Legal Drugs 101

Donald Trump: “You Have to Legalize” to Win the War on Drugs

2017-01-23T23:41:00.001-08:00

from thejointblog.com

January 23, 2017

Years before becoming the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump was firmly in support of legalizing drugs to end the drug war.

“We’re losing badly the war on drugs”, Trump said in a 1990 Miami Herald interview. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.”

Over 25 years later, and how newly-elected President Trump will handle the war on drugs is yet to be seen. On the campaign trail he mostly strayed away from the subject; the comments he did make were unfortunately more aligned with a typical Republican candidate than his 1990 remarks, but what he’ll actually do as president is entirely unknown.

What is clear, however, is that there was a point when Trump supported legalization; and it was decades before it has become a mainstream issue. With this is mind, it may be worth giving Trump a chance on the issue; or at the very least it’s something to be slightly optimistic about. Of course with cabinet picks like Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, there’s also plenty of reason for pessimism.

Point being, Trump may or may not end up being a president that increases or helps diminish the drug war; but if he chooses to expand it there’s clearly no excuses, as he knew better many years ago.

How Ecstasy Drugs Work - BBC Documentary

2016-10-11T11:44:00.002-07:00

from youtube

Subjective stages of MDMA Experience for one young girl

2016-10-11T11:40:00.003-07:00

from youtube

Editorial: Legalize – and tax – marijuana

2016-08-07T10:15:00.001-07:00

from concordmoitor.com / Editorial

Sunday, August 07, 2016

STATE HOUSE

An income tax proposal continues to be a political kiss of death in New Hampshire, and no current gubernatorial candidate has proposed one. That almost certainly means more years of muddling along with a regressive tax system, insufficient revenue, underfunded schools, neglected responsibilities and all the other ills of a budget that relies on robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The only interesting revenue proposal to come from a gubernatorial candidate so far was put on the table by former Portsmouth mayor and Democratic candidate for governor Steve Marchand. He wants to see marijuana legalized and taxed. He estimates that would raise $30 million per year, which could be used to restore school building aid and help fund education.

Marchand would raise another $30 million by increasing the Business Profits Tax. That’s a wrongheaded and counterproductive idea with no chance of passage. But his tax on marijuana should be studied.

A bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Michael Brewster of Barnstead called for doing just that, but it was declared inexpedient to legislate earlier this year.

New Hampshire, the first state to establish a lottery and a pioneer in opening liquor stores in interstate rest areas, will not lead the charge to tax marijuana.

Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana by adults and five more, including Vermont and Massachusetts, will vote on whether to do so this fall.

Colorado and Washington already do so, and so far they’ve raised about double the revenue they expected. New Hampshire, should it legalize sales, will do what it always does: Locate outlets on its borders and structure pricing to maximize sales to nonresidents.

Legalization would be a tough sell and, given the drug’s harmful effect on the developing brains of youth, would have to be tightly regulated. But as Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed out recently in arguing for legalization and taxation, the young already have easy access to marijuana of unknown potency at affordable prices.

Often, if not typically, marijuana is purchased from dealers who also offer other illicit wares, including amphetamines, pyschedelics and even hard drugs. They have an incentive to urge customers to upgrade, and purchasing any of the drugs makes the buyer a criminal. That, we believe, is the most important way marijuana can function as a gateway drug.

Legalize marijuana use and move its sale into state stores, and several things will happen. Buyers won’t become criminals and burden the justice system. The gateway effect will be minimized. Criminals, including drug gangs, will be denied a big portion of their revenue and easy access to customers. That alone is a strong argument in favor of legalization.

Marijuana is a multi-billion-dollar industry, one that is growing rapidly. As the state dominoes fall, the federal government will rethink the way it classifies the drug.

Already, Microsoft has created software to allow the easy tracking and accounting of marijuana sales, and eventually the federal prohibition on accepting funds from marijuana transactions will be lifted.

It’s too soon to give an unqualified thumbs up to marijuana legalization but not too soon to formally study the idea and track the outcome in other states.

Should the change be made, the revenue raised, even if it’s twice Marchand’s estimate, won’t be enough to put an end to New Hampshire’s structural deficit. But it might be enough to help the state meet its responsibility to its students, poor, disabled and mentally ill.

Solving the problem long term will take what no politician in recent years has dared to propose: an income tax.

Body Count Rises as Philippine President Wages War on Drugs

2016-08-02T22:45:00.001-07:00

from nytimes

By JASON GUTIERREZAUG. 2, 2016

Jennilyn Olayres weeping over the body of her husband, Michael Siaron, who was killed in the Manila metropolitan area last month. Czar Dancel/Reuters

MANILA — Since Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippinesjust over a month ago, promising to get tough on crime by having the police and the military kill drug suspects, 420 people have been killed in the campaign, according to tallies of police reports by the local news media.

Most were killed in confrontations with the police, while 154 were killed by unidentified vigilantes. This has prompted 114,833 people to turn themselves in, as either drug addicts or dealers, since Mr. Duterte took office, according to national police logs.

Addressing Congress last week in his first State of the Nation address, Mr. Duterte reiterated his take-no-prisoners approach, ordering the police to “triple” their efforts against crime.

“We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or been put behind bars or below the ground, if they so wish,” he said.

But human rights groups, Roman Catholic activists and the families of many of those killed during the crackdown say that the vast majority were poor Filipinos, many of whom had nothing to do with the drug trade. They were not accorded an accusation and a trial, but were simply shot down in the streets, the critics say.

“These are not the wealthy and powerful drug lords who actually have meaningful control over supply of drugs on the streets in thePhilippines,” said Phelim Kine, a deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia.

“We’re small
people, insignificant.”

JENNILYN OLAYRES, WHOSE HUSBAND WAS KILLED BY UNIDENTIFIED GUNMEN

Critics of the president’s campaign have rallied around the case of Michael Siaron, a 29-year-old rickshaw driver in Manila, who was shot one night by unidentified gunmen as he pedaled his vehicle in search of a passenger. When his wife rushed to the scene, a photographer took a picture of her cradling his body in the street, and the photograph quickly gained wide attention.

Scribbled in block letters on a cardboard sign left near his body was the word “pusher.” His family members insist that he was not involved in the drug trade, though they said he sometimes used meth.

Indirectly acknowledging criticism that his policies trample over the standard judicial process, Mr. Duterte said that human rights “cannot be used as a shield to destroy the country.”

He has called for drug users and sellers to turn themselves in or risk being hunted down, a threat backed up by the bodies piling up near daily on the streets of Philippine cities.

The approach appears to be driving down crime: The police say that they have arrested more than 2,700 people on charges related to using or selling illegal drugs, and that crime nationwide has fallen 13 percent since the election, to 46,600 reported crimes in June, from 52,950 in May.

Mr. Duterte’s crackdown has been hugely popular. Filipinos, pummeled by years of violent crime and corrupt, ineffective law enforcement, handed him an overwhe l ming victory in the May presidential election, and have largely embraced his approach.

Former addicts and dealers took an oath last month, promising not to use or sell drugs, in Tanauan, south of Manila, as part of a government campaign. CreditErik De Castro/Reuters

A national opinion poll conducted after his election and just before he took office found that 84 percent of Filipinos had “much trust” in him.

The model for Mr. Duterte’s policies is Davao City, where he was mayor for most of the past 20 years. Draconian laws there, including a strict curfew and a smoking ban as well as a zero-tolerance approach to drug users and sellers, have been credited with turning the city into an oasis of safety in a region plagued by violence.

The dark side of that approach was that more than 1,000 people were killed by government-sanctioned death squads during his administration, according to several independent investigations.

Mr. Duterte has denied having direct knowledge of death squads, but he has long called for addressing crime by killing suspects, whom he calls criminals and has referred to as “a legitimate target of assassination.”

He has repeatedly said that those hooked on meth, the most popular drug here, were beyond saving or rehabilitation.

He ran for president largely on the pledge of applying the same policies nationwide, promising to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office. While the number may have been typical Duterte bravado, the threat of mass killing appears to have been real.

On Tuesday, the International Drug Policy Consortium, a network of nongovernmental organizations, issued a letter urging the United Nations drug control agencies “to demand an end to the atrocities currently taking place in the Philippines” and to state unequivocally that extrajudicial killings “do not constitute acceptable drug control measures.”

Ramon Casiple, a political analyst at the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, said that he shared those concerns but that it was too early to decide whether Mr. Duterte’s approach is effective. “Let’s give him his 100 days,” Mr. Casiple said.

Mr. Duterte has recently raised his sights beyond street-level users and dealers, accusing five police generals of protecting drug lords, though he presented no specific evidence.

He also publicly accused a mayor, the mayor’s son and a prominent businessman of drug trafficking, threatening their lives if they did not surrender.

But the people killed on the street tend to be more like Mr. Siaron, the rickshaw driver.

Mr. Siaron lived with his wife in a shack above a garbage-strewn creek. Having never finished high school, he survived on odd jobs like house painting and working in fast-food restaurants.

Lately he had been pedaling a rickshaw, earning about $2 a day ferrying passengers though the warren of alleyways in a run-down part of metropolitan Manila.

The body of a drug suspect killed in a police operation last month in metropolitan Manila. President Rodrigo Duterte took office in late June, vowing to deploy the police and the military to kill such suspects to reduce crime. CreditCzar Dancel/Reuters

On the night he died, he had stopped by his father’s fruit stand to ask for an apple.

Then he told his father he would seek one more fare before heading home. As he rode off, gunmen on motorcycles sped by, pumping several bullets into him.

What happened next turned him into a national symbol of the human toll of Mr. Duterte’s war.

When she heard he had been shot, Mr. Siaron’s wife, Jennilyn Olayres, ran into the street, burst through police lines and collapsed next to him on the asphalt. The photographer snapped the picture: a distraught woman cradling her lifeless husband under a streetlight, a Pietà of the Manila slums.

The police have not commented publicly about the case and have not accused Mr. Siaron of selling drugs.

“My husband was a simple man,” Ms. Olayres said at his wake several days later. “He may have used drugs, but he was not violent and never bothered anyone. His only concern was looking for passengers so we can eat three meals a day.”

During his speech to Congress, Mr. Duterte dismissed the photo, which had appeared on the front page of The Philippine Daily Inquirer the previous day under the banner headline “Thou shall not kill.”

“There you are sprawled on the ground, and you are portrayed in a broadsheet like Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ,” he said. “That’s just drama.”

But if the antidrug campaign has targeted people on the margins of society, Mr. Siaron is an apt symbol.

“We’re small people, insignificant,” Ms. Olayres said through sobs as she stood next to her husband’s coffin. “We may be invisible to you, but we are real. Please stop the killings.”

America Wants Legalization, Trump and Pence Don’t

2016-07-26T15:25:00.002-07:00

from marijuananews.com

By Chloe Sommers -

Jul 21, 2016

It’s official, Donald Trump’s plus-one on the Republican ticket is Indiana Governor Mike Pence and no matter what side of the war on drugs you think Trump will land on – one thing is clear, Mike Pence is terrible for cannabis legalization.

Pence’s anti-cannabis view is not in step with his constituents, and it won’t be with the American people either.

Going back to at least 2012, a majority of Indianans support legalization. An October 2012 Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll revealed 54% favored decriminalization and 38% opposed. When the April 2013 Howey Politics Poll asked the same question, 56% favored and 37% opposed. However, Gov. Pence remains a steadfast adversary to Indiana’s marijuana movement.

This year, more than half, 58 percent, of Americans are polling in favor of legalization. But that doesn’t guarantee the GOP nominees will back up the will of the American people when it comes to legalization.

Trump enjoys flip-flopping on issues from nuclear proliferation to abortion, so there’s really no telling where he will stand on medical marijuana and legalization.

Many cannabis supporters hold onto the hope that he will be the Republican to finally support cannabis because of his love of money and business. For instance, marijuana is expected to become a $44 BILLION dollar a year business by the year 2020, according to a forecast from The Marijuana Business Factbook on CBS.

Here’s The Donald’s stance(s) on legalization:

“In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state. … Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen — right? Don’t we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.” Washington Post, October 29, 2015
“I’d say [regulating marijuana] is bad. Medical marijuana is another thing, but I think it’s bad and I feel strongly about that. [Moderator: “What about the states’ right aspect of it?”] If they vote for it, they vote for it… But I think, medical marijuana, 100%.” C-SPAN, June 23, 2015
“We’re losing badly the War on Drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.” Miami Herald, April 14, 1990

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) agrees, Trump isn’t a complete failure when it comes to cannabis. They give him a ‘C+’, because he sometimes says that he is for states’ rights, and a businessman. Not to be pinned to his words, Trump and his campaign have shown they can and will defend Trump’s most recent position on any given issue. The most recent example is the Trump camp’s denial of Melania Trump’s speech plagiarizing parts of First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. The Trump campaign then did a 180-degree turnaround, acknowledging that it indeed did happen – and then praised the mistake for making Melania’s speech the talk of the town.

Anti-Marijuana Pence in Indiana

Despite a majority of the state supporting the plant, Indiana continues to enforce some of the most severe punishments for marijuana in the nation — penalties for marijuana-related offenses range from about 1-6 years and $1,000 – $10,000 dollars. Albeit harsh, it’s still better than it was prior to 2013’s Indiana Criminal Code Revision. The revision to Indiana’s criminal code, House Bill 1006, was a reflection of the growing support for marijuana law reform.

Pence signed it into law when he first entered office but quickly vocalized his disdain for the reform at a press conference. “I think we need to focus on reducing crime, not reducing penalties,” said Pence.

In the lead-up to the 2012 Indiana gubernatorial elections, he clearly spoke out against cannabis at the Fort Wayne gubernatorial debate. On medical marijuana, Mike Pence called it a gateway drug, “I would not support the decriminalization of marijuana. I’ve seen too many people become involved with marijuana and get sidetracked. We need to get more serious about confronting the scourge of drugs.”

Trump is the king of adaptation, he and his VP pick will conform to the Republican National Committee’s stance.

Republicans Officially Shun Marijuana

The Republican National Committee’s 2016 official platform doesn’t reflect America’s shifting attitude. The term ‘marijuana’ is mentioned only once, under the subheading ‘Combatting Drug Abuse’:

“The progress made over the last three decades against drug abuse is eroding, whether for cultural reasons or for lack of national leadership. In many jurisdictions, marijuana is virtually legalized despite its illegality under federal law. At the other end of the drug spectrum, heroin use nearly doubled from 2003 to 2013, while deaths from heroin have quadrupled. All this highlights the continuing conflicts and contradictions in public attitudes and public policy toward illegal substances. Congress and a new administration should consider the long range implications of these trends for public health and safety and prepare to deal with the problematic consequences.”

Lumping together medical marijuana and opioids under one heading, the Republican National Committee is leaps and bounds behind the more progressive Democratic platform. As stated in a draft of their party platform:

“We believe that the states should be laboratories of democracy on the issue of marijuana, and those states that want to decriminalize marijuana should be able to do so. We support policies that will allow more research on marijuana, as well as reforming our laws to allow legal marijuana businesses to exist without uncertainty. And we recognize our current marijuana laws have had an unacceptable disparate impact, with arrest rates for marijuana possession among African Americans far outstripping arrest rates among whites, despite similar usage rates.”

By far, the most 420-friendly nominees belong to the Green and Libertarian parties. Gary Johnson is the only third-party candidate on the leadership board, currently polling at 13 percent, according to the latest CNN/ORC poll. Hillary Clinton has 42 percent, Donald Trump 37 percent.

What’s exciting about these polling numbers is if Gary Johnson holds steady at 15 percent, he could be invited on the debate stage with Clinton and Trump.

The VP pick, the RNC platform, and rumors that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie could be tapped for Attorney General all point to the rolling back of any progress the marijuana movement has seen in the past decade. As Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie has single-handedly strangled his state’s medical marijuana program. It’s hard to prescribe, obtain, and dispense cannabis in The Garden State because of the anti-marijuana politician.

The combination of Pence and Christie atop of the Republican National Committee’s anti-marijuana platform will have Trump running far away from any support he once had for legalization and the cannabis industry.

In Fort Myers, A Non-Terror Mass Murder America Decided To Ignore

2016-07-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

from dailybeast

ZOMBIES

07.25.16 8:07 PM ET

Dead is dead, whether the bullets are fired by a gangbanger or by a terrorist.

Fort Myers had been declared unsafe for zombies months before Monday’s mass shooting.

Back in October, the organizers of the city’s annual ZombieCon announced they would not be returning after five people were shot at that year’s event. A 20-year-old college football player died.

Yet, other than the once-a-year Zombies, nobody who was not directly affected by the bloodshed paid much attention to that 2015 carnage. The next two mass shootings in Fort Myers received even less notice.

The same likely would have also been true of the one just after midnight Monday at Club Blu even though two teenagers were killed and 19 wounded, including a 12 year old.

But because this mass shooting was at a nightclub, it immediately brought to mindthe June 11 killing of 49 people at Pulse in Orlando by a gunman who was one of the lonely losers drawn to ISIS.

For a brief time, the mass shooting at Club Blu became a subject of intense focus by both law enforcement and the media. Then came an announcement that transformed a scramble into a shrug even though the dead included an 18-year-old basketball player of great promise and a 14-year-old who leaves behind a twin brother.

© Joe Skipper / Reuters

“The Fort Myers Police Department would like to confirm that this incident is not an act of terror (as it has been referred) or terrorists.”

Instead, the shooting appeared to be just more gangbanging such as rages in America cities with such frequency that it is reported in year-to-date statistics instead of at the top of the evening news. The country did not even shrug when 47 people were shot just in Chicago this past weekend, raising the total there for the year to just under 2,300. The killing of bystanders tends to rouse some interest, especially if the victim is a baby, but even that is quickly forgotten.

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Unless, of course, you happen to live in a neighborhood where catching a stray bullet is a constant danger. The local paper in Fort Myers reported on a woman who lives with steel hurricane shutters pulled down in all weathers after her living room window was shot out. Nobody suspected ISIS.

Just as ISIS proved to have nothing to do with the gunfire at Club Blu or any of the three other mass shootings in Fort Myers in the last nine months. Those were preceded by a mass shooting in 2014 in which five died, two of them children, aged six and two.

One counter-terrorism investigator who joined in the scramble early Monday after the initial reports of another night club shooting in Florida had previously worked street crime. He allowed that he was disheartened to see how public interest evaporated almost instantly when it became known the Club Blu gunfire was not a terrorist attack.

The investigator suggested that those who join gangs do so for the same underlying reasons as those who join ISIS. He did not need to say that dead is dead, whether the bullets are fired by a gangbanger or by a terrorist.

Among those murdered Monday was 18-year-old Stef’An Strawder. He had been on Facebook on Sunday evening.

“I'm Thinking About Going To This Party Who All Going?” he asked,

He was apparently talking about what has been variously described as a “birthday bash” and a “swimsuit and glow” party for teens at Club Blu. He was leaving a few minutes after midnight when as many as five young gunmen began firing in the street. He fell fatally wounded.

Also murdered was 14-year-old Sean Archilles. He was rushed to the hospital. His twin brother, who styles his name as DSean on Facebook, went online while the doctors were trying to save him.

“Why me why him man I told y'all something was gonna happen no one listens to dsean now he got shot man I'm praying for him.”

A short time later, DSean posted again.

“R.i.p Sean Archilles 03/28/02 to 07/25/16”

By then, police had taken three young men into custody and were looking for others. At least one of the trio appears to have been a close friend of a 17 year-old who was found shot to death in 2014.

In that still unsolved case, the dead teen was the new father of one child. The birth of another was imminent. And that meant two youngsters had a father who was shot to death before he was 18.

As detectives continued to work on the Club Blu case, the Democrats were starting their convention up in Philadelphia. Bernie Sanders might have beat Hillary Clinton despite the sandbagging by the DNC were it not for his opposition to holding gun companies liable for the unending carnage.

That gave her a way to challenge Sanders and claim herself as the truer champion for social justice. She, in so doing, forced herself to speak more about gun control than she might have otherwise. She might even try to do something about it if she gets elected.

The folks who worry about ISIS but shrug at the other killings fear only for themselves and perhaps their own kind.

Meanwhile, too many cities are unsafe even for zombies.

Prosecutor: Venezuela First Lady's Nephews Confess Drug Deal

2016-07-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

from nytimes

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSJULY 24, 2016, 1:51 A.M. E.D.T.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Two nephews of Venezuela's powerful first lady allegedly confessed to trying to smuggle 800 kilograms (1,763 pounds) of cocaine into the U.S. following their arrest last year in Haiti, according to prosecutors in the politically-charged case.

The court filings Friday by prosecutors shed new light on the case that has sounded alarm bells about high-level corruption and drug trafficking by Venezuela's political elite at a time of increasing economic and political turmoil in the South American nation.

Efrain Campo and Francisco Flores were arrested last November in Haiti in a sting operation coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration. They were then flown to New York, where they are in jail awaiting trial for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The documents filed Friday seek to refute a motion by the defendants' attorneys to suppress their post-arrest statements to DEA agents on their way to New York because they allegedly hadn't been informed of their rights and were coerced after being taken into custody by armed men in ski masks in what they at first thought was a kidnapping.

Prosecutors allege Campo and Flores hatched the drug deal in about two months. They said it was first brought to the attention of the DEA by a wheelchair-bound cooperating witness nicknamed "El Sentado," who met Campo and Flores in Honduras and ended up killed three weeks after their arrest.

As part of the DEA investigation, confidential sources were sent to Caracas to meet with the two young men. The court documents include photographs allegedly taken from a secret video of those meetings that prosecutors say show Campo examining a brick of cocaine with plastic gloves as Flores looks on. Campo allegedly said the narcotics came from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

During the meetings, Campo allegedly brags about owning several Ferraris and being at "war" with the U.S. and Venezuela's opposition. He also describes high-level connections with the government that will make it easy to move drugs through Caracas' international airport and prevent any cocaine-laden plane from being follow by law enforcement because, he said, "it departs as if .... someone from our family was on the plane," according to a statement by U.S. attorneys for the southern district of New York.

In the court filings, Campo first suggested to agents that the cocaine deal was to fund Cilia Flores' congressional campaign.

"I know I said that but in reality it was for me," a court document quotes Campo as telling a DEA agent.

"Campo stated that friends in the drug business had told him to be careful not to get robbed so he made the statement regarding his Mom's campaign for protection," the DEA agent wrote in his post-arrest report.

In reality, Campo said he was struggling financially, earning just $800 a week from a fleet of taxis he owned in Panama, according to the documents. He also described being rebuffed by his cousin, Erick Malpica-Flores, then finance director of state-run oil giant PDVSA, in a plan to charge commissions to businesses trying to collect on debts owed them by the company.

Campo, 29, said he and his wanted to make $20 million from multiple drug shipments, enough to go live in the U.S. with his wife and child. He said his family would "kill him" if they knew what he was up to, according to the documents.

Campo's lawyer didn't immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The U.S has been steadily stepping up pressure on high-ranking members of Venezuela's military, police and government officials for their role in making the country an important transit zone for narcotics. Several Venezuelan officials, including a former defense minister and head of military intelligence, have been indicted or sanctioned in the U.S., and many more are under investigation.

Cilia Flores, who President Nicolas Maduro calls the "First Combatant," is one of the most influential members of Venezuela's socialist government and a constant presence alongside her husband.

The single time she commented on her nephews' case in January she said they had been kidnapped by the DEA, which was kicked out of Venezuela a decade ago, in an attempt to destabilize her husband's rule.

___

Joshua Goodman is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman

Libertarian Gary Johnson: Drug war 'root cause' of police shootings

2016-07-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

from politico

Poor relations between police and African-Americans stems from the criminalization of drug use, Gary Johnson said. | Getty

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/gary-johnson-dallas-shooting-225294#ixzz4E26k2NML
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Gary Johnson believes the tensions between police and minorities that led to two high-profile police shootings and the deaths of five Dallas police officers has a root cause: The long-running war on drugs.

The libertarian nominee for president did not directly tie the drug war to the shooting deaths in Minnesota and Louisiana by police or the sniper killings of five officers in Texas this week. But poor relations between police and African-Americans stems from the criminalization of drug use, he said.

“That’s the common thread. Shootings are occurring with black people, black people are dying,” he added. “This is an escalation.”“The root is the war on drugs, I believe. Police knocking down doors, shooting first,” Johnson said in an interview Friday in Washington. “If you are (black and) arrested in a drug-related crime, there is four times more likelihood of going to prison than if you are white. And shooting is part of the same phenomenon.”

The former Republican governor of New Mexico is pitching a complete rewrite of the nation’s drug policy as part of his underdog run for the presidency alongside his running mate, former Massachusetts GOP Gov. Bill Weld. Johnson wants to legalize marijuana and find other ways to deal with harder drugs than long periods of incarceration.

He said that will soon happen, predicting that California will vote this fall to legalize marijuana and President Barack Obama will remove cannabis from its listing as a Class 1 drug. "I think Obama’s going to do that going out the door," Johnson said.

“The focus on drugs needs to be as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. It can be illegal but does it need to be criminal? Do you need to go to jail for drugs?” Johnson said. “I do believe that the root of the militarization, knocking on doors, is a drug war phenomenon.”

The laid-back libertarian, dressed in jeans and an open-collared button-down in a hotel dining room, declined to join Republicans in criticizing Obama for pointing to “powerful weapons” this week as a cause of violence between police officers and minorities. But Johnson said the focus on assault rifles is misguided.

“That is a category of rifle that contains 30 million rifles. If you ban those rifles tomorrow and said hand ‘em in," only half of the weapons would actually be turned over, Johnson said. "And we’re going to have a whole new criminal class of people.”

Johnson said that as president he’d be open to proposals designed to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and the mentally ill. But he said he’d seen no such workable proposals in Congress, despite unsuccessful attempts by both Democrats and Republicans.

Carrots and sticks fail to change behaviour in cocaine addiction

2016-06-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

from medicalpress.com

June 16, 2016

A pile of cocaine hydrochloride. Credit: DEA Drug Enforcement Agency, public domain

People who are addicted to cocaine are particularly prone to developing habits that render their behaviour resistant to change, regardless of the potentially devastating consequences, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. The findings may have important implications for the treatment of cocaine addiction as they help explain why such individuals take drugs even when they are aware of the negative consequences, and why they find their behaviour so difficult to change.

"Addiction does not happen overnight but develops from behaviour that has been repeated over and over again until individuals lose control," said Dr Karen Ersche from the Department of Psychiatry, who led the research.

In a study reported today in the journal Science, Dr Ersche and colleagues tested 125 participants, of whom 72 were addicted to cocaine and 53 had no history of drug addiction, on their inclination to develop habits. They found that people with cocaine addiction were much more likely than healthy participants to make responses in an automatic fashion, but only if they had previously been rewarded for responding in the same way. The addicted individuals simply continued repeating the same responses they had previously learned, regardless of whether their actions made sense or not.

In a different context, however, where participants had to perform an action to avoid electrical shocks, people with cocaine addiction did not develop habits. In fact, they were much less inclined than the control participants to make an effort to avoid the electric shock in the first place.

"Our experiments highlight the particular difficulties faced when it comes to changing behaviour in people with cocaine addiction: they are highly responsive if their behaviour is rewarded - for example a 'high' from drug use - but then quickly switch to autopilot, becoming unable to change that behaviour in light of different consequences," said Dr Ersche. "By contrast, when cocaine users are facing adversity, they are less inclined than healthy people to do something about it.

"These findings have significant implications for the treatment of people with cocaine addiction. Clearly punitive approaches are ineffective, as the prospect of something bad happening to them won't make cocaine users more likely to change their behaviour. Interventions that build on their particular strength in developing habits, by training the implementation of more desirable habits to replace drug-taking habits, are likely to be more effective. Our findings also suggest that cocaine users would need to be actively protected from - rather than simply warned about - adverse consequences, because they will likely fail to avoid them if left to their own devices."

There is currently no medical treatment for cocaine addiction - most individuals are treated with talking or cognitive therapy. According to Dr Ersche, the results show that a different approach to treating cocaine addiction might be of enhanced benefit to cocaine users. The researchers are now aiming to better understand the brain systems underlying cocaine users' proneness to habits and their lack of avoidance, and to use this knowledge to develop more effective treatments for cocaine addiction.

In the first experiment conducted by Ersche and her colleagues, participants were asked to learn the relationship between pictures, and a correct response was rewarded with points. After a long training period, participants were informed that some pictures were no longer worth any points. Participants with cocaine addiction were less likely to take on board the information about the change in reward, and were also more likely to continue responding in an automatic way, regardless of whether they were rewarded or not.
In a second experiment, the same participants were shown two different pictures on a screen, which they learned to associate with receiving an electric shock. Participants were then taught a strategy on how they could avoid the shocks by pressing a foot pedal. Those participants with cocaine addiction were less good at avoiding the electric shocks in the first place, possibly due to learning and/or motivational impairment, and subsequently did not develop avoidance habits.

Explore further: Abnormal brain structure linked to chronic cocaine abuse
More information: "Carrots and sticks fail to change behavior in cocaine addiction," Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf3700
Journal reference: Science

What are hallucinogens?

2016-05-07T17:26:00.001-07:00

What are hallucinogens?

Hallucinogens are a diverse group of drugs that alter perception (awareness of surrounding objects and conditions), thoughts, and feelings. They cause hallucinations, or sensations and images that seem real though they are not. Hallucinogens can be found in some plants and mushrooms (or their extracts) or can be human-made. People have used hallucinogens for centuries, mostly for religious rituals. Common hallucinogens include the following:

Photo by DEA
Blotter sheet of LSD-soaked paper squares that users take by mouth

Ayahuasca is a tea made from one of several Amazonian plants containingdimethyltryptamine(DMT), the primary mind-altering ingredient. Ayahuasca is also known as Hoasca, Aya, and Yagé.
DMT is a powerful chemical found in some Amazonian plants. Manufacturers can also make DMT in a lab. The drug is usually a white crystalline powder. A popular name for DMT is Dimitri.
D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is one of the most powerful mood-changing chemicals. It is a clear or white odorless material made from lysergic acid, which is found in a fungus that grows on rye and other grains. LSD has many other names, including Acid, Blotter, Dots, and Yellow Sunshine.
Peyote (mescaline) is a small, spineless cactus with mescaline as its main ingredient. Peyote can also be synthetic. Buttons, Cactus, and Mesc are common names for peyote.
4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine(psilocybin) comes from certain types of mushrooms found in tropical and subtropical regions of South America, Mexico, and the United States. Other names for psilocybin include Little Smoke, Magic Mushrooms, Purple Passion, and Shrooms.

Some hallucinogens also cause users to feel out of control or disconnected from their body and environment. Common examples include the following:

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/CC0
Ketamine

Dextromethorphan(DXM) is a cough suppressant and mucus-clearing ingredient in some over-the-counter cold and cough medicines (syrups, tablets, and gel capsules). Robo is another popular name for DXM.
Ketamine is used as a surgery anesthetic for humans and animals. Much of the ketamine sold on the streets comes from veterinary offices. While available as an injectable liquid, manufacturers mostly sell it as a powder or as pills. Other names for ketamine include K, Special K, or Cat Valium.
Phencyclidine (PCP) was developed in the 1950s as a general anesthetic for surgery. It’s no longer used for this purpose due to serious side effects. While PCP can be found in a variety of forms, including tablets or capsules, liquid and white crystal powder are the most common forms. PCP has various other names, such as Angel Dust, Hog, Love Boat, and Peace Pill.
Salvia divinorum (salvia) is a plant common to southern Mexico and Central and South America. Other names for salvia are Diviner's Sage, Maria Pastora, Sally-D, and Magic Mint.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/CC0
Salvia

How do people use hallucinogens?

People use hallucinogens in a wide variety of ways, as shown in the following chart:

Text Description of Chart

How do hallucinogens affect the brain?

Research suggests that hallucinogens work at least partially by temporarily disrupting communication between brain chemical systems throughout the brain and spinal cord. Some hallucinogens interfere with the action of the brain chemical serotonin, which regulates:

mood
sensory perception
sleep
hunger
body temperature
sexual behavior
muscle control

Other hallucinogens interfere with the action of the brain chemical glutamate, which regulates:

pain perception
responses to the environment
emotion
learning and memory

Short-Term Effects

The effects of hallucinogens can begin within 20 to 90 minutes and can last as long as 6 to 12 hours. Salvia's effects are more short-lived, appearing in less than 1 minute and lasting less than 30 minutes. Hallucinogen users refer to the experiences brought on by these drugs as "trips," calling the unpleasant experiences "bad trips."

Along with hallucinations, other short-term general effects include:

increased heart rate
nausea
intensified feelings and sensory experiences
changes in sense of time (for example, time passing by slowly)

Specific short-term effects of some hallucinogens include:

increased blood pressure, breathing rate, or body temperature
loss of appetite
dry mouth
sleep problems
mixed senses (such as "seeing" sounds or "hearing" colors)
spiritual experiences
feelings of relaxation or detachment from self/environment
uncoordinated movements
excessive sweating
panic
paranoia—extreme and unreasonable distrust of others
psychosis—disordered thinking detached from reality

Long-Term Effects

Little is known about the long-term effects of hallucinogens. Researchers do know that ketamine users may develop symptoms that include ulcers in the bladder, kidney problems, and poor memory. Repeated use of PCP can result in long-term effects that may continue for a year or more after use stops, such as:

speech problems
memory loss
weight loss
anxiety
depression and suicidal thoughts

Hallucinogens can cause severe visual disturbances.
Photo by Steve Johnson/CC BY/

Though rare, long-term effects of some hallucinogens include the following:

Persistent psychosis—a series of continuing mental problems, including:
- visual disturbances
- disorganized thinking
- paranoia
- mood changes
Flashbacks—recurrences of certain drug experiences. They often happen without warning and may occur within a few days or more than a year after drug use. In some users, flashbacks can persist and affect daily functioning, a condition known as hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder (HPPD). These people continue to have hallucinations and other visual disturbances, such as seeing trails attached to moving objects.
Symptoms that are sometimes mistaken for other disorders, such as stroke or a brain tumor

What are other risks of hallucinogens?

Other risks or health effects of many hallucinogens remain unclear and need more research. Known risks include the following:

Some psilocybin users risk poisoning and possibly death from using a poisonous mushroom by mistake.
High doses of PCP can cause seizures, coma, and death, though death more often results from accidental injury or suicide during PCP intoxication. Interactions between PCP and depressants such as alcohol and benzodiazepines (prescribed to relieve anxiety or promote sleep—alprazolam [Xanax®], for instance) can also lead to coma.
Some bizarre behaviors resulting from hallucinogens that users display in public places may prompt public health or law enforcement personnel intervention.
While hallucinogens' effects on the developing fetus are unknown, researchers do know that mescaline in peyote may affect the fetus of a pregnant woman using the drug.

Are hallucinogens addictive?

Evidence indicates that certain hallucinogens can be addictive or that people can develop a tolerance to them. Use of some hallucinogens also produces tolerance to other similar drugs.

For example, LSD is not considered an addictive drug because it doesn't cause uncontrollable drug-seeking behavior. However, LSD does produce tolerance, so some users who take the drug repeatedly must take higher doses to achieve the same effect. This is an extremely dangerous practice, given the unpredictability of the drug. In addition, LSD produces tolerance to other hallucinogens, including psilocybin.

On the other hand, PCP is a hallucinogen that can be addictive. People who stop repeated use of PCP experience drug cravings, headaches, and sweating as common withdrawal symptoms.

Scientists need more research into the tolerance or addiction potential of hallucinogens.

How can people get treatment for addiction to hallucinogens?

There are no government-approved medications to treat addiction to hallucinogens. While inpatient and/or behavioral treatments can be helpful for patients with a variety of addictions, scientists need more research to find out if behavioral therapies are effective for addiction to hallucinogens.

Points to Remember

Hallucinogens are a diverse group of drugs that alter perception, thoughts, and feelings. They causehallucinations, or sensations and images that seem real though they are not. Some hallucinogens also cause users to feel out of control or disconnected from their body and environment.
People use hallucinogens in a wide variety of ways, including smoking, snorting, and absorbing through the lining in the mouth.
Hallucinogens interfere with actions of brain chemicals responsible for functions that include:
- mood
- sensory perception
- sleep
- body temperature
- muscle control
- pain perception
- memory
The effects of hallucinogens can begin within 20 to 90 minutes and can last as long as 6 to 12 hours.
Along with hallucinations, other short-term general effects of hallucinogens include:
- increased heart rate
- nausea
- intensified feelings and sensory experiences
- changes in sense of time
Persistent psychosis and flashbacks are two long-term effects associated with some hallucinogens.
Evidence indicates that certain hallucinogens can be addictive or that people can develop a tolerance to them.
There are no government-approved medications to treat addiction to hallucinogens. Scientists need more research to find out if behavioral therapies are effective for addiction to hallucinogens.

Learn More

For more information about hallucinogens, please visit:

www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/hallucinogens

www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/commonly-abused-drugs-charts

This publication is available for your use and may be reproduced in its entirety without permission from NIDA. Citation of the source is appreciated, using the following language: Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This page was last updated January 2016

Consciousness may be the product of carefully balanced chaos

2016-01-27T20:20:00.000-08:00

from sciencemag.org

from sciencemag.org

By David ShultzJan. 26, 2016

Is my yellow the same as your yellow? Does your pain feel like my pain? The question of whether the human consciousness is subjective or objective is largely philosophical. But the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is a bit easier to measure. In a new study of how anesthetic drugs affect the brain, researchers suggest that our experience of reality is the product of a delicate balance of connectivity between neurons—too much or too little and consciousness slips away.

“It’s a very nice study,” says neuroscientist Melanie Boly at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the work. “The conclusions that they draw are justified.”

Previous studies of the brain have revealed the importance of “cortical integration” in maintaining consciousness, meaning that the brain must process and combine multiple inputs from different senses at once. Our experience of an orange, for example, is made up of sight, smell, taste, touch, and the recollection of our previous experiences with the fruit. The brain merges all of these inputs—photons, aromatic molecules, etc.—into our subjective experience of the object in that moment.

“There is new meaning created by the interaction of things,” says Enzo Tagliazucchi, a physicist at the Institute for Medical Psychology in Kiel, Germany. Consciousness ascribes meaning to the pattern of photons hitting your retina, thus differentiating you from a digital camera. Although the brain still receives these data when we lose consciousness, no coherent sense of reality can be assembled.

In order to look for the signature of consciousness in the brain, Tagliazucchi and his colleagues used a drug called propofol—an anesthetic drug used in surgery—to induce loss of consciousness in participants while they were inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine’s scanner. fMRI works by tracking blood flow in the brain, which can be used as a real-time proxy for electrical activity when neurons fire. The team recorded data from 12 participants in states of wakefulness, ongoing sedation, unconsciousness, and recovery.

The results, published online today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, show thatbrain activity varies widely between conscious and unconscious states. The difference may come down to how the brain “explores the space of its own possible configurations,” Tagliazucchi says.

During wakeful consciousness, participants’ brains generated “a flurry of ever-changing activity,” and the fMRI showed a multitude of overlapping networks activating as the brain integrated its surroundings and generated a moment to moment “flow of consciousness.” After the propofol kicked in, brain networks had reduced connectivity and much less variability over time. The brain seemed to be stuck in a rut—using the same pathways over and over again.

The results suggest that, in the brain, there is an optimal level of connectivity between neurons that creates the maximum number of possible pathways. If each neuron can be thought of as a node in the network, consciousness might result from exploring the network as thoroughly as possible. But the most diverse networks—the ones with the largest possible number of arrangements—don’t necessarily have the maximum amount of neuronal connectivity.

If every neuron in the brain were directly connected to every other neuron, however, the brain would become too homogenous, and one signal would become indistinguishable from the next, Tagliazucchi explains. “They all fire or they all stay quiet.” Instead, consciousness might emerge from a careful balancing that causes the brain to “explore” the maximum number of unique pathways to generate meaning, he says. The researchers call this balance point “a critical point.”

“[It’s] like cars exploring the streets of the city,” Tagliazucchi says. “If the cars move always in the same restrictive manner, if they move from point A to point B and back, at the end of the day you don’t really understand the city. But if the cars are thorough explorers and go through all possible parts of the city, you get a map that’s very close to the actual map of the city. At the critical point, the cars are exploring the streets in the optimal way.”

Unlike cars, though, the flow of electricity through our brains is not driven by some sentient force with will or intent. And, in fact, what causes the brain to move between states of consciousness and unconsciousness—to and from the critical point—remains unknown. “If you’re in a critical point, the brain is really chaotic,” Boly says. “If you’re far from there, it’s too monotonous or stable.”

That stability could explain what makes it hard to wake people from a coma. Tagliazucchi hopes that by understanding where the critical points lie, and how they’re maintained, we might eventually rouse coma patients from unconscious states, coaxing the brain to begin exploring its streets in just the right way.

The Psychoactive Opioid Kratom Can Force a Broader Drug Legalization Debate

2015-12-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

from inverse.com

The leafy green drug's Xanax-like high has officials itching to ban it, but it has the potential to treat addiction to more serious drugs.

Yasmin TayagDecember 4, 2015

As the pot debate rages on, kratom, a psychoactive drug made from the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree, is quietly flooding the online recreational drug market. Its Xanax-like high, rumored side effects, and addictive potential have some state drug enforcers itching to ban it. But, as physicians at a Wisconsin hearing pointed out on Tuesday, it’s a lot less dangerous than the prescription opioids that have almost 9 million Americans in their grip. It might even offer a way to help.

Is kratom fated to undergo unnecessary criminalization, following in the steps of its now widely accepted and medically beneficial green predecessor? The answer to that question is relevant not only for users, but for precedent.

The scientific data needed to make a reasoned decision is lacking, but history provides the necessary framework. In Thailand, the leaves were traditionally chewed by field laborers seeking an extra boost, much like coca leaves in Peru. Planting the kratom-producing Mitragyna speciosa tree became illegal in 1943 — but not necessarily for safety reasons: Some officials have argued that the ban was enacted because kratom offered a way out of opium addiction at a time when the opium industry was raking in profits. Despite the ban, which wasalmost overturned in 2013 to help wean addicts off harder drugs like meth, kratom tea still remains popular, most often cut with cough syrup and Coca Cola to make a cocktail known locally as “4x100.”

America’s relationship with the drug is still in its early stages. The DEA classifies it as a “drug of concern” but hasn’t banned it outright. Kratom’s major psychoactive substance, an alkaloid called mytraginine, has opioid-like effects — stimulation and pain relief at low doses, sedation at high doses, and euphoria at even higher ones. Different varieties (stateside, our relationship with kratom is still in its early stages) — “Bali” for euphoria, “Green Vein Kali” for painkilling and stimulation — are comically easy to buy online.

In Thailand, kratom tea is mixed with cough syrup and Coca Cola to make a narcotic cocktail known as "4x100."

Different varieties promise different highs — “Bali” for euphoria, “Green Vein Kali” for painkilling and stimulation — thanks to compounds that also trigger serotonergic and adrenergic activity.

These effects can be fun: Kratom can provide everything from relaxation to a boost in sex drive to stress relief. Because kratom can trick the brain into feeling like it’s on morphine, its effects can also be helpful. This is specifically true in regards to opioid addicts, a not inconsiderable American population. Those concerned with their or other’s prescription drug abuse have used it as substitute for physically addictive opioids like hydrocodone, documenting their experiences on message boards all over the internet.

Which is all to say that kratom is undoubtedly a drug and doubtedly a dangerous one. Its arrival on the U.S. market and adoption as a psychoactive aperitif would have, in the past, put drug enforcement agencies in the Caesarian position of giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. Inaction would be the more radical action. But, in the wake of states legalizing marijuana, the law-and-order default no longer represents political self inoculation. Unnecessary drug bans — and all drug bans are considered unnecessary to some — are politically unpopular and often heaped in medical and scientific scorn. Kratom is unlikely to become part of the mainstream drug debate, but its positive effects could make it a martyr if a ban is instituted.

That’s not to say that kratom doesn’t have negative effects or addictive potential.Withdrawal causes hostility, aggression, and diminishment of emotional control. And the lack of sound data on its effects make self-medication a risky endeavor. The supply chain is also questionable at best. Buying drugs off the internet, though common practice, is generally more dangerous than not buying drugs off the internet. But, like weed, kratom seems to strike a rare balance: It offers noticeable effects but appears to be (pending study) relatively benign.

There is plenty of reason for the government to finance or conduct research on kratom but little reason to ban it without reproducible results. That, of course, augurs nothing unless drug agencies confirmation bias has diminished in strength or changed vector.

Kratom is the drug to watch. It could represent the frothy front of a coming wave of commercially available psychoactive remedies and it could represent nothing but itself, the prunings of a non-native species.

Photos via Getty

What Technology Can’t Change About Happiness

2015-09-21T10:21:00.001-07:00

from nautil.us

As pills and gadgets proliferate, what matters is still social connection.

In 2014, researchers at the University of Warwick in England announced they had found a strong association between a gene mutation identified with happiness and well-being. It’s called 5-HTTLPR and it affects the way our body metabolizes the neurotransmitter serotonin, which helps regulate our moods, sex drives, and appetites. The study asks why some nations, notably Denmark, consistently top “happiness indexes,” and wonders whether there may be a connection between a nation and the genetic makeup of its people. Sure enough, controlling for work status, religion, age, gender, and income, the researchers discovered those with Danish DNA had a distinct genetic advantage in well-being. In other words, the more Danish DNA one has, the more likely he or she will report being happy.

This tantalizing piece of research is not the only example of the power of feel-good genes. One body of research suggests we are genetically pre-programmed with a happiness “set point”—a place on the level of life satisfaction to which, in the absence of a fresh triumph or disappointment, our mood seems to return as surely as a homing pigeon to its base. As much as 50 percent of this set point, some researchers have demonstrated, is determined genetically at birth. The genetic determinants of a higher set point may be what the Danes are blessed with.

Neuroscientists are also studying a gene variant that leads to higher levels of a brain chemical called anandamide, which contributes to a sense of calm. Individuals with mutations that cause them to make less of an enzyme that metabolizes anandamide are less prone to trudge through life with the weight of the world on their shoulders. In 2015, Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, lamented in a New York Times op-ed “that we are all walking around with a random and totally unfair assortment of genetic variants that make us more or less content, anxious, depressed or prone to use drugs.” “What we really need,” Friedman continued, “is a drug that can boost anandamide—our bliss molecule—for those who are genetically disadvantaged. Stay tuned.”

“Close relationships and social connections keep you happy and healthy. Basically, humans are wired for personal connections.”

Some scientists have already tuned in to the future. James J. Hughes, a sociologist, author, and futurist at Hartford’s Trinity College, envisions a day not too far from now when we will unravel the genetic determinants of key neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, and be able to manipulate happiness genes—if not 5-HTTLPR then something like it—with precise nanoscale technologies that marry robotics and traditional pharmacology. These “mood bots,” once ingested, will travel directly to specific areas of the brain, flip on genes, and manually turn up or down our happiness set point, coloring the way we experience circumstances around us. “As nanotechnology becomes more precise, we’re going to be able to affect mood in increasingly precise ways in ordinary people,” says Hughes, who also serves as executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and authored the 2004 book Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

It would be easy to conclude the redesigned human of the future will be able to pop a mood bot and live in bliss. But not so fast, say psychologists, sociologists, and neurologists who study happiness. Just because scientists have decoded some of the underlying biology of this ineffable state of being, paving the way for a drug to stimulate it, does not guarantee that our great-great-grandchildren will live happy and satisfying lives. Human nature is more than biology, the scientists assure us. And generations of happiness research offer a clear window into what it takes to live a long and satisfying life.

TOGETHER: Strong personal relationships lead to better health outcomes, and can shift the architecture of the brain.Constance Bannister Corp / Getty

The squishiness of the term “happiness” has long caused problems for those who study it. To gauge happiness and sidestep semantic problems, many of the psychologists who have tried to quantify it have used a measure called “Subjective Well-Being.” This measure, as its name implies, relies on individuals themselves to tell researchers how happy they are. Ed Diener, a University of Virginia psychologist nicknamed “Dr. Happiness,” pioneered the approach in the 1980s. Today, Diener serves as a senior scientist at The Gallup Organization, which provides a key survey used in happiness indexes put out by most groups compiling such lists, including the United Nations.

But in recent years, a growing number of researchers have begun to acknowledge that this isn’t a particularly good fix; maybe a little more refinement is needed. What we really mean when we tell a researcher from a place like Gallup that we are “happy” can vary widely. If you ask a teenager or young adult to rate his happiness, he’s liable to base his answer on his weekend plans, how much money he has in his pocket, and how his peers treated him during lunch break. If you ask somebody with a little more mileage—someone with children, for instance—they are liable to look at a bigger picture, even if they have a bad back that’s been acting up, no babysitter for Saturday, and an appointment that afternoon for a colonoscopy.

Over the past decade or so, a growing number of researchers have begun to rethink exactly what happiness is and distinguish between two types: “hedonic” happiness, that positive mental high, and “eudaimonic” happiness. Aristotle was referring to this second kind when he wrote 2,300 years ago: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This is the kind of happiness that qualifies a life well-lived, time on this planet well-spent. Medical technology may soon be able to engineer a momentary absence of fear, or the presence of a moment-to-moment sense of well-being, but engineering this second kind of happiness would be far more difficult.

Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist and author of the best-selling Stumbling On Happiness, suggests humans are already hardwired to raise their own hedonistic happiness, and we’re pretty good at it, without resorting to mood bots. Gilbert has spent his career studying the way we convince ourselves to accept our external circumstances, and return to a hedonic equilibrium, no matter what comes.

In a 2004 TED talk, Gilbert powerfully demonstrates this by displaying two pictures side by side. The picture on the left depicts a man in a black cowboy hat holding up an oversized lottery check. He has just won $314.9 million. The picture on the right displays another man, approximately the same age, sitting in a wheelchair, being pushed up a ramp. “Here are two different futures that I invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer,” Gilbert says to the audience. Data exists, he assures them, on how happy groups of lottery winners and paraplegics are. The fact is, a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners are only slightly happier with their lives than paraplegics are.

The findings are unequivocal: Online connection decreases depression, reduces loneliness, and increases levels of perceived social support.

The reason people fail to appreciate that both groups are equally happy is a counterintuitive phenomenon that Gilbert calls “impact bias,” a tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events. We see this tendency, he notes, with winning or not winning an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, winning or not winning a promotion, passing or not passing a college exam. All these events “have far less impact, far less intensity, and for much less duration than people expect them to have.”

It’s that happiness set point again, returning to its base. But surely some things affect happiness? In fact, Gilbert tells Nautilus, “Much of our happiness is produced by things that have long evolutionary histories. I will place any wager that in 2045 people are still happy when they see their children prosper, when they taste chocolate, when they feel loved, secure, and well fed.”

These are the “staples of happiness,” he continues. “It would take an evolutionary change on the order of species to even consider the possibility that those would change too. This question could have been posed a few years ago, 300 years ago, 2,000 years ago. It would never have been wrong to say, ‘You are the most social animal on Earth, invest in your social relationships, it will be a form of happiness.’ ” It’s an answer that is so obvious that most people dismiss it.

“There is utterly no secret about the kind of things that make people happy,” Gilbert says. “But if you list them for people, they go, ‘Yeah, that kind of sounds like what my rabbi, grandmother, my philosopher have said all along. What’s the secret?’ The answer is there is no secret. They were right.”

WHO’S HAPPIER?: The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has pointed out that lottery winners are only slightly happier a year after their win, than paraplegics are a year after losing the use of their legs.Keystone-France / Getty (left) and Barcroft / Getty (right)

Perhaps the most compelling evidence on the importance of relationships stems from a study of a cohort of people who are today mostly grandparents themselves. The information is stored in a cramped room in downtown Boston, lined with file cabinets that hold the details of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies on the development of healthy, male adults ever compiled: the Harvard Study of Adult Development, previously known as the Grant Study in Social Adjustments.

In 1938, researchers began conducting tests and interviewing carefully selected college sophomores from the all-male Harvard classes of 1939, 1940, and 1941. The men were chosen not because they had problems that made them likely to fail, but because they showed promise. (The cohort included, among others, future president John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, who would lead the Washington Post during Watergate.) The original intent was to follow these men, who seemed destined for success, for perhaps 15 to 20 years. Today, more than 75 years later, the study is still going. Thirty of the original 268 men in the study are still alive.

In 1967, the files were merged with the Glueck Study, a similar effort that included a second group of 456 poor, non-delinquent, white kids who grew up in Boston’s inner city in the early 1940s. Of those, about 80 are still around, though the ones that aren’t lived, on average, nine years less than those in the Harvard cohort.

In 2009, the study’s longest-serving former director George Vaillant was asked by Joshua Wolf Shenk of The Atlantic what he considered the most important finding of the Grant study since its inception. “The only thing that really matters in life are your relations to other people,” he responded.

After Shenk’s article came out, Vaillant found himself under attack from skeptics around the globe. In response, Vaillant created what he called the “Decathlon of Flourishing,” which included a list of 10 accomplishments in late life (60-80) that might be considered success. They included earning an income in the study’s top quartile, recognition in Who’s Who in America, low psychological distress, success and enjoyment in work, love, and play since age 65, good physical and mental health, social support other than wife and kids, a good marriage, and a close relationship with kids.

High scores in all of these categories turned out to be highly correlated with one another. But of all the factors he looked at, only four were highly correlated with success on all the measures, and those all had to do with relationships. Once again, he proved that it was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted success in all aspects of the men’s lives.

“Mood bots,” once ingested, will travel directly to specific areas of the brain, flip on genes, and manually turn up or down happiness.

However, Vaillant, who detailed his findings in the 2012 book Triumphs of Experience, objects to the term “happiness.” “The most important thing in happiness is to get the word out of your vocabulary,” he says. “The point is that a great deal of happiness is simply hedonism and I feel OK today because I’ve just had a Big Mac or a good bowel movement. That has very little to do with a sense of well-being. The secret to well-being is experiencing positive emotions.” And the secret to that, Vaillant argues, might sound trite. But you can’t argue with the facts. The secret is love.

“In the 1960s and ’70s, I would have been laughed at,” to suggest such a thing, Vaillant says. “But here I was finding hard data to support the fact that your relationships are the most important single thing in your well-being. It’s been gratifying to find support for something as sentimental as love.”

Robert Waldinger, the psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor who currently leads the study, notes that it is not just measures of material success and psychological feelings of well-being that are linked to good relationships. It’s also physical health.

“The biggest take home from a lot of this, is that the quality of people’s relationships are way more important than what we thought they were—not just for emotional well-being but also for physical health,” he says. Marital happiness at age 50, he says, is a more important predictor of physical health at 80 than cholesterol levels at 50. “Close relationships and social connections keep you happy and healthy. That is the bottom line. People who were more concerned with achievement or less concerned with connection were less happy. Basically, humans are wired for personal connections.”

Not only did strong personal relationships lead to better health outcomes, it affected the architecture of the brain. People who feel socially isolated get sicker earlier, their brains decay earlier, their memories are worse, Waldinger says. Using brain-scan technologies, Waldinger and his team discovered that those who were most satisfied with their lives had greater brain connectivity. Their brains lit up more robustly when they looked at visual images than people who were less satisfied.

“The people who were most engaged were the happiest,” Waldinger says. “They could be raising kids, they could be planting a garden, they could be running a corporation. If you really care about something, if it means something to you, and particularly if you have meaningful engagement with other people when you do these things—those are the things that light you up.”

Even Nicholas Christakis, a Yale sociologist, who coauthored a seminal study of twins that demonstrated a 33 percent variation in life satisfaction could be attributed to the 5-HTTLPR gene, agrees that the key component to happiness is social. “I’m very skeptical that technological advances will affect what I regard as foundational features of human nature,” he says. “So I don’t think that any technological developments or futuristic things are going to fundamentally affect our capacity for happiness.”

Christakis, who studies social networks, says the influence of genes like 5-HTTLPR on happiness is less direct than a straight subjective feeling of well-being (though that may be part of it). Instead, he suggests, it’s their effect on our behavior that may be key—and the effect that has on our relationships. “It’s not just what genes do inside our body, how they modify our neurophysiology or transmitters, but what genes do outside our body, how they affect how many friends you make, or whether you will pick happy or sad friends, which also affects happiness,” Christakis says. “Even if you have genes that predispose you to pick happy friends, the unavailability of them may make you unhappy.”

Generations of happiness research, stressing the importance of personal relationships, drops us into the middle of a surprisingly contemporary debate. We live in an increasingly networked society, and the rate of us in social networks, and the amount of time we spend online, continues to grow each year. Vaillant, of the longitudinal Harvard study, has no hesitation in saying what our lives online are doing to us.

“Technology drives us up into our cortex away from our heart,” he says. “What makes the world go round is not technology. It’s not having a better and better iPhone; I’ve got a fancy new phone and I just hate it. The technology is just going to distract us back into our heads so that my daughter feels it’s cooler to text someone than it is to talk to them on the telephone. That doesn’t bode well for happiness in 2050.”

The fears of a dystopian new world, where we all text at the dinner table and have problems making eye contact, were perhaps most articulately summed up by Sherry Turkle, professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the science, technology, and society program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She explores the paradox of how technology connects us, yet also makes us lonelier, in her 2011 book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

“Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding,” she argues passionately in a 2012 TED talk. “And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.”

Some of the earliest studies on the use of the Internet and technology supported the idea that the networked age was driving us toward a sad, lonely future. In a groundbreaking 1998 study, Robert E. Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, recruited volunteer families with high-school-aged children, gave them computers and Internet access, and then tracked their usage. The more his participants used the Internet, he found, the more their depression increased, and the more social support and other measures of psychological well-being declined.

Since then there have been other negative studies and a spate of bad press. One widely cited 2012 study conducted by researchers at Utah Valley University of 425 undergraduates found that the more they used Facebook, the more they felt that others were happier and had better lives than they did. The researchers named the study, “They Are Happier and Having Better Lives Than I Am: The Impact of Using Facebook on Perceptions of Others’ Lives.”

Even the Vatican has expressed concern. In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI warned in one of his messages to the world that “virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact.”

But in recent years, a more nuanced consensus has begun to emerge—a consensus that suggests technology is not such a bad thing for human relationships. Carnegie Mellon’s Kraut now argues that his 1998 study might tell us about the present. The problem, he says, was there were comparatively fewer people on the Internet at the time. The individuals who participated in his study were forced to communicate with people they did not know in far-flung places, what Kraut calls “weak ties.” “What we realized is that by necessity they had to talk to relative strangers,” he says. “But that was the early days. Now virtually everybody you know is online.”

Kraut’s more recent research has found that today most people spend their time online communicating with people with whom they already have strong ties. In those cases, he argues, the findings are unequivocal: Online connection decreases depression, reduces loneliness, and increases levels of perceived social support.

It does so by enhancing offline relationships. Online interactions, like offline ones, are more fulfilling if they are with people with whom we have strong ties. They mean a lot less if they are with strangers. But most of us use technologies to communicate with people we already know. And that helps relationships grow stronger. “Communication online has the same beneficial effects that communication offline would have if we already know people,” Kraut says.

Keith Hampton, an associate professor of communication and public policy communication at Rutgers University, has conducted a number of studies in collaboration with the Pew Research Center measuring the effects of Internet use on relationships, democracy, and social supports. The idea that we interact either online or offline, he argues, is a false dichotomy. Through his studies, he too has become convinced that social media and the Internet are drawing us closer together—online and off. “I don’t think it’s people moving online, I think it’s people adding the digital mode of communication to already existing relationships,” he says.

In fact, his research has found that the more different kinds of media that people use to interact, the stronger their relationships tend to be. People who don’t just talk on the phone but also see each other, and email each other and communicate through four or five different mediums, tend to have stronger relationships with one another than those who communicate through fewer mediums, he has found.

Facebook, he argues, is fundamentally changing the nature of relationships in ways that have been lost since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when people began leaving their native villages behind to head to cities for new opportunities, and lost contact with the people they grew up with. “Thanks to social media, those types of relationships are persistent,” he says. “Now we may be connecting with people over the course of life that we didn’t before.”

Of course, Facebook and technology, Hampton argues, are not sufficient in their own right to fend off loneliness. But in conjunction with other modes of interaction, they can bolster existing relationships, contribute to diverse relationships, and keep dormant relationships alive. The overall effect of technology is to overcome the constraints of time and location that would have proven insurmountable before. Instead of Christmas cards, we get a constant stream of information. We can share in triumphs and know when to offer solace during tragedy. We are less isolated.

Hampton has heard the assertions by Turkle and others that technology is atomizing us and killing traditional interactions. So he decided to examine that contention too. In a 2014 article in the journalUrban Studies, Hampton and collaborators reported that they had studied four films taken in public spaces over the course of the last 30 years. For their study they observed and coded the behavior and characteristics of 143,593 people. They analyzed that behavior to see if, in fact, we really are “alone together” in a crowd.

In fact, Hampton found the opposite. There was, in the same public spaces, a notable increase in the numbers of people interacting in large groups. And despite the ubiquity of mobile phones, the rate of their use in public was relatively small, especially when individuals were walking with others. Mobile phones appeared “most often in spaces where people might otherwise be walking alone,” he wrote. “This suggests that, when framed as a communication tool, mobile phone use is associated with reduced public isolation, although it is associated with an increased likelihood to linger and with time spent lingering in public.”

None of this surprises Amy Zalman, president and CEO of the World Future Society, who spends her days organizing conferences, conducting research, and speaking with people who try to predict what society might look like a few decades in the future. She expects that technological tools to pursue human relationships will continue to evolve in unexpected ways. But she doesn’t expect them to change human nature. Human relating, she argues, has always been a highly mediated activity—even language can be seen as a tool on the same spectrum as technologies like social media or cell phones, a spectrum of tools we use to interface with others. It’s just that we notice these tools more. But that too will change. “Technology is going to get closer and closer, it’s going to get invasive—we are going to wear it; it’s going to be inside of us—and then it’s going to disappear and we are not even going to notice it,” Zalman says.

Some futurists believe we may plug into a matrix and communicate through a hive mind. Or perhaps we will relate through personal avatars, robots that resemble us, which we occupy remotely. Maybe our brains will be uploaded to computers. But whatever happens, in the end, the verities of happiness will remain the same as they were in the days of Aristotle. It’s never a mistake to go out and play, make friends, make love, and make an impact on society. Happiness is and has always been about our relationships with other people.

Adam Piore is a freelance writer based in New York.

The Former Top Cop Who Wants to Legalize Drugs

2015-09-16T11:48:00.001-07:00

from newsweek

BY VICTORIA BEKIEMPIS 9/10/15 AT 11:22 AM

Major Neill Franklin, who worked in law enforcement for 34 years, is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). COURTESY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST PROHIBITION

Major Neill Franklin was one of Maryland's top cops when he retired in 2010 after 34 years in law enforcement. Over the course of those three-plus decades, he went from being an active supporter of the war on drugs to a staunch opponent.

Franklin spent most of his career working for the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department, starting with road patrol for the state police and later working in narcotics. With the state police, he rose to the position of commander of the Education and Training Division and of the Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement, creating and supervising the "very first" Domestic Violence Investigative Units.

He joined the Baltimore Police Department in 2000 to overhaul and command its Education and Training Section. After the BPD, he worked for the Maryland Transit Administration Police Force from 2004 to 2010.

Though Franklin had extensive experience in stopping the narcotics trade, one politician's bold statements against the war on drugs in the 1980s prompted him to think more deeply about whether it was worth fighting. Baltimore's mayor at the time, Kurt Schmoke, publicly stated that the war on drugs had failed—and that in addition to causing violence, it was disproportionately targeting minorities.

Along with that, the major turning point in Franklin's view of the war on drugs—from proponent to opponent—was a personal tragedy. In 2000, Corporal Ed Toatley, Franklin's close friend, was killed during an undercover drug deal.

"Ed's death personally connected me to the violence of the drug war," Franklin, 57, tells Newsweek. "I was no longer on the sidelines of violence—I was now in the game."

During his last two years with the Maryland transit division, Franklin became officially affiliated with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He spoke with the nonprofit organization, which pushes for drug legalization, for two years and then served on its board for one year. He resigned from the Maryland Transit Administration Police Force in July 2010 and was appointed LEAP's executive director.

Newsweek chatted with Franklin, who is based in Maryland, about why he has become an advocate for drug legalization. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

So what is your position on drugs?

Let me say this, and I think it's important—I hate drugs, whether it's cocaine, heroin, meth, prescription drugs, tobacco products, alcohol. But these are two separate issues, and what I'm trying to change is the policy in which we manage drugs. I wish that we could keep our kids away from drugs, because I do believe that they can potentially harm. The policy with which we manage drugs is a separate issue, and that's where I live. The more problematic a drug can be, the more need we have for regulating it. In a nutshell, that's kind of my whole perspective on this whole thing, is how we manage something—drugs—that's here to stay? How do we manage it to where we use it as responsibly and safely as possible?

How do you use drugs like heroin and coke safely and responsibly?

I think there are two key points here: First and foremost is education. Because we prohibit these certain drugs, we don't do a very good job educating people. We think that because we prohibit the use, there should not be a need to educate. The bottom line is for the last four decades, we have not been living in a place of reality. Drugs have always been here, drugs are here, and drugs will be here for as long as we are. So the notion of a drug free society is just that—it is a notion, it is a dream.

The second thing is, because we prohibit drugs and drive the manufacturing of drugs underground and into the shadows, into a place of criminality, the drugs that are produced are very dangerous. Their properties are unknown. The potency is unknown. Therefore, when used by someone, they are potentially extremely dangerous.

A quick comparison is when you go buy alcohol, which is a very, very problematic drug, but when you go buy it, you know how potent it is, you know how much a percentage is in your beer, in your wine, you know whether it's 80 proof, 100 proof. You know exactly what the ingredients are and through that education, you can use it responsibly and safely.

How do we figure out safe volumes?

I think the first thing...we say to our kids is: "You're not an adult, so this is not legal for you to use," just like we do with alcohol. Then we say to them, "So it is our very, very strong advice that you do not use them." But that's not all we say to them. The third thing is, "If you find yourself in a predicament and you do use, here's what you need to know," and then it is teaching about the qualities, the properties, and the harms.

So it's almost like harm-reduction in the rave community?

I've had conversations [with] a couple people I know who dwell within the rave community. One young man in particular, he runs a group and what this group does is they go to rave parties and they provide education and kind of like, harm reduction packets for people. They can test what they have bought to make sure that it is MDMA, to make sure that it's not something else. And the interesting thing is that whenever the management of the clubs realizes or finds out that he and his group are on site, they kick them out, because they try to present the image that no one is using MDMA in a club. Dig hole, stick head in hole in the sand—that's what we do.... In some places, the local government has prohibited these test kits. It's actually considered drug paraphernalia. There you go—just leave people in a dangerous place.

What would regulation look like?

The first thing is to get people to realize—to admit to, to accept—the failure of our past policies and prohibitions. Once you get to that point to accept it, realize it, then we want to get you to the point of ending prohibition and designing a policy that works for your community. Now, the one thing we recognize is that there are literally hudnreds of options for regulatory models.

...So what's the best policy for marijuana? What's the best policy for cocaine and heroin in your community? I think what we're beginning to see with marijuana is that a reasonable policy is privately owned retail outlets. Maybe a best policy, depending upon your community, for cocaine may be a pharmaceutical model, where you have to get it from the pharmacist from behind the counter, but you have to identify yourself. Maybe the best policy for heroin is a supervised injection facility. So the uniqueness about that is it's medically supervised—the heroin that is distributed on site is of pharmaceturical grade and none of the heroin leaves the facility. However, if you have an addiction and you need a dose three times a day, you can go and acquire your dose under medical supervision.

What about addiction? Are you worried that by making it potentially easier for people to use hard drugs that more people will get addicted and maybe die?

[Laughs] I've talked to so many people who are addicted to different types of drugs. Whether we're talking heroin, or cocaine, or meth, I've never heard one of them say, "You know what, I just can't find my drug of choice today." Not only is it so readily accessible to them, those who are addicted. In the same manner, in the same reason, it is very, very accessible to our young people, to our children. Our points of distribution have no regulatory system. They have no policies preventing them from selling to certain people, whether it's someone who's addicted, or a 14-year-old child. Furthermore, these tens of thousands of marketplaces in our country, they hire children—many of them hire children.

There's not one marijuana retail outlet—legal retail outlet—in Colorado that hires children. [Recreational use was legalized in the state in November 2012.] And I think of all the sting operations that they're running in Colorado, they're not selling to children either, so that's what happens when you have a regulated market. Drugs currently are accessible to any and everybody that wants them. So as long as you have the money, you buy them. They're yours. Really, the thing is, what we're talking about is consensual adult behavior. And in a free society, when you prohibit consensual adult behavior, you're going to end up with a very violent, flourishing criminal marketplace for that behavior, and with that criminal marketplace will come all of the harms that we see today with the war on drugs.

Public opinion has shifted dramatically on marijuana legalization, but what do you think is the general view of legalizing all drugs, including those described as scourges on society, such as heroin, cocaine and meth, etc.?

I think the temperatue of the public opinion is still, for those harder drugs, resistant because they have not yet been educated on the facts. They had been fed, like I had been, like many others had been over the past four, five decades, propaganda. We have learned what we know about these hard drugs from a very aggressive media campaign over the past four to five decades. I guess we need to understand: The harms that we see related to drug abuse are primarily there because of the policies of prohibition.

So what's next for your activism?

The next step is to continue connecting the dots, connecting the dots of the problems within our criminal justice system to the war on drugs.... To effectively reduce violent crimes, to deal appropriately with rapes and murders and all these criminal justice problems that we're seeing, we're going to make sure that people understand that there is a very strong tether connecting all of these criminal justice issues—that is, the war on drugs. That's the common thread.

Native American Church

2015-08-29T18:24:00.002-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Native American Church insignia

The Native American Church (NAC), also known as Peyotism and Peyote Religion, is a Native American religion characterized by mixed traditional and Protestant beliefs and by sacramental use of the entheogen peyote. The religion originated in the U.S. state ofOklahoma in the late nineteenth century after peyote was introduced to the southern Great Plains from Mexico.^[1]^[2]^[3] Today it is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with an estimated 250,000 adherents as of the late twentieth century.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]

[hide]

History of the peyote religion[edit]

Peyote road

Peyote use originated in pre-Columbian Mexico as a medicine and a means of mystic revelation. The tradition spread north to tribes in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and acquired its present form around 1885 and thereafter began its wider spread.^[3]^[7]

The two current, major NAC chapters in the United States showcase this dichotomy: the Native American Church of the United States, the original umbrella incorporated church birthed in 1918 from which many other chapters are tied to, allows non-natives to participate, in regulation with state law. On the other hand, the Native American Church of North America, incorporated much later in the 1950s, only allows Native Americans with a 1/4 native blood quantum and CIB certificate to participate (Omer Stewart - Peyote Religion).

Development of the movement[edit]

This article appears to contradict the article Quanah_Parker. Please see discussion on the linked talk page. Please do not remove this message until the contradictions are resolved. (April 2009)

Quanah Parker clasping a peyote feather fan

Peyote Rattle, late 19th-early 20th century, Brooklyn Museum; This peyote rattle was played during Native American Church ceremonies. The gourd symbolizes the world and the sound it makes represents prayers. The gourd’s zigzag decoration symbolizes Christ’s crown of thorns. The handle’s beaded lightning design, which signifies people's ability to ascend from earth to heaven, is encircled by a red horsehair fringe that represents the rays of the sun at sunrise, the hour when Christ rose from the dead. The medal attached to the handle reads “Behold the heart of Jesus is with me.”

Quanah Parker, along with other prominent roadmen, was influential in the adoption of the Native American Church by tribal entities in the United States. Even though historically ceremonies are much older, the NAC movement started generally in the 1880s and was formally incorporated in 1918 in Oklahoma. The genesis of modern NAC ceremonies have deep roots in both Mexican and Native American culture and ritual, due to the natural locality of peyote and the dissemination by Parker to theComanche and other plains tribes located in Indian Territory.^[8]^[9]

Though there are many variations, the main two ceremonial styles of the NAC are the "half moon" fireplace and the "cross fire" fireplace. Parker learned the "half moon" style of the peyote ceremony from the Lipan Apache leader Chevato. The Lipan Apache learned the ceremony from the Comecrudo tribe of Southern Texas (Peyote Religion by Omer Stewart). The "half moon" fireplace hallmarks include the use of tobacco throughout, with very little to no use of the Bible in the ceremony. This does vary tribe-to-tribe. The "cross fire" ceremony (originally called the "Big Moon" ceremony) became prevalent in Oklahoma (initially among the Kiowa) due to the influence of John Wilson, a Caddo man who traveled extensively around the same time as Parker during the early days of the Native American Church movement. The "cross fire" ceremony has elements that separate it strongly from the "half moon". Usually, there is no tobacco used in the meeting and the use of the Bible is used extensively. Therefore, it is a merger of both indigenous ritual and Christian doctrine and belief.

United States law[edit]

A peyote set such as this is used by the medicine man during the peyote ritual.

Peyote ceremony tipi

As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which, among other things, put the legal use of peyote by American Indians into uncertainty and potential legal jeopardy, Congress passed an amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. § 1996), i.e., the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994 (42 U.S.C. § 1996a), pertinent excerpts of which are given below:

Use, possession, or transportation of peyote

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the use, possession, or transportation of peyote by an Indian for bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion is lawful, and shall not be prohibited by the United States or any State. No Indian shall be penalized or discriminated against on the basis of such use, possession or transportation, including, but not limited to, denial of otherwise applicable benefits under public assistance programs.
—42 U.S.C. 1996A(b)(1).

Definitions

For purposes of this section (1) the term “Indian” means a member of an Indian tribe; (2) the term “Indian tribe” means any tribe, band, nation, pueblo, or other organized group or community of Indians, including any Alaska Native village (as defined in, or established pursuant to, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.)), which is recognized as eligible for the special programs and services provided by the United States to Indians because of their status as Indians; (3) the term “Indian religion” means any religion (A) which is practiced by Indians, and
(B) the origin and interpretation of which is from within a traditional Indian culture or community; and (4) the term “State” means any State of the United States, and any political subdivision thereof.
—42 U.S.C. 1996A(c)

Protection of rights of Indians and Indian tribes

Nothing in this section shall be construed as abrogating, diminishing, or otherwise affecting (1) the inherent rights of any Indian tribe; (2) the rights, express or implicit, of any Indian tribe which exist under treaties, Executive orders, and laws of the United States; (3) the inherent right of Indians to practice their religions; and
(4) the right of Indians to practice their religions under any Federal or State law.
—42 U.S.C. 1996A(d)

Instruments[edit]

Shawnee altar cloth, ca. 1940,Oklahoma History Center

Native American Church instruments used in the peyote ceremony are as follows:

The peyote gourd rattle (also used in the Gourd Dance ceremony) consists of a hard wooden stick, with a vegetable gourd cut in half and affixed to a wooden or other hard stopper. It has a horsehair top with usually intricate threadwork that is removable at top. Leather fringe tassel affixed to the bottom of the gourd stick. It can be beaded or carved depending on the artist's taste. Finally, inside of the gourd is filled with stones, pebbles or other material to produce a special sound. This rattle is used to sing peyote songsduring the NAC ceremony.
The water drum is an iron kettle, with ears cut off, that is tied down with a deer, caribou, or other animal hide. It is tied down with stones or marbles along a certain formation along the side. It is filled with water halfway and produces a special, deep sound when played with a drumstick. It is played by the water drummer during the ceremony while the singer sings songs with a peyote rattle. The tempo played by the drum is usually rapid and quick.
The peyote drum stick is a single hard wooden stick used to play the drum during the ceremony. It is usually made from dense wood to produce a more satisfactory sound when played with the water drum.
The peyote staff is a wooden staff that is passed around with the water drum and peyote rattle. It is representative of holy god and is held up right during the ceremony. The staff is usually beaded or carved to match the gourd. Like the peyote rattle, it usually has a horsehair top affixed and removable.

References[edit]

Jump up^ http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jms089/Z-Unpublished%20Work/Shields-Christ%20&%20Cactus.pdf
Jump up^ Catherine Beyer. "Peyote and the Native American Church". About.com Religion & Spirituality. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b "Native American Church". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
Jump up^ "Native American Church". Retrieved 5 March 2015.
Jump up^ "World Religions & Spirituality - Native American Church". Retrieved 5 March 2015.
Jump up^ "University of Virginia Library". Religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu. 2006-09-07. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b "'A Brief History of the Native American Church'". CSP. 1996.
Jump up^ Stewart OC. 1989. Peyote Religion: A History. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-2457-1.
Jump up^ Alice Lee Marriott, Carol K. Rachlin, Peyote: An Account of the Origins and Growth of the Peyote Religion, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (1971), 111pgs.

Bibliography[edit]

Hayward, Robert. The Thirteenth Step: Ancient Solutions to the Contemporary Problems of Alcoholism and Addiction using the Timeless Wisdom of The Native American Church Ceremony. Native Son Publishers Inc., 2011. ISBN 0983638403. -- Describes the Native American Church Ceremony.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Native American Church.

Listing of Native American Churches
Native American Churches
American Ethnography – The use of Peyote by the Carrizo and Lipan Apache tribes
Native American Church, Oklahoma Historical Society
"Native American Church, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

What Bernie Sanders’ Election Would Mean for Legalized Drugs

2015-08-20T17:30:00.001-07:00

from golocalprov.com

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Brendan Murray GoLocalProv News Team

Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders; Photo courtesy of wikipedia

Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has called America’s “War on Drugs” a failure and has promised to transform America’s drug policy if elected to the White House.

So what would that look like?

Sanders has said he plans to end the program that has spent more than $51 billion annually and more than $1 trillion since 1980, according to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance.

The independent Senator from Vermont says its time to stop spending money and resources punishing and imprisoning non-violent offenders. He’s proposed treating the underlying mental health issues that cause drug addiction and legalizing marijuana use.

“Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for nonviolent crimes,” Sanders’ campaign website reads. “For decades, we have been engaged in a failed ‘War on Drugs’ with racially-biased mandatory minimums that punish people of color unfairly. It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy.”

DC Track Record

Sanders’ voting record backs up his stance on drugs. During his time on Capitol Hill, Sanders made a number of votes against the enforcement of America’s drug policies.

As a Representative in September 1998, Sanders voted against subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. He voted to legalize medical marijuana in July of 2001, and voted against military border patrol to help battle drug trafficking in September of the same year. After being elected to the Senate in 2007, Sanders voted twice to exempt industrial hemp from marijuana prohibition, once in August of 2012 and again in March of 2013.

The election of Sanders, or any candidate who backs the end of the federal War on Drugs, would be a “welcome change” to the country’s drug policy, according to Chris Brown, press secretary for Americans for Safe Access.

“It’s a failed policy,” Brown told GoLocal. “Repealing the War on Drugs would allow the public to see marijuana, and all drugs, in a nonidelogical view and allow them to analyze it for all its properties.”

Brown also said the repeal of the War on Drugs would ensure that patients who depend on the drug to treat legitimate maladies, particularly pain relief, can receive their medicine without fear of becoming an outlaw.

Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told GoLocal the criminalization of cannabis is a “disproportionate response to what is at worst, a public health issue, not a criminal justice issue.”

Armentano also said that those prosecuted for cannabis-related crimes are disproportionately minorities and young people. This can cause them to distrust government and law enforcement agencies. “This disenfranchises entire cohorts of U.S. citizens who, rather than see law enforcement agencies as protectors, see them as instruments of their oppression.”

He also responded to critics’ claims that legalization will allow teenagers and children freer access to marijuana. He said that criminalizing the substance had not proven effective, and it was time for new techniques.

“Alcohol and tobacco use in teenagers was not driven down by illegalizing these substances for adults, but by educating the target audience and imposing and enforcing age requirements,” he explained. “I don’t see why that would not work when it comes to cannabis.”

‘Not so fast’ say critics

Ron Brogan, a spokesman for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, known more commonly asD.A.R.E., told GoLocal that despite the assertion by legalization advocates that prohibition has failed, drug use is declining.

“The story that’s not really told is that the drug policing efforts in place are working,” he said. “Cocaine use is down nearly 85 percent since its peak, and drug use in general is significantly down. Prohibition is working.”

Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, echoed Brogan’s claims.

“Alcohol is legal for adults and society has done a dismal job of keeping it from our young people, and the same can be said for cigarettes,” she told GoLocal. “Advocates like to ignore that when this country really went after drugs in this country, overall drug use fell by more than 50%. That is not a failure”

Brogan also said that the prohibition of marijuana is the best way to keep drugs like marijuana from falling into the hands of children.

“When the United States government puts an age-restriction down on something like that, the message that is sent is, ‘this is not that bad,’” he said. “That it’s okay for everyone except teenagers, and that does not prove to be effective.”

Fay also addressed claims that drug enforcement laws are used to target minorities and young people. She admitted that there are times when laws are used to target those groups, but said drug laws are not to blame.

“If you look at who is and isn’t in prison, you’ll see that there are not thousands of minorities rotting away in prison because they had a small amount of marijuana,” she said. “That’s a myth.”

Causes of Addiction

2015-08-09T19:55:00.002-07:00

from ted

The War on Drugs Has Failed. Let’s Legalize and Regulate Drugs Instead.

2015-07-21T14:50:00.003-07:00

from tapinto.net

By JILL LAZARE

July 21, 2015 at 5:01 PM

CRANFORD, NJ - Heroin overdose deaths in the United States have quadrupled since 2002. If that weren’t alarming enough, New Jersey’s rate of heroin overdose deaths is more than three times the national average and drug overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in New Jersey. If it were not already clear, this recent surge in heroin deaths show that America’s drug laws are in need of drastic reform. We need to stop treating substance abuse as a criminal act and start treating it as a medical issue. We should end the War on Drugs and instead legalize and regulate the sale and use of narcotics.

I’m proud to say I have already been part of the fight to change New Jersey’s drug laws. In 2013 I testified to the legislature in favor of what is now the New Jersey Drug Overdose Prevention Act, which authorized paramedics and police officers to carry and administer the overdose prevention drug naloxone. I’m pleased that overdose deaths have declined since the law went into effect. Lives are being saved because our leaders realized that our drug laws were foolishly hurting vulnerable people instead of seeking to help those in need.

But there is still much work to be done. An obvious first step would be the legalization of marijuana. The success of legalization in Colorado and Washington should serve as a model to the rest of the country. Legalization will save millions of dollars in police and court costs, keep thousands of people out of jail and prison, and bring millions of dollars in new tax revenue into our state’s coffers. Simple possession of small amounts of more dangerous drugs by adults should be decriminalized immediately. Prohibition has only empowered drug dealers and organized crime.

Our drug laws should focus on treatment instead of punishment. We need to expand drug courts and alternative sentencing programs so that people whose crimes were a result of their substance abuse problems are not sent to prison to become career criminals. But we also need to get tougher on doctors who abuse their prescription writing power by overwriting scripts for pain relievers without seeing the patients in any meaningful way and then simply cutting the patients off without treatment or a plan to wean them off of the pain medication. Such doctors create the addiction without liability or consequences to themselves. That is where the focus of the authorities should be, rather than on the people suffering from addiction.

The recent prison escape of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman demonstrates the futility of an enforcement-only approach. This is the second time he has been able to escape from prison. How can you build a prison that will hold someone who has limitless resources? To me, it makes much more sense to cut off his source of wealth by legalizing and regulating narcotics. Prohibition has only empowered criminals like Guzman. We have tried every enforcement mechanism possible, and none of them have succeeded.

We will look back on the War on Drugs as one of the great follies in American history, alongside the prohibition of alcohol. The trajectory and failure of the two policies is strikingly similar. The prohibition of alcohol empowered bootleggers and the mafia much the same way the War on Drugs has empowered drug cartels. After 13 years of Prohibition, America came to its senses and legalized and regulated alcohol. It’s now time we do the same with drugs.

There is increasing bipartisan consensus for reform of our broken drug laws. While I have disagreed with Governor Christie on many issues, I was proud to work with him on the Overdose Prevention Act and have been heartened by his comments on drug policy reform. As a member of the New Jersey Assembly I will make reform of our state’s drug laws a top priority. I stand ready to work with members of both parties to help bring common sense and compassion to this issue. The War on Drugs has failed. It is time to bring it to an end.

-Jill LaZare is a candidate for New Jersey Assembly District 21

The opinions expressed herein are the writer's alone, and do not reflect the opinions of TAPinto.net or anyone who works for TAPinto.net. TAPinto.net is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the writer.

We're losing the war on drugs - U.S. should legalize their sale and then tax them: PennLive letters

2015-07-11T20:59:00.001-07:00

from pennlive.com

By PennLive Editorial Board
Email the author
on July 10, 2015 at 8:30 AM, updated July 10, 2015 at 8:34 AM

The number of people murdered in the drug war in the United States is larger than the death toll of our military in Iraq and three times greater than the death rate of our soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Mexican drug cartels kill more people than ISIS and they proliferate mainly in the United States - killing teens and adults indiscriminately.

The U.S. is on the verge of legalizing pot in many states. Why not all? In fact, why not legalize the sale of all drugs and tax them?

The U.S. is losing the war on drugs. Terrorists are using drug trafficking monies to fund their activities. Giving Afghanistan millions of dollar each year to stop growing poppy is just going toward making them cultivate and traffic more poppy, which becomes cocaine and heroin. This money is funding the Taliban, ISIL, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, etc.

If drugs were legal, the U.S. could license industry to sell them and then tax the profits. Some of the money could be used to rehabilitate addicts, and some could be used for internal needs. Addiction would be treated as a medical problem and not as a criminal problem. Jails would be less crowded. It is cheaper to pay for rehabilitation than it is to incarcerate someone for 10 or more years.

Alcohol and cigarettes were at one time illegal. This does not ensure that they run rampant now. Should we criminalize glue-sniffing?

Stop the war on drugs, decriminalize them, and stop funding terrorism, all with one swift blow.

ROCHELLE S. CLEAVER, Dillsburg

Why Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas thinks drugs should be legalized

2015-07-09T23:57:00.001-07:00

from reuters

By Ricardo Salinas

July 9, 2015

A group of protesters set fire to the wooden door of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s ceremonial palace during a protest in Mexico City, November 8, 2014. Protesters were demanding justice for 43 students who were abducted and apparently murdered and incinerated by corrupt police in league with drug gang members in September. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

“When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before,” John D. Rockefeller Jr., letter to Nicholas M. Butler, 1932

Did we learn anything from Prohibition?

Prohibition was a failure in the 1920s, and, for similar reasons, the so-called war on drugs has been a disaster. Forty years after Richard Nixon declared this war, consumption worldwide is up, violence has increased and the rule of law has collapsed, especially in Latin America.

Basic economics tells us that when there is artificial pressure on supply, prices go up and margins increase — the perfect incentives for criminal activities. The same mistake was made in the United States almost a century ago with Prohibition. As early as 1925, some observers started to see that this policy, far from stopping crime, was leading to the formation of large networks of well-funded crime syndicates.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 partly due to his campaign promise to end Prohibition. People who originally favored Prohibition, such as John D. Rockefeller Jr., later fought for its repeal because of the devastating effects it had on agriculture and industry.

A world of crime

The dire results of the war on drugs are clear. Mexico is paying a very high price — a pound of flesh multiplied by a million– for a policy dictated in Washington with the clear support of the United Nations. At least 50,000 people have died in my country as a consequence of this policy in the past decade alone.

In a recent global report on homicides produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, it is suggested that poverty and inequality are the main factors that explain the increase in crime rates across Latin America. Curiously in Africa, a region much poorer than Latin America, homicide rates have not shot up and the U.N. report does not offer a coherent explanation why this is the case.

Nevertheless, the report offers valuable information. For example, in 2012, almost half a million people were murdered worldwide. More than a third of the killings took place in Latin America; Europe, by contrast, accounted for only 5% of the homicides. In most regions around the world, violence is decreasing, but not here.

The war on drugs is a war on Latin America

A great deal of the violence that is bringing down our region is a product of the war on drugs The criminal justice systems throughout Latin America and the United States have been undermined as the courts are clogged with victimless crimes such as drug possession. The prisons are overcrowded with victimless criminals. The United States, in particular, is a clear example of this phenomenon, with a quarter of the world’s incarcerations, almost half of them a product of drug-related felonies.

This generates impunity for criminals. They can’t all be caught, and they can’t all be prosecuted with criminal justice systems and law enforcement agencies that are so overwhelmed.

The U.N. report correctly points out that there is a clear correlation between levels of impunity and homicide rates, a phenomenon that is unmanageable in some regions of Mexico and Central America. It should be noted that seven of the eight most violent countries in the world are located on the cocaine route to the United States.

Countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Belize and El Salvador reported rates of 90, 54, 45 and 41 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. These are intolerable levels. The inability of the state to bring murderers to justice is a key factor in explaining this violence. Something is definitely and fundamentally wrong in Latin American criminal justice systems, and this subversion of the justice systems is corroding everything else in its wake. The war on drugs is sustained by a circular logic in which the damage generated by this policy is attributed instead to drug-related activities in order to justify it, a perverse inference that generates never-ending violence.

We need to move on

It’s been more than 40 years since the war on drugs was declared in Washington. Mexico has blindly followed the lead of its northern neighbor throughout this period, and there is little to show for it beyond the rise of violence and the steady decomposition of society. The economic forces are too vast. This is a multibillion-dollar industry that has subverted social order and the rule of law. Prohibition only means that the state has renounced its right to regulate narcotics by leaving this activity and its enforcement at the sole discretion of the drug lords.

This war is ravaging our hemisphere. Many know this. But few have the courage to speak up. So here it is: Let’s legalize drugs and regulate them, starting with cannabis. It should be noted that campaigns against tobacco, which is more addictive than cannabis, have been successful. Let’s redirect scarce resources to healthcare and education to highlight the dangers of substance abuse and free up our law enforcement and judicial institutions to focus on violent crime, corruption and the enforcement of property rights, gradually reestablishing the rule of law.

The United Nations promised decades ago a “world free of drugs.” This never happened. Many more people are dying as a consequence of this policy than by consumption of illicit substances. Let’s face it, the war on drugs is a fiasco.

Marijuana legalization as viewed from the trenches of youth: Karina Baffa (Opinion)

2015-06-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

from cleveland.com

A man smokes a marijuana cigarette. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Karina Baffa graduated from Fairview High School

Karina Baffa

As a recent high school graduate, I have seen the short- and long-term effects of marijuana from all aspects of my life. I believe that the opinions and viewpoints of our younger generation are vital when it comes to the decision to legalize marijuana.

Even though this drug has positive medical uses and effects, it is still a mind-altering drug that needs to be legally regulated and used responsibly when utilized for recreational purposes.

As a member of society, I believe the legalization of marijuana would implement a plethora of health and economic benefits. Studies portray a decrease in violence and aggressive behavior after someone smokes marijuana, as opposed to people intoxicated with alcohol, who can sometimes get violent and make poor decisions, causing thousands of deaths per year. The fact that marijuana is currently prescribed in 23 states for medical purposes validates that the medical world has approved and accepted the drug. In addition to health benefits, the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado is already bringing inmore than $30 million of taxable revenue a month.

As a friend, I have witnessed the negative effects of banning marijuana. Starting last year, multiple high schools near me made the decision to begin random drug screenings. I am assuming the goal of this was to keep students away from drugs and make sure that the ones who did use got the right help. Throughout the summer, leading up to the first drug-tested school year, I watched the schools' attempt to keep the students drug-free completely fail. I observed numerous kids who were normally just occasional marijuana users turn to harder and more dangerous drugs that would not show up on the screening. I knew that their approach to the drug tests was not the smartest or most ideal, but I also knew that they all had so much potential to be successful and intelligent. Watching them struggle was very hard for me.

As a sibling of a recovered addict, I would like to touch upon the argument that insists marijuana is a gateway drug. I have personally seen marijuana lead someone to other drugs and cause them to crave a stronger high. The use of any drug, such as cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana, requires self-control. If the use of marijuana lures someone toward more drugs, it is because that person does not have the self-control to use the substance appropriately. The same goes for alcohol, which kills 88,000 people a year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is not the drug that leads someone down a bad path, it is the user. Any drug, from caffeine to cocaine, can be a "gateway drug." Whether the drug becomes a gateway is up to the user.

From my personal experiences, I can confidently assert that whether or not marijuana is illegal, anyone who wants to smoke it will do so. The use of marijuana, like practically anything, is bad only if you make it bad. The advantages that legalized marijuana would bring to today's society include more profit for business people and more revenue for government, reduced crime and violence, and a beneficial alternative to detrimental drugs that already are legal, such as cigarettes and alcohol.

Overall, from my viewpoint as a recent high school graduate, I strongly believe the legalization of marijuana would be a positive step.

Karina Baffa graduated Monday from Fairview High School, in Fairview Park, where she researched the ramifications of marijuana legalization as part of a senior project.

As Americans Legalize Marijuana, Colombians Mourn Drug War Victims

2015-05-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

from worldcrunch.com

Patricia Lara Salive (2015-05-13)

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Jeff Oberfelder and his estate near Lake Chelan

-OpEd-

BOGOTA — When I hear about people now selling marijuana legally in the United States, I think of all our fellow Colombians who have died over the years fighting America's absurd war on drugs. I think of Luis Carlos Galán and Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, two politicians gunned down by drug traffickers, and I imagine how these victims could have made Colombia a better place to live. What sense did their deaths have?

Then I hear the story of Jeff Oberfelder, an American marijuana grower whose website details the various strains of cannabis he can sell in the state of Washington. It appears that he became bored with plain old farming, abandoning his apples, cows and poultry, in order to produce marijuana on his estate near Lake Chelan, where he moved so his native Canadian wife could visit her family more easily.

Since mid-2013, Oberfelder has been a licensed marijuana grower, deemed worthy by the regulating Liquor Control Board, which also regulates alcohol sales. He paid the initial $1,000 required, filled out 140 pages of forms, and invested $100,000 to develop his farm, where he cultivated 600 marijuana plants over 15,000 square feet.

He also paid $20,000 for software and security mechanisms, and $10,000 for cameras to monitor the site. His plants met the required standards and biological characteristics, and had no contact with pesticides and other harmful chemicals such as glyphosate, which Colombia's Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria has thankfully banned here.

So as a duly licensed marijuana producer, Oberfelder began his little farm in July 2014, which has since earned him a perfectly legal $500,000.

Photo: Oberfelder Holdings Facebook page

His wife and another person work with him during regular periods, and he hires more hands at harvest time, he tells El Espectador. With this operation, the couple and their five children are earning a living, a very good one. Some of the children smoke joints occasionally, as do Oberfelder and his wife, twice a week. One of the sons has used marijuana to alleviate chronic ear pain, he says.

Obelfelder sells his produce to authorized processors at $6 a gram. They pack them and sell them to retailers, which are currently few in number but growing, given the improving market. And while the marijuana sold on the black market doesn't offer the quality guarantees of that sold in authorized stores, that market hasn't shrunk because its product is cheaper.

The marijuana market is definitely growing in the United States. There are constant television programs and fairs to promote it, and those states where it can be sold are raking in millions of dollars in related taxes. At the end of our conversation, I noted how hard this reality is for many to face in Colombia, where we have lost a lot of valuable people fighting this supposed US-led "war on drugs."

Calling the American drug policy of the past "bullshit," Obelfelder said he can understand that marijuana legalization is hard for Colombians to confront. "And it's sad," he added. "Why did Galán and Lara die? For nothing, just bullshit!"

Read the full article: As Americans Legalize Marijuana, Colombians Mourn Drug War Victims
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It’s time to legalize marijuana

2015-05-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

from americanblog.com

Marijuana’s has a strange history in America. In 1619 King James I (the King James of the King James Bible) ordered every colonist to grow one hundred hemp plants, which marijuana comes from, for export to England. The plant was used as a currency in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. George Washington grew it, and it served a variety of purposes for the early Americans. It was used to make rope, fabric, paper and many other products. In 1839, William O’Shaughnessy introduced marijuana to western medicine. Within a decade it could be bought in pharmacies for medicinal use across the US, and domestic growth of the plant was widespread until after the Civil War, when other materials were imported and replaced a lot of marijuana’s functions.

In the 20th Century, with the increase of Mexican immigrants to the US, American opinion towards marijuana took a turn for the worse. Mexicans brought with them a cultural appreciation of recreational marijuana use and, due to the xenophobia of the Americans in response to this influx of immigrants from the south, the “Marijuana Menace” became increasingly associated with Mexican immigrants while both became associated with all manner of violent crimes.

During the Great Depression, resentment of “jerb takin” immigrants surged. Through that resentment, paranoia about marijuana experienced a sharp increase. The Great Depression years saw many “studies” linking the use of marijuana to violent and criminal behavior and there was a rash of state bans on the drug. Following a propaganda movie called Reefer Madness, marijuana was (in effect) criminalized for non-medicinal and non-industrial purposes with the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937.

Hemp made a brief comeback during World War II because the military saw its usefulness in things like parachute cords. Seeds were handed out by the government and the draft was deferred for farmers who produced enough of it. The wartime hemp honeymoon was short-lived, however: A decade after the end of World War II, mandatory prison sentences for marijuana use were enacted, but they were repealed in 1970 because of how ineffective they were. When Nixon launched the War on Drugs, the independent organization he created to handle it recommended fully decriminalizing marijuana. Needless to say, Nixon disagreed.

President Reagan fared no better in his attempts to regulate marijuana, but he did make the punishments for marijana production and possession significantly harsher. By the end of his presidency, owning one hundred marijuana plants carried the same sentence as owning one hundred grams of heroin. Reagan also instituted a “three strikes and you’re out” policy, which required life sentences be given to people who were convicted of drug offenses three times. (For more details on the history of marijuana in America, check out PBS’s timeline.)

Reagan’s backwards approach to this subject has continued to some extent ever since. Such opposition is founded on ignorance, and it’s time we let it go. There are many ways in which marijuana legalization could do great things for our country.

It could kill the cartels

The Mexican drug cartels, which are waging a brutal drug war just south of the US border, rely heavily on marijuana profits. When a few states legalized marijuana they became a source of higher quality, lower cost marijuana, which did not have to be smuggled into the country. In the first 11 months after a number of American states legalized marijuana, its cost in Mexico dropped from 60-90 dollars/kilo to $30-40, and black-market imports of the drug have dropped by 32%.

If the demand for cartel-grown marijuana drops to 20 dollars/kilo, some economists speculate that it would crumble the Mexican cartel marijuana market altogether, forcing them to shift their focus to less-widely used drugs like cocaine and heroin. If the United States legalized marijuana all at once, the economic impact would be so sudden and severe that the cartels might not ever recover.

It stimulates the economy and raises tax revenue

Marijuana money, via Shutterstock

Take money away from the cartels, and it goes into the US economy instead. Since the legalization of marijuana in some states, it has become the fastest growing sector of our economy, generating us 2.7 billion dollars of taxable economic activity. The industry could be worth over $10 billion within 5 years. Colorado alone made $53 million dollars last year in tax revenue associated with the legal marijuana industry, and some estimate that national legalization could net the United States as much as $3 billion dollars annually. Legalization created over 10,000 marijuana-related jobs in Coloardo in one year alone. It would be great for the rest of the country to get a piece of that action.

These revenue gains also ignore the $42 billion the government spends every year to arrest people who use marijuana — money that could and should go elsewhere. Legal weed means the government has more money to spend on social services and fewer wastes of time and energy to spend it on.

We would no longer be sending our nation’s future to jail for harmless offenses

Our last three presidents all used marijuana at one point or another, but weren’t arrested for it. They were lucky. If they had been caught, they wouldn’t have been able to get into the schools they attended and they wouldn’t have been able to hold the jobs they held. They definitely wouldn’t have been elected to the political offices they held.

One can’t help but wonder how many would-be productive members of society are wasting away in jails or struggling in dead-end jobs because of our harsh prosecution of marijuana use.

52% of all drug arrests are for marijuana, accounting for 8.2 million Americans being taken out of society an into our dysfunctional criminal justice system every year. 88% of that 8.2 million were arrested for possession, with no indication that they had any intention to deal the drug. While Republicans blame America’s proven institutional racism problem and the struggles of the poor on single mothers and broken families, they are strangely silent about the devastating role marijuana prosecution is playing in black and impoverished families. Black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession in spite of using the drug at more or less the same rates as whites. Well over half of all drug offenders have children. If we want poor and black children to have stable families, we should stop using our criminal justice system to destabilize them.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, housing 22% of the world’s prisoners. One of the reasons for this is that we’ve decided that carrying a plant that is less addictive and less harmful than bothalcohol and tobacco is deserving of jail time.

Marijuana is safer than legal recreational drugs. Legalizing it would create jobs, raise tax revenue and save money and lives. Growing and supporting its production are two of the few things that George Washington had in common with the King who commissioned one of the most widely read English translations of the Bible.

The only reason marijuana remains illegal is because of lingering paranoia and xenophobia, along with the historical ignorance of Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Write your Congressperson and your Presidential candidate of choice: It is time to legalize marijuana.

Tags: Colorado, legalization, marijuana, mass incarceration, nixon, racism, reagan, war on drugs

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Max Mills
Max Mills is a 25 year old Computer Scientist in Texas with several years of experience writing and teaching. Although he writes about a variety of things, his main focuses are education and political accountability. You can follow him on Twitter at @MaxFMills

Lessons Learned: The Journey to Legalize Marijuana and End the Drug War

2015-05-09T21:43:00.002-07:00

from enewspf.com

07 May 2015 04:38 Written by Tony Newman

NEW YORK—(ENEWSPF)—May 7, 2015.

By: Tony Newman

For the last 15 years I've dedicated my life to ending our country's disastrous war on drugs. It has been an incredible journey, and I am happy to say that seeds that were planted a long time ago are finally bearing some fruit.

When I started my job at the Drug Policy Alliance in 2000, only 36% of Americans supported legalizing marijuana. Fifteen years later, the majority of voters support the idea, and four states and Washington D.C. have actually legalized it. In 2000, President "I didn't inhale" Clinton was overseeing an exploding increase in mass incarceration and practically bragging about his "tough on crime" policies and image. Fifteen years later, President Obama and Attorney General Holder are speaking out forcefully against mass incarceration, most presidential candidates from Hillary Clinton to Rand Paul are calling for reforms, and both Red and Blue states are looking to cut their prison numbers.

When I talk to family, friends and even strangers and tell them about my work, they often say that things seem to be changing and congratulate us on our progress.

Here are some reflections and lessons that I have taken from the struggle to end our country's sick, inhumane war on drugs.

#1) Even as Underdogs, I Would Rather Have Our Hand than Theirs

There is no doubt that the Drug Policy Alliance and our sister organizations are a small David up against a 50 billion dollar a year drug war Goliath. There are probably between 200 and 300 or so paid staff in our movement going up against a massive drug war and prison industrial complex that has access to hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising alone. But even in the dark years, I always preferred to have our cards than theirs. We have science, compassion, common sense, and justice on our side. They spew insane rhetoric, promote impossible goals like a "drug-free world," reject science, claim there is no benefits to medical marijuana, and try to justify locking people in cages just for using drugs.

#2) Taking Advantage of Drug War Hypocrisy

The war on drugs is so damn hypocritical. You can't watch TV without seeing ads for legal drugs like alcohol and pills while we are arresting 700,000 people a year for marijuana possession. We have political leaders across the spectrum (Obama, Bush, Clinton, Gore, Palin, Gingrich, Bloomberg, to name a few) who have admitted to using drugs, and yet we have others rotting behind bars for doing the very same thing. White and black people use drugs as similar rates but Blacks go to prison 10 times the rate of Whites. The public hates hypocrisy, the media loves to cover it, and the reform movement has used it to our advantage.

#3) Organizing Across the Political Spectrum : #NoMoreDrugWar

I got into this work as a progressive who wanted to get people out of prison. Before I started working at the Drug Policy Alliance, I did not know much about libertarians. But I quickly learned that they are a passionate voice against our oppressive drug war. Our movement is truly made up of folks from across the political spectrum. We don't agree on much, but there is commitment and unity in our fight against the war on drugs. The two leading Senators in the country on this issue are New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. A couple of weeks ago in D.C., a powerful bipartisan summit was held, called #cut50, dedicated to cutting the number of people behind bars by 50% in the next ten years. I haven't seen any other issue in our country that brings together such a diverse group of people.

#4) Bringing Five Fingers into a Fist

One of the longest, hardest battles we fought was to reform New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. For decades these laws locked up people, disproportionately people of color, for low-level drug offenses for 15 years to life. There was a diverse coalition of treatment providers, lawyers, families of those incarcerated, advocates, and celebrities that came together for years and were finally able to reform these laws. This was a big team effort and bringing together all of voices and expertise was crucial. It is hard to bring together the five fingers into a fist. But it is necessary and when it happens it can change laws and lives and bring people home from prison.

#5 Ending the War is a Racial Justice Issue

When Richard Nixon launched the modern day "war on drugs" 40 years ago he told his chief advisor that they had to figure out how to blame the Blacks without looking like they were blaming the Blacks. The drug war was launched. Forty years later, we are a society swimming in drugs. While everyone uses drugs, our enforcement focuses on mostly Black and Latino communities. 90 percent of those who served time under the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws were Black and Latino despite equal rates of use and sales. Blacks are arrested 3 to 10 times more often than Whitesfor marijuana despite similar rates of use and sales.

The drug policy reform movement shines a light on these racial disparities. Bestselling authorMichelle Alexander wrote a groundbreaking book, "The New Jim Crow," that documented the racist drug war and criminal justice system and changed the conversation in churches and communities around the country. When Washington, D.C., legalized marijuana in November 2014, the driving force of the campaign was to stop the arrests and harassment of African Americans.

The tragic death of Michael Ferguson has called attention to communities around the country where African Americans face the brunt of all interactions with the police, not only over drugs, but for tickets and other small items that ensnarl them into the criminal justice system. More and more civil rights organizations, elected officials and the press are talking about the disparities in enforcement and the need to reform our country's laws because of it.

#6) Winning at the Ballot Box and Passing Legislation (Another World is Possible)

It is one thing to rail against the failed drug war, but we also needed to show people that another world is possible. In 1996, California became the first state in the country to legalize access to marijuana for medical purposes. Since then, 22 other states plus D.C. and Guam have adopted medical marijuana laws, and almost half the country now has legal access to medical marijuana. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first two states to pass marijuana legalization laws. Alaska, Oregon, and D.C. also followed suit in 2014. These victories have shown that not only does the sky not fall when we change our drug laws, but that, in fact, the sun shines. Tens of thousands fewer people being arrested for marijuana. Tens of millions of dollars are being raised in tax revenue. In 2014, California again made history when they voted to eliminate felony charges for simple drug possession -- a victory that's keeping thousands out of prison and jail.

The wisdom and success from voters has made it clear that alternatives work in the real world. It has also allowed our elected officials to evolve on these issues. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

#7) The Wisdom and Voices of Those Impacted

People formerly incarcerated and their families were instrumental in reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Families who have lost loved ones to a drug overdose have shared their stories and helped pass laws to prevent these tragic deaths. Patients have changed hearts and minds by showing the world the medical benefits of marijuana. Courageous folks who have felt the brunt and horror of the drug war have fought back and won many victories that have freed people, saved lives, made medicine available to those who need it, and reunited families.

#8) Have a Vision and Connect the Dots

The drug war has devastating consequences on so many levels. There are amazing groups who tackle individual aspects. The Marijuana Policy Project, Americans for Safe Access, and NORML have done great work to reform our marijuana laws. Groups like the Harm Reduction Coalition have helped reduce overdose deaths and HIV rates by increasing access to naloxone and sterile syringes. Our allies at Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the Sentencing Project have helped reduce the number of people behind bars. These are just a sample of issues and organizations working to end the drug war.

The Drug Policy Alliance tries to connect the dots and show how all of these issues make up the insane drug war. We want to weave these issues and advocates together to show how we are all working to create a vision of how society can reduce the harms of both drugs and drug prohibition - while also recognizing that drug use in certain circumstances can have benefits, too.

#9) You Can't Rest After a Victory

It has been frustrating and tiring to have to defend every victory. After decades of fighting to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws, prosecutors and district attorneys fought tooth-and-nail to impede the implementation of the new law. It took us years to lift the federal ban on states using their HIV prevention money for syringe access programs. In 2011, we finally won and got the ban lifted - and then the GOP took over the Senate in 2012 and reinstated the ban.

We spend years fighting for commonsense, life-saving initiatives, but when we win, it doesn't mean the battle is over. We have to be vigilant against opponents who are determined to undo our progress.

#10) Not Afraid to Spank or Thank

Elected officials from both parties have championed our disastrous drug war. We have not been able to count on our elected officials when it comes to much of our progress over the last 15 years. But we will embrace elected officials when they do the right thing. We want them to evolve on this issue. We thank President Obama for not interfering or blocking states that have legalized marijuana. We applaud Mayor de Blasio when he tells the NYPD to stop making arrests for marijuana possession in New York City. And we thank Senator Paul for teaming up with Senator Booker and working on major criminal justice reform.

Yet we push back and attack these leaders when they do the wrong thing. For example, we slammed President Obama for not using his pardon power to free those who had spent years behind bars unjustly. He recently granted pardons to 22 people with drug sentences, but he has still used his power to pardon less than almost every other president in recent memory.

#11) Create and Build Momentum

We constantly try to build momentum and energy to first win victories, and then use that momentum for further progress. Whenever we are working to change a law, we use media attention and new allies to create enough momentum to help us cross the finish line. Whether we are trying to pass legislation to reduce overdose deaths or stop marijuana arrests, we have multiple waves of actions, press conferences, reports, mobilizations, and voices of support to get us there.

We use victories to secure other victories. Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana in 2012. We highlighted the successes of those initiatives: the reduction of marijuana arrests, the decrease in crime, and the increase in tax revenue to help show the voters of Oregon, Alaska, and D.C. the wisdom of legalizing during the 2014 elections. We also use the momentum around legalizing marijuana to advance our other agenda like reducing the number of people behind bars for simple drug possession.

#12 Despite Progress, the Drug War Grinds On

For all of the progress over the last 15 years, the war on drugs is still vicious. The worst drug war policies remain entrenched, as close to three-quarters of a million people are still arrested for marijuana possession every year, and half a million people are still behind bars today for nothing more than a drug law violation. The bloodbath in Mexico has taken 100,000 lives in the last eight years. And overdose fatalities have doubled in the last decade.

We are at a paradoxical moment in our country. We are clearly moving in the right direction, toward a more rational drug policy based on science, compassion, health and human rights. But we need to step up our efforts, grow our numbers, and continue to win hearts and minds, because the casualties from the war continue to mount every day.

Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org)

This piece first appeared in the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-newman/the-journey-to-legalize-marijuana_b_7233412.html

Source: www.drugpolicy.org

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