Experts Turn Against War on Drugs

Advocates of drug law reform had reason to celebrate today after public statements by senior figures in the medical and legal community suggested the argument was turning in their favour.

The chair of the Bar Council argued in his most recent report that decriminalising drug use would have substantial public benefits, while the editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the UK's most well-respected medical publication, came out publicly in support of drug law reform.

The twin developments come at an exciting time for those calling for a more liberal drug policy. Both deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and prime minister David Cameron are on record questioning the effectiveness of Britain's drug laws. Activists hope reform might be in the pipeline.

In his most recent report the chair of the Bar Council, Nicholas Green QC, argued that decriminalising drugs did not lead to greater use and would have the effect of cutting crime.

"A growing body of comparative evidence suggests that decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health," he said.

"All this can be achieved without any overall increase in drug usage. If this is so, then it would be rational to follow suit. And this will save money and mean that there is less pressure on the justice system.

"A rational approach is not usually the response of large parts of the media when it comes to issues relating to criminal justice," he continued.

"This is something the Bar Council can address. We are apolitical; we act for the prosecution and the defence and most of the judiciary are former members. We can speak out in favour of an approach which urges policies which work and not those which simply play to the gallery."

The comments came at the same time as a special edition of the BMJ in which the editor, Fiona Godlee, endorses an article by Steve Rolles of Transform, a group which lobbies for reform of the UK's drugs laws.

"In a beautifully argued essay Stephen Rolles calls on us to envisage an alternative to the hopelessly failed war on drugs," she writes.

"He says, and I agree, that we must regulate drug use, not criminalise it."

Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, said: "The war on drugs is in deep crisis. These comments show that support for drug policy reform is becoming more and more mainstream, and fundamental change is now inevitable.

"With a prime minster and deputy prime minister both longstanding supporters of alternatives to the war on drugs, at the very least the government must initiate an impact assessment comparing prohibition with decriminalisation and strict legal regulation."

In 2007, Mr Clegg - then Lib Dem home affairs spokesman - said the "so-called war on drugs is failing" following a critical RSA report into drug prohibition.

David Cameron voted in favour of recommendation 24 in the home affairs committee's inquiry into drug misuse in 2002, which read: "We recommend that the government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways-including the possibility of legalisation and regulation-to tackle the global drugs dilemma."

Activists may be disappointed if they expect a sea-change in policy on the back of the coalition government's legislative agenda, however.

While Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron have previously expressed a sympathetic view of the arguments calling for drug law reform, neither will be keen to trigger the media attack which would result from a move to liberalise drug laws.

Recent comments from home secretary Theresa May to the home affairs committee suggest the government is moving in precisely the opposite direction, and is ready to pass legislation allowing for temporary bans to be imposed on legal highs while the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) establishes their legal status.

- Article from politics.co.uk.

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High School Drug Testing Shows No Long-Term Effect on Use

New research paints a decidedly mixed picture when it comes to mandatory drug testing for high school students trying out for sports or other extracurricular activities: While testing seems to reduce self-reported drug use in the short term, it has virtually no effect on teens' plans to use drugs in the future.

A U.S. Department of Education study, out today, surveyed students at 36 high schools that got federal grants to do drug testing. Half of the schools had already begun testing for marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs; the other half had not.

The results are mildly encouraging for drug-test proponents: They show that fewer kids in extracurricular activities reported using drugs when testing took place, compared with peers in schools where drug testing hadn't been implemented.

In schools with testing, 16.5% of students reported using tested-for drugs within the previous 30 days, vs. 21.9% in other schools.

And testing didn't seem to discourage students from going out for activities.

But that's basically where the good news ends. Testing didn't seem to have a "spillover effect" on kids who weren't trying out for extracurriculars

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UN Drug Policy in the Dark Ages

Two recently-released reports show that global drug policy is in the dark ages, and that the UN shares the blame for it.

One was the UN's own World Drug Report, an annual product of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), analyzing illicit drug use, production, and trafficking. One of the phenomena discussed by UNODC each year, of course, is cultivation of coca, the plant from which cocaine gets derived. Coca is grown in the Andean nations of Bolivia, Colombia and Peru.

The big news -- sort of -- was that Peruvian coca cultivation has surpassed Colombian growing for the first time since 1997. This happened because Peruvian growing has increased the last several years, while Colombian has decreased. UN drug chief Antonio Maria Costa had this to say about the Colombians: "The drug control policies adopted by the Colombian government over the past few years -- combining security and development -- are paying off."

But paying off for exactly whom? For Peruvians in the coca business, among others. Because once again, the main effect of the coca fight has not been to reduce the size of the crop -- total growing only declined by five percent last year, an amount easily accounted for by changes in demand or other fluctuations -- but to shift it from place to place.

The uploaded graph here tells the story. From roughly 1990 to 2000, coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru dropped dramatically. But Colombian growing increased just as dramatically. Demonstrating that supply will fill demand, when the kind of money is available to be made as the cocaine trade has to offer, total world growing of coca stayed roughly constant despite enormous shifts from country to country. The years 2003 to 2009 in a more gradual way show the same thing in reverse. And even the apparent drop shown from 2000 to 2003 is not what it seems, as 2001 saw the introduction of new, high-yield coca seeds. As the report noted, "

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Oregon Board of Pharmacy Adopts Rules to Reclassify Marijuana as a Medicine

By Americans For Safe Access - Friday, June 18 2010 Tags: Headline NewsclassificationsDRUG WARlegislationoregonSchedule ISchedule IIUSA  

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Study Suggests the War on Drugs Might Really be a War on Sex

Why is there so much heated argument about whether the use of recreational drugs is morally wrong? A new University of Pennsylvania study suggests that the debate about drugs might reallybe about sex.

Published in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B, the new study compared two competing theories about illicit drugs. Traditional theory holds that drug attitudes stem primarily from people's political ideology, level of religious commitment, and personality; for example, their openness to experience. The new theory, proposed by the researchers and driven by ideas from evolutionary psychology, holds that drug attitudes are really driven by people's reproductive strategies.

When the Penn researchers questioned almost 1,000 people in two subject populations (undergraduate students and Internet users) a clear winner emerged between the competing theories: differences in reproductive strategies are driving individuals' different views on recreational drugs.

Researcher Robert Kurzban said that while many factors predict to some extent whether people are opposed to recreational drugs, the most closely related predictors are people's views on sexual promiscuity. "This provides evidence that views on sex and views on drugs are very closely related," he explained. "If you were to measure people's political ideology, religiosity and personality characteristics, you can predict to some degree how people feel about recreational drugs. But if, instead, you just measure how people feel about casual sex, and ignore the abstract items, the predictions about people's views on drugs in fact become quite a bit better."

Somewhat controversially, the study also concludes that considering morality from the standpoint of strategic reproductive interests is a potentially useful way to understand why humans care about third-party behavior.

According to the researchers' evolutionary model, people develop complex differences in their sexual and reproductive strategies. One key difference that creates strategic conflict arises in people's orientations towards casual sexual activity. The relationships of people following a more committed, monogamous reproductive strategy are put at greater risk when casual sex is prevalent. On the other hand, people pursuing a less committed lifestyle seek to avoid having their choices moralized, forbidden and punished.

The researchers cite previous studies showing that recreational drug usage is often associated with promiscuity. This, they say, implies that attitudes against recreational drugs are part of a larger attempt to advance the cause of committed, monogamous reproductive strategies.

"Condemnation of drug usage might be best understood in the context of strategic dynamics, with individuals influencing moral rules in a way that favors their own competitive reproductive strategies," Kurzban said. "We expect that this relationship between sexual strategy and moral stances will occur in other areas as well, such as attitudes toward prostitution, sexual education or abortion."

- Article from Science A Go Go.

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My First US Federal Prison Visit With my Heroic Political Prisoner Husband, Marc Emery

, solitary confinement). When I arrived at 1:30pm, it was very nerve-racking. I stepped up to the massive building's entrance, got buzzed in, then found myself in a big lobby with a reflective glass booth and a little hole to pass ID and paperwork through.

There was a table with the paperwork to fill out for visiting, but no pen. Thankfully there were some visitors there who had been through it all before and helped me figure out the process (and loaned me a pen), because you don't get any answers from the staff. Visiting officially begins at 2pm on Fridays, but by 2:15 they just started processing, which took a very long time itself.

Big families and many individuals filled the lobby. So many broken-hearted parents, girl friends, wives and troubled children crying "I want to see daddy" and behaving unruly, to the distress of the moms

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Colorado Looks At Legalizing Marijuana in 2012

Angered by a pair of bills aiming at regulating the state's burgeoning medical marijuana industry just signed into law by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D), one group of medical marijuana advocates has announced plans to get a marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot in 2012. But there is already another legalization initiative filed with state officials and ready to go.

The competing efforts suggest a certain fractiousness in the state's increasingly crowded and complex medical and recreational marijuana communities, but they also illustrate the growing momentum toward legalization on the ground in Colorado. Just last month, a Rasmussen poll showed marijuana legalization hovering on the cusp of majority support, with 49% of likely voters approving, 38% opposed, and 13% undecided. A 2006 legalization initiative got only 39% of the vote.

The initiative effort in the news this week is called Legalize 2012, and is being led by the Boulder-based education and advocacy group Cannabis Therapy Institute (CTI), which is deeply unhappy with the new regulations provoked by a massive boom in dispensaries in the past year or so. "The problem we have in Colorado is that the medical marijuana amendment didn't set up a distribution system, and now, 10 years later, that flawed language is coming back to haunt us," said institute spokesperson Laura Kriho. "The only way to cure the problems patients are now having is across the board legalization for all adults. It will simplify things for law enforcement, patients, and people who aren't patients."

Kriho had a litany of complaints about the recently approved medical marijuana regulation legislation. "Anybody convicted of a marijuana felony in the past is not going to be able to be a dispensary owner anymore. Dispensaries are not allowed to compensate doctors or patients. The local bans on dispensaries that will be found unconstitutional, but who knows when. So many hoops for dispensaries to jump through, and they can still deny a license," she recited. "The stated intent was to put a big chunk of the dispensaries out of business, and I think it will," she predicted.

"On the patient side, they're requiring three different follow-up visits to the doctor, plus registration fees," Kriho said. "For most of the patients I know, coming up with $90 for a license and $100 for a doctor's exam was the limit to what they could afford. If you push it up higher, people won't be able to afford it. "

The initiative effort is just getting under way, said Kriho. "We're just in the process of getting it going, we're forming the language committee," she said. "It's important to us to make sure the language is acceptable to all the people in Colorado. With a year and a half to write this, we should be able to get a good consensus. We have a unique opportunity now -- people have tasted that freedom and had it yanked away by the government."

"They were upset with the regulation bills and have some major issues with them," said Brian Vicente of Sensible Colorado, which lobbied for some of the provisions in the measures. "But we are committed to working with them. We do have patient access issues here in Colorado -- for example, patients with severe depression or PTSD can't currently access it under state law. If we just legalize it for all adults, those individuals would have access."

"We might have some philosophical differences with groups like Sensible Colorado," said Kriho, "but we have to remember the end goal: keeping people out of jail."

"We need to agree on what we're going to agree on and work together on these issues," said Vicente. "CTI, Sensible Colorado, and SAFER have enough common ground that I'm optimistic we can work together."

"I think we can build an effective coalition," said Jessica Corrie, an attorney, Republican, mother, and nationally known legalization advocate. "We have everybody from evangelical Christians to hard-core labor activists. There are some concerns about the radical fringe of this movement, but we can't ignore them and shouldn't ignore them. I've seen many people with passionate radical views come into the fold. In the eyes of most voters, this was all about tie-dyed hippies, but now it's people like me. The effort should be to bring people together to the extent it's possible."

"I support any effort to change marijuana laws so adults are able to make the safer choice, but this effort seems short-sighted and unlikely to garner the support of the voters," said an uncharacteristically tight-lipped Mason Tvert, whose SAFER (Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation) ran the successful 2005 Denver legalization initiative and the 2006 statewide legalization initiative that won 39% of the vote.

Tvert and SAFER already have a legalization initiative drafted and filed with the secretary of state's office. Known as Initiative 47, the measure would legalize the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, three seedlings, and three mature pot plants by people 21 or older. It also calls for licensed marijuana cultivation and sales outlets, and it calls for a maximum tax of $50 an ounce.

"CTI decided to announce this because they think there should be no tax on marijuana," said Tvert. "The initiative we filed has a tax of $50 an ounce at most and allows licensed production and distribution, no penalties for adult use or possession, and people can grow up to six plants. That seems to me like a proposal that will be met with support by most Coloradans."

Tvert is willing to put that to the test at the ballot box. "We have every intention of running a ballot measure," he said. "The language is approved, the title is set, but we're holding off until 2012. We shouldn't have any problem getting through that process again."

If there is one thing everyone seems to agree on, it is that victory is within grasp. "We're looking for freedom for the whole plant, untaxed and unregulated as much as possible," said Kriho. "Legalize 2012 comes from that. We have to take this next step, and we have to get ready now. Legalization is polling 49% now and will be over 50% by 2012."

"I think the prospects are very good," said Corrie. "If you look at the 2006 initiative, legalization outperformed the Republican gubernatorial candidate, and we saw a dramatic shift in terms of voter demographics in 2008. Now it's polling at 49%, eight points more than any statewide candidate for office, and when you ask voters if marijuana should be regulated like alcohol and taxed, there is a jump of five or six points, which is a reflection of dire budgetary circumstances. That's where the Republicans we see on board are coming from. They think marijuana is bad, but they're tired of paying outrageous tax bills, and given some persuading that marijuana is safer than alcohol, I think they are reachable."

Married women with children have historically been one of the toughest demographics for marijuana law reform, but having activists like Corrie on board may be able to swing some of the worried mom vote. "Younger mothers worry that if we legalize marijuana, it's an endorsement of marijuana use," said Corrie. "My response is to ask whether prohibition stopped us from using marijuana. We mothers are the most powerful tool for preventing our children from engaging in dangerous behaviors, and so many women across the ideological spectrum have handed government bureaucrats the responsibility for taking care of our children," she explained.

"In speaking to older Republican women, many of them were actively involved in DARE in an effort to be the best parents they could be. They want to feel like there was some good in that, and I tell them they did the best they could with the information available at the time, but now it's time to work together with the best information to protect our kids," Corrie said. "This isn't a conversation you have in 10 minutes. This is a process of getting people to rethink ideas and concepts and political views, and that can be difficult, especially when people are forced to admit the government wasn't correct."

"I think Colorado is ready right now," Vicente laughed when asked if an initiative could pass in 2012. "But 2012 is when we'll actually have the resources."

Still, Kriho and CTI aren't putting all their eggs in one basket. "We are working with Roger Christie and his THC Ministry to bring on a cannabis religious revival," she said. "The Colorado constitution specifically protects method of worship, and we're confident the THC Ministry qualifies as a legitimate church. We may be forming branch ministries, like the church sanctuary movement. It's about protecting patients. Sincere religious practitioners should form a church to get protection," she said.

But if Colorado's marijuana community can keep from flying apart, in a couple of years, patients and recreational pot smokers alike might have made the entire state a sanctuary, through the ballot box.

- Article from Stop the Drug War (DRCNet).

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