 2009 allowing the U.S. military access to seven military bases across Colombia. Of particular concern, the Obama administration made no effort to consult other countries prior to finalizing the deal with Colombia, and appeared oblivious to the regional tensions it ignited. Predictably, the controversial agreement sparked protest across the region and called into question the Obama administration's stated commitment to working multilaterally.

In the case of Bolivia, the Obama administration has continued the Bush administration's approach when it comes to drug control. In a September 2009 "determination," it declared that Bolivia had "failed demonstrably to make sufficient efforts to meet its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements" and later that year refused to renew trade benefits suspended in 2008. In fact, illicit drug seizure rates in Bolivia have increased significantly under the Morales government, and net increases in coca production are lower than in neighboring Peru. Venezuela also received a failing grade in a bilateral process that Latin American countries have long found offensive.

A Better Way

The failure of the traditional "war on drugs" approach is leading policymakers across the hemisphere to seek new strategies to contain the scale of illicit markets, and at the same time minimize the harms associated with drug consumption and production. There is also growing international recognition that drug programs must be carried out in full compliance with international human rights standards. Specifically, such measures include treating consumption as a social and public health — not a criminal — issue, ensuring proportionality in sentencing and having viable economic alternatives in place prior to significant coca or poppy crop reductions. Law enforcement efforts both at home and abroad should not target easily replaceable low-level offenders, but rather the leadership of drug trafficking organizations, corruption, and money laundering.

Finally, it's time for the Obama administration to put its money where its mouth is and significantly reallocate scarce U.S. resources to evidence-based education and treatment programs here at home and integrated economic development programs in poor rural and urban areas in Latin America and the Caribbean.