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Drug Czar Mixes Cannabis, Caffeine, and Cartography With Catastrophic Results

The Drug Czar claimed today that San Francisco has more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks coffee shops.

As we've noted previously, state "medical" marijuana laws breed confusion, abuse, and violence in neighborhoods and communities.

Here's our latest analysis of this phenomenon. In downtown San Francisco alone, there are 98 marijuana dispensaries, compared to 71 Starbucks Coffee shops

As is typical considering the source, this is just totally wrong. There are 25 medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco, not 98. I contacted Americans for Safe Access today and they had no idea what’s up with this crazy map. Most of the "dispensaries" on the map simply don’t exist. It’s incomprehensible. My best guess is that they’re including doctors' offices, which might write prescriptions, but certainly don’t provide medicine. It might be something even crazier and more dishonest than that.

The thing is, everyone in San Francisco knows where the dispensaries are. They’re only allowed in certain areas. It’s not a secret. This page includes a list of addresses for all of them and, believe me, a lot of people wish it were longer.

So if "marijuana laws breed confusion" as the drug czar claims, it would appear that the confusion remains confined to his office. Regardless of how many Starbucks and medical marijuana dispensaries there are, there is only one place to go if you’re looking for worldclass bullshit drug war propaganda maps.


ONDCP's fake marijuana dispensary map

Could the Next Drug Czar be William Bratton?

The Politico looks at rumored cabinet selections if Obama is elected and identifies Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton as a possible choice for drug czar. Of course, the election isn’t over yet and this is just a rumor, the origins of which we know nothing about. So I don’t want to go too far here, but if true, this could become big news and a source of concern for reformers.

Bratton is a proponent of the "broken windows" theory of policing which prioritizes enforcement of minor offenses in pursuit of a trickle-up effect on crime control. He served as New York City police commissioner in the 1990’s, overseeing a dramatic increase in petty marijuana arrests. On medical marijuana, Bratton has claimed to be "totally supportive," but has shown concern about profiteering by dispensary operators. While his views on medical marijuana would appear to be an improvement over previous drug czars, the question is whether he’d retain his respect for California’s laws after moving to Washington, D.C. to lead the federal drug war.

Having said all that, I believe it’s quite likely that other names will emerge if Obama wins tomorrow and I’m hopeful that his call for "shifting the model" in our drug policy would mean looking beyond law-enforcement circles when it comes to managing our national approach to drug abuse. In fact, it's really kind of hard to understand what he meant if not that.

(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.)

Mexico’s Top Drug Cop Resigns Amidst Corruption Controversy

For the hundredth time, why the hell are we giving these people hundreds of millions in U.S. tax dollars to fight the war on drugs? To say they cannot be trusted is an epic understatement:

Mexico's efforts to get to grips with spiralling drug crime and corruption suffered a blow at the weekend when one of the country's top police officers resigned amid allegations that drugs cartels had infiltrated his department.

Gerardo Garay, the head of Mexico's military-style federal police force, stepped down to head off suspicion that he was working for a major drugs cartel. "I am resigning because the bloody fight against organised crime makes it our duty to strengthen institutions, which means it is essential to eliminate any shadows of doubt regarding me," Garay told a press conference. "I will put myself at the disposal of the judicial authorities." [Guardian]

The best evidence that he’s corrupt may be the fact that, unlike his predecessor, he wasn’t shot to death. That’s how bad this has gotten.

Q: How do you tell if a Mexican anti-drug official is corrupt?

A: He’s alive.

Is that even an exaggeration? I’m beginning to wonder. Which brings us back to the mindblowing fact that our government is investing huge sums of our money in the deeply corrupted Mexican drug war. We cannot possibly possess any vague assurance that we can trust anyone on the receiving end of these enormous drug war donations, but we do it anyway.

During an economic crisis, we’re pouring hundreds of millions into Mexico’s cauldron of drug war corruption and you can bet we’ll get nothing in return. Nothing, that is, except an endless supply of cocaine on our streets.
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