Youth

Ali is a highly trained German shepherd that spent eight years on narcotics patrol with the New Jersey police force, hunting down drug smugglers at airports and drug dealers on inner-city streets. Post-retirement, he's working in the private sector, sniffing teenagers' bedrooms.

Ali and his handler are now working for a new company in New Jersey called Sniff Dogs.

The company, which also conducts business in Ohio, rents drug-sniffing canines to parents for $200 an hour. It was started this year by Debra Stone, who says her five trained dogs can detect heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and ecstasy.

The dogs' noses are so sensitive that they can smell a marijuana seed from up to 15 feet away and marijuana residue on clothing from drugs smoked two nights before.

One of the selling points of this service? Avoiding the kind of confrontation that comes with a drug test. [ABC News]

Parenting is hard and teenage drug abuse is almost impossible to handle exactly the right way. But bringing drug sniffing dogs into your house is just totally crazy, it really is. It’s the sort of approach that only occurs to parents whose over-the-top hysteria about drugs has already eliminated the possibility that their kids would actually tell them anything voluntarily.

Update: In response to this comment, I don't think the point is really to help parents who are already dealing with a drug abuse problem in their home. At that point, you don't need a drug dog to tell you what you already know. If you start doing stuff like that, your kid just won't bring it in the house. One of the mothers quoted in the story is using the dog as an extra precaution even though her kids seem fine. And that's weird. Seriously. If your kids say they're not using drugs and they're happy and doing well in school, etc. and yet you're still marching drug dogs around their rooms...you're the one with a problem.

At the federal level, Hillary will reform mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders, starting by eliminating the mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine and eliminating the disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

Make it a federal crime to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance – including meth – that is colored, packaged, or otherwise altered in a way designed to appeal to kids and young people. Last year, the DEA reported that drug dealers are coloring meth crystals and giving them names like "Strawberry Quick." The crystals resemble "pop rocks" and other forms of candy. One goal of dealers is to try to lure in young customers "by making meth seem less dangerous." Hillary will sternly punish any dealer or trafficker of meth that colors, packages, or otherwise alters the drug to appeal to young people.

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

When we push back against illegal drug use, youth abuse of other substances decrease as well:

*Use of alcohol, including binge drinking, and cigarette smoking
have decreased by 15 and 33 percent, respectively

1. These are legal, widely available drugs. The Drug Czar's claim that supply-reduction efforts have been effective against illicit substances cannot be applied to alcohol and tobacco. There may be age restrictions, but there ain't no crop substitution or aerial fumigation going on in North Carolina.

2. The Drug Czar's office doesn't work on tobacco and alcohol prevention. They've made no ads about these drugs or implemented any laws or policies in regards to them.

3. There's no war on tobacco or alcohol. If reductions in the use of these drugs are achievable without harsh laws, that merely illustrates the futility of punitive drug war policies.

4. Coinciding reductions in both licit and illicit drug use demonstrate a broader social trend, suggesting that specific drug war programs are not a catalyst in determining youth behavior.

Mitt Romney thinks it's just awful that Barack Obama has been honest about past experience with alcohol and illegal drugs:

"It's just not a good idea for people running for President of the United States who potentially could be the role model for a lot of people to talk about their personal failings while they were kids because it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, 'well I can do that too and become President of the United States,'" Romney told an Iowa audience today. "I think that was a huge error by Barack Obama…it is just the wrong way for people who want to be the leader of the free world." [FOXNews]

But, um, you can do drugs and become the President. This has been proven time and again as of late and it's actually a terrible idea to suggest otherwise. Young people need to know that they can make mistakes and still be successful. Heck, young people should even know that drug use is often not a mistake if done responsibly at the appropriate age. The problem with convincing them that drug use ruins your future is that they might believe you and just give up.

Really, there is nothing more harmful and destructive than attempting to educate children about drugs by lying about your own experiences. Young people need someone to talk to. They need to know that you understand, and the best way to create that environment is by being honest. If you do understand, don't pretend not to. That's insane.

The truth here is that Barack Obama's experience with drug use is typical. He experimented, aged out of it, and went on to pursue a rewarding career. There's nothing miraculous or shocking about his failure to become a walking after-school special. Most people don't.

But if Barack Obama has been unlucky enough to get arrested, I doubt we'd even know his name. Indeed, drug use won't disqualify you from a high profile career, but the drug war will crush your dreams every time.

If we want to send children the right message about drugs, let's stop threatening to arrest and ruin them for things so many of us did without consequence.

[Thanks, Tom]

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who studied the lyrics of hundreds of popular songs, found that one in three mention alcohol or drug use.
…

Most lyrical references to substance use were associated with partying, sex, violence and, or humor. The use of drugs and alcohol was motivated by peer pressure, sex, and, or money. Only four songs explicitly had anti-use messages. [Reuters]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- U.S. safety officials have recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots bead toys that contain a chemical that has caused some children to vomit and become comatose after swallowing them.

Scientists have found the popular toy's coating contains a chemical that, once metabolized, converts into the toxic "date rape" drug GHB, or gamma-hydroxy butyrate… [CNN]

Information Bulletin
New Drug – JENKEM

On 09/19/07 Cpl. Disarro received and email from a concerned parent regarding a new drug called “Jenkem”. The parent advised their child learned about this drug through various conversations with several students at Palmetto Ridge High.

Jenkem originated in Africa and other third world countries by fermenting raw sewage to create a gas which is inhaled to achieve a high. Jenkem is now a popular drug in American Schools. Jenkem is a homemade substance which consists of fecal matter and urine. The fecal matter and urine are placed in a bottle or jar and covered most commonly with a balloon. The container is then placed in a sunny area for several hours or days until fermented. The contents of the container will separate and release a gas, which is captured in the balloon. Inhaling the gas is said to have a euphoric high similar to ingesting cocaine but with strong hallucinations of times past. [Snopes]

This doesn't sound like a good idea. But what shall we do about it? You can't pop people for poop possession, or piss-test people for piss sniffing. Should we launch a massive public education campaign warning kids that fermenting their excrement and breathing in the resulting fumes will get them wasted? That could backfire.

So I don't know what the solution is. For starters, we should wait to see if this is a real problem or just another hysterical response to a couple gross, though isolated, incidents. If there really is a rising trend of Florida youths sniffing fermented feces, maybe it's just an overreaction to the Miami DEA Chief's recent claim that marijuana will kill you.

Drug war lunacy has taken hold in Rindge, NH and it isn't pretty. A new policy of notifying local police about suspected drug use on campus has disrupted the school's educational mission and provoked widespread alarm among students.

After discovering a marijuana grinder during a routine maintenance check, campus security called police to investigate. Police then locked students out of their residence for 26 hours while obtaining a search warrant. This video made by Franklin Pierce SSDP members shows how several students were denied access to all of their possessions, including their school work, for a full day so that one of them could be investigated for drug paraphernalia:

If this sounds like a typical college campus misconduct case, it's not. Sources familiar with the situation have informed me that Rindge Police threatened campus security themselves with arrest if they didn't start sacrificing students to the local drug war. It's like saying, "We know people smoke pot on campus. Help us bust them, or we'll bust you."

It's hard to understand what could motivate this type of law-enforcement. Small-town police departments with less to occupy their time are frequently prone to drug war excesses. College town culture clashes are nothing new either. But the sheer audacity of all this is stunning, and it raises important questions about whether this police department understands its proper role in the community.

Beyond that, it highlights how quickly the war on drugs can become a war on education itself. Throughout the nation, students bear the stigma of presumed drug involvement and are targeted, not just by law-enforcement, but by federal law that removes young people from school for petty offenses. The behavior of police at Franklin Pierce University is symptomatic of the corrupted drug war mentality that we must investigate and destroy our young people if necessary in order to discourage drug use.

This is not a war which seeks to protect and uplift America's youth. It is many things, but it is so clearly not that.

KAREN TANDY: If you filled the stadium at FedEx Field, which happens to be the largest football stadium in the NFL, if you filled that will all of the teenagers who are no longer using drugs, you’d have to fill that stadium nine times. Empty it, and refill it. [ThinkProgress]