Tag: war on drugs
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How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry
Last night I read a great article in the New Yorkerabout the new sort-of-legal-at-the-state-and-local-level but still very-federally-illegal California medicinal-marijuana industry.
I’m very curious to see how this system evolves and is regulated. It just might work. And it may be a good model for other states. At the very least, it’s starting to make California dependent on the tax dollars it brings in.
Emily had come to Humboldt ten years ago as a young activist, working to save old-growth redwoods. She first encountered marijuana plants after she picked some edible mushrooms on a friend’s land, cooked them up in marijuana-laced butter, and ate a good meal with some wine.
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Emily decided to stay in the mountains. She loved the odd mixture of people who lived in a place with no apparent cash economy…. Gazing at the setting sun, Emily said, “I think a lot of those people were drawn up here for intuitive reasons—soul reasons, or whatever.” The problem with growing pot back then, she said, was that it was illegal, and that changed you. “You had to carry a gun and be scared of people, and you lost track of the reason you came up here.”
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There were fewer stories in the newspapers about people being bound and gagged by cash-hungry gangsters. -
Snitchin’
The New York Timeshas an article about covering up a “Stop Snitchin’” mural.
The shame is that we need snitches… I mean witnesses… willing to testify. Too bad it’s dangerous.If we didn’t use snitches so much in locking up drug criminals, I bet snitching wouldn’t have such a bad name.
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New international drug use stats
For years everybody has been citing the same good but somewhat dated stats on comparative drug use in the U.S. and other countries (I know because I did so in my book).
Well, while I was busy visiting family and friends in Amsterdam last week, a new study was released (in conjunction with the World Health Organization) that updates drug use stats in 17 countries. At first glance, it seems that nothing big has changed in the past 7 years. Here’s the main table.
Guess what? Good news for all the red, white, and blue flag wavers! U.S.A.! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! In illegal drug use.
No country comes close to use in cocaine use. And only one country comes close in marijuana: New Zealand. For some reason, that’s not a surprise to me.
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Why the War on Drug Fails
A friend and former student of mine, a police officer on Long Island, tells me:
“Right now heroin is cheaper then crack and cocaine. So it has become the drug of choice. From Jan 07 to Aug 07 there was 42 heroin overdose just in two precinct in Nassau county.”There are eight precincts in Nassau County and a total population of 1.3 million. Let’s assume, because I don’t know better, that the 2 precincts represent 1/4 of the population. That’s an annual heroin overdose death rate of 22 per 100,000 people, about twice the national average.
If we really cared about saving lives, we could save these lives. But we clearly don’t care because we persist in policies that cause deaths. If saving lives were our priority, we could follow the policies of countries with much lower overdose death rates.
First of all, education. We treat all illegal drugs as equally bad. Zero Tolerance. But all drugs aren’t equally bad. Heroin is a horrible drug. Maybe the worst. Marijuana isn’t really bad at all. Cocaine is somewhere in between. This is important. I would love to give teenagers weed if only they wouldn’t try heroin. At least tell them the truth about weed so they’ll believe it when you tell them to fear heroin.
Take the Netherlands. Yes, the Netherlands. The country that drug warriors love to laugh at and dismiss because they don’t want to fight our war on drugs. In Amsterdam, you can walk into a tax-paying store and legally buy weed, hash, even magic mushrooms. The government gives out heroin to addicts (not most addicts, however). Prohibitionists say that “sends the wrong message.”
Here’s the message: in the Netherlands, drug usage rates and overdose rates are much lowerthan in the U.S. (and so is their incarceration rate, while we’re at it).
Fewer people take drugs because they don’t play the prohibitionist’s drug game. Those that do take drugs don’t die. The overdose rate in the Netherlands is 0.75 per 100,000.
Get this: in their entire country of over 16 million, there were 122 overdose deaths in a year. That’s fewer than Baltimore City alone. Probably fewer than Nassau County, too.
We could save lives–tens of thousands of lives each year–if we really cared about saving lives. But we don’t. We see overdoses as unfortunate. Hell, maybe not even that. Overdose deaths “send a good message,” I’ve heard.
The war on drugs isn’t about saving lives. It’s about maintaining prohibition. Too bad prohibition kills.
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Study finds long benefit in psychedelic mushrooms
Interesting story here.
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam the move to re-criminalize psychedelic mushrooms has been postponed another year. They’re still sold legally in stores.
Some of my friends in Amsterdam (from where I write this) are E.R. nurses. They complain to me about the summer influx of drugged-out people to the hospitals. They’re all tourists and mostly casualties of shrooms and spacecakes. They live. But they annoy the hell out of the nurses.
Health care in the Netherlands, by the way, is notfree for tourists.
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English Narco-Colonialism
There’s an interesting short BBC interview about the history of the opium trade in India under British rule. News to me.
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Details on the drug corner
My friend emailed me this:
I think we were able to pull that surveillance off not only because it was quiet from the rain but also because it was 1 month and 3 days after 9/11. We were rolling 3 – 4 deep and had every spare car on the road.
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Drug corner in action
Here’s a nice action video of a drug corner shot by a police officer friend of mine back in October 2001.
Basically this corner is a three-man (or boy) shop. The guy in the green shirt is the money man and the biggest man of this not-so-impressive. The kid in the white t-shirt (let’s call him “Little Man”) is kind of a go-between man and utility boy. An apprentice. A thug in the making. By the way, I’m guessing he’s about 13. I’m also guessing that if you had to live in what probably passes as his “home,” you might be on the corner, too.
The third guy (white do-rag ) may be around the corner hitting people off or may be out and about, drumming up business. He’s not around in the beginning and appears to not be in cuffs at the end.
The drug stash is in the rubble by the steps.
I describe an efficient drug shop in a lot more detail in my book, Cop in the Hood. Here, I’m not impressed. Things are sloppy. They’re all doing a little of everything. Too often the drugs and money are too often in the same hands. It takes way too long to complete the drug deal with white girl. And I think Mr. Green Shirt is drinking on the job. Plus they get arrested.
It is good police work. Usually patrol doesn’t have the time to this kind of surveillance. Maybe the rain kept the radio quiet.
3 min., 15 sec. No audio.Here’s a timeline:
6:35:00 Kids standing in the rain.
6:35:18 White addict comes up. Just strolling through the hood in the rain, minding her own business. How did I know she’s addict? Sometimes being a cop is very easy.
6:35:45 Reach in stash.
6:36:47 Go around corner to hit off.
6:37:31 Reach in stash again, pass to young kid.
6:37:50 Positively skips with delight because he’s about to make four sales!
6:37:55 Cluster fuck of junkies on corner. Crowd control skills come into play.
6:38:12 What the hell is that guy carrying?
6:38:45 Junkies heading back after hit off.
6:39:30 Counting money.
6:41:45 Running away. Po-po must be near. (Is that a bottle or the stash in his hand? I think a bottle).
6:42:47 Back at stash. He thinks he’s safe.
6:44:29 Two of the three in cuffs.
6:45:45 Police officer recovers stash.If you have police video I can have, let me know. Especially if you’re police. I promise to keep you anonymous and edit out anything that needs to be edited out.
