DRUG ABUSE/HUMAN ABUSE
by Sam Smith
DRUG BUSTS
Getting high on marijuana means you're rebellious, while getting drunk on beer means you're a good old boy. But ask any cop whether he'd rather go into a house full of people high on marijuana or one full of people drunk on beer. They'll tell you they'd much rather deal with people on marijuana. --Rep. Barney Frank
Federal drug enforcement agents recently destroyed several acres of hemp growing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, located in the southwest corner South Dakota. The seizure was the second time in two years law enforcement officials have forcefully prohibited members of the Oglala Lakota Nation from cultivating hemp. Lakota Nation tribal leaders had tried to persuade authorities to call off the raid, arguing that federal and state police had no legal authority to seize their plants. Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele maintains that hemp cultivation is protected under provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which ratified the Lakota Indian Nations' right to grow food and fiber crops on tribal lands. "The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 did not divest the Lakota People of our reserved right to plant and harvest whatever crops we deem beneficial to our reservation," Steele wrote in a July 18 letter to Michelle Tapken, U.S. Attorney for South Dakota. "Therefore we regard the enforcement of our hemp ordinance and prosecution of our marijuana laws as tribal matters to be handled by our Oglala Sioux Tribal Public Safety Law Enforcement Services." The Lakota Nation passed an ordinance in 1998 permitting tribal members who are part of land use associations to cultivate hemp. The ordinance defines industrial hemp as Cannabis sativa plants containing less than one percent THC. The tribe intended to use this year's crop for fiberboard and other building materials. --NORML
In a Barry McCaffrey fever dream come true, America's world-class chess players will soon be getting drug tests before every tournament. Three years ago in an article in Chess Life magazine, the then drug czar proposed drug testing for tournament chess players. McCaffrey met with ridicule at the time, but over the weekend, the US Chess Federation, meeting at its annual conference in Framingham, Massachusetts, voted to make drug testing of chess players a reality. --DRUG REFORM COORDINATION NETWORK :<http://www.drcn.org>
The top executive of Progressive Corporation has donated $7 million to the American Civil Liberties Union. Officials say it's the largest gift ever by an individual. Peter Lewis earmarked $5 million of yesterday's grant for the organization's drug-policy litigation project, which is challenging such practices as drug testing in schools and restrictions on medical marijuana. The ACLU of Ohio Foundation and the national ACLU received a million apiece. Lewis is chairman of the auto insurer in the Cleveland suburb of Mayfield. He's been an ACLU member since 1972.
Three out of four Americans oppose jailing minor drug offenders, including those convicted of purchasing drugs, according to a recently released American Civil Liberties Union poll. The study also found that more than 60 percent of the public support changing current laws so that fewer non-violent offenses are punishable by prison. An equal percentage of respondents said they opposed mandatory sentences for non-violent crimes. --ACLU, http://www.aclu.org/features/f071901a.html
Portugal has forced back the frontiers of drug liberalization in Europe with a law which, at a stroke, decriminalizes the use of all previously banned narcotics, from cannabis to crack cocaine. The new law takes a socially conservative country far ahead of much of northern Europe in treating drug abuse as a social and health problem rather than a criminal one. Vitalino Canas, the drug tsar appointed by the Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, to steer the law into place, said it made more sense to change the law than ignore it, as police forces do in The Netherlands and now experimentally in the Brixton area of south London. "Why not change the law to recognize that consuming drugs can be an illness or the route to illness?" Mr. Canas said. "America has spent billions on enforcement but it has got nowhere. We view drug users as people who need help and care." --GUARDIAN, LONDON
COLOMBIA
A group of Colombian officials and lawmakers criticized their country's US-supported anti-drug policy as "pro-mafioso," expressing concern about the environmental and health risks of aerial spraying of coca crops. "The fumigation policy is a pro-mafioso policy," Colombian Congressman Gustavo Petro told reporters, charging it "serves only to sustain the price of cocaine." "The fumigation policy is crazy and must be stopped because it is unproductive and damaging to the environment and human rights," added Colombian Senator Rafael Orduz. The Colombian concerns were echoed by Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan. "Reducing the consumption of drugs in America does not start with tearing up the environment in Colombia. This spraying is untested. It's dangerous. It has warning labels all over the canisters. It's a very terrible thing to be doing to anybody in any country," he said. --AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
The European Union and non-governmental organizations alike are calling for an alternative approach to development in Colombia. One of their goals is to get the country's small farmers to plant fruits or organic coffee instead of opium poppies and coca, the raw materials for heroin and cocaine . . . The "drug war" that is being waged by the USA and the Colombian government, however, adheres to a different logic. The Colombian authorities are using US aid money to spray poison on coca fields to destroy the plants. Anne Patterson, the US ambassador in Bogota, says that the spraying campaign is a cornerstone of US policy in Colombia . . . But the aerial spraying campaign is counterproductive. Although herbicidal spraying raids killed 58,200 hectares of coca fields in 2000, by the end of the year, the total amount of cropland planted with coca had shot up to 162,000 hectares from 103,000. More and more forests are being cleared for coca production. The government sprayed 55,000 hectares of coca in the first half of this year yet the drug trade continues to boom . . . For security reasons, the crop-dusters usually fly higher than ten meters, the maximum altitude from which the planes are sure to hit their targets with the weed killers. As a result, besides destroying illegal crops, the fountains of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" also end up affecting fruit and vegetable orchards, forests, animals and people. The rate of illness has increased among farmers and Indians. The voices inside Colombia calling for a halt to the spraying are growing louder. The governors of drug-producing regions have lodged a staunch protest against the policy. --GERHARD DILGER, FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU
Six governors from southern Colombia asked President Andris Pastrana to order a halt to the use of glyphosate and other herbicides in eradicating illicit drug crops, charging that the chemicals endanger human health and the environment. [The governors] explained to Pastrana that the situation confronting the region is explosive, as 35,000 indigenous peoples and peasants are threatening to rise up in protest against the fumigations. --INTER PRESS SERVICE
Coca-Cola's bottling plants in Colombia used right-wing death squads to terrorize workers and prevent the organization of unions, it was alleged in a Miami court. The US union United Steelworkers is suing Coca-Cola on behalf of the Colombian union Sinaltrainal for what the lawsuit describes as "the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention and murder" of workers in Colombian plants. Sinaltrainal claims that five of its members working in Coca-Cola bottling plants have been killed since 1994. Coca-Cola denied any responsibility for the alleged atrocities, saying the company did not own the bottling plants, which operated under contract. But union lawyers argued that the world's best-known soft drinks company closely controlled the operations of its contractors and was well aware of the brutal intimidation of workers in the bottling factories. The case has focused attention on frequent complaints by critics of globalization that the process of contracting out work to developing countries allows corporations to shirk their responsibilities for safeguarding the basic rights of their workers. The lawsuit details a litany of assassinations and terror which, it claims, were carried out by rightwing paramilitary groups on behalf of the management of the Colombian bottling plants. --JULIAN BORGER, GUARDIAN, LONDON. MORE http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,525209,00.html.
Sam Smith is editor of THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW,
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