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Gunmen kill 17 people at a drug rehab in Mexico (Sept. 3, 2009)
"Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico's most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone. Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence, which has taken a heavy toll across Mexico. Earlier the same day, gunmen ambushed and killed a senior security official in the home state of President Felipe Calderon."

Burma's Opium Production Back on Rise (Sept. 2, 2009)
"A Feb. 2 report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime found that the price of opium in Burma, also known as Myanmar, increased by 15% last year. As a result, Burmese land dedicated to poppy cultivation actually expanded in 2008, despite promises by the country's ruling junta to combat its reputation as one of the world's most notorious narco-states."

Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium? And If So, Why? (Sept. 2, 2009)
"If international drug- and law-enforcement officials are right, the Taliban might be hiding up to $3.2 billion worth of opium inside Afghanistan, potentially causing huge complications for NATO's decision this month to attack Afghanistan's opium laboratories and smuggling networks. If it exists, the drug stockpile would also have a major bearing on Afghan officials' tentative peace talks with the Taliban, which are favored by U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus and both U.S. presidential candidates."

Report: Afghanistan's Opium Boom May Be Over (Sept. 2, 2009)
"But there is a twist. Afghan poppy crops are now high-yield, say U.N. officials, thanks to better irrigation methods and especially good rains over the past year. While acreage devoted to the flowers fell, production of opium itself dropped only 10% in Afghanistan last year, to about 6,900 tons. Each hectare of poppies yielded about 123 lb. (56 kg) of opium — 15% more than last year."

Mexico is safer than in the past, minister says (August 25, 2009)
"Mexico decriminalized the use of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin [Friday, August 21, 2009]. The move will help focus on major traffickers, officials said."

AP Source: Michael Jackson's death ruled homicide (August 25, 2009)
"While the finding does not necessarily mean a crime was committed, it means more likely that criminal charges will be filed against Dr. Conrad Murray, the Las Vegas cardiologist who was caring for Jackson when he died June 25 in a rented Los Angeles mansion."

Marines assault Taliban town in Afghanistan (August 12, 2009)
"Marines said they killed between seven and 10 militants in Wednesday's push and seized about 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of opium, which the militants use to finance their insurgency. Troops hope to restore control of the town so that residents can vote in the election."

U.S. Military Base Plan Puts Colombia in Hot Water (August 12, 2009)
"As one of the few surviving pro-U.S. conservative heads of state in a continent that has swung left, Colombia's President, Alvaro Uribe, is used to being at odds with his neighbors. But accustomed though he may be to swimming against Latin America's political tide, Uribe is scrambling to explain his less-than-transparent decision to allow the U.S. military to use air bases on Colombian soil to track drug traffickers and even rebels."s

Phony Stats on Cocaine Prices Hide Truth About War on Drugs (July 22, 2009)
"John Walters had some data he wanted to make public, but he also had a credibility problem. Just two years earlier, in 2005, Walters, the country’s drug czar, had cited a hike in the price of cocaine as a battlefield victory in the war on drugs—only to see the price fall just as he was touting the increase. He was ridiculed in some quarters of the press; others decided to stop listening to him. This time around, in the summer of 2007, Walters went looking for the most receptive audience he could find. So he zipped down New York Avenue to the headquarters of The Washington Times, the conservative daily based in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Walters, according to a staffer present at the briefing, came with a small staff and a stack of glossy pages making the case that the United States had turned a corner in the war on drugs. Prices for cocaine, he said, were rising fast. And that, he explained, can only mean a decline in supply. The Times wouldn’t bite. The data were suspiciously thin."

Foreign Policy Magazine Exposes Folly of Marijuana Ban (July 22, 2009)
"The reason why the editor of Foreign Policy magazine Moises Naim's recent column is significant is because for far too long the foreign policy community has been a willing conduit for exporting America's wrongheaded and failed cannabis prohibition around the globe. But, the American dominance of the drug policy debate has started to wane over the last 8-10 years in quarters like the United Nations, and columns like Mr. Naim's underscore the myriad reasons why America's elected policymakers need to adopt a reform mindset--notably under an Obama administration--not status quo retrenchment into an unyielding, prohibition-centric cannabis policy."

Drug czar: Feds won't support legalized pot (July 22, 2009)
"The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno. The nation's drug czar, who viewed a foothill marijuana farm on U.S. Forest Service land with state and local officials earlier Wednesday, said the federal government will not support legalizing marijuana. 'Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,' he said. Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said. 'Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,' Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS -- Save Our Sierra -- a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County."

Who Are the Drug Lords? (July 21, 2009)
"Who are the drug lords? They are every politician who lives and breathes war, drugs, terror or otherwise. They are the corrupt corporate heads, malicious media barons, venomous judges and cretinous cops, who, knowing full well the truth, choose to follow their nose to riches, to embrace a lie, to feed their evil cornucopia with the lives of their fellow man."

Something Is Happening Down There (July 21, 2009)
"The battle against the drug gangs is a complicated one. A lot of money is involved, and the drug lords are pretty smart. They now keep a lot of their processing (opium into morphine or heroin) labs mobile. The vehicles travel with armed guards, but force is a last resort. The security detachment is also armed with a lot of cash, and the first weapon to be deployed is a bribe. That usually works. But the U.S. intelligence troops are after the drug gangs now, and this makes concealment more difficult. The U.S. military isn't releasing any play-by-play of these operations, lest they provide useful information to the enemy. It won't be until the end of August that an initial assessment is possible, and not until the end of the year until one can check the trends in wholesale and retail prices for heroin. As Afghanistan heroin production grew since the 1990s, the world supply has doubled, and prices have come down by about 50 percent. More people are using, and dying from, heroin. And now we can add many of the victims of the fighting in southern Afghanistan to that toll."

Worldwide production of heroin and cocaine falling, says UN drug chief (July 20, 2009)
"Drug use should be treated more as an illness than a crime, the head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime said today as the body's annual report announced a worldwide decline in the production of cocaine and heroin. The report for 2009 called for traffickers to be targeted rather than users and announced that there was a worldwide growth in synthetic drugs.""

Chavez Attacks US Report Naming Venezuela a ‘Narcotics State’ (July 20, 2009)
This is a great way of making one's unliked leftist darker-skinned President of a South American country look bad to the US public while simutaneously helping justify the spending of US tax money to maybe, just maybe, do things like, say, destabilize Venezuala, the country Chavez currnetly heads? Chavez has long been a very irritating thorn in the Us' side. How long he will remain as President, well, let's all wish him the best.

Revolutionary Latin America and Today's Nexus of Terror (July 20, 2009)
"The irony of the narcotics scourge alone is how the massive accrued wealth of the narco-terrorist’s hierarchy is at the expense of the citizenry and the victims, as a nation must struggle with the overwhelming massive resources needed to defend their homeland. It has been reported that Mexican drug syndicates “generate more revenue than at least 40% of Fortune 500 companies.” And let’s face it – Mexico remains under siege.

Marijuana Legalization: CBS News Poll Has Support at 41% Nationwide (July 19, 2009)
"A CBS News poll conducted over the weekend has found that 41% of Americans support marijuana legalization, while 52% oppose, and 7% are undecided. The figure matches that of a January CBS News poll. Support dropped to 31% in an April CBS News poll before rebounding this month."

Most ‘Trusted Man In America’, Also Supported Marijuana Law Reform (July 19, 2009)
"RIP Walter Cronkite! In the summer 1992, I was told by an assistant that I had a phone call, and that 'unless the person on the phone was kidding, that it was someone claiming to be Walter Cronkite.'..."Drug war is a war on families By Walter Cronkite Article Published: Sunday, August 08, 2004"
" In the midst of the soaring rhetoric of the recent Democratic National Convention, more than one speaker quoted Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, invoking 'the better angels of our nature.' Well, there is an especially appropriate task awaiting those heavenly creatures - a long-overdue reform of our disastrous war on drugs. We should begin by recognizing its costly and inhumane dimensions."

State helps ease drug offenders’ release (July 19, 2009)
"NEW YORK STATE — In the fall, low-level drug offenders will begin trickling out of state prisons and into treatment programs under the landmark state drug law reforms passed earlier this year. Legislation dismantling most of the state’s strict Rockefeller drug laws was signed into law in April by Gov. David Paterson. The bill repealed many of the state’s mandatory minimum prison sentences for lower-level drug offenders."

World drugs in graphics (July 19, 2009)
"A UN agency has published a comprehensive report on the worldwide illicit drugs market, the World Drug Report 2009. The graphs and maps below show the extent of the problem and measures to tackle it."

DEA boosts its war in Afghanistan (July 19, 2009)
"The move is seen as a recognition that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won with military force alone. Until near the end of its eight years in office, the Bush administration failed to link the drug traffickers in Afghanistan with the rising insurgency, basing its anti-drug campaign primarily on an effort to destroy the vast fields of poppy that produce more than 90 percent of the world's heroin....After Sept. 11, the Bush administration's focus on counterterrorism and, later, the war in Iraq, extensively depleted U.S. global counternarcotics efforts, especially in South Asia, they say. The DEA also suffered from hiring freezes, budget cuts and a lack of political support despite its intelligence showing ever-closer links between drug traffickers and terrorist groups."

La Familia cartel kills 12 federal agents in Mexico drug war attack (Jully 19, 2009)
"A powerful Mexican drug cartel has unleashed a killing spree against the authorities in a challenge to the leadership of the President in his home state....The perception that the war against drugs is being lost is pervasive. A poll published in Milenio said that only 28 per cent of Mexicans believed that the Government was winning, and more than half thought that it was losing."

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (July 17, 2009)
"It's a corrupt cops twofer for New Jersey, another twofer for Indiana, a two-for-one special on Texas deputies, and a lone prison guard in Florida. Let's get to it...."

Heroin is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade (May 10, 2007)
"The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions."

U.S., allies seen as losing drug war (May 7, 2007)
"The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck."

101-year-old Zambian man nabbed over cannabis cultivation, trafficking (May 3, 2007)
"DEC spokesperson Rosten Chulu confirmed the arrest of Timothy Chilekwa, a peasant farmer of Namembo village in Southern province who was born in 1906. Chulu said the old man was nabbed for alleged unlawful cultivation of cannabis weighing 1.2 tons. He was also found trafficking two sacks of cannabis weighing 6. 95 kg, Chulu said. The spokesperson said the 101-year-old would appear in court soon."

Was Timothy Leary Right? (May 3, 2007)
"Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time? The answer to both questions is yes."

The Farce of the War on Drugs (May 1, 2007)
"My brother Howard Wooldridge served as a decorated police officer and detective in Lansing, Michigan for 18 years. During that time, he collared killers, drunk drivers, child molesters, rapists, wife beaters and drug dealers. What he learned launched him on a crusade to stop the federal government’s useless 35 year 'War on Drugs.'"

Coca Growers Shake the Andes Once Again (April 27, 2007)
"During the last few days, coca growers, especially in Peru and Colombia, have been in the news again, as their actions have given the media something to talk about."

LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US (April 27, 2007)
"BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work."

No Jail for Willie Nelson on Drug Charge (April 25, 2007)
While the editor of DrugWar.com applauds this decision by the judge, I can't help but wonder how hard the judge would have thrown the book at me for the exact same offense.

The War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up (April 14, 2007)
"Middlebury, Vermont, this week declared a public health emergency to prevent a local business from selling it. It's already illegal in five states -- Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Delaware -- and a number of towns and cities across the country, and now politicians in at least seven other states have filed bills to make it illegal there. For the DEA, it is a 'drug of concern.'"

Book Offer: Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics (April 14, 2007)
"Normally when we publish a book review in our Drug War Chronicle newsletter, it gets readers but is not among the top stories visited on the site. Recently we saw a big exception to that rule when more than 2,700 of you read our review of the new book Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy."

Plant growers served search warrant (April 11, 2007)
"Three WSU students were surprised when a plant they were growing in their closet was mistaken for marijuana."

California in bid to impose 7.25% sales tax on cannabis (April 10, 2007)
"For decades, smoking marijuana has been an illicit affair, a key anti-establishment ritual for America's counter-culture underground. But the legalisation of the drug for medicinal purposes in California has presented its advocates with a dilemma: to remain firmly on the wrong side of the law or accept a demand to pay taxes on its sale."

The Other War: Democratic Candidates are Deafeningly Silent on the Drug War (April 9, 2007)
"There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House. While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color."

Ex-officer likens drug war to Prohibition (April 8, 2007)
"Retired police officer Peter Christ on Tuesday compared the contemporary war on drugs to National Prohibition of the 1920s."

Minnesota drug laws: Are they too harsh? (April 8, 2007)
Momentum gathers for review of sentencing rules

Drug Czar Blasted for Lack of Leadership (April 8, 2007)
"During the course of research for this series, it became apparent that many prominent players in the war on drugs don't have many compliments for the current drug czar, John Walters."

Is the Drug War Nearing an End? (April 8, 2007)
"Little by little by little there is some hope that the "war" on drugs is becoming a political issue - the first step in undoing a set of policies that make little sense no matter how you look at them."

Law Enforcement Group Visits Maine To Advocate For Legalization Of Drugs (April 8, 2007)
"LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, says it has 5,000 members, made up mostly of retired and active law enforcement professionals. The group tours the country speaking to various civic groups about what they call a $60 billion failed war on drugs."

Afghans pin hopes on a new economy (April 8, 2007)
"As a competitive economy awakens in one of the world's poorest countries, the residents of Kabul are jockeying to get ahead in a city flush with cash from US soldiers, foreign aid workers, new investors, parliamentarians, and drug traffickers."

Salvadoran Murders in Guatemala (April 8, 2007)
"If the trip to Guatemala was a fiasco, Colombia was no better, Bush's arrival in Bogotá couldn't have happened at a worse time as every moment ticked off another scandal, some of them leading in the direction ofo President Uribe's office, and nothing that Bush or Uribe president could say concealed the fact that the Colombia phase of the U.S. anti-drug war was more dead than alive, which was even more certain when it came to extraditing Colombian suspected felons to the U.S."

Analysis: U.S. anti-drug war in Afghanistan (April 8, 2007)
"In a bluntly worded letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the lawmakers said inter-agency rivalry and U.S. policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos."

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (April 7, 2007)
"A Georgia fire captain gets caught peddling coke, a pair of New Haven narcs lose their jobs, a former Mississippi police chief cops a plea, and a former Ohio cop goes back to prison. Let's get to it...."

Methamphetamine: Feds Make First Cold Medicine Bust Under Combat Meth Act (April 7, 2007)
"An Ontario, New York, man last Friday won the dubious distinction of being the first person arrested under the 2005 Combat Meth Epidemic Act. According to a DEA press release, William Fousse was arrested for purchasing cold tablets containing more than nine grams of pseudoephedrine within a one month period."

Harm Reduction: New Mexico Governor Signs Overdose Death Reduction Measure (April 7, 2007)
"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Wednesday signed innovative legislation that would protect friends or family members who seek medical attention for drug overdose victims. The law is the first of its kind in the country."

Pot-Growing Takes Root in the Suburbs (April 1, 2007)
"In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other's privacy - ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs."

Bob Barr Flip-Flops on Pot (March 28, 2007)
"Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project."

What the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care? (March 28, 2007)
"Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people."

Mexican Envoy Highly Critical of U.S. Role in Anti-Drug Effort (March 23, 2007)
"The United States has contributed 'zilch' to Mexico's efforts to combat the nations' joint problem with criminal narcotics gangs, Mexico's new ambassador to Washington said yesterday."

Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind (March 14, 2007- Free NYTimes registration required)
"The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about 'friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,' in 1972, he was not referring to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question, lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling you get after a nice hike, perhaps."

U.S. faults friends, foes in drug war (March 5, 2007)
"The United States said top anti-terror allies Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia had fallen short in the war on drugs despite enhanced counter-narcotics efforts and it criticized perennial foes Iran, North Korea and Venezuela for not cooperating."

Cuba’s War on Drugs (March 5, 2007)
"A review of the main results of the Cuban efforts against illegal drug trafficking as well as prevention during 2006, shows a marked reduction in the presence of drugs on the island, with 1.7 tons of narcotics seized, the lowest figure of the past 11 years and almost four times less than the amount detected in 2003."

Drug War Corrupting Cops In Hawaii and Elsewhere (March 5, 2007)
"Claiming to be the 'world’s leading drug policy newsletter,' the Drug War Chronicle publishes a regular online feature called, 'This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories.' The typical Hawaii newspaper reader probably comes across these cops-gone-bad stories pretty rarely. But, when hundreds of reports compiled over the past year from around the nation are read at one sitting, they add up to a hidden cost of America’s ill-fated drug war -- widespread corruption inside local police departments, prisons and jails."

Drug war rips apart Mexico (March 5, 2007)
"More than 250 people were executed last year in Acapulco as the sweltering Pacific resort became the latest battleground between rival cartels battling for supremacy of the multibillion-dollar drug trade."

In Guatemala, officers' killings echo dirty war (March 5, 2007)
"The two sets of brazen killings set off a vicious diplomatic conflict between Guatemala and El Salvador — heightened by news reports suggesting that the congressmen were indeed drug dealers — and ignited a political scandal here. It shed light on how corrupt the National Police has become, and raised questions about links between drug dealers and high-level police officials, as well as whether the government can contain drug trafficking without international help."

Collision Course: Bolivia's "Coca, Si; Cocaine, No" Policy Runs Afoul of the International Drug Control Board and, Probably, the United States (March 1, 2007)
"A confrontation is brewing over Bolivian President Evo Morales' effort to rationalize coca production in his country and expand markets for coca-based products....Now, the Morales government is also pushing for expanded legal markets for coca products and, in a joint venture with the Venezuelan government, is preparing to begin coca product exports to that country."

Ga. Reconsiders No - Knock Warrant Rules (March 1, 2007)
"A group of lawmakers wants to make it harder for police to use ''no-knock'' warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes officers stormed her home unannounced in a search for drugs."

Here we go again (Feb. 22, 2007)
"We're happy we could help with that, Mr. Vice President, but Colombian cocaine is still readily available in U.S. cities, so we have a difficult time thinking we got a good deal for our $4 billion. In fact, we don't believe Americans are getting their money's worth for any of the cash the government has thrown into the bottomless pit of the drug war. Court dockets are packed and prisons are overcrowded, yet illicit drugs are still readily available to anyone who wants them."

Latin America: Mexico Moves to Decriminalize Drug Possession -- So It Can Concentrate on Drug Traffickers (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Legislators from Mexican President Felipe's Calderon's National Action Party (PAN -- Partido de Accion Nacional) have introduced a bill in the Mexican Senate that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs for 'addicts.'"

DPS officials were told of lax lab security (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Texas Department of Public Safety officials were aware of security breaches in the handling of their drug evidence as recently as 2006 and as far back as at least 2003 — problems such as failure to log evidence out of storage, containers of marijuana left open and the lack of a monitoring system for a high-security drug vault — according to the agency's internal audits."

'Safest city' now has drug war (Feb. 22, 2007)
"From the shopping malls and the fashionable clothes of its residents, this could be any affluent U.S. suburb. Residents pride themselves on their prosperity. But in recent weeks, drug-related violence has shattered the tranquillity."

Mexican president gives soldiers pay hike as drug war intensifies (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Soldiers waging a nationwide offensive against drug traffickers will get a pay hike of nearly 50 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced Monday."

New Federal Study Shows Methamphetamine Use Decreased Between 2002 and 2005 (Jan. 31, 2007)
"A new analysis of data from The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that past-year use of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant, declined between 2002 and 2005 among persons age 12 or older....The study also shows that the number of persons who used methamphetamine for the first time in the 12 months before the survey remained stable between 2002 and 2004 but decreased between 2004 and 2005."

Tell Governor Spitzer to Support Rockefeller Drug Law Reform (Jan. 31, 2007)
"The Rockefeller Drug Laws require extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Most of the people incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses, and many of them have no prior criminal records. Today 14,139 people are locked up for drug offenses in NY State prisons, comprising nearly 38% of the prison population. This costs New Yorkers over half a billion dollars a year. Send a message to Governor Spitzer now, urging him to support real reform."

Mexico eyes Colombian experience in drug battle (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Mexico's top prosecutor on Thursday looked to Colombia's experience in counter-narcotics and conflict for lessons to help his government battle drug cartels whose violence has engulfed parts of the country."

Rio gang kills seven as drug war spreads (Jan. 27, 2007)
"The mutilated bodies of seven youths, some with their heads and legs chopped off, have been found in an abandoned car in a notorious Rio de Janeiro slum. They appeared to be the latest victims of a long-running drug war that has made Rio, which depends heavily on tourism, one of the most violent cities in the world."

Drug Policy Reform Group to Partner with State of New Mexico in Federally-Funded Meth Prevention Education Program (Jan. 27, 2007)
"In a first for drug reform organizations, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) New Mexico office has been designated to create a statewide methamphetamine education and prevention program directed at high school students, thanks to a $500,000 grant obtained by US Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) as part of a Justice Department appropriations bill. The grant is the result of years of close collaboration between DPA and New Mexico state and local officials dating back to the administration of former Gov. Gary Johnson (R), a prominent voice for drug law reform."

Spot in brain may control smoking urge (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Damage to a silver dollar-sized spot deep in the brain seems to wipe out the urge to smoke, a surprising discovery that may shed important new light on addiction. The research was inspired by a stroke survivor who claimed he simply forgot his two-pack-a-day addiction - no cravings, no nicotine patches, not even a conscious desire to quit."

Case highlights medical-pot dilemma (Jan. 23, 2007)
"'If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to come back and arrest me for 50,' said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare, says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state. Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver, Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost."

Alleged cartel members extradited to Texas (Jan. 23, 2007)
"A suspected Mexican drug lord whose cartel allegedly smuggled more than 4 tons of cocaine a month over the U.S. border will stand trial in Texas. Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged kingpin of the Gulf Cartel, and three other alleged drug lords appeared in a Houston court Monday. Mexican authorities delivered Cardenas-Guillen and 14 other alleged Mexican drug dealers and criminals to Houston late Friday and early Saturday, the Drug Enforcement Administration said."

Burdened U.S. military cuts role in drug war (Jan. 22, 2007)
"Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts."

S.F. area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says (Jan. 21, 2007)
"The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA, a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found."

Executive Order 13420 -- Dismantling the DEA (Jan. 21, 2007)
"This is the order I will sign after delivering my inaugural address," says Steve Kubby, who is again running for office this time seeking the nomination from the Libertarian Party as their Presidential candidate.

Cocaine found on 99.9% of UK banknotes (Jan. 21, 2007)
"Pretty well every banknote in the UK shows traces of cocaine, forensic scientists have claimed. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, 99.9 per cent of the two billion notes currently in circulation have come into contact with Bolivian marching powder."

A Legacy of Torture: From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act (Jan. 21, 2007)
"In today's world, the US government's use of torture and complicity in its clients' use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis. Yet very few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical shocks could be -- and have been -- used on US citizens." But the fact that torture is used profusely in US jails and prisons is unsurprising to those who've been inside the US "justice" system.

Reefer Madness (Jan. 21, 2007)
"I was never an activist until I got busted [noted Tommy Chong]. But it ’s not so much my efforts as the substance itself. Pot lives and dies on its own reputation....Years ago, people would do booze jokes. Then they start dying of cirrhosis of the liver and all these alcohol-related car accidents. Alcohol started out as a fun thing and ended up as this evil thing that kills people. Pot is the opposite...."

In the Costly War on Drugs, Who's To Say What Is Right? (Jan. 21, 2007)
"It seems like you lack a certain enthusiasm for the war on drugs, I said. I do lack enthusiasm for the war on drugs, he said. I asked about legalization. He shrugged. 'Monday, Wednesday and Friday I think they should be legalized. Tuesdays and Thursdays I think they should be illegal. I don't like drugs. I strongly disapprove of them. The costs are great. But it's expensive to incarcerate somebody. The costs are enormous either way. I don't know what's right.'"

Democracy and Plan Colombia (Jan. 21, 2007)
Just what effects are the massive spraying in anti-cocaine and poppy efforts that are one of the main tenents of Plan Colombia, not to mention all the arms and training given to the Colombian military and governments to combat Colombian peasents...errr, I mean, dastardly narco-terrorists? No major advancement of democracy it appears.

Drug mafia, CIA blamed for sacking of Afghan governor (Jan. 21, 2007)
"As The Washington Post has plainly summarized, 'corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, [have] undercut the [counter-narcotics] effort.'"

PAST NEWS ARCHIVE

Doing Things the Righteous Way

An Interview with Shawn Heller- National Director of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy


Shawn Heller
photo- Preston Peet

by Preston Peet-
Special to Drugwar.com

June 20, 2002

P- Hi Shawn. I’m watching the tape of your arrest at the Department of Justice right now.

SH- I still can’t feel part of my hand. I think I’m going to go to the doctor tomorrow. I guess you could say I probably had the harshest situation with the cops. They had me pressed down onto the ground, kneeling on me as well as applying pressure points on my wrists and neck for about 20 seconds. Then they put the plastic cuffs on me and carried me by the cuffs, which made them cinch as tight as they could get. They left the cuffs on me for 3 hours. We were incarcerated for about 8 hours total.

P- Let me get a little background. How many brothers and sisters do you have?

SH- I have one brother, and one sister.

P- Where were you born?

SH- Miami Florida.

P- You’re how old?

SH- 23.

P- Where’d you go to HS and college?

SH- I went to the Maritime Academy of Science and Technology, the M.A.S.T. Academy, on Key Biscayne in Miami, a public school but it’s a magnet school. It’s a neat place. We used to go kayaking and windsurfing for PE instead of playing football. I went to college at George Washington University in Washington DC, and graduated in 2000.

P- You are still working with the Students for Sensible Drug Policy right? And you are president, right?

SH- Actually, that’s national director.

P- What got you interested in the drug reform movement?

SH- I’ve been more or less for the legalization of drugs for quite some time, especially after undertaking lots of research on the subject.

P- That was while you were in the WH?

SH- Towards the end of working at the WH and over that following Summer. I spent my time researching drug policy pretty much day and night for a long period.

P- When were you at the WH?

SH- I was at the WH in 1997-98.

P- What took you there, what did you do?

SH- I worked in the Office of Political Affairs part of the time, and I also worked for WH Advance, the advance team. I’d started doing that back when I was in High School, when Clinton was coming down there for different events in the 1996 campaign. Then I came to DC and continued to work in Advance then got the job in the Political Affairs.

P- What did you do in the Office of Political Affairs?

SH- I did a ton of different things, a lot of lackey type stuff. I worked for Linda Moore, who was deputy assistant to the President. Basically by the end of my time there, I was writing weekly political briefs for the President on over 30 different states. I was also writing trip briefs on about 12 different states, which basically means if he was taking a trip to a state, we would put together a special brief for that trip, who the different politicians in that area are, what races are going on, what are the big topics of the area, basically all the political stuff he would want to know on a trip.

P- So he would seem knowledgeable.

SH- Right.

P- How old were you when you were doing that?

SH- I was 18 and 19.

P- When’s your birthday?

SH- April 7, 1979.

P- Have you ever had any legal problems with the police and drugs?

SH- No. The first time I was ever arrested was on Thursday, June 6, 2002. at the DOJ. First arrest.

P- I would be proud to put that on my resume if I were you.

SH- Oh, as am I. I would do it again. The DEA and the Department of Justice have gone completely out of control, and we have to stop it.


Heller under arrest in Washington DC, June 6, 2002-
photo Doug McVay

P- Are you worried about SSDP being infiltrated by the feds, like they did to the protestors for at least one of the DC protests, where they had people actually in the puppeteers’ building in the week before the protests were taking place, taking pictures and pretending to be protestors themselves. I’ve heard that you were actually followed the morning of the June 6 protest?

SH- I’ll tell you exactly what happened.

P- Hold on a sec. My point is, are you worried about the SSDP becoming, and I know it sounds really conspiratorial, infiltrated? Like what the feds did to the Students for a Democratic Society, (SDS) back in the 60s, and Ramparts Magazine, as well as the news that came out last week that Reagan, the FBI, and the CIA had been targeting students and faculty out in California for years. It’s been known, but they’re just now admitting it after 17 years of federal denials. Are you worried about that kind of thing at SSDP, and I want to hear about being tailed.

SH- I’ll start with the being tailed. On Thursday, I was the first one to Adam Eidinger’s house in DC that morning to get prepared. After everyone got there, we went to do a practice run in a local park right by Adam’s house. When we did, there was a red Ford Torus with 3 antennas, significantly more antennas than is typical on such a car sticking out the back, that drove by a couple of times while we were out there. When we left, it did a U-turn and followed us. We saw it again when we went a couple miles down the road on our way to the Department of Justice. There is of course no guarantee that vehicle was really tailing us, but it seemed probable that it was. When we arrived to do the demonstration, the police were already there, in presence, and it didn’t take them long tp get a big group of federal police and a SWAT team unit there. We spoke to one of the arresting officers while we were in jail, who said that they were told that morning during the briefing that there would be three protests during that day, one of which would be at the Department of Justice. He said they knew pretty much already what we were going to be doing, which is why they arrived with the clippers, the chain cutters. How true that is, whether they really knew we were going to be chaining ourselves to the door, I’m not completely convinced. It seems to me that at the least they knew we were going to be at the Department of Justice, and that’s what the police officer said. We had not made that public information. We’d let the media know by telephone, and people who were involved in the demonstration, but as far as everyone knew, that was an undisclosed demonstration. We had only publicly disclosed the location of the 4 o’clock demonstration at the DEA headquarters. In addition, the officers had gotten an update, saying that at first we were expected by 10AM but that got bumped back to 11AM. That information was probably from the red Torus, which seemed to be watching our progress.

P- You know that law enforcement nowadays have those directional mics that they can just point right at your car and hear every word you are saying. I know I really sound paranoid.

SH- No, no, I hear you and understand your concerns. For your first question, about infiltration. SSDP is a completely non-violent organization. We have lots of activities that we involve everyone in, but we make sure that everything we talk about and everything we do and present and organize as an organization is all stuff that is either legal or is non-violent civil disobedience. If there are infiltrators in SSDP, and there very well might be but we haven’t found any out to date, that’s not going to change what we do. We’re very conscious of that, so that if somebody suggests something that seems illegal or violent, anything like that, we would immediately step in and say that’s not what our organization is about. If there was an infiltrator trying to convince us to do that kind of stuff, that would immediately be squashed as an idea, While we probably wouldn’t come right out and say, “you’re an infiltrator,” we’d make it very clear that’s not what our organization is about.

P- Because that is exactly what happens. Somebody will come in and make suggestions, say things like non-violence isn’t working, let’s ratchet up some violence.

SH- I think all the SSDP members and leaders across the country know that that sort of stuff is not what we’re about.

P- Is that a subject you might bring up at board meetings? You know, keep in mind we’re a non-violent organization but we know the feds don’t like us and would love to put us out of business so watch for people making untoward suggestions?

SH- Not so much in that we say, “watch out for infiltrators”, but more in the sense of we know Rep. Mark Souder of Illinois very much dislikes us. We know that Joyce Nelepka from Drug Free Kids has twisted statements by SSDP members to insinuate that we’re a militant organization. So we make it very clear that we have to very careful about what we say and how we say it so as not to be misconstrued, let alone suggest something, or deal with a situation where someone had suggested something that is off-color and that is not what we’re about, so in that context, yes. But we don’t say we need to be worried about infiltrators because we really don’t have anything to worry about. I don’t want to put too much focus on giving them that attention…

P- It’s almost like giving them power. We certainly don't want to give the destructive anti-drug grandstanding by evil and twisted people like Rep. Souder or Joyce Nelepka any more attention or power than can be helped.

SH- In a sense, yeah. We’re going to do what we’re going to do. We’re going to do the righteous thing and if we go down for it, we’ll go down doing the right thing.

P- Right on. How many members are in SSDP now?

SH- During this Summer we’re working on improving our member data base. Right now we only have firm numbers on our chapters. We have 200 chapters, and our chapters tend to range from 5 members to hundreds of members, depending on the chapter.

P- SSDP was founded on what date?

SH- SSDP was founded in Fall-Winter 1998 at Rochester Institute of Technology.

P- That was with you? Are you one of the original members?

SH- Originally, there was a group of students at Rochester, who created the Rochester Cannabis Coalition, the RCC. They had insane problems with the administration there. The administration wouldn’t recognize them as a student group, gave them all sorts of hard times left and right. It became a very difficult situation for them. The students went to NORML, and didn’t really get too much assistance from them. I think NORML didn’t have the time nor means at that moment to help. At a loss for what to do, they contacted DRCNet, which was able to provide them with some assistance. A lot of students still actually wound up being expelled.

P- Because of their RCC involvement?

SH- There was a quasi-riot at the end of the school year because one of the members of RCC was getting expelled. This was the result of a situation in which he went to a secret board of trustees meeting to appeal to the trustees, due to the President was being so unreasonable. When he wandered into the building where the secret meeting was being held, unbeknownst to him the security had been instructed to detain him. The situation turned ugly and violent, and he was accused of assaulting a campus police officer, when in reality the officer had assaulted him. There was a big trial on campus outside of which other RCC members had a big protest set up, where they had a bullhorn going, speaking to all the students gathering there. They ended up taking over a building. In the end the student got expelled. As a result of that expulsion, the student body, not just members of the RCC, pretty much freaked out. A very large scale disturbance broke out. It was covered by all the local news. There were tons of cops there, and tons of students arrested and expelled. After this situation, Chris Lotlikar, who was there but hadn’t been expelled, found the campus was so unfriendly to him that he couldn’t see continuing to be there. He left RIT and came down to DC, where he started interning for DRCNet. During this internship period, he began creating what became known as U-Net, the University Network, a listserve of kids who were interested in drug policy around the country. That was sort of the impetus for SSDP. U-Net is not used anymore, everything has been transferred to SSDP talk list. Chris helped create U-Net, then got a job with DRCNet instead of returning to school, becoming their campus coordinator. I’d returned to school that Fall, and after researching drug policy all that summer, I’d realized I had to do something. This was in 1998.

I had finished all this research, realizing that the War on Drugs was far worse than I’d ever imagined. I walked into DRCNet, telling them I wanted to intern there. After starting my internship, one of my very first tasks was to write a story for DRCNet's weekly online news serive, the Week Online. I went to my old boss’s office, Senator Bob Graham, and tried to interview them. First over the phone, then they asked me to come in. I took the opportunity and went down there. It was funny, because the interview turned into them more interviewing me. They started grilling me on what I felt at the time were really tough questions, questions for which I really didn’t have the answers for. At the end of that session, they offered me a job there. I decided not to take them up on it. They were trying to get me out of the clutches of the legalization movement. While I didn’t want their job, I also knew that I obviously didn’t know my facts about the Drug War well enough to be all gung ho about it yet. I told DRCNet that I was really sorry, but I needed to be more secure in my position, so I left my internship there at DRCNet.

Chris and I by this time had already become friends and decided to move in together. During this time I had a lot more exposure to Drug War information, and went back over all the stuff I’d read the previous Summer. I realized I was definitely right on about this, that I’d just not been well enough versed in the facts to argue for my position. I went back to work for DRCNet, doing slightly different stuff than I’d originally anticipated doing, working with the students end of things. When the students with the RCC went back to school that Fall of 1998, they decided they wanted to change the direction and ideas behind the organization a little bit. They knew they weren’t going to be officially recognized by the Student Government, but they knew it was important that they existed on campus. Michael Eck created the name Students for Sensible Drug Policy. The idea was that SSDP would take on the War on Drugs as a whole.

For me, coming into things, never having been a drug user or even considered using drugs, looking at the situation from a real policy focus angle, I had always felt that the War on Drugs was wrong, making no distinction between the War on Marijuana and the War as a whole. SSDP wasn’t a marijuana focused organization, but it did still deal with marijuana policy. I felt this was a perfect fit for what I was looking for. I then started the second chapter of SSDP at GW in DC.

The original members of the GW chapter had all met each other working on I-59 medical marijuana campaign here in DC in 1998, volunteering for that, then we formed SSDP shortly thereafter. Chris and I looked at the 2 chapters, and the U-Net, and began coming up with greater ideas for a national organization. That’s when we started to move to increase SSDP, to spread it and get people aware of what we were doing, to get them on board. At the same time, the Higher Education Act campaign came into existence, because we had just found out about the law. By October 1999, we met with Governor Gary Johnson, after he came out for drug legalization, and he joined our board of advisors. Over that entire previous Summer, Chris and I, and a guy named Peter Nelson, who was a campus leader in Colorado and come out to DC to help us put together our first conference, which we held in November of 1999. We had between 200 and 250 attend. we went into the conference with 5 chapters, and came out with 15. The conference was a huge success. We got a grant from DPF to help put it together, and we also got about $20,000 in funding and in-kind donations from GW to get the conference to happen. I worked very hard in the GW bureaucratic quagmire to get it done. GW is an interesting place. You can get them to support you on different things, it just takes a lot of effort.

I’ve been national director since November 2000. The board of directors elected me, and SSDP national Congress confirmed me. The Congress is made up of all chapters, each chapter getting one vote in the Congress.

P- Did your political background working in the WH help you deal with putting together SSDP, and is it helping you now?

SH- It definitely helped me, what I learned while at the WH, in terms of being able to bring that up to people as an experience I’ve had. It definitely sheds a different light for people, especially people who have a one or single dimensional view of who or what should be a drug policy reformer. I think that people like myself, who have a slightly different background, and David Borden of DRCNet, who has yet another different background, helps give the idea that this isn’t just a movement of one particular type of person, it’s made up of all kinds of different people from all kinds of different backgrounds.

P- It’s not just people with pierced faces, or hairy stoner dropouts?

SH- Right, not just people with pierced faces. It’s like the people who focus on the Club Drug issues or Harm Reduction are not only from the Club Drug community.

P- How do your parents feel about what you are doing now?

SH- Well, my parents are definitely supportive of what I’m doing. Prior to the arrest at DOJ, my Dad told me he’d be willing to get arrested with me, but after the arrest he said he was just saying that to be supportive of me. My brother, sister, and parents were all big influences on me and my life. My brother is 11 years older than me, and my sister is 8 years older. Both of them sort of acted like parents in some ways. My brother is liberal in some ways but ultimately he’s a very straight edged, straight laced, regular American dude who is also conservative on a lot of things. My sister on the other hand is very free spirited. She used to go to Grateful Dead shows all the time. They are very different, so I had very different exposure to different kinds of people, at least within my own family. My parents are both from the Bronx, then moved to Long Island, New Jersey, then Miami. The typical migration. Neither of them went to college. My Dad is a self-made business man. My Mom was a housewife for years, until our financial times got tough, so she studied and took an exam to become a stock broker. She’s now been a stock broker for over ten years, and is the vice-President of her small firm. I’m proud of my parents. I think they’re awesome people.

P- So you obviously like and get along with your parents.

SH- Oh yeah. My mom and I were talking about my grandmother’s birthday coming up. My mom has this idea that each family member will give her a different charm to go on a charm bracelet. My mom suggested, “Why don’t you get your grandmother a little marijuana leaf?”

P-What a great idea. Have grandmother walking around with a little pot leaf dangling from her wrist. Would she even know what it was?

SH- Yes. My grandmother has told me she’s been anti-prohibition since the 30s and 40s.

P- Right on. Too bad she’s had to see it continue for so long. How long were you under arrest in DC?

SH- About 8 hours. I was one of the first released, of the group arrested.

P- What time did you go in?

SH- We went in at 11AM, and got out at 7PM, and others around 8:45PM. Half of us got out at one time, then the other half later. Really, the worst part about the jail, number one, DC jail is just so poorly run. You think the DMV is run badly? DC jail is run so poorly. Beyond the fact that people are treated subhuman, and the guards won’t acknowledge you, they simply had no clue what was going on. If we wanted to ask a question, we’d be told they weren’t the ones to ask, but the one we did need to ask wouldn’t be around. When we first went in, they started finger printing us while watching tv and joking around with their fellow officers, paying no attention to what they were doing. When we were at the federal precinct, where they first took us, they finger printed us and made out this whole form before realizing they had filled out the wrong form. We were like, “haven’t you guys arrested somebody before?”

P- You know that was probably just the run around, to make it as much of a hassle for you guys as possible.

SH- Everybody who was in jail with us in the men’s section, except one guy, was an African-American male. At least 10 were in for basically, as far as I’m concerned, driving while black. All these BS things, like one guy driving in DC with a Maryland temporary tag, which is supposedly illegal, so they put him in jail for that. One guy was driving with a learner’s permit without someone else in the car and he was taken to jail for that. I mean, these are things that, in my experience, white middle class people don’t go to jail for.

P- Yeah, I’ve been caught driving on a suspended driver’s license before, and I didn’t get taken to jail, in Florida no less, and that’s not a good place to get caught out by the police either. Do you have to go back to court?

SH- No, we were charged with incommoding, given a $50 fine and time served. From what I can tell, it’s sort of like loitering.

P- What other organizations are you involved with?

SH- The only other organization I have official ties with besides SSDP at the moment is DanceSafe, where I sit on the national board of directors. I am not opposed to the idea of being in other organizations, there’s just a limit to how many I can join.

P- Or pay dues to.

SH- That true. I’d like to be able to give to everyone, but that’s not possible.

P- Any thoughts about going into politics?

SH- I used to be convinced when I was younger that I was going to be President. That’s what it says in my yearbook, that I’m going to be President by 2024.

P- You’re still young, you’ve got plenty of time to do it.

SH- Whether I can do it or not, my focus has certainly changed. Right now, what makes me feel most fulfilled and happy as a person is doing something in which I feel like I’m helping people. That’s something I wasn’t getting while working in the WH. I felt like I was just turning the wheels of the machine, and to what ends I wasn’t sure. Now I know the work I’m doing, at least my intention, is to help people. That makes me feel totally good. Whether that lands me in public office or not isn’t so important.

P- So you’re enjoying what you’re doing?

SH- Yes, very much so. I feel like so much has changed in just the time since I started as a Drug War reformer. When I got into the movement, there wasn’t this national student group around that was trying to end the Drug War. This was something I thought should happen, but I didn’t know who else thought or felt this way. Back then, whenever I would bring up drug legalization, I’d get “yeah man, puff, puff” but now that’s not what I get from most people.

P- No? What do you get from most people?

SH- Now when I say the War on Drugs has failed, I get a real response, either “definitely,” or “oh I don’t know,” but it’s no longer the joke that people seemed to think it was. It’s worth discussing one way or the other. That’s a big shift.

P- This is true, now that you mention it. I too get responses of a serious, somewhat thoughtful nature for the most part. Anything else you’ve been doing?

SH- I’ve written a chapter on the Drug War for a communications text book that will be published in the next year, that will wind up either as a text book or reader in communications classes all across the country. It doesn’t have a title yet. It’s from a guy named Thomas Steinfatt who’s head of communications at University of Miami. I spoke at a conference he had about nine months to a year ago. He was really into the things I was saying, so he asked me to contribute to the book. I wrote about the ridiculousness of the Drug War, the absurdities.

I talk about how GHB is in your body, yet it’s a Schedule 1 Drug. I talk about the National Institute for Drug Abuse's, (NIDA), Marijuana Facts for Teens and Marijuana Facts for Parents use things that aren’t exactly untrue, but are specifically geared towards making parents believe every kid is smoking pot, and the kids that no one is smoking pot. I talk about one of the things I’ve noticed, that when someone realizes the War on Drugs has failed, they tend not to change their opinion back. It not like I’ve ever met someone who says they think the War on Drugs should be ended, but comes back a couple months later saying something like “If we only had a few thousand more police officers on the street, we could really end the War on Drugs.” That doesn’t ever happen.

When NIDA's information is not deliberately misleading, it is often inaccurate. In fact, inaccuracy permeates government information, even when no ideological agenda seems to be at stake. For example, a publication from NIDA claimed that MDMA may stimulate the release of neurotransmitters similar to serotonin from the brain’s neurons, producing a high that lasts anywhere from several minutes to an hour. You and I both know that MDMA highs can last far more than one hour. Who knows what reason they had for saying that, but it’s inexcusable.

On the DEA website, they have these graphs showing the Drug War budget, and DEA budget, and as the DEA budget goes up, the prison population goes up, first time drug use goes up, by very similar percentages which is about 20 fold. There’s no thought among them to the possibility that they are responsible for increased incarceration and first time drug use.

P- I’m looking at the DEA’s appalling website right now. The very first thing that pops up is “Marijuana- The Facts”, about how drug legalization advocates are portraying marijuana as a harmless drug that “even has medicinal value.” They allege that more than people can become dependent on marijuana, and that more than 200,000 Americans entered drug treatment for marijuana abuse “in the latest studies” without saying what years those studies might cover. What do you think of that number?

SH- It seems to be very vague as to where and when this number comes from. So many people go into treatment because they have to, because of either their work or being arrested. I don’t know if those numbers include those people…

P- I’m sure they do.

SH- …but it would be interesting to see how many went in voluntarily for marijuana treatment as opposed to being forced into treatment.

P- They also say here that scientific research has concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease or condition. What do you say to that?

SH- I say that’s hogwash. There’s been the Shafer report, the Institute for Medicine report, countless studies that have been done in and out of the government, plenty of doctors’ opinions, and patients’ testimonies that say marijuana is helpful in treating different conditions from cancer, to Crones condition, to AIDS. It so sick to me that the government is trying to tell people what medicine they should be taking, what is appropriate. They’ve had no medical training, they know nothing about the real effects of these drugs, and they don’t suffer from these conditions. So how can they tell people who are suffering what is and what isn’t helping them? It’s just like with my insurance carrier. I got prescribed a drug for my stomach acid. I went to get it filled only to be told at the pharmacy that my insurance company had to approve the prescription. This was for a nothing drug, so I was very surprised. The insurance company told me when I called that my doctor had to call them and explain why I needed the drug. I’m asked him, “are you a doctor? You’re just some guy on the other end of the phone. How are you going to know better than my doctor what I need? I know nothing about alternatives, this is what my doctor told me I should take.”

P- What was their response?

SH- They said it was on the list of drugs that you should be substituting something else for.

P- WHAT??!!

SH- I said that my doctor had already prescribed something. This was Care First PPO, supposedly the best health provider Blue Cross, Blue Shield has. PPOs are supposed to be better than HMOs. I asked, if my doctor had written a prescription for Viagra, would they have needed to speak to my doctor then? They said no, that’s not on the list, we would have filled that. Does that make sense? I don’t have a prescription for Viagra. They’d have filled that without comment, but not my stomach acid medicine. Maybe I should get one.

P- Here’s another one from the DEA website. High Court upholds marijuana as a dangerous drug. This judge in Washington DC ruled against High Times magazine and Jon Gettman, saying marijuana will remain in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act. The DEA press release bluntly states that marijuana has a high potential for abuse, and that there’s no safe or effective medical uses for it. Although the ruling came down on May 24, the DEA issued this crowing press release on June 6, coincidentally the same day as the nationwide protests calling for an end to the US War on medical marijuana and users thereof. What do you have to say in response to this, both the ruling and the timing of the press release?

SH- Let me answer this question in the broad sense. Drug laws as a whole are not only un-American, they violate the essence of the Constitution, whether marijuana should be Schedule 1 or not. Marijuana certainly shouldn’t be Schedule 1, but the idea that Schedule 1 even exists, I mean, that the Department of Justice is determining what legal status is for possessing a chemical either in your body or on your person, this is just a crazy idea. This is what originally got me upset about the War on Drugs, one of the things that made it seem ridiculous. As our friends at Alchemind talk about, we have something called cognitive liberty. Richard Glen Boire runs Alchemind, a non-profit group that basically is working for what they call cognitive liberty. Their idea is that we have freedom of thought, that we have the freedom to alter our thoughts by whichever way we choose. One of their thoughts on why drugs are illegal is basically that thoughts people have while under the influence of illicit substances are not exactly conducive with corporate America, and spending our time going to K-Mart or the Sports Authority and buying stuff. I feel strongly that when it comes down to it people have the right to consume substances they choose. It’s our own body, our own mind, we’re the one that has to deal with the ramifications.

Now if you do something that is violent, that hurts somebody else while you are intoxicated, that’s the same thing as if you did it while not intoxicated, and should suffer the penalties regardless. To get to the point here, that’s always been a strong feeling of mine. When I then look at how this been so used and manipulated to become what I call the third wave of social control and others do as well, you know, slavery, segregation, and now the War on Drugs, it’s really asinine. So what I have to say about the DEA, and the court’s decision to keep marijuana a Schedule 1 substance with no medical benefits is it’s a complete lie. It’s a ridiculous thought in its essence to assume there are no medical benefits when doctors all around the country and patients all around the country are saying there is.

P- Here’s yet another gem. DEA Director Asa Hutchinson said that accurate drug scheduling is important. “Drugs sold lawfully in the United States are the safest in the world. This is because our nation through our laws insists on careful deliberation before allowing drugs to be sold as medicine. To date marijuana does not meet the scientific requirements.

SH- There are so many drugs sitting in the pharmacy next door to me here to could kill me, and marijuana has never killed anyone. These drugs range from Viagra, which is in my mind mostly a recreational drug and one that can give you a heart attack, to morphine and morphine derivatives, and Oxycontin. Marijuana is a plant. The idea of making a plant illegal is so absurd. If we’re going to make any plant illegal, why not make it Poison Ivy? I was at a festival this weekend, the Smile fest in North Carolina, and this poor girl had to leave early because she’d gone into the woods to pee and wiped herself with poison ivy, so it’s on my mind.

P- That’s way too horrible. I’m going to have that image in my mind for the next week at least.

SH- Here’s an example of the hypocrisy behind the whole War on Drugs. I went to this festival recently, the Smile Fest. There were about 8,000 people there. Near Ashville, western NC. It was pretty much an open air drug market. I’m sure there were undercover cops around, and a uniformed police presence, but I saw nobody get arrested for drugs, even with such large amounts of sales and drugs going on. This was all happening out in the open at a festival.

P- Did you see any fights or violence?

SH- Nope, neither. Meanwhile, in inner cities across the country street sweeps are going on where one doesn’t see obvious open air drug use, but still the excuse is the cops know those people have drugs, so they’ll look to see if they can find those drugs. Not that they should be going and increasing their festival raids. This in fact is exactly what they did down at the University of Viginia, when people made similar complaints about what was happening on the campus there, cops started going on campus and arresting white students there. In other words, boosting up the War rather than stopping arresting the black students. At this festival, other than for a handful I saw, everyone pretty much was white. I go out and see this, how that can work, that people can use drugs and not be problems and not have any situations, and at the same time the cops go and find situations that they don’t need to.

Another thing I want to mention is that last Fall at Hookaville in Ohio, we did a joint event with MAPS and DanceSafe, a bad trip or emergency tent. Normally at these festivals when people have a bad trip, they get strapped down and sent to a hospital where they get their stomach pumped. Here we had a last line before that step, a much more human way of dealing with a bad trip, of doing things in general. The worst thing to do to someone on a bad trip is strap them down and throw them into the back of an ambulance with sirens screaming for a trip to the hospital.

P- Have you ever traveled outside of the United States?

SH- I lived in Holland for 6 months, in the Winter and Spring of 2000. While living there I got a real perspective that policies other than US policy can work. So many people say it can’t or won’t work here, and I say that’s horse crap. Because when have we tried anything else? In Holland it’s very civilized. Everything is much more friendly. When the police were out and about there, I felt they were my friends, people that I could go to if I needed help. I didn’t feel they were there to intimidate anyone. It seems as though they like to solve a situation before resorting to violence.

P- Are you feeling positive about the growth of the Drug War reform movement and on the obverse, does the increase in federal volume about the need to really, really crack down on drugs, trying to tie their old War with their new War on Terror, concern you? It seems they’re getting almost frantic in their repeated bleating about how drugs and marijuana are dangerous, and terror-connected. Both sides seem to be growing.

SH- I definitely feel that little steps are important. Achieving small victories here and there are definitely helpful, and spur growth of the movement. I think the size, the type, the amount of things we do as a movement, as the movement increases, are perhaps the most important things. I think that in the long term we really need to end the War on Drugs as a whole, and the little steps are important.

The only way we’re going to end the War on Drugs is for our movement to increase, for the things that we do to garner increased attention and notoriety, increased publicity, and increased awareness so that the discussions reach the point where they are actually happening versus being laughed at. We want to take it to the next step where most everyone is saying no, this is wrong and it needs to end. Getting it to where people are not going to support other people because they are tough on drugs. When the students set up political action committees, when that continues to happen and politicians start to loose elections because they’re too tough on drugs, when our movement has grown so much that we are on every college campus and tons of high schools, and all the young people and their parents are talking about this issue, that’s when we’re going to see the really big, monumental changes. Ultimately, that is the more important thing. I can’t be anything but optimistic after doing this for three and a half years and seeing this discussion, first undertaken sitting out on a porch just talking, turn into 200 hundred chapters of the SSDP so far. Seeing us go from just trying to get some media coverage, then having that media coverage turn into a CBS news story within our first year of being an organization, when we met with Gov. Gary Johnson, to now being featured in Rolling Stone 4 times, a 5th coming up this Fall. Seeing these articles and appearances upping the respectability of everything makes me extremely optimistic about our future.

Now, am I optimistic about the short term future? I mean, it’s looking very grim from what the federal government is looking like they want to try to do, what they actually are doing and saying about drugs. In a sense I think that is a sign of desperation. People are beginning to think the government has better things to worry about than drugs after September 11, so the government is trying to link the two.

P- In my opinion, one step towards ending the war would be for people to come out of the closet like that couple, Jeff Jarvis and Tracy Johnson, did in Oregon, the ad saying “Hi, we’re your good neighbors, and we smoke pot.” Do you see a positive side to coming out and saying yes, I am a pot smoker and still a hard working, tax paying member of society who loves my family and they love me?

SH- I think that coming out of the closet for certain people can be very effective, and I think it’s very important in letting people know that not all drug users are crazy criminals, they are often simply your neighbors that you wave to on your way to work. Right now, the political climate is such that people in DC and across the country use drug use to completely discredit people, to completely take away their forum. They say that what drug users have to say doesn’t matter precisely because they are drug users. In my case, with SSDP, it’s much more important that I take my personal background completely out of the picture, whether I use drugs or I don’t. Prohibitionists will use whatever they can to allege that reformers are only in the movement to increase access to drugs. You and I both know that’s utter horse manure.

P- Yeah, especially since illegal drugs are widely available as it is now.

SH- Some people take that seriously though. I think that as an organization and as an individual, right now we want to be able to appeal to a broad base of people. We welcome drug users into our organization, we welcome non-drug users too. As a whole, being representative of this big constituency that’s made up of users and non-users alike, if I were to talk about my own personal choices when it comes to drugs I could possibly take the emphasis away from one side of my constituency and have it more focused on the other side, making neither side very effective at being able to disseminate our message.

P- Ok, thanks for speaking with me Shawn.

SH- No, thank you. Anytime.
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