I am pretty sure THIS guy will be willing to answer:
Posted on 11/16/2005 8:24:04 AM PST by JTN
You wouldn’t have expected it during any other week, but for a few days in mid-November, pot smoke wafted throughout the hallways and meeting rooms of the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, California.
Upscale hotels aren’t typical hangouts for barefoot young hippies, recovering addicts, or a handful of self-described “harm reduction hotties” toting their own 12-month calendar and information about how to minimize disease and other damage from injection drug use.
But here they were, rubbing elbows with retired police chiefs, academics, addiction specialists, attorneys, non-profit directors, religious leaders and formerly incarcerated prisoners.
The occasion? The 2005 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organized by the Drug Policy Alliance. With nearly 1,000 registrants from all over the United States and many parts of Europe, Latin America and Canada, the event offered attendees nearly 75 sessions over three days, on topics such as harm reduction psychotherapy, rogue anti-drug task forces, and cutting edge cannabis research in Canada.
The group causing the biggest buzz, by far, were the representatives of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which calls for an end to the drug war altogether. In the three years since the group’s founding, the not-for-profit has cultivated an impressive advisory board with the likes of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson; Joseph McNamara, San Jose’s former police chief; Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell; former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and U.S. District Court Judge John Kane.
Years ago, police officers would only have mingled with this crowd as undercover agents, but here, burly LEAPers were treated like celebrities in their own right, easy to spot because of their buzz cuts, cowboy hats and/or extremely large lettering on their brightly colored t-shirts: “Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why.”
A LEAP panel discussion yielded shocking stories from the drug war front lines. Admissions from LEAP Director and former New Jersey state police lieutenant Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran and narc, surprised even this drug war-savvy crowd. “We lied regularly about the numbers of drugs we were seizing,” Cole said, explaining that if his fellow officers were lucky enough to bust someone for one ounce of cocaine, they’d immediately look for a cutting agent to double the amount of the seizure. And if a seizure’s street value stood at $1,500, the cops would bump it up to $20,000. “Who’s to question it,” Cole asked.
Other panelists spoke of leaving the profession because they couldn’t stomach the lies or the corruption, especially when they noticed fellow cops striking deals with the people they were supposed to arrest, selling and smuggling drugs, and buying cars, trips and multi-million dollar homes with their proceeds.
Garry Jones, a retired senior lieutenant who has worked in prisons across the country, including the federal system, recalled instances where people would come to prison on visiting day just to buy drugs from the inmates. “My [colleagues] were bringing drugs inside the prisons, making big money … There was no way to escape drugs in prison. You couldn’t do it yesterday and you can’t do it today,” he said.
Jones said that he was particularly troubled to see ever-increasing numbers of African American men being locked up, often on drug-related offenses.
In this session and many others, plenty of talk was devoted to the plight of the poor people and people of color who make up the vast majority of American jail and prison populations. The few formerly incarcerated men in attendance echoed the sentiment that it felt good to hear so many people acknowledging the seriousness of the problem.
But if there’s one thing that prison teaches longtime inmates, it’s that there’s no point to talking if you can’t back it up. People who have been locked up tend to have little patience for bullshit, even if it’s well-intentioned and comes from a gentle medical marijuana activist selling colorful, close-up pictures of fat buds, or from red-eyed college students passing joints on the hotel patio.
“Building a movement with integrity has to be about more than weed,” says Dorsey Nunn during the conference’s only session by and about the formerly incarcerated.
Nunn, a former crack addict and prisoner, is now the program director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and co-founder of an advocacy group, All of Us or None.
“There are a lot of people advocating on our behalf,” he said, “but are we allowed to come and sit at that table with them?” Nunn’s question was straight and to the point, but the sentiment is still relatively new within the drug policy reform movement.
Just as the drug policy reform movement has benefited from the insight and visible presence of LEAPers, so, too, can it be made more powerful and effective if it creates more seats at the table for the men and women who have lived through this brutal war, and experienced it from the inside out.
Oh, I've googled it. I see that 99% of the hits are identical to what I've heard here - bare assertions without substantiation on websites run by drug law obsessives who are long on rhetoric but short on citation.
Even the sites that bother to reference historical documents avoid the actual statements of legislatures and LEOs and rely on newspaper articles in tabloids ripped from their context.
That is pure ignorance.
Unlike you, I've done my homework and learned about key pieces of legislation, key legislators and LEOs and significant events in the history of US drug enforcement. And, in learning about this history, I've never seen a shred of evidence that any of this was done as a deliberate racial strategy.
And you and your buddies, despite your bold assertions, seem completely unable to come up with a shred of direct evidence that US drug laws were a deliberate racist plot.
It doesn't have to be forced. Some children will it feces voluntarily. Plus, it's natural.
When and where did he say all this?
Anslinger, because of his primary role in the criminalization of drugs, has many, many things put in his mouth by his anonymous web critics who hate him.
The language atttributed to him here by you is not very consistent with the language he employed in his Congressional testimony, in which he emphasized crime and smuggling - not music and race.
Many newspapers also editorialized in favor of marijuana prohibition on racist grounds.
I'm sure they did. I'm sure that many other newspapers advocated such prohibition on law enforcement grounds.
Just as today, some people support border enforcement on racist grounds and the vast majority support it on law and order grounds.
You might also be interested in reading Eric Schlosser's book Reefer Madness
Thanks.
Controlling for the amount of drugs seized, researchers found that, among those arrested with at least 1.5 grams of cocaine, 94% of minorities were charged with drug dealing, while only 26% of whites were.
This is a commonly cited statistic, but I'd like to see some controlling for context as well as size.
Someone arrested at a party with 1.5 grams lined up on a mirror surrounded by guests may possibly be offering free drugs to friends, while someone standing alone on a streetcorner late at night with the 1.5 grams neatly packaged into multiple stamped glassine enevelopes is probably not giving away free drugs to friends.
The police know what cases they can win in a court of law and which they can't.
The guy in the former case can make a very strong argument that he wasn't dealing, while the latter cannot.
Cops are not in the habit of making collars they know they can't turn into convictions.
Deceit; what rolls from your fingertips ...
Personnally, I think its your primary diet.
I never said the Dutch were going to close their "coffee shops".
Your post does however verify what I have been saying; that the Amsterdam drug trade is highly regulated and restricted. No one can not point to Amsterdam as a model of free drug use. It is anything but.
What do you mean by "it hasn't worked in China"? Do you mean unobtainable perfection?
There will always be some degree of drug use in any nation. I don't believe in perfection in that regard.
You need to read about the history of opium in China. It was a devastating period for the Chinese. It's something no compassionate person would want anyone to experience.
When Emperor Yung Cheng prohibited the sale and use of opium, he was not trying to be a buzz kill, he was serious about saving the lives of his people, large numbers of whom were addicts.
People mindlessly point to US prohibition of alcohol and try to apply it to everything else under the sun. You can not compare the failure of alcohol prohibition to the prohibition of dangerous narcotics because there is no comparison between beer and heroin.
If drug us is so harmless, why then do we have drug treatment programs and personal interventions? Are you trying to tell me that is you make drugs legal that people will use them responsibly? If drugs were legal, would they cease to ruin peoples' lives?
L98Fiero: Nope, it doesn't. Weed is consumed in it's natural form.
Moonman62: Which is irrelevant. What's relevant is the chemical in the plant and its abuse.
The chemical in the plant is virtually identical to one
your body produces. Can we outlaw that chemical and
force all people to take another drug to destroy this
chemical along with the portion of the body which
produces it, so that receptors for this chemical
remain empty?
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What genius of design is reflected in the flower of this
herb which was gifted by God to man and beast at the very
beginning of time? Within its flower it mirrors the
chemistry of the mind and within its seed it mirrors
the substance of the body to nourish it with the most
complete and absorbable combination of amino acids
required for sustenance of any plant on the
face of Earth. What is more relevant than the sowing
of such a seed in the face of those sowing only seeds
of discord? Warring against each other over flowers
is a revolting development in this countries history
for many reasons which are undeniable fact. Sowing
the seeds of peace need not be done by men in black
masks and black armor in the middle of the night.
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
Sad way to admit you have no case, but effective.
"direct evidence that US drug laws were a deliberate racist plot"
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day;
but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period,
and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrators)
too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."
--Thomas Jefferson
Nope, just tired of dealing with ignorance.
"Your post does however verify what I have been saying; that the Amsterdam drug trade is highly regulated and restricted. No one can not point to Amsterdam as a model of free drug use. It is anything but."
So what if they have regulations? I imagine when they legalize marijuana here it will be regulated in much the same way alcohol is regulated.
Here's another story revealing the filthy underside of the WOD.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4443700.stm
From the article:
Guatemala's top anti-drug investigator, Adan Castillo, has been charged in the US with drug-trafficking.
Mr Castillo, who is accused of conspiring to import and distribute cocaine in the US, was detained after arriving in the country .....
... Mr Castillo was in the US state of Virginia for a training course on how to fight drug trafficking through ports when he was arrested, Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Vielman said.
The arrests were "a strong blow to the infiltration of organised crime in the structures of the Guatemalan government," Mr Vielman said at a news conference in Guatemala City.
US officials confirmed the arrest.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Mr Castillo said he was frustrated in his job because corruption in the Guatemalan government made fighting drug smugglers impossible, and that he was ready to quit after just six months in his post.
Guatemala is a major staging post for cocaine that is trafficked from Colombia to the US.
US officials believe 75% of the cocaine that arrives in the US travels through Guatemala.
Another fact-free, argument-free one liner.
You have nothing of substance to contribute at all, sadly.
I'm not debating the existence of corruption in drug enforcement. It's well-attested.
Well-attested???
Mittfuls of dirty money is the whole point of these sumptuary laws!
You had an opportunity not to dip back into hysterical hyperbole.
You missed it.
How is it hyberbole to point out the big fat pot of cash which occupies center-stage in this farrago of lies, dishonor, and deception.
There is no good outcome of the WOD, except for the 'public servant' human swine gorging themselves on illicit benefits.
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