Every year, about $12 billion in drug profits returns to Mexico from the world's largest narcotics market â the United States. As a tactic in the war on drugs, law enforcement pursues that drug money and is then allowed to keep a portion as an incentive to fight crime.
â¦
Federal and state rules governing asset forfeiture explicitly discourage law enforcement agencies from supplementing their budgets with seized drug money or allowing the prospect of those funds to influence law enforcement decisions.
There is a law enforcement culture â particularly in the South â in which police agencies have grown, in the words of one state senator from South Texas, "addicted to drug money."
Everyday I read the Drug Czar's blog hoping that one afternoon I might happen upon something vaguely resembling an actual response to the reform movement's detailed and ongoing critiques of his work. Yet it never comes. Instead, I read that marijuana makes people sad, medical marijuana makes people sick, and school children love having their urine collected.
Then today it happened. Overcome, perhaps, by excitement over the newest data on marijuana potency, the Drug Czar's blog linked editorials by MPP's Bruce Mirken and NORML's Paul Armentano. The post even contains quotes by Armentano and attempts to refute them:
Claim 1: "...even by the University of Mississippi's own admission, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana -- which comprises the bulk of the US market -- is less than five percent, a figure that's remained unchanged for nearly a decade." (via the HuffingtonPost)
Not exactly. The "domestic" samples analyzed in the University of Mississippi's report do not represent what's found in the U.S. market. "Domestic" samples refer to marijuana plants that were found in the process of being grown and were then eradicated by law enforcement in the U.S. The potency of these "domestic" specimens is far lower because those specimens are most often taken from immature plants that never reached full cultivation (maturity) for distribution and consumption in the illegal market.
The "non-domestic" specimens in the report are from actual DEA street or border seizures, which are a different set of specimens from the "domestic" eradications. These samples more accurately represent the quality of marijuana that's smoked in the U.S. (The "non-domestic" label has been misinterpreted because the origin of the seized marijuana is not known.)
It's just not true. As "Understanding Marijuana" author Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D. explains via email:Claim 2: "If and when consumers encounter unusually strong varieties of marijuana, they adjust their use accordingly and smoke less."
The research cited in this argument undermines the author's own claim. The almost 20-year old study found that the effects of the marijuana were greater for the high THC doses of marijuana. Even though the 12 experienced users in the study were titrating, they ended up more intoxicated, and that was with marijuana that only had 1.3 percent versus 2.7 percent THC.
â¦the Pushing Back website says "Even though the 12 experienced users in the study were titrating, they ended up more intoxicated," while the abstract of the article they are mentioning says "Active marijuana also increased subjective reports of drug effect over placebo, but not dose dependently" That is, the folks smoking real pot got higher than folks smoking placebo, but the folks with the stronger dose didn't get higher than the folks with the weaker dose.As always, it is just impossible to overstate the factual vacuum from which the Drug Czar's claims emerge before being tossed into the public debate like a turd into a hot sauna. These reflexive, involuntary fabrications are all the more galling when one considers that marijuana potency actually has increased and could theoretically be demonstrated without lying at all.
It's a popular tactic in an emergency, but it can easily backfire:
His mouth packed with marijuana, a teenager asked a deputy if he could spit the cannabis out before he was arrested on multiple drug charges, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.
Andrew Alexander Alvarez, 17, of Merioneth Drive, Fort Walton Beach, is charged with possession of Percocet, tampering with evidence, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
A deputy stopped a vehicle in front of the Coast Guard station and noticed the driver and Alvarez seemed to be hiding something, he wrote in the arrest report.
Alvarez would only mumble after he got out for questioning. Then he "requested that I allow him to spit the cannabis out onto the shoulder," the deputy wrote. [nwfdailynews.com]
Not familiar with this scientific research? Your government is.
In fact, the first experiment documenting pot's potent anti-cancer effects
took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest federal
bureaucrats. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974,
Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana's primary
psychoactive component, THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast
cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their
lives by as much as 36 percent."
Despite these favorable preliminary findings (eventually published the
following year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute), U.S.
government officials refused to authorize any follow-up research until
conducting a similar - though secret - clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That
study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2
million, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over
long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated
controls.
However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers
shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its
findings were leaked to the medical journal AIDS Treatment News, which in
turn forwarded the story to the national media. [timesheraldonline.com]