Maxim/Business Round Table nails it

Maxim/Business Round Table nails it… and the implications for drug policy are?

Curiously Robert Sirico’s visit follows MAXIM’s hosting of eminent kiwi Law Professor Jeremy Waldron.

I particularly admire Waldron’s discourse on disproportionate punishment, a matter highly relevant to international drug policy especially where the death penalty is applied. Seemingly the principle is forgotten when New Zealand Judges send medpot users ‘down’ for 5 months ‘jail time’ for possessing a couple of grams of weed ‘just because they still growing’. /Blair

Listen to Waldron on “Parliamentary Recklessness”

(snip)
At a lecture, co-hosted by Maxim Institute and the [NZ] Business Roundtable, Father Robert Sirico (President of the US-based Acton Institute) discussed the role of social justice in a free society.

“Do we know who we are? I think that has to be the beginning question with regard to statism and social justice. I think we have to begin with the question of anthropology, if for no other reason than two facts: first, the human person is prior to the state. If we’re going to understand what statism is, what the state is, we have to understand first that the human person is prior to the political arrangement. And the second fact that we have to keep in mind is that the state exists for man, and not man for the state.”

By statism, I mean the presupposition that when confronted with human and social needs, the resort of first resort is the central government. That’s what I take by statism. By social justice, I take my definition from the Catholic Catechism (though I believe the definition is broadly accessible to believers and non-believers alike) and so I quote: “Society ensures social justice by providing the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain their due.”

“We ask the question of who we are with a sense of wonder. The very fact that we can wonder is itself an indication of our dignity: human beings have the ability to self reflect. We have the capacity of not merely to know, but to know that we know—and that there exists that which exceeds our knowledge. This capacity for transcendence takes place from within the reality of our corporal / physical dimension, which is the first and most obvious thing we know about ourselves and we see in others; that we are physical, we are material. We are located in time and space, but somehow sense that we are more than things. We are made up of a biological reality, to be sure, but we are not defined by that. We relate to the material world, and depend upon it, yet we do not ultimately discover our meaning from it … because we transcend our material reality.”
(end snip)

see: Statism vs Social Justice
Listen to “Statism vs Social Justice”
There is also an interview with Father Sirico in the New Zealand Herald

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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Dope smokers not so mellow

More than a third of people who present at Sydney emergency departments after smoking cannabis are violent and half have mental health problems such as severe anxiety and suicidal thoughts, shattering the image that dope smokers are relaxed and sleepy, researchers have found.

( another laughable clinicians falacy /Blair )

The data, collected by the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, at the University of NSW, indicates that cannabis users can be as aggressive as crystal methamphetamine users, with almost one in four men and one in three women being violent toward hospital staff or injuring themselves after acting aggressively. Almost 12 per cent were considered a suicide risk.

“It flies in the face of what people typically think of cannabis – that it is a natural herb that makes people mellow,” the centre’s director, Professor Jan Copeland, said yesterday.

“The reality is that it can make people highly agitated and trigger acute episodes of anxiety.”

She said the study, which covered two hospitals from 2004 to 2006, revealed that more than 9 per cent of cannabis users had depression or bipolar disorder, 5 per cent had schizophrenia and 4 per cent had paranoia and a history of self-harm.

“It’s the first time we have ever gathered this data and it is highly surprising. It’s apparent that we need a higher level of early intervention to pick up these problems before they get to the emergency department,” Professor Copeland said.

The head of emergency at St Vincent’s hospital, Gordian Fulde, said yesterday most people still believed marijuana was a soft drug, but “the old image of feeling sleepy and having the munchies after you’ve had a smoke is entirely inappropriate for modern-day marijuana”.

“The grass we smoked in the ’60s could have been lawn clippings compared to this completely different breed of nasty cat,” he said.

“With hydroponic cannabis, the levels of THC [the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol] can be tenfold what they are in normal cannabis so we are seeing some very, very serious fallout.”

Cannabis use was soaring among young professionals in the city and inner west, Dr Fulde said, but users rarely needed sedation.

Kate Benson Medical Reporter / July 30, 2008

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/07/29/1217097241179.html

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Evidence Is In, and is Exonerative……

UN Security Council
in disrepute? “Evidence Is In” and is Exonerative……

What should be a matter of social justice and inclusive politics has been reduced to the logical equivalent of water-boarding.

The failure of ‘due process’ in the USA is dirt on the hands of those who govern and they should be held to account.

It is therefore up to the citizens of the USA to regale at the UN Convention on Narcotics under which they are shackled and join in the global push to disenfranchise the INCB‘s hold on the debate.

There has never been a better chance available to all world citizens to circumvent the tyranny of the majority than UNODC Vienna 2009.

It is, as it were, in your hands… each and everyone of you.

see Beyond 2008 NGO consultation recommendations containing clear harm reduction and human rights language, calling for evidence-based, culturally and socially sensitive approaches, calling for inclusion of all affected and stigmatised populations, access to alternative livelihoods before eradication, improved access to essential medicines under treaty control, encouraging alternatives to criminal/prison sanctions, analysing unintended consequences of the drug control system, taking into account traditional licit uses, and many more.

This is the stuff of social capital. Back the horse that is winning.

• Dispatches from Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs
• Could Afghan Poppies Be Painkillers for the Poor?
• Lisa Gans: Defeating the Taliban by Treating the World’s Sick: A New Approach to the Afghan Poppy Trade

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Full-body Armour for WAR’rior Cops?

Police consider* full-body armour as assaults increase

(*for USA SWAT style warrant serving?, its those meth heads justifying our need to be safe! Yeah Right! )

10:00AM Monday July 28, 2008 NZH – Police culture

Increasing violence against police could result in officers being kitted out in full-body armour. Police headquarters has confirmed it is considering full-body protection for frontline staff, as the number of assaults on officers continues to rise.

They have yet to determine exactly what sort of armour would be used but The Dominion Post reported that the possibilities ranged from extra protection for arms and legs to an all-over suit – similar in appearance to that in the film Robocop.

The number of assaults against police increased to 2248 last year, the equivalent of one in four officers being assaulted. In 2006, there were 2123 assaults on police. Of the 2007 incidents, 88 involved a weapon, including a gun or knife. Police began a $10.4 million programme last year, to provide stab-proof vests to every frontline officer. There were delays because of size and heat problems. Police said discussions about new armour were at an early stage. Any upgraded protection would be reserved for police called to deal with disorder incidents. The Police Association said it had not heard of the proposal.

– NZPA

Recommended Read: With Aid Of Pentagon, Civilian Forces Acquiring Army-Style Look, Approach – “POLICE DEVELOP ‘MILITARY’ MIND SET” by Diane Cecilia Weber

/Blair

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People Abuse on NZHerald Website. [LTE]

Letter to the Editor

Editorial Staff.

New Zealand Herald.

Dear Sirs/Madam's.

 

re: Abuse on NZHerald Website.

 

The description 'drug abuse' stories prominent on the NZHerald Website marginalises the very people such stories profess to protect. Labelling all 'use' as abuse is scientifically invalid and irrational. Drugs don't have problems, people do, and those who consume drugs, legal or otherwise, are not arbitrarily 'abusers'. 

Labelling is demeaning to those in recovery treatment, is contrary to best practice clinical care, and goes against the sentiment of NZ disability law.  Recent Mental Health television advertisements make this point clear.  Professor of Pharmacology/Toxicology Dr. Carlton Erickson [director of the Addiction Science Research and Education Center at the University of Texas]  alerts us to his concerns in his book, "The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment." describing substance abuse as "a weak, wimpy, confusing, inaccurate, and misleading term when applied to drug problems."

The NZHerald, when publishing drug related stories typically blindly accepting opinions of POLICE. POLITICIANS and other self appointed experts such as the unfortunately named METHCON  could do well to test themselves against Dr Erickson's "Exploding Drug Myths" page at the University of Texas site.

It is time within the ambit of drug policy to listen to the consumers, 'close the gaps' and adopt a rights based approach, this is the stuff of social capital.

Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›
50 Wainoni Road,
Christchurch.
ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

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Prohibition Doesnt Work

PROHIBITION DOESN’T WORK (no matter which way you hold your mouth)

Cover via Amazon

The White House had the National Research Council [www.nationalacademies.org/nrc/] examine the data being gathered about drug use and the effects of U.S. drug policies. NRC concluded, “__the nation possesses little information about the effectiveness of current drug policy, especially of drug law enforcement.__” And what data exist show “little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use.” In other words, there is no proof that prohibition “the cornerstone of U.S. drug policy for a century” reduces drug use. = National Research Council. Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us. National Academy Press, 2001. p. 193.

“There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana.” = Milton Friedman (an economist of note that BERL might recall)

Image via Wikipedia

In the “The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition,” a report recently done by Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, on the causes of drug crime, Miron said his research “very much suggests that it is prohibition. It’s not drug-consumption-related, it’s fighting-over-disputes-in-the-illegal-drug-trade-related. And that’s a result of prohibition, not a result of the drug.”

Hubert Williams, President, Police Foundation; former Chief of Police, Newark, New Jersey said “Miron persuasively demonstrates, the net effects of prohibition, both past and present, are to increase violence, enrich criminals, threaten civil liberties, and make drug users more ill. The right question for policy makers, he concludes, is not whether drugs are misused but whether the benefits of prohibition outweigh its exorbitant costs. All in all, this is a solidly researched and dispassionate discussion of a topic that is too often couched in moral and emotional terms.”

Aside from the NZ Police’s questionable use of the DRUG HARM INDEX to self interestedly perpetuate an unaccounted policy, demanding as it were ‘more resources’ without any accounting for ‘deliverable outcomes’ is entirely contestable in managerial let alone economic terms. The Drug Squad is in effect ‘deficit funded’ without as much a skerit of evidence that the resources AND priorities are allocated with ANY efficiency.

This is POOR management. This was roundly critiqued by visiting top cop and former head of Scotland Yard Narcotics/London Metro, Chief Super Det. Eddie Ellison to the Ministry of Justice in 2004. (Eddie was also a founding member of TRANSFORM, now with UN consultative standing )
“It wouldn’t pass muster at Police College in let alone the Home Office. There is no room in modern policing for unaccountable deployment blindly following political directives” -(private conversation with the writer)
Eddie presented to 17 MoJ Officials alongside Snr Detective Jack Cole, both of whom were executive directors of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [www.leap.cc] also recently

Image via Wikipedia

accredited by the UN. Eddie also conveyed this to Gregg O’Conner of the Police Association.
Some months later the MoJ couldnt find a single person who attended the board meetingroom presentation, declaring again in a recorded telephone conversation to the writer “we have a very high staff turnover’

The BERL DRUG HARMS report and the subsequent Police Intelligence claims that cananbis is the problem, bring the POLICE once again into disrepute.

There is no accounting the POLICE and JUSTICE stupidity of continuing to bang ones head against the wall and hoping it will soon stop hurting….

/Blair

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• If The War on Drugs Is a Success, What Does Failure Look Like? (mydd.com)
• Potty Ideas Drives Jobs Summit into Ecstasy! (mildgreens.blogspot.com)

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Human Rights a Drug War Casualty

Image via Wikipedia The drug war’s dirty washing is exhibited everyday in popular media, absent scrutiny or oversight from academic or civil society.

I suspect all those living in this institution we call New Zealand would be generally appalled if it were argued that by our collective (in)actions we were held to be unfit members of the UN, yet everyday we incarcerate and continue to deprive the freedom of thousands of people in the name of compliance with one UN “Single Convention” – and to what end?

I have on many occasions raised the glaring human rights anomaly with government select committee and commissions including the NZ Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan.

It has been the character of the response that ‘drugs are illegal’ and that people may choose not to consume them, thus consumption or possession is not a ‘rights issue’, rather society has the preeminent right to be protected from drugs’ harms and consumers. Else why the law?

This is wrong. It doesn’t matter how one spins the moral probity of drugs on society and the self, it is still wrong. It is not a little wrong, nor is it a little right. It is neither gray nor fudgeable. UN Drug policy focused on punitive ‘consequences’ purportedly sending signals to some market has delivered the very market it set out to eliminate. It is a policy that is condemned by its own failure that one can legitimately ask “what is the moral probity of those who maintain it?”
.
This week past has seen ‘tit for tat’ claims and counter-claims surrounding Shapelle Corby’s kilo’s. Another, incarcerated for 20 years for possessing enough methamphetamine one could sneeze and the evidence would have been mere vapours. Yet another, a candidate whom has stood his good name before his electorate and has politically and actively engaged for reasoned drug policy now stands charged with possession of 1.6grams of cannabis plant (ESR weighed it)material – doubtless with ‘active’ THC in nanogram quantities. All this in the same week that the Health Select Committee was hearing from NORML and others about the undoubted efficacy of the herb. [Sativex/Marinol proves the lie]. Methamphetamine is a prescription drug so safe it is given to Children (Ritalin) and to stroke sufferers. It’s prevalence and associated harms are a product of the very rules intended to protects us. There is little in the pharmacology of methamphetamine that redeems it as an ‘illegal stimulant’. It is not a good drug by any means.. but the more dangerous a drug is the less responsible it is of governments to abrogate its control, distribution, profits and quality to unaccountable networks.

So do drug users have human rights? or are we to maintain the notion that 52% of adult NZer’s are so craven that they should be deprived of their liberty, possessions and future options simply because we REFUSE TO BELEIVE they, drugs or consumers have any worth. For that is the PREJUDICE masked by this LAW. It is wrong. It must change. It is institutionalised ‘othering’ of people’s master status expressly prohibited under UN Charter. Discussion within the community is no longer avoidable. Civil Society cannot ignore the unresolved tensions between the ‘UN Single Convention on Narcotics‘ and ‘Human Rights’. And is so doing it must engage those whose ‘other status’ has for too long been ignored. It is the stuff of social capital.

Protection of human rights is clearly, specifically and repeatedly identified as one of the purposes of the UN in the Charter, and as a specific legal obligation of all UN member states, whereas drug control has been conceived from the outset as a subset of the higher aims of the Organisation and its Members.

Furthermore, the Charter’s own provisions make it clear that Charter obligations take precedence over other, conflicting treaty obligations. The principal recommendation making body of the UN, the General Assembly, has specifically stated that drug control ‘must be carried out in full conformity with the
purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and other provisions of international law, and in particular with full respect for…all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and on the basis of the principles of equal rights and mutual respect.’

If a principal organ of the UN directs that drug control must be in conformity with human rights, then this must be reflected in the operations of the UN. Human rights violations stemming from drug control must be highlighted and brought to an end, and the drug control machinery must adopt a rights-based approach to its work in order to avoid complicity in human rights abuses and to influence domestic implementation of the international drug control conventions in line with human rights norms. / http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/pdf/report_13.pdf

Blair Anderson

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• UN Conventions Unintended Consequences & HR

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Obama’s "Rolling Stone"

Obama “on the cover of the rolling stone”

Barack Obama on the horrendous human and financial cost of mass incarceration of non violent drug offenders. ‘It’s expensive, it’s counterproductive and it doesn’t make sense’

“Anybody who sees the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities, or the methamphetamine trade in rural communities, knows that this is a huge problem. I believe in shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public-health approach. I can say this as an ex-smoker: We’ve made enormous progress in making smoking socially unacceptable. You think about auto safety and the huge success we’ve had in getting people to fasten their seat belts.
The point is that if we’re putting more money into education, into treatment, into prevention and reducing the demand side, then the ways that we operate on the criminal side can shift. I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives — it’s expensive, it’s counterproductive, and it doesn’t make sense.” – Rolling Stone Magazine (also see Barack Obama supports cannabis decriminlisation – Transform)

It makes one wonder, why we cannot ask the same question in New Zealand?

“If there are no enemies out there, we will create them,”- fmr New Haven Police Chief Nicholas Pastore.

(backstory) A Yale University law professor maintains mandatory jail sentences for some drug offenders has backfired, leaving America’s “war on drugs” bankrupt with too-powerful prosecutors and dubious witnesses. “There’s a lot of innocent people in prison as a result of mandatory minimum sentencing,” said Professor Steven Duke Thursday.

“This is simply an insane approach to the problem.”

The problem lies with prosecutors who can lord 20- or 40-year prison sentences over the heads of defendants and then offer them deals or even immunity if they turn informant.
“When someone is facing that kind of time, most people are willing to do most anything,” Duke said. And that includes lying to save your own hide, he said.

Duke spoke during a forum at the New Haven Free Public Library sponsored by Hartford-based Efficacy, a nonprofit group that espouses legalization of drugs and elimination of mandatory minimum jail terms.

Also speaking at the event were Nicholas Pastore, research fellow with the Criminal Justice Policy foundation and former New Haven Police Chief; and Derby Superior Court Judge Philip E. Mancini Jr.

“America’s war on drugs does far more harm than good,” Mike Gogulski, vice president of Efficacy, said Thursday, And he said the failed “war on drugs” is creating a new class of lost and disenfranchised citizens — what the activists called the prisoners of the drug war.
Mandatory minimum prison sentences tear apart families for crimes that are, in many cases, “bottom of the totem pole offenses,” Gogulski said.

Efficacy is currently sponsoring a photo exhibit at the library as a way of giving that lost population faces and names.

Margaret Thornton, executive director of the organization, said the photos often tell the tale of non-violent, first-time offenders facing decades in jail under tough federal guidelines.
She said that despite the $1 trillion spent on combating drugs in the last 25 years, “drug problems are still as persistent as ever, if not worse.”

The photo exhibit, “Human Rights and the Drug War,” will be on display through Nov. 26.
Mancini, a former prosecutor and judge for 28 years, said the answer doesn’t lie in more jails and stiffer sentences. “I don’t think drug users belong in jail,” he said. “The cure is building drug centers.”

Pastore agreed, saying the war on drugs had an effect on police too, transforming them from “public servants” to “soldiers in the war on crime and drugs.”

“If there are no enemies out there, we will create them,” he said.

Efficacy promotes complete legalization of marijuana and legalization of all other drugs by medical prescription. (It was Efficacy Executive Director Clifford Wallace Thornton jr who came to NZ 2003-2004 that lead to the tours by LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Clifford is now also co-chair of the USA Green Party Policy committe/Blair)

Clifford Wallace Thornton jr

• Barack Obama supports cannabis decriminlisation
• Tough crime policies ineffective, U.S. sentencing expert contends
• Dispatches from Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs
• Edwards: War On Drugs Too Punitive
• WHO Says US/NZ Drug Policies “a failure’
• Canada’s drug crime bill brings calls for caution from U.S.

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School shooting: It’s when, not if.

(Police address to School Trustees Annual Conference)

Police are pushing for schools to implement an emergency response strategy in the event of a shooting similar to those that have happened overseas.

On radio today, police were interviewed and this media release suddenly become the “P” [methamphetamine] problem… [yet another ‘meth-con’?] sad but true! / Blair

The New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA) holds its annual conference in Christchurch from tomorrow and police say it is a good opportunity to discuss the realities of a shooting.

“Like it or not, it’s not a matter of whether a shooting could happen in a school, but more of a matter of when,” Superintendent Bruce Dunstan said.Mr Dunstan, commander of the police national tactical group, said such an event could involve anything from a person carrying a firearm to someone shooting one or more people.

While schools had plans for emergencies such as earthquakes, flooding and fires, few – if any – were prepared for an armed incident.

He said police expectations of boards of trustees in terms of emergency preparedness would be discussed at the conference.”We don’t want to create panic and say it’s going to happen tomorrow, but it is a form of emergency like many others that schools face, and we’d like schools to think about how they’d respond to minimise chaos should they be so unfortunate to be faced with such a scenario.”Just because a school hasn’t faced an emergency before doesn’t mean they can’t plan for it,” Mr Dunstan said.

He said police wanted a standard emergency response ratified so schools and police could be prepared and respond in a consistent way.”If we’re all on the same page it doesn’t matter whether the school is in Invercargill or Whangarei, the response and procedures will be the same for both schools and police.

“It means that on the day schools and students in particular will know how to react.”
Part of the response plan would be to consider how the alarm would be raised and how schools would react.

Police are currently in talks with the Ministry of Education and NZSTA, and want the ministry to make a response plan widely available to schools, who can then decide whether or not to adopt it.The conference will also cover student discipline issues, and issues that arise from complaints to the Ombudsmen’s Office by parents or students about board of trustees’ disciplinary decisions.

(and how many of these complaints will be around the contestable discipline policy and procedure issues relating to unresolved drug policy? /Blair)

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No dope in dem cookies, just dopey Police.

The Cookie Crumbled

No drugs in cookies teen gave Lake Worth police, lab finds.

LAKE WORTH – The case against a teenager accused of delivering drug-tainted cookies to police crumbled Thursday after scientific tests revealed no traces of narcotics.

Christian Phillips, 18, became a cookie monster and the butt of jokes around the globe following his arrest Tuesday after he left a basket of treats at Lake Worth police headquarters. Authorities said then that “field tests” they conducted on the cookies showed traces of marijuana and LSD. (read this story for more insight into the perversity of police reporting, leading to charging the young fellow with ‘assault on a police officer’, because a drug dog sat in front of food. /Blair)

But Blue Mound police Lt. Thomas Cain said Thursday that while he respects and accepts the medical examiner’s report, he is sure he smelled dope on the home-baked Toll House treats. “They did have a pungent, rancid odor,” Lt. Cain said. “They did have the odor of marijuana. I got within two feet of it; I could smell it.”

see media story that hangs the young guy! It was also reported in New Zealand.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080708_lj_cookies.372644f1.html
Well there goes any case that a ‘sniff’ is grounds for a search’! /Blair

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