Tag: war on drugs
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Alcohol and drug use down among teens, despite what the headline says
Let’s play a game called “write the headline.” Here’s the story from the New York Times:
According to the latest federal figures, which were part of an annual survey, Monitoring the Future…. The report looked at a wide variety of drugs and substances. It found, for example, that drinking was steadily declining, with roughly 40 percent of high school seniors reporting having used alcohol in the past month, down from a peak of 53 percent in 1997. Abuse of the prescription painkiller Vicodin is half what it was a decade ago among seniors; cocaine and heroin use are at historic lows in almost every grade.
Cigarette smoking has also fallen precipitously in recent years. For the first time since the survey began, the percentage of students who smoked a cigarette in the past month dropped below 10 percent. Roughly 8.5 percent of seniors smoke cigarettes on a daily basis, compared with 6.5 percent who smoke marijuana daily, a slight increase from 2010.
[Also] More than 12 percent of eighth graders and 36 percent of seniors at public and private schools around the country said they had smoked marijuana in the past year. About 60 percent of high school seniors said they did not view regular marijuana use as harmful, up from about 55 percent last year.
How would you summarize this story in one headline?
No matter what you pick, I bet you can beat what what the Times editor came up with: “Increasing Marijuana Use in High School Is Reported“! The exclamation point is mine.
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Waltzing Matilda
Should you just happen to be in Sydney next week, wonder over to the Opera House and check out the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I’ll be there, spreading dangerous thoughts about flogging and the war on drugs. Did I mention they’re flying me over there all fancy? Like in business class? Classy, those Aussies are!
It should be a blast.
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Why Are So Many Violent Criminals Walking Free?
Because of the War on Drugs.
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Two more prohibition deaths
These twodidn’t die from MDMA. They died from whatever they took that wasn’t MDMA. Why? Because of prohibition.
To blame drugs rather than prohibition is exactly the same as when, during Prohibition, “alcohol” caused blindness, death, and (my own favorite) Jake Leg. These are prohibition problems. Of course during Prohibition, prohibitionists blamed the prohibited drug rather than their policy of prohibition. They still do.
If you’re not ready to end drug prohibition, how about testing booths? Testing booths would have saved these two lives. Clubs in Europe have them. But no, not here. You’d get arrested. Why? Because we want our drug users to buy from criminals and die. I mean, seriously, we don’t have a system that prevents recreational drug users from dying because prohibitionists, perhaps yourself included, say: “it sends the wrong message!” Because preventable death is such a good message. For shame.
Every weekend, throughout the world, countless hundreds of thousands of people take recreational drugs, have a good time, and live to tell about it. The fact that anybody dies from taking what they think is ecstasy is as absurd (and real) as partial permanent paralysis from a shot of booze.
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We Got Another Kingpin! (12)
That’s two in one month and it makes an even dozen.
“Eduardo Arellano Felix is to serve 15 years in jail, after pleading guilty to charges of money laundering,” says the BBC. Though I don’t know if this should really count since he’s been in jail since 2008, and his nickname, “The Doctor,” is kinda lame. But I’m still chalking him up because, well, he was a kingpin (or at least the accountant for one).
Check out the others.
Eduardo was the last of four brothers who ran the Mexican drug cartel known as the Arellano-Felix Organization. With all these kingpins gone, we can look back to the turning point in the drug war. Though today it’s hard to conceive of how violent Mexico once was, back before we won the war on drugs.
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LEAP’s Peter Christ on Drug Prohibition
Well played, Peter. Well played.
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Now This News
Short video on the problem of opiate painkillers. I get my two-cents in at about three minutes in.
Ironically, I may have been or Percocet while being interviewed!
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Another Drug War Victim
Daniel Chongwas awarded $4 million after he was detained, told he wouldn’t be charged, and then left in a windowless cell in the DEA’s San Diego headquarter without food or water for four days. He drank his urine to stay alive and after being found spent three days in the ICU.
Hey, mistakes happen. The DEA regrets the error.
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We Got Another Kingpin! (11)
Why it was less than a year ago that we got Heriberto Lazcano, the founder and principal leader of the Zetas. And now the Times reports:
The leader of … the Zetas, was captured Monday in a city near the Texas border, an emphatic retort from the new government to questions over whether it would go after top organized crime leaders.
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Mr. Treviño is the highest-ranking and most-sought-after drug capo arrested by the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, whose aides had questioned the so-called kingpin strategy of his predecessor, which had emphasized high-profile arrests.
If you’re counting, and I am, this is the 11th Kingpinwe’ve captured in less than three years! Start the chant: War on drugs! War on Drugs! USA! Mexico!
The BBC mentions in passing: “The fear is that it will lead to a period of violent in-fighting between different Zeta factions as they try to assume control of the criminal organisation, our correspondent adds.” Ya think?