no third solution

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Category Archives: Drug War Rants

America’s Chief Export

October 23rd, 2007

G-dub is asking for another $46 billion to fund the war in Iraq, bringing the total to over half a trillion dollars. A half a trillion dollars. To most of us, a half a trillion dollars is absolutely an incomprehensible sum. It could’ve paid a thousand kings’ ransoms. Instead, it’s paid for a lot of murder and destruction, and there’s no end in sight.

One trillion dollars could buy a lot of bling,
One trillion dollars could buy most anything,
One trillion dollars buying bullets, buying guns,
One trillion dollars in the hands of killers, thugs
— Anti-Flag, “1 Trillion Dollar$”

Douchebags on the other side of the aisle are lamenting the conundrum presented by “the troops”, who they insist need resources to accomplish their mission. Well, if you’re against the war, you sorta kinda have to be at least apathetic towards the troops: bring them home, and you don’t need to worry about jeopardizing them with inadequate funding. But, these are douchebag politicians we’re talking about, so the “anti-war” stuff is just posturing. Funding the war in the name of “the troops” allows them to straddle the fence.

And in case you’re not satisfied with one un-winnable and tremendously expensive war that’s been going on for the better part of a decade, your representatives are getting ready to throw more money at an even more expensive war they’ve been losing for the better part of a century. They’d like to export the war on drugs, to Mexico. Because it worked so fucking well in Afghanistan. Seriously, what exactly does our government have against brown people? It’s not bad enough that we refuse to let them enter our country where they might make a better life for themselves (e.g., Mexico), or that we blow up their family members and villages (e.g., Afghanistan) – we see fit also to destroy the only crops for which those people living in abject third-world poverty are able to secure a meager income? And you wonder why they hate “us”?

America’s chief export is war — and practically all of the countries that “hate us” are running a massive trade deficit in that department.

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In other, less sickening news, George Bush declares that he is still relevant. I swear to god I saw this on the Colbert Report last week. Unfortunately, this is not satire.

Get Out of Jail Free

September 25th, 2007

What do you think would happen if you stole marijuana from a police car, then “overdosed” on it, and called 9-1-1 to report your “emergency”?

What if you were a cop? [Stale Link because the Detroit Free Press doesn’t know how to manage digital content – dz]

Dearborn police allowed Sanchez to resign from his job on May 23, 2006, even though investigators said he admitted to taking the marijuana from his police car and using it to make the brownies. Dearborn police reports the Free Press obtained said Sanchez told investigators he planned to use the marijuana to train his police dog.

Last night, Sanchez was on one of the local news programs crying like a little bitch, e.g., “I loved my job, you don’t know what it meant to me to be a police officer, you don’t know how this or that, etc.”

The only line from that taped interview that I find cited in the Free Press article is “The incident doesn’t represent me, it doesn’t represent my family, it doesn’t represent what I stood for as a police officer.” Well, you get the gist, I hope. He was acting as though his actions don’t deserve the scrutiny, or the punishment, or the humiliation to which he’s been subject. And I don’t imagine he’s thrilled that Dearborn is actually going to press charges, although he’ll likely skate on those, too.

As I said when this first appeared in the news, I’m all in favor of his right to eat brownies, or smoke pot, or whatever. But Sanchez made his own bed, and now he doesn’t want to sleep there. He wants a free pass.

I wonder: in his tenure as a K9 handler and narcotics officer, how many free passes did Sanchez give to people on the receiving end of his handcuffs?

Reefer Madness

August 1st, 2007

A British study indicates that a marijuana cigarette is five times more harmful than a tobacco cigarette. Actually, the study says “up to five times” as harmful. OK, considering most people smoke their joints without a filter, it’s plausible. But, did you catch the sleight of hand? Smoking “a joint” is more dangerous than “a cigarette,” therefore, smoking marijuana is more dangerous than smoking tobacco. Which commits the same error as the old diamond-water paradox, in treating things as abstract concepts only, such as “diamonds” or “marijuana.” When you treat things thusly, you can draw some pretty awful conclusions – like, “an object’s value is derived from the cost of the labor required to obtain it.” But enough econ-speak, this isn’t about econ, it’s about reefer madness.

So, why are the results of this study not particularly alarming? Because, whereas there are many, many people who might smoke one joint a day, or a week, there are comparably few people who smoke one cigarette a day, or a week. And there are very, very few people who smoke 20 or 40 joints a day. So even though, pound-for-pound, marijuana may be more dangerous than tobacco in some regards, this particular study is basically junk-science because marijuana is simply not consumed in the same quantities as tobacco. The Yahoo! article cites a public health concern that came to light in another recent study:

“Smoking a joint is more harmful to the lungs than smoking a cigarette and we have just banned people from doing that in public places because of the health risks.”

Last week British researchers said using marijuana increased the risk of developing a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia.

Hilarious. Citing this study, however, neglects what is probably the most important qualifier on the marijuana-schizophrenia “conclusion”, which basically amounts to saying that, “we haven’t proven anything”:

The researchers said they couldn’t prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

Both of these studies may have been perfectly conducted – but that doesn’t mean that the results are statistically significant or otherwise actionable. On the contrary, the evidence seems to suggest that neither article yielded even an iota of scientific merit. Combining what amount to insignificant inferences from two separate studies will not yield robust conclusions. Of course, the pesky details of scientific rigor will not stop bureaucrats from citing these studies to further their war on dangerous minorities personal freedoms “drugs.” Which, is precisely what Radley Balko predicted, less than a week ago:

…Even among heavy users, and even assuming all of this data is correct, the increased risk is negligible, and the overall risk remains extremely low. And even then, the study hasn’t proved causation, and doesn’t claim to, though that’s certainly the way it’s being interpreted, and is how it will be cited by drug warriors.

It would be comically predictable, if it weren’t so tragic.

no third solution

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