| January 7, 1998 #028 | ||||||||
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A DrugSense publication
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Table of Contents
Number Jumble Clouds Judgment of Drug War Key Findings: Drug Abuse Warning Network | ||||||||
International News -
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* Hot Off The 'Net
Women's Christian Temperance Union At It Again | ||||||||
* Tip Of The Week
A Message From Mark Greer | ||||||||
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FEATURE ARTICLE (Top) | ||||||||
The Drug Civil War
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by Cliff and Margaret Thornton, Efficacy
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Our government declared war on drugs over a quarter century ago, but the war
is really against Americans who choose to use certain drugs - people not
inanimate objects. Regardless of what they claim, we are engaged in a
strange sort of civil war - the drug civil war. | ||||||||
The government would say that the war is not against the people who use
drugs, but those who sell them, as if there is some wide gap between the
two. Whether users of dealers, both all are people. In addition, millions of
American lives have been destroyed by charges relating to simple use or
possession of drugs. | ||||||||
America has declared war on its own people three times. The first was when
the North invaded the South to prevent it from seceding over the issue of
slavery. (It can be debated that this conflict, as well, could have been
resolved without the terrible bloodshed of war.)
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The second time was to attempt to prohibit the consumption of alcohol in
1921, which led to the most violent period of street crime we ever endured
until recently. The War on Drugs is the third war. It has been a politically
conceived, irrational reaction to what should be considered a public health
problem. The battlegrounds of the second and third wars were (are) the
streets of our cities. | ||||||||
If any President had ever said he wanted to declare a violent war on some of the most sick and unfortunate Americans, he would not have had much support. The declared war on drugs, however, has received support from all sides. Inanimate substances were the perfect enemy for a society that seems to require an enemy in order to feel secure. With the threat of communism vanishing, the timing was perfect and the politics "correct." | ||||||||
When Martin Luther King said, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today, my own government," he was referring to the war in Vietnam. Our
government has since turned its violence inward on its most vulnerable
people, minorities, the young, and the poor. Like all Civil Wars, this one
is fought between different groups of Americans, including government
entities. | ||||||||
Belief in neighborhood block watches seems to be growing, even after
volunteers have been killed on the streets. This thinking is the result of
the need for an illusion of control. This is psychological control -
reinforcing the "us" vs. "them" attitude. Many minority people make their
livings as drug warriors. Minorities involved in or using drugs are
considered enemies. War rhetoric is strong in minority communities. It is
divisive and dehumanizing. It helps people cope with the brutality of war.
Remember Gooks, Krauts, and Japs? Now they are roaches who run from the
light. | ||||||||
When government commandos use helicopters and assault weapons and crash
through doors of Americans, it is war. The people inside the doors did not
look like dangerous enemies at first. They were sick and pathetic - until
they began to arm themselves. Violence and drugs were never connected until
the government introduced the violence. No matter what anti-crime bills we
pass, the cycle of violence will continue until we substantially change the
role of our government with regard to drugs. | ||||||||
When we trace the per capita level of violence in American history, we see
that it jumped in 1921 and continued to escalate until 1933. It then
declined rather dramatically and was quite stable until the 1970=92s. During
the Depression, crime rates fell. Poverty, it seems, does not cause crime to
the extent that prohibitive law enforcement does. | ||||||||
"People... locked up for drug use are really political prisoners. For it is only politics that makes their drug use a crime while the leaders of the world are toasting with champagne," says Marloes Elings of Amnesty International. When the government uses hypocrisy and violence to control the behavior of citizens, the citizens become vicious. Government sets the tone by declaring war - as a result the drug civil war rages. | ||||||||
Cliff and Margaret Thorton head Efficacy, a drug policy reform group based
in Connecticut. | ||||||||
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From a discussion on the Alliance of Reform Organizations: | ||||||||
Since we already know what the drug war is I looked up the other relevant
words:
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civil: 1. of citizens 5. pertaining to the private rights of the individuals
and to legal proceedings connected with these. | ||||||||
civil war: 1. a war between factions within the same country | ||||||||
Quite revealing. We do indeed have us a drug civil war raging as we speak. | ||||||||
Nora Callahan in a post to Robert Field, January 1998. | ||||||||
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WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW (Top) | ||||||||
Domestic News
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Adolescents
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Questions about the cost and effectiveness of the main anti-drug program
taught in Orange County elementary and middle schools are prompting a
reexamination of the curriculum. | ||||||||
Proponents of DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, say the large number
of cities using the program across the country demonstrates support for
having uniformed police enter the classroom and discuss the dangers of
cocaine, alcohol and other drugs. | ||||||||
But, in recent years, the decision of cities such as Seattle, Spokane and
Oakland to drop DARE indicates that some officials are wondering if the
lectures to schoolchildren do deter them from drugs. | ||||||||
Several Orange County school districts are taking fresh looks at the
program, which is a good idea. | ||||||||
There should be no rush to end DARE, but looking for possible supplemental programs to help it operate more effectively is warranted. | ||||||||
A DARE spokesman said the program, which began in Los Angeles more than a decade ago, was never expected to solve America's drug problem. Seventeen one-hour lessons in fifth grade are no match for the availability of drugs. | ||||||||
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Heroin
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BOSTON (Reuters) - Purer product, cheaper prices and savvy marketing have
given deadly Colombian heroin the lion's share of the U.S. market with New
England the fastest growing segment, Drug Enforcement Administration
officials said Wednesday. | ||||||||
George Festa, the DEA special agent in charge of New England, attributed the resurgence of heroin to "a lack of memory on the part of youth, celebrity heroin chic and the fact that you no longer have to inject it. | ||||||||
The purity is so incredible, you can snort it. | ||||||||
"The ability to snort heroin like cocaine means that it eliminates needles and the risk of AIDS. So its use is spreading. These people don't realize that heroin is not cocaine. Heroin is not a recreational drug," Festa said. | ||||||||
The Colombians use their well-established cocaine distribution networks to
offer free samples of the drug and make it available in smaller, cheaper
quantities. | ||||||||
The result is that after decades of a market once dominated by Southeast and Southwest Asian drugs, Colombian heroin now accounts for more than 60 percent of the heroin smuggled into the country, the DEA said. | ||||||||
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Medical Marijuana
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Feeling the heat from law enforcement, a leading alternative to Dennis Peron's Cannabis Cultivator's Club in San Francisco has shut its doors. | ||||||||
Cannabis Helping Alleviate Medical Problems, or CHAMP, which provided
marijuana to 500 members from its headquarters at 194 Church Street, shut
down for good Wednesday. | ||||||||
"We didn't feel a lot of support from the city to support its clubs," said
Victor Hernandez, CHAMP executive director. | ||||||||
Hernandez said members of the staff at the club were upset about a two-week
period of surveillance by unidentified plainclothes police, who videotaped
outside the club and trailed staff members. | ||||||||
"The biggest culprit in this thing is Dan Lungren, who refuses to carry out the will of the voters who passed Proposition 215," said Hernandez. | ||||||||
Members of the organization were permitted to smoke marijuana for their
medical conditions at the facility, but it did not foster a night club
atmosphere like Peron's club. | ||||||||
Hernandez said he sees nothing wrong with Peron's approach. "In Dennis'
situation, people seemed to be in much better spirits than they would be
somewhere else," he said. | ||||||||
Hernandez said the club offices will be open next week from Wednesday
through Thursday, noon to 7 p.m., for members to pick up their medical
records. | ||||||||
[end]
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At the close of a long interview at his Cannabis Cultivators Club in San
Francisco, the affable Dennis Peron offered to roll a reporter a joint. The
offer was politely declined, and the proffered buds of a substance that
might have been marijuana were drawn back to the desk of club founder Peron,
who has recently declared himself a Republican candidate for governor of
California. | ||||||||
It was a typical, and not wholly unexpected gesture from the bad boy of pot
politics, but it underscored a tendency that is making Peron's colleagues in
the medical marijuana business very nervous - he bends the rules, and
sometimes, they break. | ||||||||
Peron's antics and incessant activism have fractured the coalition that in
November 1996 engineered a decisive victory for Proposition 215, which made
legal the personal use of marijuana in California for medical purposes with
a doctor's prescription. | ||||||||
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WISCONSIN MARCHERS WHEEL INTO MADISON
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Madison, WI - Fifteen medical-marijuana patients spent a week last September marching 210 miles from the small town of Mondovi to the state capitol here, in a follow-up to last May's "Journey for Justice" in Ohio. | ||||||||
The march's arrival on Sept. 18 coincided with the introduction of a
medical-marijuana bill in the state legislature by Rep. Frank Boyle
(D-Superior). Boyle's bill would reschedule cannabis as a Schedule III drug
- equating it with Tylenol/codeine, rather than with heroin - and create a
medical-necessity defense for patients with "acute, chronic, incurable or
terminal" illnesses, if their doctors say conventional treatment "is either
not effective or is causing severe side-effects."
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Rep. Boyle says he decided to sponsor the bill because medical-marijuana
patients "convinced me this was more than worth the political risk." He
argues there's "absolutely no rational" to deny people medication that
improves their lives, especially when drugs like steroids, barbiturates and
codeine are legal and frequently prescribed. | ||||||||
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Last year California voters, by passing Proposition 215, made it clear that they want marijuana, when used for medical purposes under the supervision of a doctor, to be removed from the criminal arena - although most voters are not interested in across-the-board legalization. During 1997, implementation of the mandate was shakey. The year began with federal officials hinting they might pull the licenses of doctors who recommended marijuana for their patients, but they backed off, reinforced by a federal court decision. | ||||||||
In California, several cannabis clubs continued to dispense marijuana, but
their ability to do so legally was called into question by a 1st District
Court of Appeals decision Dec. 12 that reinstated an injunction that shut
down the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco. Most observers, led by
Attorney General Dan Lungren, interpreted the decision as reaffirming state
law that prohibits anyone, even a non-profit organization, from selling
marijuana or possessing it for sale. | ||||||||
If that's the case, however, the result in practice will be that medical
patients with a doctor's recommendation will be able to possess marijuana
legally, but will only be able to obtain it on the black market, unless they
grow it themselves. Thus the black market will be reinforced. The voters,
perhaps relying on a clause in the initiative declaring one purpose to be
"to encourage the federal and state governments to implement a plan to
provide for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all
patients in medical need," thought they were voting for a small scale legal
"white market" in medical marijuana. | ||||||||
A few localities have made efforts. The city of Arcata came up with a
detailed plan that could easily be adopted or adapted by other cities. San
Mateo flirted with the idea of distributing pot confiscated in drug busts,
and one Northern California city discussed the idea of using a vacant lot
behind the police station to do it. Santa Ana is having the issue thrust in
its face through prosecution of people involved with a cannabis buyers'
club. | ||||||||
A closer reading of the 1st District's decision shows the court virtually
invited local governments to come up with safe and legal distribution plans
and delineated several criteria that would have to be met. Next year, then,
the ball will be in the hands of local governments. | ||||||||
[end]
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Sentencing
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Asset forfeiture laws have been spreading like a computer virus through the
nation's statute books. Until a decade or two ago, such laws targeted
primarily customs violators, but today more than 100 federal laws authorize
federal agents to confiscate private property allegedly involved in
violations of statutes on wildlife, gambling, narcotics, immigration, money
laundering, etc. | ||||||||
The vast expansion of government's forfeiture power epitomizes the demise of property rights in modem America. Federal agents can confiscate private property with no court order and no proof of legal violations. | ||||||||
Law-enforcement officials love forfeiture laws because a hefty percentage of
the takings often go directly to their coffers. The Justice Department alone
bequeathed $163 million in confiscated assets to state and local law
enforcement last year. | ||||||||
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The War On Drugs
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Your toddler throws tantrums - whose does not? - so you give him time-outs,
speak sternly, cancel a dessert. But not every time he acts up. Like most
parents, you choose your battles and skip some. | ||||||||
That's the thinking behind providing shelter for chronic alcoholics or drug addicts without requiring that they abstain or enter treatment. | ||||||||
It's called "harm reduction." It makes sense to keep people alive until, one
day perhaps, they sober up. In the meanwhile, they are prevented from dying
on the streets. | ||||||||
Most of us have a hard time with the measures and implications of harm
reduction. Beyond our tendency to moralize and blame victims, no one wants
to encourage deadly habits. | ||||||||
Naturally, the approach has opponents in the substance abuse treatment
field, where a single-minded insistence on abstinence has saved millions of
lives. Tempers flare when reformers suggest a more flexible approach may
help others. | ||||||||
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LINCOLN, Ill. - Erika Gonzales is reading to her 2-year-old boy, Jimmy. It's
a simple book about the simple things children do: visit the corner, take
the bus to Grandma's, go to first grade. | ||||||||
But barely a sentence along, she tosses the book down. | ||||||||
Crying and swiping at tears with the palms of her hands, she whispers, "I
can't read it."
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Then she gathers herself and starts reading again - into a cold, black tape recorder. Jimmy is 125 miles away in Joliet. Gonzales is in prison. | ||||||||
"Mommy misses you and loves you," she tells the recorder. "She's going to read you a book to let you know this is me and I love you." | ||||||||
She soon finishes the story, then gives the recording to the volunteers who
will make sure it is mailed. | ||||||||
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As the election season began gearing up in late 1991, President George Bush
got an unsettling bit of front-page news:
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The number of habitual cocaine users in the United States had jumped an astounding 29 percent in a single year, from 662,000 to 855,000, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Bush had aggressively pushed his administration's anti-drug effort. Now, he had little to show for it. | ||||||||
But the bad news, widely reported by newspapers across the country, was wrong. NIDA had miscounted in its annual National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, one of the nation's "leading drug indicators." A year later, without fanfare, the number of habitual users was revised back down to 625,000. | ||||||||
"Problems with statistical imputation," the General Accounting Office concluded in a 1993 report on the miscalculation that received little public attention. "We certainly think that more adequate quality control procedures could have caught findings of such significant policy relevance." | ||||||||
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Among key findings announced Tuesday by the federal government's Drug Abuse
Warning Network:
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In 1996, there were 487,600 drug-related hospital emergency-department episodes overall, down significantly from 1994 (518,500) and 1995 (517,800). | ||||||||
There was no statistically significant change in the total of cocaine-related cases between 1995 (138,000) and 1996 (144,200). | ||||||||
Between 1995 and 1996, there were no changes in either cocaine or heroin-related episodes by age, sex or race and ethnicity. However, between 1994 and 1996, there was a 21 percent increase in cocaine cases and a 20 percent increase in heroin cases among those 35 and older. | ||||||||
Although heroin-related episodes had increased steadily since the early
1980s, there was no change in the number of heroin-related episodes reported
from 1995 (72,200) to 1996 (70,463). However, between 1990 and 1996, there
was a 108 percent increase, from 33,900 to 70,500. | ||||||||
Marijuana/hashish episodes rose from 40,200 in 1994 to 50,000 in 1996, an
increase of 25 percent. Since 1990, such incidents have increased 219
percent. | ||||||||
Between 1995 and 1996, there were no changes in marijuana/hashish cases by age, sex or race/ethnicity. However, between 1994 and 1996, marijuana-related episodes have increased 33 percent among those 12 to 17; 27 percent among those 26 to 34; and 41 percent among those 35 and older. | ||||||||
Methamphetamine-related episodes dropped from 16,200 in 1995 to 10,800 in
1996. | ||||||||
Health officials attributed the increases among older Americans to their higher vulnerability to a range of age-related health problems and to a greater likelihood that they would seek professional care. | ||||||||
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International News
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If Jack Straw decides to back the decriminalising of cannabis, he will find
that the overwhelming majority of Britons are behind him, to judge from a
Mori poll for the Independent on Sunday which revealed that 80 per cent want
the law relaxed. | ||||||||
Almost half of those polled (45 per cent) said they were in favour of the
law being changed for those who need cannabis for medicinal purposes, while
35 per cent wanted cannabis legalised for recreational use. Only one in six
(17 per cent) approved of the Government's policy of maintaining the status
quo. | ||||||||
Mr Straw would be particularly popular among under-45s, 45 per cent of whom
believe cannabis should be available for personal use. The belief among
ministers and their advisers that our campaign appeals chiefly to
middle-class intellectuals was not borne out by the poll. More than half of
working-classrespondents (55 per cent) thought a debate on a change in the
law was a good idea. | ||||||||
Further evidence that the Government is wrong to dismiss the cross-class support for decriminilisation came from a phone-in poll published around the same time of the IoS Mori poll. The Labour-supporting Mirror showed its readers voting by nearly two to one in favour of decriminalisation. | ||||||||
Nearly six out of 10 (59 per cent) Conservative voters and seven out of 10
(68 per cent) of Labour were in favour of a debate; 64 per cent applauded
the unprecedented call by Lord Bingham, the Lord Chief Justice, last October
for an open debate on legalising cannabis. | ||||||||
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Australia's police chiefs have endorsed a milestone report which concedes
that police are having almost no impact on the trade in illegal drugs and in
many cases are making the situation worse. | ||||||||
The 160-page report, compiled by the Australian Bureau of Criminal
Intelligence, looks at decriminalisation and more police tolerance of drug
use. It also warns that "policing cannabis may be pushing cannabis users
towards harder drugs."
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The Australian Illicit Drug Report gives a comprehensive overview of the drug scene, noting the cost of abuse is estimated at $1.6 billion. | ||||||||
Meanwhile, the price of most drugs has remained stable or fallen and
supplies have been steady or grown - strong indications of the
ineffectiveness of police activity. | ||||||||
The ABCI's board comprises all of Australia's police chiefs and is chaired
by the Victorian Police Commissioner, Mr Neil Comrie. | ||||||||
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A Vancouver police officer doesn't want to tell one more mother of a son's
overdose death. He writes that a public-health crisis, not a law-enforcement
challenge, is besieging us all. | ||||||||
WOULD WE RATHER COUNT BODIES?
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Recently, I had to tell a woman her son had died from a drug overdose.
Leaving her world shattered by tragedy, I asked myself what our society is
doing to help other mothers whose children are at risk. Absolutely nothing,
I'm embarrassed to say. And with seven Vancouver residents dying in one
24-hour period from drug overdoses - nine in less than two weeks - that's
not good enough. | ||||||||
Rather than constructive action, however, lawmakers frantically rearrange deck chairs on the modern social Titanic. My hope for 1998 is that Santa has left a large measure of courage and wisdom in a number of stockings, so that our children can mark this year as the one when we finally began treating drug abuse as a health issue, rather than a criminal industry. | ||||||||
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PARIS =97 The French government will approve the experimental medical use of
marijuana in hospitals next year as a first tentative step toward relaxing
the country's Draconian drug laws. | ||||||||
Discussions also are to be held early next year on the abolition of prison
sentences for possession of small quantities of marijuana and other 'soft'
drugs - perhaps eventually leading to decriminalization of cannabis use,
government officials say. | ||||||||
Although the government has ruled out any formal change in drug laws in the
near future, it is contemplating administrative changes to soften the harsh
French rules. | ||||||||
To help counter political opposition, the government has commissioned a
scientific study of the relative dangers of marijuana and other illegal
substances, including comparisons with legal drugs such as alcohol and
nicotine. | ||||||||
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HOT OFF THE 'NET
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Women's Christian Temperance Union At It Again
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The Women's Christian Temperance Union, the organization primarily behind alchol prohibition continues today. One of its new issues is drug policy. They have been reported lobbying against medical marijuana in various states. You can visit their web site at: http://www.wctu.org | ||||||||
Having the WCTU against us is a great way to highlight the historical
relationship between today's drug prohibition and the failed alcohol
prohibition. | ||||||||
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TIP OF THE WEEK
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A Message From Mark Greer
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A little thought: If a reformer spends an hour on a letter, emails it to ten papers and it gets published in one with a modest circulation of 500,000 readers (many major publications have a circulation in the millions) the reformer is earning $3,500 for the movement (that is what it would cost to purchase the space of a typical letter in such a newspaper). | ||||||||
Who knows that letter may influence: a local politician, a senator, a local businessman, the next George Soros not to mention the effect the other nine letters have on educating the editors who read them (this may actually have a higher value than the published letters over the long haul) | ||||||||
Write those letter's, folks. It's a huge return on your time investment. | ||||||||
It's not what others do, it's what YOU do. | ||||||||
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DS Weekly is one of the many free educational services DrugSense offers our
members. Watch this feature to learn more about what DrugSense can do for
you. | ||||||||
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We wish to thank each and every one of our contributors. | ||||||||
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Mark Greer
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