Alcohol toll badly underestimated, study says

Oh goody, just what we need, another study that tells us what we already know: Alcohol is the real drug problem.

OK OK it actually is an informative article. It just goes to show that drug policy reformers have to try to educate the public about drugs. I find this disturbing:

OTTAWA - Days after the federal government unveiled a budget that earmarked $64-million for a national anti-drug strategy, a new report says the social and economic costs associated with alcohol are twice as high as those racked up by illegal drug use.

The study says Canadians have an exaggerated view of the harm associated with illegal drugs, possibly fuelled by vivid media reports, and the emphasis given the subject by police organizations, political leaders and policy-makers.

The study, released yesterday by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, suggests anti-drug strategies should include alcohol as a significant part of the equation.

I blame the Reefer Madness Talking Points which are included in every account of a drug bust:

-An exaggeration of the value of the drugs seized. The value of marijuana is calculated as though the entire crop will be sold as dime bags. That means a pound of weed has to be worth $4400.

-An exaggeration of the amount of marijuana that your average pot plant produces.

-Hysteria about the "dangers" posed by grow-ops. If they are so dangerous, why are neighbours always shocked by grow-op busts? Where are all the grow-op fires caused by faulty firing?

-An insistence on covering grow-op busts. Busting a grow-op accomplishes less than nothing but its' good public relations for the police. They look like they are protecting the public during their cop photo ops but in reality all they are doing is propping up a corrupt justice system. Stop putting this garbage on the news.

I am always happy when the public has another opportunity to learn about the problems caused by the war on drugs. But I am concerned by the possible conclusions that could be drawn by these studies. The last thing we want is for drug warriors to come out in favour of prohibiting alcohol and tobacco.

This also pisses me off:

The study said 49% of murders, attempted murders and assault were attributable to drugs and/or alcohol. Five per cent were attributable to drugs only, 28% to alcohol only, and 16% were attributable to a combination of alcohol and illicit drugs.

Alcohol gets its' own special category because its' not a drug. Got that? Even though alcohol fits the definition of a drug, its' not a drug because you can buy it legally at the liquor store. Even an article that is attempting to educate the public about the drug war contains reefer madness.

Walker denied release on bail

Even though Kim Walker has gotten an unbelievable amount of sympathy for being a cold-blooded murderer, the good news is he will stay in jail until his appeal is heard. I will be able to sleep at night.

REGINA -- Convicted killer Kimberley Joseph Walker will remain in prison until his appeal is heard.

Neither Walker nor his family were present in Saskatchewan Court of Appeal chambers on Wednesday, when lawyers argued over whether he should be released on bail while awaiting his appeal on a second-degree murder conviction.

Carol Gwilt is free

Medical marijuana exemptee Carol Gwilt is free on parole starting on April 2nd after serving six months of her fifteen month sentence. Gwilt was sentenced in September of 2006 for trafficking for her role in the operation of the famous Da Kine cafe.

Da Kine Cafe was a store that opened in May 2004 and sold cannabis and hash to anyone who signed a form to join. The neighbourhood businesses claimed that they benefited from the organized and safe cannabis outlet, and customers stated that they were protected from dealing with unsavory characters in order to obtain marijuana.

Together with volunteers and activists, Carol made Da Kine a very public and reputable shop that thrived for four months with no complaint. It wasn't until Septmeber 2004 that a sudden massive raid tok place with no warning, shutting down a movie shoot (The Fantastic Four) and including helicopters, swat teams, and numerous weapons and police vehicles -- all for a cafe with unarmed patrons and volunteer staff.

The police raid was thought to be motivated by the BC Solicitor General, who was openly opposed to any cannabis or anti-prohibition demonstrations, and cracked down with a huge show of unnecessary force to please American Law Enforcement.

It's always good news when an activist gets out of jail. Congratulations!

Debunking UK reefer madness

STATS did it for me so that I don't have to. The past week in the UK has consisted of a newspaper flame war leading to more prohibitionists demonizing marijuana AKA skunk. First, we had this story in The Independent apologizing for previously calling for the decriminilization of cannabis. It was a masterpiece of reefer madness propaganda. On Monday, The Telegraph ran a story about the tragic death of a young boy caused by cannabis.

STATS is a great site, dedicated to debunking unscientific claims made by the media. For their fabulous debunking of all that reefer madness, they have earned a link on my shabby little web site.

But I will pretend that you were too lazy to click the link and visit STATS for the scoop on cannabis-induced psychosis. I will even pretend that all the claims made in The Independent and The Telegraph are true and that cannabis causes psychosis. I will even concede, just for the sake of argument, that all cases of schizophrenia are caused by the use of cannabis. Does it then logically follow, that cracking down on cannabis is the best strategy? In order for that line of thinking to make sense, we would have to believe that cracking down on cannabis would lead to a decrease in cannabis users. If it were true that the number of cannabis users was directly proportional to the legal status of the drug, then the Netherlands should be awash with drug-using teenagers. Read it and weep, drug warriors. Prohibiting drugs does not stop people from using them and it will not prevent a single case of schizophrenia.

I hate Oprah Winfrey

Why must she take advantage of all the gullible idiots in the world and peddle this mindless trash? Isn't she rich and powerful enough? One of these days I am going to leave a bag of flaming dog poo on her door step. One of these days.

In case you have been living under a rock, I am refering to The Secret. Instead of praying to the ghost of a dead jew to have your deepest desires fulfilled, now you can just wish them into existence with The Secret.

Maybe if I keep imagining Oprah Winfrey opening her door and discovering a flaming bag of dog-poo and stomping it with her bare feet it will really happen. That would surley put a smile on my face. Oh yeah.

Way to Go, Moe!

Letter Writer of the Month - February

DrugSense recognizes Moe Brondum of the Saskatchewan Marijuana Party, North Battleford, Saskatchewan for his seven letters published during February. This brings his total published letters, that we know of, to 14.

You may read his published letters at:

http://www.mapinc.org/writers/Moe+Brondum

I better get off my bum and get writing some letters.

Prison Rape and the Drug War

Stop the Drug War has an excellent feature about prison rape - a human rights' issue that is still socially acceptable to make bad jokes about. The feature tells the horrible stories of men and women who had to deal with the aftermath of prison rape.

The most interesting and gross part of this story is the way the trolls came along to infest the comment section with typical slut-blaming:

The first man, Chance Martin, claims to have been ganged raped while in a COUNTY lockup while awaiting trial. He claims he was put into a cell holding 40 other men, and that this cell was not supervised. While I can believe there were times every cell was not under the supervision of a guard, I find it this story not believable. A county jail has many small cells, and these people would have been seperated into smaller cells, not left in in one big area unsupervised.

**This article is asking me to believe that within 24 hours without freedom in a COUNTY lockup, the majority of men will turn into raping animals. Are men really like this? If so, they all need to be locked up anyway, just to keep them away from everybody else.

Is it possible there is a motive for this claim other than the stated one? Perhaps to decriminalize drugs? While I have no doubt that rape in PRISON happens, a county lockup defies belief.

The commenter thinks that a person would lie about rape in order to win sympathy towards ending the drug war. How do people this stupid remember to breathe?

Great Study, Stupid Conclusion

Once again we have another study that comes out with the astonishing revelation that marijuana is safer than alcohol. The current ranking system for drugs is flawed! But then they end it with this bit of nonsense:

While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved.

Will they ever learn?

Hey Stephen, Welcome to the Dark Side!

Stephen Glauser sent me this story today about Saskatchewan's first quasi-legal safe marijuana inhalation room. I will make sure to visit Field of Dreams the next time I am in Regina to thank Dean Foster for making a safe place for medical marijuana users to take their medicine. I was unaware of the difficulties that some people face when they want to use marijuana for medical purposes. A lot of landlords do not want people using marijuana as medicine on their property. One unfortunate woman got a visit from Child Protection Services after a nosy neighbour complained about the smell. I am lucky to be free of nosy neighbours. Most of the people on my block know I smoke up once in a while and have a good laugh about it. I just hope they don't tell the cops about my garden.

What I really liked about this story was the fact that a non-pot smoker wrote it* and sent me the link. In the drug reform movement, the overwhelming majority of activists are users of the unholy, demon weed. The users of marijuana that are growing and selling it are afraid to say anything public about drug prohibition because of the risk of arrest. In my limited experience, most non-users are rather uninterested in drug policy reform and say things like "I used to smoke pot but then I grew up" or "I have no interest in that stuff." I have often wondered about the best way to motivate people to realize that drug policy reform is important and effects everybody. I am still unsure of how to make people care about this issue. Drug users aren't cute and adorable like baby seals. You aren't going to convince gullible, attractive women to wax their private areas and parade around the neighborhood for marijuana smokers. Which is just as well because PETA sucks.

In closing, what do you think would motivate members of the public to get involved or educated about drug policy reform? Are smoke-outs and rallies going to appeal to non-users?

* Or am I being presumptuous?

UPDATE: You gotta love Adsense. Stephen's page had a link to this outstanding web page, which promises to cure me of my marijuana addiction with hypnotherapy. I can end my long term habit now! I wonder if they learned their tricks from the "ex-gay" movement.

MORE UPDATE: The author of the blog post was Stefan Schussler, not Stephen Glauser.

Why the Drug War is Doomed to Failure

via Peter and the Centre for Substance Abuse Research.

This illustrates what I like to call "the black market effect" quite nicely. Say you buy an ounce for $200 and divide it up into eighths of an ounce and sell them for $40 -$50. If you have 8 pot-smoking friends, it is pretty easy to make money or get your smoke for free. With that kind of cash incentive, who wouldn't want to sell or grow weed? When I have a bad day, the temptation to quit and become a drug-dealer is very strong. Luckily today is not such a day.

Work-Mom burn-out and a link dump

Stress is overwhelming me at the moment and I feel like taking out my rage on puppies and kittens. Luckily for the small adorable creatures, I took a couple of Torey Hayden's books out of the library and I started reading them. Hayden is a special education teacher that had some interesting adventures with her students. After reading the first few chapters of one of her books, I feel so much better about everything. Her only flaw is calling her EA an aide *wince*. At any rate, I am much too stressed out to come up with anything coherent and intelligent but the drug war news is overflowing with very linkable items.

Bong hits 4 jesus is in the US Supreme Court this week. Peter is the go-to guy for analysis on this important case.

Another story that caught my interest this week is the reefer madness in The Independant. Thehim has more on this as well as the Transform Drug Policy Foundation and Stop the Drug War. Looks like I better update my blogroll. For those of you too lazy to read all that I have a simple mathematical formula to explain the article in The Independent:

Skunk = B.C. Bud

Any questions?

New Budget, Same Old Reefer Madness

Here are the drug-war related sections of the new budget and my criticism.

National Anti-Drug Strategy

The introduction of a new National Anti-Drug Strategy is an important commitment of Canada’s New Government that is being supported in Budget 2007. This new strategy covers three priority areas, with common objectives, to combat illicit drug production, prevent illicit drug use and treat illicit drug dependency. This new approach will result in a more focused program for dealing with illicit drug use.

The investment of $63.8 million over two years will build on existing programs and initiatives ($385 million per year) that are being refocused to create a new National Anti-Drug Strategy. This new strategy places particular emphasis on additional actions to combat the illicit production and distribution of drugs, to address gaps in preventing illicit drug use, to create awareness of illicit drugs and their negative effects, particularly among youth, and to treat and rehabilitate those with drug dependencies. Together, these three initiatives form a focused approach to reducing the supply of and demand for illicit drugs, as well as addressing the crime associated with illegal drugs, leading to safer and healthier communities.
Combatting Illicit Drug Production and Distribution

In other words, let's keep pissing away money on law enforcement because Harper loves getting compliments from John Walters. They are adopting the language of drug policy reformers and twisting it around. Treat and rehabilitate sounds really great but what does this even mean, coming from The Right Honourable PMS? Will it mean an American-style system of sending people convicted of possession of drugs off to rehab whether they need it or not? What strategy are they going to employ to reduce the supply of and demand for illegal drugs? Let's read and find out.

Budget 2007 provides $21.6 million over the next two years to support law enforcement in combatting the illegal use of drugs. Canada’s New Government is working closely with the provinces, territories and law enforcement partners to ensure that officers have the tools they need to significantly reduce illegal drug production and distribution operations. Officers will also be able to tackle the organized crime elements behind them, including gangs, thereby stemming the supply of illicit drugs. Increased enforcement activities will proactively target illicit drug producers, such as marihuana grow operations and clandestine methamphetamine labs, and gangs. Funding will enhance the capacity of the criminal justice system to investigate, interdict and prosecute offenders. The Government is also committed to ensuring that strong and adequate penalties are in place for serious drug crimes.

This will lead to more cop photo-ops, complete with drug porn, stacks of currency and more drug-dealing deviants hauled off to the slammer. We already know that this will not lead to a decrease in the number of illicit drug users or a reduction in the harms caused by the illicit drug market. This is the same strategy used in the United States which has given them the dubious distinction of "Most Incarcerated in the World."

Preventing Illicit Drug Use

Budget 2007 invests $10 million over the next two years to implement a national prevention campaign aimed at youth and their parents. The objective of the campaign will be to help decrease the prevalence of drug use among youth. To do this, the campaign will raise awareness and knowledge about drugs and their negative effects. It will also give parents the tools they need to talk to their children about drug use.

What does this even mean? Are they going to start pushing anti-drug ads, like the ones that have worked so well for the US? Kids are already steeped in anti-drug propaganda in school. Are they going to take away math and gym or extend the school day a few hours so we can spend more time telling kids that drugs are bad? I wish they would be more specific so I could have more fun picking this apart, although this is already like shooting fish in a barrel.

Treating Illicit Drug Dependency

Budget 2007 provides $32.2 million over two years to support treatment services that will address substance abuse. This will include the development and implementation of innovative projects that will support programming for First Nations and Inuit populations and support provinces and territories in filling critical treatment gaps. Funding will also be used by the Department of Justice to support extra-judicial diversion and treatment programs for youth offenders with drug-related problems at the various stages of the criminal justice system. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police will implement new tools to refer youth at risk to treatment programming. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research will develop new treatment models for crystal methamphetamine use.

I wish I knew what this means. Will we have a situation where drug users need to get arrested to get into rehab while users that are arrested are getting pushed into treatment that they don't need? We will have to wait and see.

All in all, this is very disappointing but not at all surprising. The Conservatives have no interest in fixing the real cause of drug crime by legalizing and regulating the supply. They repeat meaningless rhetoric about how legalizing marijuana will mean more kids will have access to drugs, despite the fact that Canadian children are exposed to more drugs than children in the Netherlands.

The only good thing about this budget that I could see was increased funding into treatment for addiction to methamphetamines. In my budget, all the integrated drug units would be shut down and all drugs would be legal and for sale at low prices at the local pharmacy. Cops would actually have to do something worthwhile, like walk my kids home from school.

A New Sorrow for Afghanistan: AIDS Joins List

This story shocked me. I am used to reading about the fact that 90% of the worlds' opium is grown in Afghanistan and I am defintely used to hearing about how the efforts to eradicate the opium crop are driving farmers into the arms of the Taliban. Hearing about the AIDS epidemic reaching Afghanistan is just sad. The lack of medical resources for testing and treatment of AIDS means that the extent of the epidemic is unknown. Antiviral treatments are not available. In a country where homosexuality and extramarital sex are illegal, the social stigma associated with being diagnosed with AIDS is detrimental to education and treatment.

I was shocked to learn how rampant injection drug use is in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, the biggest opium- and heroin-producing country in the world, has nearly one million drug users, according to United Nations estimates. Most users still smoke the drug, but five years ago, injectable heroin hit the streets of Kabul, the capital. Now there are an estimated 19,000 intravenous drug users here, according to the World Bank. Addicts are not difficult to find, living in bombed-out buildings in the old part of the city and in Kota-e-Sangi, a neighborhood on the city’s south side.

Injection drug use, prostitution, lack of testing of the blood supply and the punishments for out-of-wedlock sex are creating a disaster in Afghanistan. Read the whole thing.

Tory tough on crime strategy

If you go to the Conservative Party's web site, you will find a link to their much-touted crime strategy at tacklingcrime.ca. Here is the link to the Prime Minister's tough-on-crime strategy.

Drug War Roundup

Thehim has his drug war roundup over at his pad. It's great reading so get busy!

Blog Talk Radio

Join me in 6 hours and 52 minutes for my second attempt to do my blog talk radio show. Despite the technical difficulties I experienced during last week's test show, I got a number of encouraging comments and emails so I am inclined to give it another shot.
First, I am going to give you the weekly drug war news, a brief overview of the drug war stories that caugt my attention. Then we are going to discuss the tough-on-crime strategy that the Conservative government is using quite succesfully to demonize the floundering Liberals.

Feel free to listen or phone in. My number is (718)-664-9582. If you are too shy to phone you can message me on MSN at Tanyatalkradio@hotmail.com

Random Hilarity

I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not a fan of Rosie O'Donnell and I never watch the View. The only reason I know about her dispute with Donald Trump is that I hear about it on the radio on my way to work. I am officially switching stations. The infatuation that some people have with the petty bickering of celebrities is such a bore. I just don't care. So allow me to be a hypocrite and show you this:

Best goth poetry ever.

the dump truck is at it again

“she’s depressed from looking in the mirror”

hurtful 2 know he doesnt find me attractive
as it has been my goal
for so long
to give a bald billionaire a boner

Why can't they kiss and make up?

Millions More for a Failed Anti-Drug Propaganda Campaign? Ridiculous!

Paul Armentano has an article at Alternet about the failure of the anti-drug advertising (*Cough* propaganda) to have an impact on drug use rates among American teens.

Indiana House Republican Mark Souder, a White House point man in Congress for its propaganda war against drugs, recently took to the airwaves to defend one of the Bush administration's sacred cows: its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.

If you've had access to a television or a newspaper over the past few years, you're probably familiar with the federal ad campaign. It's the one that's spent over $2 billion since 1998 to produce public-service announcements implying that smoking pot supports al-Qaida and may make you pregnant, among other dubious anti-drug messages. So dubious, in fact, that the campaign has flopped miserably among its target audience. Of course, this fact matters not to the White House, which recently demanded $130 million to run the ads through 2008 -- a 31 percent increase over current funding levels.

The ONDCP has so much faith in their advertising campaign that they have disabled commenting on the videos they uploaded on youtube. Luckily, users have found imaginative ways to comment on these stupid ads, sabatoging the cowardly attempts by the ONDCP to shield themselves from criticism.

The misinformation in the ads undermines the already thin credibility of the federal government and parents and teachers that buy into the reefer madness and ty to teach it to their kids.

A black market for abortion pills?

I wish I knew more about this story. It surprises me that it's possible to spike somebody's drink with an abortion pill. Where did he get the pills?

Some Really Good News, for a change

The charges of money laundering and tax evasion against medical marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal have been dismissed.

Score one more for our side.

Also via CC, I just heard the good news that Tyrone Brown is free. His case was an outrageous example of overzealous prosecution and racism. It's about damn time they let him go.

I hope Tyrone can celebrate with a nice, fat joint but it would be completely understandable if he was too scared of the fascist drug warriors. Congratulations to Tyrone Brown and his family.