Reefer sanity . . .

A Uruguayan man smokes cannabis during
a demonstration in Montevideo in May.
A senate vote to legalise the drug
is expected in November.
Photograph: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images

Uruguay sets price
of legalised cannabis
at $1 a gram

Uruguay sets price of legalised cannabis at $1 a gram, according to The Guardian's article by Uki Goni, who reports that

Uruguay is set to become the first country in the world where the sale of cannabis will not only become legal and government-controlled, but at around $1 a gram probably also the one with the most affordable marijuana anywhere.

Lies with a tee-emm . . .

REALLY. From Michele Bachmann's Facebook page “Christians For Michele Bachmann”, an oeuvre apparently paid for by Christians for Michele Bachmann™. Love the tee-emm. The FB slogan is “Changing lives, one BachFann™ at a time”. More tee-emm.

Creative Kiwis . . .

DESIGNER DRUGS ARE BIG in New Zealand, according to a post on The Economist, “A New Prescription”, and the Kiwi government has had to come to terms with the situation. Unlike Stevie and the CONs, for whom prisons are perfection, the Kiwis have decided that regulation and taxation is the only sustainable policy.

Sick of trying to keep up with drugmakers, the government is trying a new tack. Last month a law was passed which offers drug designers the chance of getting official approval for their products. If they can persuade a new “Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority” that their pills and powders are low risk, they will be licensed to market them, whether or not they get people high. Drugs will have to undergo clinical trials, which the government expects to take around 18 months—much less than for medicines, because the drugs will be tested only for toxicity, not for efficacy. Drugs that are already banned internationally, such as cocaine and cannabis, are ineligible. Only licensed shops will sell the drugs, without advertising and not to children.

Success story . . .

Drug money in Mexico. Note the small pile of Canadian bills in front of all the Benjies.

FRED REED IS A CURMUGEON to some, a tell-it-like-it-is observer to others. An American ex-pat living in Mexico, he has been rather scathing in his denunciation of American policies and their impact on Latin America. His latest blog post, "Helping the DEA" resumes his critique of the Drug Enforcement Agency

Fact is, though, DEA as an organization ain’t done jack-shit about drugs. I’m sorry, but there it is. It’s like a law of logic. If you set out to do something impossible, you won’t do it. That’s DEA.

A little history if I may. In the Sixties, when mind candy went universal, we had pot, acid, shrooms, mescaline, and various amphetamines. Scag was a ghetto drug for strung-out crashers like William Burroughs, coke mostly unknown, and crack nonexistent.

OK, half-century later. To my certain knowledge, today in suburban Washington, as for example at Washington and Lee High where my daughters did time, kids can buy all the aforementioned goodies, plus nitrous, Ecstasy, crystal and, within a five-minute drive, there may still be an open-air crack market in the parking lot of Green Valley pharmacy. Crack isn’t a kid drug, but it is easily available all over Washington.

Further, I know all sorts of people in their sixties now, veterans of Dong Ha or Woodstock, some of them vets of both, and most of them do grass and not infrequently hallucinogens. I’m talking door-gunners, Special Forces guys, at least two Ivy profs, just plain people. So, Michelle, what exactly has the War on Half the Population accomplished?

You certainly aren’t protecting kids in high school, or even middle school, from becoming drooling stoners living in dumpsters. They have easier access to drugs than you do. What protects kids from becoming needle-cases is—I am aware of the preposterousness of this—the common sense of teenagers. They aren’t druggies because they don’t want to be. They aren’t alkies because they don’t want to be. Most don’t smoke because they don’t want to. DEA has nothing to do with it. Kids could easily do all of these things. America is up to the armpits in drugs, tobacco, and booze.

So you see, Michelle, the DEA is like a man sitting on a raft in mid-Pacific, trying to outlaw water.

And failure has some frightening possibilities, because the cartels are ruthless, and if, in the unlikely event that the DEA did get its shit together, there could be even more need for body bags:

You might try to drill into the Pentagonal mind—I would suggest a cold chisel and a sledge hammer—that Mexico differs in a fundamental way from the military’s other comic efforts at martial enterprise: The narcos have a million gringo hostages. Or maybe five hundred thousand. Nobody is sure exactly how many Americans live in Mexico. They—we—are very soft targets. We live in a sort of sprawl across Mexico, concentrated in places well known, grouping in known bars, unarmed and utterly defenseless.

A minor contact I have with the bad guys says that, now, attacking Americans carries a death sentence from people who would carry it out with a blow torch over a period of days. “Oh no. Don’t fuck with the gringos,” says this guy. Like most Mexicans, the narcos figure the US is looking for a pretext to invade. They are happy with the current semi-partnership with Washington and don’t want interference.

But piss these bad boys off—they are very, very bad boys—and they could begin killing gringos by hundreds. Logically it would be an easy way of putting pressure on Washington to back off. Washington could write off aging vets living on disability from Nam, but a lot of expats here live in houses costing a million doomed green dollars.

Meanwhile, we have Stevie and his attitude on drugs. H/T to Nolan.

Oh man, just kick it because it feels good!

The one and only TBogg explains to the coaches of the San Diego Chargers why kicking a field goal in the last minutes of the game when you're down by 30 points is sad, pathetic and a waste of time.

He also explains to the "War on Drugs" guys why they look like the coaches of the San Diego Chargers when they work out of the same worn out playbook.

It's tough to get that message out. Sometimes you just have to say, "To hell with it," and take on the thankless job of training Basset Hounds instead.

California Pot Vote

THE SACRAMENTO BEE has a report by Peter Hecht, "California will vote on legalization of marijuana in November".

California's raucous argument over legalizing marijuana is headed to the ballot.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen confirmed Wednesday that voters will decide in November whether to legalize and tax marijuana use for Californians 21 and over.

California's annual pot crop is worth about $14 billion, according to the State Board of Equalization. It estimates that legalization and taxation could bring in up to $1.4 billion in revenue.

Should be a hell of a show to watch. The U.S. Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Center, has released a report, "National Drug Threat Assessment 2010". 

Overall, the availability of illicit drugs in the United States is increasing.1 In fact, in 2009 the prevalence of four of the five major drugs–heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine)–was widespread and increasing in some areas. Conversely, cocaine shortages first identified in 2007 persisted in many markets.

… Although drug use remained relatively stable from 2007 through 2008, more than 25 million individuals 12 years of age and older reported using an illicit drug or using a controlled prescription drug (CPD) nonmedically in 2008. Each year, drug-related deaths number in the thousands, and treatment admissions and emergency department (ED) visits both exceed a million. These and other consequences of drug abuse, including lost productivity associated with abuse, the impact on the criminal justice system, and the environmental impact that results from the production of illicit drugs, are estimated at nearly $215 billion annually.

Mexican DTOs {drug trafficking organizations} continue to represent the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States. Mexican DTOs, already the predominant wholesale suppliers of illicit drugs in the United States, are gaining even greater strength in eastern drug markets where Colombian DTO strength is diminishing. The extent of Mexican DTO influence over domestic drug trafficking was evidenced in several ways in 2009.… National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) analysts estimate that the overall threat posed by illicit drugs will not diminish in the near term. Although NDIC believes that sustained shortages of cocaine will persist in some U.S. markets in 2010, the availability of heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana will increase, largely the result of increased production of the drugs in Mexico. The growing strength and organization of criminal gangs, including their alliances with large Mexican DTOs, will make disrupting illicit drug availability and distribution increasingly difficult for law enforcement agencies.

Uh, just say no.  :)

When the Mexican toilet flushes . . .

FABIUS MAXIMUS is an American who has an eponymous blog which is "a discussion about geopolitics, broadly defined, from an American's perspective". Over the years, I have found a sage perspective.

Anyway, Fabius has a page on the current debacle that is Mexico, leading with the comment, "Mexico continues to fall apart in slow-mo. There seems to be little we can do to help, so our government pretends all is fine — rather than take defensive measures." Fabius is not given to hyperbole, so, just how bad is it?

He cites an article in THE ATLANTIC, by Philip Caputo, titled "The Fall of Mexico":

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

14,000 people killed in 3 years? Wow. Here there be dragons. As well, the Fabius page has links to other articles about this festering problem. As Pete De Lorenzo says at Autoextremist, "a heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good".

Others concur. William S. Lind is what you could call a "paleoconservative", which seems somewhat whacko to my milquetoast weltanschauung, but, Willie is something of an avant-garde theorist, when it comes to things military. His take is that La Familia, one of the Mexican drug outfits, is different from the rest, in that it is the acquiring the shape of a "4GW" entity. That's 4th Generation Warfare. He is a major contributor to Defense and the National Interest, and what he has to say is worthy of attention:

An article in the October 23 Washington Times points to what I think may be the next important evolution in Fourth Generation war. The piece concerns Mexico’s third-largest drug gang, La Familia. La Familia is best known for beheading people it does not like. But according to the article, its real claim to fame may be as a pioneer in seizing the mantle of legitimacy previously worn by the state.

Bill C-15 : Keeping up with the failing US war on drugs

Bill C-15, the Cons' latest shot at implementing the failing US war on drugs in Canada, guarantees, among other travesties, mandatory jailtime for people who grow and sell five marijuana plants.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement over their original proposal - jail time for just one plant -until the Bloc and NDP managed to leverage it up to five plants in the Committee on Justice and Human Rights hearings where this new bill was hatched - and where 13 0f the 16 expert witnesses spoke against it.

From Friday's Hansard, Jim Malloway, NDP :

"California, New York, Michigan, Delaware, Massachusetts are all repealing their mandatory minimum sentences with other states considering the same.

Former counsel to the United States House of Representatives committee on the judiciary, Eric Sterling, stated emphatically his decision to promote mandatory minimum sentences in the United States was probably "the greatest mistake of my entire career over 30 years in the practice of law".

What the Americans found was that the goal of the legislation to reduce drug use failed. The goal of safety in the communities failed. The goal of raising the prices of drugs and lowering the purity failed. The goal of reducing organized crime failed."

Yeah but they do have one in every hundred adults behind bars now, much of it petty drug crime related.

Thursday in the HoC, Keith Martin, Lib, asked why we can't "decriminalize simple possession, for example, of marijuana and allow people to have a couple of plants"?

Indeed. People receiving mandatory sentences of one year or two years less a day will wind up in the already overcrowded provincial prisons.

The Canadian Bar Association, as quoted in the HoC :

"We believe the Bill would not be effective, would be very costly, would add to strains on the administration of justice, could create unjust and disproportionate sentences and ultimately would not achieve its intended goal of greater public safety."

The Libs will have to suck it up very hard to vote for this one on Monday, as they party with the Cons like it's 1969. The NDP and the Bloc will vote against it.

Scott has a round-up of the Liberal blogger revolt; Jennifer is firing off emails. Well done, Liberal bloggers!

Mexico: Failed State or Same-old Basket-Case?

A soldier inspecting the S.U.V. where three police officers were killed last week in Ciudad Juárez. /Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
See the windshield? That's fire-power.

THE NEW YORK TIMES article,
"With Force, Mexican Drug Cartels Get Their Way", by Marc Lacy, is a chilling read on a number of levels. The misery that resides in Juarez thanks to the lunacy of the US War on Drugs is ghastly.

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mayor José Reyes Ferriz is supposed to be the one to hire and fire the police chief in this gritty border city that is at the center of Mexico’s drug war. It turns out, though, that real life in Ciudad Juárez does not follow the municipal code.

Roberto Orduña Cruz, left, was escorted by a police officer after resigning on Feb. 20 as police chief of Ciudad Juárez. Drug cartels vowed to kill an officer every 48 hours until he resigned.

It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.

They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy, Operations Director Sacramento Pérez Serrano, together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.

Replacing Mr. Orduña will also fall outside the mayor’s purview, although this time the criminals will not have a say. With Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding state of Chihuahua under siege by heavily armed drug lords, the federal government last week ordered the deployment of 5,000 soldiers to take over the Juárez Police Department. With the embattled mayor’s full support, the country’s defense secretary will pick the next chief.

Chihuahua, which already has about 2,500 soldiers and federal police on patrol, had almost half the 6,000 drug-related killings in all of Mexico in 2008 and is on pace for an even bloodier 2009. Juárez’s strategic location at the busy El Paso border crossing and its large population of local drug users have prompted a fierce battle among rival cartels for control of the city.

“Day after day, there are so many horrible things taking place there,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies Mexico’s drug war. “The cartels are trying to control everything.”

What to do? Well, maybe it's time for the Mexicans to develop their version of the British S.A.S. When they were set upon the IRA, all of a sudden the intransigent became eager to negotiate. Gerry Adams didn't come to the idea that it was time to play nice, without some prodding. Hard times may require some really hard solutions.

Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

DEFENCE AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST is one of the best sites out there for pondering aspects of defence and warfare. It is also a great place to start learning about John Boyd. Who is Boyd? Go to the site and find out, before the next adversary gets inside your OODA loop.

Anyway, John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus have written an article, "Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency". Apart from murdering Canadian tourists, ill-socialized Mexicans are up to all manner of mayhem:

Grenades are thrown at popular gatherings. Mutilated corpses flood the morgues. Heavily armed gunmen blast police to shreds with high-powered automatic weapons. Just another day in Iraq or Afghanistan? No-all of the events described occur regularly in Mexico. Our southern neighbor is imploding under the weight of a criminal insurgency just as dangerous any crew of bomb-tossing jihadists–an insurgency that may soon envelop our borders.

The SPP is dead - Long live the SPP!

Robert Pastor, chair of the 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force "Building a North American Community" (now available in book form and co-authored by John Manley) and author of the book "Toward a North American Community" says the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead.

It was killed, he tells us, by the timid incremental approach of its policy makers who tried to fly the SPP below the radar of public opinion, thereby arousing their deepest suspicions.
Right wing fears of Mexican immigrants and a North American Union combined with left wing fears of unfair labour practices to create 'a perfect storm' of public alarm that scuttled its chances of success.

So that's it then. It's been nailed to its perch pining for the fjords since last April. It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile.
THIS IS AN EX-SPP!!

Well ok then.

In other totally unrelated news this week :

1) the U.S. is leaning on Mexico to privatize its state-owned oil consortium PEMEX

2) Saskatchewan has followed BC in introducing the Enhanced Driver's Licences demanded by Homeland Security for admission to the U.S.

3) U.S. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Daniel Sullivan is calling for greater energy integration and enhanced energy supply routes between the U.S. and Canada, praising the benefits of "benefits of market-based free trade agreements" to "enhance energy security throughout North America".

4)Avi Lewis and Linda Carlsen on Democracy Now discuss "re-armouring NAFTA" : Plan Mexico, the $400 million regional cooperation security initiative that introduces a greater US military presence into Mexico under the guise of lending aid for the war on drugs.

5) The U.S. Navy has reactivated gunboat patrols off the coasts of Latin America to "send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region".

You see we don't care what you call it : SPP, deep integration, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny. We don't care. Really. Call it whatever you like.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Spin Doctors Without Borders...again

As noted by Dana below, a mere three days after the G&M reported:
Safe-injection site in B.C. wins court protection

"North America's only sanctioned safe-injection site for drug addicts won a major court victory Tuesday, thwarting any chance of the federal Conservative government closing it down" ,

Tony Clement announced at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health that he will be asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to appeal the BC Supreme Court's decision "as soon as possible".

Kady O'Malley live-blogged the committee hearings in her own inimitable way today, noting that:

"It occured to me as I was scurrying back from the foyer that this is the *second* meeting this week where the only witness on hand to defend the government’s policy on a controversial issue is an import from the United States—and not just the U.S., but the United States of Right-Wing Think Tanks."

Ah yes - Colin Mangham.
Colin Mangham is "director of research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an offshoot of , wait for it , the Drug Prevention Network of America, headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally".
DPN of Canada lists her as an "honorary board member" who has "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Rounding out the board of our very own 'war on drugs' Canadian clonetank is past president ReformaTory Randy White and REAL Woman Gwen Landolt as current VP, plus a couple of Scientology's Narconon graduates.

Back to Kady :

"Dr. Colin Mangham, who huffs and puffs over the "bad science" and sloppy journalism behind support for the program...[snip]...At one point, he mentions in an offhand way that he’s a graduate of UBC, but his accent is glaringly American. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
He then goes into a rant about how people who support InSite, including some in this very room, are, in fact, part of a larger movement towards drug policy reform. He demands that "elected representatives" stop these "activists."
By this point, there are hisses and catcalls coming from the visitors’ gallery."

"Bloc’s Christiane Gagnon : does he have any data to support his contention that the vast quantity of research that supports harm reduction policies is worthless?
Well, no, not exactly. He provided a “second opinion” on research produced by other people, to “critique” it, just like a first year university student would do."

Ok, our score so far : 22 positive peer-reviewed studies in favor of InSite published in prestigious scientific journals ... versus one "second opinion" from a promoter of the wildly successful and universally admired US 'war on drugs'.

So why am I still worried?

Cross-posted at Creekside

Update : Wow! Four posts on this at the Gazetteer from Ross - who is, incidentally, a scientist, the peer-reviewed kind, the kind who does his own research.

"Don't touch my bags if you please Mr. Customs Man"

A lot of airlines run promotions to reward travellers for choosing them and a lot of countries do tourism promotions that offer freebies of various sorts, but this is exceptional:

from the BBC

Cannabis blunder at Tokyo airport

An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.
A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.
Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.
Anyone finding the package has been asked to contact customs officials. .

Just so you know, "sources" tell me that 142 grams of marijuana (that's about five ounces or "lids" as the kids call them) would mean a lump about the size of your average paperback. Imagine finding that when you get home and unpack from your business trip or vacation.

I can't believe the dog couldn't find it - Given the amount, if the stuff is any good at all, they could probably just grab the first couple of people they see in tiedye down in Harajuku and let them sniff around for baggage area for ten minutes.

No embed code for this one, but I'd like to dedicate it to Narita Customs chief Manpei Tanaka with my sympathy

UPDATE: Apparently the misplaced stash has been returned by the passenger who found it in his suitcase.

Just Say No! to The Quagmire on Drugs

Ever since pot "Just Said No!" to me many years ago, I haven't kept up on The War on Drugs news much, other than to note that at best it appears to be a gigantic federal money laundering racket in those countries which have embraced it. I had always rather assumed that along with giving women the vote and widespread acceptance of the benefits of bathing, legalization of marijuana was just one more benchmark in the long march toward civilization that we would eventually get around to.

While I'm not aware of Health Minister Tony Clements' position on female emancipation and personal hygiene, he recently announced an upcoming $64M federal anti-drug program, presumably to better align Canadian policy with the spectacularly corrupt and utterly ineffective US War on youth, blacks, hispanics and the poor Drugs program.

The UN also recently reported that Canada has the highest use of marijuana in the industrialized world, clocking in at 16.8%, with over half of the population supporting decriminalization as laid out in the LeDain Commission 35 freakin years ago.

The Toronto Star :

"In 2003, the Liberal government introduced a bill to decriminalize possession of less than 15 grams, making it subject to a fine but no criminal record.
The move caused immediate criticism in Washington. It warned Ottawa that if the bill passed, Canadians would pay for it at the border with increased security checks and lengthy delays.

In 2004, Conservative leader Stephen Harper said he opposed decriminalization but that "we can look at fines rather than jail terms for possession under five grams."
When the Tories came to power two years later, however, they killed the Liberal bill.

"Are they kowtowing to the U.S.? Almost certainly," says [Ottawa lawyer Eugene] Oscapella. "

From an article on how the war on drugs is undermining western security, Misha Glenny writes in The Washington Post :

"British Columbia is now home to the greatest number of organized-crime syndicates anywhere in the world (if we accept the U.N. definition of a syndicate as more than two people involved in a planned crime). According to B.C. government statistics, the production, distribution and export of B.C. Bud, highly potent marijuana grown in hothouses along the province's border with the US, accounts for 6 percent of the region's gross domestic product. It now employs more Canadians than British Columbia's traditional industries of mining and logging combined.

The majority of the province's criminals remain passive hippie types for whom the drug is a lifestyle choice. But as Brian Brennan, the chief investigator for the drug squad of the RCMP told me, the marijuana trade is threatening to turn nasty as British Columbia's Hells Angels, one of the best-organized criminal syndicates in the world, moves in on the action.

An avalanche of B.C. Bud rolls southward into the United States every day, dodging U.S. customs in myriad imaginative ways. But as the Hell's Angels and other syndicates get stronger and their control over the port of Vancouver tightens, the ability of U.S. and Canadian authorities to monitor the border becomes ever weaker."

BC as a northern drug economy-based banana republic.
Reading US editorials like this, I can better appreciate why some Americans respond to the news that you come from British Columbia with praise at how well you speak English.

Over in the Netherlands, where civilization seems to be on a somewhat more secure footing and possession isn't a criminal offence, consumption is only 6.1%.
Oscapala again in the Toronto Star : "This shows that criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization make people use it."

Well exactly.