Search Results: drug enforcement administration (413)

Reason
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske: “Calling it medicine sends a terrible message”

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske — required by law to lie about the medical efficacy of cannabis — has, unsurprisingly, attacked the herb again in a speech in San Francisco.

“Calling it medicine sends a terrible message” to American youth, according to the Czar, reports Chris Roberts at NBC Bay Area. Gil seems unfamiliar with or indifferent to the fact that the U.S. federal government itself has been providing free medical marijuana to a handful of patients for 30 years under the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program.
Gil could also use a refresher course on the thousands of scientific studies which show marijuana’s medical effectiveness. Oh well; I guess Science “sends a terrible message” to youth, as well.

The Utopianist

By Anthony Martinelli
Communications Director
In a recent article published on our website, we explain the key reasons for ending our failed prohibition on cannabis. Doing so would bring untold benefits, and deal a huge blow to our failed war on drugs. However, even if cannabis were legalized, our nation would still be waging the widespread and devastating humans rights violation that our drug war has become.
Even if you don’t condone the use of any drugs, it is difficult to argue that throwing someone into prison alongside murderers and other violent criminals — for simple drug possession, spending taxpayer money along the way — is anything other than bad policy.

io9

One of the chief attractions of synthetic cannabinoids — which are, make no mistake about it, NOT “synthetic marijuana” or anything near it — has been that these substances don’t show up on conventional drug screening tests, which after all, aren’t designed to detect them. God knows they don’t have many attractions, and no stoner in his or her right mind would ever smoke these blends if real weed is available.

This has made “herbal blends” (which are actually vegetable matter sprayed with chemicals) popular in such settings as the military and jobs which are subject to piss tests. But even that advantage will probably soon be gone, leaving synthetic cannabinoids the sole province of poor schlubs who can’t score any real weed.
Adding to its portfolio of test offerings for designer drugs — which also includes a bath salts drug test for synthetic cathinones — Ameritox‘s synthetic cannabinoids drug test now provides quantitative results for metabolites from 15 synthetics that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act on an “emergency basis” this summer.

Law Offices of Daniel Rosen
This map shows drugged driving laws by state, as well as which states allow medical marijuana.

By Judy Pokras
The White House has issued a call for every state to make strict drugged driving legislation a priority. What makes this complicated, however, is that for most illicit drugs, including marijuana, there’s no agreed-upon limit that reliably determines impairment.
There are currently 16 states that allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and over a million medical marijuana patients across the country. With three different types of drugged driving laws across the U.S. — and varying state limits for determining impairment from marijuana — depending on which type of law a state uses, a person who is legally allowed to use medical marijuana can be convicted of driving while impaired, even if he or she did not use medical pot on the same day.
This is because THC — the main psychoactive element of marijuana (that causes a person to get high) — can be present in the blood of a heavy pot user for several hours or even days, long after any impairing effects of the drug have gone away. And THC-COOH — a secondary metabolite in marijuana that is formed after a person gets high, and that has no psychoactive effect — is detectable in urine for weeks or even months after past use.

Caravan For Peace, Justice and Dignity


Despite fear, Mexican victims of Drug War on Caravan for Peace to visit El Paso-Juarez border to deliver clear message: End the War On Drugs
Families, including exiled residents of Juarez — epicenter of Drug War violence — and relatives of the more than 60,000 killed in the Drug War, go to DEA to demand alternatives to costly, catastrophic failure of drug prohibition, military aid, and the open gun market
Members of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity will gather on Tuesday in front of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) division office in El Paso to demand accountability from the principal United States government agency charged with prosecuting the drug war in both Mexico and the U.S., and to seek a dialogue about the costs of this war — and how to bring it to an end.
Families carrying large and small pictures of loved ones lost in Mexico’s Drug War will join Mexican exiles and U.S. families and communities hurt by the Drug War in actions and community events designed to call attention to the human and economic toll of this war on both sides of the border.



Drug Enforcement Administration Director Michele Leonhart’s recent testimony during an oversight hearing before Congress is very notable for a couple of reasons.
The first and most obvious is Leonhart’s deep cluelessness — whether real or (very convincingly) feigned — about the effects of marijuana, the effects of federal drug policy and, particularly, the impact of federal marijuana policy on people’s lives.
Leonhard flat-out refused to admit that marijuana is any different than heroin, meth, or cocaine, and simply avoided directly addressing the hard questions put to her by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.)

StoptheDrugWar.org
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske (left) and President Obama: “Drug War Autopilot and Co-Autopilot,” according to Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org

Cops Slam Obama For Same Old ‘Drug War’ Budget

Despite Promises, President Continues To Favor Punishment Over Treatment
The Obama Administration on Tuesday morning released its annual National Drug Control Strategy, detailing the methods and budgets planned to “combat drug use” for fiscal year 2013. The report stresses that more resources need to be spent on addiction treatment and prevention, and that an enforcement-centric “War On Drugs” is unworkable. But in a prime example of political incongruence, the report also shows that budget allocations for law enforcement methods could increase by hundreds of millions of dollars, including military operations on U.S. soil.

Wikipedia
Afghan Air Force L-39 Albatross jets: drug smugglers?

​The United States is looking into claims that some members of the Afghan Air Force (AAF), which was established largely with American funds, have used their airplanes to transport drugs, a U.S. military spokesman said on Thursday.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the drug-running allegations, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, are linked to the shooting deaths last year of eight U.S. Air Force officers at the airport in the Afghan capital city of Kabul, reports CNN.
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