Homeland Security Hearings on the Drug War
DWR: Pete Guither Saturday, March 7, 2009

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is planning hearings on southern border violence (ie, the drug war).

And now there are some House Hearings as well that may come up in the next week as well. Commenter Pat Rogers is all over this on his blog, along with providing lists of House Committee Members and Senate Homeland Security Committee members.

I've got to say that at first glance, the makeup of these Homeland Security Committees is pretty horrible. Chairman Lieberman? Pryor, Coburn, McCain, Burris? And Souder in the House? These are names unlikely to demonstrate even a glimmer of intelligence regarding the drug war.

Souder Illusion: Drug Sentencing Reform Ax
Souder Orders to FDA Backfiring!
A Lie College Students Might Want To Tell
McCain Should Know The Truth

Gang Violence in Canada Linked to Mexico Drug Wars

Sinister Drug War Propagandists will stoop to any low level as evident in this World War 2 Era Political Cartoon from the Buffalo Courier-Express equating Marijuana with Nazism.
- Daily Koz by redstatehatemonitor Wed Sep 19, 2007

Drug Death, Thy Name is Hershey's
Saturday, December 1, 2007

"Drop the Ice Breakers and step away from the car."

It would've been mildly amusing had it had been satire. After searching the story to see if it was intended to be a humor piece, "
Mint or Drug: Is Hershey's Cracked?" by Jill Porter, Philadelphia Daily News, one is overcome by a sadden resignation.

Have drug alarmists no shame? This is unintended humor from a usual source. They've now settled their focus on a familiar group of law-breakers: Hershey's. The offending candy? Ice Breakers that are so similar to crack cocaine in appearance that--what?


Reaction to drug warriors' next target?

"My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular.... That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system."
-- Jack Nicholson

Drug War Porn

I've always thought of Al Roker's DEA as a form of drug war pornography.

But apparently, it's just soft-core porn compared to Chris Ryan's Elite Police (DVD out on Monday)

And they're about "knock down the door" of a cocaine-making lab . . . big time.

KABOOM! A searing blast of heat scorches Chris's cheeks as the hut VAPORISES before his eyes, sending a 3,000ft plume of smoke into the air thanks to plastic explosives planted by the Junglas--Colombia's frontline cops in the war against drugs.

"We left the coke lab a blast site of scorched metal stinking of napalm," says Bravo Two Zero hero Chris who worked with the squad for his dramatic TV series, Elite Police, about the South American cocaine trail. "Then we needed to get out fast."

This is drug war action so intense, it even spontaneously breaks out into CAPITALS!

But of course, this isn't about making money. It's got a more important message:

"There was a story where 14 gangsters' bodies turned up without heads. Their gang then chopped off the rival gang's heads a week later. There's no end to what they will do."

Now Chris hopes his programme will make cocaine users in the UK sit up and take notice. "Despite cocaine being so addictive, some Brits see it as relatively harmless," says Chris.

"But as I discovered, the facts behind it are horrifying. And the misery it causes on its way to our streets is shocking."



Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight
Mexico Decriminalizes Small Amounts of Drugs
Mexico City -- Owning marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if the drugs are carried in small amounts for personal use, under legislation passed by the Congress.

Ganjawar Puppets Cave... again
After intense pressure from the United States, President Vicente Fox has asked Congress to reconsider a law it passed last week that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as part of a larger effort to crack down on street-level dealing.

US PRAISES THAI DRUG WAR!
From February of 2003, to 100 days later, June 2003, Thai police executed over 4,000 Thais, jailing 60,000, in a bid to meet targets set by the Thai Prime Minister to 'complertely end all illegal drug use by whatever means necessary'. A senior US drug official yesterday hailed Thailand's war against drugs as a success.

Stop the War on Colombians!

Via Kaptinemo in comments comes this heartbreaking story:

In July 2007, Teresa Ortega stood solemnly in a field of wilting corn and pineapple crops as tears streamed down her cheeks. She had taken it upon herself to start a farm with 100 widows - women who lost their husbands and children to Colombia's war and were fighting against poverty. Together they had purchased this small farm and worked it on the weekends to make ends meet. Now - after a plane sprayed chemicals over their farm - all was lost.

To bureaucrats in Washington, Teresa and her friends are simply additional collateral damage at ground zero of Washington's drug war in South America.



Yellowknife Couple Lose Children Over Medical Marijuana Garden In Closet
The family of a woman who used marijuana to ease the pain of a spinal injury had their house raided and ransacked by RCMP last week after the police received an anonymous tip about a "smell" emanating from the home. Although the authorities found only a few marijuana plants, they have condemned the home and placed the children in foster care under family child protection services. full story

How To Stop The Drug Wars
A hundred years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commissionâ??just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a â??drug-free worldâ?ť and to â??eliminating or significantly reducingâ?ť the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008. full story



Never Mind The Evidence - A Drug-Free World Is Nigh
This year marks the 100th anniversary of global drug prohibition, and what an inglorious centenary it is when we consider the millions of lives that have been blighted as a consequence of the war on drugs. And yet the majority of governments have supported a worldwide ban on the cultivation, distribution and use of psychoactive substances ever since the signing of the Shanghai convention, which aimed to target opium use, in 1909. full story

Rockefeller Drug Laws Are a Crime
The draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws represent a misguided and ineffective regime for addressing drug use and addiction - health issues, not criminal issues. With legislation passed this week by the Assembly, New York may be ready to shift towards a more reasonable - and affordable - approach guided by public health and safety. full story



Stop Bill C-15: Say No To Mandatory Jail Terms For Marijuana
Stephen Harper has introduced mandatory minimums for marijuana - previously known as Bill C-26, but now introduced as Bill C-15. Harper wants a mandatory minimum six months in jail for one plant, and one year for trafficking involving "organized crime", which is simply defined as three or more people - that could be you, your dealer, and the grower! Canadians know the drug war has failed, and 62% support the legalization of marijuana. Speak up and help defeat C-15! full story



"Insanity (is) ...
Continuing to do the same things and expecting different results."
-- Albert Einstein

"The Limits of the Criminal Sanction"
by Herbert Packer, 1968

For over fifty years the United States has been committed to a policy of suppressing the "abuse" of narcotic and other "dangerous" drugs. The primary instrument in carrying out this policy has been the criminal sanction. The results of this reliance on the criminal sanction have included the following:

(1) Several hundred thousand people, the overwhelming majority of whom have been primarily users rather than traffickers, have been subjected to severe criminal punishment.

(2) An immensely profitable illegal traffic in narcotic and other forbidden drugs has developed.

(3) This illegal traffic has contributed significantly to the growth and
prosperity of organized criminal groups.

(4) A substantial number of all acquisitive crimes - burglary, robbery, auto theft, other forms of larceny - have been committed by drug
users in order to get the wherewithal to pay the artificially high prices charged for drugs on the illegal market.

(5) Billions of dollars and a significant proportion of total law enforcement resources have been expended in all stages of the criminal process.

(6) A disturbingly large number of undesirable police practices - unconstitutional searches and seizures, entrapment, electronic surveillance have become habitual because of the great difficulty that attends the detection of narcotics offenses.

(7) The burden of enforcement has fallen primarily on the urban poor, especially Negroes and Mexican-Americans.

(8) Research on the causes, effects, and cures of drug use has been stultified.

(9) The medical profession has been intimidated into neglecting its accustomed role of relieving this form of human misery.

(10) A large and well-entrenched enforcement bureaucracy has developed a vested interest in the status quo, and has effectively thwarted all but the most marginal reforms.

(11) Legislative invocations of the criminal sanction have automatically and unthinkingly been extended from narcotics to marijuana to the flood of new mind-altering drugs that have appeared in recent years, thereby compounding the preexisting problem. A clearer case of misapplication of the criminal sanction would be difficult to imagine.

Drug Warriors Terrorize Freedom

Ernest Money
A drug warrior uses Congress' purse strings to strangle dissent.Jacob Sullum | February 20, 2004