The War on Drugs Has Failed – Should America Legalize Drugs?

The war on drugs has failed;
We must make peace, heal our wounds, and change our laws.

Richard Burton,
Chair, NAACP Prisoner Rights Sub-committee

In 2005, International Activist Cliff Thornton invited me as Chairman of the NAACP Prisoner Rights Sub-committee, to participate in a drug conference in Hartford, Conn and after several years of research as it relates to drugs and its side effects, I offer these thoughts.

The drug war can’t be won, and we have lost. We merely repeat the mistake of Prohibition. The harder we try to stop this evil, the more lucrative we make it, and the more it spread. The war on drugs cannot be eradicated by making it more profitable and at the same time creating more jails/prisons, disparities, casualties and tax burdens.

This view is shared by activists like Jack Cole a conference participant, a retired police lieutenant who worked on the front lines of the war on drugs, and who feels that prohibition causes more damage than the drugs themselves do.

According to Cole, “The war on drugs was really responsible for about 99% of all the things that we attribute to the, quote, `drug problem.'” Furthermore, Cole maintains that the federal government’s attempts to stamp out the drug trade merely “inflates the values of these products virtually by up to 17,000 percent” and “creates an obscene profit margin, making many people willing to kill.”

Rutgers University professor Douglas Husak gives more detailed statistics, citing studies that have shown that the types of crimes generated by illegal drug use occur “when drug users and dealers battle over drug sales, turf, and other aspects of illegal drug sales.” Husak maintains that the crimes caused by the drug trade “would be virtually eliminated if drugs were available at retail stores.” Jack Cole, the retired policeman, expresses much the same sentiment when he says that drugs need to be legalized “so that you can control it and regulate it and keep it out of the hands of our children.” The goal of legalization is not to encourage drug use, but to discourage the victimization of drug users, as well as society, at the hands of the illegal drug trade.

Cliff Thornton the founder and president of Efficacy, a drug reform organization based in Hartford Thornton called for a three-pronged approach to deal with the various drugs that are now illegal: legalization of marijuana, medicalization of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines, and decriminalization of the rest. He said the so-called drug war is a war on people, especially people of color, that has cost billions of dollars and has destroyed families and communities, but has done nothing to curb the flow of drugs into the country.

Cliff has shared with me, his life story on this issue and his ongoing advocacy, as well as other like minded national advocates and I think we must signal a “Code Blue”. The rash of recent crimes and murders in Chicago, Philadelphia, DC and other major cities across the country, are thought to be drug related, lend to this conversation “The War on Drugs Is Destroying Lives.”

Richard P. Burton, Sr., Director
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Resources
Cole, Jack. “The War on Drugs Is Destroying Lives.” Legalizing Drugs.
Cliff Thornton. “Under The Influence” –edited by Preston Peet

Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143
efficacy@msn.com
http://www.efficacy-online.org/

“THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON”

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit 501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax deductible.

Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Social Ecologist ‘at large’
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com/
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com/
http://blair4mayor.com/
http://efsdp.org/

ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

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ENCOD: Thornton on Greed, fear and racism

Clifford Thornton (Efficacy) developed his theory on the war on drugs as being based on three pillars: greed, fear and overt racism. (as presented in Vienna, see ENCOD BULLETIN 40 – Encod.org.)

Greed is found among most people who deal in drugs, but also among those who fight them, either as doctors, policemen or politicians: in the past 4 decades, almost 1 trillion dollars have been spent on drug related law enforcement in the USA alone.

Fear is spread by those who exaggerate the dangers of drugs, but deliberately ignore the basic reasons why people wish to take them: to increase positive experiences or reduce negative ones.

And overt racism is what the war on drugs comes down to in practical terms: for instance in the US, where black people make up only 12 % of the population, they account for more than 50% of the prison population, 2/3 of whom are serving drug related sentences.

If the white population were affected by drug prohibition in the same way, it would not last long before a public outcry would demand its immediate end. But in the present situation, money is spent on repression instead of education and welfare, so a group of people are deliberately held in a corner where they have little alternative but to continue in disruptive lifestyles.

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Cliff Thornton will tour four countries while in Europe

DRUG PEACE DAYS IN VIENNA
The new version of the programme of the Drug Peace Days that are organised by ENCOD on 7, 8 and 9 March in Vienna is now available on http://www.encod.org/info/VIENNA-2008-TEN-YEARS-AFTER.html

The days will include a Drug Peace March on 7 March to the Vienna International Centre, seat of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, where from Monday 10 March onwards, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs will have its 51. annual meeting. In this meeting, the CND will start its “year of reflection” on the results of the 10 global strategy to “significantly reduce the supply and demand for illicit drugs”, agreed upon in 1998 in New York. We intend to give them something to reflect about.

In the Conference that will be held in Vienna University on 8 & 9 March prominent US drug policy reformers such as Clifford Thornton, and Peter Webster will intervene, next to drug policy experts and activists from Europe and South America.. Cliff Thornton will also journey to Germany, France and Italy for presentations with elected Green Party officials and conferences in those countries.
The programme FLARE and all its participants www.flareprogramme.org(about 200 young people coming from more than twenty different countries, more than 40 organizations) will gather again for the third time in Italy, in the city of Bari, from 11 to 16 of March 2008, just after the Vienna meeting! I would really like to invite Mr Thorntorn will be in the city of Bari (southerm Italy) on March 12th to hold a seminar upon alternative solution to drug trafficking.

For those of you who wish to make the trip to Vienna, you can find information on hotel accomodation on our website. If you need any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,
Joep Oomen
EUROPEAN COALITION FOR JUST AND EFFECTIVE DRUG POLICIES
Lange Lozanastraat 14 – 2018 Antwerpen – Belgium
Tel. + 32 (0)3 293 0886 – Mob. + 32 (0)495 122644
E-mail: info@encod.org <mailto:info@encod.org> / http://www.encod.org/
<http://www.encod.org/>

Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143
efficacy@msn.com
http://www.efficacy-online.org/

“THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON”

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit 501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax deductible

—
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Social Ecologist ‘at large’
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com
http://blair4mayor.com

ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

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VIENNA 2008: TEN YEARS AFTER

6 MARCH

Public Meeting on the Evaluation of the implementation of the 1998 UN Plan “Towards a drug-free world by 2008 – we can do it”, organised by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe From 9 to 12.30, room ASP 3 G 3, European Parliament, Brussels

7-9 MARCH, DRUG PEACE MARCH

Upon the initiative of ENCOD (European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies) a counterevent to the UN Summit takes place from 7 to 9 March 2008. The purpose of this event is to raise awareness on the need to end the “war on drugs” and start new approaches in drug policy. Current prohibition of drugs creates more problems than it solves. This is a reality that most governments are not willing to face. (featuring fellow MildGreenie Clifford Thornton USA)

10 -14 MARCH UN COMMISSION ON NARCOTIC DRUGS
published Friday 15 February 2008 13:47, by encod .

In June 1998, the United Nations announced a 10-year strategy to achieve “measurable results” in the fight against drugs, including a “significant reduction” of the cultivation of cannabis, coca and opium poppy by the year 2008.

On March 10th, 2008, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs will meet in Vienna to review the results of this strategy.

In the past ten years, the war on drugs has failed – again. Consumption of drugs can cause problems, but prohibition of drugs causes disasters. Millions of people are criminalized, billions of euros are spent in a war that is ineffective and counterproductive. Efforts to reduce harmful and improve responsible use of drugs are actively thwarted by governments. Meanwhile, the drug market remains in the hands of organised crime, whose huge profits distort global economy and generate widespread corruption.

Drug policies should be a matter of public health, not of law enforcement. We ask the UN to establish the right of every adult citizen of the world to grow and possess natural plants for personal use and non-commercial purposes, using all technical equipment that is available for this. At the same time, individual countries should be allowed to experiment with drug policies that are not based on prohibition.

Vienna 2008 is the opportunity to send this urgent message to the United Nations.

From 10 to 14 March the annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nations will take place in Vienna. Some NGOs may delegate observers to this meeting, thanks to the Transnational Radical Party ENCOD has obtained two slots on their list. These will be filled by Clifford Thornton from the US based NGO Efficacy, and by Fredrick Polak, member of the ENCOD Steering Committee.

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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insightful.courageous.elegant.erudite.com(entary)

This extract is highly relevent to New Zealand citizens who have been subject to Waitangi Day (and Bob Marley’s birthday) ‘helicopter’ cannabis overhead spray regimes predicated on, according to police spokespersons, ‘the association between cannabis cultivation and organised crime’.

As the drug debate progresses in the UK with the AMCD review, there is also the Vancouver Forum on internatiopnal drug policy this week. A pity that the Law Commission didnt have anyone there. The MildGreens were represented by way of USA Greens champion Clifford Wallace Thornton jr. and LEAP, now with 10,000 ‘law enforcement’ membership.

Forum organizers noted that “over-reliance on law enforcement” criminalizes drug users unnecessarily, “fuels the drug economy and the black market, aids organized crime and terrorists [dependent on income from drug crops] and disproportionately targets poor people of colour.”

He [Former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen] noted that 220 U.S. mayors at a conference last June “agreed unanimously the war on drugs is not working.”

“Cops are so concerned about being labelled soft on drugs, soft on crime, and that next promotion, that we don’t even talk to our peers about what we believe.” /Jack Cole

There will be more to report on Vancouver in due course. /Blair

Meanwhile consider this insightful.courageous.elegant.erudite.com(entary)……

It is about time that policy makers woke up to the fact that a single mechanism linking damage to health with criminal punishment, as enshrined in the Misuse of Drugs Act, is entirely illogical. By all means reclassify cannabis. Reclassify all drugs. legal and illegal, according to the harm they can do. That’s one debate and of itself it is hardly straightforward. But deal with the criminal justice implications separately.

These two considerations have nothing to do with each other, and the link between them is entirely abstract, completely fatuous and vastly distorting. So much damage has already been done through the creation of the illegal market for drugs that it is hard to see exactly how to undo it. But dividing consumer health issues from supplier criminality issues would be a modest and entirely sensible start.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/02/an-unhealthy-de.html

• The costs associated with the control, monitoring, and enforcement of international drug laws add ‘less and less to the benefits achieved and more and more to the cost to society. Ultimately, the costs outweigh the benefits’

(Gardner 1993: 308). http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/81/rpp81.pdf (
The market for amphetamine-type stimulants and their precursors in Oceania, the production, trafficking, importation, and consumption of ATS.,
Published by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Chapter: Conclusions)

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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Green Party Co-Chair Awarded for Drug Law Leadership

The Green Party [USA] congratulates Connecticut Green and newly elected Green Party of the United States Steering Committee Co-Chair Clifford Thornton on an award he received from the Drug Policy Alliance http://www.drugpolicy.org/ for his leadership in the movement to reform
drug laws.

Mr. Thornton, co-founder of the drug law reform organization Efficacy, Inc. http://www.efficacy-online.org/, is a national co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. In 2006, he ran on the Green Party ticket for governor of Connecticut.

“Cliff Thornton’s work for the reform of US drug policy is in line with Green opposition to the War on Drugs, unjust and draconian drug laws, and the use of drug laws to fill up prison cells with black, brown, poor, and young Americans. We’re proud that Cliff is a member of the Green Party,” said Alfred Molison, co-chair of the Green Party’s national Black Caucus http://gpblackcaucus.blogspot.com/.
—

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. -James Baldwin

hat tip : Jeffrey Turner
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:54:08 -0500

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• Rep. McKinney running for president as Green

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Clifford honoured by Citizen Action award

“Cliff Thornton is one of the true heroes of the growing movement to stop the drug war and promote more rational policies,”

“He’s a role model for all those who believe in the moral imperative of speaking truth to power.” – Ethan Nadelmann

This award is also thanks to the help of you who facilitated and hosted (and reported) Cliff on his NZ tour – that lead to the LEAP tour. May we have more of him!

/Blair

Hi all,

For those living in Connectictut. This is the official press release. Please use it as you see fit and thanks to all,

because if it were not for all of you I would not be receiving this prestigous award.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Tony Newman (646)335-5384

November 29, 2007 Tommy McDonald (646)335-2242

Cliff Thornton to receive Citizen Action Award from the Drug Policy Alliance

Thornton to Receive the Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action During International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans, Dec. 5-8

Longtime Connecticut drug policy reform advocate and activist Clifford Thornton will receive the Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action from the Drug Policy Alliance. The award honors citizens who make democracy work in the difficult area of drug law and policy reform.

Thornton will be among leading advocates that work courageously to promote and implement more sensible drug policies who will be honored at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference , in New Orleans, December 5-8. The conference is organized by the Drug Policy Alliance and dozens of other organizations. The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation’s leading organization working to end the war on drugs and promote new drug policies based on science, compassion, health and human rights. The winners will be honored during an awards ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 8.

The biennial awards for achievement in drug policy reform recognize the accomplishments and commitment of people and organizations that have done outstanding drug policy reform work. The awards are given every other year at the international conference of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Thornton is the primary speaker for Efficacy, Inc. – a non-profit organization that has concentrated on drug policy reform. Thornton ran for governor in Connecticut in 2006 on the Green Party ticket. His campaign centered on drug policy reform. Thornton has done over 400 radio shows on drug policy. Thornton has spoken to over 300,000 people in some 450 venues about the drug war as it relates to health, economics, race, class, and white privilege. Efficacy is partially responsible for the removal of D.A.R.E. from the Ocean City, NJ school system in 2001. Thornton gave a presentation to the board of education that received great reviews and helped facilitate its demise. Thornton taught a graduate-level course, “Illegal Drugs and Public Policy” at Trinity College in Hartford, CT in 2002.

“Cliff Thornton is one of the true heroes of the growing movement to stop the drug war and promote more rational policies,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “He’s a role model for all those who believe in the moral imperative of speaking truth to power.”

The award is named after Robert C Randall, who pioneered the medical marijuana issue in America. He was a model citizen who took on the federal government and assisted in the defense of people accused of criminal offenses involving marijuana. In receiving treatment for glaucoma, Randall became the first medical marijuana patient in the United States. After winning his case against the federal government, Mr. Randall continued to fight for others in need as founder and representative of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics. In the early 1990s, he also founded the Marijuana AIDS Research Service, intended to help place AIDS patients in programs and studies that administer medical marijuana. This service’s closure was a driving force in the adoption of California’s Proposition 215, the first medical marijuana ballot initiative.

Past awardees include, Allan Clear, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition; Mikki Norris, Chris Conrad, and Virginia Resner, authors of Shattered Lives: Portraits from America’s Drug War and founders of Human Rights 95, Cannabis Consumers, and Green-Aid; Randy Credico, activist for the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, Inc.; Nora Callahan, executive director of The November Coalition; 1996 Joyce Rivera, founder of St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction, a needle exchange program and center in the Bronx, NY; Dennis Peron, author of Proposition 215 and founder of San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club; Edith Springer, clinical director of the New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition; Jack Herer, activist and author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy; Louis Jones, founder of STANDUP Harlem, Inc. ; and Julie Stewart, founder and president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums

Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143
efficacy@msn.com
http://www.efficacy-online.org/

“THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON”

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit
501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax
deductible

—
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Social Ecologist ‘at large’
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com/
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com/
http://blair4mayor.com/

ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

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Dr Tom O’Connell on Evidence Based Policy

When feigning deafness eventually becomes impossible, as with Evolution, Global Warming, or certain aspects of the “wars” on drugs and terror, the fall-back positions of those in denial often become unsupported claims that their favored alternatives are morally superior, and the ones they oppose will lead to disaster.

Thus do they usually favor war over negotiations, profits over environmental preservation, and imprisonment over rehabilitation. In the case of the drug war they have gotten away with a particularly egregious injustice by defining safe self-medication as a crime; entirely on the basis of deductive logic which has been assiduously protected for nearly a century from the rigorous scrutiny supposed to be applied to “evidence based” policy, and despite its obvious failures and piously dishonest claims.

– Dr T. O’Connell

When the practice and principles of (harm minimisation) medicine are applied to health related to the popular herb cannabis somehow the truth of the matter just flies out the window. Cannabis ‘as medicine’ is ignored because ‘*it is illegal, and there is no money in it’.

How damned convenient, that we can proscribe to a medically efficacious plant ‘criminal sanction’, ignore all that is good for the patient and still call the US$100billion ‘annual research budget’ in best practice & pharmacology science ‘evidence based’.

“I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.” – Hippocrates, the father of medicine

(*public lecture at the University of Otago, Christchurch School of Medicine by visiting speaker from Oxford University, Professor Paul Glasziou. He is an expert in the important area of evidence-based medicine and how to transfer health research into best practice.)

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

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