Cocaine

Joe Biden, whose brain malfunctions severely anytime he thinks about drugs, did not disappoint during Sunday’s Democratic Presidential Debate. When asked about his shifting support for a fence along the Mexican border, Biden had this to say:

Well, that fence -- the reason I voted for the fence was that was the only alternative that was there, and I voted for the fence related to drugs. You can -- a fence will stop 20 kilos of cocaine coming through that fence. It will not stop someone climbing over it or around it.

And so -- but this bill has a much more reasonable provision in it. It has much -- much shorter fence, it does have the Border Patrol requirement, and it is designed not just to deal with illegals; it's designed -- a serious drug trafficking problem we have.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Biden, understand that he is not suffering from a stroke.* This guy just has a really hard time understanding drugs, but continues to bring them up whenever he’s under pressure. Biden’s unfortunate obsession/confusion regarding drugs has led him to create ONDCP, author the RAVE Act, and propose biological warfare in South America.

So does Biden dramatically misunderstand the role of actual people in physically transporting cocaine across the border? Is it really necessary to explain that some of the people who climb over or around the fence carry cocaine with them? Does he know that 20 kilos fits in a backpack?

Whether Biden realizes the absurdity of his remarks is beside the point. He got cornered for flip-flopping on the fence issue, so he cried “Drugs! If my positions appear contradictory, it’s because I was trying to fight drugs.” That’s what he does, because he knows there’s no accountability when you talk about “Drugs!”

*No offense to stroke victims. I’m not really comparing you to Joe Biden.

According to the New Jersey Law Journal, via Law.com, the NJ Supreme Court has shifted away from a 20-year-old policy of suspending lawyers convicted of cocaine possession, instead merely censuring a Wayne-based workers compensation and personal injury attorney for it:

The court, in an order made public on Tuesday, took one step further a recommendation for lenience made by the Disciplinary Review Board, which suggested a "suspended" three-month suspension for the lawyer, Wayne, N.J., solo Anthony Filomeno, in view of his demonstrated remorse, rehabilitation and early release from a year-long pretrial intervention program.

Now maybe they'll go a little softer on the rest of the drug-using public...

From The Baltimore Sun:

The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators showing that cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and American users were getting more bang for their buck.

We've already covered this story, but it's beginning to generate broader coverage. Of course, no amount of negative publicity will silence our brave drug warriors even momentarily. Here's Karen Tandy just yesterday:

"Plan Colombia is working. The amount of land used for the cultivation of coca is at an historic low in Colombia," the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Karen Tandy, told a drug law enforcement conference in Madrid. [AFP]

So why does Washington cover up increased cocaine potency, while aggressively trumpeting increased marijuana potency? The answer is simple, although if you asked the drug czar, he'd turn purple and pretend not to understand what you mean.

In the case of cocaine, the federal government has long identified reducing purity and increasing price as the primary goals of our ridiculously expensive and ongoing South American drug war investments. Increased cocaine potency in 2007 raises serious doubts about the efficacy of the brutal jungle wars we've been bankrolling for 10 years.

In the case of marijuana, however, the government's primary interest is in convincing an experienced public that this isn’t the same drug that has so consistently failed to hurt anyone. Jacob Sullum puts it best:

These warnings have to be understood mainly as a rationalization for the hypocrisy of parents (and politicians) who smoked pot in their youth and thought it was no big deal then but feel a need to explain why it is a big deal now.

Of course, while drug war demagogues are fond of comparing today's more potent marijuana to cocaine, there's really nothing to which they can compare today's stronger cocaine. I dunno, anthrax maybe? When I start hearing reports about weaponized nose-candy, I'm totally moving to Jupiter.

My friend Grant Smith over at Drug Policy Alliance has commented on NIDA research to develop vaccinations and the philosophical implications of "robbing entire future generations of the basic human right to have freedom of choice and sovereignty over their bodies and minds." As a follow-up, I'd like to point out here the danger from a straight medical perspective. The questions of whether a vaccine will work, what its side effects may be, and what the likelihood is of experiencing such side effects are questions that go along with the development of any new medication. But there is something fundamentally different -- medically and scientifically -- about the concept of a vaccine to permanently disable a person from experiencing the effects of ingesting a drug. First, the neurological system that goes to work when one tries to "get high" is intimately tied to the rest of our neurology -- getting a thrill from chocolate or a rush from exercise, for example, involves some of the same chemical interactions in the brain that are involved in smoking a cigarette or snorting cocaine. I'm not saying that the acts are the same, but they are biochemically similar and related. They have to be -- each of us only has one brain, after all. Second, most drugs, both legal and illegal, either are used medically now or are highly similar to drugs that are used medically now. Cocaine and methamphetamine are both schedule II substances -- highly regulated, but used in medicine. Meth is from the same family as the widely used Ritalin. Heroin is a close variant of morphine. I don't know of current medical uses for nicotine, but I don't think it can be categorically ruled out for all time. Could a vaccination to block the euphoric effects of these drugs interfere with the ability of the same or similar drugs to produce the medical benefits for which they are also used? The only way to really know for sure is to do test people for it. But because only a fraction of all children go on to experience the medical problems that would be treated by the drugs, to do such a test and have sufficient data for it to be meaningful would require vastly expanding the number of kids who have to be given the vaccination initially as part of the research. And possibly excepting Ritalin use, the data would not come in for several decades, because most people acquire the afflictions for which the medications are used late in life. So in addition to the disturbing philosophical implications that Grant has explored, I really see this direction as inherently reckless from a straight medical perspective -- there is just no truly reliable way to know whether the treatment administered to toddlers or grade-schoolers now could put them in a box with respect to medical treatment down the road -- there's just no feasible way to gather enough data in advance, and if we did we might still not find out for 70 years. Rank this one right up there with the drug-fighting franken-fungus -- don't go there!

I´ve spent the last few hours with Baldomeo Caceres, the Peruvian psychologist and coca expert, walking around central Lima and talking about the politics of coca. Now, we´ve traveled to Baldo´s house in the upscale Lima suburb of Miraflores, where we´re going to have a nice Peruvian lunch, then I´ll pull out my laptop and do a formal interview with him. One of the points that Baldo hammered away on while we walked and talked was his frustration with the slow pace of efforts to get coca removed from the list of banned plants in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotics. Evo Morales is supposedly ready to formally request coca´s removal from the list, but according to Baldo, he isn´t getting support from some of the quarters he should be in the world of the non-governmental organizations. We´ll see what Baldo is willing to say about that on the record. He was also pessimistic about the prospects for change at the UN General Assembly special session on drugs in Vienna next year. Again, we´ll see what he says about that on the record. I have just been called to lunch, so I will keep this short. After this, I go to interview Peruvian defense and drug policy analyst Ricardo Soberon, formerly an advisor to Congresswoman Nancy Obregon. I will have photos soon. I had to buy a cable for the camera so I can transfer the photos. I´ll try to post some this evening.

Well, that didn't take long. I arrived in Lima late last night and didn't clear customs and make my way to my very cheap ($10) hotel in the center of the city a few blocks off the Plaza de Armas, the main square at the heart of the city. But I went to the Plaza today, where I met some Canadians and Russians. As we sat drinking Inka -Cola, we were soon engaged in conversation by one of the numerout touts trying to make a living off the tourists. The young man wanted to sell bronzed llamas and stuff like that, but the Russians had more decadent pleasures in mind, and the young man disappeared and returned in a matter of minutes. An under the table transaction occurred, and our group adjourned to the Russian´s hotel, where they proceeded to put their contribution to the Peruvian economy right up their noses. They paid $40 for what was supposed to be a gram, but looked like maybe twice that. I ran into the tout again a few minutes ago. He wanted to know if I wanted some. When I said no, he dropped the price to $20. How low would he have gone? I don´t know because I wasn't haggling. From what I can tell, though, it was so pure that if I had snorted any it would have probably blown out my sinuses. A couple of points here: I don't really recommend buying cocaine off strangers in the main plaza of a strange city. There are plenty of stories here about people like that turning out to be cops. (Ah, the old reverse sting. It's particularly profitable for Third World cops working on gringo tourists. How much would you pay to make that sort of trouble go away?) In this case, however, my concerns were lessened somewhat because it wasn't the tout but the Russians who mentioned the stuff. In those stings, it´s usually the other way around. The second point has to do with coca. All the coca growers say they are only growing for the traditional markets, but that's clearly not the case. I don't think it serves their leaders well to pretend otherwise. I guess I'll see what they have to say about it when I talk to some of them next week.

People are getting wasted on cocaine again. Science Blog reports on data from the University of Florida that may suggest a coming epidemic:

What happens when a satirical TV program tricks 50 members of Italian Parliament into taking a drug test? Controversy.

From News.com

Brazil, Latin America's largest and most populous nation gets surprisingly little press in the US. The mass media paid some attention back in May, when the country's "commands"--the criminal gangs formed in Brazil's prisons that control the drug trade and act as a de facto government in some of the favelas (ghettos) surrounding Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro--rose up in open rebellion against the Brazilian state. But since then, the silence in the US press has been deafening.