AlterNet.org: Drugs

How MDMA Can Take You on the Healing Path ... Even for a Former Nun

Ralph Metzner, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:16:00 -0700

Ralph Metzner re-examines uses and potentials of MDMA "Through the Gateway of the Heart."

The following is an excerpt from the book, "Through the Gateway of the Heart; Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and Other Emphathonic Substances," by Ralph Metzner. The first part of the text includes the Foreward to the 2012 edition, and following it, a first-hand experience by a former nun. (Four Trees Publications, 1986. 2012 Edition).

Ecstasy, empathy, openness, compassion, peace, acceptance, being, forgiveness, healing, re-birth, unity, emotional bonding, caring, celebration—these are some of the terms people use to describe their experiences with a class of substances, of which MDMA 3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (also known as Adam, Molly, Ecstasy or XTC) has become the best known. Although related in a general way to the psychedelic “mind-manifesting” substances such as LSD, psilocybin and mescaline, these substances are different in that they do not usually produce visions, hallucinations, or altered perceptions of reality.

Even more importantly, these substances seem to consistently induce a positive affect and reduce or attenuate anxiety—in significant contrast to the classical psychedelics which can amplify and elaborate both positive and negative affects. Because of the high percentage of major positive insight experiences reported with these substances, and the relatively low incidence of undesirable side-effects, these drugs have attracted favorable attention from a number of psychotherapists, who regard them as facilitators of therapeutic insight and change. They have also been used by some teachers and practitioners of meditation, who see them as important amplifiers of emotional and sensory awareness, and as aids to spiritual practice.

The Use of MDMA in Overcoming Fear and Trauma

The book "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide," edited by Julie Holland, MD (Park Street Press, 2001) offers a comprehensive look at the risks and benefits of MDMA, as well as a summary of the pharmacological effects identified thus far. Jessica Malberg and Katherine Bonson in their chapter on “How MDMA works in the brain," summarize the effects the main brain neurotransmitters as follows:

"MDMA acts in the brain through three main neurochemical mechanisms: blockade of serotonin re-uptake, induction of serotonin release, and induction of dopamine release. With these actions, MDMA is essentially a combination of the effects of fluoxetine, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and anti-depressant; a serotonin releaser and amphetamine, a dopamine releaser (op. cit. p. 29)."

More recent studies by Gillinder Bedi and others have used functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques to show that MDMA attenuated amygdala response to (pictures of) angry facial expressions, but did not affect amygdala response to fearful expressions. Responses to happy emotional expressions were enhanced with MDMA. Further studies done with recognition of emotions in facial expressions in photographs suggested to these authors that MDMA reduced the perception of fear in the images, leading to more “pro-social behavior.” Summaries and detailed descriptions of these and other studies may be found by consulting the MAPS website (www.maps.org), which maintains a comprehensive database of all published research on MDMA and other psychoactive drugs of potential value and interest.

These findings of reduced fear-perception are consistent with anecdotal reports (including many of those in this book) that MDMA significantly attenuates interpersonal fear and anxiety. This is probably the basis for its marked therapeutic utility, especially in the treatment of PTSD, where the perceptual fixations on a real life-threatening situation blocks the normal processing of memories.

The potential applications of MDMA in the treatment of debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is now being researched by Michael Mithoefer and associates at the University of North Carolina, is exemplified in two of the accounts in this book, whose authors were able to confront the traumatic experience of rape. One is called “I Can Now Move through the Trauma.”

She wrote:

“There seemed to be some quality of the Adam that broke down the repressive/defensive network and took me back into the experience of the attack that was too much for my psyche to bear. Over a period of eight to twelve months I was able to re-experience fragments of the attack, thereby recreating and de-sensitizing me to the experience.”

The other account, by a school teacher, is titled “To Speak of What Was too Painful to Remember,” and she writes about realizing that a rape that had occurred eight years ago, had been,

“... hidden in the back of my mind… and all the little details that I had wanted to ignore were eating at me like a cancer…The suffering became more intense, but I still wanted to talk about it and I felt that I could deal with the pain, that this was a start to try to defeat this cancer.”

The potential value of using MDMA in the treatment of PTSD can hardly be overestimated, considering that there are some 350,000 veterans from US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, who are suffering from this and who only receive palliative support, if any, from the usual prescriptions of SSRIs offered by the over-burdened Veterans health care system.

One of the people I (RM) worked with in MDMA-supported psychotherapy in the early 1980s was a Vietnam War veteran, who was able to release an enormous amount of war-related trauma in one intensive session, and subsequently turned his life completely around, becoming a dedicated peace activist and co-founder of the group Veterans for Peace, giving talks with fellow veterans on the realities of war to groups of high-school students (Ed Ellis & Ralph Metzner, From Traumatized Vet to Peacemaker Activist. MAPS Bulletin, Vol XXI, No. 1, 2011).

MDMA, Intimacy and Sexuality

Torsten Passie, MD, a research psychiatrist at the University of Hanover medical school in Germany, has done studies on the neurohormones released in the MDMA state and how this relates to the subjective effects. He states, on the basis of his studies, that MDMA deactivates the amygdala (the seat of fear-rage emotional reactivity) and reciprocally activates prefrontal brain circuits (which underlie calm thinking). This is the neurophysiological counterpart to the empathic understanding of self and others, reported by the patients. There is also a massive release of serotonin, the neurotransmitter associated with a non-depressive, non-fearful attitude. Passie’s research is described in a monograph published in 2012 by the Multi-disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS): Healing with Entactogens: Therapist and Patient Perspectives on MDMA-Assisted Group Psychotherapy by Torsten Passie, M.D.

To my mind the most provocative of his findings is that MDMA results in a massive release of prolactin, the hormone associated with breast-feeding, as well as oxytocin, sometimes called the “cuddle hormone.” Both of these hormones are released during non-sexual post-orgasmic intimacy. As Dr. Passie points out, this release of non-sexual intimacy hormones correlates perfectly with the often-remarked subjective experience of MDMA-users— that they feel intimate with others, wanting to touch and be physically close, but not sexually aroused.

The experience of sensory and sensual intimacy without sexual activity or even desire is expressed in this book in the account titled “Desire Transcended by Being Fulfilled.” In this account the subject, a 48-year old male, reported an experiment of having a massage at the Esalen retreat center, on two occasions – once without MDMA and once with. The man reported that the second massage

“seemed longer and slower, and my body responses much deeper and more total. I felt blissful. I recalled my wanting and desiring the masseuse, from the first session, and realized I did not have that craving or desire now; instead I felt as if we were making love! The desire was transcended by being fulfilled, virtually (p.125)."

Even couples who were intimately involved have reported that with MDMA the sexual drive was often just not there. This effect is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons why MDMA has such unparalleled usefulness in enhancing psychotherapy: it facilitates the heart-felt, empathic, verbal and postural expression of emotional intimacy, without the slightest hint of sexual arousal or interest (which is often a confounding issue in therapist-patient interactions, as is well-known).

Entactogens vs. Empathogens

I want to say a word here about terminology. Torsten Passie, like most of the European researchers uses the word entactogen to describe the class of drugs like MDMA, whose primary neuropsychological action is a marked decrease of interpersonal and intrapsychic fear —thereby facilitating a seemingly effortless re-integration of previously defended and traumatic memories and perception. This is in marked contrast to the primary effect of the classical psychedelics (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin) which involve visual and affective amplification of all psychic contents and processes, including fear—thereby making difficult or “hellish” trips much more likely than with MDMA (where they are virtually absent). Entactogen means something like “touching within” or getting in touch with one’s own inner processes.

In a friendly debate which I had with a couple of my colleagues in the pages of the MAPS bulletin several years ago, I suggested that “touching within” doesn’t really distinguish the MDMA-type experience from the LSD-type experience. My own preferred term for these substances (and the experience they can facilitate) is empathogen—generating a state of empathy, both empathy for others and empathy with one’s own self in past or present conflict situations. This to me is the basis for the heightened affective understanding, the integration of emotion and reasoning, consequent upon the absence of fear and anxiety, that Dr. Passie’s study demonstrates.

The Use of MDMA in Alleviating Terminal Anxiety

A dramatic and powerful account of MDMA’s ability to attenuate fear and terminal anxiety is given in the book by Marilyn Howell "Honor Thy Daughter," also published by MAPS (2011). In this book, Howell relates how her 27-year old daughter who had colon cancer, struggled terribly to marshall her life-forces and resist the illness, in spite of the increasingly discouraging feedback from the medical professionals and increasingly painful side-effects of the chemotherapy drugs she was receiving. She fought for her life, using one extreme, technological method after another. She didn’t want to hear, think or talk about her possibly impending death. I think most researchers would agree that actually, for end-of-life palliative care the classical entheogens like LSD and psilocybin are better than MDMA at expanding awareness into the spiritual dimensions. But in the case of this young woman, since she was so relentlessly committed to fight for her life, and in denial about death, the turning point came when she could accept the possibility that the MDMA would ease her existing pain and anxiety, without thinking about death, the after-life or similar concerns. She was able to have a relatively peaceful and painless dying, in the company of her loved ones.

When MDMA first became known in therapists’ circles in the early 1970s, its possesion or use was not illegal—until the FDA, invoking emergency powers, placed it on Schedule I in July 1985, just around the time the first edition of this book was published. Because of the change in its legal status, and for obvious reasons of confidentiality, the individuals reporting, the therapists or group leaders facilitating, and the researcher who compiled and edited the accounts all chose to remain anonymous. Now, more than 20 years later, MDMA is still illegal, and listed on the FDA’s Schedule I (along with heroin, cocaine, LSD and marijuana) although researchers can obtain small amounts for their controlled and approved research studies. Such studies all have to be privately funded, since no pharmaceutical company can put its development resources behind it. In spite of the promising research studies demonstrating the relative safety of MDMA, and the positive anonymous self-reports published on the Erowid website—MDMA is no closer to being formally and legally available for any condition or purpose than it was in the 1980s. However the informal, underground distribution of Ecstasy at rave concerts, and in the context of small, anymous, secretive groups, has led some observers to estimate (though of course no hard statistics are available) that several million doses of Ecstasy are distributed and consumed every year—in the US, most European countries, as well as India, Japan, Australia, South Africa and possibly China.

The research with the classic psychedelic drugs (psilocybin, LSD etc) carried out during the 1960s had led to the hypothesis, widely accepted by workers in the field, that psychedelics are non-specific psychic amplifiers, and that the content of a psychedelic experience is primarily a function of the “set” (expectations, intention, attitude, personality) and the “setting” (physical and social context, presence and attitude of others, including the guide). This set-and-setting hypothesis is a useful model in coming to understand the experiences with MDMA also. The specific insights, feelings and resolutions of problems that occur are of course unique to the individual, although there is a commonality in the kinds of feeling states that are named, such as “empathy”, “ecstasy”. Individuals are often able, if their intention in taking the substance is serious and therapeutic, to use the state to resolve long-standing intrapsychic conflicts or interpersonal problems in relationships. One therapist has estimated that in five hours of one MDMA session clients could activate and process psychic material that would normally require five months of weekly therapy sessions.

Because of the importance of the set and setting variables, a brief description of the nature of the set and the setting was requested of each of the individuals whose accounts were included. These are shown at the bottom of the first page of each account; and one can obtain a pretty clear sense of the operation of this principle by comparing that statement with the content of the experience. In addition, the text lists as “catalyst” the precise identity and the amount of the particular substance used. In many of the sessions, an initial dose was followed after an hour or so by a “booster” of a lesser amount of MDMA, or with a related compound called 2-CB. Invented by Alexander Shulgin, the famous independent chemist who identified and synthesized hundreds of previously unknown psychoactive compounds (described in his booksTIHKAL and PIHKAL), 2-CB is in many ways analogous in its effects to MDMA, though much less research has been done on it, nor is it as widely available in the underground scene.

With all these empathogenic (or ‘entactogenic’) substances, the catalyst triggers a change of feeling state, in which insights and perceptions take place. These insights and perceptions, though they may appear ordinary and commonplace when they are afterwards heard or read by others, are felt with a depth and poignancy of emotion that was for most people unheard of in their lives before the time of that first experience.

None of this is meant to say or imply that similar or identical changes of consciousness could not be produced or arrived at without the use of these empathogenic substances. Obviously, many people have in the past, and continue to have, empathic and heart-opening experiences without the use of any external aid, pharmaceutical or other. For the people whose experiences are recounted in this volume, the heightened and deepened state of awareness facilitated by the drug served as a kind of preview, as it were, a taste of the possibilities that exist for much greater emotional openness and relatedness than they had imagined.

They are clearly aware, too, that the drug-experience is a temporary state, and one that can be converted into the ongoing reality of everyday consciousness only with continuing therapeutic and spiritual practice—and not with the continued use of the drug. Most people do not want to repeat the experience very often—it is felt to be too intense, too sacred. Although the possibility of becoming psychologically dependent on this, or any drug, cannot ever be ruled out, there is a fairly high degree of consensus that MDMA is not addicting, in the way that opiates are. None of this positive potential therapeutic work with MDMA discounts or denies the existence of patterns of extreme overuse of Ecstasy that have become associated with the international rave culture, nor do we intend to minimize the potential harm from such overuse.

Under favorable circumstances and with a supportive set and setting people feel that the MDMA experience has elicited true compassion, forgiveness, and understanding for those with whom they have important relationships; and most importantly, for themselves, for their ordinary, neurotic, childish, struggling persona or ego. The relative absence or attenuation of normal amounts of anxiety and fear in these states is perhaps the single most important feature in regard to their therapeutic value. People report being able to think about, talk about, and deal with inner or outer issues that are otherwise always avoided because of the anxiety levels normally associated with those issues.

The accounts presented in this book derive from about fifty individuals, of various ages, professions, and degrees of psychospiritual sophistication. They were apparently gathered from about twenty anonymous therapists, mostly, though not exclusively, from the West Coast of the United States. Some of the reports are from guided therapeutic sessions; others are from sessions with serious psychological or spiritual intention, where the “sitter” might be a trusted friend or partner, rather than a therapist. A considerable number are by individuals who are themselves therapists—which suggests that some of the most promising potentials of these substances may lie in the training of therapists – where the capacity for empathy is a highly-valued.

A smaller number of the reports are from group experiences, usually of a highly structured or ritualistic nature. Although the relatively unstructured, recreational use of Ecstasy in informal small groups of friends is probably more common, most people are agreed that the use of rituals similar to those of the Native American Church, or other shamanic traditions, is the preferred mode of operation when powerful sacramental substances are taken in a group context.

The editor of this volume, the writers of the Foreword and Guidelines, and the publishers, do not advocate the use of any illegal substance. Nor do they advocate that individuals attempt to treat their own medical or psychological problems with the use of this or any other substance. Nor do they recommend the use of these substances by individuals without the supervision and consultation of one’s physician. Given these obvious limitations on the use and accessibility of these drugs, the question might be raised as to the point of publishing these accounts since the experience with MDMA is now one that has become illegal. The answer to this question that the therapists and their clients using these substances would give, is that it is in the public’s interest to be aware of what is an extraordinarily promising new tool for the exploration of the human mind and for the improvement of human relations.

Perhaps greater public knowledge of these substances and their potential human benefits can lead to a considered re-examination of the social and legal framework with which our society deals with such matters, so that as other substances of similar import are discovered, their uses and potentials will not be wasted. Many of the individuals whose experience are recounted in this volume expressed the wish and hope that, given the gravity of the planetary crisis in which we find ourselves, aids to the evolution of consciousness such as these substances will be thoroughly explored, and applied to the solution of the immense human problems that confront us.

***

The following is another excerpt from "Through the Gateway of the Heart." This excerpt, titled, "I Was Resting in the Palm of His Hand," includes the experiences of an ex-nun during an MDMA treatment.

35 year-old former school teacher, ex-nun

Set: therapeutic, spiritual.

Setting: therapist’s office, with guide.

Catalyst: 150 mg MDMA plus 50 mg MDMA.

Perhaps the most obvious feeling for me at the beginning and throughout the session was the incredible sense of peace and release from the bondage that I felt. My body was no longer a trap, a prison, but instead became like a kaleidoscope, a mingling of different energies. I felt myself being several “I”s in a very strange way. Sometimes I felt myself very wise, sometimes I was the adult me (not so wise) and sometimes I was a child. I felt a deep friendship with the guide, as if I had known him for a long time. Certain other relationships came up and I saw them as equally lovable. I was able to detach from intense attachments that bring pain and was able to love gently and freely, a truly wonderful gift for me.

I found myself thinking of God the Father and felt that I was resting in the palm of His hand, just as Isaiah says in the Bible. I was being rocked in a large hand with darkness as universe all around me. It was incredibly soothing and loving. When the guide put on certain music, I felt romantic, and instead of being with God the Father, I was dancing with a very handsome man whom I don’t know. It was very peaceful, not passionate; very graceful and free. Then I was confused, and it became the figure of Jesus. I was amazed. I told the guide that Jesus was my brother whom I loved very deeply. The guide suggested that Jesus was also my lover and yes, I have felt that, though a bit guiltily. But love like that with a man is what I have sought…passion and gentleness together…peace. In my life both aspects have always been separate. A man is either passionate or gentle, and I love both, but they are separate.

I knew instantly what my life’s purpose was…to continue to seek the heart and mind union, to continue to remember the essence within which was so peaceful, in spite of worldly activities. Adam revealed a new potential which I knew was there, but was too afraid to experience alone. As far as my studies, I realized they were important, but they only mattered in the world. I saw that I was worrying too much about others’ opinions of my work. I realized that the intellectual work has been a saving grace for me…I truly love the work of the mind, I have always been an avid reader. But, now I can put it in perspective. I have been putting too much energy in concepts and theories that may change in ten years, whereas the eternal principles of love, truth, self-realization, etc., remain the same. Now I can, with the help of Adam, tap into the deeper resources which were always my goal. I am still a bit afraid of the future, of going back “into the world,” but after the session, I feel that the inner connection will guide me through and I will find my place. The place will definitely be working directly with love energies.

When the guide played Vangelis’ Odes I felt as if my soul had been called. I remembered my Greek heritage and I went back to ancient times in feeling and memory. I felt very, very old. I could have died at that point and not felt bad about leaving my loved ones. Somehow I felt that they would understand. Death was so natural, so peaceful.

With the South American jungle music, I felt very earthy and that felt threatening. I felt that I was going to be sacrificed, and my dream of running away over the mountain was remembered. Going into instinctual waters is very scary for me, I realized then. I felt the possibility of the mind gone wild, of no principles to live by, of evil sorcery and of life being worthless. Since then I have realized that I feel the same way about certain areas of the ghetto where I grew up. in fact, some were even called “the jungle.” There is a sense of being ripped open and apart. I have felt that passion does that, when it is purely egotistical desire without taking the beauty and dignity of the human being into account. In some ways, my quest for the spiritual was to purify myself from those threats. I have never seen that before. But I think I definitely have to face those instincts now, though I am afraid.

During the session I saw my mother’s life and realized that her suffering was hers, not mine. This has been a great release for me. I saw that, just as I could have died then and there and known it was right, that she also, at some level, perhaps had that feeling. I could see under the normal layers, in a way, and know that we all know the truth underneath. So too my mother may have known that someday I would understand and accept her death, without feelings of abandonment. This was a wonderful gift. When I thought of my father, I missed that sense of security and power that comes from the male (at least for me) but I was getting it from God the Father as energy and love. I was able to see my parents as earthly extensions of Divine parents and as such of course limited. But since I now felt the presence of Divine parents, it was O.K. I still hold that feeling to this day, though not as strongly as during the session.

I realized that I have a hard time receiving love, I mean, really experiencing it. I know that I am loved, but I feel shy and don’t seem to give it much importance. I felt a deep sense of self-love, a feeling of rightness about me, as I was. In loving freely, I want to give without expectations but also receive without judgment. I see this very clearly. It will be my life’s goal. I’m really excited about it. Life now becomes a mystery, but a good one. Before, it was always a problem. As a mystery, I am not judged if I am me, I am looking to see who that “me” is. And looking, in itself, is worthwhile. Another relief.

One of the most beautiful experiences of the session was the resolution of Christian and Buddhist compassion. This has been an inner question for me for many years. How could Buddha love and not feel sad; how could Jesus feel sad in loving and still be enlightened? Somehow, during the session, they came together. I saw that Jesus’s heart, sad with the ignorance of the world, was an expression of his life externally, but that internally, he was absolutely sure that he and the Father were one and so, his soul was at peace. Buddha’s external expression was mind, a peaceful, harmonious mind, but his internal experience was a deep sadness and heartfelt compassion for the suffering of the world. So he, too, gave his life to save others from suffering. For me, Jesus and Buddha, in front of whom I pray and meditate, became two sides of the same coin, two perspectives of one experience. That question is over and I am truly grateful, for I can cultivate both heart and mind, knowing that sadness and peace can be simultaneous emotions or feelings, and not judge them as separate. Also, that sadness and love are one aspect and that joy and love are also expressions of love. Love can and should also be practical.

Cops Go Undercover at High School to Bust Special-Needs Kid for Pot: Why Are Police So Desperate to Throw Kids in Jail?

Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:23:00 -0700

The school-to-prison pipeline strikes again.

Californians Doug and Catherine Snodgrass are suing their son’s high school for allowing undercover police officers to set up the 17-year-old special-needs student for a drug arrest.

In a video segment on ABC News, they say they were "thrilled" when their son -- who has Asperger's and other disabilities and struggled to make friends -- appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock,” Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

"Daniel," however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department who "hounded" the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied -- not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers' undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School). This March, Judge Marian H. Tully ruled that Temecula Valley Unified School District could not expel the student, and had in fact failed to provide him with proper services.

“Within three days of the officer’s requests, [the] student burned himself due to his anxiety,” Tully said. “Ultimately, the student was persuaded to buy marijuana for someone he thought was a friend who desperately needed this drug and brought it to school for him.”

In January, a juvenile court judge decided that extenuating circumstances applied to the student's case, and ruled that he serve informal probation and 20 hours of community service, which would translate into “no finding of guilt.”

Since being allowed back to school, Snodgrass says his son has been "bullied" via suspensions and threat of expulsion. “Our son was cleared of the criminal charge, but the school continued to try and expel him,” Snodgrass said.

The Snodgrasses are now suing the school for unspecified damages. District administrators, they told ABC, should have protected their son, but instead “participated with local authorities in an undercover drug sting that intentionally targeted and discriminated against [him]."

“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” says Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing way more harm than good.”

Stephen Downing, a retired law enforcement veteran and former captain of detectives in the LAPD, said the behavior of the police in this case points to troubling trends in policy. "It is evidence of just how far we have gone, and how callous we have become, in treating our children with the care and dignity they should be entitled.”

“The fact that the police officer chose to prey upon the most vulnerable" is “egregious” but not surprising, he said. He pointed toward policing tactics and policies -- like quotas, the increasing criminalization of America's schools, and the war on drugs -- that put pressure on police to treat normal teen behavior as criminal.

Downing, who is a member of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, also pointed out, “The less fortunate are always targeted."

“Do we ever hear of an undercover operation like this conducted in an exclusive private school, or on a university campus, or on the stages of a movie studio in Hollywood? No, we don't. Why? Because those people would complain, get lawyers and make life miserable for the status quo."

"The parents of this child are right to bring a lawsuit, to take that needed step that will, hopefully, bring about the kind of change that will stop this kind of tyrannical corruption and harm to our children," he said.

Drug crimes are not the only charges unfairly leveled against students. Marginalized youths are regularly the targets of the school-to-prison pipeline, as in the case of Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old girl who was arrested less than a month ago for accidentally causing a small explosion during a science experiment.

Drug Testing Purveyor Absurdly Tries to Blame Boston Bombing on ... Pot?

Russ Belville, AlterNet — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:09:00 -0700

Here's why that's absolutely ludicrous.

The bombings that took place in Boston were a heinous crime carried out by the Tsarnaev Brothers that killed and maimed American citizens. It seems the older brother had become radicalized in his hatred of U.S. foreign policy and his younger brother, called Jahar, seemed to be along for the ride. How anyone could wreak such havoc and destruction is beyond the ability of most Americans to comprehend.

Unless you're Robert L. DuPont, one of the principles in the firm Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, which is a major purveyor of drug testing management in America. Then the reason for the terror is clear: marijuana. Writing for U-T San Diego, DuPont explains how marijuana turned a bright young student into a terrorist.

One of the most striking and consistent observations about Dzhokhar, or Jahar as he was commonly known to his friends, was that he was a normal college kid. Evidence of his normality was his heavy marijuana use as a party boy.
Less recognized among his friends was the academic trajectory of Jahar in college, including receiving failing grades over three consecutive semesters.
While Jahar's marijuana use did not directly make him a terrorist, it closed the door to his dreams of being an engineer or physician and it opened the door to his suicidal violence.

DuPont laments the "endemic" use of marijuana in America's colleges and the inflated rates of drop-out in America's high schools (actual tables available at RadicalRuss.com). I thought it might be fun to look those figures up and compare:

YearHigh School Dropout Rate (Overall)High School Dropout Rate (Black)12-17 Monthly Marijuana UseCollege Graduation Rates18-25 Monthly Marijuana Use1979no datano data16.8%no data35.3%1985no datano data11.9%no data21.9%199112.1% (1990)13.2% (1990)4.3%no data13.0%199711.8% (1998)13.8% (1998)9.4%33.7% (1996)12.8%20039.9%10.9%8.0%36.7%17.2%20098.1%9.3%7.2%no data18.6%

So it would seem that we had the most teens dropping out of school in 1991, the same year we had the least proportion of teens smoking pot regularly. Now that pot smoking is at less than half what it was in 1979, we have the fewest kids dropping out of school. And while the Dept. of Education didn't have much for me on undergraduate degree completion, it does look like pot smoking among college kids increased from 12.8% to 17.2%, and the graduation rate increased by three points.

Naturally, DuPont has the solution to preventing the next marijuana-dropout-terrorist...

What if Jahar had been required to take drug tests to obtain and maintain a driver's license? Might he have changed his behavior if faced with real and immediate certain consequences for his drug use? What about the tens of thousands of kids nationwide who are caught in similar drug-induced downward spirals? New technologies make minimally intrusive drug testing part of a practical approach to preventing and identifying drug problems early. Can our society afford to ignore the measures that are available to encourage young people to find positive drug-free directions for their lives?

The Similarities Between the Charter School Movement and the War on Drugs

Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D., TruthOut.org — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:33:00 -0700

How both are creating an underclass, significantly among African American males.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.

In the United States, the intersection of the criminal justice system and public schools has intensified in the wake of school shootings, prompting similar solutions from supposedly opposite ends of the political spectrum. As noted in a New York Times editorial, "The National Rifle Association and President Obama responded to the Newtown, Conn., shootings by recommending that more police officers be placed in the nation's schools."

As the editorial points out, however, research tends to show that police in the hallways creates schools-as-prisons and students-as-criminals, increasing, rather than eliminating, the problems. In another piece, Chloe Angyal highlights the disturbing connection between incarceration and education:

Punishment rates in schools mirror the rates in the 'real world' - though what could be more real than entrenched discrimination in our schools? - and in fact, contribute to those real world figures. The Civil Rights Project report notes that the abuse and misuse of suspensions can turn them into "gateways to prison." Even if that were not the case, even absent a school-to-prison pipeline, the situation would be grim enough. What this report reveals is a disregard for the well-being of marginalized populations that, were it directed at other groups, would never be allowed to stand. If a quarter of white middle school boys were being suspended every school year, and if pretty white ladies were being frisked on the streets of Manhattan, there'd be an uproar.

While the term "a nation at risk" tends to be associated with the 1983 report on US education from the Reagan administration, the early 1980s also spawned an era of mass incarceration, built on claims that the United States was also a nation at risk because of illegal drug sales and use, identified by author Michelle Alexander as The New Jim Crow:

In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration's "War on Drugs. At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the country. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and drug dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined "others" - the undeserving. (p. 49)

Within a year of each other, then, the Reagan administration launched a war on drugs and a crisis response to public education. Just as Alexander details the masked intent behind the war on drugs, John Holton exposed A Nation at Risk as less about education reform and more about political agendas.

We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious when he gave us our marching orders. He told us that our report should focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to education: Bring God back into the classroom; encourage tuition tax credits for families using private schools; support vouchers; leave the primary responsibility for education to parents; and please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don't ask to waste more federal money on education - "We have put in more only to wind up with less."

For three decades, the War on Drugs has led to mass incarceration, primarily impacting African American males, the racially defined "others," and the education reform movement based on high-stakes accountability has targeted "other people's children" in ways that suggest market-oriented education reform is a school-based component of the New Jim Crow grounded in the criminal justice system.

Mass incarceration and market-oriented education reform share more than their genesis in the 1980s, since both have been shown to cause far more harm than good and to further marginalize African American and impoverished youths and adults.

The Dark Reality of Market-Oriented Education Reform

The education accountability era begun in the early 1980s focused on implementing curriculum standards and high-stakes testing, first at the state level and then over the decade since No Child Left Behind (NCLB), increasingly at the national level.

The evolution of the education reform movement has included some central ideological commitments - focusing on in-school-only reform and relying on slogans such as "no excuses" and "poverty is not destiny," as expressed in a 2010 manifesto from several key figures in reform, Michelle Rhee, Paul Vallas and Joel Klein:

So, where do we start? With the basics. As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income - it is the quality of their teacher.
Yet, for too long, we have let teacher hiring and retention be determined by archaic rules involving seniority and academic credentials. The widespread policy of "last in, first out" (the teacher with the least seniority is the first to go when cuts have to be made) makes it harder to hold on to new, enthusiastic educators and ignores the one thing that should matter most: performance.

At first, reform was driven by revolutionary promises and often unverified claims of public school failure, but over the past 30 years, ample evidence now suggests that political education reform has failed to fulfill its promises, and, in a mechanism similar to the negative consequences of the mass incarceration, has harmed the exact students those reforms were designed to help.

The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education has resisted market-oriented, in-school-only reform championed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Rhee, Vallas and Klein, calling instead for social and educational reform seeking equity of opportunity for all families and students. In Broader, Bolder's "Market-Oriented Education Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality" (April 18, 2013), Elaine Weiss and Don Long examine test-based teacher evaluations, school closures and expanded charter schools in Chicago, New York City and Washington, DC, concluding: "The report finds that the reforms delivered few benefits and in some cases harmed the students they purport to help. It also identifies a set of largely neglected policies with real promise to weaken the poverty-education link, if they receive some of the attention and resources now targeted to the touted reforms." (p. 3)

Market-oriented education reform has depended on addressing inequity indirectly, trusting mechanisms such as choice and business models of managing teachers as well as schools to initiate social change. This reform has specifically targeted goals such as closing the achievement gap, better serving impoverished and minority students, and raising international indicators of educational quality.

As Weiss and Long show, however, test-based teacher evaluations, school closures and expanded charter schools haven't succeeded, even against their advocates' promises:

· Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in "reform" cities than in other urban districts.
· Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.
· Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.
· School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.
· Charter schools further disrupted the districts while providing mixed benefits, particularly for the highest-needs students.
· Emphasis on the widely touted market-oriented reforms drew attention and resources from initiatives with greater promise.
· The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance.
· Real, sustained change requires strategies that are more realistic, patient and multipronged. (p. 3)

Further, additional evidence reveals (ostensibly) unintended consequences of market-oriented reform have included increased segregation by race and class in charter schools and a widening gap between the type of educational experiences affluent children receive compared with the authoritarian and test-prep-focused "no excuses" schools for minority and impoverished students, notably as detailed inSarah Carr's Hope Against Hope, exploring the post-Katrina rise of charter schools in New Orleans:

But inside the schools, the war over education no longer seems so stark and clearly defined. Edges blur, shades of gray abound, and simple solutions prove elusive. . . . Many of the most powerful people in the country have a plan for the future of education in America, one focused on more charter schools, technocratic governance, weakened teachers' unions and the relentless use of data to measure student and teacher progress. (pp. 5, 6-7)

But Carr's narrative and analysis show that, as detailed in the Broader, Bolder report, market-oriented reform tends to replicate and even perpetuate inequity instead of eradicating it: Students in New Orleans sit in "no excuses" charter schools that are both authoritarian and segregated, while the post-Katrina Recovery District reduced the African American teacher workforce from 75 percent to 57 percent of the city's teachers.

Despite the slogans and the rhetoric, schools experiencing the array of market-oriented education reform policies have shown that home and communitycharacteristics do predict educational opportunities, mirroring the historically greatest challenge facing traditional public schools. Ultimately, like the War on Drugs, current education reform exists as a key element in America's New Jim Crow era.

Education Reform and "Racially Sanitized Rhetoric"

Just as the education reform movement was spurred by a "manufactured crisis," as exposed by Gerald Bracey and Holton, the War on Drugs grew out of a racially divisive political agenda, a drug crisis that did not yet exist, but created "mass incarceration in the United States . . . as a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow," as Alexander details. (p. 4)

Since market-oriented education reform is producing evidence highlighting the ineffectiveness and even negative outcomes associated with those policies, that the agendas remain robust suggests, again like mass incarceration, education reform fulfills many of the dynamics found in the New Jim Crow.

Just as mass incarceration from the war on drugs continues institutional racism once found in slavery and Jim Crow, education reform, especially the "no excuses" charter school movement, resurrects a separate but equal education system that is separate, but certainly isn't equal. The masked racism of mass incarceration and education reform share many parallels, including the following:

· Both depend on "racially sanitized rhetoric," according to Alexander, that thinly masks racism. "Getting tough on crime" justifies disproportional arrests, convictions and sentencing for African Americans; "no excuses" and "zero tolerance" justify highly authoritarian and punitive schools disproportionally serving high-poverty children of color.

· Both depend on claims of objective mechanisms - laws for the war on drugs and test scores for education reform - to deflect charges of racism. Alexander recognizes "this system is better designed to create [emphasis in original] crime and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals," (p. 236) just as test-based education reform creates and does not address the achievement gap.

· Both depend on racialized fears among poor and working-class whites, which Alexander identifies in the Reagan drug war agenda: "In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the 'excision of the language of race from conservative public discourse' and thus built on the success of the earlier conservatives who developed a strategy of exploiting racial hostility or resentment for political gain without making explicit reference to race" (p. 48). The charter school movement masks segregation within a progressive-friendly public school choice.

· Both depend on either current claims of post-racial America or the goal of a post-racial society: "This system of control depends far more on racialindifference [emphasis in original] . . . than racial hostility," Alexander notes. (p. 203)

· Both depend on a bipartisan and popular commitment to seemingly obvious goals of crime eradication and world-class schools.

· Both depend on the appearance of African American support. Alexander explains about the effectiveness of the war on drugs: "Conservatives could point to black support for highly punitive approaches to dealing with the problems of the urban poor as 'proof' that race had nothing to do with their 'law and order' agenda." (p. 42)

This last point - that African Americans seem to support both the war on crime and "no excuses" charter schools - presents the most problematic aspect of charges that mass incarceration and education reform are ultimately racist, significant contributions to the New Jim Crow.

For example, Carr reports that African American parents not only choose "no excuses" charter schools in New Orleans, but also actively cheer and encourage the authoritarian policies voiced by the schools' administrators. But Alexander states, "Given the dilemma facing poor black communities, it is inaccurate to say that black people 'support' mass incarceration or 'get-tough' policies" because "if the only choice that is offered blacks is rampant crime or more prisons, the predictable (and understandable) answer will be 'more prisons.' " (p. 210)

New Orleans serves as a stark example of how this dynamic works in education reform: Given the choice between segregated, underfunded and deteriorating public schools and "no excuses" charters - and not the choice of the school environments and offerings found in many elite private schools - the predictable answer is "no excuses" charters.

Market-oriented education reform continues to produce evidence that it fails against its own goals and standards. But more disturbing is that current education reform also shares with the war on drugs evidence that the United States is committed to the New Jim Crow, to which Alexander quotes Martin Luther King Jr.: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (p. 203)

The war on drugs and highly punitive, segregated charter schools are creating an underclass, significantly among African American males - facts that must be acknowledged before equity of opportunity can be secured. About this intersection of the criminal justice system and education reform, Angyal asks, "But the real question is, what will it take for us to fix this system that punishes students and citizens for no other reason but their membership in marginalized groups?"

The Other IRS Scandal: Outright War Against Marijuana Dispensaries

Clarence Walker, Drug War Chronicle — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:08:00 -0700

"Should the IRS campaign be successful, it will ... eliminate tens of thousands of well paying jobs, [and] destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue."

Dispensaries providing marijuana to doctor-approved patients operate in a number of states, but they are under assault by the federal government. SWAT-style raids by the DEA and finger-wagging press conferences by grim-faced federal prosecutors may garner greater attention, but the assault on medical marijuana providers extends to other branches of the government as well, and moves by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to eliminate dispensaries' ability to take standard business deduction are another very painful arrow in the federal quiver.

The IRS employs Section 280E, a 1982 addition to the tax code that was a response to a drug dealer's successful effort to claim his yacht, weapons purchases, and even illicit bribes as business expenses. Under 280E, individuals involved in the illicit sale of controlled substances -- including marijuana, even medical marijuana in states where it is legal -- cannot claim standard business expenses on their federal taxes.

"The 280E provision which requires certain businesses to pay taxes on their gross income, as opposed to their net income, is aimed at shutting down illicit drug operations, not state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the medical marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access." Nonetheless, the Obama Administration is using Section 280E to push these local and state licensed facilities out of business."

The provision can be used to great effect. Oakland's Harborside Health Center was hit with a $2 million IRS assessment in 2011 after the tax agency employed Section 280E against. Harborside is fighting that assessment, even as it continues to try to fend off federal prosecutors' attempts to shut it down by seizing the properties it leases. Similarly, when the feds raided Richard Lee's Oaksterdam University that same year, it wasn't just DEA, but also IRS agents who stormed the premises. Lee said it was because of a 280E-related audit.

The attacks on Harborside and Oaksterdam were part of an IRS campaign of aggressive audits using 280E to deny legitimate business expenses, such as rent, payroll, and all other necessary business expenses. These denials result in astronomical back tax bills for the affected dispensaries, threatening their viability -- and patients' access to their medicine.

"Should the IRS campaign be successful; it will throw millions of patients back in to the hands of street dealers; eliminate tens of thousands of well paying jobs, destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue; enrich the criminal underground; and endanger the safety of communities in the 17 medical cannabis states," said Harborside's Steve DeAngelo as he announced the 280E Reform Project to begin to fight back.

It's going to be an uphill battle. In the last Congress, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced House Bill 1985, the Small Business Tax Equity Act, designed to end the 280E problem for medical marijuana businesses, but it went to the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, where it was never heard from again.

Still, something needs to happen, said Betty Aldworth, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, which this year is working with members of Congress to try to find a fix for the 280E problem.

"When Section 280E was created in the 1980s, no one imagined state-legal marijuana providers," Aldworth told the Chronicle. "Whether or not it is part of a larger effort to curtail the development of regulated models for providing marijuana, which is a model that is clearly preferable to leaving this popular and relatively safe medicine (or adult product) in the underground market, these onerous tax rates have severely hampered the development of the regulated market."

It's a brake on the overall economy, Aldworth said.

"Not only has it resulted in stymieing job development, but it also curtails other economic activity such as reinvestment in business and the rippling positive effects of that spending," she argued. "And in many cases, it has created a tax burden that is simply unbearable: many providers have had to close their doors and lay off their staffs because the tax burden was simply too great."

Because of this unintended application of 280E, medical marijuana providers are paying overall taxes at a rate two to three times those of other small businesses, Aldworth said.

"It's important to note that just as they want to apply for licenses, follow regulations, and otherwise participate in the legal business community, state-legal marijuana providers also want to pay their fair share of taxes," she pointed out. "Most small businesses pay an effective tax rate of between 13% and 27% on net income, according to the Small Business Administration. State-legal marijuana providers pay an average effective tax rate of 65-80%. An industry that can provide thousands of jobs is being held back by these crazy tax rates."

While the lobbyists look to Congress for a fix, one academic tax law expert thinks he has hit upon a novel solution, but not everyone agrees.

Benjamin Leff, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law, raised eyebrows at a Harvard University seminar this spring when he presented his report,Tax Planning For Marijuana Dealers, where he suggested that dispensaries get around 280E by registering with the IRS as tax-exempt social welfare organizations, known as 501(c)(3)s or 501(c)(4)s.

The IRS has already ruled that medical marijuana providers can be exempt under 501(c)(3) because its "public policy doctrine" does not allow charitable organizations to have purposes contrary to law, but in the paper, Leff argued that "a state-sanctioned marijuana seller could qualify as tax-exempt under 501(c)(4), since the public policy doctrine only applies to charities, and 501(c)(4) organizations are not charities."

The organization would have to be operated to improve the social and economic conditions of a neighborhood blighted by crime or poverty, by providing job training, employment opportunities, and improved business conditions for commercial development in the neighborhood, just like many existing community economic development corporations that run businesses.

"When taxes get too high, you can drive compliant dispensaries out of business," Leff told the Chronicle.

Americans for Safe Access' Hermes would agree with that, but he's not so sure about Leff's idea.

"The concept of medical marijuana dispensaries registering with the federal government as a 501(c)(4) in order to sidestep section 280E is novel and may be hypothetically valid," he said. "However, the IRS will refuse to grant tax-exempt status to a business that the agency believes is violating federal law. Perhaps, it would be possible for a dispensary to obtain 501(c)(4) status under false pretenses, but such status would not very likely withstand an IRS audit."

There are better ways, he said.

"A much more realistic and sensible approach -- pending a change to the federal classification of marijuana for medical use -- is to amend the tax code to exclude state-lawful medical marijuana businesses from Section 280E," Hermes recommended. "This is the kind of legislation that Congress should pass in order to allow states to implement their own medical marijuana laws, without undue interference by the federal government."

"I agree with everything he said," Leff replied. "But it's not just the Obama administration that is using 280E this way. The Supreme Court has held that there is no exception to the Controlled Substances Act for state-level legal marijuana sales, and since 280E makes references to Schedule I controlled substances, it applies to legal marijuana unless Congress changes the law. I totally agree that Congress should amend 280E to exempt marijuana selling that is legal under state law. Congress could also amend the Controlled Substances Act to remove marijuana from it, which would probably also make sense," he added.

Whether it is by act of Congress, internal policy shifts, or creative thinking by law school professors, some way has to be found to exempt state-permitted medical marijuana providers from the clutches of 280E and its punitive tax burden aimed at dope dealers, or there may not be any medical marijuana providers.

Congressmen Help Launch Drug War Exit Strategy Guide

Bill Piper, AlterNet — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:49:00 -0700

A new generation of legislators be a key asset to drug policy reform.

On Thursday, the Drug Policy Alliance will release An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs. This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and re-entry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education. The guide will be released at a forum on the Hill cosponsored by Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), both of whom fought for major drug policy reform at the local level before running for Congress and winning. This new generation of legislators has demonstrated that support for drug policy reform is no detriment to electoral success – and in fact that it can be a key asset.

As a New York Assemblyman, Jeffries was a leader in opposing New York City's racially discriminatory marijuana arrest practices. He was the sponsor of legislation that would have ended arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. As an El Paso councilmember O'Rourke sponsored a resolution calling on the federal government to rethink the war on drugs. The resolution was unanimously supported by his colleagues on the council but vetoed by the mayor. Then-U.S.-Representative Silvestre Reyes threatened to withhold federal funding if the city adopted the resolution. O'Rourke subsequently ran against Reyes, an eight-term incumbent, and won his Congressional seat.

The Drug Policy Alliance’s federal legislative guide does what the Obama Administration has failed to do – it lays out a roadmap for treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. Upon taking office, President Obama announced that he would shift the federal government’s drug control resources from a criminalization-centered approach to one based on public health. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske even announced that he would end the war on drugs: "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

This rhetoric, however, does not match the “lock ‘em up” reality experienced in communities across the country, where the criminal justice system remains the primary means of addressing drugs. The Obama administration’s budget continues to emphasize enforcement, prosecution and incarceration at home – and interdiction, eradication and military escalation abroad. Even what the government does spend on treatment and prevention is overstated, as many of its programs are wasteful and counterproductive.

In 2011, the last year for which data are available, the U.S. arrested more than 1.5 million people for a drug law violation – and more than 80% of those arrests were for minor possession, not sales or manufacturing. On any given night, 500,000 people go to sleep behind bars in the U.S. for nothing more than a drug law violation.

Among the recommendations included in the Exit Strategy:

Allow states to reform their drug policies without federal interference.
Shift the focus of the federal drug budget from failed supply-side programs to cost-effective demand and harm reduction strategies.
Repeal federal mandatory minimum sentencing.
Repeal the federal syringe funding ban.
Eliminate federal possession and paraphernalia laws.
Declare a moratorium on creating new drug crimes, increasing existing drug sentences, or criminalizing more drugs.
Eliminate or cut drug war subsidies to the states to reduce incarceration and civil rights abuses.
Ensure the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s essential health benefit rule guarantees access to evidence-based drug treatment options, such as methadone and buprenorphine, in the plans offered in the individual and small group markets, both inside and outside the ACA Exchanges.
Establish federal funding for state, county, tribal and non-profit recipients who provide overdose prevention training and resources to communities.
Encourage and allow for the establishment of supervised injection facilities, which are proven internationally to save lives, save money and increase participation in drug treatment without increasing drug use.

It’s time we developed a comprehensive strategy for dealing with substance misuse in the 21stcentury by focusing on what works and what doesn’t. There are no perfect solutions to drug misuse and addiction, but it’s time we put all options on the table.

Synthetic Marijuana Turns People Into Zombies, Says Atrocious Govt. Anti-Drug Propaganda

Sharda Sekaran, AlterNet — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:37:00 -0700

D.C. Govt. advertisement is just as ridiculous as the 1930s film 'Reefer Madness.'

You might be familiar with Reefer Madness, the drug war film from the 1930s that has become a cult classic because of its over-the-top scare tactics about marijuana. Generations have laughed at the film’s cartoonish hysteria, with young students portrayed committing acts of violent lunacy after smoking a joint with their friends. Rather than educating young people about marijuana, Reefer Madness is widely seen as the epitome of unreliable and exaggerated propaganda.

The District of Columbia’s Department of Health seems to have a taken a page directly from Reefer Madness for its new advertising campaign, suggesting a synthetic form of marijuana known as “K2” or ”Spice” will turn people who use it into “zombies.” The ads recently made their debut on the DC Metro, and are wacky enough to look like a parody. Teenagers – presumably under the influence and grotesquely made up to look like “Walking Dead” extras – pose in various stages of decay with captions like “No One Wants to Take a Zombie to the Prom.” Seriously?

Just about everyone agrees that teenagers should be discouraged from taking drugs and warned about potential health risks. But decades of exaggerated claims and egg frying commercials have taught us that wild and fictitious notions about drugs do very little to generate confidence, trust and safety among young people. Research by the Government Accountability Office, in fact, has found that these sorts of tactics are ineffective at reducing teen drug use rates.

There may be legitimate health concerns associated with synthetic marijuana, a chemical compound created to imitate the still-prohibited plant. Like any drug, “fake weed” should be carefully studied to better understand its effect on humans, and regulated accordingly. Giving teens access to information grounded in science and health is a much more sensible alternative to preparing them for the zombie apocalypse.

Did America's First Drug Czar Secretly Supply Dope to Sen. Joe McCarthy?

Matt Harvey, The Fix — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:03:00 -0700

During the 1950s Red Scare, America's first drug czar fed the opiate addiction of America's most feared senator.

Joe McCarthy, the late senator from Wisconsin who built his reputation by whipping up the anti-Communist hysteria sweeping America at the beginning of the Cold War, has long been widely viewed as an object lesson in the abuse of power. His style of politics—demagoguery, paranoia and, worst of all, witch-hunts—has been named McCarthyism, and in recent years some politicians have emerged who would wear the label proudly. For people who have struggled with addiction, however, McCarthy—an alcoholic and opiate addict—offers a provocative question about the limits of our own anti-stigma views.

By the peak of his power in 1953, McCarthy's allegations of “Communist subversion” had wrecked havoc on virtually every level of government—from scores of federal employees whose careers were ruined by unfounded charges of “treason” to decorated war heroes to highly respected statesmen. McCarthy even characterized the entire Democratic Party as the “party of treason.”

Not surprisingly, there is a long tradition of right-wing pols and pundits who see McCarthy as a misunderstood hero. Sen. Ted Cruz, the newly elected Tea Party Republican from Texas, has already won widespread comparisons to McCarthy for his innuendo-laced pronouncements about Democratic members of Congress and presidential appointees such as Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary. Cruz has welcomed the criticism as “a sign that perhaps we’re doing something right.” In fact, McCarthy seems to be almost a role model for Cruz, who in 2010 upbraided his alma mater, Harvard Law School, for harboring a dozencommunists on its faculty.

A larger-than-life figure of enduring influence, the story of Joe McCarthy would seem to offer little in the way of surprises. The fact that he suffered from severe alcoholism is well known. But the fact that by many accounts, he was also addicted to opiates remains almost as hidden as it was during his lifetime.

That Capitol Hill was rife with drinking and even drugging was an open secret in the 1950s, but the “private” lives of political figures remained largely unpublicized. This protected McCarthy’s favorable reputation with the American public from the stinging stigma attached to alcoholism and drug addiction. (There is some speculation that his opiate addiction was the result of either treatment for “chronic pain” or treatment by sympathetic doctors to help fortify the hangover-hobbled senator to get him through the day. But he may have had a personality disorder; a friend remarked once that he "operates in his own moral universe.")

Yet even in the current age of celebrity snort-and-tell publicity, when nothing seems capable of shocking, the method in which McCarthy’s drugs were supplied is, well, shocking.

According to the country’s first de-facto drug czar, Harry Anslinger, McCarthy’s addiction was enabled by the federal government. Anslinger, who served as chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, is credited with successfully demonizing “marijuana” as causing addiction and insanity, murder and mayhem. More than any other political figure, Anslinger was responsible for criminalizing opiates and its users. And his word was gospel when it came to the country’s nascent war on drugs.

In his 1961 memoir, The Murderers, Anslinger wrote about finding out, in the 1950s, that a prominent senator (whom he left unnamed) was addicted to morphine. When confronted by Anslinger, the politician refused to stop, even daring Anslinger to reveal his addiction, saying it would cause irreparable harm to the “Free World.” Anslinger responded to this gambit by securing the lawmaker a steady supply of dope from a Washington, DC, pharmacy. (Morphine taken by prescription was, then as now, legal.)

Anslinger’s acquiescence was a testament to just how feared McCarthy was in his heyday. Few dared to speak above a whisper about his evident alcoholism. “[He] went on for some time, guaranteed his morphine because it was underwritten by the Bureau," Anslinger wrote. "On the day he died I thanked God for relieving me of my burden."

Beltway insiders guessed that the smack-addicted senator’s bullying threats and bombastic appeals to patriotism—not to mention the fact that he had died in office—pointed to the late Joseph McCarthy. Anslinger, however, refused to reveal the name to reporters. The story dropped out of circulation until 1972, when a landmark study on the effects of narcotics, issued by Consumer Reports, repeated it (still with no name attached) in a chapter on “eminent narcotic addicts.”

Even in the current age of celebrity snort-and-tell publicity, when nothing seems capable of shocking, the method in which McCarthy’s drugs were supplied is, well, shocking.

During the Army-McCarthy hearings, which riveted Americans to their small black-and-white television sets in 1954, McCarthy’s combustible mix of grandiosity and paranoia was on full self-destructive display. Every so often a senator on the subcommittee would remind viewers—among whom McCarthy’s favorability ratings were falling by the week—of the real reason for the proceedings: an investigation of charges that McCarthy had tried to blackmail the Army into giving special favors to a McCarthy aide who had been drafted. All spring, McCarthy played to the cameras in his deep-throated baritone, using the hearings to preach “communist infiltration” at all levels of government (including the Army), and appealing to what he called the “real jury—the 16 million television viewers out there.”

But then Army chief counsel Joseph Welch confronted McCarthy over his attempt to blacken the reputation of a young Welch associate, for purportedly joining a “Communist-front” lawyers organization. When McCarthy persisted, a visibly shaken Welch famously upbraided him with these words: “Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” The packed hall burst into applause.

By the time the gavel fell on the hearings, McCarthy could be seen desperately haranguing an empty chamber. Having finally gone too far, he was censured by a slim majority of his peers. Neither the career nor the man himself ever recovered; he died three years later. McCarthy’s last years were not pretty. He was in and out of the hospital with exhaustion, broken bones, failing organs. Apt to suddenly appear on crutches, or with his arm in a sling, he fluctuated noticeably in weight. His official cause of death, “noninfectious, seldom fatal, hepatitis, cause unknown," is not consistent with the acute alcoholic’s liver disease that is generally thought to have killed him.

McCarthy’s opiate addiction became public fodder only after Anslinger’s death. A 1978 article in, of all places, Ladies Home Journal named McCarthy as the senator in Anslinger’s autobiography. “Agents who worked under [Anslinger] claim that the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy was addicted to morphine and regularly obtained his narcotics through a druggist near the White House, authorized by Anslinger to fill the prescription,” Maxine Cheshire wrote.

Given Cheshire’s credentials as a respected Washington Post reporter, the report was treated not as gossip but as news, and widely disseminated. United Press International (UPI) put it starkly, “[McCarthy] was a morphine addict who had his drugs supplied by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for the sake of national security.”

In Flowers in the Blood: the Story of Opium, a 1981 investigation into the history of opium use, addiction and interdiction, Dean Latimer reported that the relationship between Anslinger and McCarthy was more complicated and hypocritical than Anslinger had ever let on. Just when the top drug-enforcer was supplying McCarthy with his government-approved pharmaceutical smack, the two worked hand in hand to pin the country’s burgeoning heroin trade on a Communist Chinese plot, even though the trafficking was clearly a mafia-controlled operation. Such a fiction would have conveniently served the federal government’s relaxed policy toward organized crime. (During his 40-year reign, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover never even acknowledged Cosa Nostra’s very existence.)

The last mainstream mention of McCarthy’s morphine addiction that this writer has uncovered dates back to 1989, when the Philadelphia Inquirer attacked scholarship supporting Cheshire’s findings. By now, of course, anyone who could have authoritatively confirmed the story is long dead.

McCarthy was undoubtedly a man who wrestled with more than his share of private demons that he was only too eager to unleash on the nation. His exploitation of his country’s greatest fears have made him a polarizing figure. To most, he is a cautionary tale about the abuse of power. But to some, he is an exemplar of the principle that, as the late Arizona senator Barry Goldwater famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Given the current climate of polarization in our national politics, it is not surprising that McCarthy-as-myth has made a comeback.

For the recovery community, there is a special question in the story of Joe McCarthy. Whether omitted by those who would rehabilitate him or advertised by those who would vilify him, his addiction is viewed as a shameful "scarlet letter." For those of us who view addiction as a disease to be treated with sympathy—and who reserve none of that emotion for McCarthy the demagogue—coming to terms with McCarthy the addict is, to say the least, challenging.

Why I Decided to Stop Drinking for 9 Months, in Solidarity with My Now Pregnant Wife

Jeff Koyen, The Fix — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:59:00 -0700

A liquor-lover describes his effort to put down the bottle.

There's that sparkling, lazy afternoon in a tiny port town, working through ice-cold carafes of retsina, Greece’s resinated white wine. And that surprisingly good pizza, washed down with lukewarm bottles of Toña, Nicaragua's answer to Budweiser. Even anxious memories fraught with fear, like braving an illegal back alley bar in Pakistan, are made more profound with booze.

Liquor has been part my life for so long, I finally understand why recovering addicts and alcoholics keep a careful count of their sober days.

In February, my wife and I stopped drinking. For some couples, this would be a minor sacrifice. But Neena and I met and courted at bars across downtown Manhattan. We fell in love toasting sunsets under thatched roofs throughout Central America. For us, dinner without wine isn't much of a meal, and a weekend without time spent in a dark bar isn’t much of a weekend.Sobriety didn’t arrive unannounced. We spoke at length and prepared for it, much as one readies for an imminent storm. Still, it was a shock to learn on a random Monday morning that Sunday night's wine had been our last. We should’ve splurged on better bottles.

At this point I should mention that my wife's not an alcoholic. Neither am I. She's pregnant, and I’m trying to be supportive.

When it comes to incendiary topics, partner sobriety during pregnancy runs a close second to expectant mothers drinking alcohol. Pity the woman who turns to mommy blogs and baby forums for advice on broaching the subject of alcohol use with her partner. Should the all-knowing crowd deem her husband or boyfriend’s drinking as excessive, she is urged to leave this good-for-nothing sperm donor. Even when they’re not labeled alcoholics, drinking partners are regularly condemned online as traitors for lifting a single beer.

Fortunately, the middle ground is more reasonable. Hidden among the hysteria, most expectant mothers ask just one thing of their partner: Don’t be an asshole. For some couples, this means dual sobriety. For most, though, partners continue to drink in moderation. Writing on the web, some women even take pride in being the “DD” (dedicated driver) for their “DH” (dear husband) or “SO” (significant other).

Months before Neena got pregnant, I offered to stop drinking when the time came. When the test came back positive on that Monday morning, my abstract idealism quickly became a grim reality: Holy shit, I’m going to be sober until October. And even thereafter, with a newborn and a new life, drinking would never be the same.

A few months into our new lifestyle, I’ve realized something: Sobering up isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had. The last time I dried out was 2005, when I was running a weekly newspaper in New York City. Between the job stress and the newspaperman’s romantic urge to hit the bottle, my nightly drunkenness was entirely justified. But it was getting out of hand. There is a breaking point, a Rubicon that must not be crossed, and it was near.

Taking a cue from a friend who’d given up the bottle for an entire year for similar reasons, I vowed to dry out for however long it took to clear my head and get a handle on things. By then, I’d been drinking for more than 20 years, starting with a mickey of blackberry brandy passed around before a middle school dance. I’ve always been an enthusiastic, loyal drinker. In fact, after smoking weed in high school and sucking down the usual pollutants in college, I spent my 20s in an exclusive relationship with alcohol.

My 2005 dry spell lasted about four months, and ended when my father died. I wouldn’t say my head was entirely clear, but I had certainly stepped back from the brink. All things considered, it was a success.

Truth be told, I’m happy to abstain during the week. I’m in my mid-40s, an age when most men bulk up if they don’t exercise regularly. Thanks to the empty calories of alcohol, I've carried an extra 10 or 20 pounds for longer than I’d like. A few months ago, when every dinner included wine and we drank beer by the caseload, working out meant breaking even, at best. You’d think, then, I’d be shedding weight. But the body wants what it's had, and mine craves sugar. My sweet tooth is out of control, and non-dairy Cuties frozen treats don’t actually qualify as healthy snacks.

It’s the weekends that hurt. Since it’s too early to build a nursery and shop for baby things, we fill our days with activities. We hike in the nearby hills above Santa Monica. We play paddle tennis at Venice Beach. We do everything we can to run down our engines, wearing ourselves out like small children so we’ll fall asleep early. Still, the urge to drink is always there, tapping at the window like a vampire anxious for an invitation.

For the newly sober, the toughest challenge is often one of lifestyle. After Neena and I moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 2011, we had trouble finding our rhythm. Two years later, we finally have a favorite dive bar for summer Fridays when she leaves the office early. We found the right jukebox and pool table for idle Saturday afternoons. We even found a dog-friendly patio where our mutt can join us for Sunday pints, as she had in our old neighborhood.

Those hard-won locals are now a thing of the past, destined to fade into fond memories. Some non-drinkers can still visit their favorite haunts, ordering club soda and O’Doul’s, concentrating on the company not the cocktails. Not us. We’re even avoiding favorite restaurants whose meals are lessened without good wine pairings. Dry meals are easier on the budget, sure, but I'd gladly blow $200 tonight if it meant a hearty red with my steak and a perfect port to end the meal.

At least our non-drinking has been good for Netflix. We finally caught up with Arrested Development,Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. We may finally succumb to peer pressure and binge on Mad Men. We'd better cram it in now, before the baby arrives and there’s no time for real television. Or real drinking, for that matter.

I’m actually grateful for these next few months of clarity and hangover-free mornings. I’m particularly glad it’s a voluntary dry-out, not lifelong abstinence. If all goes well, sometime in October I’ll be popping a bottle of champagne in a Santa Monica hospital room. In no time, Neena will be sneaking glasses of white between feedings. No doubt, we’ll be that annoying couple with the baby at the bar. We’re not entirely out of the game.

Will I miss those lazy Saturdays that start with mimosas, continue with pints and end with nightcaps on the couch? Those carefree Sundays when the most important decision is, which bar? Of course. But as Old John told Joseph Mitchell, as quoted in Up in the Old Hotel, I’ve had my share. More important matters are at hand.

Jeff Koyen is the former editor of the New York Press and founder of the software startup Assignmint.

Woman Slaps Cop to Quit Smoking

The Fix — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:31:00 -0700

Hoping to get locked up to quit her addiction, California woman decided to slap a cop in the face.

Here's one way to quit smoking: assault police personnel, get arrested and be forced to go cold turkey in jail.

This was the plan that led 31-year-old Etta Lopez to wait outside the Sacramento County Jail for hours for a law enforcement official to come out, so she could slap him.

The victim of her ploy, Deputy Matt Campoy, says she came out of nowhere and purposely blocked his path.

“All of a sudden, she stepped into me and slapped me in the face,” he says.

As she had hoped, Lopez was immediately arrested and taken to jail.

“She told us that she needed to quit smoking,” says Campoy. “She explained it with great detail as to why.”

One of Lopez's neighbors says he supports her quitting the habit, but not her chosen cessation method.

“There’s easier ways to stop smoking than hitting a cop,” he says. “that’s not the way I want to quit.”

Kimberly Bankston-Lee of California anti-smoking group Breathe California says that the desperation behind such a plan shows just how difficult it is to quit.

“If it led somebody to do something like that to quit, that lets us know in the community that we have a real problem,” says Bankston-Lee.

CA Supreme Court: Localities Can Ban Pot Dispensaries

Phillip Smith, Drug War Chronicle — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:42:00 -0700

For patients, that means access to medical marijuana at dispensaries will depend on the political currents in their city or county.

In a ruling that will leave California's patchwork approach to medical marijuana dispensary regulation in place, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that local governments can ban dispensaries from operating within their jurisdictions. For patients, that means access to medical marijuana at dispensaries will depend on the political currents in their city or county.The decision likely means that cities and counties that had been holding off on banning dispensaries will now take steps to do so. It will also increase pressure on the state legislature to come up with a means of statewide medical marijuana regulation, something it is working on right now.

The case was City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, Inc., in which Inland Empire sued the city after Riverside using its zoning power to declare that dispensaries were nuisances and ordered them shut down. Inland Empire went to court to block the city from forcing it to close.

The decision was eagerly -- and anxiously -- awaited by all sides. Cases on local bans had been percolating through the state court system for several years, with state appeals courts splitting on the issue. An appeals court had earlier sided with the city of Riverside, but a trial court last summer held that Riverside County could not ban dispensaries, and an appeals court in Southern California had struck down Los Angeles County's ban on dispensaries.

The move by the city of Riverside was part of a broader counter-offensive against the proliferation of dispensaries after the Obama administration signaled in 2009 that it would take a largely hands-off approach. According to the medical marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access, more than 200 cities or counties in the state have since moved to ban dispensaries. That move toward local bans has since slowed, in part because of uncertainty over their legality and in part because the federal offensive since the Obama administration shifted gears in the fall of 2011 has driven hundreds of dispensaries out of business.

Patient and industry advocates had argued that allowing localities to ban dispensaries ran counter to the intent of the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law. The law called for making medical marijuana accessible to people with doctors' recommendations for its use. But the state's high court sided with the localities.

"The issue in this case is whether California's medical marijuana statutes preempt a local ban on facilities that distribute medical marijuana. We conclude they do not," wrote Justice Marvin Baxter for a unanimous court. "The CUA and the MMP [state medical marijuana laws] do not expressly or impliedly preempt Riverside's zoning provisions declaring a medical marijuana dispensary, as therein defined, to be a prohibited use, and a public nuisance, anywhere within the city limits."

"While the California Supreme Court ruling ignores the needs of thousands of patients across the state, it simply maintains the status quo," said Joe Elford, chief counsel with Americans for Safe Access, which filed an amicus 'friend of the court' brief in the case. "Notably, the high court deferred to the state legislature to establish a clearer regulatory system for the distribution of medical marijuana, which advocates and state officials are currently working on."

"There is nothing surprising about this; it affirms the status quo," said Dale Gieringer, longtime head of California NORML. "I've been following the court cases and reading the state constitution, and it seems pretty clear that local governments have broad authority under California law."

"Today's decision allowing localities to ban will likely lead to reduced patient access in California unless the state finally steps up to provide regulatory oversight and guidance," said Tamar Todd, senior staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance. "The good news though is that this problem is fixable. It is time for the state legislature to enact state-wide medical marijuana oversight and regulation that both protects patient access and eases the burden on localities to deal with this issue on their own. Localities will stop enacting bans once the state has stepped up and assumed its responsibility to regulate."

"We're hoping that we can fix this by having some sort of state regulation system where people have access wherever they live in the state, if not by local dispensaries, then at least by some sort of delivery service," Gieringer said. "I think they're trying very hard to do something this year. Remember, last year, the Assembly passed a regulation bill and the Senate came very close, and now we have the leader of the state Senate supporting the same concept, so I think the prospects are pretty good for action."

The statewide medical marijuana regulation bills this year are Assembly Bill 473, sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), and Senate Bill 439, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). Both bills have passed their first committee votes and are supported by a broad coalition of patients, dispensaries, and law enforcement groups.

But until and unless statewide regulation is passed in Sacramento, the battle over patient access to dispensaries is now going to be fought in city council chambers and county supervisor meeting rooms in cities and counties across the state. That is going to mean differential access to medical marijuana depending on the political complexion of the localities where patients reside.

San Francisco, CA

United States

Why Cops Bust Down Doors of Medical Pot Growers, But Ignore Men Who Keep Naked Girls on Leashes

Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:38:00 -0700

Thanks to the drug war, police have much more incentive to go after drug crimes than more heinous crimes.

Earlier this year, men wearing black ski masks whipped out their guns and raided the home of 62-year-old Cathy Jordan, a medical marijuana patient and activist in Florida. They seized 23 of her plants, two of which were mature enough to be used for her medicine. Police officers with the Manatee County Sheriff's Department, the team of armed men, made no arrests, but later charged Jordan and her husband with marijuana cultivation. A district attorney later dropped the case.

In Colorado this year, a 13-person SWAT raid on two medical marijuana users began with a kicked-in door and a flash bang grenade.

"They acted like they were coming for a big terrorist," Chuck Ball, one of the patients, told KRDO. "They came in here, drug me across the kitchen floor and handcuffed me," he said. "They kept telling me to shut up."

According to KRDO, “Ball said the raid was prompted by tips to investigators from his roommate's estranged ex who told police that there was an illegal number of medical marijuana plants in the house."

No charges were filed because the patients were growing a legal amount of medical marijuana.

Strange, isn’t it, that hunches and vague tips about potential marijuana growing (in a state that recently legalized the drug!) is motivation enough to send a SWAT team busting down a door? Compare that to recent reports that police in Cleveland, Ohio ignored years of tips and calls about strange things going on in the home of the three Cleveland men suspected of holding captive, brutally raping and beating three women for nearly a decade.

Before the big break on Monday, neighbors say they knew something was up and claim that they repeatedly called the cops. The police did not appear concerned; they certainly lacked the enthusiasm many law enforcement officers display when going after drug crimes (and non-crimes):

USA Today:

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard several years ago and called police. "But they didn't take it seriously," she said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of Castro's house, which had plastic bags on the windows, in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. "They walked to the side of the house and then left," he said.
...
Israel Lugo said he, his family and neighbors called police three times between 2011 and 2012 after seeing disturbing things at the home of Ariel Castro. Lugo lives two houses down from Castro and grew suspicious after neighbors reported seeing naked women on leashes crawling on all fours behind Castro's house.
Lugo said about two years ago his sister told him she heard a woman pounding on a window at Castro's home as if she needed help. When his sister looked up, she saw a woman and a baby standing in a window half covered with a wooden plank. His sister told him and Lugo called the police.
….
A third call came from neighborhood women who lived in an apartment building. Those women told Lugo they called police because they saw three young girls crawling on all fours naked with dog leashes around their necks. Three men were controlling them in the backyard. The women told Lugo they waited two hours but police never responded to the calls. Still looking it into it, though.

Without proof of the 911 calls, it is hard to say definitively that the Cleveland Police Department failed to properly follow up on tips (and it is assuring the public that it did all it could to find the young women). If the neighbors aren’t making it up, which seems unlikely, there is some explaining to do.

Retired law enforcement veteran Stephen Downing, former captain of detectives in the LAPD, says he has not seen proof that the police officers failed to adequately respond to information in this case; indeed, police cannot possibly crack every case and investigate every angle all the time. At the same time, we must recognize that police are incentivized to go after certain crimes -- like drug crimes -- and not other, far more heinous crimes, like rape.

In the first place, federal cash giveaways make police departments' reactions to drug cases much more swift and severe.

“The statistical demands of the drug war and the grants that come from the federal government --- all they do is incentivize our local police to chase drugs and chase seizures so they can supplement their budgets," Downing said. "We call that 'policing for profit.'”

Furthermore, allowing military training of local police has “turned our police into drug warriors,” instead of “police officers and peace officers.”

“Every police department, every sheriff’s department, and the federal government have personnel that are dedicated 100 percent of the time to drug enforcement,” said Downing, “and the result of that is to use police resources for that purpose.”

Perhaps the strongest example of how drug war policing can distract resources from more pressing problems is the use of department laboratories. In Ohio, police agencies across the state have sent more than 2,300 untested rape kits to a state crime lab for testing. Some of them are decades old, and could contain vital clues regarding suspects in rapes. But they've been backed up in police departments across the country.

“What they don’t talk about is why do they have that backlog in the first place?” said Downing. “The answer is that drugs take a priority because they often involve people in custody, and they’re going to be in court, so when they show up in court, they’re going to have those tests. Thousands and thousands of tests run through our police labs for drugs when most of the time it's a personal use decision. Most of the time it's a recreational use of drugs rather than an abuse of drugs. But our criminal justice system is completely involved in dealing with drug crime rather than dealing with crime that truly affects public safety, like property and crimes against persons."

Praising the man who helped Amanda Berry escape, Stephen Downing also says police need to become more involved with their communities.

“The community is involved in solving these cases and the willingness of people is helpful,” he said. “If the police would recognize more the true value of their community -- that the people are the police and the police are the people -- rather than chasing drugs and asset seizures and policing for profit modalities, all our communities would be better off and more aware.”

Wishing an Unhappy 40th Anniversary to the Rockefeller Drug Laws that Cost Me 12 Years of My Life

Anthony Papa, AlterNet — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:37:00 -0700

New York's draconian sentencing laws, which became the template for the country, have been reformed somewhat. But they still have a long way to go.

In 1973, two years after President Nixon declared a "war on drugs," New York Governor Rockefeller passed the toughest drug laws in the nation. The notorious Rockefeller Drug Laws demanded mandatory sentences for people convicted of drug law violations, while removing the Judge's power to consider each case individually. They also turned New York's prisons into merciless machines, destroying families and lives, and locking up tens of thousands of first-time offenders, many addicted to drugs. Eventually these laws became the template for the federal government's draconian sentencing laws passed in the 1980s that imprisoned millions of Americans with mandatory minimum sentences.

In 1985, I made the biggest mistake in my life - and it cost me my freedom, my soul, and my humanity. Because I was desperate for cash I was convinced by a bowling teammate to get involved with a drug deal. In exchange for $500, I transported an envelope containing 4 ounces of cocaine from the Bronx to Mt. Vernon, NY. To my surprise I walked into a police sting operation where 20 undercover cops were waiting for me. I did everything wrong and was convicted and sentenced to 15 years-to-life under the Rockefeller Drug Laws. I served 12 years in a maximum security prison until I was granted executive clemency by Governor George Pataki in 1997.

Upon my release, I struggled with my newfound freedom and realized that the freedom I fought so long and hard to win was not what I imagined it would be. The way of life I once knew was gone, along with my friends and support base. I discovered I was quite alone in a new world that had drastically changed. But I could not forget those I left in prison and decided to go on a rescue mission to save them and change the laws that had imprisoned me.

I become an activist and traveled to Albany, New York with groups like the Drug Policy Alliance to meet with politicians. After having several conversations with elected officials I soon realized that change would not occur from the top down. Instead I knew that any change that would occur would have to be done from the bottom up - with a street movement that would unite the masses and legitimize our cause. I then co-founded the NY Mothers of the Disappeared with Randy Credico, the director of the William Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. The group soon became leading advocates for the reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. With a motley crew of crippled and sick family members of those imprisoned under the drug laws, we began to generate tremendous press - that put a human face to the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Soon after, celebrities and politicians like Andrew Cuomo and hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons joined the movement. After 30+ years of struggle, some minor reforms were made in 2004 and 2005, and then in 2009 broader reforms were made under Governor David Paterson.

Yet much more needs to be done. A comprehensive new report - Blueprint for a Public Health and Safety Approach to Drug Policy - by The New York Academy of Medicine and the Drug Policy Alliance presents an all-inclusive set of wide-ranging recommendations to implement a health-based approach to drug policy - and calls for strong, effective leadership to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity. The report demonstrates how New York's drug policies remain largely split between two different and often contradictory approaches - criminalization and health - despite the historic 2009 reforms of the notoriously draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.

To establish an effective, coordinated drug policy in New York, the Blueprint outlines recommendations for integrating prevention, treatment and recovery, public safety, and enforcement - thus creating shared objectives among diverse stakeholders. The Blueprint is informed by extensive research, including 25 community consultations around the state with 500 New York residents, lawmakers, law enforcement officials, healthcare providers, victims, advocates, young people, housing and mental health providers, legal experts, educators, and others, who described how drug use and drug policies affected them and their neighborhoods - and what should be done to move the state forward.

In a recent editorial, The New York Times called the report "timely" and said it "provides a detailed blueprint for how the state could remake its drug treatment delivery system and remove public policy obstacles to timely and accessible treatment."

The draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws - signed May 8, 1973 - became the model for the failed "war on drugs" as states around the country adopted New York's approach, leading the U.S. to incarcerate more of its own citizens than any other country in the world. It is our hope that New York can lead the nation in a new direction that would embrace the true meaning of justice.

Zoloft Put the Pleasure in My Sobriety

Maia Szalavitz, The Fix — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:06:00 -0700

I've been on antidepressants for 20 years, and can still remember exactly when the first one started to work—allowing my recovery to begin for real.

Drug addicts and alcoholics are surprisingly conservative when it comes to psychiatric medications. We’re willing to try virtually anything to get high—but when it comes to taking drugs to get better, we tend to get all “Just say no.” For me, this tendency led to years of suffering before I finally had no choice other than to try antidepressants.

Part of the problem can be attributed to widespread skepticism about these medications, which is prevalent in some 12-step programs. This fear has two facets: the first, a justified anxiety based on historical claims about certain medications not being addictive, which later proved false; the second, a more problematic moralizing that use of medication to “fix” an emotional or mental problem is somehow “cheating.”

The issue of AA members telling people to stop taking—or advising them never to try—psych meds became so acute by the early ’80s that a 1984 conference-approved document, “The AA Member and Other Medications,” explicitly warns against “playing doctor” and states starkly:

AA members and many of their physicians have described situations in which depressed patients have been told by AAs to throw away the pills, only to have depression return, with all its difficulties, sometimes resulting in suicide.

Although I attended 12-step groups daily for the first five years of my recovery from cocaine and heroin addiction, I never thought that I bought into the extreme anti-drug line. Indeed, I handed out that pamphlet to many people who had been reprimanded for sharing, or felt otherwise beleaguered, about taking medication—and yet I resisted it for myself.

And so I continued going to meetings and trying to get on with my life, even as I wrestled with feelings of self-hatred and anchorless fear. I’d spend hours on the phone, analyzing tiny incidents of social rejection, thereby ruining the friendships I actually had but felt I didn’t. I tried talk therapy, but several years of ruminating about my childhood didn’t change much.

Throughout this time, my mid-20s, my career was taking off and I’d managed to sell my first book. At the lowest points of my life, work was the one area of life where I’d always felt good about myself. But when the publisher killed the book, I found myself paralyzed by apprehension.

I thought the problem might be the structurelessness of my freelance life, so I got a job. When even working on an AIDS documentary—something that normally would have energized me—didn’t change the state of deadness and dread, I knew I had to try something else, especially when I found myself unable to stop crying at the office.

The next day, I managed to get myself to a psychiatrist, who rapidly prescribed Zoloft. It turned out to be lucky that I took the oblong blue pill for the first time on a weekend. Several hours later, I experienced an oddly familiar sensation.

It was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that things were about to get weird—the vaguely nauseous lurch I’d often experienced after taking acid, right before the drug kicked in. Soon, as with LSD although less intensely, I was seeing multidimensional red and green geometric shapes if I looked at anything bright for too long.

Concerned, I called my psychiatrist, and she said it would pass and that I should take my next dose on time, but halve it. And indeed, the hallucinations soon diminished to the point where I felt normal enough to go back to work on Monday. Ironically, I missed my colorful visions: although the hallucinations hadn’t lifted my depression, they had at least distracted me from it.

I had never before been consciously aware of the minute bursts of pleasure until they’d leached away—and now suddenly returned.

For about 10 days after first taking Zoloft not much changed. I didn’t relapse; I went to meetings. I did the bare minimum necessary to get through the day. This was not helped by the fact that after my office-crying incident, one of my bosses responded cruelly. I tried to explain what was wrong with me, saying I was seeking help. She barked, “Don’t bring it to the office.”

Then one morning, something changed. I noticed it when I was writing an op-ed and found myself pleased by a line that I had written. It was no great ecstasy, but it was striking all the same. I actually felt…good. That’s when it hit me: This drug is working and I am going to get better.

What I hadn’t realized until that moment was that pleasure had disappeared from my life. I knew something was wrong, of course, but I had never before been consciously aware of the minute bursts of joy that I had typically gotten from my work and my interactions with people until this pleasure had leached away—and now suddenly returned.

That moment and those that followed helped me recognize a fundamental truth about my addiction: It had largely been driven by an inability to take pleasure in emotional support. The reason I seemed insatiably needy was that I didn’t see or feel the love around me. I always needed more support because I couldn’t truly take in what I had.

Twelve-step programs had taught me that my perceptions of social rejection might be misguided and that when I walked into a room and thought everyone wanted me to leave, that was my interpretation, not necessarily what the data suggested. But they couldn’t teach me to experience emotional connection that I wasn’t physically—chemically—capable of feeling. When even work no longer provided satisfaction—when whatever brain chemicals that had allowed that last pleasure broke—everything had collapsed. And by boosting dopamine, serotonin or some type of nerve growth factor—as current theories of antidepressant action suggest—the Zoloft solved the problem.

One study of the effects of these antidepressants shows that almost immediately after you first take them, you start to perceive emotional expressions in faces more accurately—and the better you get at recognizing happy faces, the greater the improvement in your symptoms. It may be that the time it takes for the drugs to kick in is the time it takes you to really take in these smiles and warmth that you have missed. It may also be that when you can feel pleasure again, you are better able to see it in other people.

Regardless, this experience taught me that simply changing your thinking often cannot solve serious problems; a change in brain chemistry is needed. And that’s not an ignoble shortcut. We cheer new medications that make recovery from cancer or heart disease possible, why should someone already cursed with depression or addiction have to do more and more “hard work” to overcome it if an easier, softer way does work? While opposition to medication has certainly mellowed in the 12-step world—to the point where Hazelden itself now offers maintenance medication for opioid addiction, when once it wouldn’t even permit Prozac—there is still lingering discomfort, if not stigma.

I’ve taken antidepressants for around 20 years. The drugs have dramatically improved my relationships, ending the days when I needed so much reassurance that no one could stand it. Now I get to support other people. By turning down the volume on negative emotions, they have also allowed me to be sad when it is appropriate—not when I watch AT&T commercials. Incidentally, the fact that the drugs have worked for me in this way also shows that I am not simply having a placebo effect: In their ability to lower emotional over-responsiveness, studies have shown that serotonin antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft have dramatically better effects than placebo.

While they don’t work for everyone, the widespread notion that these antidepressants have no pharmacological effects—or only negative ones ("they "turn you into a zombie," etc.)—has been debunked by more than two decades of research. For many people, including a surprising number of 12-step members, these drugs improve or regulate mood to a very significant degree—and that can be exactly what a person needs to do the work of recovery. But because these medications alter brain chemistry, they can also have undesirable side effects. These can be truly terrible: The wrong drug for the wrong person can absolutely be worse than doing nothing.

For me, however, the only thing I regret about taking medications for depression is not having done so sooner—in fact, I wonder if I might have skipped addiction entirely had these drugs been available during my teens. Of course, your mileage may vary, but I encourage everyone who is struggling in recovery to consider the possibility that drugs can help as well as harm. And whatever you do, make sure it truly works for you. Don’t settle for any treatment—whether medication, talk or support group—that doesn’t allow for the full return of joy.

Why Good Parents Should Support Drug Legalization

Tony O'Neill, The Fix — Sat, 04 May 2013 11:54:00 -0700

As an ex-junkie, I know how harmful addiction is.

A friend of mine used to laugh when I said I was in favor of legalizing all drugs. He just couldn’t fathom such a position. He told me that if they legalized drugs, “It would take all of the fun out of it.”

Three years after he died of a heroin overdose, I wonder whether he’d be alive now if drugs had been legal.

As a father, I sometimes find myself on the receiving end of an argument that’s a perennial favorite of the hardened drug warrior: Why would I, the father of a nine-year-old girl, advocate for a society awash with legally available drugs?

The answer is simple: My daughter is already growing up in a society in which illegal drugs are easier to procure than alcohol. Unlike the guy behind the counter of my local liquor store, I’ve never known a drug dealer who checked IDs.

Of course, as an ex-addict, the idea of my daughter using drugs is disquieting. But let’s be honest: The idea of her dating boys is disquieting. I’m not about to campaign to ban co-ed schools. It is hard to remain detached and logical when I’m talking about the little girl I tuck into bed every night. But I truly believe that ending prohibition would protect her, not expose her to harm.

The horrors of drug addiction are the last thing I’d ever want her to experience. But if it did happen, I’d prefer it to happen in a society that treated addiction as a medical issue, rather than a reason to lock her up. And frankly, I’m more at ease with the idea of her smoking a joint when she’s old enough, rather than exposing herself to the greater potential harms of alcohol. That doesn't mean I'm going to head off with her to my local 420 rally this weekend.

Maybe it’s easier for me than most parents because the cat, as it were, is already out of the bag. I've written about my experiences with heroin and crack in great detail in my books. She'll no doubt read them when she's old enough. But even without the paper trail, I've always felt that I have a duty to be honest with my daughter about drugs. Especially when she's growing up in a society that will be bombarding her with politically motivated propaganda via police-led “educational” programs like DARE, and a media that often prefers hysteria and controversy to cold hard facts.

I truly believe that we're moving toward a society in which it is no longer acceptable to persecute drug users, and it's my duty to prepare my child for that.

The movement to legalize marijuana is gathering unprecedented momentum. In the US, it’s now legal in two states for adults to buy pot just like tobacco or alcohol. In many other states, all it takes is a doctor’s prescription. There is a steady shift in public attitudes to the War on Drugs: According to one recent poll, only one in five Americans feels it has been worth the cost. Suddenly, it seems everything is up for grabs.

Taking a stand against prohibition—whether by how we vote, where we donate or simply being “out and proud” about our beliefs—is one thing that our unique, fractured and excluded community should do with one voice. If we don’t, others will make their own assumptions about where we stand.

Addiction and recovery issues have for years been moving out of the shadows and into the media spotlight. Celebrities openly discuss going to rehab; in a weird way, recovery has become trendy. We can seize this high profile to speak out against the injustices of the drug war.

My introduction to activism came in London a decade ago. I was on the methadone program at Homerton Hospital and my doctor was giving me hell. He wanted to wean me off immediately. While I was open to the idea of detoxing—in my own time—I knew that if the clinic started weaning me off just weeks into the program, I was going to be back on the needle at the end of it.

That terrified me. Because methadone—which gets a pretty bad rap—saved my life. It gave me enough breathing space to finally look at my situation. And I didn’t like what I saw. I began to believe that maybe I could try a life without heroin at its center. But I could see this potential new life slipping away after an immediate attempt at detox.

Somehow I got in touch with a fellow called Bill Nellesat the Methadone Alliance, and to this day I thank the stars I did. Bill argued my case with the clinic; pulled out pages of evidence in favor of high-dose maintenance from men way smarter and more experienced than my doctor. Eventually my clinic capitulated. Within a year I was able to wean myself off without their help.

Bill’s advocacy was a powerful lesson. With his help, I soon immersed myself in groups like The National Drug Users Development Agency. I went from feeling utterly disempowered to realizing that even junkies, society’s outcasts, could wield enormous power, if we only fought smart and stuck together.

When I quit dope and left England I lost touch with a lot of my advocate friends. But what we were fighting for—equality, decent treatment and an end to our persecution—is still a major concern of mine. And these goals are irrefutably tied to the question of legalization.

People who have never experienced addiction often express some confusion on this issue. They feel that we, as current, recovering or ex-addicts, should be fighting against legalization. After all, drugs have wreaked havoc in our lives: Why on earth would we want them legal?

We want them legal for the same reason that few ex-alcoholics are in favor of banning booze. The legality of the substance is not the issue; the availability of it is. Prohibited or not, trillion-dollar drug war spend or not, drugs remain readily available all over the globe—in small towns, big cities, schools and even prisons.

A relapse isn’t something that can be prevented by legislation. But at least when alcoholics relapse they don’t risk death from drinking contaminated bathtub hooch. Many of the tangible harms of addiction come from the illegality of substances we use—the prohibitive cost, the uncertain quality and the legal risks involved in procuring our substance of choice.

You must know by now that the current approach has failed. A century of prohibition has resulted in a wider proliferation of drugs than ever, sold by criminal organizations so powerful and well funded that they hold the power to topple governments. This “war” has done nothing to stop people taking drugs. The only people who benefit are drug dealers and the profiteers in the prohibition industry.

It's all well and good for us to rally around “safer”—albeit crucial—causes, like better and more accessible drug treatment, ending the stigmatization of drug users, and developing new and more effective medications to help break the cycle of addiction. But even these issues fail to get to the root of the problem. The addiction community's number one priority has to be convincing the powers that be to end drug prohibition. Only when drug use is classified as a medical rather than a legal issue can resources finally be focused on helping to solve, not worsen, our problems.

Drugs are either illegal or they’re not. Drug users are either criminals or they're not. There is no “third way,“ and "compassionate prohibition” is an oxymoron. We have a moral imperative to speak out.

Addicts and former addicts—drinkers, smokers, IV drug users or whatever—are anything but a homogenous bunch. While undergoing treatment I shared a room with a crack-smoking bank manager and a meth-shooting ex-hooker who’d changed gender twice. During the time I once spent in the rooms, I sat alongside priests, actors, gangbangers, businessmen, housewives, prostitutes and pilots. The only thing binding this ragtag group together is an obsession for narcotics.

Sometimes we agree; sometimes we scream at each other. We may be using actively or moderately; we may have quit via the 12 Steps, CBT, free will, religion or some other way. We might not like each other; we might not agree on a single issue politically or socially. But we do have a shared, collective experience.

We know that a life spent as a slave to a substance isn’t glamorous or fun. And when we’re at our lowest ebb, no law on the books can cause us the kind of hurt and pain that we heap upon ourselves; we need support, not persecution.

Drug prohibition should be our top priority also because it has the greatest potential to unite us: 12-step, non-12-step and anything in-between. AA “neither endorses nor opposes any causes.” But that doesn’t mean that those who are in the program should also remain silent. We should be getting involved with organizations like MPP and LEAP. We should be talking to our families, our friends and our peers about this. We should be putting pressure on politicians.

We’ve long had the experience and the knowledge; now we have the momentum, too. For ourselves, for our kids, for the countless others who will follow in our footsteps down the dark path of chemical dependence, let's make it count.

AlterNet.org: Drugs

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