Tag Archives: Drug War

From the DPA: Congress Set to Escalate War on Drugs, Despite Decades of Failure and Unaffordable Price Tag

This article makes me terrified and furious at the same time. My research could land me in jail. Legitimate and legal activities performed by researchers in other countries, if they violate US law, could land those researchers in jail.

It is fiscally, logistically – not to mention morally – implausible to continue fighting this so-called “war” on civil liberties and  cognitive-spiritual freedom. Certainly there are psychoactive substances that are dangerous. I have a significant amount of personal experience with members of my family and rehab. We need a lot more research and much better education at all levels about what different substances can do, and what they can’t, and where the lines are drawn. But criminalization and prohibition is the most ridiculous answer from a policy perspective that I can imagine. It costs more in raw dollars, lives, and time than it will ever merit back, and incarcerates people who simply need help and rehabilitation, and puts drastic limits on all the good that many of these substances could do. These kind of misguided laws amplify the social harm they seek to prevent through an unconscionable process of misinformation and criminalization.

To extend that kind of policy outward such that treatment facilities and healing centers working in other countries with different ideas about how psychoactive substances can or should be used now act as legal traps for US researchers and therapists working in these fields? Unconscionable.

Update [2011-12-09]: The bill is HR 313. A summary can be found here. To be clear, what I find frustrating is not the ostensible purposes of the bill. While I would argue (with anyone that will listen) that prohibition is an absurd policy stance, what I am frustrated with about the bill is not what I perceive to be the obvious attempt to stop those who are colluding to traffic narcotics outside of, and ultimately into, the US. I understand that the point of the bill is to give the government some kind of leverage so that people guilty of actions outside the country, explicitly designed to break laws in the US, are able to be put within the legal grasp of the justice machinery. I understand that. What I’m frustrated with is two-fold. First, it’s implausible to suspect that we can actually enforce laws like this. Making it a law, from the way I understand what I’ve read of it, seems unlikely to actually lead to a significant number of arrests, and even less actual stymying of the flow of illicit substances across US borders. Second, the way the law is structured (again, if I understand it correctly), it casts such a wide net that researchers working on cannabis in other countries, people working with substances banned in this country but that are being used for medical purposes in other countries (like ayahuasca and addiction, ayahuasca and depression, among many, many others) would be in serious danger of arrest. My own research, which I have intended to orient toward a study of ayahuasca tourism as a form of religious pilgrimage, could be construed as an active attempt to break US drug laws outside of the country. My frustration is that the law may very well cast a net so wide, or at least leave room open for this kind of interpretation, that legitimate research being done outside of the US will be impacted. Our own draconian drug laws are our own problem to fight and work through. But I need to understand this law better, and I very much hope that I’m misunderstanding the ways in which it could be applied.

You can find out more here at popvox, and you can send a letter to your representative about it here.

Avaaz.org and Ending the War on Drugs

Avaaz.org has a new campaign running.  Though internet petition signing is notoriously questionable insofar as effecting policy change is concerned, I agree with what they’re doing.  I’m copying in their “letter to forward to friends” below.  I don’t want to blow up anyone’s inbox, but posting it here seems like a worthwhile middleground between bothersome and silent.

Their letter:

In days we could finally see the beginning of the end of the ‘war on drugs’. This decades long and hugely expensive policy has completely failed to curb the plague of drug addiction, while costing countless lives, devastating communities, and funneling trillions of dollars into violent organized crime networks.

Drug policy experts agree that the most sensible policy is to regulate, but politicians are afraid to touch the issue. In days, a UN panel of global leaders including billionaire Richard Branson, and five current and former heads of State, will break the taboo and publicly call for a move towards decriminalization and regulation of drugs, delivering a major new report to the UN Secretary General.

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 ready for an alternative. Let’s show them a sane and humane policy is not taboo. Click below to sign the petition — it will be delivered by the Commission to the UN Secretary General and global leaders in New York:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs/97.php?cl_tta_sign=79b73d12432d5643ba54bf71991288b7

Current drug policies are failing everyone, everywhere but public debate is stuck in the mud of fear and misinformation. As thousands of journalists, policy experts, and social scientists have documented, the current approach — deploy militaries and police to burn drug farms, hunt down traffickers, and imprison dealers and addicts – has been an expensive mistake. And with massive human cost — from Afghanistan, to Mexico, to the USA the illegal drug trade is destroying countries around the world, 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 still stand in the way of change, including military, law enforcement, and prison departments whose budgets are at stake. And politicians fear that voters will throw them out of office if they even mention alternative approaches, as they will appear ‘soft on drugs’, weak on law and order, or pro drug use. But polls show that citizens across the world know the current approach is a catastrophe. And momentum is gathering towards new improved policies, particularly in regions that are ravaged by the drug trade.

If we can create a worldwide outcry now 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_on_drugs/97.php?cl_tta_sign=79b73d12432d5643ba54bf71991288b7

We have a chance to enter the closing chapter of this brutal ‘war’ that has brought destroyed millions of lives. It is time to join forces and end this disgraceful policy that affects us all. Global public opinion will determine if there is change. 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, Maria Paz, Shibayan and the whole Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Reports that show the war on drugs has failed:

http://idpc.net/publications/failure-regime-selected-publications

Reports that show alternative approaches of decriminalisation and regulation are working:

http://idpc.net/publications/alternative-strategies-selected-publications

War on drugs ‘cannot be won’, officers claim

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5933840/War-on-drugs-cannot-be-won-officers-claim.html

5 Years After: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

The Global Comission on Drug Policy that will call on the UN to end the war on drugs

http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Documents.aspx

Drug War by the Numbers

http://www.drugpolicy.org/facts/drug-war-numbers

Final Report of the Latin American Comission on Drugs and Democracy

http://www.drogasedemocracia.org/English/Destaques.asp?IdRegistro=8