Lies Our Drug Warriors Told Us

[DdC]

Lies Our Drug Warriors Told Us By Dennis Myers
CN Source: Reno News & Review August 24, 2006 Nevada

The reporters made their way through the dim lights and small huts of Virginia City's Chinatown. In the huts, one of the reporters later wrote, "A lamp sits on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would well nigh turn the stomach of a statue. John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen whiffs, and then rolls over to dream."

The reporter, Mark Twain, whose Victorian sensibilities made him uncomfortable when faced with the scenes in Chinatown, nevertheless was one reporter who did not use his coverage of opium use to demonize the Chinese. Others were less principled. They set the pattern of much of the news coverage of drug use that followed in the next century and a half.

The Comstock journalists produced racist and inaccurate news coverage that relied on uninformed sources (law enforcement instead of physicians), inflamed the people of the town, and produced the nation's first anti-drug law, an ordinance banning opium smoking within Virginia City, enacted on Sept. 12, 1876. The local politicians, discovering that fear of drugs and minorities sold, were just as irresponsible, blaming everything from poor sanitation to child molestation on Chinese drug "fiends." When the local prohibition ordinance failed, they pushed for a statewide law which failed (and, of course, would be followed by national laws that failed).

The entire ineffectual template of the drug war with which we live today was established there in Virginia City--journalists who gave short shrift to science and health-care professionals in favor of treating politicians and law enforcers as drug experts in lurid and exploitive news coverage; politicians who exploited legitimate concern to promote race hatred and reelection; law enforcers who confused cause with effect and exploited public anxiety to promote punitive laws; and all three who treated prohibition as a solution: "Let severe measures be adopted and the sale of the drug will soon be suppressed!" observed a Nye County newspaper. The nation has been chasing that siren's song ever since.

A century later, Reno physician Wesley Hall was the president-elect of the American Medical Association. On April 2, 1970, he used the forum provided by his new stature to announce that in June, the AMA would release a study showing that marijuana deadened the sex drive and caused birth defects. The statement caused a flap, but no such study was ever released. A few weeks later, Hall claimed he had been misquoted but also claimed that he had not bothered to correct the record because "it does some good." By then, correcting the record did no good--Hall's comments kept getting cited and quoted until experience and the passing years showed their falsity.

Over the course of the war on drugs that began in Virginia City and accelerated decade by decade, such lying became an indispensable weapon of that war. The lies sometimes took the form of outright falsehoods. At other times, they took the form of letting errors stand uncorrected or leaving out essential information. Drug warriors--whether journalists, politicians, police or public employees--need lies because the drug war can't be sustained without them. Lies are the foundation of the drug war, and the five listed here are the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many more, and they are relevant to a marijuana measure that will appear on this year's Nevada ballot.

1. Gateway Drugs

In the early 20th century, Dr. Charles Towns was a leading public figure and drug "expert," operator of the Towns Hospital in New York. He propounded a theory that would have a long life--that some drugs "lead" to harder drugs. "The tobacco user is in the wrong," he wrote. "It undermines his nervous strength. It blunts the edge of his mind. It gives him 'off-days,' when he doesn't feel up to his work. It always precedes alcoholism and drug addiction. I've never had a drug case or an alcoholic case (excepting a few women) that didn't have a history of excessive smoking. Inhaling tobacco is just as injurious as moderate opium smoking."

The gateway theory evolved until baby boomers raised in the 1950s on "marijuana leads to harder stuff" learned its falsity from personal experience in the 1960s. If that experience and the findings of science were not enough, there was practical evidence that some drugs actually functioned as barrier drugs, not gateway drugs. Whenever mild drugs were removed as a barrier, harder drugs came into use. In 1910, Congress received data showing that during a period of alcohol prohibition in New England, morphine use jumped by 150 percent. In 1968, a Johnson administration crackdown on marijuana in Vietnam reduced supply and provoked an upsurge in heroin use. In 1969 in California, a six-day Nixon administration crackdown on the Mexican border dried up marijuana supplies and filled heath-care facilities with a flood of heroin cases. California physician David Smith told Newsweek, "The government line is that the use of marijuana leads to more dangerous drugs. The fact is that the lack of marijuana leads to more dangerous drugs."

The gateway theory went into decline after such experiences but always made a comeback because drug war dogma requires it. Today it is back, alive and well.

And as it turned out, "Doctor" Towns was a quack--a failed insurance salesman who was not a physician and peddled a bogus "cure" for drug addiction.

2. Marijuana’s Not Medicine

Today, we're accustomed to medical experts like Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick denying that marijuana is medicine (Gammick: "I didn't support medical marijuana because it doesn't exist."), but in 1937, it was a novel argument, since marijuana was universally acknowledged as a beneficial medicine. It was listed in the American Medical Association's Pharmacopeia (list of approved medications) and remained there even after being made illegal until federal officials brought pressure on the AMA. (It is still in the British Pharmacopeia.)

What may have been the first time this lie was told was a key moment in the drug wars. Congress was considering legislation that year to outlaw non-medicinal marijuana at the behest of the lumber and liquor lobbies and fueled by newspaper hysteria over marijuana. By continuing to protect physicians' use of the drug, Congress recognized its medical value.

Though there was an exception in the bill for physicians, the medical community was still concerned about the restrictions. There was apparently an effort to slip the ban through Congress quietly, but AMA lobbyist William C. Woodward found out about a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the bill and showed up to demand actual evidence of the danger of the drug instead of the anecdotal newspaper horror stories to which the committee had been listening: "It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marijuana addiction.

We are told that the use of marijuana causes crime. But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marijuana habit. An informed inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point. You have been told that school children are great users of marijuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children's Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit among children."

The committee members tore into Woodward spitefully, giving him the kind of grilling they did not give to drug warriors.
One member told Woodward, "We know that it is a habit that is spreading, particularly among youngsters. ...

The number of victims is increasing each year." Woodward replied, "There is no evidence of that." He kept insisting on evidence instead of hearsay.

The committee ended Woodward's testimony without thanking him or even formally ending his testimony, brusquely calling the next witness.

One of those present at that hearing was U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson of Georgia. When the marijuana ban reached the House floor on June 10, 1937, he was the floor manager. To give some idea of the care with which the bill was enacted and the depth of knowledge from which lawmakers were working, there was this exchange:

U.S. Rep. Bertrand Snell of New York: "What is the bill?"

U.S. Rep. Sam Rayburn of Texas: "It has something to do with something that is called marijuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind."

Vinson: "Marijuana is the same as hashish."

Snell: "Mr. Speaker, I am not going to object, but I think it is wrong to consider legislation of this character at this time of night."

Then came a question that led to the lie whose consequences are still with us. Snell asked, "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"

The response fell to Vinson. A truthful answer might well derail the bill. Future chief justice of the United States Vinson stood and lied: "Their Doctor Wentworth [sic] came down here. They support this bill one hundred percent."

The bill was approved.

3. Crack Babies

The report went on the air at 5:34:50 p.m. on Sept. 11, 1985, with an on-screen headline of "Cocaine and pregnant mothers." In 1 minute and 50 seconds, Susan Spencer of CBS ignited an inflammatory national myth--the crack baby. Footage of a screaming and trembling baby going through withdrawal after supposedly being born to a mother who used cocaine was backed by interviews with physicians Ira Chasnoff and Sidney Schnoll. Chasnoff had just published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that had caught Spencer's eye and prompted the report. Spencer ended the report with the lines, "The message is clear. If you are pregnant and using cocaine, stop."

University of Michigan scholars Richard Campbell and Jimmie Reeves have tracked the events which followed. As other reporters and media chased the story, it evolved. Spencer's report was a health warning. By the time her CBS colleague Terry Drinkwater and others recycled the story, it was an attack on the mothers (Washington Post:

"The Worst Threat Is Mom Herself"). As the firestorm built, politicians and others got involved, and the babies themselves were demonized. A judge called them "tomorrow's delinquents," and Democratic U.S. Rep. George Miller of California said, "We are going to have these children, who are the most expensive babies ever born in America, are going to overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come in contact with throughout the rest of their lives." Boston University President John Silber suggested the babies were soulless--"crack babies who won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God."

The drumbeat against the children became so fierce that a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association asked, "Why is there today such an urgency to label prenatally cocaine-exposed children as irremediably damaged?" And Emory University's Dr. Claire Coles said of the "crack baby" label, "If a child comes to kindergarten with that label, they're dead. They are very likely to fulfill the worst prophecies."

Hospitals started threatening to turn mothers over to police; prosecutors started charging mothers with child abuse. (The Nevada Legislature rejected a statute permitting such prosecutions, and when the Washoe sheriff tried to charge a mother anyway, the Nevada Supreme Court slapped it down.) One case--Ferguson v. City of Charleston--made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that hospitals had to stop testing for drugs without patient consent. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that the drug habits of white women were more likely to be overlooked by physicians or hospitals, while African Americans were reported to police.

And it was all built on a pile of sand.

Spencer, like most reporters, did not know how to read a scientific study, and the Chasnoff study was flawed. The study involved just 23 women, and its author himself called it inadequate.

Worse, according to former Wall Street Journal reporter Dan Baum, who wrote an influential account of the drug war, physicians noticed something about video reports by Spencer and others that ordinary viewers--and the reporters themselves--missed. The trembling babies were exhibiting behavior that is not produced by cocaine. Being withdrawn from coke produces sleep, not the trembling and screaming shown in the sensational reports. Baum wrote, "It dawned on [Dr. Claire] Coles that the TV crews were either mixed up or lying. They were filming infants suffering heroin withdrawal and calling them 'cocaine babies.' "

Moreover, the physicians also felt that drugs were not the cause of the problems being attributed to the babies. Lack of nutrition and health care during pregnancy were. A Florida report noted, "In the end, it is safer for the baby to be born to a drug-using, anemic, or diabetic mother who visits the doctor throughout her pregnancy than to be born to a normal woman who does not."

This is a page from the 1909 list of medicines approved by the American Medical Association. The AMA kept marijuana on the list into the 1940s, after it was an illegal substance, but finally was pressured by federal drug warriors into removing it from the list. Click here for a larger version.

The controversy arose at a time when both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and President Reagan had sliced apart the "safety net" that had long existed for poor families. By 1985, prenatal care and nutrition were less accessible. Federal deregulation of the insurance industry had cut low-income families loose from health insurance. Federally funded medical care had been slashed. While journalism had raced off after the mock cause of unhealthy babies, the real causes had received far less press scrutiny.

It was a case study of journalism taking a complex story and simplifying it into inflammatory and irresponsible coverage that made the problem worse. It is now pretty clear to experts and insiders what happened. But the damage is done. Today, there are 103,000 hits on Google for crack baby and 107,000 for crack babies.

4. Instant Addiction

The March 17, 1986, issue of Newsweek hit the newsstands on March 10. Newsweek has long served as the unofficial house organ of the drug war. That alliance has often suspended the critical faculties of its staff members. Never was that failing more dangerous than in that 1986 issue with its "Kids and Cocaine" cover story. Inside was an interview with Arnold Washton, operator of a drug hotline who was known for hyperbole--he had once told NBC that crack was a form of Russian roulette. In the Newsweek article he said, "There is no such thing as recreational use of crack. It is almost instantaneous addiction."

Newsweek did not bother checking the accuracy of the incendiary claim before publishing it. Instead, acting as stenographers instead of journalists, the magazine's editors printed it without a competing viewpoint.

The assertion shot through newsrooms around the nation with the speed of sound, and those newsrooms passed it along like carriers of a disease. And it was untrue. Dr. Herbert Kleber, perhaps the leading cocaine expert in the United States has said, "No drug is instantly addictive."

The claim was as potent in its effect as crack. Laws, fueled by the frenzy created by "instantly addicting" crack, were enacted. One of them, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, imposed lower penalties on powder cocaine (used mostly by whites) than on crack cocaine (used mostly by African Americans). In practice, whites tended to be diverted into treatment more than blacks. All four members of Congress from Nevada voted for the bill.

There were those who tried to brake the inflammatory news coverage. The Washington Journalism Review eventually ran a cover story quoting Peter Jennings saying that using crack "even once can make a person crave cocaine as long as they live." Existing research, the Review said, disproves that statement. But the piece didn't appear until 1990. The Columbia Journalism Review did not directly challenge the claim but did urge greater skepticism toward drug war claims.

It did little good. The belief in the instantly addicting qualities of cocaine has entered popular culture. "The crack cocaine of ..." joined "If we can put a man on the moon ..." as an indispensable phrase. There are 47,800 Google hits for it--"the crack cocaine of junk food," "the crack cocaine of gambling addiction," "the crack cocaine of sexaholics," and so on.

5. Marijuana’s Rising Potency

That distinguished medical expert, Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick, said on Sam Shad's television program, "This is not the marijuana that people used to roll and do a little doobie back at Haight-Ashbury and some of the other things that went on back 30, 40 years ago. This is 10 times stronger in THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] content."

This has become one of the most common new myths about marijuana. White House drug czar John Walters loves it and used it when he came to Reno and Las Vegas to campaign against a 2002 marijuana ballot measure. "What many people don't understand is that this is not your father's marijuana," he told the Washington Post in a story about the Nevada initiative. "What we're seeing now is much more potent." In fact, no reliable evidence substantiates Gammick's 10-times-stronger claim, much less Walters' 30-times-stronger claim.

What they leave out of their sales pitch are these little nuggets of information:

• The claims of higher potency are based on a 1960s study that used unusually low-potency marijuana for testing purposes.
• The Bush administration itself will not substantiate the Walters/Gammick-style claims about potency. The federal Potency Monitoring Project reports negligible fluctuations in potency over the years. The U.S. Department of Justice's "National Drug Threat Assessment" for 2005 said that higher potency marijuana is not marketable because it makes tokers sick--"more intense--and often unpleasant--effects of the drug leading them to seek medical intervention."

• Potency is a so-what issue--when marijuana is more potent, tokers smoke less.

Walters managed to combine two of the lies we listed here into a single sentence when, on one occasion, he talked about border smuggling of pot that he claimed was highly potent: "Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana." It's the kind of false statement that would have fit right into 1870s Virginia City.

Contact: renoletters@newsreview.com *

CannabisNews Justice Archives



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Missing Nixon tapes
excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink "to have fun" but they smoke marijuana "to get high." This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it.

Anti-pot propaganda
Shortly before last year's Super Bowl, about 22 million American households saw a series of reports on their local TV news about the dangers of marijuana. The reports were by journalist Mike Morris, and included interviews with Drug Czar John Walters and other "experts" on the harms of pot.

Ganja/hemp lnfolinx

"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."

The Shafer Commission of 1970
Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency, although some evidence indicates that the heavy, long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug"

Special Release
30 Years After Nixon's Marijuana Commission Advocated Decriminalization
Report Findings Are Still Valid Nixon Never Read His Own Report, President Bush Should

March 22nd marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the report of the so-called "Shafer Commission" -- the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse -- whose members were appointed by then-President Richard Nixon. The Shafer Commission's (named after commission Chair, Gov. Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania) 1972 report, entitled "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding," boldly proclaimed that "neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety" and recommended Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana for personal use.

Nixon Commission Report
Advising Decriminalization of Marijuana Celebrates 30th Anniversary



GAO: $1 Bil.+ Anti-Drug Effort Ineffective
A Government Accountability Office probe of the White House's anti-drug media campaign has found that the $1 billion-plus spent on the effort so far has not been effective in reducing teen drug use. The report recommends that Congress limit funding until the Office of National Drug Control Policy "provides credible evidence of a media campaign approach that effectively prevents and curtails youth drug use."

White House Sends Money To Fight Pot Growing
The White House is sending money and some momentary manpower to reinforce the fight against California marijuana growers. When national drug czar John Walters lands in Fresno on Tuesday, he'll be bringing a commitment of an additional $2.2 million in law enforcement funding. The money will include $100,000 grants for Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as more support for a coordinated anti-pot campaign.

D.E.A.th Deceptions

Spraying Ditchweed Could Devastate Midwest Game Bird Populations
Outdoor Life, June 1971 p.53
Midwest game has gone to "pot"—for both cover and food. Problem: spraying could devastate game populations. The pot that the game is going to is marijuana or wild hemp, often called "pot" by its high-flying advocates. It grows as a weed in many Midwestern States. Nine out of 10 hunters probably couldn’t care less whether marijuana lives or dies. However, marijuana is one of the Midwest’s most valuable cover plants for upland game, and some of the proposals for eradicating it could have terribly damaging effect on all other upland-game cover. And cover is the name of the hunting game. No cover means no game and no hunting.

Annual Ditchweed Eradication Boondoggle Underway Again
"It is important to examine carefully how much of the marijuana eradicated in the US is essentially worthless ditchweed," wrote Clayton. "The answer is 95%." Clayton's research is not the only to pan the DEA's eradication efforts, nor the most damning. A 1998 report by the Vermont State Auditor placed the proportion of ditchweed in DEA's marijuana eradication program even higher, at 99.28%

Ditchweed Update: DEA Numbers

Mon$anto'$ WoD on Ditchweed
Often, authorities said, it is used as "cut" or added to higher grade marijuana to increase the yield.

[DdC]

The Czars' Reefer Madness By John Tierney
CN Source: New York Times August 26, 2006 Amsterdam  

Arjan Roskam, the creator of the award-winning marijuana blend named "Arjan's Haze," has dozens of pictures of celebrity visitors on the wall of his coffee shop in Amsterdam. He's got Eminem, Lenny Kravitz, Alicia Keys, Mike Tyson -- but so far, unfortunately, not a single White House drug czar.

The czars have preferred to criticize from afar. In the past, they've called Dutch drug policy "an unmitigated disaster," bemoaning Amsterdam's "stoned zombies" and its streets cluttered with "junkies." Anti-pot passion has only increased in the Bush administration, which has made it a priority to combat marijuana.

More than half a million Americans are arrested annually for possessing it. The Bush administration can't even abide it being used for medical purposes by the terminally ill. Why risk having any of it fall into the hands of young people who could turn into potheads, crack addicts and junkies?

But if America's drug warriors came here, they would learn something even if they didn't sample any of the dozens of varieties of marijuana sold legally in specially licensed coffee shops. They could see that the patrons puffing on joints generally don't look any more zombielike than the crowd at an American bar -- or, for that matter, a Congressional subcommittee listening to a lecture on the evils of marijuana.

And if they talked to Peter Cohen, a Dutch researcher who has been studying drug use for a quarter-century, they would discover something even more disorienting. Even though marijuana has been widely available since the 1970's, enough to corrupt a couple of generations, the Netherlands has not succumbed to reefer madness.

The Dutch generally use drugs less than Americans do, according to national surveys in both countries (and these surveys might understate Americans' drug usage, since respondents are less likely to admit illegal behavior). More Americans than Dutch reported having tried marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Among teenagers who'd tried marijuana, Americans were more likely to be regular users.

In a comparison of Amsterdam with another liberal port city, San Francisco, Cohen and other researchers found that people in San Francisco were nearly twice as likely to have tried marijuana. Cohen isn't sure exactly what cultural and economic factors account for the different usage patterns in America and the Netherlands, but he's confident he can rule out one explanation.

"Drug policy is irrelevant," says Cohen, the former director of the Center for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam. It's quite logical, he says, to theorize that outlawing drugs would have an impact, but experience shows otherwise, both in America and in some European countries with stricter laws than the Netherlands but no less drug use.

The good news about drugs, Cohen says, is that the differences among countries aren't all that important -- levels of addiction are generally low in America as well as in Europe. The bad news is that the occasional drug fad get hyped into a crisis that leads to bad laws.

"Prohibition does not reduce drug use, but it does have other impacts," he says. "It takes up an enormous amount of police time and generates large possibilities for criminal income."

In the Netherlands, that income goes instead to coffee-shop owners and to the government, which exacts heavy taxes. It also imposes strict regulations on what goes on in the coffee shop, including who can be served ( no minors ) and how much can be sold ( five grams to a customer ). Any unruly behavior or public disturbances can quickly close down a shop.

To avoid problems at the Green House, Roskam has closed-circuit cameras and a staff that urges novices to stick with small doses, and to protect their lungs by taking hits from a vaporizer. Unlike street buyers in America, customers know exactly what strength they're getting, which is especially useful for the hundreds of people with multiple sclerosis and other ailments who use his marijuana medicinally.

Roskam sneers at the street products in the United States, which he considers overpriced and badly blended. But he acknowledges there's one feature in the American market he can't compete with.

"Drugs are just less interesting here," he said. "One of my best friends here never smoked cannabis, never wanted to even try my products. Then when she was 32 she went to America on holiday and smoked for the first time. I asked her why, and she said: 'It was more fun over there. It was illegal.' "

Contact: letters@nytimes.com * Website

Cannabis Cafes Get Nudge To Fringes of a City
Dutch Take Sober Look at Pot Laws
Dutch Back Plan To Regulate Marijuana Farming

No pot smokers allowed in the U.S.

[DdC]

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, the Nuremberg Trials

Denver DEA Rep: Don't Legalize It By Ryan Morgan
CN Source: Daily Camera August 27, 2006 Colorado

The Drug Enforcement Agency is stepping into the political fray to oppose a statewide ballot issue that would legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. In an e-mail to political campaign professionals, an agent named Michael Moore asks for help finding a campaign manager to defeat the measure, which voters will consider in November. If passed, it would allow people 21 and older to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

In the e-mail, which was sent from a U.S. Department of Justice account, Moore also writes that the group has $10,000 to launch the campaign. He asks those interested in helping to call him at his DEA office.
That has members of Safer Colorado, the group supporting the marijuana legalization measure, crying foul. The government has no business spending the public's money on politics, they said.

Steve Fox, the group's executive director, said members of the executive branch, including the DEA, should leave law-making to legislators.

"Taxpayer money should not be going toward the executive branch advocating one side or another," Fox said. "It's a wholly inappropriate use of taxpayer money."

Jeff Sweetin, the special agent in charge of the Denver office of the DEA, said voters have every right to change the laws. And the law allows his agency to get involved in that process to tell voters why they shouldn't decriminalize pot.

"My mantra has been, 'If Americans use the democratic process to make change, we're in favor of that,'" he said. "We're in favor of the democratic process. But as a caveat, we're in favor of it working based on all the facts."

Sweetin said the $10,000 the committee has to spend came from private donations, including some from agents' own accounts. He said the DEA isn't trying to "protect Coloradans from themselves" but that the agency is the expert when it comes to drugs.

"The American taxpayer does have a right to have the people they've paid to become experts in this business tell them what this is going to do," he said. "They should benefit from this expertise."
That argument threatens states' rights to make their own laws, says Safer's Fox.

"By this logic, federal funds could be used by the executive branch without limitation to campaign for or against state ballot initiatives," he said. "Our federalist system is based on the notion that states can establish their own laws without federal interference. The DEA ... is thumbing its nose at the citizens of Colorado and the U.S. Constitution."

State and federal law take different approaches to whether government employees should be allowed to mix work and politics.

Colorado law prohibits state employees from advocating for or against any political issue while on the job, and also bars those employees from using government resources — including phone and e-mail accounts — for any kind of political advocacy.

But federal law — which governs what DEA agents can do — is different.

The Hatch Act, passed in 1939 and amended in 1993, governs most political speech. Passed in the wake of patronage scandals in which the party in power would use government money and staff to campaign against the opposition, the law is mostly aimed at partisan political activity, said Ken Bickers, a University of Colorado political science professor.

While the act's prohibitions against on-the-job partisan politicking are strict, for the most part it allows federal employees to take part in non-partisan politics. And it's mostly silent on non-partisan ballot measures.

"I'm not sure that this doesn't slide through the cracks in the Hatch Act," Bickers said. "The Hatch Act isn't about political activity — it's about partisan political activity. Since this is a ballot initiative, and there's no party affiliation attached to it, that part of the Hatch Act probably wouldn't be violated."

An official from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency charged with investigating violations of the act, said in a statement last week that the DEA hasn't run afoul of Hatch.

Note: Agent seeks support to fight proposed legislation.

Contact: openforum@dailycamera.com * Website

"Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street
but also to protect the public from harmful ideas."
Robert Ingersoll, then Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in a column by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post, June 24, 1972, p. 31 (Ingersoll became the first director of the DEA in 1974)



Ideas are more powerful than guns.
We would not let our enemies have guns,
why should we let them have ideas.
Joseph Stalin

Legalizing Pot Would Hurt Kids, and Here's Why By Cindy Rodriguez
CN Source: Denver Post August 27, 2006 Denver, CO

People who smoke pot - including a few friends of mine - are not going to like this column. But their desire to legally light up is less important to me than the effect that legalization would have on kids. For that reason, I hope Amendment 44 - the state ballot initiative that would allow adults to legally possess up to an ounce of marijuana - fails.

If it passes in November it will allow adults to smoke without fear of getting arrested. But the upshot is many young people will take it as evidence that marijuana is not dangerous - something many already believe.

Young people often say that because marijuana comes from a plant, it is "natural" and "organic," therefore not harmful. But it is toxic. If it weren't there would be no high.

"Of course marijuana intoxication impairs intellectual functioning," says Dr. Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who has spent a decade researching the effects of marijuana use. "You don't need brain scans to tell you that."

Heavy marijuana smokers are not only less academically accomplished, they tend to have lower incomes than nonsmokers, Pope said. But he said science cannot yet answer whether it's due to marijuana use or whether people who choose to smoke marijuana tend to have lower cognitive functioning and/or less drive to begin with.

Snipped: Complete Article: [url=][/url] http://www.denverpost.com/style/ci_4220993

Contact: openforum@denverpost.com * Website

Certain segments of the media, certain quarters in academia,
and some frustrated Americans see legalization as an option that should be discussed.
-- US DEA booklet, "Speaking Out Against Legalization"

A Sucker Mom's Take On The DEAth War
A Drug Warmongers Toll on the Americas
The Drug War Refugees
The Ganjawar Fraud...

"Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.
Karen Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration



Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative
WHEREAS, according to the National Institutes of Health, an average
of 317 Americans die annually as the result of alcohol overdoses; and
WHEREAS, there has never been even a single fatal marijuana overdose recorded in the medical literature, as noted by the British Medical Journal in September 2003; and
WHEREAS, according to U.S. Department of Justice, “About 3 million
crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been
drinking at the time of the offense. Among those victims who provided
information about the offender’s use of alcohol, about 35% of the
victimizations involved an offender who had been drinking”; and
WHEREAS, extensive research, documented in official reports by the
British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, among others, shows that -- unlike alcohol -- marijuana use is not generally a cause of violence or aggressive behavior and in fact tends to reduce violence and aggression;
WHEREAS, it is the intent of this ordinance to have the private adult use and possession of marijuana treated in the same manner as the private adult use and possession of alcohol;
NOW, THEREFORE,
BE IT ENACTED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF DENVER

Safer Choice
Change The Climate



Colorado Voters To Consider Marijuana Legalization

Marijuana Amendment Will Be On Ballot

SAFER Pushing To Legalize Marijuana Statewide



"The DEA is unequivocally opposed to the legalization of illicit drugs
(including, marijuana, hemp, and hemp seed oil)."
- US DEA booklet, "Speaking Out Against Legalization"

Virtues of Ganja



The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--delierate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth persistent, peruasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

[DdC]

Anti-Drug Advertising Campaign a Failure By Donna Leinwand
CN Source: USA Today August 28, 2006 Washington, DC

A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.

The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush's budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year.

Walters' office disputed the study and noted that drug-use rates among youths have declined since 1998. A 2005 survey by the University of Michigan indicated that 30% of 10th-graders reported having used an illicit drug the previous year, down from 35% in 1998.

The GAO report is "irrelevant to us," says Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). "It's based on ads from 2½ years ago, and they were effective, too. Drug use has been going down dramatically. Cutting the program now would imperil (its) progress."
Snipped: Complete Article: http://tinyurl.com/f7678

Contact: editor@usatoday.com * Website

GAO: $1 Bil.+ Anti-Drug Effort Ineffective

White House Unveils Latest Anti-Drug Effort

Senators Join Critics Of ONDCP Program

"Like the Red Menace of the early 1950s, the current drug hysteria has led to a loyalty oath - this time, the urine test."

- Abbie Hoffman, "The Nation," Nov 21, 1987



Tax dollars used for ill-conceived DEA push

"It's hardly news that Drug Enforcement Agency officials are opposed to a Colorado ballot initiative seeking to make it legal for adults to possess small amounts of marijuana.

It certainly is news, however, when DEA agents admit to spending staff time, paid for by taxpayer dollars, fighting that ballot measure or any other.

The Daily Camera reported Aug. 27 that DEA agent Michael Moore sent out e-mails to political consultants looking for someone to advise the federal agency how to set up a campaign against the amendment.

The issue comes before voters in November and seeks to allow state residents over 21 to keep up to 1 ounce of marijuana.
The wisdom of such a change in drug laws is certainly debatable. American learned hard lessons during Prohibition, mostly that it neither kept people from drinking nor persuade Americans to shun alcohol.

Clearly, for all the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on fighting the so-called War on Drugs, illegal drug use seems as dangerous and pervasive as ever.

It's unclear whether decriminalization of drugs such as marijuana would have any effect on American drug use or drug sales, but it's hard to argue that there's much of a black market for alcohol these days."
Snipped: Complete Article: http://tinyurl.com/zxc49

By any of the major criteria of harm - mortality, morbidity, toxicity, addictiveness and relationship with crime - cannabis is less harmful than any of the other major illicit drugs, or than alcohol or tobacco.
-- Report of the British Police Foundation, March 2000



U.S. Lawmakers consider 'Piss Tasting Grity Act of 2005'

Former DEAth Merchant's Delusions
X Drug Czars Believe Their War Has Been Won

Newsbrief: Walters Lies Pile Up in Canada Diatribe

Journey for Justice Pedaling for Pot
Ganjawar: Prison Slave Labor, Rape & Pillage Deterrent

The Drug War Refugees

How drug testing and other privacy violations are alienating America's youth
Authors Laura and Paul Finley detail how school policy serves to alienate, denigrate, and subjugate the youth of our society. Rather than find humanistic ways to further the intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical development of the youth, schools are increasingly taking on militaristic characteristics emphasizing efficiency, chain of command, and zero tolerance for mistakes (i.e., learning).287 Pages

DEAth Flunky

White House Budget Office Flunks the DEA

We could seize your vehicle, whether it's paid off or not we can seize the car. But we're going to go ahead and let you keep your vehicle now, because it's kind of beat up and stuff.
-- Police officer talking to a marijuana suspect on "COPS"



Tax Dollars Used for Ill-Conceived DEA Push
CN Source: Aurora Sentinel Editorial August 29, 2006 Colorado

It's hardly news that Drug Enforcement Agency officials are opposed to a Colorado ballot initiative seeking to make it legal for adults to possess small amounts of marijuana.

It certainly is news, however, when DEA agents admit to spending staff time, paid for by taxpayer dollars, fighting that ballot measure or any other. The Daily Camera reported Aug. 27 that DEA agent Michael Moore sent out e-mails to political consultants looking for someone to advise the federal agency how to set up a campaign against the amendment.
Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread22115.shtml

Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places,
and does not cure it or even diminish it.
-- Mark Twain



Colorado Marijuana Bill Step In Right Direction By Ian Logsdon
CN Source: Retriever Weekly August 29, 2006 Colorado

Residents of the state of Colorado will be voting on a ballot initiative this November, as students and activists in the state have gathered over 130,000 signatures to place a bill that would legalize possession of marijuana for the entire state on the ballot.

They managed to double the number of required signatures in case of court challenges, and because of their efforts, the Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative will go to the voters this fall. The law will make it so that possession of up to an ounce of marijuana is legal for anyone over the age of 21, with obvious restrictions for driving while intoxicated.
Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread22113.shtml

Marijuana's greatest gift to humanity is the gift of appreciation. I think the ability to just open your eyes and appreciate things: to actually be able to look at something, actually be able to hear something, and ignore a lot of the static, and the noise, and the interpretation, and the newspaper values, and the television imagery and all this stuff that the information overload pours on our heads every day.
-- Michael Aldrich



State By State Legalization Destined for Chaos By Chris Najmi
CN Source: Retriever August 29, 2006 Weekly  Colorado

Last February, a ballot initiative known as the Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative was introduced in the state of Colorado. The text of this ballot initiative states the following: “Shall there be an amendment to section 18-18-406 (1) of the Colorado revised statutes making legal the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana for any person twenty-one years of age or older?”

This initiative is something of a slap in the face to the federal government. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 establishes how possession, manufacture, and distribution of drugs are to be regulated by the federal government.

The CSA classifies marijuana as a schedule 1 controlled substance, the penalties for possession/distribution range from 5 years imprisonment for possession, to life sentences for multiple trafficking charges. If there were a constitutional scholar in the room, they might point out that nowhere in the Constitution is this an expressed power of the federal government and therefore by the 10th amendment drug enforcement should be a power reserved to the states.
Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread22112.shtml

Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed

The US Supreme Court upheld the power of drug agents to use the airport drug courier profile to stop, detain and question citizens without probable cause; to subject a traveller's luggage to a sniffing examination by drug-detector dogs without probable cause; to make warrantless searches of automobiles and closed containers therein; to conduct surveillance of suspects by placing transmitters or beepers in containers in vehicles; to search at will without cause ships in inland waterways and to obtain a search warrant based on an undisclosed informant's tip.
-- Steven Wisotsky, Professor of Law, Nova University Law Center