1/15/98
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Now that 1998 has begun in earnest, and everyone's gotten through their post-vacation hangovers (when's the next vacation again?) it's really time to get back to the business of ending the Drug War. We have a very activist- oriented issue this week. There's federal action against the California buyers' clubs to oppose (and a defense fund for the clubs which is seeking contributions), a Washington state medical marijuana bill to support, a national news story which just begs for letters to the editor of your local paper, an editorial in the international medical journal Lancet, to which we hope that all the MD's on this list will respond, and a very important harm reduction conference being planned in Boston whose organizers are looking for some small donations to cover their expenses.
Yes, it's time to stand up and be counted. 1998 promises to be a seminal year in the movement toward a more rational and humane drug policy. You know that you can count on DRCNet and The Week Online to keep you plugged in to the issue, and to let you know how best to make your voice heard. There are a lot of exciting things in the works, including a global response to the United Nations' first-ever special session on narcotics in June (more on that next week). So get ready to get active. In the words of Margaret Meade, "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world... in fact, it's the only thing which ever has."
(And please don't forget to send us copies of your letters - - it is crucial for our documenting and fundraising. E-mail to [email protected], fax to (202) 293-8344, or mail to DRCNet, 2000 P St., NW, Suite 615, Washington, DC 20036.)
DRCNet SUBSCRIBERS ARE URGED TO RESPOND!! (SEE INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE)
California State Senator John Vasconcellos held a press conference on January 12 to call for the full implementation of Proposition 215, passed by the state's voters in 1996, which allows for the use of medicinal marijuana by the sick and dying. His call came just days after officials of the Clinton Administration vowed to close all of California's cannabis buyers' clubs, which are illegal under federal law.
Vasconcellos promised to push for the passage of a bill, which he sponsored last year, which would establish a three- year study by the University of California on marijuana's medicinal value. He also said that he plans to appeal the federal action against the clubs. In addition, the senator will push for a state-wide summit aimed at devising a plan for the distribution of medical marijuana to those who have legitimate medical need. Vasconcellos' office told The Week Online that they are hoping to convince the Department of Justice to take part in the summit, and thus to become part of the solution. "If Dan Lundgren (California's Attorney General) co-sponsors this summit, we think that Justice will participate. Lundgren, although he disagrees with us right now on the issue, has been very open-minded. He truly wants the evidence to be evaluated, and to do the right thing by the people of California."
The federal threat (as reported in last week's Week Online) comes despite efforts by a number of California city governments to work with medical marijuana distributors to ensure the availability of the medicine with the least possible diversion to the black market. Vasconcellos said that he would ask his colleagues in the California legislature to sign a letter to President Clinton in protest against the federal response, and is urging citizens to do the same.
A spokesman for Vasconcellos told the Week Online, "We're in the process of getting a letter circulated to California legislators opposing the federal action. We're hopeful that a majority will sign on, and that that will get the attention of the administration. We can't believe that they (the Clinton Administration) really intend to thumb their nose at the will of the majority of California voters, and we're counting on them to become part of a process of problem-solving. Right now, this unilateral action on the part of the federal government is being perceived by Californians as an intrusion and an affront to the will of the voters. We're sure that that's not what they (the administration) want."
DRCNet IS URGING OUR SUBSCRIBERS TO RESPOND!!
Send a letter - or a fax - to President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and, if you are a California resident, Governor Pete Wilson and Attorney General Dan Lundgren. In it, please ask (politely) that they come together, in respect of the will of the voters of California, and the needs of suffering Californians, to find a solution to the issue of the distribution of medical marijuana. In your communications to the White House, you may want to mention that the administration's respect, or lack thereof, for the will of the people will weigh heavily in your assessment of Al Gore's candidacy for the Presidency.
President Bill Clinton, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20500. V: (202) 456-1414 F: (202) 456-2461
Vice President Al Gore, Old Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20501. V: (202) 456-2326 F: (202) 456-2685
(You can also e-mail them, although this has less impact than the above modes of communication, at [email protected] and [email protected])
Governor Pete Wilson, State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814, V: (916) 445-2841, F: (916) 445-4633, http://www.ca.gov/s/governor/mail.html
Attorney General Dan Lundgren, 1300 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, V: (916) 445-9555, F: (916) 324-5205
Contact: Dale Gieringer, (415) 563-5858.
Californians have established an emergency legal defense fund to help support medical marijuana patients, caregivers, and dispensaries against the government's efforts to suppress medical marijuana.
An immediate, urgent goal of the fund is to support litigation in opposition to the federal government lawsuit to close down six prominent Northern California medical marijuana dispensaries. The fund also hopes to provide legal defense, assistance, and education in other cases involving medical marijuana patients and caregivers, and to support efforts to achieve Prop. 215's goal of "safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients in medical need."
California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer, one of the original organizers of Prop. 215, is calling on supporters across the nation to contribute to the Medical Marijuana Patients' and Caregivers' Fund, which is being administered independently of NORML by a board of representatives from several statewide organizations, including California NORML.
"The federal lawsuit presents the greatest peril to medical marijuana patients since before Prop. 215 was passed. The six clubs serve over 10,000 patients, nearly 80% of the total in California; to close them down now would be an intolerable public health and safety disaster... Those of us who supported Prop. 215 have the duty to help preserve the victory. The federal lawsuit is an unprecedented threat to medical marijuana patients everywhere. To fight it will be costly. Contributions are urgently needed."
Donations may be sent to: NORML Foundation, Medical Marijuana Patients' and Caregivers' Fund, 1001 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 710, Washington DC 20036. (Checks should be made out to NORML Foundation: MMPCF.)
(This story was partially adapted from Hemp.Net News, http://www.hemp.net.)
In The state of Washington, Senate Bill SB 6271, which would authorize the possession and use, as well as the sale by licensed pharmacists of medical marijuana, is on the legislative agenda. The legislative session in Washington runs for only 60 days, which means that people concerned about the issue must move quickly to register their support.
SB 6271 was introduced and referred to the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee. The bill must be reported out of committee before the February 6th cutoff date in order for it to stay alive. Sen. Alex Deccio (R-Yakima) chairs this committee of seven. Deccio supported the Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research Act in 1979 and has scheduled a hearing on the bill for Tuesday, Jan 20, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM.
You can find the complete bill on the web by going to: http://www.leg.wa.gov, clicking on "Bill Info" and typing "6271" into the search engine.
IF YOU ARE A WASHINGTON STATE RESIDENT, OR IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS OR FAMILY RESIDING IN THAT STATE, WE URGE YOU TO TAKE ACTION IN SUPPORT OF SB 6271.
Legislative hotline: (800) 562-6000
Legislature website: http://www.leg.wa.gov
It is especially important if your Senator is one of the following, as they are on the Health and Long-Term Care committee. At least four of these seven must support the bill to pass it out of committee.
Senator Alex Deccio, Chair Senator Jeannette Wood, Vice Chair Senator Don Benton Senator Darlene Fairley Senator Rosa Franklin Senator Gary Strannigan Senator R. Lorraine Wojahn, Ranking Democrat Member
For a complete update of the medical marijuana bill and an introduction to how it could become law, see the Hemp.Net news story at http://www.hemp.net/news/legislature.html.
In the wake of last year's shooting death of American high school sophomore Esequiel Hernandez by camouflaged marines on the Texas-Mexican border, the Pentagon has proposed ending all such military patrols. "It's not worth the legal liability for our soldiers, and the actual amount of drugs seized throughout the performance of those missions proved to be modest," a Pentagon official told reporters.
The Pentagon claims that the number of troops who were on such patrols was never more than two dozen, and so this proposal amounted to just a "minor adjustment" in strategy. The Pentagon plans to continue programs under which the military provides communications, intelligence, logistic and air support for border patrol efforts.
Visit the Esequiel Hernandez memorial photographic gallery at http://www.mapinc.org/DPFT/hernandez/gallery/.
In what has to be considered a telling admission of the impossibility of successfully keeping drugs out of a free society, President Clinton this week signed a Presidential Directive which he hopes will force states to address their failure to keep drugs out of some of the most secure facilities in the world, prisons. The directive orders states to make an assessment of the drug problems within their institutions. Those figures will be used as a baseline from which to measure future success, upon which federal prison monies will then depend.
It is widely known that virtually every prison in the country, whether federal or state, houses an active drug trade. The contraband is usually either smuggled in by visitors or guards. The problem is so universal that some countries in Europe have experimented with needle exchange programs within their institutions, attempting to stem the spread of AIDS after having come to the conclusion that they could not keep the drugs out entirely at any price.
THIS STORY WAS CARRIED BY VIRTUALLY EVERY MAJOR NEWSPAPER IN THE COUNTRY. DRCNet SUGGESTS YOU TAKE A MOMENT TO SEND A LETTER TO YOUR FAVORITE PAPER (most take email submissions) POINTING OUT THE ABSURDITY OF THE DRUG WAR IN LIGHT OF OUR INABILITY TO KEEP EVEN PRISONS "DRUG FREE". And don't forget to let us know if your letter gets published!
We reported last week that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had ordered all 60 of his Labourite EP's to vote against the report of the EU Drug Commission which recommended a harm reduction approach, including the decriminalization of cannabis, as official policy for the soon-to-be established Union. Reports reaching us this week were that many of the 60 would abstain, rather than vote one way or the other. In any case, it looked like it would be impossible to get the Report passed without the British Labourites.
Now comes news that on Tuesday, the EU Parliament voted 252 to 223 in favor of postponing the vote. This was reported as a victory for the report by Dutch radio, considering its slim chance of passing at this time. What is certain is that this issue will remain contentious in Europe as governments and even populations within most of the individual nations remain divided over the best way to proceed with regard to drug policy. Unlike in the US, and despite heavy US pressure in favor of strict Prohibitionism and against rational debate, drug policy in Europe is being widely discussed, and the momentum, if not the advantage, is certainly on the side of those advocating a change in the US-led status quo, as evidenced by ongoing events.
The Week Online will of course keep you up to date on developments in Europe and elsewhere. Things will no doubt heat up even further as the UN special session on narcotics, scheduled for early June, approaches.
(ERRATA: Last week's article on the EU vote contained a typo: The strict prohibitionist amendments were submitted by Sweden, not Switzerland. Our apologies to the Swiss, whose heroin maintenance programs are in the vanguard of drug policy reform.)
Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Mejia said this week that the United States had better certify her nation as an ally in the Drug War, or else it will face an anti-American backlash which would make itself felt during Colombia's upcoming presidential elections. "Any certification decision that isn't positive for Colombia is going to cause an internal political earthquake... and cause more opposition to the United States," she said.
The controversial certification process, under which the United States declares that a nation is either sufficiently or insufficiently cooperative in the international Drug War, has far-reaching implications for source and transshipment countries. Under US law, countries which are de-certified face an end to US foreign aid and an automatic "no" vote by the US on loans from the World Bank. The deadline for President Clinton to make such decisions is March 1.
General Rosso Jose Serrano, commander of Colombia's National Police, told Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper, "I hope that the international community, particularly the united States, the world's principal drug consuming country, recognizes the efforts we have made." Those efforts include the passage of a long-awaited bill allowing the extradition of Colombian citizens to be tried in foreign courts. The US administration expressed disappointment with the bill, however, as it was not made retroactive, meaning that cartel leaders currently jailed in that country will likely never be brought to trial in the US, and that their enormous assets will never be subject to forfeiture by the US treasury.
Adding their voice to the growing chorus of well-respected medical and scientific organizations and publications advocating syringe exchange, the renowned British medical journal Lancet called on the US government to "act now" to allow the use of federal anti-AIDS funding to be used to institute such programs. The stinging editorial, which appeared in the journal's January 10 issue, notes that over one half of new HIV infections in the US could be traced, either directly or indirectly, to the sharing of an infected syringe.
"Those affected are not only the drug misusers infected by contaminated needles, but their sexual partners (most of whom have been poor, black, and Hispanic women) and the children of women infected by drug misuse or sexual contact with infected drug misusers. Injection drug misuse is now the leading primary cause of pediatric AIDS." The editorial goes on to note that "despite this epidemic, the USA remains one of the few industrialized countries that refuses to provide easy access to sterile syringes" and that "given the weight of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of needle-exchange schemes, it is hard to attribute the reluctance to support such programs to anything other than political considerations."
A study conducted by Peter Laurie and Ernest Drucker, and published last year in Lancet, estimates that between four and ten thousand new infections would have been avoided in the US if the ban had not been in effect in 1997. The Lancet's editors call that estimate "conservative."
The Week Online spoke with Ernest Drucker about the continued federal ban on the use of anti-AIDS funding for Syringe Exchange programs.
"Once again, the administration and the US Congress are playing God, refusing to accept the evidence of countless studies showing that needle exchange saves lives... it simply saves lives. Aside from the outright shamefulness, their unwillingness to permit others to take simple steps to protect people from this disease is vindictive. Such behavior should lead their constituents to question the message being sent here -- that some American lives aren't worth saving."
"It has become quite clear that the majority of Americans are prepared to support the availability of these programs. And yet, the federal government continues not only to obstruct the implementation of these lifesaving measures but to spread blatant disinformation about them. The people in Washington who are responsible for this should be called to account for the lives they've cost. And I believe that some day they will."
You can send letters to the Lancet via e-mail at [email protected].
In Australia, an innovative program has been unveiled which will train young people (16-22 yrs.) and pay them to attend concerts and other cultural events to disseminate infor- mation about drugs and alcohol. Australian Health Minister Robert Knowles told The Australian News Network, "If they've got people their own age, normal young kids who have been specially recruited and trained to provide information, they are much more likely to be receptive (to it)."
The youths will be paid, by the Centre for Adolescent Health and the Australian Drug Foundation, and have been trained to discuss both the risks associated with the use of alcohol and illegal drugs, but also to discuss ways in which to use the substances more safely. This approach, a linchpin of the harm reduction philosophy, is based on the idea that while it would be optimum to keep young people from using these substances at all, some young people will use them regardless. For them, the philosophy goes, it is far better to try to keep them from making a tragic mistake due to lack of information than to leave them to the vagaries of chance simply because they are engaging in behavior which society wishes they wouldn't.
The USS California, one of only two nuclear-powered cruisers remaining in service for the US Navy, will spend its last year before being decommissioned patrolling the seas for drug smugglers. The California is currently on its way to Panama. It will spend time in both the Caribbean and in the Pacific monitoring naval traffic and intercepting suspected drug smugglers before returning to its base in Bramerton. It will be decommissioned in early 1999.
On April 8, health care workers, harm reductionists, public officials and concerned citizens from Boston and the surrounding area will be invited to come together for a one day conference on harm reduction methods, philosophy and practice. The state of Massachusetts has recently started a pilot syringe exchange program, and this will be an opportunity for community leaders and others to learn more about the benefits of a whole host of non-coercive drug policy strategies.
"It's important that people become informed about harm reduction" says George Kenney, long-time harm reduction activist. "There's so much rhetoric and misinformation out there, it's difficult for people to sort it out and learn what harm reduction is really all about. Once people understand that harm reduction is all about people, and the reduction of the harms associated with drug use, both to the user and the community, they feel a lot better about what we're trying to do. Some of the biggest supporters of the philosophy are people who came to it assuming that they would be totally opposed, and that includes a lot of city and state health officials around the country."
NOTE: The organizers are still trying to raise about $1,000 to cover the costs of the event. If you can help, even in a small way, please contact George Kenney at the Community of Color Outreach in Roxbury, Massachusetts at (617) 427-8192. And don't forget to tell him DRCNet sent you.
1998 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the War on Drugs, as declared by then-President Richard M. Nixon. It is ironic, of course, that the proclamation of this war, a war which has claimed innumerable casualties and which has cost the nation countless billions of dollars, was made at the same time that President Nixon was extricating America from her last embarrassing and unsuccessful war: Vietnam. Vietnam had been pointless. Bloody. Interminable. The people had spoken. We had suffered enough.
In the late sixties, as the body bags were piling up, the anti-war movement began to gain enough momentum to force the Johnson Administration into a defensive posture. So, in an effort to hold onto dwindling public support, and buoyed by body counts which were in reality meaningless, answers to the wrong questions, the administration escalated the hostilities and issued its now-famous opinion that there was "light at the end of the tunnel". It was, in fact, the beginning of the end of the war. But not the end envisioned by Johnson. Nor would Johnson be in power to see it.
Twenty-five years. For twenty-five years we have seen a near-continuous escalation of the present, pointless war. We have seen, as we saw in Vietnam, the expansion of the conflict across formerly unthinkable borders. What began as an effort to arrest away the problems of marijuana smoking, and the small but persistent heroin problem in some urban centers, is now a global enterprise. American troops, along with the armed agents of numerous federal agencies, operate in and around nearly all of Central and Latin America. 2,000 more will soon be stationed in Panama. They are on the seas. And they are also, quietly, ironically, back in Asia, on a mission to protect the free world from the "red menace" of the poppy flower.
In Vietnam it quickly became apparent that the regime we were supporting was itself brutal and corrupt. Today the United Nations, born of a vision of world peace and human rights, prepares to pay millions of dollars to the Taleban, perhaps the most repressive and barbaric of all the world's ruling parties, in return for worthless promises. How happily we discard the lives and the futures of the women and children of Afghanistan. We send more money and military equipment into Colombia, even as that society disintegrates into anarchy and violence under the weight of our Prohibition, and peasants -- again, women and children - - are massacred and displaced. In the scope of the present war, these people, brown, indigenous, poor, do not even merit the calculus of statistics.
Twenty-five years ago, our nation had been nearly torn apart by the war in Vietnam. Generations set against each other, riots in the cities, four young students shot down on a campus in the heartland of America, and the nation stood in fear and in awe. That war, entered into and fought in the name of freedom and democracy, had very nearly destroyed them both.
Think back twenty-five years to the beginning of the current war. There were very few guns in our cities then, and certainly almost none in the hands of children. Marijuana abounded on college campuses, and even in many high schools. But heroin? Cocaine? They were mere rumors outside of the largest cities, and underground even there. Methamphetamine? Unheard of. Today not a place exists where these substances cannot be found. On the streets of our cities, large and small, they can be had by anyone, of any age, purer and cheaper with each passing year.
58,000 Americans were killed in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Tens of thousands more were maimed or injured. We could have lost 50,000 more, and we probably would have, had the nation not cried 'enough', and the outcome would not have changed. They were mostly young, many of them were poor, and in the end there was no good reason for their loss. Over the past twenty-five years tens of thousands of Americans have died in the violence of Prohibition on our streets, millions with no history of violence have been arrested, their lives disrupted, their futures darkened under the shadow of a criminal record. Some will spend the majority of their lives in cages. And still we escalate. We can jail a million more. And the drugs will not disappear.
Today we hear of record seizures, and slight fluctuations in the abhorrently high numbers of children using drugs, and 100,000 more cops, and billions more dollars spent in combat. And a president declares, "there is light at the end of the tunnel." And we look back... to another president who was asking the wrong questions... and escalating the conflict... and tearing the nation apart. It is time to end the war. It is time to stand up. To make them stop. It's been twenty five years. We have all suffered enough.
Adam J. Smith
Associate Director
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