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The Office of National Drug Control Policy under Bush, led by John Walters, was notorious for flat-out lies and evidence bending, especially regarding cannabis (it was a holy culture war for Ashcroft as well), but under Obama the office has mostly put focus on prescription drug abuse and “drugged driving”. With 2012 bringing a host [...]

Only in the drug war. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” — DEA head Michele Leonhart From 2009: “There will be more violence, more blood, and, yes, things will get worse before they get better. That’s the nature of the battle,” — U.S. [...]

Opponents to CA’s Prop 19 ran pretty well with the narrative that legalizing cannabis would yield no reduction of the cartel violence in Mexico. After all, they don’t really make their money on pot; it’s all California-grown, they promised. They even were kinda sorta convincing me that might be the case.  Maybe—just somehow—they know that. [...]

I’ve been waiting for a story like this to come along. “It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling [...]

In November Californians will see on their ballot the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. The act would basically “legalize” cannabis—all involved in such an industry would remain in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act, and subject to the whims of the federal DEA and Dept. of Justice—for adults 21 and up, [...]

Blogger Classically Liberal shows how codifying the morality of the day (“societal justice”) can give you laws that abuse a slowly changing demographic of victims. With support of Christians, England at one time had criminalized homosexuality; but now that most brits openly accept it, England’s remaining Christians and their speech are becoming targets for abuse [...]

AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals This writer is obviously on fire about this issue, and while I appreciate the fact that it will expose more people to the wider effects and history of our drug policy, it’s simply unfair to claim that the drug war has met no goals. [...]

From Radley Balko: In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri: SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment. [...]

Remember Calderón’s It’s-OK-if-criminals-kill-criminals argument? In light of the new study that finds increasing drug enforcement increases violence, our last drug czar weighed in: The former drug czar, John Walters, said the researchers gravely misinterpret drug violence. He said spikes of attacks and killings after law enforcement crackdowns are almost entirely between criminals, and therefore may, [...]

…Deaths in the last three years of Mexico’s drug war. While U.S. prohibitions create thousands of criminals, Calderón reassures us they’re mostly killing each other. Of course plenty of cops, govt. officials, and innocent kids are in that figure, too. With the Mexican economy going South—especially tourism—parents will just have to hope their children don’t [...]

Update Nov. 15: My letter to the editor in Monday’s Alligator. Recently I wrote about the potential e-cigarettes hold for harm reduction, so when the University of Florida proposed a regulation that would expand its tobacco use ban to explicitly include e-cigarettes, I decided to speak up. Today I sent the following e-mail to Paula [...]

Today almost no credible evidence suggests that cannabis belongs on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, alongside drugs like heroin. This position has stifled medical research of the drug and its component chemicals for 39 years, making research extremely expensive and arbitrarily difficult to secure compared to that of much more harmful drugs. A [...]

I first learned about e-cigarettes from Reason’s coverage of the FDA’s rush to ban them, and of the rightful criticism of that intent from the American Association of Public Health Physicians. Without smoke (e-cigs are miniature vaporizers), nicotine use is likely to be many magnitudes less harmful to the body. The hope is that e-cig [...]

(From January 7) Over the break Kathleen and I watched a bunch of movies, but season 1 of The Wire delivered beyond the hype it got from friends. It gives a crash course on the frustration and futility of local cops fighting drug gangs on the street level in West Baltimore. The police jump through [...]

For a few moments, imagine the year is 2109 and the U.S. government “grudgingly tolerates” the recreational use of psychoactive drugs, but requires users to take an education course and earn a license to buy and use (even alcohol).

Surprisingly, Mike Wallace’s 1968 TV report on Marijuana is probably the most reasonable, well-balanced, and well-researched report available on the drug.

If you haven’t noticed, Juarez and many other Mexican cities are facing a violent crisis. The drug cartels are so well funded and armed that they can bribe officials and even threaten police chiefs into retirement. The drugs moved by the traffickers can, of course, cause harm, but Mexico’s problem isn’t a “drug problem” but [...]

What if we had zero tolerance for laws that have a lot of ugly side effects? Like busting an amazing teacher in front of her kids… for finding a couple Xanax pills… in a suspicion-less search of her car. Herrick, 59, has taught at Roberts for 17 years. Parents describe her as “inspirational,” “talented” and [...]

What if Congress debated the prohibition of drugs for over 2 hours, finding surprisingly that most members already favored harm reduction policies and, in some cases, regulation over criminalization? This just happened in the U.K.’s House of Lords. On January 22nd, a debate was held (full transcript) to encourage the government to send a senior [...]

Daniel Rodriguez said there’s no such thing as a healthy discussion about legalizing drugs because young people take their cues from adult conversation. “There are things I believe should not be open for discussion, and this is one of them,” he said. [El Paso Newspaper Tree] Thank goodness we now have more excuses to stifle [...]