Posted on 07/25/2004 1:12:55 AM PDT by MadIvan
New super-strength marijuana readily available on US streets is prompting the White House to change direction in its war against drugs.
Research from the government-sponsored Marijuana Potency Project claims today's cannabis is more than twice as strong as in the mid-Eighties, leading to greater health risks for those smoking it at increasingly younger ages.
Now President George Bush, who had already promised a more aggressive campaign against substance abuse, has ordered that resources be allocated to fighting so-called 'soft' drugs instead of concentrating on harder forms, such as heroin and cocaine.
'We are working hard on education, but unfortunately a lot of today's parents are under the impression marijuana is harmless and that their kids trying it is some kind of rite of passage,' said Jennifer de Vallance, of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
'They might have had experience in their own teenage years with no problems, but this is not the same marijuana as in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. Today's forms are much stronger and potentially more harmful, especially to young people whose brains are not fully developed and are therefore more susceptible to adverse reactions.'
The Marijuana Potency Project, at the University of Mississippi, analysed more than 30,000 samples seized over the past 18 years by the authorities. It found that the average level of the active ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), jumped from 3.5 per cent in 1985 to more than 7 per cent in 2003.
Of more concern to the analysts is that the upward trend appears to be continuing. The average potency of 20 marijuana samples seized and tested so far this year exceeds 9 per cent, with a peak of 27 per cent in one batch from a state in the North West.
'Today's marijuana is a much more serious problem than the vast majority of Americans understands,' said John Walters, the government's director of drug control policy who has promised a clampdown on producers.
Those who support the legalisation of cannabis are not convinced. 'Whenever government officials speak about drugs issues, a more detailed examination of the facts is a good idea,' said David Borden, executive director of the Washington-based Drug Reform Coordination Network.
'These projects are always government-funded and, without criticising the researchers, officials take what they want from it and send out their press releases. There has always been a wide range of potencies. It doesn't mean people are getting more intoxicated, because the higher the potency, the less they smoke.'
Figures suggest overall drug use in America's high schools has fallen by 11 per cent in two years but the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse reports the number of children and teenagers receiving treatment for marijuana abuse jumped 142 per cent over the last decade, and that emergency hospital admissions of 12 to 17-year-olds in which marijuana was implicated rose 48 per cent in four years.
Borden acknowledges children must be steered away from drugs, but says: 'Their anti-drugs efforts have had a paradoxical effect in promoting the underground cultivation of marijuana. The number of users makes it an appealing target and there is no limit to the number of arrests that can be made, and the government uses those numbers to scare the public into thinking there is some big problem.
'All the government has been able to do is encourage people to experiment with stronger drugs than they would have before.'
You guys may very well be onto something, there. You know what Rush always repeats..."follow the money!"...
Al Capone supported prohibition. I have yet to hear a drug lord speak out against the War on Drugs.
Drug laws protect drug dealers.
The only reason Soros claims to be against drug laws is because of the money. He wants to get rid of his competition. He is not pro drug in eastern Europe where he is Boss Hog.
I really don't care why he's doing it, there isn't any excuse for it.
You, sir, cannot support your posts. Slander is your game.
I think we ought to decriminalize it for fiscal reasons. BUT to discourage use, remove any voting rights from those caught possessing it.
That way our jails are not full of potheads and we don't waste money prosecuting them, but there are still severe consequences for using. And almost all of them vote liberal anyway so its a win all around as far as I see it.
Well, I don't think cocaine and heroin should be legal. I do, however, agree with Boortz that, if cocaine didn't have a thousandfold markup from the moment the coca leaves are harvested to the time the finished product gets sold on the street, the cartels wouldn't make enough off it.
My personal proposal: Let the states decide on marijuana ONLY, and put a 20-year moratorium on the legalization of ANY other drug. Only arrest people who smoke pot while driving, providing to kids, or if other public-safety concerns come into play (airline pilot, example).
Then, authorities would only have to arrest people for marijuana offenses when it's absolutely necessary. This would free up resources to drop the ____hammer on meth-lab operators, coke pushers, and Ted Kennedy.
Barring that, if anyone is truly serious about ALL drug use, then push for a Constitutional amendment that legitimizes the War on Drugs. The prohibitionists were serious enough to get their POV set in stone in the Constitution, after all.
Actually, we'd be better of to START a war on socialism, beginning with the expulsion of ANY public official who tries to expand any government giveaway social program.
Better solution: Wean the public off the dole system, then you won't have "dopers" eating at the taxpayer trough. Let private charities help 'em out.
Same thing goes for *alcoholics*. You do include them in the "doper" category, right? Just because alcohol is legal, doesn't make abusers of same any more deserving of public handouts.
Only socialists want socialized medicine of any kind.
That's why I'm wasting my vote on Bush, even though he's hell-bent on socializing medicine now; at least with him, we won't have the full-bore system Kerry wants.
But not everyone who espouses drug-law changes is in Soros' pocket, and neither are all of them of like mind.
BTW, cin, I mentioned James Gray's book about the WoD a while back. It was published by Temple University Press. If Soros gave any money to that publishing concern, I'd like to know, because if not, that would prove that Soros doesn't fund EVERY anti-WoD effort.
Not necessarily. Sometime the proponents aren't really socialists, but political opportunists willing to ignore the consequences.
US JUDGES CALL FOR LEGALISING OF DRUGS
The restricted sale of heroin, cocaine and cannabis 'would break the vicious cycle of violence' Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
American judges are growing so uneasy about their country's drugs laws that they are to go public with their calls for change. The judge who will publish the names of his concerned colleagues is calling for the regulated sale of cocaine, heroin and cannabis as the only way to break the current international cycle of violence and imprisonment.
The move comes as an advertising campaign is launched advising jurors to acquit people on drugs possession charges even when they are guilty and as a citizen's commission publishes a report calling for drugs to be treated as a medical and social rather than a criminal problem. It also coincides with this week's report on the enormous disparity between the numbers of black and white people jailed for drug offences.
James P Gray, a superior court judge in Orange County, California told the Guardian yesterday that his new book will contain the names of more than 20 judges who favour a change in the policies, some of whom support his call for legalisation, and are happy to say so publicly. He said that three times that number of judges had given him permission to quote them by name. Many others had told him privately of their belief that a radical change to the drugs laws was urgently needed.
Judge Gray, 55, has been on the bench for 16 years and was previously a prosecuting attorney. His experience on the bench convinced him that the drugs laws were causing more crime than they were stopping and that the "war on drugs" had been a failure.
"There is an increasing number of judges who want change," said Judge Gray, the author of the soon-to-be-published Why our Drugs Laws have failed and What we can do about it. "The momentum is truly building, we're making progress and it is no longer a question of if there will be changes, but when."
Judge Gray, who is due to outline his views at a meeting in Los Angeles later this month, is critical of the United States' drugs tsar, General Barry McCaffrey, whose budget has just been increased from $17.8bn a year to $19.2bn (UKP13bn). He suggests that asking Gen McCaffrey whether the right policy is being pursued is "like asking a barber if one needs a haircut".
The changes that Judge Gray would like to see include the regulated sale to adults of heroin, cocaine and cannabis. No advertising should be allowed, said the judge, so that drugs could be "de-profitised". He also favours needle-exchange programmes. He believes that the likeliest route for change would be for individual states to be allowed to decide on what drugs policy suits them best.
"First of all, we have to legitimise the discussion," he said. He stressed that talking about change did not mean that he or fellow judges condoned the use of drugs, merely that the existing laws were causing more harm than good.
His move comes as the organisation Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) has been placing advertisements in magazines headlined "Just Say Not Guilty".
The ad argues that "the jury right to say 'not guilty' is an essential safeguard against injustice. [This] dates back to English common law and the founding of the United States."
Doug McVay of the Virginia-based CSDP said yesterday that the aim of the advertising campaign was to remind people that "justice is not simply the application of the law. The current situation violates common sense". He said that the FBI made 1,559,000 arrests for drug violations in 1998, 78% of them for possession and the campaign wanted to "plant the seed" in the minds of potential jurors that they could acquit people if they be lieved that the punishment did not fit the crime.
The United States is now building a new prison every week to cope with the people serving mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession. The prison population in the US has risen from just under 200,000 in 1966 to 2m today accounting for a quarter of the entire world's prison population.
A further call for change has come from the influential Institute for Policy Studies in Washington which has published the findings of a citizen's commission on drugs policy entitled The War on Drugs: Addicted to Failure. In the foreword to the report, Professor Craig Reinarman states: "Drugs are richly functional scapegoats. They provide the public with a restricted aperture of attribution in which only the chemical bogey man or lone deviant come into view and the social causes of a cornucopia of complex problems are out of the picture."
The chairperson of the commission, actor, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, said: "Having grown up in Harlem during the Great Depression, I knew that the real roots of drug abuse and addiction had more to do with poverty, alienation and despair than crimes of malice."
He pointed out that in California five African-Americans were in jail for every one in a state university. The commission has called Gen McCaffrey's "war on drugs" a "monumental failure" and recommends the ending of mandatory minimum sentences for drug cases. It calls on President Clinton to revise the drug laws.
Belafonte's point was emphasised by this week's publication of a report by Human Rights Watch saying that 482 out of every 100,000 African-American men are in prison for a drug crime compared with 36 out of every 100,000 white men. In Illinois, a black man is 57 times more likely to be jailed for drugs than a white man.
The figures were described as a "national scandal" by the organisation, whose report was funded by George Soros's Open Society Institute.
George Soros makes the cover of Time magazine.
Due in large part to his high profile drug policy-related philanthropy including $1 million to needle exchange, $25 million for reforms in Baltimore, general support to drug policy reform organizations and support of medical marijuana initiatives in California and Arizona, George Soros is featured in Time.
You keeping safe down there? Those storms look nasty.
Not near as bad as the mess in NJ.
More proof, bush IS an idiot.
Belafonte is a moron. Gray, however, is not. Just because you disagree with him does not make his POV invalid.
This is government of the people, by the people and for the people.
I assume that you meant the original sin regarding the fall from the garden when you wrote "sin is the reason why we have to coax things from the earth."
Your unabashed ignorance is so disconcerting it makes me nauseous. I could use a smoke after that nonsense to keep me from hurling. The story of Adam and Eve is not about an evil fruit, but the evil act of being disobedient to the word of God. You should be careful not to lead people astray.
Matthew 15:11
Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
1. Original sin is washed away in baptism.
2. Their are no dietary laws proscribing herbs
3. ...God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:12
4. Romans 14:2 One believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs.
See, it is a fool who believes he may eat all things because he will soon find himself dead. However if one is weak, as in ill health, and needing assistance then with proper wisdom it may be attained from herbs.
I have shown you the word of God. Are you not being disobedient to God while being in support of an unjust, ungodly and unconstitutional war against our citizenry for the mere possession, protection and propagation of an herb gifted from God? Killing, stealing, burning fields, imprisoning in rape camps, invading homes, taking children to be raised by a godless state, these things you see as being in the good favor of God in your falsely puritannical pursuit to purge the world of a purported sin?
Ephesians 6:11
Put on the whole armour of God,
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.
13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God,
that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day,
and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth,
and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Your reply is so incoherent that I must assume you were smoking something BEFORE you replied to my post...
Sorry if some of the words used exceed your vocabulary skills.
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