THE WAR ON DRUGS
THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE reported this week that Morgan Grams, 21-year-old son of U.S. Senator Rod Grams, was driven home and released by Anoka Chief Deputy Peter Beberg, after ten bags of marijuana were found in the car he was driving. In addition to having marijuana, Grams was driving without a license and was on probation for drinking and driving. Beberg said he pulled over Morgan Grams after receiving a call from the Senator, who said he "learned he might be in trouble, and asked the authorities to find him." Beberg, who is also the Mayor of Anoka, told the Tribune there was no special treatment: "Just because it's Rod Grams' kid doesn't mean that I would back away from it. But there was nothing I could arrest him for." There did seem to be sufficient grounds to arrest Grams' 17-year old passenger, however, who was charged with marijuana possession and spent over a month in a juvenile detention center. Nine of the ten bags were being carried by the passenger, but one was found under Grams' seat. Marijuana aside, Grams' possible violation of his parole--terms of which included a judge's order not to possess alcohol or other mood-altering substances--could have netted him at least three months in jail. Beberg told the Tribune there were beer cans in the car, but they were full and unopened, including the one at Grams' feet. A worker at the car rental agency, however, said that five or six empties were found under the seat.
In 1997 Grams championed legislation requiring eviction of public housing tenants upon discovery of any amount of any illegal drug, on or off housing grounds. He also cosponsored legislation to lower the quantities of powder cocaine that invoke five- and ten-year mandatory minimum sentences, and supported a similar amendment that passed the Senate.
--DRUG REFORM COORDINATION NETWORK
DEBORAH LYNN QUINN has been placed in a "secure" medical unit by the Arizona Corrections Department. Her crime: selling $20 of marijuana (four grams) to a police informant-and then being caught with a small amount of marijuana in her home after being placed on probation. Because she was born with no arms and only a partial left leg, Quinn, 39, can't be sent to a regular prison. So, the state will pay $126,000--or $345 a day--to keep her imprisoned in a special medical unit. By comparison, it costs the Arizona state government only $90 a day to keep a violent felon in a maximum security prison, and only $45-$50 a day to keep a typical inmate behind bars.
While the American public goes along with draconian marijuana laws, a recent US News & World Report survey found that 68% of parents would just talk to a teen if they found pot in a jacket pocket
THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION has filed a complaint against a rural Oklahoma school district that administers drug tests to all students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities. Other school districts have employed mandatory drug-testing, but many of the activities in the Tecumseh School District are tied to the students' classes. Students who refuse to submit to the urine test for the activity would then be forced to drop the associated class, thus losing credits for graduation. The ACLU contends this is a violation of a student's right to a public education, as well as the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. "First, schools wanted to test student athletes, then it was students in extracurricular activities, and now it's students competing in quiz bowls and performing in chorus. Where does it end?" said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project. "The district's drug testing policy is more about symbolism than substance. Tecumseh officials initiated urine testing without any evidence of a drug problem at the school and at a time when government reports show that teen drug use is on the decline nationally."
--ACLU COMPLAINT, <www.aclu.org/court/tecumseh.html>
SIXTY-ONE PERCENT OF MAINERS voted "yes" to Initiative Question 2, which asked, "Do you want to allow patients with specific illnesses to grow and use small amounts of marijuana for treatment, as long as such use is approved by a doctor?" Maine becomes the sixth state to legalize the medical use of marijuana by voter initiative, and the first state east of the Mississippi River. The other states are California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Voters in Nevada approved a medical use initiative in 1998, and as an amendment to the state constitution, vote again on the issue in 2000. Colorado voters will also be voting on an initiative in November of 2000, where it has already been qualified for the ballot. District of Columbia voters approved medical marijuana in 1998, but Congress is considering a bill to override the results.
THE UNITED STATES' WAR ON DRUGS is a $150 billion failure that has failed to reduce the supply of illicit drugs, resulting in negative public health consequences, according to a report published by the National Association of Public Health Policy in its latest issue of the Journal of Public Health Policy. The report states the $150 billion would be better spent on prevention, treatment, and research programs. NAPHP estimates 31 percent of Americans have used an illicit drug at least once, but only six percent can be considered drug abusers or addicts. "It is clear that most persons who take illicit drugs are experimental or socio-recreational users," according to the report. "The typical drug user is scarcely distinguishable from the typical citizen, and most were introduced to illicit drugs by a close friend, not a pusher. . . . This government advocates a policy (the war on drugs) which treats all illicit use as abuse. This is a major cause for the failure of the drug war and prohibitionist policies in general."
DRUG FACT: The average federal prison sentence imposed in 1994 for drug offenses was 13 months longer than the avenge sentence for rape and 33 months longer than the average sentence for aggravated assault. Drug offenders are often young, nonviolent persons vulnerable to rape and assault while in prison.
--CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY FOUNDATION, <www.cjpf.org>
LEGALIZING DRUGS: The argument about legalizing drugs usually misses a key point; illegal drugs have been repeatedly legalized throughout the so-called War on Drugs. Drugs are legalized when a US Attorney decides not to take any cases involving less than a certain amount. Drugs were certainly legalized in Arkansas under the regime of Governor Clinton. And methadone is little more than a legalized version of heroin that makes money for pharmaceutical companies rather than drug dealers.
Now, federal officials have reclassified the prescription drug Marinol, which is basically synthetic (and corporatized) THC, one of the key ingredients of marijuana. According to an article by Peter McWilliams in the December issue of Playboy, the drug can now be prescribed by phone or fax by doctors who can order as many as five automatic refills every six months. Drug overlord Barry McCaffrey has called Marinol the only "safe and proper way" to make THC available to the public. Not only does the reclassification make Marinol available to up to 75 million Americans who suffer from chronic, debilitating pain, it undermines drug tests because, says McWilliams, there is no legally recognized test that distinguishes between the synthetic THG of Marinol and the natural THC of marijuana. McWilliams says Marinol could become as big as Viagra: "Marinol is a great high, too, rather like eating hash brownies. Don't even think about driving on it. Marinol's makers suggest you take your first dose only in the presence of a "responsible adult."
So once again, a drug has been legalized after the pharmaceutical corporations figured out how to do, artificially and at a big profit, what nature once offered for the picking. The natural substance, of course, remains illegal.
THE WAR AGAINST GENERIC DRUGS: The model for Freevibes is the National Partnership for a Somewhat Drug-Free America, which, the media is careful not to mention, gets major backing from the tobacco and liquor drug industries anxious to not face still more competition from pot. Rare for a mainstream outlet, therefore, was this week's New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan, which addressed the hypocrisy:
"You would be hard-pressed to explain the taxonomy of chemicals underpinning the drug war to an extraterrestrial. Is it, for example, addictiveness that causes society to condemn a drug? (No; nicotine is legal, and millions of Americans have battled addictions to prescription drugs.) So then, our inquisitive alien might ask, is safety the decisive factor? (Not really; over-the counter and prescription drugs kill more than 45,000 Americans every year while, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, "There is no risk of death from smoking marijuana.") Is it drugs associated with violent behavior that your society condemns? (If so, alcohol would still be illegal.) Perhaps, then, it is the promise of pleasure that puts a drug beyond the pale? (That would once again rule out alcohol, as well as Viagra.) Then maybe the molecules you despise are the ones that alter the texture of consciousness, or even a human's personality? (Tell that to someone who has been saved from depression by Prozac.)
"At this point our extraterrestrial would probably throw up his appendages and ask, can we at least say that the drugs you approve of all have a capital letter at the beginning of their names and a 'tm' at the end?"
A TRACTOR-TRAILER full of seed destined for a birdseed factory was stopped and seized in Detroit, Michigan, by U.S. Customs officials on orders from the DEA. The cargo was listed as sterilized hemp seed from Kenex, a farming company based in Ontario, Canada, where it is licensed to breed, grow, process and manufacture hemp and hemp products. . . . The problem arose when the DEA literally chose to take the law into its own hands by redefining the law as it relates to marijuana, despite the fact that Congress, when drafting the Controlled Substance Act of 1937, excluded from its definition of marijuana, "the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination." Unapologetically, Dean Boyd, spokesperson for Customs, told us, "The law is the law. We don't want to get in a political back and forth on the merits of hemp seed. We have to uphold the law." But he was quoting the law according to the DEA, not the act of Congress. Of the 32 countries that grow and import hemp, none is mentioned in the DEA's congressional report on drug-producing nations.
-- JACK ANDERSON