Reform, A Political Opportunity

Image via Wikipedia While much of the discussion (and protest) for change is very US centric it must not be forgotten that on a global scale the US acts cravenly, often under arms but more subtly through ‘international relations’ and delegations. Uncle Sam’s goal is to pervert the required ‘resolving of the tensions’ pushing its largely moral reformist (thus religious) policy position.

Americans pay dearly for this ideology, but so to does the rest of the world.

“It is often forgotten that health is the first principle of drug policy.” – Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Marijuana Law Reform No Longer a Political Liability, It’s a Political Opportunity

January 13th, 2009

Voting ended late last week on the President-Elect¹s website Change.gov. As was the case in December, questions from the general public pertaining to marijuana and drug policy reform proved to be extremely popular.

Of the more than 76,000 questions posed to Obama by the public, the fourth most popular question overall called on the incoming administration to cease arresting and prosecuting adults who use cannabis. And in the sub-category “National Security,” the most popular question posed by the public pertained to amending U.S. drug policies as a way to try and halt the ongoing violence surround illicit drug trafficking in Mexico and other nations. ( for more see http://blog.thehill.com/ article by Deputy Director Paul Armentano, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws )

The continuing arrogance of the US Congress/administration and its political and religiously deluded vehicle for maintaining the international ignominy of the “War on Drugs”, the Single Conventions and covenants, stands as the single biggest unresolved issue on this planet. It is in the way of even climate change and peace… so long as it is the single largest ‘fixable’ contributor to destabilised nation states, institutionalised corruption and chronic and systemic racist, ageist and sexist human rights abuse. Without wholesale reform of the drug laws the rest is just pretence for expediency. Non-feasance on a planetary scale. Seriously, political arses should be whupped for this devious practice of ‘self interest before others’.

Repudiate the Single Conventions on Narcotics – ‘for God’s Sake’

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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No Size Fits Everyone

“If one cannot keep drugs out of a prison, how then an entire Country?” /Blair

Image by Getty Images
via Daylife

“…. that the one-size-fits-all approach to drug control is fundamentally flawed and that communities and countries need the flexibility to develop and experiment with policies that best fit their own realities” / Foreign Policy In Focus Beyond the Drug War. Nov 25, 2008

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
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Beyond the Drug War, Inst/Policy Studies

Image: Getty Images via Daylife Excerpt from, A New U.S. Approach Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies

….

The Obama administration could learn valuable lessons from some of its Latin American counterparts.

First, it could recognize that the international drug control policies implemented over the past several decades have failed to make any significant dent in the supply of illicit drugs.

Second, it could adopt measures that reduce the harm caused by both drug use and the “war on drugs.”

Completely eliminating the demand or production of illicit drugs is simply not achievable. The challenge, therefore, is to put into place policies that mitigate the harm caused by drug use to individuals, families, and communities, and the harm or negative consequences caused by illicit drug production and the policies intended to contain it.
…..

The issue of proportionality of sentencing is a major problem in the United States and the Latin American countries “persuaded” to follow its lead (more often than not as a result of threats of losing U.S. trade benefits and economic assistance). In addition to disproportionate sentences for crimes committed, the United States has long pushed for the criminalization of drug consumption and has continued to hold fast to that approach even as many European and other countries have increasingly treated drug abuse as a public health problem.

see http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5698

Because drugs are bad doesn’t mean prohibition is good.
Supporting prohibition and being pro-human rights is a contradiction.

The international conventions are an ‘immoral and unjust contradiction’ manufacturing quantifiable harms.

They must be changed. It is an imperative. /Blair

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Did Frank Marshall Davis Sell Cocaine With Obama? [New Zeal]

Blair Anderson has left a new comment on the post “Did Frank Marshall Davis Sell Cocaine With Obama?“:

Getty Images While it may or may not be true as to Obama’s partaking of social intoxicants (experiential or otherwise) or as to the source of said drugs (always best from a trusted source), Obama can be held in high regard for at least acknowledging the reality, that he enjoyed them “and inhaled, that was the point!”.

Not so however can I mitigate the ‘Uncle Tom‘ that we see today. Obama has failed in his ‘need for change’ dialog in not going there on drug issues. It is a racist, classist law in application and effect. His silence given the fiscal ‘trillion dollar boondoggle’ downside in these pressing times and the impact on law and order…(and UNGASS review) is squeamish, but like New Zealand’s pretense around ‘bottom lines’ pre-MMP election journalism on this subject seems internationally afflicted.

We are the only democratic nation on the planet for whom two consecutive MMP arrangements have had as there bottom line “thou shalt not talk about cannabis”. This being one of four criteria for ‘confidence and supply (access to treasury cheque account) makes us and our forth estate look patently inane.

Image via WikipediaWill no one ask ANY of the leaders major or minor of their post election intentions?

Cannabis issues defined the outcome of the 96, 99, 02, and 05 elections…(ask Jenny Shipley!) are we politically stupid?

There is an UNGASS review in March09 and a NZ Law Commission review ‘in progress’ – tell me there is no context to the question?

Posted by Blair Anderson to New Zeal at 10:43 AM

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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

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