Disinformation » War On Drugs

Yet Again, YouTubers Ask Obama About Drug Reform

DeepCough — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:37:40 +0000

Isn’t it funny how a Democrat refuses to listen to the people who put him in power? From Alternet:

“We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.”

Can you guess which 2012 presidential candidate said the above statement? You’d be forgiven for thinking Ron Paul, or even Gary Johnson, since both have publicly advocated for reforming our country’s drug laws. You’d be forgiven for guessing anyone but Barack Obama, based on his actions during the past few years, but it was. It may be hard to believe, but President Obama is the same person who once called for reforming our marijuana laws, and deemed the drug war an “utter failure” during his 2004 campaign for the US Senate. Despite previous calls for reform, on Monday night, when faced with over 70,000 individuals urging him to address the issue of marijuana prohibition, Obama’s only response was his silence. NORML and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition posted two of the most popular questions submitted to the White House’s recent Q&A on YouTube, alongside hundreds of others on the topic of marijuana law reform, but Obama offered no response or acknowledgement.

This recent attempt at citizen engagement, entitled “Your Interview With the President,” was launched to coincide with the State of the Union Address. The concept was simple. Anyone could submit a text or video question through the White House YouTube channel, before the public voted on them over the course of the week. The highest rated questions would be selected for Obama to address. On Tuesday, January 24th, NORML submitted a question of our own, which inquired:

“With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, for marijuana charges alone, and tens of billions of tax dollars being spent locking up non-violent marijuana users, isn’t it time we regulate and tax marijuana?”

The question exploded in popularity and received more than 4,000 votes in the first several hours, making it the 2nd highest rated question. Much to our surprise, that evening the question was removed from the YouTube channel and flagged as “inappropriate.” In response, an upset contingent of citizens flooded the page with marijuana law reform questions…

[continues at Alternet]

It Is Time To Legalize All Drugs

Amir Alwani — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:27:04 +0000

Cannabis female flowers. Photo: Acdx (CC)

I have a right to ingest/smoke whatever I want and to explore the contents of “my own mind” in the process, so long as I am not hurting anyone else, even if it kills me. This is a human right, albeit one that few people think of.

Imagine if you had the right to have a shed in your backyard but you didn’t have a right to explore the contents of that shed. That would be a little insulting, wouldn’t it?

Those who want to limit our mental exploration are to be held highly suspect. Those same people, for instance, often advocate that perfectly normal and healthy individuals go on 7 psychotropic pharmaceuticals at the same time. Limiting access to information is usually a form of domination.

We don’t truly have access to our own minds right now. Some of us do, but there is a huge effort to dumb all of us down and re-engineering us. Fluoride in our water supply destroying our third eye (pineal gland) is just one of many examples of this.

Decriminalization of pot is a sad effort to appease control freaks. I see no reason to demand anything short of full-on legalization (of all drugs).

The nanny-state should get off of our backs. Waving its finger, the state pretends it’s looking out for our best interest but half the time it’s dealing the very drugs that it’s punishing people for possessing.

Drugs are prohibited in order to instill a monopoly (e.g. coke/heroin) and/or to mold a society’s consciousness (e.g. magic mushrooms, LSD, DMT).

State-owned education and the mainstream media are the mouthpieces of the government and that is bad enough but we should now (or sometime soon) also deal with the reality that social engineers have prohibited specific substances precisely because those substances have, for thousands of years (in many cases), helped people become more self-aware, helped people discover that the ego is an illusion and that the true self knows no borders.

Whether this discovery happens rapidly via a deep introspective journey fomented by a heroic dose of magic mushrooms or whether a slower but slightly similar process unfolds over time with the aid of the occasional toke of a flower that allows one to relax and decompress, the name of the game is self-discovery and elites seem to passionately hate this game.

While this is technically an insane and sinister state of affairs – and, of course, those guilty should be held accountable – I personally think we need to clean up our act a little bit and look in the mirror, especially with respect to how we treat each other and how we dominate the other creatures that inhabit this planet. Otherwise we will have simply learned nothing, can easily be shown to be inconsistent and at that point we cannot expect to be taken seriously.

Misguided Rage

If you are one of those people who puts their blind trust in a government, you might find yourself at a soccer riot, filled with rage, fighting with someone over a ball going into a net, ignoring the true culprits behind the shaping of your depressing life, all just because you listened when they (government/society) told you “we know what’s best for you” and because you had not yet made the decision to face the reality that you had no sound reason to believe them (I’m not saying it’s an easy decision, I’m just saying it’s a decision… one that you likely can still make).

The pharmaceutical industry makes more money when people are ignorant of the fact that marijuana & hemp can replace a lot of the “traditional” drugs out there (and indeed, hemp does represent a massive threat to the oil industry as well) but at the end of the day elites are really giving each other high fives over the fact that they’ve more-or-less successfully banned one of the most awesome things in the world.

Pot is illegal because pot is absolutely amazing and has the ability to dramatically improve many different aspects of your life in a variety of different ways.

It’s great that people are fighting so hard for patients to be able to get effective medicine, but where does that put those of us who just want to have a good time with that same medicine? And wouldn’t those who want their medicine also benefit from the efforts of those who want total freedom to enjoy that which is harmless?

Do I have to sit here and wish I get cancer or some other serious ailment just so I can one day finally enjoy smoking a joint in peace? This is absurd.

Comedian Doug Stanhope eloquently echoes my initial point, that the real problem is one of individual rights:

“If you’re gonna have a pro-drug argument, start the argument where it starts: I have the right to do what ever the hell I want to my own body, if it kills me slowly, happy for me, f*ck you, “clack clack” (miming a pump-action shotgun) stop me!”

When I came across the headline, “Snoop Dogg’s marijuana drug bust highlights idiocy of the failed War on Drugs,” I was happy that Natural News was reporting on such a blatant attack on individual rights. I mean Snoop did have a medical marijuana license, when all is said and done, and these mixed messages about pot are getting ridiculous. When I finally had time to actually read the article a week later, however, I was shocked and amazed.

As a disclaimer, I will say that I have been an enormous fan of Natural News for years (and probably will continue to be). In the past I’ve even sent the editor, Mike Adams, a letter of gratitude for putting Natural News on the map.

I’m grateful to be able to upload some of my videos on Natural News’s video section as well and I’m going to continue to have Natural News’ RSS feed on the Potent News website because I value a lot of the other content that Natural News reports on with regard to cancer-cures, food freedom, the highly detrimental effects of vaccines, other health issues, the growing police state, etc., but I want to make it known that I now find myself very confused by Mike Adams’ take on marijuana and drug laws in general.

I do have a lot of respect for Mike Adams but this issue is one that has deeply affected my life in a number of ways and so I will not hesitate to be blunt.

A Drug Court For Pot?

The article states,

Ideally, marijuana possession should be de-criminalized to free up law enforcement resources for more important tasks (and to take the ego out of the DEA, which is a rogue government ~~agency~~ gang that openly violates state law).

Barring that, the next best option is to pass state laws that put marijuana possession under the jurisdiction of a drug court, not a criminal court. In fact, this idea of approaching drug possession from a health care point of view (rather than a criminal point of view) works for all street drugs: meth, heroin, cocaine, etc.

Later the article elaborates on the drug court:

Drug problems needed to be treated in a “drug court” where court options include:

• Mandatory drug detox treatment.

• Mandatory drug counseling.

• Nutritional support programs for detox and overcoming drug addiction.

• Paying of relatively small fines, similar to traffic tickets.

• Regular drug testing for a limited period of time to determine compliance.

My first thought is, “are you joking?”

My second thought is, “why not make all drugs legal?”

This probably only sounds radical to those who have a residue of a holier-than-thou attitude whereby they think they know what’s best for everyone. To me, a drug court for pot sounds radical.

Freedom is an all-or-nothing thing. You can’t be a half-slave.

As many people have pointed out, decriminalization is a flimsy concept. I almost find the concept offensive. It’s saying you can have “small amounts”. What a tease! There is no dignity in decriminalization and it only delays the inevitable.

Also, I don’t know if Mike Adams forgot, but it’s worth mentioning that marijuana is not only “far less harmful” than alcohol, as he put it, but marijuana is also a medicine that treats over 100 conditions (1,2). I don’t say that as an argument for legalization. This is simply something which Natural News has covered before but which is apparently irrelevant now (although, to be fair, he didn’t write the specific Natural News article I’m thinking of).

Personally, I think it would have been ideal if Mike Adams mentioned operation Fast and Furious (which he has covered before), as globalist-funded coke gangs spilling into the US with guns given to them by the ATF and the White House would definitely be relevant to a discussion of the root causes of drug-culture.

The current marijuana situation is a joke. The whole drug war is a joke. They ship the narcotics in and then bust us for using them. There’s no bargaining with these people. If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.

This whole thing is a very complex issue and deserves a lot of attention. We are at a particular stage in our evolution. Our relationship to each other and our relationship to the world is reflected accordingly. We cannot reasonably hope to reclaim our humanity while simultaneously allowing others to use every excuse they can come up with to dictate the parameters of our behavior and mental exploration. We do not need to be treated like infants.

Let’s pause for a moment to examine one thing. When you spend your time with friends and family, you start to sound like them. We all know that.

Similarly, we are trapped, so to speak, in a Matrix-like world that is constructed by unseen cockroaches, and so those cockroaches have rubbed off on us.

I mean, it seems like the powers-that-be think they know what’s best for everyone and everything. It follows that we’ll mimic their dominating ways when exposed to the constructed reality they have manufactured for us (at least a bit, in some ways, I mean they’re not our “friends” but you catch my drift).

It’s not all bad. Conversely, the evil scumbags must also have the good people rub off on them. It’s only a matter of time before the nanny-state gains a bit of sanity and we all understand where we’re all coming from.

Rewind

While doing more research, I found an earlier Natural News article about Willie Nelson’s arrest for pot, where Mike Adams advocated legalization (and taxation… I don’t understand why we should tax this… maybe I’m missing something but I’m going to ignore this for now).

Legalization seems to be a much more sound position but I don’t know why a little more than a year later Mike Adams became content demanding the above mentioned de-criminalization / drug court (which I feel represents a compromise).

In this article on the Willie Nelson bust, Mike writes,

For the record, I’m not a marijuana smoker, and I would never encourage any individual to take up such a habit unless they had a legitimate medical need for pain relief. However, I am totally against the continued persecution of individuals who buy, possess or consume this medicinal herb. They harm no one but themselves, and smoking marijuana produces side effects that are far milder than drinking alcohol.

I find the “harm no one but themselves” part to be a little pompous. Personally, I would recommend that everyone try it at least once. There, I said it. I’m also not the only person who’s said it.

Legendary comedian Bill Hicks has joked that marijuana should not only be legalized but should also be mandatory (fast-forward to 3:45):

Comedian Kat Williams also gets the message across very succinctly:

It helps me make visual art and music, it helps me write articles, and above all, it helps me be more patient and understanding with people. Perhaps as a result of a combination of all of these things, it helps me be more self-aware and allows me to not waste my energy fighting other peoples’ battles.

Influential writer Alan Watts was largely responsible for popularizing Zen in the west and he has said that a lot of the problems in life occur simply from not thinking things through all the way to the end.

Marijuana helps many people slow down and not panic so much, to the point that we can actually think for once. State-owned education seeks to accomplish the opposite of this and that’s an important thing to keep in mind. Your government wants you in the dark about substances that make you less afraid.

Mike Adams goes on to write things which are indeed 100% accurate but which nevertheless don’t capture the whole picture:

Why is marijuana criminalized in America? The answer is simply that marijuana prohibition is the cornerstone of the American police state. Keeping this herb illegal keeps millions of people employed in law enforcement who otherwise wouldn’t have jobs. It keeps the prison industry strong and gives cops a reason to search vehicles.

It even gives law enforcement officers yet another excuse to hold “terrorism drills.” Seriously: A recent terrorism drill in Northern California imagined pot heads taking over Shasta Dam and blowing up vehicles (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle…). These cops must have a lot of free time on their hands to dream up these wild (and highly improbable) scenarios. But keeping marijuana criminalized allows them to spend more taxpayer money running these useless drills that, after all, keep them all well paid.

At the same time, it causes billions of dollars a year to flow into the underground black market economy — money that would otherwise be used to raise tax revenues for states. (http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy…)

Yes, these are all true reasons. In fact, even in Arnprior, Ontario, Canada, back in April of 2011, police threw a flash-bang grenade into a guy’s son’s bedroom window (for suspicion of some pot and a weapon) and the guy even turned out to be the wrong guy. The cops were at the wrong house. If that man’s son was asleep in that bed he could have been killed.

I agree that police do need an excuse to push people around these days but they’re not just picking some random excuse. It’s not just a happy coincidence that this particular excuse has to do with a drug which, as I mentioned before, helps people make art and write (books, plays, films, documentaries, reports, articles, etc.), helps them think/meditate, and helps to dissolve the ego. Did I mention it helps people love each other? Is that a medicinal benefit?

A Mountain of Laws

It’s worth noting that I was surprised to even find out that there was a time when people could drive cars without a “driver’s license” (and then I was surprised at the fact that I was surprised). Many years ago when I visited France I was shocked to see that their laws are such that they allowed 16 year old kids to purchase alcohol at the corner store. They allowed you to drink in a car as long as you were a passenger and not the driver. They also allowed people to drink outside on the streets.

In Canada, the laws were a lot less lenient and yet I saw more car accidents, more teenagers getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk, more drinkers making fools of themselves on the streets, etc.

We must get rid of this idea that we have some sort of right to put a law on everything, every human activity. Simply saying, “It’s for the greater good”, is not sufficient. Those who purport this overreach often say they’re doing so for our best interest but any sensible person has witnessed the pattern that has emanated from the tentacles of the machine/cabal driving this accelerating global tyranny and it is an ugly pattern.

In fact, when one reads the writings of influential elites like Edward Bernays, one gets the overwhelming impression that he’s trying to convince everyone that if they didn’t allow society to be run by “men we’ve never heard of” tragedy would follow. Compartmentalization is the kind of thing that allows a disgusting Brave New World like ours to run smoothly.

Of course, by running smoothly I mean that we remain seemingly eternally ignorant of our true nature and of what/who we really are, our astronomical potential for true progress, and we get closer and closer to assimilating the traits of those who dominate us, we continue to allow our energy to be drained and our lifeblood to be sucked out of us, until we no longer recognize ourselves. That’s what “running smoothly” really is to people like Edward Bernays.

I’d like to think that now, in 2012, we’re past this naive attitude and can see the organic nature of our existence.

Not everybody is a good drinker but laws aren’t the solution to that. I don’t know if there is a “top-down” solution to that kind of problem. I have a strong hunch that things like that come down to personal responsibility. You can’t make a law, for example, saying “everybody is allowed to drink… except Jeff… Jeff sucks at drinking so he’s not allowed”.

Imagine if that’s what the law actually said. That would be insane.

Why? Because Jeff is not the only bad drinker and you can’t keep track of all the bad drinkers. Even if you could keep track of them, wouldn’t you have better things to do with your time? It doesn’t matter if Jeff’s a bad drinker. It doesn’t matter if everybody’s a bad drinker. The law isn’t there to make everybody perfect in every way.

Adding laws shouldn’t be a pastime. It shouldn’t be something you do for fun. In fact, history tells us that it’s best to have as few laws as possible.

You are not their God. You don’t own them. The only reasonable thing to do is to let everybody drink despite the fact that a few people might ruin that freedom for the rest. And historically, that’s what has happened. If a person can’t control himself, no nanny-state is going to teach him to control himself by controlling him for him. I’m not saying, “abolish the drinking and driving laws” or anything like that, but can anybody remember how well the prohibition of alcohol worked? How well do you think people would have taken to alcohol being regulated by a special drug court?

A baby is not going to learn how to walk if you don’t give him/her a chance to walk.

With all this in mind, however, even though we have not shed this naive attitude, I will remind all of you that it is not a hindrance that few people think of this, for indeed times of great change are often ushered in by an irate minority. Remember that.

Cocaine = Speed = Ritalin = Coffee

: Wikimedia Image

Another thought I had after reading the suggestion to have a drug court regulating pot is that I can’t count how many people I’ve seen lose a big chunk of their humanity simply from ingesting coffee all the time.

An argument that is sometimes given for the prohibition of these “harder” drugs is that people end up stealing to support their habit. First of all, caffeine is a drug. If coffee or cigarettes were very expensive, perhaps we’d see many more segments of the population stealing to support those habits as well (and indeed as the economy turns to crap, people will start to steal food from each other… is that any reason to outlaw food?)

The real reason that truly destructive narcotics like cocaine are illegal in the first place has nothing to do with the fact that cocaine may lead to destructive behaviour and nothing to do with any possible altruism on the part of your government. The reason harder (and more useless) drugs like cocaine are illegal is, again, to impose a monopoly on the narcotics.

Drug dealers generally don’t like that they might go to jail, but I’d be willing to bet that at least some of them love the cash they get to keep when they successfully stay out of jail and they might also love the price inflation that occurs when one of their “peers” (who they didn’t know, maybe) gets locked up.

Mike Adams was indeed accurate in raising the point that there is little difference between drugs like Ritalin vs. cocaine or meth. I can personally attest to this as six years ago I was doing cocaine every week for 3 months (or what was likely cocaine that dealers diluted with “incense powder”, baking soda, or other cocaine-looking things — another reason to legalize all drugs). I also had the opportunity to snort a line of Ritalin in those days and rest assured, the Ritalin high feels almost identical to the cocaine high. That’s right, folks. Most of these ignorant parents are basically giving their 9 year old kids cocaine in the form of Ritalin.

This happening all while the parents are completely oblivious that the coffee they drink every day produces the same effects/feelings as cocaine as well. People treat coffee like it’s water.

I’ve heard of people trying to “sober up”, after a night of drinking, by ingesting caffeine (as though being high on coffee is sobriety). Similarly, I’ve seen cocaine work wonders with respect to “sobering” drunk people up. A guy who is so drunk that he can barely walk or talk is literally a line or two away from coming off as though he has had almost no alcohol the entire night. I’ve seen this happen.

Wikimedia Image: cup of coffee (author: Assassingr)

While things like speed are more synthetic, the feeling of the high is basically the same. It is a travesty that so few people are aware of these things. Maybe someone more versed in chemistry would be able to split hairs here, but alas, the feeling of the high for these drugs is dauntingly similar.

Personally, caffeine makes me want to go to the washroom and take a dump, makes my hands shake, makes me feel nervous (when it wears off), and gives me the exact same “boost” that I got from cocaine back in the day. Could this be why cocaine was once an ingredient in Coca Cola?

I have caffeine as seldom as possible – maybe once every few months when no ginseng is around. Ginseng wakes me up without any of those bizarre side effects.

Personal Responsibility

I’m not going to lie – the pharmaceutical drug ads on TV are not helping the situation but I don’t think we have a drug culture because of ads on television. I submit to you that we have a drug culture because we want to have a drug culture.

Maybe we have a drug culture because drugs distract people and everyone’s too lazy and lacking in foresight to actually deal with the world’s problems. Maybe we choose to sedate ourselves and our children because we fear the responsibility we would have to take on when we realize how powerful we really are. We have this vague feeling that the longer we’ve thought a certain way the harder it is to change, however, I think too many people barely ever even try to change.

It seems to me that making it illegal to put drug advertisements on television would be a giant waste of time. Nobody (except for maybe victims of MK Ultra or some cruel thing like that) is forced at gunpoint to watch television. In general, we sit and waste our lives via our own free will. Let’s own up to that. We almost love the propaganda. More laws is not the answer.

Raising your child is your responsibility, not the TV’s responsibility and not the state’s responsibility. In fact, this type of Orwellian thought is the very reason the dictator in the novel 1984 is named “Big Brother”. It gets you used to the idea of feeling like you can trust the state and that it can replace your family. Arguably, globalists have been fairly successful in destroying the family and indeed this is one of their multifaceted tactics of global domination.

Let’s Get Real

Let’s stop pretending we’re that different from the people who dominate us. We should set an example and be the change we want to see.

Why are we so surprised?

Many of us now believe in karma, after all. How many of you have a cat that you’ve mutilated, euphemistically referring to that act as “spaying” or “fixing”? Hey, I’m not saying I’m better than you. I once got a veterinarian to “fix” a cat that I had too (when I was living on “auto-pilot” more). I’m just saying let’s be honest with ourselves.

How many of you have allowed your son (or daughter, in some places) to be victims of the barbaric act of circumcision?

How many of you have a gold fish in a tiny glass jail in your house?

How many of you don’t give two sh!ts when you see those poor lobsters at the grocery store living in conditions that I would call torture, as they are forced to be surrounded by their own crap and urine in a fluoride filled tank with their claws clamped shut, all these lobsters on top of one another in a mountain of misery, staring at artificial lights as they count down the days they have left?

You might think that’s funny or irrelevant, but in a world that is pure consciousness your intentions or negligence have an instantaneous affect on everything. You’re putting out bad vibes by not looking at the facts.

Sure, many other animals suffer as a result of stores like these existing and it’s definitely not always in-your-face like with the lobsters – people have the opportunity to separate “beef” from “cow” in this way – but I have never met anyone who has even mentioned this lobster abuse to me or what they think of it. I’ve seen people in front of fancy restaurants protesting with signs against foie gras being served (as they should – foie gras is an abomination), but never any love for the lobsters.

The fact that we can put up with this level of abuse right in front of our faces is, I think, a huge part of the problem. Just walking into a pet-store should kill anyone’s mood, but for some reason it doesn’t.

When I was young, I had a neighbour who “owned” a dog. The neighbour would let the small dog roam around in a tiny fenced-in jail-like area in the backyard but the dog also had some sort of electronic device on its collar that seemed to automatically electrocute the poor thing every time it barked. I would often hear the dog try to bark and then I would instantly hear the loud high pitched cry of pain that it let out upon getting zapped/tazed.

I have more stories like this, but I think you get the picture.

When I came across the headline “Marijuana Prevents PTSD In Rats” I thought two things:

#1: How the hell would anybody give post-traumatic stress disorder to a rat?

#2: Do you really need to torture rats to find out pot’s effectiveness? I mean, it doesn’t grow everywhere for nothing and I’m sure you could have found many humans who had PTSD and simply asked them, “Does pot help you?”

The above video is funny, I’ll admit (I laughed) but it also underscores a sad reality. Equally important to scrutinizing the power structure of our civilization is our ability respect each other in the moment, on a day to day basis, so that we can remember what it is we’re trying to save in the first place.

It is in our best interest to act humanely to all the different creatures and spirits that inhabit our planet. Otherwise we are chasing our tails and we can look forward to wasting even more energy on a fabricated war on drugs that only serves to divide and conquer us.

By the way, the day I read the Snoop-arrest article my website registered 420 site-hits. If that’s not a synchronicity, I don’t know what is.

Amir Alwani is a psychonaut who makes metal, electronic and hip-hop music. He is also the founder and editor of the online independent media outlet known as Potent News.

The New Cocaine Trade

majestic — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:46:34 +0000

Coca leaf in Bolivia. Photo: Marcello Casal Jr./ABr (CC)

John Lyons reports on some seismic shifts in where cocaine is produced, for the Wall Street Journal:

In the dusty town of Villa Tunari in Bolivia’s tropical coca-growing region, farmers used to barricade their roads against U.S.-backed drug police sent to prevent their leafy crop from becoming cocaine. These days, the police are gone, the coca is plentiful and locals close off roads for multiday block parties—not rumbles with law enforcement.

“Today, we don’t have these conflicts, not one death, not one wounded, not one jailed,” said Leonilda Zurita, a longtime coca-grower leader who is now a Bolivian senator, a day after a 13-piece Latin band wrapped up a boozy festival in town.

The cause for celebration is a fundamental shift in the cocaine trade that is complicating U.S. efforts to fight it. Once concentrated in Colombia, a close U.S. ally in combating drugs, the cocaine business is migrating to nations such as Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, where populist leaders are either ambivalent about cooperating with U.S. antidrug efforts or openly hostile to them.

Since 2000, cultivation of coca leaves—cocaine’s raw material—plunged 65% in Colombia, to 141,000 acres in 2010, according to United Nations figures. In the same period, cultivation surged more than 40% in Peru, to 151,000 acres, and more than doubled in Bolivia, to 77,000 acres.

More important, Bolivia and Peru are now making street-ready cocaine, whereas they once mostly supplied raw ingredients for processing in Colombia. In 2010, Peru may have passed Colombia as the world’s biggest producer, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Between 2009 and 2010, Peru’s potential to produce cocaine grew 44%, to 325 metric tons. In 2010, Colombia’s potential production was 270 metric tons…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Gary Webb’s Drug War Reporting Vindicated

majestic — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:30:32 +0000

Freeway Ricky Ross. (Patrick Bastien Photography)

The late, lamented Gary Webb never really received the credit he deserved for his investigative journalism blowing open the CIA-Contras drug trafficking scandal. Now Ryan Grim sets the record straight in this article for Huffington Post, ostensibly about Ron Paul and conspiracy theories, but really an opportunity to plug his new book, This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America:

…Earlier this week, I looked into [Ron] Paul’s claim … that the war on drugs had racist origins and that the medical community played a role in lobbying for drug prohibitions. That charge was more or less accurate.

So is Paul’s claim about the CIA and drug trafficking, a connection I explore in the book “This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America.” (An excerpt of the chapter on the CIA appeared in The Root.) The following is drawn from my book.

Since at least the 1940s, the American government has organized and supported insurgent armies for the purpose of overthrowing some presumably hostile foreign regime. In Italy, the United States helped pit the Corsican and Sicilian mobs against the Fascists and then the Communists. In China, it aided Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in its struggle against Mao Zedong’s communist forces. In Afghanistan, it once backed the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union and today backs warlords in opposition to the mujahedeen.

All of these and other U.S.-supported groups profited, or still profit, heavily from the drug trade. One of the principal arguments made by the Drug Enforcement Administration in support of the global drug war is that the illegal drug trade funds violent, stateless organizations. The DEA refers specifically to al Qaeda and the Taliban, but the same method of fundraising has long been used by other violent, stateless actors whom the United States befriended.

AN ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ STORY

Douglas Farah was in El Salvador when the San Jose Mercury News broke a major story in the summer of 1996: The Nicaraguan Contras, a confederation of paramilitary rebels sponsored by the CIA, had been funding some of their operations by exporting cocaine to the United States. One of their best customers was a man nicknamed “Freeway Rick” — Ricky Donnell Ross, then a Southern California dealer who was running an operation the Los Angeles Times dubbed “the Wal-Mart of crack dealing.”

“My first thought was, ‘Holy shit!’ because there’d been so many rumors in the region of this going on,” said Farah 12 years later. He’d grown up in Latin America and covered it for 20 years for the Washington Post. “There had always been these stories floating around about [the Contras] and cocaine. I knew [Contra leader] Adolfo Calero and some of the other folks there, and they were all sleazebags. You wouldn’t read the story and say, ‘Oh my god, these guys would never do that.’ It was more like, ‘Oh, one more dirty thing they were doing.’ So I took it seriously.”

The same would not hold true of most of Farah’s colleagues, either in the newspaper business in general or at the Post in particular. “If you’re talking about our intelligence community tolerating — if not promoting — drugs to pay for black ops, it’s rather an uncomfortable thing to do when you’re an establishment paper like the Post,” Farah told me. “If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done.”

In the mid to late 1980s, a number of reports had surfaced that connected the Contras to the cocaine trade…

[continues at Huffington Post]

Richard Branson: It’s Time To End The War On Drugs

majestic — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:34:24 +0000

Richard Branson. Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

The billionaire businessman shows a hint of his counterculture roots by joining the call for an end to the war on (some) drugs, on his Virgin blog:

Visited Portugal, as one of the Global Drug Commissioners, to congratulate them on the success of their drug policies over the last 10 years.

Ten years ago the Portuguese Government responded to widespread public concern over drugs by rejecting a “war on drugs” approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. It further rebuffed convention by placing the responsibility for decreasing drug demand as well as managing dependency under the Ministry of Health rather than the Ministry of Justice. With this, the official response towards drug-dependent persons shifted from viewing them as criminals to treating them as patients.

Now with a decade of experience Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism and HIV infection and create safer communities for all.

I will set out clearly what I learned from my visit to Portugal and would urge other countries to study this:

In 2001 Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines…

[continues at his Virgin blog]

Marijuana Use At 30-Year High Among U.S. Teenagers

Easy Rider — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:14:07 +0000

Anahad O’Connor reports in the NY Times:

One out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a near daily basis, a figure that has reached a 30-year peak even as use of alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine among teenagers continues a slow decline, according to a new government report.

The popularity of marijuana, which is now more prevalent among 10th graders than cigarette smoking, reflects what researchers and drug officials say is a growing perception among teenagers that habitual marijuana use carries little risk of harm. That perception, experts say, is fueled in part by wider familiarity with medicinal marijuana and greater ease in obtaining it.

Although it is difficult to track the numbers, “we’re clearly seeing an increase in teenage marijuana use that corresponds pretty clearly in time with the increase in medical marijuana use,” said Dr. Christian Thurstone, medical director of the adolescent substance abuse treatment program at Denver Health and Hospital Authority, who was not involved in the study. Medical marijuana is legal in 16 states, including Colorado, and the District of Columbia.

Missouri is the U.S. Meth Capital, Again

Easy Rider — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:59:29 +0000

Walter White has some serious competition. Chad Garrison writes in the Riverfront Times:

Missouri has once again been ranked as the nation’s biggest meth-producing state based on the number of drug labs busted last year.

According to Missouri Highway Patrol figures published in the Post-Dispatch, law enforcement seized 1,774 meth labs in 2009 — up 20 percent from the 1,487 confiscated in 2008.

Missouri outpaced the No. 2 state — Indiana — which had 1,096 meth lab busts in 2009. Jefferson County, Missouri, led the state with 227 labs confiscated last year.

The news comes as Missouri legislature considers a bill that would require pseudoephedrine — the key ingredient for meth — to be sold only as a prescription.

Drug Cartels Building High-Tech Tunnels Below U.S.-Mexico Border

JacobSloan — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:04:16 +0000

Gives new meaning to “underground economy.” The Globe and Mail writes:

When architect Felipe de Jesus Corona built Mexico’s most powerful drug lord a 200-foot-long tunnel under the U.S.-Mexican border with a hydraulic lift entrance opened by a fake water tap, the kingpin was impressed. The architect “made me one [expletive] cool tunnel” Joaquin (Shorty) Guzman said, according to court testimony that helped sentence Mr. Corona to 18 years in prison in 2006.

Built below a pool table in his lawyer’s home, the tunnel was among the first of an increasingly sophisticated drug transport system used by Mr. Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. U.S. customs agents seized more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine that had allegedly been smuggled along the underground route.

In the past five years, a crackdown on drug smugglers in Mexico and tighter U.S. border security above ground has led to a dramatic increase in the use, and the sophistication, of tunnels under the border.

There have been more than 100 tunnels discovered during President Felipe Calderon’s five years in office, double the number found over the previous 15 years. Officials suspect most recently found tunnels belong to the Sinaloa cartel, which has been perfecting its technique for two decades using specialized technology and a cadre of trained builders.

That tunnel, replete with a hydraulically controlled steel door, elevator and electric rail tracks, was built by the Sinaloa cartel, which controls the California-Mexico border area where the bulk of subterranean passages are, he said.

To burrow deep and long – one tunnel stretched four kilometres – smugglers employ powerful machinery, some of which can bore a small hole deep in the soil and create a walled shaft without having to send anyone below ground. “It’s super fast, it’s really actually scary,” said Tim Durst, assistant special agent in charge of ICE’s San Diego office. “You can have a tunnel done in a couple of weeks.”

The drilling equipment costs between $50,000 and $75,000, and officials say they have no way to stop cartels from obtaining the high-powered gear.

The War On Drugs: Ron Paul Vs. Barack Obama (Video)

Easy Rider — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:57:03 +0000

Obama’s Reefer Madness

majestic — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:48:00 +0000

International Drug Policy Reform Conference, Nov. 2-11

Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, suggests that President Obama needs to take charge of the medical marijuana legislative chaos around the United States, in the New York Times:

Marijuana is now legal under state law for medical purposes in 16 states and the District of Columbia, encompassing nearly one-third of the American population. More than 1,000 dispensaries provide medical marijuana; many are well regulated by state and local law and pay substantial taxes. But though more than 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, any use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue. He appeared to make good on this commitment in October 2009, when the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

But over the past year, federal authorities appear to have done everything in their power to undermine state and local regulation of medical marijuana and to create uncertainty, fear and confusion among those in the industry. The president needs to reassert himself to ensure that his original policy is implemented.

The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms…

[continues in the New York Times]

NYPD Commonly Planted Drugs On Innocent People To Meet Arrest Quotas

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:59:42 +0000

Ever watch that show Punked on MTV with Ashton Kutcher? The NYPD narcotics squads do something that’s kind of like that. The New York Daily News reports:

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

“Tavarez was…worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny’s bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn’t limited to a single squad.

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.

A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD is plagued by “widespread falsification” by arresting officers.

Anonymous Takes On A Mexican Drug Cartel (Video)

HAL9000 — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:46:12 +0000

Story here:

Obama Is The Worst President In U.S. History Regarding Medical Marijuana

JacobSloan — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:15:47 +0000

…Or so the Medical Marijuana Project argues. What happened, Barry? You were supposed to be so cool.

During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama instilled hope in medical marijuana supporters by pledging to respect state laws on the matter. And for the first two years of his term, he was generally faithful to his promise. Yet suddenly, and with no logical explanation, over the past eight months he has become arguably the worst president in U.S. history regarding medical marijuana.

5 Tons of Marijuana Seized in Indianapolis, State’s Largest Drug Bust

Easy Rider — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:23:15 +0000

Mary Beth Schneider reports in the Indianapolis Star:

An investigation that started in March with money falling from a hidden compartment in a truck ended last week as apparently the largest drug bust in Indiana history.

More than 5 tons of marijuana and more than $4.3 million are now in law enforcement hands, with four men in the Marion County Jail on charges that could put them in prison for life.

The size of the bust has law enforcement confident that they have, at least for now, halted a large drug distribution operation in Indianapolis and probably affected a Mexican drug cartel …

Obama’s Crackdown on Medical Marijuana

Easy Rider — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:59:11 +0000

Photo: O'Dea (CC)

Justin Elliott writes in Salon:

Back in July, I interviewed a drug policy expert about an apparent change in Justice Department policy that suggested a crackdown on medical marijuana — which is legal in many states but illegal under federal law — might be coming.

Now, with the announcement last week by California’s four U.S. attorneys that pot dispensaries will be targeted with harsh criminal sanctions, the shift feared by drug policy reform advocates appears to have come to pass. The rhetoric from candidate Barack Obama about not prioritizing medical marijuana cases now seems a distant memory.

To learn more about what’s happening in California, I spoke to Bob Egelko, a veteran reporter who covers courts for the San Francisco Chronicle and has been following the story.

U.S. Government Poisoned Booze to Enforce Prohibition

Haystack — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:46:42 +0000

During Prohibition, crime syndicates were re-distilling industrial alcohol to supply their speakeasies. In an effort to “poison the well,” the federal government responded by requiring manufacturers to add new, deadly compounds to the industrial alcohol mix, leading to the deaths of thousands nationwide. In an article at Slate.com, Deborah Blum writes:

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was — the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom — the man died. So did another holiday party-goer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskeys and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

[Full Article at Slate.com]

Prescription Drug Use Now Kills More People Than Traffic Accidents

Easy Rider — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:29:32 +0000

Photo: 51fifty (CC)

Via the Inquisitr:

In 1979 the U.S. Government began tracking drug-related deaths and for the first time those deaths have surpassed the number of traffic fatalities on an annual basis. The most recent statistics which were taken in 2009 shows that 37,485 people died in traffic related accidents while 36,284 people died from drug related activities in a one year period.

Surprisingly the main culprit of those deaths were not street illegal drugs but rather prescription options including Xanax, OxyContin and the main culprit Vicodin which killed more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times a Santa Barbara sheriff said: “The problem is right here under our noses in our medicine cabinets.”

The study also revealed that traffic related fatalities have actually fallen by a third since the 1970s even as the number of drivers using American roadways continues to increase, while drug related deaths have doubled in the last decade. Deaths among the 50-year-old to 69-year-old crowd have been even worse, tripling during the same time period.

CIA-Linked General Poised to Win Guatemalan Presidential Election

Jin_TheNinja — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 07:18:41 +0000

Democracy Now! explores accusations of genocide against Presidential hopeful General Otto Molina Perez, and examines US foreign policy in Latin America with particular regard for the ongoing ‘War on Drugs’:

An Epitaph for the American Dream

James Curcio — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:38:22 +0000

Photo: Reckon (CC)

Via Modern Mythology:

(Update: Since writing this entry, I recently discovered a Mother Jones article informing me that the Republican/Tea Party Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, founded a company called SOLANTIC that specializes in drug testing, among other “public services” … Could it be that this legislation stands to benefit the people who are passing it financially? Hrmm … Jigsaw falling into place.)

Recently, as many of you may have heard, Florida senators successfully passed a bill requiring welfare recipients to receive mandatory drug screenings. It is doubtful the legislation will stop there. In what seems to me to be an instance of VERY OBVIOUSLY blatant racial discrimination and discrimination of the haves towards the have-nots, they are now finding another way to invade all of our lives and rob us of more of our privacy. One gradual erosion of civil liberties at a time. The cruel and hilarious irony of the situation is that although at the moment these measures are now only being taken against those who have already slipped through the cracks, it is only a matter of time before all of our privacy and civil liberties will be up for grabs.

Think of it like this: What if your healthcare provider (if you even have one, and you probably don’t) suddenly decided to take it upon themselves to barge into your house and force you to piss in a cup, clip your hair, ransack your apartment or home and search for anything mildly incriminating. Any evidence that you had engaged in anything mildly incriminating (and most of you have, or know someone who has) would then be immediate grounds for them to discontinue your healthcare. Alternately, say you yourself or someone you knew suffered from some sort of drug related addiction or health problems. Ironically, many of the same persons I have heard complaining about people on welfare using drugs have had similar issues themselves. Imagine, then, you yourself or someone you love ODs and they are dying. They are now in a position of life or death.

Now imagine the doctor in charge tells you, “Sorry, new ER policy: We are no longer allowed to treat this person because they have a history of drug use and their healthcare won’t allow it.” What if a doctor in an ER refused someone a life saving preventative measure to keep them from dying because of drug use? What if your healthcare provider suddenly decided that it didn’t have to insure you if you had a history of drug use?

Sound extreme? It is.

Fingerprint Analysis Technology Aims To Revolutionize Drug Testing

Pelliciari — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:39:46 +0000

Photo: Fretti (CC)

When someone drives a vehicle while drunk there are plenty of road side tests that police can perform to confirm the drivers intoxication. For many other drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine, there are signs of intoxication, but no immediate method of proof. Often, urine or blood samples must be taken at the police station, which must then be processed to confirm the what and how much of the substance taken. New develops allow a person’s sweat to give more instant results.The Raw Story reports:

A new technology that analyzes the sweat from a person’s fingertips looks to revolutionize the drug testing market, providing on-site results in minutes with a test so advanced it can even detect marijuana intoxication.

Using gold nanoparticles and special antibodies, the tech produced by British firm Intelligent Fingerprinting latches on to metabolites on the fingerprint and turns a specific color depending on which drug byproducts are detected.

While it can be configured to search for drugs like nicotine, methadone and cocaine, it also presents another innovation: helping to determine if someone is actively intoxicated on marijuana.

[Continues at The Raw Story]

300-Acre Marijuana Farm Found In Mexico

JacobSloan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:20:06 +0000

The Mexican military says it is the the biggest pot farm ever uncovered. The crop will likely be cut and burned — one wonders about the effects on residents in nearby areas. Via the Wall Street Journal:

Mexican soldiers discovered one of the largest marijuana plantations ever found in the country, just 200 miles south of San Diego, Calif., the Mexican Defense Ministry said. The plantation, in Baja California, stretched as far as the eye could see—totaling some 296 acres. The crop would yield about 120 metric tons and be worth an estimated $160 million.

Video of the plantation showed a sophisticated system of piped-in irrigation to support the plants, some of which were several feet tall, according to the Associated Press. The plantation was shielded by a black screen.

Mexico’s army hailed the find as the biggest marijuana plantation ever found in the country, saying the field was four times the size of a notorious bust in 1984 at a ranch called “El Bufalo” in northern Chihuahua state.

But experts questioned the military’s claim, saying the Bufalo field was far bigger. Several Mexican press reports say El Bufalo stretched for 1,344 acres, quoting officials at the time. Press reports from the time also said police found anywhere from 2,500 to 6,000 tons of marijuana at the ranch—worth more than $3.2 billion to $8 billion in today’s prices.

Should We Say “Maybe” to Drugs in Afghanistan?

moezilla — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 19:18:03 +0000

There’s a global morphine shortage in the west (while the Taliban is financing terrorism through black-market opium). So for over a year, a mainstream journalist for both Information Week and Library Journal has been contacting Congressmen about the “Sustainable Opportunities for Rural Afghans Act.” (”Whereas granting rural Afghan farming families an economic ally other than the Taliban is good for the national security of the United States…”)

Basically, the act would allow American pharmaceutical companies to buy opium from the farmers in Afghanistan — and even offer aid and bonuses to the farmers to deter their cooperation with the Taliban (before eventually transitioning them to other crops). “Action has been nil and talk has been quiet,” the reporter writes, even though it could help efforts to “defeat, disrupt, and dismantle” al Qaeda and its allies.

“As we press our advantage after the death of bin Laden, it seems reasonable to use every available tool toward our stated goal.”

The Use Of U.S. Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010

JacobSloan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:37:36 +0000

Presented by the Federation of American Scientists, the Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010 chronologically lists the cases in which the United States has used its armed forces overseas in military conflict over the course of our nation’s history.

It’s fascinating, and a quick skim highlights both that the majority of military action is overlooked, forgotten or unknown by the much of the public, and that with each passing decade, we seem to engage in warfare with increasing frequency. A mid-eighties retro snippet:

Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Medical Purpose

JacobSloan — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Our government will continue to structure policy on the basis that marijuana is the same as heroin — because it’s science. Via the Los Angeles Times:

In a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that [marijuana] has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart sent a letter dated June 21 to the organizations that filed a petition for the change. Leonhart said she rejected the request because marijuana “has a high potential for abuse,” “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” and “lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”

This is the third time that petitions to reclassify marijuana have been spurned. The first was filed in 1972 and denied 17 years later. The second was filed in 1995 and denied in 2001. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government.

Free Speech Moment: Declare War on Christianity Not Drugs!

BaphometRex666 — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 06:29:09 +0000

Site Note: From time to time, Disinfo.com does post an article for the sole purposes of the speaker intended on exercising their First Amendment rights. If you are curious about this new venture, contact us through the site with the subject line “free speech moment”, and of course, all comments are welcome.

HFS, Christians have denied and continue to deny non-Christians the right to pursue happiness. Christians oppress homosexuals and their right to marry and pursue happiness. Christians are attempting to thwart legal marijuana use. It’s time we deny them their rights for they have clearly shown they abuse those rights to oppress non-Christians.

If Germany can keep out Scientology then America should be able to boot out Christianity!

ISN, 666

Tommy Chong Debates Drug War Flack on the “Harm” Marijuana Has Done to Society (Video)

Easy Rider — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 08:17:13 +0000

LulzSec Leaks Arizona Law Enforcement Papers

BananaFamine — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 06:06:56 +0000

Rob Beschizza writes on BoingBoing:

LulzSec announced Thursday evening the publication at Pirate Bay of a trove of leaked material from Arizona law enforcement agencies. Arizona’s Department of Public Safety confirmed shortly thereafter that it was hacked.

In the press release included with the dump, a LulzSec affiliate outlines a more activist agenda than is usually associated with the group:

We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.

The documents classified as “law enforcement sensitive”, “not for public distribution”, and “for official use only” are primarily related to border patrol and counter-terrorism operations and describe the use of informants to infiltrate various gangs, cartels, motorcycle clubs, Nazi groups, and protest movements.

Jimmy Carter: End the Global War on Drugs

Easy Rider — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:45:27 +0000

I doubt any other former (or current) president(s) will make this statement. Jimmy Carter writes in the New York Times:

In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

Read More from Jimmy Carter in the New York Times

Connecticut Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession

Easy Rider — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:45:18 +0000

When is our large neighbor to the west going to figure this one out? Sorry New Yorkers … but hopefully we are on the road to legalization in Connecticut. Daniela Altimari writes in the Hartford Courant:

After a lengthy debate, the state House of Representatives gave final legislative approval to a bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The vote was 90 to 57 in favor and came after a spirited discussion that stretched on for nearly five hours.

The bill now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who immediately hailed its passage and pledged to sign it when it reaches his desk.

“Final approval of this legislation accepts the reality that the current law does more harm than good — both in the impact it has on people’s lives and the burden it places on police, prosecutors and probation officers of the criminal justice system,” Malloy said in a statement emailed to reporters moments after the vote was tallied.

“Let me make it clear — we are not legalizing the use of marijuana. In modifying this law, we are recognizing that the punishment should fit the crime, and acknowledging the effects of its application. There is no question that the state’s criminal justice resources could be more effectively utilized for convicting, incarcerating and supervising violent and more serious offenders,” Malloy said.

Read More in the Hartford Courant

Mexican Drug Lords Building DIY ‘Tanks’ (Video)

Easy Rider — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:33:08 +0000

Spencer Ackerman writes in WIRED’s Danger Room:

How ill are the Mexican drug wars getting? The drug cartels are building their own armored trucks.

Rival drug gangs are playing around with really serious military hardware, including .50 caliber machine guns and grenades. At least some of them figured out an armoring solution for the uptick in firepower: armoring. Chop shops add inch-thick steel plates to a standard truck chassis like that of a Ford F-150. At least 100 of the so-cold “El Monstruo” monster trucks have been discovered by Mexican security officials this spring, with the most recent two found this weekend.