Tag: war on drugs

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Nixon official: real reason for the drug war was to criminalize black people and hippies

The war on drugs: Is it a genuine public health crusade or an attempt to carry out what author Michelle Alexander characterizes as “the New Jim Crow”? A new report by Dan Baum for Harper’s Magazine suggests the latter. Specifically, Baum refers to a quote from John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon when the administration declared its war on drugs in 1971. According to Baum, Ehrlichman said in 1994 that the drug war was a ploy to undermine Nixon’s political opposition — meaning, black people and critics of the Vietnam War: At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently […] Read More

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Legalizing Weed Has Done What 1 Trillion Dollars and a 40 Year War Couldn’t

The $1 trillion War on Drugs launched by President Nixon in 1971 created the Mexican drug cartels, now legalizing weed is killing them. The Mexican drug cartels are finally meeting their match as a wave of cannabis legalization efforts drastically reshapes the drug trafficking landscape in the United States. It turns out that as states legalize cannabis use and cultivation, the volume of weed brought across the border by Mexican drug cartels dramatically decreases — and is putting a dent in their cash flow. A newly-released statistical report from the U.S. Border Patrol shows a sharp drop-off in cannabis captured at the border between the United States and Mexico. The reduction in weed trafficking coincides with dozens of states embracing cannabis use for both medical and recreational […] Read More

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Mexico Considering legalizing Marijuana To Weaken Drug Cartels

Later this month, the supreme court of Mexico will review the country’s current prohibition of marijuana, as well as the possibility of legalizing the plant for medical and recreational use. Medical marijuana is currently legal in Mexico, but the black market drug trade in the country continues to cause widespread violence, drug cartel, and gang activity, just as it does in America. Marijuana legalization has traditionally been a very popular concept in Mexico, where people understand the real-life consequences of the drug war and prohibition. However, the United Nations has forced many countries around the world, including Mexico, to comply with the drug prohibition policy the United States government has championed. Now, with many U.S. states choosing to legalize the plant, Mexico is seeing a […] Read More

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Cocaine Production Plummets After DEA Kicked Out Of Bolivia.

(CounterCurrentNews)  Bolivia — After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was kicked out of Bolivia, the country was able to drastically reduce the amount of coca (cocaine) produced within its borders. According to data released by the United Nations, cocaine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease. It was just seven years ago that the DEA left Bolivia — and only three years after that, progress was finally made. The strategy employed by the Bolivian government may be a surprise to many prohibitionists because it did not involve any strong-arm police state tactics. Instead, they worked to find alternative crops for farmers to grow that would actually make them more money. […] Read More

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Obama Commutes Non-Violent Drug Sentences To Reduce Mass Incarceration

Whether you love him or hate him, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. In a recent effort to cut back the number of people incarcerated on non-violent drug charges, President Barack Obama said he will free dozens more federal prisoners in the next weeks, according to the New York Times. Obama is planning on starting with the sentences of around 80 individuals who have been locked up on non-violent drug offenses. But that is just the start. There are over 30,000 prisoners who have applied for clemency and there is talk emanating from the White House that these 80 are just the first wave. The Obama administration claims that this is all part of a broader move to correct for judicial abuse, discrimination and general over-sentencing. The Raw […] Read More

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The Unbelievable Story of How America’s War on Drugs Started

The pledge to wage “relentless warfare” on drugs was first made in the 1930s, by a man who has been largely forgotten today. The following is an excerpt from Johann Hari’s new book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (Bloomsbury, 2015). As I waited in the drowsy neon-lit customs line at JFK, I tried to remember precisely when the war on drugs started. In some vague way, I had a sense that it must have been with Richard Nixon in the 1970s, when the phrase was first widely used. Or was it with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, when “Just Say No” seemed to become the second national anthem? But when I started to travel around New York […] Read More

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This Is How It Feels to Walk Out of Prison After 21 Years

In 1993 I went to prison for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense. The following first appeared on Substance.com:  I woke up on the morning of July 31 at 4 am, feeling apprehensive, elated and ready to take on the world. For most of the 2.2 million people behind the fence in this country, it was just another day. For me, it was the day I would leave prison for the last time. I was scheduled to report to R&D (the Receiving and Discharge department at FCC Forrest City) at 11 am to be processed out. Those last hours seemed to take forever. It was all coming to an end, after two decades and counting. I was finally going home—or to the halfway house at least. […] Read More

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National Marijuana Arrests Have Tripled Since 1991

This disturbing trend does not reflect the growing national acceptance of pot. While the national call to legalize marijuana—both medical and recreational—is higher than ever before (and includes more than half of American voters), you wouldn’t know it by looking at the issue from a law enforcement perspective. The number of marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1991, and as a percentage of arrests, they have more than tripled. As Christopher Ingraham pointed out in a recent Washington Post article, this makes for a somewhat confused climate as far as the status of marijuana. On one hand the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy is trending toward a more tolerant attitude in handling drug use. (On the ONRCP’s website you can read […] Read More

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Behind FedEx’s Alleged Billion-Dollar Drug Trafficking Crime: Diet Pills

Can’t the feds at least go after addictive drugs? The federal war on drugs has now become a war on diet pills. FedEx Corp. pleaded not guilty in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday to 15 charges related to shipping illegal drugs that allegedly earned it $820 million, prompting some media outfits to ask, “Is FedEx America’s Biggest Drug Dealer?” The 26-page indictment, handed down by a grand jury in mid-July, accuses FedEx of conspiring with online pharmacies—the Chhabra-Smoley Organization from 2000-’08, and Superior Drugs from 2002-’10—to distribute eight prescription drugs: three diet pills, three anti-anxiety meds, one sleeping pill and a low-level painkiller. Most of the charges concern the diet pills: Phendimetrazine, Phentermine and Diethylpropion. “The advent of Internet pharmacies allowed the cheap […] Read More

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No, Teens Don’t Smoke More Pot In Medical Marijuana States

A new national report dispels the common prohibitionist argument. The U.S. federal government stubbornly continues to classify marijuana as a Schedule I substance with no known medical uses. While our government blocks all research on the potential benefits of marijuana, clinical studies in Israel, Spain and elsewhere confirm what patients in the 23 U.S. states with medical marijuana programs already know: it’s a miraculous treatment option for many known diseases, with the potential to mitigate, and sometimes reverse, ailments ranging from cancer, PTSD and epilepsy to arthritis, skin abrasions, and chronic pain. Since so many of the arguments against cannabis medicine are crumbling, marijuana prohibitionists are resorting to fear-mongering about the “safety of the children” to defend their position. They insist that allowing marijuana in any form will give kids […] Read More