Tag Archives: Harm Reduction

The Hate-Filled Origins of the War on Drugs they Don’t Want you to Know

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By Jay Syrmopoulos

Source: The Free Thought Project

An eye-opening video produced by the folks at ATTN, lays out how cocaine was banned as a means of social engineering, using racism as the main tool in driving this agenda. The desired results were achieved by utilizing stereotypically false racist attributions, perpetuated in the media as a means of turning public opinion against specific substances.Cannabis was attributed to Hispanics, hence the coining of the term “marijuana,” as a means of correlating the drug with Mexicans immigrants. Cocaine was attributed to blacks while opium was linked to the Chinese, with each being associated with racist depictions relating to use of the drug in question.

As hysteria grew, mainly due to the racial demonization of drugs, Congress took action with the passage of the Harrison Act of 1914, which outlawed the production, distribution or importation of opium and cocaine.

These actions were then followed up with the outlawing of marijuana on a federal level with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

The modern “War on Drugs,” which has been waged disproportionately upon urban minorities, has its roots in the Nixon administration.

Nixon dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

In the early 1980’s the crack cocaine epidemic hit the inner cities of urban America with a vengeance. It began the devastation of black communities and the disenfranchising of many of the socially conscious organizations, such as the Black Panthers, which were working towards ending institutionalized racism.

Journalist Gary Webb in his groundbreaking investigative series, Dark Alliance, exposed deep connection between the CIA and large scale drug trafficking, which many attribute to the crack cocaine epidemic.

The violence associated with the crack scourge was steadily fed to the living rooms of middle America on the nightly news, which once again manifested as fear in the public. The public then begged the politicians to save them from the media spoon fed menace.

Thus began the approach to “get tough on crime,” which can be seen in the disparate penalties for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine. Crack, which was primarily used by blacks, was given a penalty 100 times more severe than that of powder cocaine, which was primarily used by whites. This sentencing difference was in spite of the drugs being the same pharmacologically speaking.

In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act reduced this disparity down to an 18 times more severe penalty for crack vs. powder cocaine, but a massive difference in the way these almost identical substances are treated remains.

It’s quite clear what the impetus for making drugs illegal has historically been, racial fear. The violence perpetrated upon innocent people under the guise of a “War on Drugs” clearly shows that it’s actually a war being waged on all freedom loving Americans.

The manner in which racial prejudice has been used by the state to forward its agenda throughout history is consistent with the divide and conquer approach that continues to be used domestically and abroad, with the mainstream media seemingly ever ready to assist.

Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has previously been published on BenSwann.com and WeAreChange.org. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

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Why the Drug War Has Been a Forty-Year Lynching

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By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Source: FreePress.org

The Drug War has been a forty-year lynching….
…the corporate/GOP response to the peace and civil rights movements.

It’s used the Drug Enforcement Administration and other policing operations as a high-tech Ku Klux Klan, meant to gut America’s communities of youth and color.

It has never been about suppressing drugs. Quite the opposite.

And now that it may be winding down, the focus on suppressing minority votes will shift even stronger to electronic election theft.

The Drug War was officially born June 17, 1971, (http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war) when Richard Nixon pronounced drugs to be “Public Enemy Number One.” In a nation wracked by poverty, racial tension, injustice, civil strife, ecological disaster, corporate domination, a hated Vietnam War and much more, drugs seemed an odd choice.
In fact, the Drug War’s primary target was black and young voters.

It was the second, secret leg of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” meant to bring the former Confederacy into the Republican Party.

Part One was about the white vote.

America’s original party of race and slavery (https://zinnedproject.org/materials/a-peoples-history-of-the-united-states-updated-and-expanded-edition/)was Andrew Jackson’s Democrats (born 1828).

After the Civil War the Party’s terror wing, the KKK, made sure former slaves and their descendants “stayed in their place.”

A century of lynchings (at least 3200 of them) (http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html)efficiently suppressed the southern black community.

In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs began to attract black voters to the Democratic Party. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson’s support for civil and voting rights legislation, plus the 24th Amendment ending the poll tax, sealed the deal. Today blacks, who once largely supported the Party of Lincoln,  vote 90% or more Democrat (http://blackdemographics.com/culture/black-politics/).

But the Democrats’ lean to civil rights angered southern whites. Though overt racist language was no longer acceptable in the 1970s, Nixon’s Republicans clearly signaled an open door to the former Confederacy (https://www.thenation.com/article/why-todays-gop-crackup-is-the-final-unraveling-of-nixons-southern-strategy/).

But recruiting angry southern whites would not be enough for the Republicans to take the south. In many southern states more than 40% of potential voters were black. If they were allowed to vote, and if their votes were actually counted, all the reconstructed Democrat Party would need to hold the south would be a sliver of moderate white support.

That’s where the Drug War came in.

Reliable exact national arrest numbers from 1970 through 1979 are hard to come by.

But according to Michelle Alexander’s superb, transformative The New Jim Crow, and according to research by Marc Mauer and Ryan King of the Sentencing Project, more than 31,000,000 Americans were arrested for drugs between 1980 and 2007 (http://newjimcrow.com).

Further federal uniform crime report statistics compiled by www.freepress.org indicate that, between 2008 and 2014, another 9,166,000 were arrested for drug possession.
Taken together, than means well over 40,000,000 American citizens have been arrested for drugs in the four decades since Nixon’s announcement.
It is a staggering number: more than 10% of the entire United States, nearly four times the current population of Ohio, far in excess of more than 100 countries worldwide.
A number that has gutted the African-American community.  A national terror campaign far beyond the reach of even the old KKK.
Justice Department statistics indicate than half of those arrests have been for simple possession of marijuana.
According to US Bureau of Justice statistics, between 1980 and 2013, while blacks were 12% of the population, blacks constituted 30% of those arrested for drug law violations and nearly 40% of those incarcerated in all U.S. prisons.  Thus some 20,000,000 African-American men have been sent to prison for non-violent “crimes” in the past forty years.
If the Hispanic population is added in, as much as 60% of drug arrests are of racial or ethnic minorities.
On the 40th anniversary of the Drug War in 2010, the Associated Press used public records to calculate that the taxpayer cost of arresting and imprisoning all these human beings has been in excess of $1,000,000,000.
Sending them all to college would have been far cheaper.  It also would have allowed them to enhance and transform their communities.
Instead, they were taken from their families.  Their children were robbed of their parents.  They were assaulted by the prison culture, stripped of their right to vote and stopped from leading the kind of lives that might have moved the nation in a very different direction.
Nixon also hated hippies and the peace movement. So in addition to disenfranchising 20,000,000 African-Americans, the Drug War has imprisoned additional millions of young white and Hispanic pot smokers.
Thus the DEA has been the ultra-violent vanguard of the corporate culture war.
In 1983 Ronald Reagan took the Drug War to a new level.  Using profits from his illegal arms sales to Iran, he illegally funded the Contra thugs who were fighting Nicaragua’s duly elected Sandinista government.
The Contras were drug dealers who shipped large quantities of cocaine into the US—-primarily in the Los Angeles area—-where it was mostly converted to crack.
That served a double function for the GOP.
First, it decimated the inner city.
Then Reagan’s “Just Say No” assault—-based on the drugs his Contra allies were injecting into our body politic—-imposed penalties on crack far more severe than those aimed at the powdered cocaine used in the white community.
In 1970 the US prison population was roughly 300,000 people.  Today it’s more than 2.2 million, the largest in world history by both absolute number and percentage of the general population.  There are more people in prison in the US than in China, which has five times the population (http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11).

According to the Sentencing Project, one in seventeen white males has been incarcerated, one in six Latinos, and one in three blacks.
By all accounts the Drug War has had little impact on drug consumption in the US, except to make it more profitable for drug dealers (http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11).  It’s spawned a multi-billion-dollar industry in prison construction, policing, prison guards, lawyers, judges and more, all of them invested in prolonging the drug war despite its negative impacts on public health.

For them, the stream of ruined lives of non-violent offenders is just another form of cash flow.
Like the Klan since the Civil War, the Drug War has accomplished its primary political goal of suppressing the black vote and assaulting the African-American community.
It’s shifted control of the South from the Democrats back to the Republican Party. By slashing voter eligibility and suppressing black turnout, the Drug War crusade has helped the GOP take full control of both houses of the US Congress and a majority of state governments across the US.
But the repressive impacts hit everyone, and ultimately enhance the power of the corporate state.
Toward that end, the southern corporate Democrat Bill Clinton’s two terms as a Drug Warrior further broadened the official attack on grassroots America. Clinton was determined to make sure nobody appeared tougher on “crime.”  He escalated the decimation of our democracy far beyond mere party politics, deepening the assault on the black community, and the basic rights of all Americans for the benefit of his Wall Street funders.  Obama has been barely marginally better.
In political terms, the Nixon-Reagan GOP remains the Drug War’s prime beneficiary. Today’s Republicans are poised to continue dominating our electoral process through the use of rigged electronic registration rolls and voting machines. That’s a core reality we all must face.
But no matter which party controls the White House or Congress, by prosecuting a behavior engaged in by tens of millions of Americans, the Drug War lets the corporate state arrest (and seize assets from) virtually anyone it wants at any time. It has empowered a de facto corporate police state beyond public control.

Regardless of race, we all suffer from the fear, repression and random assaults of a drug-fueled repressive police force with no real accountability.
In the interim, the Drug War is not now and never has been about drugs.
Legalizing pot is just the beginning of our recovery process.
Until we end the Drug War as a whole, America will never know democracy, peace or justice.
____________________
THE SIXTH JIM CROW: ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT & THE 2016 SELECTION will be released by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman by January, 2016. Their CITIZEN KASICH will follow soon thereafter. Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES are at www.freepress.org; Harvey’s ORGANIC SPIRAL OF US HISTORY will appear in 2016.

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Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong: Smashing the Drug War Paradigm

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By Matt Agorist

Source: The Free Thought Project

“Overwhelming evidence points to not just the failure of the drug control regime to attain its stated goals but also the horrific unintended consequences of punitive and prohibitionist laws and policies,” states a study, published by the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP).

“A new and improved global drug control regime is needed that better protects the health and safety of individuals and communities around the world,” the report says. “Harsh measures grounded in repressive ideologies must be replaced by more humane and effective policies shaped by scientific evidence, public health principles and human rights standards.”

This sudden onset of logic by political bodies across the globe is likely due to the realization of the cruel and inhumane way governments deal with addiction. Arbitrary substances are deemed “illegal” and then anyone caught in possession of those substances is then kidnapped and locked in a cage, or even killed.

The fact that this barbaric and downright immoral practice has been going on for so long speaks to the sheer ignorance of the state and its dependence upon violence to solve society’s ills.

The good news is that the drug war’s days are numbered, especially seeing that it’s reached the White House, and they are taking action, even if it is symbolic. Evidence of this is everywhere. States are defying the federal government and refusing to lock people in cages for marijuana. Colorado and Washington served as a catalyst in a seemingly exponential awakening to the government’s immoral war.

Following suit were Oregon, D.C., and Alaska. Medical marijuana initiatives are becoming a constant part of legislative debates nationwide. We’ve even seen bills that would not only completely legalize marijuana but deregulate it entirely, like corn.

As more and more states refuse to kidnap and cage marijuana users, the drug war will continue to implode.

Knowledge is a key role in this battle against addiction tyranny and investigative journalist Johann Hari, has some vital information to share. In a recent TEDx talk, Hari smashes the paradigm of the war on drugs.

What really causes addiction — to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do — and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world, and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem.

When Drug Users Aren’t People

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By Ryan Calhoun

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

Judge Katherine Forrest’s decision to lock up Ross Ulbricht for the rest of his life is a momentous tragedy. There were other tragic circumstances on display during Ulbricht’s trial, however. Submitted as evidence against the integrity of the Silk Road were stories of drug overdoses that were allegedly tied to products bought on the darknet drug market. The loss of life in these cases is something we should never look at as unimportant, but their use in condemning Ulbricht’s market are seriously problematic.

“I have no doubt in my mind, that if Preston had not taken that drug which one of his friends had purchased off the internet Silk Road, he would still be alive today,” wrote one grieving mother from Australia. Her son had jumped to his death after purchasing what he may have thought was LSD, but was actually a synthetic known as NBOMe. First please let us take note of where such synthetics come from, a need to produce new designer chemicals which are often more unstable, untested, and easily passed off as what we know to be much safer psychoactive chemicals. The parents and siblings grieving in these cases misplace their ire. What truly led to many people ingesting dangerous chemicals was in fact the laws that are now being used to send Ross Ulbricht to prison. Also worth recognizing is that at the time of ingestion, there was no federal ban on these substances and, at least in America, they could be found or sold discreetly in wholly legal forms of exchange.

Notice also the subtle dehumanization of drug users masquerading as compassion. When someone overdoses people do not recognize the choice of the individual. They do not talk about these people as individual agents, but as symptoms of the individual. In the Silk Road case, parents condemn what Ulbricht’s venue provided for their children — a safe and discreet way to obtain psychoactive chemicals. They would have never sought out these drugs had it not been for Silk Road. This is doubly dehumanizing. They characterize their son’s purchase as somehow inevitable, that he was too weak to help himself and too ignorant to know the dangers inherent in hard drug use. But what compounds the dehumanization of drug consumers in this treatment is that they declare that drug markets OUGHT to be unsafe, ought to be insecure. Their son is a mere exception to the scummy and disposable drug world, he was corrupted by looking through a window to a drug trade which didn’t pose enormous risk to his safety. Drug users, drug distributors, they don’t deserve safety to these people.

Many who are involved in drug subcultures aim to make consumption safer for those who choose freely to consume these substances. Along with being able to read customer reviews that keep merchants within these bazaars held accountable by reputation, there is frequent encouragement to buy test kits for these chemicals. Across the internet you will find no shortage of FAQs on how to prudently go into an experience with drugs, especially for psychedelic experiences which are often delicate and require a good deal of coaching to ensure the best set and setting. At raves across the country people are encouraged by their peers to consume judiciously, to stay hydrated, and most of all to enjoy their experience — which is a frame of mind directly hindered by drug laws and cultural taboos.

These are all voluntary, spontaneous modes of behavior, many born out of a genuine concern for one’s fellow drug users. They are treated as individuals, not addicts. They are met with care, compassion, and resources both physical and mental. What drove these markets underground, what made them more dangerous than they ever needed to be is the intention behind these laws and tragically behind the condemnation of Ulbricht and others as “psychopaths” from people who lost those they loved. It is this legislation, this judicial process, and these cultural norms that must change. We must recognize drug users not as inherently sick and lascivious, but as people who come from the same world as we do, who sought these chemicals not out of an alien urge that overtook them, but because drugs come with a great deal of reward to the user. We can’t let that reward go unchecked from the dangers that are there for those who choose willingly to accept it. We must abolish not only the laws, but the puritanical attitudes which make us see our neighbors and our loved ones as fraught with illness for wanting to get high. It’s time. We must step out of the shadows, break the back of the system that has kept us there, and bring this enormous wealth of human experience into its proper social context. Free Ross Ulbricht, free all drug criminals, and end this dehumanization campaign once and for all.

The Root of Support for the Drug War

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By Laurence M. Vance

Source: The Future of Freedom Foundation

Although many states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, some states have decriminalized the possession of certain amounts of marijuana, and four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, bipartisan support for the drug war throughout the United States continues unabated and unquestioned.

Why?

Why do so many Americans think that the property of other Americans should be confiscated, and that some of their fellow Americans should be fined, arrested, put on probation, subject to no-knock SWAT team raids, be treated as criminals, or locked in a cage for growing, manufacturing, processing, buying, selling, distributing, “trafficking in,” using, or possessing some substance the government doesn’t approve of?

Why do so many Americans support a war on drugs that

  • unnecessarily makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding Americans, clogs the judicial system with noncrimes, and expands the prison population with nonviolent offenders;
  • violates the Constitution, the principle of federalism, and increases the size and scope of government;
  • has utterly failed to prevent drug use, reduce drug abuse, or end drug overdoses;
  • fosters violence, corrupts law enforcement, and militarizes the police;
  • hinders legitimate pain management, hampers the treatment of debilitating diseases, and turns doctors into criminals;
  • destroys personal and financial privacy, and negates personal responsibility and accountability;
  • has been unsuccessful in keeping drugs out of the hands of addicts, teenagers, and convicts;
  • assaults individual liberty, private property, and the free market; or
  • wastes billions of taxpayer dollars and has financial and human costs that far exceed any of its supposed benefits?

I see a number of reasons that Americans in general support a government war on the mind-altering and mood-altering substances we refer to as drugs.

For some the reason is history. As far as many Americans are concerned, drugs have always been illegal and should therefore always remain so. It is simply unthinkable that it should be any other way. Yet, for the first half of our nation’s history there were no prohibitions against anyone’s possessing or using any drug.

For some the reason is society. The use of marijuana — for medical reasons or not — is still viewed negatively. And of course the use of other drugs such as cocaine, LSD, and heroin is disparaged even more. There is almost universal support for the drug war among all facets of society: engineers, teachers, preachers, physicians, clerks, accountants, secretaries, and housewives. But, of course, it doesn’t follow that because a majority of society supports something the power of government should be used against those who don’t.

For some the reason is political. The war on drugs enjoys widespread bipartisan support. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, moderates, populists, progressives, centrists, Tea Partiers — they all generally support government prohibition of certain drugs. The drug war is never an issue in any congressional primary or general election. As long as their party or their political group supports the drug war, most Americans will follow suit. The decision to use drugs should be an ethical, religious, medical, or moral decision, not a political decision.

For some the reason is religion. Support for the drug war can be found across the religious spectrum, encompassing Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, liberals and conservatives, fundamentalists and progressives, and Trinitarians and Unitarians. Yet, there is no ethical precept in any religion that should lead anyone to believe that it is the job of government to prohibit, prevent, regulate, restrict, or otherwise control any substance that any adult desires to ingest of his own free will.

For some the reason is morality. Because, some assert, it is immoral to alter one’s mind or mood with illegal drugs, the government should ban the use of these substances. Do drug warriors likewise believe that it is immoral to alter one’s mind or mood with alcohol? If not, then they are woefully inconsistent in their proscription; if so, then they are woefully inconsistent in their prescription.

Dangers and vices

For some the reason is safety. Because it can be dangerous to use illicit drugs, some think the government should ban them. Yet there is no question that smoking marijuana is less dangerous than drinking alcohol. Alcohol abuse is a factor in many drownings; home, pedestrian, car, and boating accidents; and fires. How many drug warriors propose that the government ban alcohol? There are plenty of things that are much more dangerous than using illicit drugs: skydiving, bungee jumping, coal mining, boxing, mountain climbing, cliff diving, drag racing — even crossing the street at a busy intersection. According to the Journal of Forensic Sciences, there are more than 28,000 chainsaw-related injuries annually in the United States. Shouldn’t governments across the country declare war on chainsaws?

For some the reason is vice. Using drugs is said to be a vice like gambling, profanity, drunkenness, using pornography, and prostitution. But as only the latter is actually banned outright by the government, arguments for government action against select drugs are extremely weak. And what about the vices of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust? Why don’t drug warriors advocate government action against them? Vices in 2014 are still as the 19th-century political philosopher Lysander Spooner explained:

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

For some the reason is health. The use of mind-altering and mood-altering substances is said to be unhealthy. The federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” But even if drugs such as marijuana don’t provide benefits for certain diseases and medical conditions, they are certainly not nearly as deadly as the drugs administered by physicians that kill thousands of Americans every year, the drugs that cause thousands of hospital patients every year to have adverse reactions, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin that kill thousands every year. The most unhealthy drug is alcohol, which is a contributing factor in many cases of cancer, mental illness, fetal abnormalities, and cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol abuse is one of the leading causes of premature deaths in the United States. There is no question that smoking marijuana is less dangerous than smoking tobacco. Common sense would dictate that it is tobacco that should be banned, not marijuana. And of course, the greatest health threat Americans face is obesity, not illegal drugs.

For some the reason is addiction. Certain drugs should be illegal, we are told, because they are addictive. The federal government says that marijuana “has a high potential for abuse.” But is that because it is addictive or because some people just want to get high? Legal drugs prescribed by physicians are certainly just as addictive as any drugs that are illegal. And of course, pornography, smoking, gambling, sex, shopping, and eating can be addictive. Drug warriors are very selective about which addictive behaviors deserve government action.

For some the reason is irrationality. Although every bad thing that could be said about drugs could also be said about alcohol, some drug warriors hold the irrational belief that drugs are just different from alcohol. Why? Because they just are.

For all, the reason is government. I believe the root of support for the drug war is simply this: trust in government. Unnecessary, irrational, and naive trust in government.

What’s so disturbing is that nowhere does the Constitution authorize the federal government to intrude itself into the personal eating, drinking, or smoking habits of Americans or concern itself with the nature and quantity of any substance Americans want to ingest. The Constitution is supposed to be the foundation of American government. The federal government is not supposed to have the authority to do anything unless it is included in the limited, enumerated powers granted to it in the Constitution. Yet some of the ardent enthusiasts of the Constitution are some of the most rabid drug warriors.

The war on drugs is a war on individual liberty, private property, limited government, the Constitution, American taxpayers, personal responsibility, the free market, and a free society that has ruined more lives than drugs themselves.

Every facet of government that contributes in some way to the monstrous evil that is the war on drugs should be dismembered, root and branch, and cast to the four winds.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 edition of Future of Freedom.

Legalizing Marijuana Now More Popular Than All Political Candidates

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By John Vibes

Source: TheAntiMedia.org

It is no secret that Americans are losing faith in the US political system. With the potential of a choice between a Clinton and a Bush in 2016, it is likely that even more people will stop participating.

Now that there have been states where people have been allowed to vote for the legalization of marijuana, that topic has actually become more popular than the candidates themselves.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in March, in the key swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, marijuana is far more popular than all the major political candidates. The survey found that over 80% of people in all states supported medical marijuana, with over 50% also supporting full legalized recreational marijuana.

Meanwhile, all of the major political candidates have the approval of less than 50% of the people polled.

“In some ways marijuana policy is the perfect issue for a presidential campaign. It has far reaching consequences that both parties have reason to engage,” John Hudak of the Brookings Institution told the Washington Post, in response to the poll.

Prohibition of any kind should be opposed for the reasons I have laid out in the past. However, marijuana is of specific immediate importance because of its ability to heal sick people and create environmentally friendly industrial products. It is also one of the safest drugs known to our species.

A recent Gallup poll found that major political parties in the United States are seeing their lowest popularity levels in recent memory.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans fall well below 50% in terms of approval, with 39% viewing the Democratic party favorable and 37% viewing the Republican party favorable.

John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.

 

Infuriating Video Shows City Official Calling Vietnam Vet “The Enemy” for His Use of Medical Pot

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By Matt Agorist

Source: The Free Thought Project

Maricopa County, AZ — A video was submitted to the Free Thought Project Sunday, which illustrates the brutal insanity of the state’s War on Drugs.

The video was taken during a heated debate on whether or not to legalize marijuana in Arizona. Maricopa County Attorney, Bill Montgomery, and Attorney Marc Victor went head to head on the topic of prohibition. Victor advocated to end prohibition and Montgomery held the position to continue locking people in cages for a plant.

At the end of the nearly 2 hour long debate, the two debaters took questions from the audience. That is when Vietnam veteran Don Ream stood up to explain to Montgomery how calling people who use marijuana for medicine, “Pot Heads,” was offensive.

Ream explained how he has been a patient for four years, and he is off all of his pharmaceutical medicine. All he uses for his symptoms is his medical marijuana. He then politely invited Mr. Montgomery to come and learn about the benefits of the substance and how safe marijuana actually is.

As Ream began to close his statement, Montgomery took to the podium ready to fire back.

“There is a difference between medical application of marijuana and recreational use of the substance,” said Montgomery, who is an attorney, not a doctor.

Ream then admitted that he uses his marijuana recreationally as well.

“Well, then you’re violating the law, and I have no respect for you,” Montgomery said. “I have no respect for someone who would try to claim that you served this country and took an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect against all enemies foreign and domestic – because you’re an enemy.”

Montgomery was then met with several “Boos” from the audience.

How exactly does ingesting a plant make you an enemy?

The person who wants to ingest a substance for medical or recreational reasons is not the criminal. However, the person that would kidnap, cage, or kill someone because they have a different lifestyle is a villain on many fronts.

The only “enemy” in the interchange below is the person who would deprive someone of their freedom by using government violence to enforce their personal preference. Shame on you Bill Montgomery.

Never Before Has Our Approach to Drugs Improved So Much, So Fast

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We’re winning: More progress has been made toward enlightened drug policies and treatment in the past five years than in the previous 25. Here’s an advocacy agenda to take us even closer to the future we need.

By Maia Szalavitz

Source: Substance.com

There has never been a more exciting time to be writing and thinking about drugs and addiction. For most of the ‘80s through the ‘00s, policy and treatment debates were stagnant, with all sides taking hardened positions and often repeating the same tired talking points. But now change is in the air and those who would like to see reform have a chance to make a real difference. By looking at where we’ve come from, we can see where we need to go.

Until 2011 or 2012, the war on drugs, while much bemoaned, was simply a fact of life, with pretty much everyone agreeing both about its failure and, simultaneously, about the impossibility of doing anything significantly different because of the “tough on crime” arms race between the Republicans and Democrats.

The science didn’t matter: No one seemed to care that marijuana was objectively less harmful than alcohol or tobacco or that our drug laws originated both in the time of Jim Crow and, quite explicitly, as a way of oppressing people of color by other means. In fact, merely stating these facts, as I did many times, would often get me in trouble with editors who wanted to “balance” them with a prohibitionist claim to prove that the publication was “objective”! No one ever seemed to consider balance when a drug warrior made a demonstrably untrue statement.

It didn’t matter that the data on needle exchange was overwhelmingly in favor—and that no study had ever found that it encouraged drug use or prolonged addiction. A quote by someone who was ideologically opposed had to be obtained, even though they had no data to back their concerns about these programs to prevent infection with HIV and hepatitis C “sending the wrong message.”

The failure of drug enforcement either to prevent or to reduce “drug epidemics” and the ineffectiveness of incarceration at fighting addiction was irrelevant, too, even as the necessity of such punitive efforts was simply accepted without question.

Nor did it matter that harsh, confrontational treatment was known both to backfire and to be incredibly common—Dr. Drew, Intervention, Beyond Scared Straight and similar shows even portrayed it as exemplary.

At the same time, 12-step supporters were adamant that their way was the only way—or at least the best way. Drug warriors were convinced that criminalization of both possession and sales was the only way to avoid addiction Armageddon—and even many people in recovery bought into the idea that law enforcement must always play a role in policies related to illegal drugs.

In 2000, for instance, during the fight over California’s Proposition 36, which gives drug users three chances at treatment before jail becomes a sentencing option, the Betty Ford Center was among the opponents. Speaking for a coalition that included the rehab, actor and sobriety advocate Martin Sheen wrote in an op-ed, “Without accountability and consequences, drug abusers have little incentive to change their behavior or take treatment seriously.” (He didn’t explain how Betty Ford gets alcoholics, whose drug is legal, to comply with care.) But Prop 36 passed anyway, an early sign of the drug war’s waning hold.

And so, even when reforms would actually send patients to rehabs, treatment providers remained firmly aligned with drug warriors on the necessity of harsh criminalization, while they begged for crumbs of financing from the abundant table of law enforcement and argued that treatment is better than jail.

Now, though, the winds have shifted. Four states and Washington, DC, have legalized recreational use of marijuana. President Obama has directed the justice department not to interfere with these experiments and said last week, “My suspicion is that you are going to see other states start looking at this.” California, which rejected recreational legalization as recently as 2010, may pass it in an expected 2016 ballot initiative. National polls show majority support for legalization.

Neither Colorado nor Washington—the first two states to legalize—has seen anything near the predicted disaster in the first year after the passage of the law. In fact, in Colorado, crime is down, auto fatalities are down and teen use is stable or declining. (Because Washington took longer to implement its regime, good statistics aren’t yet available).

All of this is excellent news for reformers. So what should be next on the agenda? Here are a few things I’d like to see, which I think could build on the increased openness to more effective policy:

1. Over-the-counter naloxone

Naloxone, an opioid antagonist that can reverse opioid overdose, is now widely available to first responders and, through many harm reduction agencies, to friends and families of people at risk. No adverse effects have been reported; just more and more lives saved. The FDA should make naloxone available over the counter, and sales should be subsidized or prices capped to make it affordable. This safe, effective lifesaver should be in every first-aid kit.

2. Expand access to medication-assisted treatment

As I noted recently, it’s outrageous that any doctor who discovers that a patient has an opioid problem can’t simply prescribe the most effective treatment: maintenance with Suboxone or methadone. Federal limits on the number of patients a doctor can have on maintenance and laws that literally ghettoize methadone treatment should be repealed. Insurance limits on prescribing also should be challenged: These exist for no other medical condition.

3. Decriminalize personal possession of all drugs

Now that even once-staunch prohibitionists like Kevin Sabet no longer argue strongly for arrest and incarceration of those who possess marijuana, why does it still make sense for heroin, cocaine or other illegal drugs?

82% of all drug arrests are for possession, and half of these are for marijuana. According to the ACLU, the US spends $3.1 billion annually arresting and adjudicating marijuana possession cases, and at least as much is likely to be spent on the other half of possession arrests for all other drugs. And yet no data suggests that arresting drug users for possession fights addiction or reduces crime: In fact, addicted people often get worse due to incarceration, with very little treatment available in jail.

Moreover, Portugal’s 10-plus-year experience of complete decriminalization has found it to be associated with less crime, more treatment and less disease. What’s not to like? The World Health Organization recently came out in favor of decriminalization. Drug reformers should not make marijuana arrests the only focus of their abolition campaign. Arrests for use are expensive, harmful and ineffective: They need to stop.

5. Reform treatment

People with addiction and their loved ones are often shocked at what occurs in treatment: Evidence-based care is so hard to find that even leading addiction researcher and former deputy drug czar Tom McLellan didn’t know where to turn when his son needed help in 2009. Anne Fletcher’s Inside Rehab, David Sheff’s Clean and this 2012 report from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse all demonstrate the need for better accountability from treatment providers.

To start, private and public insurers should simply refuse to pay for treatment that is little more than indoctrination into 12-step groups, which can be had for free at many church basements. Instead, treatment time should be devoted to evidence-based therapies like motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy, which aren’t free—and provider reimbursement should be based on results, respectful and empathetic care and genuine fidelity to evidence-based therapies.

And this isn’t a change that only opponents of 12-step programs should favor. Even those who are helped by the steps know that such treatment clearly violates the Eighth Tradition, which states that AA should be “forever nonprofessional” and that the 12th-step work of trying to bring others into the program should be unpaid. Both 12-step groups and treatment will ultimately be better off disentangled.

5. Reframe addiction

As I’ve argued here before, addiction is better characterized as a learning or developmental disorder than as a brain disease. While those who support the brain disease concept see it as a way of reducing stigma, in actual fact, this idea can increase fear and hatred of addicts because the notion of “brain damage” suggests permanence and poor odds for recovery.

What addiction actually does in the brain is similar to what love does—it strongly wires in new memories and pushes us to seek certain experiences. This is not “damage” or “destruction.” When we understand addiction as one more type of neurodiversity—not always a disability, sometimes even a source of strength—we’ll really cut stigma.

Also, it’s impossible to fight stigma while the legal system enforces it: The whole point of criminalizing drug possession is to stigmatize it. Without changing both criminalization and the view of addiction as the only disease treated by prayer and repentance, stigma reduction won’t get very far.

There’s much more, of course, but these are areas where real progress can be made. Never before have I seen more openness in this area: Now people who used to blanch at the words “harm reduction” are singing its praises and those who were once horrified by needle exchange are calling for naloxone. We still have a long way to go—and there’s always the chance of backlash—but as Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Maia Szalavitz is the nation’s leading neuroscience and addiction journalist, and a columnist at Substance.com. She has contributed to Time, The New York Times, Scientific American Mind, the Washington Post and many other publications. She has also published five books, including Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006), and is currently finishing her sixth, Unbroken Brain, which examines why seeing addiction as a developmental or learning disorder can help us better understand, prevent and treat it. Her previous column for Substance.com was about how to treat people who need, but misuse, opiate painkillers in a more helpful and enlightened way.