The decriminalisation of drugs is certainly a controversial topic. I have believed for a long time that the 'war on drugs' is a sham designed to line the pockets of parasites within society. Decriminalising drugs puts the drug lords out of business--immediately. It also benefits society in many ways. It doesn't make it a perfect society, just a better society, imo. The following is an article by Norm Stamper, former Seattle police chief and now a board member of LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition):

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/39565/


Any thoughts are appreciated.

The author of the article you cited recommends "legalization" Mark, and I agree with him.

These so-called "drugs" are commodities and we should treat them as such. There are no distinct 'moral' issues involved - just health issues and matters common to the sale and use of other commodities such as quality control.

The War on Drugs is as bogus as the War on Terror.

In neither case is there serious intent to 'win'. In neither case is the objective to secure the maximum common good. On the contrary, In both cases, the 'war' reaps a horrific toll in human misery, serves as a shield for other nefarious objectives - and some of the nastiest and most avaricious folk on the planet are the principal beneficiaries.

The finest irony - and the case where the two bogus wars most clearly overlap - is Afghanistan. Remarkably, under the Taliban (a regime condemned as authoritarian and worse by freedom lovers from Fleet Street to Wall Street), the level of opium production really did take a dive. The alleged war strategy of cutting off supply was actually working - in 2000/1. But no sooner did Afghani opium production drop significantly than 'the West' invaded and kicked out the offending Government. Now its back to business as usual in trumps.

The hypocrisy embedded within the cruel and unnecessary 'War on Drugs' is one of the (sickening) wonders of the modern world.

Sid,

Agree 100% (sooner or later we'll find something to disagree on).

I am often stunned and aghast at the self serving lies and hypocrisy contained within the war on drugs stance adopted by so many legislators and commentators, who are owned lock, stock and barrel by the same interests which benefit from prohibition.

Prohibition now serves as a gravy train for a vast conga line of hangers on:

More police to investigate and apprehend the (drug) criminals, lawyers to act for them in court, more prisons and prison staff to house the increasing prison populations (70 to 80 percent of whom are there for drug related crimes), more insurance and home security devices to protect against theft from drug addicts who steal in order to pay for drugs at black market prices, and a greater than necessary burden on hospitals and ambulance services in order to treat overdose victims and drug related assault victims.

The DEA in America has now become a huge and costly bureaucracy hostile to any attempts to contain it. Prison building in the US is big business, too. The DEA also influences drug policy in other countries.

What does the public get for this massive investment? Illicit drug use at record levels, billionaire drug barons amassing arsenals of stolen weapons, massive police corruption, a much higher tax burden on the public and inexperienced kids dying in the streets or having their future propects diminished through drug convictions. Sounds like a rotten deal to me.

Mark,

Try as I may, I can't fault you on a single word

Up here in north Queensland, front line 'warriors' of the Drugs Industrial Complex get to play with helicopters. No doubt the operators enjoy the thrill as they make lots of noise and burn copious quantities of fossil fuels. The WoD is also great for the local prison industry, keeps lawyers employed and helps the cops justify demands for ever larger budgets.

Is there anyone out there game to put in a good word for this absurd 'war' that has created a worldwide trillion dollar plus illegal industry and damaged countless lives?

I agree with everything written so far.

Unfortunately Sid and Mark, the fact that it is worth a trillion dollars is the reason it will never be legalized. The British fought wars over it, The Taliban had erradicated the trade in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion - now it's triple it's previous record yield. Drug trafficking in Panama increased 10 fold following the US invasion. The CIA have well documented links to importing and were very active during the Vietnam war.

If I was really cynical, I might think that governments have traded in and fought wars for this 'commodity' for years and these 'drug lords' will not give up their monopoly without a fight.

War on drugs = 'war' on those who use them recreationally or are addicted - not those who grow or wholesale them.

War on poverty = 'war' on the poor - not those who nor those policies which cause poverty.

War on terror = 'war' on public to keep them terrorized and under control - not to stop the real terror, both state sponsored and other (often a reaction to the former)

Etc. The War on Drugs keeps the prices high, the jails full, the poor and inner-city and non-white criminalized and keeps the ultra-right and morally challenged happy. During Iran-Contra (to name but one small episode) planes filled with illegal guns flew south, returning with cocaine. Some flew into and were off-loaded by uniformed persons at military bases in the US.....some War....like everything else just for public 'consumption'. Don't inhale.

I think that's just about spot on, Peter, with one query.

Was 1960s 'War on Poverty' really as inherently bad and misguided as you suggest?

Or was the greater problem that it was abandoned and has since disappeared without trace, superceded by other, blatantly evil 'wars' of greater longevity?

The following is from Leap's Jack Cole:




IT'S NOT ABOUT SAYING YES TO DRUGS, IT'S ABOUT MAKING THEM LEGAL
To the editor:

On reading the David L. Harris Aug. 3 article, "Just say yes to drugs," I was once again struck by the inaccuracies of information reaching the public.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( leap.cc ) is a nonprofit international education organization consisting of more than 5,000 police, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, DEA and FBI agents, and others who fought the War on Drugs for their entire careers. The last thing we want to do is, "Just say yes to drugs."

LEAP's mission is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction by ending drug prohibition.

This 36 years of war has accomplished none of its stated objectives. Instead, we have already wasted more than a trillion dollars, and each year we continue the war we spend another $69 billion tax. And today, drugs are cheaper, more potent and far easier for our children to access than they were in 1970 when I started buying them as an undercover narcotics officer.

All we have to show for this war is we now arrest 1.7 million people each year in the U.S. for nonviolent drug offenses - destroy all hope they may have for a productive future - and then wonder why they haven't stopped using drugs. You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction. It will track you every day of your life.

There is a better way. If we end drug prohibition, we can stop the violence and crime just as we did when we ended alcohol prohibition in 1933. The next day Al Capone and all his smuggling buddies were out of business and off the streets, no longer shooting each other, police or innocent children caught in crossfire.

Other countries do a much better job. Switzerland has had a program since 1994 where they treat heroin users by giving them free government heroin. Their results: not one overdose, AIDS and hepatitis dropped to the lowest per capita rate in all of Europe; crime was cut by 60 percent; and an there has been an 82 percent decrease in the expected cases of new heroin users.

If we treat drug abuse as a health problem rather than a crime problem, we can actually save most of those folks whose lives we destroy every year.

There are more than 110 million individuals in the U.S. who have tried an illegal drug. This is not a war on drugs, it is a war on people, and it must end.

Jack A. Cole

Mystic Avenue

Executive Director of LEAP

( Retired a detective lieutenant after 26-year career in the New Jersey State Police, 14 of them as an undercover narcotics officer. )



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake

LEAP is a great organisation. It has grown from five to over five thousand members in just four years. It consists of police officers, prosecutors, FBI agents, DEA officers and others who have spent their careers fighting the War on Drugs. So far it has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. However, the growth of this organisation, the unquestionable credibility of its members and the appalling failure of the War on Drugs in achieving any of its goals, means this organisation can't continue to be ignored.

http://www.leap.cc/

A good look through this site is highly recommended for those unfamiliar with the facts and figures behind the present charade being played out by the Government and the media.

In the US, the War on Drugs currently has a price tag of $69 billion per year and is rising. That's taxpayers money. How much of a flogging can taxpayers be expected to take? When considered in the light of America's multi billion dollar overseas military excursions, rapidly rising oil prices and economic uncertainty, surely the question must now be debated--is it worth spending this much money when all it achieves is an artificially bloated crime rate and actually INCREASES illicit drug use? There are 1.7 million arrests per year in the US for nonviolent drug crimes.

Prohibition is a stupid, stupid policy. Those involved in this massive gravy train will never admit this because it is their meal ticket. When will the American public tell legislators to end the charade? The only way to put drug traffickers out of business is to legalise the drugs. Criminal sanctions can never work when such a colossal profit margin exists--something like 3000 times the farm gate price in the case of heroin. Any elimination of a dealer from the distribution network is always quickly replaced, like the multi-headed Hydra. As Jack Cole stated, "It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on people and it must end". It's also a war on common sense.

Hmmm..I guess most Americans don't care about wasting $69 billion a year. It's also a huge waste of resources (ie. people) with 1.7 million being arrested in America on drugs charges each year.

If change is to come, it must come from America because America pressures many other nations to conform with these absurd policies. The most recent example of this is the case of Mexican President Vicente Fox, who proposed relaxing prohibition while placing Government restrictions on many banned substances in order to save the lives of young Mexicans and preventing them being tarnished with criminal convictions. However, the threat of economic sanctions from America forced Fox to back down. So once again the drug barons, and their de facto partners, the DEA, breathe a sigh of relief.

As you know the whole 'War' is a fraud and PR. To site just one of a million things....Opium production in Afghanistan is now UP after our little war there - which I think was the plan..... but the declaration of 'wars' of all kinds benefits the US to suppress, oppress and control...as well as rake in huge illegal profits for their cut.

A very fair statement, Peter. All these 'wars' have very little benefit for the ordinary American--but they can't see that. The apparent necessity for pursuing these dubious policies is reinforced in the media every day.

Some have stated that the 'war on drugs' is the most damaging social experiment in modern civilisation, in that the drug laws are much more harmful to society than the drugs themselves and actually achieve the opposite goals to those they purport to achieve. If ever there was a giant, shitting elephant in the living room, this is it.

We don't disagree. I'm not sure it is the largest 'elephant' in the room...but one of them for sure. But to the average ill-informed American, who 'buys' the TV and other media propaganda without question is sounds so pure and good...saving their children from the horrors of drugs and all.....even the hypocracy of two of the most dangerous drugs - alchohol and nicotine - being more than legal [pushed and promoted] is not seen - one could cite other prescription drugs too. CIA and other 'black ops' groups being involved in drugs is clear. US backing groups in countries that control the drug trade in them is documented. DEA and other Police Depts complicity or looking-the-other-way is also. But it keeps lots in prison and in fear; allows the police to do all kinds of things to those to be supressed/oppressed; offers social and administrative control; and a 'war' mentality over everything now in the USA...all false enemies contrived by the warriors within, IMO. That many in power take cocaine or have or do smoke pot is well known...but they don't get arrested...and if they do they get a slap on the hand. Olie North...dealt in drugs by the ton - as did others around and above him...did he spend a day in jail? I met a man conviced [falsely I can prove] of acccomplice to sale of grass - he was actually a car mechanic going to a man's house who had not paid for rebuild of his car and had driven it home without payment - at the home this man was in the process of arrest for drug sales. But, because he had twice in his youth been arrested for smoking grass and the three-strikes-your out shit he is in prison the rest of his life.....some war.....wait until they start the bombing!....

The California Assembly recently passed a bill legalising the cultivation of hemp for industrial purposes. Hemp is currently used in the production of paper, clothing, auto parts and building materials and its seeds and oils are used in food products. It is a $270 million industry in the US. However, as Federal laws prohibit its cultivation it must be imported from China, Canada and Europe. Unlike marijuana, industrial hemp contains only trace elements of the primary psychoactive ingredient, THC.

The bill, if passed into law, would represent a major economic boost for California farmers. It was passed by a vote of 43-28 in the California Assembly. Some GOP dissenters resorted to Reefer Madness style posturing to explain their opposition to the bill, "as a conservative Republican, I can't have my name attached to hemp", said Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia), adding that industrial hemp and marijuana both give off the same heat signal. Assemblyman John Benoit (R-Palm Desert) weighed in with a stunning display of ignorance, claiming that marijuana and hemp are "indistinguishable", despite the fact that law enforcement officials in 30 countries where hemp is legally cultivated have no trouble telling the difference.

It now depends on whether Governor Schwarzenegger will sign the bill. The pressure on him from the DEA must be immense. I predict he will buckle under pressure and refuse to sign, using the often quoted excuse that it would send the wrong message about drugs, or similar garbage along those lines. Arnie knows that signing such a bill into law could have an adverse impact on his political career, with a bloodthirsty media eagerly awaiting his decision. I hope I'm wrong:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/450/ca...emp_bill_passes

Well, Arnie put the kibosh on the hemp bill:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2...ies/03local.htm

Those hapless farmers in California don't know what they're up against. The DEA has become an uncontrollable bureaucracy, impervious to logic or reason. Another problem for plantation hemp is the fact that it requires no pesticides. Good for the environment but very bad for the manufacturers of these products.

At least it's proven one thing--Arnie's got his eye on the White House.

Few people know that Milton Friedman was a vocal critic of drug prohibition and the carnage it wreaks on society from the day Nixon officially launched the 'war on drugs' in 1972.

This recent tribute to the late Mr. Friedman is worth reading. Wall Street has called him the greatest economist of our time:

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1632/a11.html?289127

Eventually, people will realise what prohibition is all about--diverting public resources towards all the people who benefit from an artificially elevated crime rate. More police, more prisons, more prisonguards and more lawyers to process offenders. In Australia, Government statistician Don Weatherburn is on record estimating the annual cost of prohibition to be $5-$6 billion. Less money for schools and hospitals, of course. As usual, the mainstream media is at its mendacious best, holding itself out as a fearless guardian against 'the evil of drugs', while being a major financial beneficiary of prohibition. The media thrives on the public hysteria which this issue generates. They make millions.

Why the public can't understand what an onerous and needless burden this places on the taxpayer is a frustrating mystery to me. Part of the answer is, once again, the media and the role it plays in disseminating this issue. Bald faced bullshit masquerades as media coverage.

Last but not least, the illicit drug cartels are the biggest beneficiary of all. Repeal prohibition and they're out on their ass. No more mansions, helicopters, weapons caches, Swiss bank accounts and bloodbath turf wars.

Here's the way I see it: we have the police, the media, the law and the underworld on one side---and an ignorant, unwitting public on the other side. The public don't even know they're being conned.

Few people know that Milton Friedman was a vocal critic of drug prohibition.

As is the father of the modern conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr.

Indeed he was:

http://www.veryimportantpotheads.com/site/...S.htm#armstrong

There's a priceless article in Counterpunch by Fred Gardner: Nixon on Pot, Booze and the Fall of the Roman Empire

Gardner draws on tapes of Nixon chatting with his crew to tease out the 'philosphical underpinnings' of his position on 'drugs'.

This helps explain why the 35 year old 'War on Drugs' has been such an extraordinary failure.

The policy was devised by bigots and utter fools.

Here's an extract to whet the appetite:



Nixon apparently believed the push to legalize drugs was - inter alia - a Jewish/Communist conspiracy to destroy American society.

I imagine today's Red Mafya get a chuckle out of that.

Nothing beats clear, rational thinking when formulating public policy.

Perhaps it was the 'drugs' Nixon was on, Mark?

Anthony Summers claims Nixon was a pill-popper with good reason to evade the question "have you stopped beating your wife?"

The Wonkette, discussing the similarities between Elvis and Nixon, shows the happy couple together.

She tells us: "The National Archives and the Associated Press both claim the Nixon-Elvis picture is the No. 1 most-requested photograph".

That story about Elvis charging in to the White House always cracks me up.

I was disappointed that Elvis only got a badge. Since he was packing a piece, he should have settled for nothing less than VP.

From 'The Australian' newspaper:

[/color]Addicted to myths about opiates
Almost everything you think you know about heroin addiction is wrong, writes Theodore Dalrymple in his latest book
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 20, 2007
IT is not only those who take heroin who are blinded by illusions, but almost the entire population, including - or especially - the experts. Every problem in contemporary society calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy. The ostensible purpose of this bureaucracy is to solve that problem.
But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct and so no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself with no food for the future.
In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction. Thanks to propaganda assiduously spread for many years by everyone who has concerned himself with the subject, there is now a standard or received view of heroin addiction that is almost universally accepted by the general public, by the addicts and by the bureaucracy.

This view serves the interests of the addicts who wish to continue their habit while placing the blame elsewhere, as well as the bureaucracy that wishes to continue in employment, preferably forever and at higher rates of pay.

This standard or received view conceives opiate addiction as an illness and therefore implies that there is a bona fide medical solution to it. When all the proposed "cures" fail to work, as they usually do, and when the extension of quasi-medical services to addicts is accompanied not by a decline in the prevalence of the problem but, on the contrary, by an increase, who can blame addicts if, in continuing their habit, they blame not themselves but the incompetence of those who have set themselves up as their medical saviours and offered them solutions that do not work?

But where bureaucracies are concerned, nothing succeeds like failure. For example, the budget of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse increased by 16.2 per cent between 2001 and 2002, which would be quite a creditable performance if it had been a purely commercial enterprise. In the period, $US126,394,000 was added to its budget, but it would be foolhardy to suggest that a single drug addict stopped, or will stop, taking drugs because of this extra funding.

The standard or orthodox view of heroin addiction is as follows, a view that has a different function in the case of addicts, doctors and the general public. According to this view, a man is somehow or other exposed to heroin, more or less by chance. It has a pleasurable effect on him and he takes some more, and then some more again. Before long, indeed very quickly, he is physiologically addicted, and in order to avoid the terrible suffering caused by withdrawal, he has to take more and more heroin.

Unfortunately, in order to pay for this, he often has to resort to crime, unless he belongs to that small elite of addicts who come from the moneyed classes, for his addiction precludes normal paid work but requires a large income. His powers of self-control have by now been completely destroyed or subverted by heroin. Unless he takes a substitute drug, or possibly enters a lengthy and technically rigorous rehabilitation program, he cannot give up. He is hooked for life. He needs help.

There is only a very tiny grain of truth in all this. That physiological addiction exists is undoubted. But in practically all other respects, the standard view is wrong. It is a masterpiece of the old rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. It overlooks the most obvious salient facts.

A man is somehow or other exposed to heroin. But how is a man exposed to heroin? The use of the passive voice is here very instructive. The heroin comes to the man, the man does not go to the heroin. It is as if the heroin had a will of its own, unlike the man.

People who are genuinely exposed to strong opiates by chance, in medical circumstances, for example after an operation, very seldom become addicted to them. The vast majority of heroin addicts do not become addicted via the medical route. In fact, I do not recall one among the many hundreds whom I have met. When I ask heroin addicts why they started taking heroin, most of them reply with one of two answers. These are: "I fell in with the wrong crowd" and "heroin's everywhere".

When I reply that it is odd how I meet many people who fell in with the wrong crowd, but I never under any circumstances meet any member of the wrong crowd itself, who must therefore be lurking permanently out of my sight and hearing, the addict who has attributed his addiction to his fortuitous acquaintance with the wrong crowd smiles, or even laughs, knowingly.

Of course, it is perfectly possible, likely even, that people live in social micro-climates, in some of which heroin addiction is much more common than in others.

But there is no micro-climate, other than the self-constituted one in which addicts live, in which heroin addiction is universal, literally inescapable, as it would have to be for its ubiquity to count as the explanation of any individual addict's addiction.

DISTRESS from opiate withdrawal is overwhelmingly a social or psychological condition: it is not caused by observable physiological changes. This has extremely important implications for practice. It means that anyone who suggests withdrawal is a serious condition, worthy of and necessitating medical attention and treatment, other than treatment of the most trivial kind, is, wittingly or not, increasing the distress that withdrawal causes.

In other words, the whole apparatus of care, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, counsellors, serves not to alleviate suffering but to create and exacerbate it. (I cannot resist quoting a law first enunciated by Colin Brewer about modern society: "Suffering increases to meet the means available for itsalleviation.")

The idea of the most common method of "treatment" is substitution of heroin with a drug called methadone. This substance, which is most often taken in syrup form, but is also available as an injection and as pills, is a synthetic opiate first developed in Germany just before World War II. What we end up with (at best) is a methadone addict as well as a heroin addict, whereas we had only a heroin addict before. Neither the quadrupling of methadone prescriptions in Britain between 1982 and 1992, nor the doubling of them in the US between 1999 and 2001, had any effect on the scale of the problem. Substantial numbers of people are killed by methadone. Heroin was involved in 58 per cent of the 3961 fatal poisonings from opiates between 1993 and 1998 in England and Wales, while methadone was involved in 49 per cent.

The resort to intoxicants is a permanent and ineradicable temptation that arises from human nature. Not everyone gives in to it, however, or is equally susceptible, by virtue of their situation in life. The majority of people sometimes resort to intoxicants (or, like me with alcohol, resort to them every day), without letting them interfere with their ability to function in the world. Indeed, taken in moderation, they probably increase their ability to do so.

But there are some people for whom the desire for the consolation of illusion, and the illusion of consolation, is constant. In most Western societies, there is now a class in which tedium vitae is very common, almost normal. This is the class from which the vast majority of heroin addicts now comes. The young of this class are disaffected, and have good reason to be so. They are for the most part poor, though not of course in the absolute sense. They have no interests, intellectual or cultural. The consolations of religion are closed to them. As for their family life, loosely so-called, it is usually of an utterly chaotic nature, a quicksand of step-parents, step and half-siblings, and quite without an orderly succession of generations. Their sexual relationships are a kaleidoscope of ephemeral couplings, often with abandoned offspring as a result, motivated by an immediate need for sexual release and often complicated by primitive egotistical possessiveness leading to violence and conflict.

Their economic prospects are poor. They are unskilled in countries in which the demand for unskilled labour is limited. Any work that they do will be repetitive and dull; and while a man might once have derived satisfaction from performing a menial task well, from leading a life of modest usefulness to others, this is not an age in which such humility is very common.

In large part, this is because people live to a quite unprecedented degree in the virtual world of so-called popular culture. From the very earliest age, their lives are saturated with images of celebrities, whose attainments are often modest but who have been whisked by good fortune into a world of immense and glamorous luxury.

Crime ceases to be crime, but is rather restitution or justified revenge. The result is that, while profoundly dissatisfied with their present lot, they do not have ambitions towards which they might work in a constructive fashion, but daydreams in which everything is solved at once in a magical way, daydreams from which the emergence into reality is always painful. Any aid to the perpetuation of the state of daydreaming is therefore greatly appreciated.

The temptation to take opiates, and to continue to take them, arises from two main sources: first, man's eternal existential anxieties, to which there is no wholly satisfactory solution, at least for those who are not unself-consciously religious; and second, the particular predicament in which people find themselves.

The addict has a problem, but it is not a medical one: he does not know how to live. And on this subject the doctor has nothing, qua doctor, to offer. What he ought not do, however, is to mislead the addict, or allow the addict to mislead him, into thinking that the problem is medical and requires, or is susceptible to, a medical solution.

Edited extract from Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy, by Theodore Dalrymple, published by Encounter Books and distributed by DA Information Services, $31.30. Dalrymple has worked as a prison doctor and as a psychiatrist in a general hospital in a British slum.[color="#0000FF"]

As you're back, Mark, an update on the 30+ year old 'War on Drugs.

Latest indications are that this may prove a great year for business!

Thanks to deft work by NATO in 2001, with 'aftercare' continuing to this day, Afghanistan is now in peak opium production.

No more pesky Islamic scruples!

In fact, it looks like Afghani hash will be making a comeback too - along with plenty of cheap smack.

Notice the other key benefit of an invasion. Record crops can be now be blamed on 'insurgents', the Taliban etc.

At the time the Taliban were in power, when opium production declined sharply, that wasn't really going to work.

Now, not only is business booming - official spokepersons can once again wring their hands and blame it on someone else.

Read all about it...


[quote]Tuesday March 6, 3:39 AM
Afghan opium crop set to grow in 2007: UN

- AFP

Afghanistan's opium crop is likely rise again this year after production of the drug saw a record 50 percent jump in 2006, the United Nations warned on Monday in a new blow to eradication efforts.

A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report also pointed out clear links between the spiralling Taliban insurgency and the drugs trade in Afghanistan, which accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin.

"This winter survey suggests that opium cultivation in Afghanistan in 2007 may not be lower than the record harvest of 165,000 hectares (407,550 acres) in 2006," the report said.

However "effective countrywide eradication may alter this trend," it added. The government has boosted efforts to plough up poppy fields this year, sparking a handful of often-deadly clashes between police and farmers.

Poppy cultivation would likely increase in 15 provinces and decrease in seven, according to the report based on surveys in 508 villages in December and January.

Among those expected to see an increase were southern provinces worst hit by a Taliban-led insurgency such as Helmand, the biggest opium-growing region.

"The situation is worse in Afghanistan's richly fertile yet highly unstable southern provinces. Bear in mind that this region accounted for more than 50 percent of all opium cultivated in Afghanistan last year," the report said.

There were "clear correlations between insurgency and illicit drug-related activities," it said.

"While this is not new, Afghanistan seems to be the most obvious case in the world of how drug cultivation, refining and trafficking funds political violence, and vice versa."

The UNODC also noted a "new and disturbing" increase in cannabis cultivation.

"The last thing we need is for Afghanistan to switch from one drug to another or -- worse -- to become a world leader in cannabis as well as opium production," its report said.

In 2006 an estimated 50,000 hectares of cannabis was grown compared to 30,000 in 2005, and the figure was likely to rise again this year.

Last year's increase in the cultivation of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, was a blow to British- and US-backed efforts costing billions of dollars to stop the drugs trade through eradicating poppy crops, cracking down on those involved and offering farmers "alternative livelihoods."

The report found that the main reason that farmers were still growing the crop was that it could earn them 10 times more than a cereal per hectare.

Farmers also felt protected against the authorities by Taliban who earned revenue through cultivation, UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa

told AFP.

Much of the problem in the south was related to corruption, including in the judiciary, and the lack of government or military authority, he said.

"Anywhere in the world, not only in Afghanistan, this sort of illicit activity is related to a lack of control of territory by authorities. It's not poverty...," he said, referring to claims by poor farmers that poppies are the most lucrative cash crop.[/quote][/quote]

See below

Sid,

Yes, the evil of terror appears to be limitless. But WHO are the terrorists? Hmmm....

I suspect that UNODC report was ghost written by the DEA.

This spike in drug production will of course require taxpayers to cough up for more cops, courts, judges, lawyers, jails, insurance, hospital emergency room staff and doctors. The social costs of increased assaults, murders, HIV cases etc. will also be borne by the public in general.

Is all this damage to society (to keep us 'drug free') worth it?

Yes, says the DEA (annual budget in 2004 was $1.6 billion). Of course, they would say that. Without the War on Drugs many of them would be unemployed.

Yes, says the US prison building industry (2.1 million in American jails--highest in the world--80% are nonviolent offenders--so much for the land of the free).

Yes, says the pharmaceutical industry. Since the patent on heroin has long expired, the industry would suffer massively from competition from generically produced heroin, the world's most effective painkiller and still used in British hospitals, under the name Diamorphine, to treat many patients, including women experiencing difficult childbirth. Big Pharma is a multi-billion dollar industry, so it can afford two lobbyists to every US Congressman in order to make sure there's no fancy legislatin'.

Yes, say Western Governments. But its not heroin they fear but cannabis. So hardy it can grow almost anywhere, why would people pay for the production costs and associated taxes of a product they can grow themselves? Yes, its the unkindest cut of all, I can barely bring myself to say it---the Government would be cut out of the equation. There's little, if any, revenue from cannabis for them. Ouch.

Yes, say the media. What would the world be like without salacious drug scandals, disgraced athletes, politicians and celebrities, major drug busts, and record high crime rates to report? It doesn't bear thinking about.

Yes, (and many thanks) say the drug barons.


Finally, here's an interesting article from Lester Grinspoon:

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/48749/

[/color]Marijuana Gains Wonder Drug Status

By Lester Grinspoon, Boston Globe. Posted March 3, 2007.



A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine -- and US drug policy -- that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found smoked marijuana to be effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy. It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.

As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.

This is all good news, but it should not be news at all. In the 40-odd years I have been studying the medicinal uses of marijuana, I have learned that the recorded history of this medicine goes back to ancient times and that in the 19th century it became a well-established Western medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900, American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.

Of course, our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids, and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.

The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which marijuana has been used for centuries; they deserve the same kind of careful, methodologically sound research. While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain, and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe -- safer than most medicines prescribed every day. If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to isolate cannabinoids and synthesize analogs, and to package them in non-smokable forms. In time, companies will almost certainly come up with products and delivery systems that are more useful and less expensive than herbal marijuana. However, the analogs they have produced so far are more expensive than herbal marijuana, and none has shown any improvement over the plant nature gave us to take orally or to smoke.

We live in an antismoking environment. But as a method of delivering certain medicinal compounds, smoking marijuana has some real advantages: The effect is almost instantaneous, allowing the patient, who after all is the best judge, to fine-tune his or her dose to get the needed relief without intoxication. Smoked marijuana has never been demonstrated to have serious pulmonary consequences, but in any case the technology to inhale these cannabinoids without smoking marijuana already exists as vaporizers that allow for smoke-free inhalation.

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the US government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana -- and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use. Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies. The new Congress could go far in establishing its bona fides as both reasonable and compassionate by immediately moving on this issue.

Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions of Americans suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and other debilitating illnesses.[color="#4169E1"]

A very interesting article, Mark. The possibility of inhalers had never occured to me. But yes, that would solve (or at least reduce) the lung damage issue, and allow for safer yet effective self-medication (or intoxication, depending on one's point of view).

I also agree with your list of War on Drugs 'beneficiaries'.

At one time I believed that when enough progressive MPs of my generation or younger were in power, they'd change at least Cannabis laws to bring these laws more into line with their own cultural practice.

But of course a disproportionate number of such politicians are lawyers. Many of them have a proud record defending the underdog - and made a tidy income defending drug cases. Some still do.

Then there's the counselling and rehab services... never to forget hundreds of thousands of small time dealers.

Most of these folk are probably Labor voters and would take a dim view of anyone who put them out of business.

It all goes to show, I guess, that when it comes to industry policy, one should give more credence to disinterested observers than participants with direct pecuniary involvement.

As Scott said earlier in this thread, for a sane take on the Drugs War at the time of its inception, Milton Friedman takes some beating.

see below.

It's not really surprising that whenever decriminalisation of illicit drugs is suggested, it is so vehemently attacked from all quarters. Prohibition has become a huge industry in itself--a parasite sucking the lifeblood out of modern society while masquerading as a bulwark against society's moral collapse.

The list of groups who benefit from destroying the lives of many of our people is almost endless. I've read that illicit drug funds represent some 30% of the wealth washing through the stock market. Even the welfare industry benefits--the Salvation Army here in Australia argues strongly against drug law reform as sending the wrong message to kids but (surprise, surprise) they recieve $800 from the Federal Government for every person they place on their rehabilitation program. They never mention this fact, of course. No wonder talk of drug law reform gets Brian Watters so hot under the collar.

If rational, sane drug laws were ever enacted it was result in a large spike in unemployment--in the short term at least. This must be acknowledged. However, it would lift a massive burden from the taxpayer and from the wider population. Less crime, ruined lives and drug deaths. At present, Western Governments value the economic imperative over the human misery cost. While the US, the major force behind the global war on drugs, has such a powerful influence over Western Governments this will remain the case.

Good post Mark!'

Yes, unemployment might go up - and quite a few secondary sources of income would dry up.

However, considerable additional consumer spending power would be freed up. This must surely be taken into the equation. Economic modellers would have fun working it out. Perhaps they already have?

My impression - but it's only that - is that not much changes when "recreational drugs" are decriminalized (are there any recent instances of full legalization in modern societies? I can't think of any).

As most of the jails are close to full anyway, they just stop building new ones. Lawyers and police work less overtime. Psychiatrists find something else to do. Social workers still find plenty to keep themselves busy. Prelates preach about something else. Sociologists get re-employed studying the impacts of decriminalization. The media finds something else to shock us with. Organized crime... moves on to 'solve' other 'market failures.

see below

I think that's right Sid--repeal of the drug laws will cause a realignment in the financial system. The initial shock will be gradually blunted by counterveilling forces, mainly the fact that there will be more disposable income to be spent on other things. It would be interesting to observe the economic outcome as prohibition has artificially heated up the economies of western nations, imo. One thing's for certain---it would be a shocking result for organised crime and, to some extent, the stock market. The stock market would shed wealth as it, too, has been artificially inflated by prohibition.

There could be hope on the horizon. A British report calling for a reappraisal of the current laws has met with approval from certain parts of the media. Of course, the tabloids are up in arms about it because drug prohibition is their bread and butter.


UK: Editorial: A Startling Injection of Common Sense

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n291/a02.html
Newshawk: JimmyG
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Mar 2007
Source: Independent (UK)
Copyright: 2007 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact: letters@independent.co.uk
Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Note: See The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public
Policy website http://www.rsadrugscommission.org and the 335 page
report as a .pdf file at http://www.rsa.org.uk/acrobat/rsa_drugs_report.pdf


A STARTLING INJECTION OF COMMON SENSE

The report from the Royal Society of Arts Commission on Drugs tells us what most thoughtful people have known for some time: Britain's drug laws have been shaped by moral panic, rather than a rational analysis of the problem of substance abuse.

The two-year study argues that the focus of government policy should be on harm reduction. In common with last year's report by the Parliamentary Science Select Committee, it recommends that the existing "ABC" classification system be scrapped in favour of an "index of harms", which would extend the definition of drugs to include alcohol and tobacco. It also argues that there should be an emphasis on "medicalising" the problem of heroin abuse, urging the roll out of "shooting galleries" for heroin users and wider prescription of the drug by doctors.

The report's authors feel addiction should be seen as a health and social problem rather than simply a criminal justice issue. If drug taking does not harm anyone, criminal sanctions should not be applied. Jail should be reserved for only the most serious drug-related crimes.

They also correctly identify the major reason why this is not already happening: politicians. The response of the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, to the proposals yesterday sums up the problem. He rejected the arguments of the RSA in favour of reform and argued that the present approach by the Government is working perfectly well. Meanwhile, the former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, who is shaping the Conservative Party's own policy on drugs, was also critical of the RSA recommendations. Mr Duncan Smith does at least have a strategy for improving on the present situation. He stresses the need for residential rehabilitation for addicts. But by arguing that getting people off drugs altogether should be the only objective of government policy, he too demonstrates why politicians are failing on this crucial issue. Too many in Westminster feel it is their responsibility to stigmatise addicts, rather than help them.

Of course, the reason ministers are clinging on to the crude policy of prohibition is that there is still a wide-spread mindset in this country, stoked up by the populist press, that all drugs are "evil" and that, by extension, so are those that take them. The summersaults performed by ministers over the downgrading of cannabis demonstrate just how in thrall to this popular prejudice they remain. The RSA report argues that: "The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others. The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common." One can already predict the shrieks of alarm that will emanate from the prohibitionist lobby at this eminently reasonable statement.

The political classes have been afraid to challenge those who demand a "hard line" on drugs. They must begin to do so urgently. The present blanket prohibition is not working. A vast proportion of crime committed in Britain is related to the drugs economy. The Home Office has estimated that the social cost of drug abuse is between UKP10bn and UKP17bn a year. Our jails are bursting because they have been forced to take in so many drug addicts. As Professor Anthony King, the head of the RSA Commission, pointed out yesterday: "The quickest way into treatment is to commit a crime". What this shows is a society with its head in the sand when it comes to the question of drugs. It is high time we pulled it out.

The clock cannot be turned back when it comes to drugs. The reduction of harm must become the explicit goal of government drug policy, or we will all continue to pay a heavy price.

A very interesting article, Mark.

When it comes to Blunkett's reaction, "there are none so blind as those who will not see"

His reaction parallels James Callaghan (then Home Secretary) when the Wootton report was released, all those decades ago in the Autumn of the Summer of Love. Americans, more dramatically, call it 'The Fall'.

Some time ago, the Gay movement began a program of systematically outing closet homosexuals who proved themselves to be rank hypocrits while enjoying the comforts of power.

I recall Peter Tatchell led the charge in Britain.

At the time, I felt uneasy about this. It seems to me people have a right to private lives, wheover they are. I want politicians in power who are competent, caraing and honest about public policy. I don't care about their secuality.

Whether they have a right to gross hypocrisy - hypocrisy that involves pontificating about 'morals' they don't really share, or persecuting others over victimless 'crimes' that they themselves have committed and/or still commit, well, that's another matter.

Tatchell felt not. I think he has a point.

Back to the 'War on Drugs'.

I myself know ay least one MP who - at least in earlier years - "passed the dutchie" as they say in Brixton, London. Whether the individual concerned inhaled, I cannot say. I didn't take much interest at the time.

I imagine there's plenty more politicians in the same boat... to say nothing of lawyers, journalists, captains of industry...

This particular MP sits in a Parliament that some years previously enacted the most remarkable legislation to make it easier to convict Cannabis offenders. It reversed the presumption of innocence with respect to charges of 'possession' (I thought that breaches the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, but I'm old fashioned). There is no longer a right to jury trial in such cases; defendents must prove their innocence if illegal plants are found on their property. Consider how one might do that with a large rural property. How can landowners possibly know every plant growing on a few hectares - let alone tens, hundreds or thousands?

This is playing fast and loose with our civil liberties, breachig international obligations in order to intimidate more victims into pleading guilty and keeping the racket operating smoothly.

It seems to me those responsible for such laws endanger themselves - along with everyone else.

Have they never heard of frame-ups?

It only takes a political enemy to 'plant' one small plant on one's block - then arrange for an anonymous tip-off to the police - and it's camera, lights... action!

Odd it doesn't happen more often.

That it does not is probably a case of 'honor among thieves' - and another testament to the essential decency of the long-suffering general public.

I fully agree, Sid.

It always amuses me when shockjocks and journalists in the populist media scream about the evil of drugs. I hope they never get drunk because that would make them awful hypocrites---my consciousness altering substance is fine but yours is evil. That line is absurd regardless of the current legal status of any drug. The oft repeated theme that drugs like cannabis, heroin and cocaine etc are dangerous and thus deserve their illegal status is equally absurd because alcohol tops all the lists as the major killer and cause of crime. It has only one rival when it comes to causing damage to society and that is the havoc caused by prohibition itself.

Some of these talking tabloid heads behave as if they don't know the difference between a crime and a vice. Of course, their livelihoods depend on maintaining this ignorance.