What Is It About Opium?
by David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org, 3/15/02
What is it about opium? To listen to drug warriors these days, it is the lifeblood of terrorist organizations around the globe. Ohio Rep. Rob Portman lamented that Americans who spend money on heroin (made from Afghani opium) are financing the Taliban, who in turn protect terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Therefore, say Portman and his ilk, reducing drug demand and disrupting drug trafficking organizations is part of the war against terrorism.
Translation: Anti-drug agencies and their supporters are afraid of seeing their budgets cut in favor of other law enforcement priorities. And, they're anxious to get themselves back in the headlines. So it's business as usual for the drug warriors -- stretch the facts as much as necessary, ignore the key issues, and hope no one notices -- or if some people do notice, hope that no one else notices them.
In reality, the resources being poured into the drug war can only come at the expense, not the benefit, of all other budget priorities, law enforcement or otherwise. Certainly, some drug traffickers will turn out to have ties to terrorist groups; but that doesn't mean that indiscriminately targeting all users and sellers of all drugs, is even a remotely efficient way of tracking down or dismantling or disempowering perpetrators of terrorism.
Not to mention that most heroin reaching the US now comes from Latin America, not Asia or the Middle East -- another fatal flaw in Portman's logic. And would an attack on opium cultivation and distribution do anything other than move the supply and supply lines from place to place? That's all such operations have ever done before. Such displacement might take some cash out of the hands of one set of enemies, but could just as easily put it in the hands of another. And eradicating the opium trade from the war-shattered land of Afghanistan, where it is one of the primary sources of income, is an even less realistic than usual drug war strategy.
But there's a larger issue at stake, which drug warriors hate to talk about, at least in a context like this. Why is that opium destined to be processed into heroin is a funding source for crime and terrorism, but opium intended for pain medicines or anesthesia isn't?
Are they two different types of opium? No. Are the drugs highly different? No, heroin and morphine, for example, are essentially similar. Not that any of that would make any difference anyway.
The only difference between opium for heroin and opium for pain meds is that pain meds are manufactured, distributed and administered legally. Heroin isn't.
In other words, opium grown to ultimately be processed into heroin provides easy money for terrorists, because it's illegal. And the converse is also obvious: Legalization of drugs would eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars a year of illicit profits, some of which accrues to perpetrators of terror and other violence. The connection between drug prohibition and terrorism can be overstated; but it is clear that ending prohibition is one of the steps that must be taken to make the world a safer place. It is equally clear why drug warriors don't like to talk about this.
Ignoring these undeniable facts is hard to excuse under ordinary circumstances. To still do so now, when Americans are filled with pain and fear and are seeking real answers, and to do so for political and budgetary gain, is a profound failure to lead. What is it about opium, and other such drugs, that our leaders refuse to think or speak rationally about them, at the most important times?
Feds Raid San Francisco Medical Marijuana
Operations,
City Officials Join Angry Protests as DEA Head Speaks Same Day
by David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org, 2/14/02
While the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies went on high anti-terrorist alert Tuesday, the DEA in San Francisco had better things to do. In predawn raids across the Bay Area, DEA agents hit the 6th Street Harm Reduction Center, the home and offices of long-time High Times and Cannabis Culture cultivation columnist Ed Rosenthal, and properties where suspected medical marijuana grow ops were allegedly taking place. By the time DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson arrived at the downtown Commonwealth Club for a speech that evening, he was greeted by several hundred angry demonstrators, including several members of the city's Board of Supervisors as well as San Francisco's District Attorney, demanding that the raids cease and chanting "DEA Go Away!" Hutchinson fared no better inside, where his speech about the war on drugs was greeted with heckling, boos and cat-calls.
"We are just outraged," said Gina Palencar of Americans for Medical Rights, the organization that helped bring Proposition 215, the California medical marijuana initiative, into the law books. "We've been saying since the crackdown on the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center that it is an obnoxious misuse of federal law enforcement resources to target our seriously ill and wounded when we have other high national priorities," she told DRCNet. "We continue to be shocked by Asa Hutchinson's boldness and the cruelty with which his men come to California and rub their anti- medical marijuana agenda in the faces of Californians who have already decided on this issue. Today's events show how out of touch and out of control the DEA is."
Palencar was hardly alone in her outrage. San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, who attended the Tuesday protest, told the Oakland Tribune the raids made him "furious," while Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, yelling through a bullhorn to the angry crowd on the street, called the DEA "an obnoxious, grandstanding, macho agency."
Arrested in the raids were 6th Street current and former operators Richard Watts and Kenneth Hayes, Rosenthal, and another alleged medical marijuana grower, James Halloran of Oakland. All are charged with cultivation of marijuana and face mandatory minimum federal prison sentences of at least five years. Halloran, who was charged with growing more than 1,000 plants, faces a possible life sentence. Hayes, who was arrested in Vancouver, was released on his own recognizance by Canadian authorities and may seek asylum there. Rosenthal was released after posting a $500,000 bond, and Watts and Halloran remained jailed at press time.
Chris Conrad, a certified expert witness on cannabis issues in California, told DRCNet he hoped the cases would go to trial. "If they have the trial here, they will lose," said Conrad. "It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the feds to prevent the jury from realizing these are medical marijuana cases, as they have done in the past. In this case, it was one medical marijuana person turning in others, there were informants or agents who got phony recommendations, and don't forget the jury will be walking past protesters in the street. I don't see how the government can keep the medical marijuana issue out of any trial arising from this bust," he said.
Conrad added that it was "too bad" that federal prosecutors had not brought the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center and its director, Scott Imler, to trial. "If things had moved quickly and we won an acquittal, the DEA would be less likely to do more raids. But as long as they're busting clubs and shutting them down, patients will be suffering."
Conrad, who attended Hutchinson's speech, said he was "shocked, offended, but a little bit hopeful. I was shocked that Hutchinson says he can't reschedule marijuana, when he is the one who can do so, and I was shocked by his lack of familiarity with the studies on medicinal marijuana. I was offended by his talking about dialogue but refusing to listen to anyone, and I was offended by his talking about dialogue when his troops are out there the same day arresting health providers," said Conrad. "But I am hopeful because Hutchinson had no choice but to confront the overwhelming unpopularity of his policies."
Americans for Medical Rights' Palencar is looking for that unpopularity to be translated into stronger action by state and local officials to uphold the California medical marijuana law. "We've seen the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and District Attorney coming out and telling the federal government to get out of town and leave the cannabis clubs alone," she said. "We'd like to see more of that from state officials. It is time to end the hypocrisy. We have electoral majorities in all the states with medical marijuana. It is time for the states to step up and defend the rights of patients and providers."
(Visit http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02.n238.a08.html for an extensive, continually updated archive of relevant reports and links. Visit http://sf.indymedia.org for on-the-scene reporting and photographs. The Democracy Now radio show ran stories on the raids as well as Tulia and the New York Rockefeller Drug laws. Summaries, links and the complete audio can be accessed at http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20020213.html online.)
Sometimes People Learn,
Sometimes They Don't
by David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org, 12/7/01
Sixty-eight years ago this week, on December 5, 1933, our nation corrected a historic mistake and repealed its disastrous experiment with Alcohol Prohibition. Sometimes people learn, sometimes they change course.
Sometimes they don't. Earlier this week, the DEA held a conference on terrorism and drugs -- coincidentally the same day as our hemp food protests in front of DEA offices around the country -- somehow they were able to spare several security officers to monitor our taste-test table, even though they knew from the last time that we weren't dangerous.
The conference was a minor news item, but if the news report gave an accurate characterization of what the DEA people were talking about -- which we don't know for sure, but it certainly sounds like them -- the thrust of what they discussed, and for which they will probably lobby, is for an effort to use the rearrangement of Afghanistan's governmental system as an opportunity to move against the nation's opium crop. They claim that doing so could raise the price of heroin in the US.
DEA, at least, never learns. Eradicating Afghanistan's opium will only shift the production to other regions, such as Burma -- or Latin America, where most US heroin actually originates now. Crop eradication has never reduced the long-term supply of any drug. Why not? Because people are paying money for it, a lot of money. Someone will grow it, someone will process it, someone will sell it, people who want it will get it. Not all the time, perhaps, but most of the time. Ultimately, the price drops again, sometimes even more. To believe that reducing or even wiping out Afghanistan's opium crop will have any significant long-term effect on the heroin supply takes an extraordinarily degree of foolishness or ignorance of economics and history.
And it is very clear that we need DEA's tens of billions for other things much more than a failed and futile drug war. Our nation is under attack by terrorists. Our economy is ailing. And all our other needs have not gone away in the meantime. It would have been perfectly reasonable, maybe even productive, for the DEA to spend a day talking about the targeted goal of disrupting drug trafficking organizations that have links to terrorist groups. After all, drugs aren't legal yet, therefore there is a black market which does supply some of terrorism's funding. But instead, they apparently focused on the unfocused, wasteful and impossible goal of taking on the opium industry as a whole.
Maybe Strom Thurmond can help. The 99-year-old Senator is more than old enough to remember Alcohol Prohibition, its failure, and the reduction of violence and corruption that followed its repeal. In fact, Prohibition was repealed on Thurmond's 31st birthday.
And Thurmond has shown an ability to learn: Back in 1964, when he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over the Democrats' support for civil rights, Thurmond was a segregationist. But now, he admits that he was wrong about that. He learned, he became a better person. Only someone who knew him well could say whether his initial opposition to desegregation was based on misguided conviction or on politics, or whether his conversion over the subsequent years reflected a personal enlightenment or was simply a shift to match the prevailing cultural and political winds.
But whatever the reason was for Strom Thurmond deciding to join modern civilization, he did it. He did ultimately change his position. Which means he may be capable of changing his mind on other long-entrenched views. And he does remember Alcohol Prohibition.
There probably is no one quite so old working at the DEA. And they have too much invested in their bureaucracies and the status quo, anyway, to do anything about this. But the same doesn't apply to a member of the Senate. Certainly not to a 99-year-old member of the Senate. Strom Thurmond would have nothing to lose by initiating a dialogue on drug prohibition.
Of course, I'm not holding my breath; after all, he didn't change his mind about segregation until after most other people had already figured it out. But one can hope. After all, it's no more unlikely than it would be for some of the other responsible parties in the drug war.
12/7/01
Why Did Police Arrest 734,498 Pot-smokers,
Instead of Tracking Murderous Terrorists?
WASHINGTON, DC -- American law enforcement is guilty of something close to "criminal neglect" for arresting 734,498 people for marijuana violations last year -- instead of investigating and stopping murderous terrorists, the Libertarian Party said today.
"Thousands of innocent Americans may be dead because law enforcement considered it more important to raid college frat parties and arrest people for smoking marijuana than to find and stop the deadly terrorist 'sleeper' cells that were plotting the greatest mass murder in American history," said Steve Dasbach, the party's national director.
"You just have to wonder: If the tens of thousands of law enforcement officers, the millions of man-hours, and the billions of dollars that were spent monitoring, investigating, arresting, charging, processing, jailing, and bringing to trial non-violent marijuana users had been used, instead, for anti-terrorist activities -- could the September 11 atrocity have been prevented?"
That question has become especially crucial now that the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has released new figures showing that marijuana arrests in 2000 hit an all-time record.
According to figures collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report, police arrested an estimated 734,498 people for marijuana violations last year. That's up from the 704,812 Americans who were arrested in 1999 on marijuana-related charges.
Of the almost three-quarters of a million people arrested in 2000, approximately 88% -- or about 646,042 individuals -- were charged only with possession of marijuana.
The most chilling thing about those numbers, said Dasbach, is that every arrest for marijuana represents a "missed opportunity" for law enforcement.
"Local and state police, the FBI, and federal law enforcement agencies have only a finite amount of people, time, and money to investigate and stop crimes," he noted. "By directing so many of those resources to the War on Marijuana, law enforcement made the ill-advised decision that detecting murderous, fanatical terrorists was less important than arresting non-violent Americans who choose to use marijuana.
"The nearly 4,000 Americans who were killed in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93 may have paid the price for that tragically misguided decision."
Of course, what law enforcement did last year can't be altered now, admitted Dasbach. However, such policies can be changed for the future.
"We can't bring back the thousands of Americans who were killed on September 11," he said. "And we can't bring back all the law enforcement resources that were squandered in the past. But we can learn from our mistakes -- and we can learn from the actions of other nations."
For example, noted Dasbach, Great Britain reclassified marijuana in October so it is no longer an arrestable offense.
"For the safety and security of our nation, it's time for the United States to follow the lead of Great Britain," he said. "Then, we could redirect law enforcement -- at the local, state, and federal levels -- to focus on preventing future barbarous acts of terrorism, instead of arresting marijuana-smokers who are no threat to anyone."
The Libertarian
Party
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
Washington DC 20037
Click Here for All the Past Articles
Give Thanks
by Adam J. Smith, Associate Director
Drug Response Coordination
Network
If neither you nor someone you love has had to decide between the relief of pain, the suppression of life- threatening nausea, or the loss of sight, and the prospect of risking arrest and conviction under state or federal marijuana laws, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has had the experience of armed agents of the state kicking in your door, terrorizing your home's occupants and damaging your personal property, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has contracted injection-related AIDS, or Hepatitis, because there was no legal source of clean needles for themselves or a present or past sexual partner or a parent, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has been the victim of Prohibition-related violence or crime, give thanks.
If neither your child nor another child that you love has been lured by the siren song of the black market, or by gangs, or been shot at by a law enforcement agent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and for being the wrong color), or been saddled with a life-long criminal record for youthful experimentation, or been banished from school for possession of an aspirin, or been tried in court as an adult, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has had property taken by the state without so much as being charged with an offense, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has had to suffer the indignity of urinating in a cup, on demand, for the privilege of maintaining menial employment, give thanks.
If neither you nor someone you love has sought drug treatment and found that it was unavailable to those of modest means save through the processes of the criminal justice system, give thanks.
If you and everyone that you love can go through this list and be thankful for each and every entry, know that you are among a shrinking group of Americans who have managed to avoid some of the most common consequences of the War on Drugs. But know too, that your tax dollars, in ever- increasing amounts, are helping to make the number of citizens like you smaller each year. So give thanks. But remember too that there is work to be done.
Happy Thanksgiving.
The Drug War and Our Children
by Adam J. Smith, Associate Director
Drug Response Coordination
Network
On December 20, the University of Michigan released its annual "Household Survey" on teenage drug use and attitudes. True to recent trends, the numbers reveal, at best, no significant decline in teen drug use, along with a continued decline in age of onset. In other words, teens have begun drug-using behavior at younger ages than ever before. In addition, the study shows that once again, nearly 90% of teens will report that drugs are either "easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain.
Government officials, from the President, to his "Drug Czar" Barry McCaffrey, to his Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, will decry the statistics. They'll talk about the need for family involvement and mentoring, which is good, they'll talk about their upcoming anti-drug ad campaign, which is probably harmless, they'll talk about a nation's commitment to it's children, which is politically savvy, but once again, they'll fail to address the major problem: The Drug War, justified in the names of "68 million young Americans" is a sham. Far from protecting children, it is putting them in harm's way.
The numbers show, for instance, that a small but not insignificant number of American eighth graders have used heroin in the past year. From our knowledge of kids and the drug scene we can deduce that probably ten times that number were offered the drug during that time. Why are ten to fifteen percent of our 13 year-olds being offered heroin? Perhaps it is because someone has an economic interest in selling it to them. Rather than a system under which these substances are sold by licensed and strictly regulated outlets (clinics, staffed by medical professionals or pharmacologists for instance) and under which we can set strict guidelines as to the age of buyers and the potency and purity of the product, we have a system under which there are virtually no controls. The stuff is sold everywhere, by anyone, usually by people desperate for the money for their own fix. The purity of the substances, and the adulterants used in them (two of the prime causes of accidental overdoses, especially among young, inexperienced users) is anyone's guess. Children, who are far less likely to turn out to be undercover cops, are among the most desirable of clients.
Then there are the kids who get lured into the drug trade. Whether it's the easy money, the sought-after acceptance of older toughs whom Prohibition has turned into modern-day "gangstas" and folk heroes, or to gain entry into a gang which the child feels is imperative to his own safety on the streets (another situation largely attributable to Prohibition), our children are finding employment in the black market. And even those not lured by these siren songs are forced to live in a "culture of Prohibition" in which violence is an accepted norm, the police are seen as an invading (and increasingly violent and corrupt) army, respect for the law is nearly non-existent, and drugs are "easy" to get.
Why is a system, the results of which are diametrically opposed to its stated purpose (the protection of children), allowed to continue? Why are our children being used to justify their own endangerment? Why is anyone with the temerity to question the status quo called "pro-drug" and worse by the Drug War's staunchest proponents? In a word, the answer is money. All of those billions of dollars being spent to "protect our children" are going somewhere, and mostly they are going into the hands of a small but influential group of industries who are profiting mightily on the status quo. Construction companies scurrying to keep up with the demand for new prisons, corrections companies getting rich off of the privatization of incarceration, defense contractors supplying arms to American and foreign military and police forces for counter-narcotics operations, private drug treatment companies whose rolls are full of court-mandated clients, and on and on.
These industries, and the people who profit from them, put plenty of money into the coffers of political parties and their candidates. (In 1996, for example, the largest single contributor to statewide election campaigns in California, a state with a shockingly high incarceration rate, was the California Prison Guards Association.) The politicians, in turn, demand that America "protect its children" by the perpetuation and expansion of the very system which has given our eighth graders easy access to heroin.
The War on Drugs as a measure of protection for children? This is The Big Lie written large across the landscape of American politics. Currently, one in three African American males between 18 and 29 are under the "supervision" of the criminal justice system, many, if not most, for drug-related offenses. What of their children? What of the neighborhood kids who look up to them? What of the children of the women who make up the enormous recent increase in female inmate populations, often, as FAMM reports, due to mandatory minimum sentences and only the most peripheral connection to the activities of a drug-dealing boyfriend or spouse? What of the seventeen year-old boy, the captain of his high school soccer team, who was shot by federal agents in Queens last month for having the misfortune to have been carrying a candy bar in a shiny, metallic wrapper, through his own neighborhood, which had been declared a "high intensity drug trafficking area"? And what of every other child who lives in such an area? And why have we let the drug trade loose, unregulated and out of control, on their streets in the first place? To protect them?
If 90% of the nation's teenagers find it "easy" to obtain illegal drugs, it is likely that they have GREATER access to these substances than anyone else. The fact is that if the parents of America's teens wanted to buy drugs, the vast majority would have to ask their own kids to "cop" for them. Perversely, it would be difficult to envision a system under which teens could more easily obtain dangerous and addictive substances. We have put temptation directly in front of them, and have given economic incentive to their tempters.
The War on Drugs is worse than ineffective in the battle to protect America's children. It is counter-productive. It is harmful. And, insofar as Prohibition and its defenders are driven by enormous profits and political contributions, it is evil and sick. Remember that this week when the President starts talking.
Click Here for All the Past Articles
Quotes to Consider:
When they took the 5th Amendment, I didn't speak up because I
wasn't a criminal.
When they took the 4th Amendment, I didn't speak up because I didn't deal
drugs.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I didn't speak up because I don't own a
gun.
When they took the 1st Amendment, I couldn't speak up.
"When was the last time your doctor told you to go home,
light up some leaves and suck the smoke down your throat?" - William
Bennett, former Drug Czar, 10/29, talking about medical marijuana
A 1995 poll of American oncologists found that 44% admitted having
recommended smoked marijuana to at least one patient. The real question is:
when was the last time a seriously ill patient went to Bill Bennett for
medical advice?
"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is just as fallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. ... Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Thomas Jefferson
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to
offend, it ceases to exist."
- Salman Rushdie (whose criticism of Islam inspired Muslim leaders to put a
price on his head and condemn him to death.)
"Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." - Seneca, 65 CE
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." - Lily Tomlin
"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like
asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
- John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder, Decrypting the Puzzle Palace
"California legislators consider 10 to 15 letters and faxes to be a strong showing of support for a bill (in a state of 31 million!)" - Jim Warren, GovAccess Internet newsletter, 08/04/94
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." - Barry Goldwater
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause,
support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
- Amendment IV, United States Constitution
(Amazingly, the US House of Representatives voted this language down when
it was inserted in a 1995 bill by a crafty legislator, to replace
unconstitutional language proposed by another. Apparently, few in the House
recognized this as the Fourth Amendment. One Representative even whined
that it gutted the whole bill.)
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
