Drug War // Current

We’ve Cut Cigarette Smoking By Half and We Didnt Have To Arrest 20 Million Americans To Do It

November 17th, 2008

According to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control, fewer Americans are smoking cigarettes than at any time in modern history.

The number of U.S. adults who smoke has dropped below 20 percent for the first time on record, Reuters reported. This is less than half the percentage (42 percent) of Americans who smoked cigarettes during the 1960s.

Imagine that; in the past 40 years tens of millions of Americans have voluntarily quit smoking a legal, yet highly addictive intoxicant. Millions of others have refused to initiate the habit. And they’ve all made this decision without ever once being threatened with criminal prosecution and arrest, imprisonment, probation, and drug testing.

By contrast, during this same period of time, state and local police have arrested some 20 million Americans for pot law violations ‹ primarily for violations no greater than simple possession. And yet marijuana use among the public has skyrocketed from an annual rate of 0.6 million new users in 1965 to some 2.5 annual new users today.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, of course. Tobacco, though harmful to health, is a legally regulated commodity. Sellers are licensed and held accountable by federal and state laws. Users are restricted by age. Advertising and access is limited by state and federal governments. And health warnings regarding the drug’s use are based upon credible science.

By contrast, marijuana remains an unregulated black market commodity. Sellers are typically criminal entrepreneurs who, for the most part, operate undetected from law enforcement and are free to sell their product to any person of any person. Unlike tobacco, marijuana’s packaging carries no warning label, and government ‘education’ campaign’s regarding pot’s use are based almost explicitly upon hyperbole, propaganda, and laughable stereotypes.

Is it any wonder why use of one drug is going down at the same time that use of the other is rising?

If federal lawmakers truly wished to address marijuana use, they would take a page from their successful campaign to reduce the use of cigarettes. This would include taxing and regulating cannabis with the drug’s sale and use restricted to specific markets and consumers.

While such an alternative may not entirely eliminate the black market demand for pot, it would certainly be preferable to today’s blanket, though thoroughly ineffective, expensive and impotent criminal prohibition.

Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORML and the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. He may be contact by e-mail at: paul@norml.org.November 17th, 2008 According to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control, fewer Americans are smoking... more

simplecj
added this

14 responses

1 day ago

Grass: The History of Marijuana

This film explores the history of the American government's official policy on marijuana in the 20th century. Rising with... more

elsonwvu
added this

3 responses

1 day ago

Why Marijuana is illegal (Part 1)

"Grow More Pot" by Jello Biafra From "I Blow Minds for a Living", recorded at Slim's, San... more

JackHerer
added this

3 responses

2 days ago

Czech law to punish marijuana less strictly than other drugs

Prague - The possession of a small amount of marijuana for personal use will be punished far less strictly than that of other... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

6 days ago

Mexicans in U.S. will stay home for the holidays

Every December for as long as Brenda Cardoso can remember, her family has spent Christmas together at her grandmother's house... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

6 days ago

Teacher drug testing may see legal action

Unless members of the Kanawha County school board change their minds about a plan to randomly drug test teachers, the county could... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

6 days ago

PFA unhappy with home drugs tests

The Professional Footballers' Association are opposing new drug-testing rules that could see the top players tested in their... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

7 days ago

Compulsory drug testing proposed

The Task Force on Youth Drug Abuse has proposed introducing legislation allowing compulsory testing of people suspected of... more

JackHerer
added this

5 responses

7 days ago

Mexico captures top Gulf drug cartel hitman

While we typically look overseas for danger, things have been heating up south of the border for quite a long time. The Mexican... more

doithengiaorg
added this

0 responses

11 days ago

PTSD: Virtual Reality Therapy Part Two: Condemnation

Dr. Phil Leveque Salem-News.com Phillip Leveque has spent his life as a Combat Infantryman, Physician Pharmacologist and... more

JackHerer
added this

1 response

12 days ago

N.D. farmers appeal to grow hemp

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY Two North Dakota farmers will ask a federal appeals court in St. Paul on Wednesday to allow them to... more

JackHerer
added this

9 responses

12 days ago

Price of cocaine plummets on streets

In the space of just four years, the price of cocaine in Ireland has dropped drastically.

A kilogram of high-grade Colombian cocaine was once worth almost €130,000. The price has now dipped to under €80,000.

Such has been the decline in "street" drug prices in Ireland, that one criminal recently tried to use the collapsing rates to challenge a state drugs prosecution -- on the basis that the drugs he was charged with being in possession of had only a fraction of the actual value claimed by the gardai.

Detectives acknowledge that the plummeting street price is directly linked to supply -- and a decision taken a decade ago by the notorious Colombian Medellin cartel to flood Western markets with their drugs.

As the Colombian, Central American and West African drug gangs dramatically increased cocaine production, so smugglers invested in their supply pipelines. Drug smuggling became a hi-tech, highly sophisticated endeavour -- and tonnes of cocaine suddenly flooded European markets.

Gangs

Gangs were willing to invest up to €1m in getting a major shipment into Europe and their logistical operations were worthy of an espionage thriller.

In one case, a gang even set up a bogus solicitors officer in London simply to obtain fake passports -- and then bought jeeps, cars, satellite phones, a yacht and two high-powered landing craft just to support the drug delivery operation.

European and US police forces battled to close the technology gap as cocaine, now readily available and declining in price, stopped being the drug of just the upper middle-class.

Suddenly, cocaine became a poison for all levels of society -- and this explosion in popularity was blamed for driving the price of ecstasy down to just €2. The price of cocaine has fallen in the UK, France and other wealthy EU states, too. All have also witnessed a resultant flood of cocaine addiction.

The multi-million euro profits of cocaine have also fuelled vicious drug wars as gangs fight over territory and shipments.

- Ralph RiegelIn the space of just four years, the price of cocaine in Ireland has dropped drastically. A kilogram of high-grade Colombian... more

JackHerer
added this

6 responses

12 days ago

Woman gets probation for pot-growing operation

Woman gets probation for pot-growing operation By Lisa Roose-Church DAILY PRESS & ARGUS A former Ann Arbor Police... more

JackHerer
added this

3 responses

12 days ago

Man tells grand jury police beat, sodomized him

Man tells grand jury police beat, sodomized him BY PERVAIZ SHALLWANI Special to Newsday November 7, 2008 Michael... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

12 days ago

Owner told to stop selling hemp items

Heather Colpitts Langley Advance Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Since setting up his downtown store recently, Randy Caine has... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

12 days ago

Hampden County D.A. to drop all small marijuana possession charges

By DAN RING dring@repub.com BOSTON - A day after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question to decriminalize marijuana,... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

12 days ago

Drugged daze in the Don

I’ve become my own worst nightmare, a medpot horror story Matt Mernagh NOW writer and med pot activist Matt Mernagh,... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

12 days ago

Thailand - Govt's war on drugs launched to last 90 days

The government has launched a new round of drug crackdown in a ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat on... more

JackHerer
added this

0 responses

12 days ago

Research into medicinal marijuana grows up.

This summer, British and Italian researchers found that in a laboratory plate, molecules in marijuana can slay the superbug methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, which recently infected seven babies and four employees in a Yonkers, N.Y., maternity ward, heightening fears of outbreaks in schools and locker rooms, as well as in its more familiar breeding grounds, hospitals and nursing homes. In theory, compounds derived from the cannabis plant could someday serve in topical creams for patients with MRSA or other antibiotic-resistant infections.

This isn't the first time marijuana has tantalized the world as a possible wonder drug. In recent years, compounds in cannabis or related molecules have been shown to slow the growth of lung tumors in mice, decrease hardening of the arteries in rats, and boost the egg-binding capability of tobacco smokers' sperm. Research on the receptors that THC and other cannabis compounds attach to—and the nitty-gritty mechanisms by which they exert their effects—has been booming. So has work on native molecules, called endocannabinoids, that bind to the same sites. These molecular interactions affect a wide range of functions, from appetite to inflammation to the perception of pain.

The onslaught of basic science has helped to separate cannabis from an association with hippies and recreational pot smokers. It has also spurred hopes that these molecules (or similar ones) might prove therapeutic for traumatic brain injury, inflammatory bowel disease, allergic contact dermatitis, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease, among others. For all the razzle-dazzle, though, potential treatments frequently seem stuck in perpetual adolescence. Research on traumatic brain injury seemed promising but got mixed results in human clinical trials, while most of the others simply haven't gotten very far in the experimental process.

Still, a few prospects show signs of inching toward adulthood. The most enticing are aimed at lessening pain associated with nerve damage and improving some symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Between 2007 and this summer, several randomized clinical trials have found that smoking marijuana can relieve pain in patients with nerve degeneration caused by HIV or other disorders. Compounds in cannabis also seem to reduce nerve pain and possibly decrease spastic movements in people with MS. A drug called Sativex—which delivers two cannabis compounds in a spray under the tongue—is now in late-stage clinical trials in Europe for MS patients. Much as we've heard the hype before, these findings deserve some notice even from the jaded.

Studying the upside of marijuana can be a bureaucratic nightmare. In 1970, Congress deemed it a Schedule 1 drug, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse and "no currently accepted medical use"—making research on possible benefits a tough sell. In the 1980s, the Food and Drug Administration approved Marinol, an oral formulation of THC, the most psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy. Later, it also approved Marinol to boost the appetites of people with AIDS. But Marinol was never fully accepted by patients, says Donald Abrams, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. It took effect more slowly than smoked marijuana and was also more psychoactive. (When THC enters the bloodstream from the digestive tract, it is broken down by the liver into even more psychoactive molecules.) Nor has Marinol been approved in the United States to treat pain. Those who wished to push research further—whether by studying smoked marijuana, developing better formulations, or testing cannabis for other conditions—got no love from the federal government.

moreThis summer, British and Italian researchers found that in a laboratory plate, molecules in marijuana can slay the superbug... more

JackHerer
added this

1 response

12 days ago

'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case finally settled: Juneau

$45,000: Juneau school district will pay student it suspended.

In a free speech case that reached the nation's highest court, the Juneau-Douglas School District and former student Joseph Frederick have reached a settlement.

Frederick was suspended during a 2002 Olympic torch relay for holding up a banner that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while standing across from the high school.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school's position that Frederick celebrated the illegal use of drugs. The district will pay Frederick $45,000. In exchange Frederick will drop remaining claims not heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We're really happy to have this one resolved," School Board President Mark Choate said. "Every case involves different opinions, but we're pleased to have it resolved so we can focus more on the important work the board has to do to improve schools in Juneau."

Frederick's Juneau-based attorney Douglas Mertz says the settlement essentially brings an end to the case as far as his client sees it.

"It's time I think to close the chapter on what happened to Joe and leave these other things to be resolved in the future," Mertz said.

The settlement also calls for the district to spend as much as $5,000 to hire a neutral constitutional law expert to chair a forum on student speech at JDHS. This is to be done before this school year ends next spring.

The district also will continue to enforce its policies that prohibit its students from displaying materials deemed as advocating or celebrating illegal drug use, as permitted by the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, Choate said.

"The settlement in the case will avoid further litigation expenses, but more importantly will allow all parties to put a long-running, divisive issue behind them and move forward with a better understating of the speech rights of students in the Juneau School District," Choate said.

Mertz said he believes the community has learned from this high-profile case. He said civics and First Amendment issues should be an education priority in schools.

Mertz said the saddest part of this seven years is what he calls an unfair campaign of retaliation the school district launched against Frederick and the young man's family.

"Joe stood up for his rights and has been vindicated."$45,000: Juneau school district will pay student it suspended. In a free speech case that reached the nation's highest... more