Another Government Road Block

The Department Of Health and Human Services (it has very little to do with health and is into denying services) has denied permission for an FDA approved study of cannabis for treating PTSD.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has blocked a pilot study to examine the benefits of marijuana for veterans with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study was sponsored by the nonprofit research organization the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and would have been conducted by Dr. Sue Sisley of the University of Arizona at Phoenix.

“Hundreds of veterans in medical marijuana states already report using marijuana to control their PTSD symptoms,” MAPS said in a statement. “The growing number of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat-related trauma combined with large numbers of treatment-resistant veterans highlights the pressing need for research into additional treatments for PTSD.”

It seems the Federales have an impenetrable wall to keep this reseach on cannabis from getting done.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has denied researchers requests to obtain licenses to grow marijuana, claiming that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) — overseen by the HHS — can be the only one to supply marijuana for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-regulated research.

Clever boys.

It seems like actual veterans are taking matters into their own hands. Green leafy matters.

“My life went downhill from the moment I came back from Iraq,” Begin, now a 31-year-old veteran, tells Danger Room. “Doctors at Bethesda had me on so much, and on such high doses of everything, that I didn’t even know what was a symptom and what was a side effect.”

At one point, Begin, diagnosed with PTSD shortly after coming home, was taking more than 100 pills a day. So many that he would stuff dozens of bottles into a backpack to lug everywhere he went. Now, he’s cut his dependency on prescriptions to zero. Their replacement? Five joints a day.

“Using marijuana balances me out,” he says. “It takes those peaks and valleys of PTSD and it softens them. It makes my life manageable.”

Begin’s now launched an online petition asking the feds to change their course on marijuana as a treatment for PTSD. In September, the first-ever study proposed to evaluate marijuana as a potential treatment for PTSD was blocked by officials at the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA). With an estimated 37 percent of this generation’s vets afflicted with PTSD, and a dearth of effective treatment options available, Begin thinks pot deserves, at the very least, a single study.

He is not the only veteran who thinks that cannabis ought to be an official medicine. I wrote about Jamey Raines recently.

And what do you know? Our friends the Israelis are on the case.

D., a 26-year-old woman from the north of Israel, says she began to suffer from nightmares about seven years ago, after her partner raped her. After undergoing various forms of therapy, she thought she had largely put the trauma behind her. Then, two years ago, she chanced to see the rapist not far from her home. The nightmares came swarming back.

"I fell into a depression that went on until not long ago, during which I hardly slept or ate," she says in a quiet voice. "My whole life turned upside down. I left my job. Everything came to a stop. I went back to taking antidepressants and tranquilizers - Cipralex, Lustral and Prozac; sleeping pills that made me addicted. It was a nightmare. There was no way I could get through the day without those pills. Then I discovered cannabis."

So war trauma is not the only way to get PTSD? Maybe that explains why 70% of female Heroin users report being sexually attacked. When they were children. Too bad no famous sports figures (in so far as we know) are involved. Too bad we can't figure a way to give such kids a pass. Until we figure out better ways to help them heal. Currently a long slow process that is not a sure thing.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Pagan Solution.

About 70% of female heroin users were sexually molested as children.

I'm all for the Pagan solution. Abuse them some more.

Brain Study - Childhood Sexual Abuse Linked To Drug Use

The physiological link between sexual abuse and drug use has tentatively been found.

It has long been widely accepted that early childhood sexual abuse can predispose an individual to later substance abuse. But how?

Now, a new study combining brain imaging with information gathered from a questionnaire assessing symptoms of subjective distress and discomfort provides evidence of a neuroanatomical mechanism by which early childhood trauma could lead to drug abuse or other behavioral problems.

In the study, published in the January [2002] issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology, Carl Anderson, PhD., and colleagues at McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Mass., found that repeated sexual abuse in childhood may be correlated with changes in blood flow and function in a key region of the cerebellum, known as the cerebellar vermis.

At the same time, they found that those changes were significantly related to scores on a questionnaire used to rate symptoms of irritability in the limbic system of the brain, known to be involved in regulation of emotions, attention, and judgment.

This study was published in January 2002, so the information has been available for about ten years. Funny that it is not common knowledge by now.

The study was small (24 people total - 8 abused kids and 16 controls) so the findings are not definitive. But they correlate well with the findings of Dr. Lonnie Shavelson detailed in his book Heroin. And what did Dr. Shavelson find?

About 70% of female heroin users were sexually abused as children.

Is it possible to get the government to stop further abusing abused kids? Or is a modicum of morality and human kindness too much to ask from our government? Heck is it too much to ask from the people supporting Drug Prohibition? In my experience so far the answer is YES. It is too much to ask from them.

Say. Isn't America supposed to be a Christian Country? Yes it is. In the same way the Inquisition was a Christian operation. Or the way Martin Luther hated Jews. Ya gotta love Christian Morality. And them Christians are so proud of it. Isn't it time for another Reformation or something? Could we please avoid the Jew hatred this time? How about ending all hatred? You know "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Pardon me but isn't that a Jewish concept? Yes it is.

OTOH some Christians get it.

H/T Drug Policy Forum Of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Chicago Honors Heroin Addict With Street Naming

That would be Halsted Street. Named after the founder of modern surgery. William Stewart Halsted. Who was a life long heroin addict.

I propose we petition Chicago to change the street name. It sends a bad message to the kids.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Social Movement

Jim Hoft has a nice article up about why the Norway shooter was not a Christian. And of course a load of commenters chimed in about Christian compassion.

I will believe in Christian compassion when I see a call for an end to the pogrom on heroin users.

Did you know that about 70% of female heroin users were sexually abused children? (See Dr. Lonnie Shavelson’s book “Heroin”) And of course sexually abused children provide a cohort ready for prostitution.

So where is the compassion? Instead of punishing these people we should be helping them. We should be focusing on child abuse. I don’t see it. Oh. There are individual cases. But where is the social movement? I don’t see it.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Underground In Las Vegas

There are people living in the flood tunnel system under Las Vegas.

Further into the maze are Amy and Junior who married in the Shalimar Chapel – one of Vegas’s most popular venues - before returning to the tunnels for their honeymoon.

They lost their home when they became addicted to drugs after the death of their son Brady at four months old.

‘I heard Las Vegas was a good place for jobs,’ Amy said. ‘But it was tough and we started living under the staircase outside the MGM casino.

‘Then we met a guy who lived in the tunnels. We’ve been down here ever since.’

Matthew O’Brien, a reporter who stumbled across the tunnel people when he was researching a murder case, has set up The Shine A Light foundation to help.

‘These are normal people of all ages who’ve lost their way, generally after a traumatic event,’ he said.

‘Many are war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.

It is really shameful the way we treat people with personal problems in the US. If they take drugs for relief we hound them into jail if we can find them. But that is not the only problem.

PTSD treatment for returned soldiers is haphazard at best.

In his last months alive, Senior Airman Anthony Mena rarely left home without a backpack filled with medications.

He returned from his second deployment to Iraq complaining of back pain, insomnia, anxiety and nightmares. Doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed powerful cocktails of psychiatric drugs and narcotics.

Yet his pain only deepened, as did his depression. “I have almost given up hope,” he told a doctor in 2008, medical records show. “I should have died in Iraq.”

Airman Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

It breaks my heart to see this. But that is not the only such story.

...the military came under criticism a decade ago for not prescribing enough medications, particularly for pain. In its willingness to prescribe more readily, the Pentagon was trying to meet standards similar to civilian medicine, General Chiarelli said.

But the response of modern psychiatry to modern warfare has not always been perfect. Psychiatrists still do not have good medications for the social withdrawal, nightmares and irritability that often accompany post-traumatic stress, so they mix and match drugs, trying to relieve symptoms.

“These decisions about medication are difficult enough in civilian psychiatry, but unfortunately in this very-high-stress population, there is almost no data to guide you,” said Dr. Ranga R. Krishnan, a psychiatrist at Duke University. “The psychiatrist is trying everything and to some extent is flying blind."

They are all flying blind - civilian and military doctors alike.

Worse - our government actively hampers the use of one of the safest drugs known to man for relief of PTSD symptoms. I have written about it at length. Here are some of the articles:

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

The Soldiers Disease

Is Addiction Real?

Police and PTSD

PTSD Pot Alcohol & Substance Abuse

PTSD is not just a problem for combat vets: Heroin.

And where opiate use is necessary marijuana can reduce the required dose.

Medical marijuana can help pain patients in many ways. Using cannabis as an adjunct medicine can help opiate pain meds work better. Medical marijuana can successfully treat pain and help lower the overall dose of narcotics, something that is healthy for the patient.

It would be very useful if military doctors could use marijuana to reduce the required opiate dose. Unfortunately military doctors are not allowed to have anything to do with medical marijuana. There are Federal Laws against pot dontcha know.

I would love it if the Government wised up about all this. But first the people are going to have to demand it. We are not quite there yet. And that is very sad.

Here are a few books on the subject:

Marijuana Medical Handbook: Practical Guide to Therapeutic Uses of Marijuana

Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible

Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence

Medical Marijuana 101: Everything They Told You Is Wrong

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Punishment And Moral Disapproval

As some of you know who read me regularly I have a great deal of interest in the Drug War. In one of my early pieces on the subject Heroin, I came to the conclusion that addiction was a response to pain. i.e. people chronically take pain killers to deal with chronic pain. I have come across another book which makes the same point:

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
Here are some words from the author.

I've written In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts because I see addiction as one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People--including many people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers--believe it to be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease. It is both simpler and more complex than that.

Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal relationship to it. Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive attempt to ease one’s pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted.

The inner city drug addicts I work with are amongst the most abused and rejected people amongst us, but instead of compassion our society treats them with contempt. Instead of understanding and acceptance, we give them punishment and moral disapproval. In doing so, we fail to recognize our own deeply rooted problems and thereby forego an opportunity for healing not only for them, the extreme addicts, but also for ourselves as individuals and as a culture.

Which is pretty much what I found out ten years ago by reading Dr. Lonny Shavelson's book:

Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System

Which I reviewed in my post Heroin.

The Author Gabor Mate' has a few More words:

The human brain is exquisitely capable of development, a capacity known as neuroplasticity. But, as with all development, the conditions have to be right. My pessimism about my clients’ future is based not on any limitation of their innate potential, but on their dire social, economic and legal situation and on the essential indifference of policy makers--and of society--to their plight. In short, the resources that could go into rehabilitating people are now sunk, instead, into persecuting them and keeping them marginalized. It’s a failure of insight and of compassion. We are simply not living up to our possibilities as a society.

My estimation is that the rear guard in the support for the Drug War consists of people who need an object for their two minutes of hate. They get more value out of hating than they do out of solving problems. Very strange from this engineer's point of view. But not everyone thinks like an engineer. Pity.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A Conversion

I reposted my article on Heroin at Classical Values and within minutes I had this reply by reader Bob Sykes:

In the past, I have often thought you were somewhat of a crank on drug legalization. But your link this morning to Dr. Shavelson is a revelation.

I have a brother in-law who is a long-term drug addict and who is suicidal. He has never gotten any meaningful treatment for his problems. And I now see somewhat that his pain must be severe.

I am sending this link to my sister.

Thank you.

bob sykes January 14, 2011 8:02 AM

Which prompted Eric of Classical Values to give his own thoughts: What if they made disease illegal, and jailed the sick?.

As I noted in another comment, at some point it was decided to label opiate drugs as "pain killers" and declare that "real" pain consists only of physical pain. A moral line was therefore drawn between emotional pain and physical pain, and it was deemed "immoral" to medicate emotional pain. This in turn led to treating people who medicated their emotional pain as common criminals.

There is more. Go read the whole thing.

Cultural Socialism

I wrote a very short post on Cultural Socialism that got some very interesting comments given the length of the post (Two lines - a total of 16 words). So I thought I'd Google "cultural socialism" to see how popular the term was.

Not very. A total of 2,580 hits. Pathetic. And the post linked above? Number two on the list. So that is something. My mission in life will not be complete until that phrase gets millions of hits. So may I ask a favor of those so inclined? Use the term early and often in speech and comments and blog posts.

And for my more "conservative" friends I think the term deserves some further elucidation. What is cultural socialism? It is state management of the culture. What you can smoke. What you can drink, what your relationship to favored and unfavored groups or individuals should be. It is epitomized in Orwell's novel "1984" by the daily two minutes of hate against Emmanuel Goldstein. And don't forget that love for Big Brother is mandatory.

So who can you currently hate in America? Well wreckers of the state and destroyers of children. And who would those be? Well #1 on the list are users of heroin. You can hate them all you want. And how effective has the hate been? Before the hate was sanctioned and users were punished by law about 2% of the population were users. Since that time the number of heroin users is still about 2%. Which is to say heroin is not very popular. But what has gained popularity? Cultural socialism. If you ask the question: should heroin users be subject to state sanction the numbers in favor would run about 60 to 80%. Maybe more. So we find that cultural socialism is way more popular than heroin. And in my opinion a bigger threat to our liberties than heroin could ever possibly be.

I read a book once that made that very point. Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State. I think the title itself makes my point as well or better than I can. Of course you have to buy the book to get the details. Or you can read my review of it How To Put An End To Drug Users for only a little investment of your time.

So who else can be hated? Well hating gays is very popular on the right and is not uncommon on the left. But that is dying out. We can see that in the Massachusetts Governors race where an openly gay guy is on the ticket in the Lt. Governor spot.

Richard Tisei, a member of the Gay Republican group Log Cabin Clubs and minority Senate leader, is Baker's running mate.

And this next bit of information will make some conservatives really mad. The top of the ticket is a gentleman named Baker. Who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

Baker owns the respect of political insiders on both sides of the aisle. He can also inspire confidence among business leaders. Conservative Republicans may not be thrilled at Baker's libertarian tendencies, but at least he is one who can be influenced by reason.

Yeah. Us libertines/libertarians don't get no respect. Which just goes to show you how popular cultural socialism is. But if you judge by St. Augustine being a libertine is a path to sainthood. Should you believe in saints. Which a fair number of Americans do. And more power to them. As long as they don't try to enlist government to enhance their power.

What the power mad do gooders (cultural socialists) seem to forget is that the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Or as C.S. Lewis put it:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Get it my cultural socialist friends? Cultural socialism is a form of tyranny.

It is not just Economic Socialism we have to worry about.

So does that mean I'm against changing the culture? Of course not. I just think it is more effective and longer lasting if done without the benefit of government guns. Not a very popular position at this point. But as I said at the beginning. I'm out to change that.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Leftist Dogma

Thad McCotter, U.S. Representative and Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee is discussing leftist dogma. Thad goes into details but I'm just going to cover the bullet points. They are:

1. You are a victim of yourself and others
2. You are a danger to yourself and others
3. Nuts Who Scream “Death to America” Need Love, Too

There are statists on the right who subscribe to at least two out of the three points. The Rs need a House cleaning as well. Case in point: the large core of support among Republicans for the Drug War. I believe support for that fits #1 and #2. And you know - it ain't working. Kids can get illegal drugs easier than they can get a legal beer. Doing nothing would work better and cost less.

But let me see if I can get this right. By 1914 Americans were no longer competent to deal with opiates and cocaine. Formerly over the counter drugs. By 1920 they couldn't handle alcohol and by 1937 they lost the ability to deal with cannabis. Oh. I forgot. In 1933 their ability to deal with alcohol in the environment suddenly returned. All it required was passing a law (an Amendment to the Constitution actually - but still - law).

Pot (heh) meet kettle.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Heroin Has Been Destroying America For 100 Years

A newspaper report out of Connecticut paints a dire picture of heroin use in America. The destruction of the country by these evil drugs is nearly complete. We have zombie Armies roaming the streets whose only motivation is drugs and death.

Painter also sees a misconception about heroin addiction, and the hysterical fears of a zombie army of junkies roaming the streets.

“The heroin addiction rate in this country is 1.3 percent and has remained steady for the past century,” he says. “We are going to have heroin addicts no matter what we do. We are going to have alcoholics and nicotine addicts too and a lot of recreational use of these drugs. Finding drugs in urine is a violation of parole. We will never get rid of this scourge by sending people to prison for drugs in their urine. It’s ridiculous. If they rob, OK, send them back. But so many people are in jail on technicalities, for dirty urine. What have we gained?”

Talk of the problems with drug sentencing eventually leads to the subject of prison policy. Brooks likes to cite the TV show “Lock Up” in which a squad does nothing but go through mail to find out how the drugs are getting inside the prison.

“If we can’t keep drugs out of the most secure places in the country, how are we going to keep them off the streets? It is just unrealistic, a fantasy, to think that we can have a drug-free society,” says Brooks, then adds, “The privatization of prisons is partly to blame. What’s the best way to make a profit? By keeping the prison cells full. What’s the best way to fill prison cells? Arrest and convict non-violent drug offenders, who will quietly serve their time.”

Well OK. despite the fact that drug use is as bad as it has ever been (no worse than it has ever been?) there are no zombie armies in the streets looking for children to molest. In fact what has the spending on the drug war done about drug use? If heroin use is any guide - zilch. It is a typical government program. It costs a lot of money and accomplishes the opposite of what it pretends to accomplish - make drugs hard to get, increase public safety, protect children (is is easier for kids to get illegal drugs than legal beer). I'm really surprised that more conservatives don't have alternatives. If for no other reason than:

DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT

Government can't make economies (deep thought, that). It can break them. But according to my conservative friends government is the perfect tool for stamping out vice (harming one's self). I fear my so called conservative friends have bought into progressivism. "Government can.....". I've got news for you: No it can't.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Deliverance

The US Government has a plan. A plan to deliver us from the the scourge of drugs. Really. For sure. Well OK not so sure. It is hard to sell sure after the twentieth or thirtieth time. Well it is all good. But not in fun.

Law enforcement agencies have arrested more than 2,200 people in an investigation targeting Mexican drug trafficking organizations in the United States, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The probe, called Project Deliverance, focused on the transportation networks that carry methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the United States, with return trips of drug proceeds and weapons.

At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder said the extensive operation began nearly two years ago. He said federal agents targeting violent drug cartels have seized nearly 70 tons of marijuana and nearly 1,500 pounds of heroin. Authorities said some of the drugs were hidden inside buses that cross the Southwest border.

But Holder said the fight is far from over.

“Make no mistake. We know that as successful as this operation was, it is just one battle in what is an ongoing war,” he said.

Yeah. A War On Plants and Plant Extracts is going to be successful one day. Real Soon Now. The war on the opium and coca plants has been going on for 96 years (Harrison Narcotics Act). The war on the hemp plant has been going on for 73 years (Marihuana Tax Act of 1937). So yeah. Real soon now there will be some useful results.

At the news conference in Washington, Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the DEA, described the law enforcement strategy as an effort to cut off and shut down the supply of drugs headed northward and the flow of drug profits and guns southward into Mexico.

Well the US Government has been doing that for over 70 years with no end in sight. Evidently the government is beginning to wise up. A little. Look at what the Drug Czar recently said about the government effort.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told the Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

So what do you call an effort (how many Drug Kingpins have been collected so far?) that makes things worse and yet is intensified with each successive failure?

A Government Program.

That is how it works with socialism (price supports for criminals). And yet a lot of so called conservatives support this program. A friend of mine tells me that in the new crop of "Conservatives" running for election this year there are quite a few who favor government price supports for criminals (what would a pile of vegetables be worth if it wasn't for Drug Prohibition?). I don't get how you can be a Conservative and support a government program that has never worked, is not working, and will never work in the way proposed by its supporters. Did I mention that it costs at least $50 billion a year (Federal, State, and Local). A rather nice chunk of change in these hard times.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Some Random Drug War Notes

Well not so random actually. They are the working notes of anti-Drug War Lobbiest and retired Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge.

De Nile is also a river in Egypt:

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting this week our Deputy Secretary of State for the Americas, Mr. Valenzuela was asked by the chairman about the murders of 16 school kids at a birthday party in Mexico. His response was ‘the murders were a sign of success’ of the policy of Mexican President Calderone. I did not believe my ears. After the hearing I asked 2 others if I had heard correctly. Yes. I reviewed the tape at home. Yup. Like body counts in Vietnam and Iraq, dead students are a sign of success. Who knew?

Unsurprisingly a modest search of the Internet turned up nothing about those remarks.

Hell froze over:

On Tuesday I attended a press conference in the Capitol. The IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) endorsed the Webb Commission bill. 17 of my colleagues in full dress uniforms stood behind four Senators asking the Congress for a speedy passage* of the bill. The IACP represents 20,000 Top Cops. It is the only major group to endorse the Webb bill. The rest are fighting it for all their worth.

I never thought the IACP would support this bill. I was wrong. On this occasion it is good to be wrong.

More about IACP support.

And why are the rest of the top police opposing it? Follow the money.

Last month in the hallway of the Heritage Foundation, I ran into Ron Brooks, chief lobbyist for the nation's 69,000 narcotics officers (one cop in 12 is a narcotics officer). He smugly stated that my organization only had a few thousand members vs his 59,000 strong organization. I countered that a solid poll had just shown that 22 percent of all active duty cops would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. This percentage meant about 225,00 cops feel like I do. Per the same poll, a majority of cops felt that marijuana should be just a ticket, not an arrest. I told him that he and the narcs favored prohibition because it was a big, overtime check and job security. He became upset and stormed off.

That is not the only corruption going on in the Drug War. Ever wonder how all those drugs get across the border?

Worse than we thought:

Senator Pryor (D-AR) had the courage ( no other Senators attended the event) to call a hearing on the ‘Corruption of federal officers by the Mexican Drug Cartels.’ One witness stated that the polygraph exam was washing out 60% of the applicants. The audience was stunned at such a figure.

Then came the bad news. The Border Patrol only polygraphs 15% of applicants. The witnesses testified further that the Drug Cartels are hiring people who then apply to the Border Patrol. Why receive only one paycheck? And you wonder how drugs flow across the border like beer in a German bar?

Well not to worry. We are winning the Drug War. In fact we have been winning it for 40 years. Or would that be 96 years - since the passage of the Federal anti-cocaine and heroin laws - or for 73 years since the passage of the Federal anti-marijuana laws?

YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS

“So what numbers can you ‘hang your hat on?” asked Wooldridge. “In 2005 our federal government reported these sobering numbers: One – 110 million Americans had tried an illicit drug at least once. Two – 35,000,000 had used an illicit drug the previous year. More importantly, ask yourself what is the most crucial question for you and your children. Is it how much has drug use has gone up or down or how easy is it for your kids to buy drugs from marijuana to heroin. Of course it is drug availability which is the crucial question and that is why the Prohibition Crowd never, ever wants to discuss that aspect.

“Drug Prohibition will be repealed when a majority understand its destructive effects AND tell their politicians. Help your family by re-directing police time towards public safety, not personal safety. Going after Willie Nelson smoking marijuana on his back porch is NOT making America safer. Silence here means politicians will keep voting billions to feed the police drug machine.”

Which just goes to show you how long failure can be maintained if you are spending other people's money to support it.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Treatment Denied

A why is treatment denied? Because it is unavailable. So reports the Army Times.

Treatment, not incarceration, should be the first option for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses, a group advocating alternatives to the nation’s “war on drugs” said Wednesday in a new report.

The Drug Policy Alliance report [pdf] also called on government agencies to adopt overdose prevention programs and policies for vets who misuse substances or take prescription medicines, and urged “significantly expanded” access to medication-assisted therapies, such as methadone and buprenorphine, for the treatment of dependence on opioid drugs used to treat pain and mood disorders.

Now that is a change. People use drugs to change their minds. Or at least how their minds make them feel. I wonder if they are suggesting that idea because it is now more acceptable? Addiction or self medication?

Those close to the issue point out that about 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression or other mental illness or cognitive disability, and that 19 percent of veterans who have received care from the Veterans Affairs Department have been diagnosed with substance abuse or dependence.

Guy Gambill, an Army veteran and advocate for veterans’ rights who took part in the conference call, noted that one of the hallmarks of PTSD “is a tendency to self-medicate. People do that with drugs, people do that with alcohol.”

In my article originally published in 2002, Addiction or Self Medication?, I voted for self medication. I guess it is catching on. Took 'em long enough.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Demons Vs Imps

The Guardian - UK has an editorial up on the failure of the drug war.

The political fixation on drugs prohibition really took hold in the west in the 1960s as much from moral panic about a subversive counterculture as from analysis of the harm caused by particular drugs.

Since then, the law has tried to maintain a distinction between reputable and disreputable substances that neither users nor medical research recognise. Scientific attempts to classify drugs in terms of the harm they do – to the body and society – routinely place tobacco and alcohol ahead of cannabis and ecstasy. The point is not that the wrong drugs are banned, but that the law is nonsense to anyone with real knowledge of the substances involved.

One point of general agreement is that heroin is the big problem.

Ah. The heroin demon vs the marijuana imp. Progress.

But if you take out superstition all you have left is that "People take pain relievers to relieve pain. The stronger the pain the stronger the pain reliever required."

It pains me to see anti-prohibitionists still mired in superstition. I may have to seek pain relief.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Getting A Daily Dose

The Swiss are giving in to the junkies.

GENEVA (AP) - Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.

The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it was begun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s.

Zullino's office, part of the Geneva University Hospitals, is one of 23 such centers in Switzerland.

Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches.

In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work.

Junkies with jobs? What is the world coming to? Or rather what is the world going back to? The Swiss program is very much like one in effect in the US from 1914 when the Harrison Act was passed until about 1923 with the closure of last clinic in Baton Rouge.

It worked then, and it still works. Which is why we can no longer do that sort of thing in America. Which is rather fortunate. After all those drug cartels need to make a profit too. And think of all the street dealers such a system would put out of business. We certainly don't want to be putting retailers and wholesalers out of business in a down economy do we?

There is one small problem with the program. Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the program began in 1994. Now think of all the police, prosecutors, lawyers, prison guards etc. out of jobs because of that. Every junkie in America has a huge burden to bear keeping all those people working. If it were not for junkies taxpayers might not willingly pony up the dough to support all those folks. Another economic disaster in the making during hard times if this clinic idea ever caught on. As long as Americans keep hating junkies the jobs that depend on them are safe. So do your part. Hate a junkie today. A big part of the economy depends on it.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Will The Real Cause Of Addiction Please Stand Up?

I just got a comment on my piece Capitalism, Pain, and The War On Drugs. My commenter is long on ignorance and short on facts.

First of all, in order to prove that drug addiction is inherited, one would need to identify the gene responsible. So much for that theory. My opinion: bullshit.

Some of the genes have been identified. You can read about them: Genetic Discrimination Note that I wrote that in Dec of '05. We know more now than we did then.

In addition the NIDA says Addiction Is A Genetic Disease.

So right away you are on weak ground. i.e. the government says you are full of it.

Second, just because people with problems tend to have drug problems says nothing about drugs themselves.Logic is not commutative, unless one is willing to assume that cause and effect are interchangeable. Then again, conservatives often rely on religious mysticism for intellectual guidance, to the chagrin of physicists around the globe.

Funny thing is, I was a physics major in college and spent a major portion of my career as an aerospace engineer. One step short of rocket scientist.

The NIDA says that besides genetics there is some kind of envionmental trigger. I believe that trigger is trauma. I cover that in Heroin.

Third, PTSD is such a novel concept that there is no reliable information about it, never mind a genetic test for susceptibility to it.

PTSD is not a nebulous concept. It is about fear memories. Here is a study on the subject: Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor done at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Further we have research by the discoverer of the CB1 receptor, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, that looks at PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System and explains the applicability of the mice studies to humans.

In addition a genetic test is being developed for PTSD by the very same discoverer of the CB1 receptor: A Test For PTSD.

Fourth, most 'graduates' of AA go on to become responsible social drinkers. Some day I must find out how they managed to alter their genomes. Did asking Christ into their hearts do it?

Well no. It is actually explained by Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor. Fear memories decay over time. The rate of decay is variable and is genetically dependent. No need to go to AA meetings or asking Christ into your heart. Just wait and try to keep youself comfortable while the fear memories decline. (Any way I'm pretty much Jewish and claim that you only need to go to the head man, but that is a minor theological dispute.) The science is out there for any one truly interested in the subject. It amazes me that with research so easy in these internet days so few people avail themselves of the opportunity.

Finally our friendly commenter finishes with:

But then, I am just a radical lefty liberal, with no credibility, so go ahead and ignore me.

I will assume you are correct in your self description - radical lefty liberal. I also agree that you have no credibility. However, you are not being ignored. Just ridiculed for you ignorance. As usual for a lefty you are weak on science, strong on opinion, and unwilling to put your name (not even a pseudonym) next to your opinions. My condolences.

Policing Morality

In a discussion at The Captain's Quarters the policing of morality came up. Naturally I had to chime in.

We have whole departments of government dedicated to policing morality.

Ever hear of the DEA? The Federal Government spends at minimum $20 bn a year policing people's drug habits. Is it working? The price of heroin on a cost/purity basis has declined by a factor of 600 in the last 40 years. A packet of 2 - 5% pure heroin used to cost on the order of $40. Now you get 80 to 95% pure heroin for around $4. A real success story for the morality police.

Pot - one of the least dangerous drugs known to man, including alcohol, tobacco, and aspirin - has seen a significant price rise over the same time period. Another roaring success.

Less dangerous drugs - more expensive. More dangerous drugs - less expensive. Another roaring success.

Did I mention financing criminals and terrorists?

Why don't we stop this madness? I blame drugs - the mere mention of which makes people stupid.

Penn and Teller On Drugs

I was over at one of my daily reads Little Green Footballs and came across this Penn and Teller episode of their program Bullshit on Recycling. Very interesting. Very Funny. And laced with profanity. Kind of like Amanda Marcotte only they make you laugh.

So I started noodling around and found a bit they did on the War On Drugs. And how well it is not doing. As you know I rarely post pictures or video clips in order to keep this place low bandwidth friendly. I'm going to make one of my rare exceptions for this one. (about 30 minutes).

These guy are geniuses. And, smart too.



Not Work Safe

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The War Lords of Afghanistan - Part II

Afghanistan's member of parliament, Mrs. Malalai Joya, says American policy in Afghanistan is all wrong.

The so-called "Northern Alliance," a coalition of regional and religious organizations, governed Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 before one of its member groups, the Taliban, took over the government. After a U.S.-led coalition in 2001 ousted the Taliban regime in response to the 9/11 attacks, Northern Alliance figures were appointed to government positions despite their extensive and well-documented history of human rights abuses.

And from Joya's perspective, that's the biggest problem Afghanistan now faces.

Malalai Joya says the former Mujahideen - "warlords who have now learned how to talk about democracy and women and how to wear a suit and a tie" - are no better than the Taliban: "Every country that wants to prove itself as real and honest friends of the Afghan people must stop following the policy of the U.S., because this is not a real democracy and this is not a real war on terror. At one hand they are saying 'we fight the Taliban' and on the other we have members of parliament who are Taliban. The only way is to stop this policy. If they don't stop this policy, I am sure that one day there will be another September 11. Another September 11 will happen — because they are like the Taliban [and] they will act like the Taliban."

She couldn't have told us this sooner?

I suppose we really knew this all along. You can only impose a form of government on a defeated people. Other wise all you have is pressure and not much of that if the Afghanis want to assert their independence.

Like it or not the warlords are power centers. Loyalties change slowly. The American Indians are a case in point.

As one example of the approach that Joya objects to, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., while visiting Afghanistan two weeks ago, voiced his support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."

She says these are the same "warlords and drug lords [who] committed lots of crimes when they were in power under the name of jihad and even now are committing lots of crimes under the name of jihad and Islam."

We could reduce the profit in growing drugs by at least 90% to 95% by ending prohibition. I cover that in The War Lords of Afghanistan.

Who uses Heroin? About 70% of female heroin users were sexually molested. If heroin helps them get by I'm all for it. I think that being under a doctor's supervision would be a sufficient control of the market. Besides, the NIDA says that addiction has a genetic component. Only a small fraction of the population is susceptable.

In any case it looks like the outsiders in Afghanistan are backing the wrong crowd. Nothing new here. I think the Afghanis are going to have to sort this out. With our support. We have to resist the tendency to go native.

H/T Afghan LORD