If you haven’t got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need. If you’ve got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need. – @TomCLloyd Drug Czar linked to deception It was just a few days ago that I put forth my Open letter to marijuana prohibitionists and so-called third-way-ers and said: Correlation and Causation are two different words. Get this one right. There are millions of people who use and have used marijuana, so there’s bound to be some strong correlations out there. Correlations are interesting, and may be a reason to do further study, but generally, they are not, of themselves, a reason to act. For example, marijuana use has been linked to Nobel Prizes, the U.S. Presidency, and Olympic Gold Medals. That doesn’t mean that marijuana use is going to cause you to get any of those things. But yesterday, all over twitter and the media, the drug czar and his assistants havee been screaming at the top of their lungs about the link between drugs and crime. In the manner typical of the ONDCP, they talk about it in such a way as to strongly imply causation, pushing the media to act as their patsies (and there are still a few who are happy to do so). Mike Riggs does a good job of responding with Drug Czar Report on Crime and Drug Use Is Really a Report About Being Poor and Getting Caught WASHINGTON — Marijuana is the drug most often linked to crime in the United States, the U.S. drug czar said Thursday, dismissing calls for legalization as a “bumper-sticker approach” that should be avoided. Gil Kerlikowske, the White House director of national drug-control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime. Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, Calif., last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug. Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested. We’re going to see versions of this story everywhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw most of them written up the way McClatchy’s was, which is to say, without any indication that reporter Rob Hotakainen actually read the 2012 Annual Report on the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program II (or ADAM II in ONDCP shorthand), which is 122 pages long–far too long for Hotakainen to have examined it before firing off a dispatch about Kerlikowske’s speech. And yet, reading the report is the only way to tell whether Kerlikowske is spinning the results. (He is.) It was interesting seeing communications director Raphael LeMaitre on Twitter promoting the drug/crime link, but he wasn’t getting away with it there. Still, you can bet that we’re going to continue to get this kind of activity from the Drug Czar. Anything (including blatantly dishonest implying) to get the public worried about legalization. “Look — drugs and crime!” tell us about it Gil: The ADAM II report confirms an urgent need to support policy reform outlined in the Obama Administration’s new drug policy strategy [...] I see… so Droop-Dog, let me get this straight, you’ve just released a report that somehow just happens to support an earlier report of yours which basically was a report supporting the previous report… “if we do the wrong thing some more it will have to eventually work” isn’t really good bizness sense. In fact isn’t it kind of Firestone Study-ish there bunky? Didn’t the GAO just tell us that uh, the ONDCP is really a big flopping failure? Gil… dude… aren’t you feeling just a tad embarrassed? I mean Ford Motor Co. only lost $400 million on the Edsel. You guys have blown over $1 trillion and drugs are in every city and burg in the country. Ford only took 3 years to figure it out, what’s the gummint’s problem? Drugs as a scapegoat for crime? Where have I heard that one before? Confronted by the inevitability of life in a cutthroat capitalist society, the capitalist uses patsies to placate those calling for solutions to a plutocratic society’s lack of equity and justice. With a Malthusian contempt for the poor, the final solution becomes elimination. For the petty tyrants, the end justifies the means. Eliminationism works best against soft targets. The caged can’t defend themselves. The poor are made vulnerable by design. The ignorant, the curious, those who strive for joy and freedom from their tormentors, risk entrapment by a persecuting society. The oppression is real. Without strong countermeasures, all others are vulnerable, fear spreads, and freedom throughout the world is threatened. The Wire creator David Simon on what’s behind the US war on drugs – extended video interview White House anti-drug videos violate propaganda ban, GAO says Full story By Shane Harris January 6, 2005 Excerpts Some of the tapes included references by name to the narrators, one of whom was called Mike Morris. "Many of the suggested anchor remarks include a phrase like, 'Mike Morris has the story,' or 'Mike Morris has more,' " GAO found. The narrators were hired to read scripts prepared and approved by ONDCP. They weren't affiliated with any news organizations. ONDCP's estimates show that the video footage reached more than 22 million households, GAO noted, "without disclosing to any of those viewers-the real audience-that the products they were watching, which 'reported' on the activities of a government agency, were actually prepared by that government agency, not by a seemingly independent third party. This is the essence of the 'covert propaganda' violation." GAO acknowledged that the news organizations receiving the videotapes would certainly know they came from ONDCP, because they bore identifying information. But, GAO questioned whether audiences realized the tapes were coming from the government. In this case, GAO said, viewers couldn't have known ONDCP had produced what they were watching. Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not Retro Report tells the story of the epidemic that wasn’t through firsthand accounts by some of those at the center of things: the researcher who put out the alarm, a pediatric expert who originally cast doubt on his findings and one of the original cocaine-exposed research subjects, a young woman whose life helped disprove the myth of what these infants would become. Organization of American States launches groundbreaking drug policy report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs Drug policy reform has been a taboo issue for decades – but for the first time representatives from 34 countries across the Americas have had the courage to break that taboo and envision real alternatives to the war on drugs. It is a clear acknowledgement that the global prohibition has failed to deliver what was promised and that a range of alternatives should be meaningfully explored. Bong Hits 4 Jesus - Free Speech The Corporate Muzzle The inbedwith dis-infotainment: Gaza to Iraq
Honduran victims of US drug war still await justice One year later, the exact role that the DEA agents played in the deaths of Juana Jackson, Candelaria Trapp Nelson, Emerson Martinez and Hasked Brooks Wood remains unclear. The US government has never conducted an independent investigation into the incident, and has obstructed the Honduran investigation by denying the investigators access to either the ten DEA agents involved or their weapons. Stop the War on Colombians! Exporting DEAmocracy IS THE DRUG CZAR SKIRTING THE LAW? Drug Czar Manipulating Data in a Report to Congress The doctored document, Performance Measures of Effectiveness: 2000 Report, is supposed to fulfill ONDCPs obligations under Public Law No. 105-277, which seeks to reduce waste by requiring ONDCP to set quantifiable and measurable goals and then file annual reports with Congress detailing progress. If goals are not met, Congress can eliminate programs that dont work. D.E.A. Confirms Grounds To Remove Marijuana From Sched#1 INCOMPETENCE AND SEVERE MISTAKES WHITEWASHED AT THE NIAAA WHILE CONGRESS IS MISLED AND LIED TO BY GOVERNMENTAL ADDICTION EXPERTS This article is written to beseech congress to remove the people running the NIAAA if it wants real answers to questions about alcoholism. This article makes much the same point I made in a previous article about firing Leshner from NIDA, National Institutes of Drug Abuse found Here, and, for the same reasons. In fact, both groups should be disbanded and started over from scratch as a single institute on addictions. Drug Czar is Required by Law to Lie UK’s Drugs Czar Fired For Marijuana Truths Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage “We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.” - Bill Clinton Anti-Drug Campaigns Dumb Down Vital Message Calvina Fay Prohibition Inc. GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab 'Torture' Centers
One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds Oh Gilligan! The Obama Admin's Anti-Marijuana Manifesto Multiple DEA Raids Target Marijuana in Hawaii Obama: Drug Legalization is "An Entirely Legitimate Topic for Debate" Hil and Gil on the Drug War Obombo's Sublingual Attack on Ganja One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds Oh Gilligan! President Obama takes a dump on California Obama Doesn’t Need Congress Marijuana By Itself Not a Significant Factor in Fatal and Injury Crashes in 2012 New Times’ findings, based on a records request satisfied by DPS this week, jibe with statistics we reported earlier this month in our feature article about Arizona’s zero-tolerance marijuana-DUI law (link below). Drivers suspected of impairment in crashes that hurt or killed people in Phoenix, Chandler, and Scottsdale were rarely found to be impaired by marijuana, our earlier research showed. Are You Drunk Correa? CA SB 289 Clueless Legislation Time to overturn the 1971 drugs law (Richard Branson) If the war on drugs were a business, we’d have shut it down immediately. Current drug policies are counter-productive, and we need to think seriously about new policies that will deliver good value for money. "The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy ... and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with 'scientific support' ... fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others." ~ William F. Buckley, Jr. Requiescat In Pace Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495 Go to Hell Dung Worrier Sabet Why Police Officers Lie Under Oath Money Grubbing Dung Worriers An open letter to marijuana prohibitionists and so-called third-way-ers Dear sons of SAM and daughters of the American prohibition; to all the treatment industry, drug testing, private prison, and sheriff union lobbyists; and, of course, to our friends who are required by law to lie: I keep hearing from your side that you have noble motives for your opposition to marijuana legalization. I hear that all you care about is using scientific inquiry to determine what is best for the people. However, I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but you keep talking about things in ways that aren’t scientific, or that are meaningless without the proper context. That kind of thing may have worked once, but in general, people are a little more sophisticated about scientific knowledge — they no longer uncritically accept “Here be dragons” for cartography or “If she floats, she’s a witch” as a judicial system. Here are just a few of the danger signs that you may be mis-using or underutilizing scientific rigor in your discussions about marijuana legalization. continued Americas New Drug Pushers John P Walters Prohibitionist Deceptions Nov 12 01 Clinton Asks Supreme Court To Overturn MMJ Ruling US: McCaffrey's Brain On Drugs The so-called harm-reduction approach to drugs confuses people with terminology. All drug policies claim to reduce harm. No reasonable person advocates a position consciously designed to be harmful. The real question is which policies actually decrease harm and increase good. The approach advocated by people who say they favor harm reduction would in fact harm Americans. -- Mr. Barry R. McCaffrey
