Mar
Inside the lucrative world of ecstasy smuggling
Though [Ragan] makes $40 an hour teaching SAT classes and tutoring kids in their math classes, most of her income comes from dealing ecstasy. It’s a year-round business, but summer is especially lucrative. “High season,” she calls it.
[…]
A drought in Canada had led to a shortage of safrole oil, the main ingredient needed to produce [MDMA]. ..the Vancouver labs ran dry and even California, a growing hub in the US, lacked the substance.
Police in Canada had been cracking down on all avenues of ecstasy production, and conservationists helped the cause by fighting against the harvesting of sassafras plants, whose root bark and fruit provide safrole oil.
The bottleneck led to a proliferation of adulterated [MDMA] that included synthetic drugs called “bath salts” — crystals that when crushed into a powder and mixed the right way can pass for ecstasy, especially to the untrained eye. They look like epsom salts but otherwise have nothing to do with actual bath salts; they cause people to become hyped up, as with cocaine.
This is a fascinating article that establishes a few important points:
1) Illegal drugs, in this instance MDMA, are smuggled in vast quantities across the Canadian border just as marijuana and other drugs are flooding through the Mexican border. It seems to matter little whether a given country possesses a corrupt government or a democratic one…in either case, if a demand for an illegal substance exists, that product will be sold and yield astonishing profits. As this article notes, two of the major producers of MDMA in Canada are offshoots of Chinese and Vietnamese gangs. Some unsavory characters are profiting from this enterprise and using their funds for god-knows-what.
2) Drug dealers, though often depicted as murderous sociopaths in the media, could very well be tutoring your child in math.
3) Synthetic drugs (or “bath salts”) exist only because the “real” drugs are illegal. This is an important point. Demand for a product does not magically disappear just because the product has.
4) The drug war cannot, in any real sense, ever be “won.” A white flag is our only option.
Feb
The most politically encouraging event on the horizon — which is a very bleak one politically — is the possibility of fusion or synthesis of some of the positions of what is to be called left and some of what is to be called libertarian. The critical junction could be, and in some ways already is, the War on Drugs.
The War on Drugs is an attempt by force, by the state, at mass behavior modification. Among other things, it is a denial of medical rights, and certainly a denial of all civil and political rights. It involves a collusion with the most gruesome possible allies in the Third World. It’s very hard for me to say that there’s an issue more important than that at the moment.
Jan
I have felt negatively about people who seem like they are bragging about drug use in order to be perceived a certain way, but generally I feel more irritated by people who brag about their sobriety.
If I left drug use out of my writing, I would be hiding something about myself so that people wouldn’t judge me.
I also don’t feel like there is anything particularly “cool” about the way I do drugs. Most of the time I am taking various pills alone in my room. I like pills because they aren’t demanding or inconsistent. I usually spend the first half of my drug binges desperately trying to become motivated enough to be productive, but eventually resign to staring at porn for three hours and feeling good about my inevitable death.
Dec
- Maia Szalavitz: What drugs really are the most harmful?
- Dr. David Nutt: There are two dimensions: harm to society and harm to the individual. Our most recent research report was published in the Lancet in 2010. Basically, it adds the two together. Overall, the most harmful drug is alcohol and that’s largely because it’s far and away the most harmful drug to society. Then it’s crack and then heroin and crystal meth.
Dec
Bill Clinton and the Drug War
The trailer for a new anti-drug war documentary, Breaking the Taboo, advertises interviews with Jimmy Carter (implied though not seen in the trailer) and Bill Clinton that presumably feature the former Presidents criticizing the drug policies that they, to one degree or another, enforced. While I appreciate any effort to criticize our ineffective, racist, and torturous drug laws, this film’s trailer (which may or may not accurately reflect the content of the film itself) praises President Clinton for courageously “breaking the taboo” by admitting the obvious: our drug policies don’t effectively reduce drug-related violence, deaths, or even the use of illicit substances. It’s better of course that Clinton condemns rather than praises our drug laws, but it seems like another public relations effort by the former President to revise his political legacy by embracing far more liberal views than the ones he held while in office.
Clinton, though he made Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act laws of the land, now presents himself as a crusader for gay rights. Again, it’s preferable that he support gay marriage, but it’s an entirely symbolic act. While in office, his policies were aggressively anti-gay. Similarly, Clinton appeared in campaign ads for Obama’s re-election lamenting the same old deregulatory policies that caused the financial crisis. One of the worst of these policies, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, was enacted by Clinton. It helped create the Too-Big-To-Fail banks that are now, thanks to taxpayer funds, bigger than ever.
Shortly before exiting the White House, Clinton encouraged the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana in an interview with Rolling Stone. Sadly, this sentiment meant next to nothing as Clinton spent his two terms in office aggressively prosecuting marijuana users:
The Clinton presidency has been marked by ever-increasing anti- drug budgets, huge increases in the number of people sent to prison on drug charges, and three consecutive years of record marijuana arrests. During Clinton’s two terms in office, the annual number of marijuana arrests rose from 250,000 to more than 700,000.
His record on medical marijuana was no better:
When Clinton was first elected, medical-marijuana advocates thought that he would at least be sympathetic. He did, after all, appoint Dr. Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General, and she was outspoken in favor of debating medical marijuana’s potential. Unfortunately, the Clinton camp quickly saw her as a problematic political lightning rod-she was also in favor of sex education, AIDS education and the rights of high-schoolers to acquire condoms-and got rid of her before a serious nationwide medical-marijuana debate could even begin.
Subsequently, the Clinton years saw a grass-roots upsurge demanding the right of the seriously ill to medicate themselves with marijuana. California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada and the District of Columbia all passed referendums or legislation to legalize the medicinal use of cannabis, but the Clinton Administration refuses to recognize these laws as legitimate. Moreover, it has instructed the Justice Department to go after medicinal growers and distributors in those states. It has told doctors that their licenses to prescribe other drugs could be revoked if they give patients the documentation necessary to acquire medical marijuana, and said that patients using medical marijuana in federally funded housing will be evicted.
Furthermore, Clinton refused to fund needle exchange programs, which have been shown to reduce the spread of AIDS:
The inability of needle-using drug addicts to acquire clean needles legally has long been identified as a key factor in the spread of AIDS, hepatitis and a host of other debilitating diseases. Junkies sharing used needles are microbe distributors. If they have clean needles, they won’t spread those microbes. Dozens of major studies, including several paid for by the federal government during Clinton’s years, have confirmed that needle exchange not only works, but does not increase drug use. Still, the Clinton Administration, at the behest of Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, refused to allow federal funding for needle-exchange programs, saying that ( in McCaffrey’s words ) this “would send a message to our nation’s children that doing drugs is not wrong.” That intransigence in the face of science has caused thousands of drug addicts and their lovers to die needlessly.
To his credit, shortly before leaving office, Clinton called for sentencing disparities between powder and crack cocaine (which unjustly target poor black people) to be reevaluated. President Obama did just that, and reduced the disparity from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1.
But much like President Obama’s criticisms of the drug war in 2004, Clinton’s “taboo breaking” doesn’t amount to much of anything. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama pretend that because certain laws are in place, there is nothing they can do to prevent them from being aggressively enforced. This is a convenient excuse that serves a political purpose: liberals can be perceived as tough on crime while abdicating their responsibility to reform drug laws that they know are counter-productive. Our nation’s drug policy could be radically altered by simply respecting state laws that legalize either medical or recreational marijuana.
Instead, the drug war goes on and on, despite numerous states voting to defy federal drug laws. There have been many admissions of failure but very little actual progress has been achieved at the federal level. Now that the majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, it’s time to stop pretending that timid and vague calls for reform are in any sense “courageous.” There are no more excuses for continuing to imprison hundreds of thousands of people for mere possession. No more excuses for the genocidal war zones created by cartels in other countries; countries that we demand “crack down” on drug sales. No more excuses for our collective failure to eradicate addiction to deadly substances. And no more excuses for those who oversee these terrible policies.
Nov
Americans make up less than 5% of the global population but consume 80% of the world’s supply of opioid prescription pills. Sales of the drugs have increased more than fourfold in the past 10 years, grossing $11 [billion] annually.
…about 15,000 Americans are dying every year from prescription pill overdoses – triple the rate of a decade ago, according to the US government body the Centres for Disease Control, which has declared the problem an epidemic. The death toll exceeds that caused by heroin and cocaine combined, and in 17 states has become the No 1 killer, surpassing even car crashes.
Nov
Oct
Marijuana inmate with food allergy dies in prison after being given oatmeal
Michael Saffioti, 22, who, upon his mother’s advice, had turned himself in to the Lynnwood Police Department after missing a court date, was dead after just one night in the Snohomish County Jail in Washington state…
The young man knew dairy products could kill him; he read labels and carried medication, and suffered severe reactions from just being near dairy protein. His anxiety over the allergy was so severe, in fact, it left him needing medication. “Ultimately, he found and thought he was better functioning using marijuana,” said his mother, Rose Saffioti, who is a nurse.
But Michael didn’t have a doctor’s recommendation to use cannabis medicinally, which left him vulnerable to prosecution. His marijuana use led to several encounters with law enforcement. After the most recent incident, he and his mother went to the police station, carrying his medical history, after he had missed a court date. “I wanted Michael held accountable for his legal issues and I insisted on it,” his mother said. “But I didn’t want him to die.”
Another person who didn’t have to die; another day in the drug war.
Oct
Decriminalise drug use, say experts after six-year study
A six-year study of Britain’s drug laws by leading scientists, police officers, academics and experts has concluded it is time to introduce decriminalisation.
The report by the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), an independent advisory body, says possession of small amounts of controlled drugs should no longer be a criminal offence and concludes the move will not lead to a significant increase in use.
The experts say the criminal sanctions imposed on the 42,000 people sentenced each year for possession of all drugs – and the 160,000 given cannabis warnings – should be replaced with simple civil penalties such as a fine, attendance at a drug awareness session or a referral to a drug treatment programme.
The report says their analysis of the evidence shows that existing drugs policies struggle to make an impact and, in some cases, may make the problem worse.
The work of the commission is the first major independent report on drugs policy since the influential Police Foundation report 12 years ago called for an end to the jailing of those possessing cannabis.
Oct
'The Biggest Breakthrough in Depression Research' in 50 Years Is... Ketamine?
…ketamine’s potent and rapid effects seem downright miraculous, even though the relief it provides from depression onlys last seven to ten days. But researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have known this for a decade now. And the drug actually been approved by the FDA for use as an injected anesthetic, albeit one with short-term, but psychologically intense, side-effects…
What is new — and legitimately exciting — about all this is that scientists are beginning to realize that we may have been thinking about the depressed brain in the wrong way. The effects seen with ketamine suggest that the common explanations for depression — that it’s caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain, or by low levels of serotonin — may not be what’s really causing the disorder after all.
Instead, the studies reviewed here support a different theory, one which suggests that depression is the result of damage to the brain cells responsible for controlling mood. In mice, at least, this atrophy of neurons occurred in response to stress. Although the reasons for why stress causes this to happen are unclear, the weakening of synaptic connections appears to be at the root of depression and other stress-related disorders.
Oct
This film deserves heaps of praise. It succeeds in personalizing an issue that may sometimes seem abstract. See it if you can.
Sep
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