Biggest push yet to a different approach to the war on drugs.

[Django]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...de-drugs/print

Quote
"Transform believes the case for overhauling the prohibition approach to drugs is now overwhelming. It quotes Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, who observed that drug-related crime costs the UK economy around £13bn a year. "Decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health," he said."

Quite a few former leaders are pushing for legalization/decriminalization. Current leaders no doubt are to afraid of seeming soft on so called crime.

I would love to be at the Waldorf Astoria for this conference.

I still am baffled why anyone would still back the new growing privatized federal prison system and its reliance on current drug laws to keep it afloat and growing.

[Django]

Here is a petition to help end the war.


Dear friends across Latin America,

In 72 hours we could finally see the beginning of the end of the ‘war on drugs’. The illegal drug trade is the biggest threat to our region's security, but this brutal war has completely failed to curb the plague of drug addiction, while costing countless lives, devastating our communities, and funneling trillions of dollars into violent organized crime networks.

Experts all agree that the most sensible policy is to end the war on drugs and regulate, but most politicians are afraid to touch the issue. In 72 hours, a global commission including former heads of state and foreign policy chiefs of the UN, EU, US, and Mexico will break the taboo and publicly call for new approaches including decriminalization and regulation of drugs.

This could be a once-in-a-generation tipping-point moment -- if enough of us call for an end to this madness. Politicians say they understand that the war on drugs has failed, but claim the public isn't read y for an alternative. Let's show them we not only accept a sane and humane policy -- we demand it. Click below to sign the petition and share with everyone -- when we reach 1/2 million, it will be personally delivered to world leaders by the global commission:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_...81b5f08ff753da

For the passed 50 years current drug policies have failed everyone across Latin America, but the public debate is stuck in the mud of fear, corruption and misinformation. Everyone, even the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which is responsible for enforcing this approach, agrees -- deploying militaries and police to burn drug farms, hunting down traffickers, and imprisoning dealers and addicts – has been totally counterproductive. And with massive human cost -- from Brazil to Mexico, to to the USA, the illegal drug trade is destroying our countries, while addiction, overdose deaths, and HIV/AIDS infections continue to rise.

Meanwhile, countries with less-harsh enforcement -- like Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Australia -- have not seen the explosion in drug use that proponents of the drug war have darkly predicted. Instead, they have seen significant reductions in drug-related crime, addiction and deaths, and are able to focus squarely on dismantling criminal empires.

Powerful lobbies stand in the way of change, including military, law enforcement, and prison departments whose budgets are at stake. And politicians across our region fear that voters will throw them out of office if they support alternative approaches. But, polls show that citizens across the world know the current approach is a catastrophe. Many former drugs Ministers and Heads of State have come out for reform since leaving office and momentum is finally gathering towards new policies in Latin America, the US and other parts of the world that are ravaged by this disastrous policy.

If we can create a worldwide outcry in the next 72 hours to support the bold calls of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, we can overpower the stale excuses for the status quo. Our voices hold the key to change -- sign the petition and spread the word:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_...81b5f08ff753da

We have a chance to enter the closing chapter of this brutal 'war' that has destroyed millions of lives. Global public opinion will determine if this catastrophic policy is stopped or if politicians shy away from reform. Let's rally urgently to push our hesitating leaders from doubt and fear, over the edge, and into reason.

With hope and determination,

Alice, Laura, Ricken, Mari a Paz, Shibayan and the whole Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Reports that show the war on drugs has failed:
http://idpc.net/publications/failure...d-publications

Reports that show alternative approaches of decriminalisation and regulation are working:
http://idpc.net/publications/alterna...d-publications

[Jimaz]

Hartmann passionately [[albeit tangentially) contrasts this against far greater unprosecuted crimes.

Thom Hartmann: Post Legal America

[Richard]

I grew up in the seventies [[teens) outside of Mlps Minn at that time you could be caught with up to 1/4 lb of weed as long you had no scales or baggies it was considered personal consumption they either gave you a fine of $25 or dumped it out on the ground. Decriminalized.

Now in Fla if you are even caught with parifnila you go to jail ,it is crazy but the huge demand for cocaine did not come about until the war on drugs which was a convenient source for some agencies creating the demand for the financial benefits, lots of not so nice stuff going on behind the scenes,personally I think if they left the pot aspect alone and diverted those billions towards the cocaine and heroin aspect they could get a handle on it,but now with the whole painkiller scene it seems as tho it will be a continuing battle. To many people and organizations in high places making to much $ to control it .

Spending allot of time in South Miami and Bogota in the thick of things I never seen a crazed out person smoking a joint,but plenty of cracked out ones that would not even think twice about killing somebody for that fix. plain crazy

[Django]

The problem is Richard, that drugs have to be smuggled in sending prices skyrocketing. What can be bought in say Burma for $10 can be sold here for $1000, literally. Thats why ppl are dying and robbing. Of course I agree with your pot analogy but hard drugs are the ones that need to be studied and regulated. Ive said it many times,more people die over drugs than by drugs, because the are illegal.

[Jimaz]

Total duration 1 hour:

This veers deeply into politics but gets back to the war on drugs in the end: Plan Colombia: Cashing In on the Drug War Failure. It's very informative.

If losing the war on drugs were profitable, that loss would be prolonged as long as possible. How long has it lasted? When will it end? When it's no longer profitable.

[Richard]

The problem is Richard, that drugs have to be smuggled in sending prices skyrocketing. What can be bought in say Burma for $10 can be sold here for $1000, literally. Thats why ppl are dying and robbing. Of course I agree with your pot analogy but hard drugs are the ones that need to be studied and regulated. Ive said it many times,more people die over drugs than by drugs, because the are illegal.

In 1990 you could buy off of the boat in Miami an ounce of cocaine that was 98% pure for $300 stepped on or diluted by 50% it was bringing $2000 in Mlps Minn considering an c130 can carry 80,000 lbs at peak of 4 flights a day during the mid eighties to homestead AFB the problems were created with a purpose in mind.The average citizen pays the price for it in cleaning up the mess.

[Django]

This just in.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110602/...ugs_commission

– Thu Jun 2, 7:58 am ET
WASHINGTON [[Reuters) – A high-level international commission declared the global "war on drugs" a failure and urged nations to consider legalizing cannabis and other drugs to undermine organized crime and protect their citizens' health.

[Jimaz]

First Person: Seniors Using Medical Marijuana

This thing could catch on.

[Big Dog]

Residents and political leaders from Oakland County, need to read this thread, instead of watching "Reefer Madness" reruns.

[Django]

Someday our kids will look back on the current drug war the way we do slavery, or equal rights, or racism.as atrocities. Locking up ppl because they use or deal in substances that grow naturally and their bi products will seem as stupid as blacks at the back of the bus.

Ill go further and say that the drug war has become a sort of modern day slavery. A group of ppl has been singled out incarcerated for trhe gain of others ie privatized prisons, and often put to work in horrific conditions.

[Django]

40th anniversary of the war on drugs and its failure.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...kesoffice.html

[Ray1936]

Yeah, I hear the liberal cry.

"Legalize marijuana!!! Throw tobacco smokers in jail!!!!"

[maxx]

http://calcoastnews.com/2011/05/dea-...rijuana-farms/

"...the Drug Enforcement Administration has licensed 55 pharmaceutical companies to grow cannabis for use in producing generic versions of the THC capsule Marinol, according to the East Bay Express. .."

[maxx]

"Decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health," he said."

I'm all for treating drug addicts as people with a health issue, but turning around heroin, cocaine, or meth addicts isn't easy or cheap. And decriminalising hard drugs for personal use does not sound like a workable plan and contradictory to the treatment of addictions.

[Django]

I'm all for treating drug addicts as people with a health issue, but turning around heroin, cocaine, or meth addicts isn't easy or cheap. And decriminalising hard drugs for personal use does not sound like a workable plan and contradictory to the treatment of addictions.

Our current plan of jailing anyone caught with drugs at the cost of roughly $52,000 a year pr person is not a workable plan either. There are so many different aspects to the debate its very hard to understand them all. Drugs are not expensive when bought in their native country, but their prices can raise 1000% easily on their way here to us in the States. Like I said before, a $10 gram in the jungle of Burma can go for $1000 here in Detroit. Do that math and then tell me that someday the drug war will conquer supply an demand.

And Maxx, the health issue IS cocaine,heroin, and Meth, and the addictions to. Sure,other problems arise due to using these drugs but addiction itself is a health issue. I think decrim of hard drugs would be a much more workable plan than our current one. 40 tears of locking ppl up over possession. We could talk about the 43,000 drug related death that happened in Mexico in the past 5 yrs due to the Cartells. I could go on and on.

[maxx]

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/20...-still-illegal
"....One month after sessions at either or both the two highest dose sessions, 94% of volunteers endorsed that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction moderately or very much, and 89% rated moderate or higher changes in positive behavior..."

Oh.great. The gov. can feed us 'shroom pills so we feel good while we're getting screwed by the oligarchy.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun...olicy-20110602
"...
Administration officials have promoted the use of drug courts where judges can sentence offenders to treatment and other terms as alternatives to jail time. The White House also is working to expand reentry programs that aim to reduce recidivism rates by assisting the nearly 750,000 drug offenders released from prison each year to transition more easily back into communities."


Three strikes laws swell the prison population too.

[Jimaz]

Jimmy Carter chimes in: Call Off the Global Drug War

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself....

At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million....

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

[Richard]

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

Wachovia, based in Charlotte, N.C., admitted it didn't do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That's the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program. Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems.

Wachovia's new owner, Wells Fargo, paid $160 million in fines and penalties -- less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009 -- and agreed not to contest the facts in its admission. If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government has agreed to drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.

[Jimaz]

Here's an irony.

While our government is trying so hard to prevent U.S. citizens from using nonfatal drugs, Denmark is trying to prevent our government from using fatal drugs on U.S. citizens.

Danish firm to prevent use of drug in U.S. executions

Danish drugmaker Lundbeck said Friday it would restrict the distribution of its Nembutal drug to prevent its use in lethal injections in US prisons....

The drug will from now on "be supplied exclusively through a specialty pharmacy drop ship program that will deny distribution of the product to prisons in US states currently active in carrying out the death penalty by lethal injection," Lundbeck explained.

This also flies in the face of the notion that corporations ignore everything but profit. Perhaps that's only a trait of U.S. corporations.

It's enough to give you a brain cramp.

[Django]

Heres a piece on the cartels and our banks gettin hot n heavy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPGWc...embedded#at=23

[Big Dog]

New approach is being done in Gaylord MI. This small town, has just opened it's sixth MJ dispensery. Result? 6 vacant stores are now rented, the county and city are benefitting from the taxes, those needing their medicine, are getting it, and the local police, are all in favor of this. It has not caused any social problem. Maybe Oakland county should take a new approach.

[Django]

I agree Big D. Bouchard in Oakland seems to want to clear up all the many grey areas in the written law. He does this by standard stormtrooper tactics used on crack houses. The violations he cites go to court then the precedent is set when the judge rules on them. Its a rough way to clear things up when he could just let sleeping dogs lay. If I were a patient, grower, or dispensary worker/owner I certainly wouldnt want to live in Oakland. It will come back to bite them in the ass when they realize they will be missing out on millions in taxes when no one will want to run a dispensary there. Thats my theory anyway.

[Jimaz]

Former cops: The drug cartels are winning

"[Look] at Phoenix, Arizona," Neill Franklin, a former undercover police officer in Maryland, told Raw Story recently. "That is the number two kidnapping capital in the world. A couple years back they were averaging one drug-related kidnapping every day. We do already have these [cartels] in the United States, but you just don't hear about them very often. And when we do, it's not the 'undocumented workers' as people are often led to believe, it's the result of our drug policies."

Suggesting Phoenix has the second most number of kidnappings out of any city in the world is not new: for instance, that very claim was immediately disputed after Sen. John McCain said it in 2010. However, a review of kidnapping statistics by a team of judges and criminologists earlier this year nearly doubled the official 2008 numbers, lending at least some credibility to the statement....

Both Nelson and Franklin are members of the non-profit advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which aims to win the hearts and minds of law enforcement and conservative lawmakers, who've largely stood in the way of any significant changes to the nation's drug policies....

Nelson, a life-long Republican, said that he believes many conservative lawmakers are beginning to come around to their view of drug policy as counter-productive to the overall goals of the drug war. "They're just waiting for when it becomes politically viable to take action," he said. "I hope that happens. It needs to."

"If you legalize it, you take the violence and the obscene profits out of [drugs]," he added. "Legalization does not help your drug problem, it helps your crime problem. Over the years in this war, we've made no progress. Legalization, education and treatment is the best way."

[Steve bennet]

I'm glad the cartels are "winning". The faster our backwards hypocritical drug Policies get thrown back in our face the better.

Ironically enough, we still havnt learned from our mistakes from alcohol prohibition from the 1920's. People are dumb.