Fuck Yeah Drug Policy
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably
by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the
government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be
enforced. - Albert Einstein
by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the
government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be
enforced. - Albert Einstein
"Nothing changes when it comes to the drug war. Just more death and destruction — and corruption, robberies, muggings, overcrowded prisons, gang wars, and violence, all with no impact on the supply of drugs. They kill one smuggler or they bust one drug cartel, and ten more pop up. Decade after decade after decade doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. Like the Energizer Bunny, the drug war just keep going and going and going."
Jacob Hornberger - History Repeats Itself in Honduran Drug-War Killings | FFF (h/t arielnietzsche)
Why Won’t President Obama Support Our Right To ‘Choom’ A Doobie Like He Did? | Mediaite
Washington Post editor David Maraniss‘ forthcoming book Barack Obama: The Story at points describes the president’s marijuana hijinks during his high-school and Occidental College days. Book excerpts posted online reveal that young Barack Obama frequently smoked marijuana, and he and his “choom gang” developed clever strategies for how to better maximize the impact of the “sticky-green.”
On its own, stories like these about a young adult are actually kind of funny, even humanizing — like something straight out of a stoner comedy. But when you realize it’s about President Obama, it becomes a little less humorous.
Less humorous because President Obama has repeatedly laughed off and dismissed serious discussion about drug policy, like in that 2009 virtual town hall where the president mocked online voters for picking a question about marijuana legalization.
Less humorous because the president shuts down medical marijuana dispensaries with a frequency that would have made Richard Nixon stand up and cheer. He presides over a DOJ, IRS, and DEA that have threatened, audited, and shut down legal pot sellers in California, Colorado, Montana, and Washington. All this despite once promising to respect state laws regarding medical marijuana.
Four tons of marijuana were found floating in the ocean off Dana Point, California, on Sunday.
In this video, Conan investigates this incident’s impact on sea life.
(Source: shits-and-giggles1, via mainstreamrevolution)
Anonymous Declares War on Marijuana Prohibition →
Greetings from Anonymous and Team Vendetta,
As many are aware, Operation Cannabis 420 is a grass roots effort to bring all who use cannabis together for the purpose of legalization. Our efforts have been largely successful in terms of raising awareness and getting the word out. Our video and press releases for Operation Cannabis 420 - Phase 1 have reached countless numbers of people thanks to the internet and the pro-cannabis media. The support we have garnered for this operation is better than we could have dreamed.
Now, we would like to welcome you all to Operation Cannabis 420 - Phase 2! In this phase of the operation we will be focusing on two objectives: 1) Organizing several worldwide marches for cannabis legalization, the first of which is scheduled for October 1st (some of you may live in countries where the 1st falls on a Monday and might need to march a day sooner) and 2) Bringing to the forefront the “narco-warriors” (as they have come to be known). These are primarily the police unions, the private prison contractors, big pharmaceutical companies, the alcohol and tobacco industries, the corporate lobbyists for these organizations and the politicians who accept payoffs to legislate in their favor. These are the people who have a financial stake in keeping cannabis illegal, and are willing to spread lies, incarcerate cannabis users and ruin people’s lives. No more. We are calling them out and will not rest day or night until they end their unjust war on cannabis users.
This is a wake up call. Every single person who uses cannabis and every single person who supports our right to do so must take a stand now. We have too many people languishing in jail for marijuana “offenses”. We have too many people who are still ignorant to the facts of this miracle drug. It has been shown that THC can actually kill brain cancer cells, and also slow the rate of regeneration. It’s been proven that cannabis is extremely beneficial to cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy. These are just some of the benefits we are being denied because of the sleazy activity of a greedy minority.
Join us as we venture to put a stop to this once and for all. Organize an October 1st march for cannabis in your city/town. Talk to everyone. Make people aware. This fight could be won by simple math alone. We have far greater numbers. It’s time to put them to use.
Sincerely,
Team Vendetta
June 9, 2008 - DEA FAST seized 262 tons of hashish (being destroyed in this photo) in Afghanistan.
“People who may mean well promote and enact measures that produce results they neither intended nor anticipated. The explanation for this discrepancy between what is planned for and what results can be found in the study of chaos, or complexity. The ability to predict outcomes is dependent upon an awareness of all factors influencing events. With complex systems, however, such complete knowledge is always unobtainable, meaning that there will always be information loss that will produce unforeseen consequences. This distortion increases with the passage of time.
The hubris that motivates some people to use the power of the state to impose their well-intended visions upon others derives, in part, from an ignorance of the inherent uncertainties that are embedded in complex systems. Arrogance is grounded in the unstated assumption that one’s understanding is so complete as to render their actions infallible.”
— Butler Shaffer - The Unintended Consequences of Good Intentions
Penn Jillette uncorked one hell of a righteous rant about our pot-smoking president and his life-destroying Drug War hypocrisy
(via Reason)
D.E.A. Squads Extend Reach of Drug War Abroad | NYT
The D.E.A. now has five commando-style squads it has been quietly deploying for the past several years to Western Hemisphere nations — including Haiti, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Belize — that are battling drug cartels.
The program — called FAST, for Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team — was created during the George W. Bush administration to investigate Taliban-linked drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Beginning in 2008 and continuing under President Obama, it has expanded far beyond the war zone.
The evolution of the program into a global enforcement arm reflects the United States’ growing reach in combating drug cartels and how policy makers increasingly are blurring the line between law enforcement and military activities, fusing elements of the “war on drugs” with the “war on terrorism.”
The war on drugs is beginning to resemble a real war now more than ever before.
It’s not just the horrifying death toll in places like Mexico and Honduras, it’s the method of American interdiction: Small, commando-style units have busted drug rings and killed dealers in foreign countries. Anti-drug agencies are taking a page from the counter-terrorism playbook.
But the conflicts are different and the tactics don’t always translate. As one critic of the new war on drugs says, its impossible to kill your way out of this problem.
![After Incident, Hondurans Want DEA Ejected | Fox News
Residents of the isolated Mosquito Coast of Honduras have burned down government buildings and are demanding that American drug agents leave the area immediately, intensifying a dispute over whether an antidrug operation there last week left four innocent people dead, including two pregnant women.
“For centuries we have been a peaceful people who live in harmony with nature, but today we declared these Americans to be persona non grata in our territory,” [local leaders] said in a press statement.
source 1 / source 2
original post](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4dw5uSH6Q1qc1ca1o1_250.jpg)
After Incident, Hondurans Want DEA Ejected | Fox News
Residents of the isolated Mosquito Coast of Honduras have burned down government buildings and are demanding that American drug agents leave the area immediately, intensifying a dispute over whether an antidrug operation there last week left four innocent people dead, including two pregnant women.
“For centuries we have been a peaceful people who live in harmony with nature, but today we declared these Americans to be persona non grata in our territory,” [local leaders] said in a press statement.
Photos of Antinarcotics Efforts in Bolivia
“I was the personal photographer of Bolivian general Hugo Banzer during his 1997 presidential campaign. After he won, I asked him to send me somewhere to document something exciting. He selected the Chapare Province of Cochabamba, where I embedded with Bolivia’s Mobile Police Unit for Rural Areas (UMOPAR) from 1997 to 2001. In its heyday, the unit was a highly specialized and DEA-funded subsidiary of Bolivia’s Special Antinarcotics Force, and my assignment was to document its efficiency and success.”
"I guess I never caught that bug where you’re only supposed to care about your own country or your own local area. To me, 49 decapitated Mexicans is just as bad as 49 decapitated Americans and I know if there were 49 decapitated Americans in the street anywhere in the country, it would be like 9/11 all over again. It would be the largest news story for years - if it just happened once - but it happens time and time again in Mexico… and I guess as long as Americans aren’t getting decapitated, apparently the rest of the country, and especially our media, couldn’t give a damn and that’s part of what’s sick and wrong with this country’s media. And so, we march on as if nothing is wrong, as if everything is hunky dory, as if the war on drugs makes sense and hasn’t created these grotesque gangs that grow larger and more grotesque by the day - and it’s not because of the drugs. It’s because the drugs are illegal."
Cenk Uygur commenting on the 49 bodies that were recently found decapitated in Mexico and on the continued War on Drugs, which has claimed over 62,000 lives since just 2006 (via mohandasgandhi)
(via mohandasgandhi)
May 4, 2012: Nine bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border from Laredo, Texas. Police could not confirm who was responsible for the murders but a message seen with the bodies indicated it may have been an attack by the Zetas cartel against the rival Gulf cartel.
The Houston Chronicle is carrying a story with startling revelations of drug gang brutality in Mexico. Among other things, it reports of kidnapping young men and forcing them to engage in contests to the death in order to find and recruit killers. This made me wonder what kinds of things deter people from behaving like this, and what kinds of conditions produce this kind of behavior.
1. The state forbids something, like drugs.
2. Production MUST therefore be illegal, and production will occur because the demand doesn’t disappear when the drug is made illegal.
3. Going illegal is a necessary condition for all those who are willing to produce and supply the drug. The profit motive remains, even heightens, and so there will always be people who will go illegal.
4. The people attracted into the illegal business are going to be the people who already have the least inhibitions about doing anything immoral and illegal. They are the ones most willing to take risks.
5. Competition is all within illegality. This means that moral rules that govern peaceful competition do not prevail among the suppliers. They therefore select among any actions and rules that bring them survival, profits, and growth. The most effective means of gaining market share and preventing the incursion of rivals within a situation of illegal rivalry will include a reputation and readiness to kill and maim so as to enforce one’s will.
6. The means include corrupting law enforcement. This is virtually a necessity and always occurs in these conditions. The results include gang warfare. It also includes uneasy peace among gangs and division into territories and fiefdoms.
7. The competition need not lead to the practices mentioned in this article whose aim is to find and groom the most merciless killers. Yet it probably happened in the 1920s gangs that this mode of competition also prevailed as the many stories of Capone suggest. Most gangster movies also depict that the more brutal gangsters rise to the top.
I don’t claim that this is a complete explanation of what’s going on, but I did want to make the point that what’s going on in Mexico is not a random thing and not a peculiarly Mexican thing. These things often have rational explanations. It’s akin to terrorism and assassination and other forms of violence in that respect. There are often reasons that we can find that explain it even if the behavior is awful.
Houston grandmother in prison for life for first-time drug offense | Houston Chronicle
The U.S. government didn’t offer a reward for the capture of Houston grandmother Elisa Castillo, nor did it accuse her of touching drugs, ordering killings, or getting rich off crime.
But three years after a jury convicted her in a conspiracy to smuggle at least a ton of cocaine on tour buses from Mexico to Houston, the 56-year-old first-time offender is locked up for life - without parole.
Convicted of being a manager in the conspiracy, she is serving a longer sentence than some of the hemisphere’s most notorious crime bosses - men who had multimillion-dollar prices on their heads before their capture.
