Search Results: drug-war/ (9)

ABC News
President Obama: “It does not make sense from a prioritizing point of view” to go after marijuana in states where it’s now legal

President Barack Obama pledged on Friday that he will not go after Washington state and Colorado for legalizing marijuana.

Obama was asked — in a Barbara Walters interview airing Friday on ABC — whether he supports making marijuana legal, reported The Associated Press. “I wouldn’t go that far,” the President said.
But Obama said he wouldn’t press the issue by going after recreational users in states where voters legalized marijuana in the November elections. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” he said.
“It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view,” the President said, to focus on pot use on states where it is now legal.

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.

ColorLines
Mexico’s Drug War has claimed more than 50,000 lives in five years

After More Than 50,000 Prohibition-Related Deaths in 5 Years, Candidates Say Reducing Violence More Important Than Simply Seizing Drugs, Making Arrests
 
DPA Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann: Next President Should Show Bold Leadership and Follow Other Latin American Presidents’ Call for “All Options On The Table”
 
The top three presidents candidates in Mexico have all promised a significant shift in their country’s drug war strategy, according to a front page story in Monday’s New York Times. The candidates are pledging to prioritize a reduction in prohibition-related violence, which has led to more than 50,000 deaths since President Calderon launched a war on the drug traffickers in 2006, over conventional measures such as arrests and seizures. 

The Coming Crisis

President Obama to Attend Summit of the Americas in Colombia This Weekend: Discussions to Include Drug Decriminalization, Legal Regulation and Other Drug War Alternatives
 
First Time Ever that Sitting Presidents are Calling for All Options to Be Put on Table to Reduce Drug Prohibition-Related Crime, Violence and Corruption
  
This week, President Obama will join more than 30 other heads of state from throughout the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia for the Summit of the Americas. For the first time ever, a major focus of the summit – both in official meetings and behind closed doors – will be the need for alternative strategies to the failed war on drugs.
 
The urgency of the discussion is growing in light of the prohibition-related violence in Mexico that has killed more than 50,000 people since 2006, the growing war zones in Central America, and South American governments worn down by decades of disastrous U.S.-sponsored eradication and interdiction efforts that have bred institutionalized corruption and routine violence.

The Dangerous Servant

By Bob Starrett
Of all the baloney that has come out of the various battles in medical marijuana states, the notion that “anyone” can get a medical marijuana recommendation from a doctor is the scariest to legislators who are considering medical marijuana bills in their states this year.
In 2012, 17 states have pending medical marijuana legislation. And you can be sure that this argument — that chronic pain is used as a catchall for doctors to hand out medical marijuana recommendations to “anyone” — will come into play as it has in Montana and New Jersey.
In an apparent attempt to prevent wholesale stoned-ness among the citizenry, New Jersey specifically excluded chronic pain as an eligible condition in their legislation.
Last year, the Montana Legislature, having failed in their attempts to repeal the state’s medical marijuana law entirely, made significant changes that included specific doctor rules for a chronic pain diagnosis. A recommending physician must have either x-rays or an MRI to back up the diagnosis. If they do not, a second physician must sign the “Physician Statement for a Chronic Pain Diagnosis.” It is a separate form.

World Economic Forum
President Felipe Calderon scolded “political forces” that don’t have the “vision” to support his Drug War

​President Felipe Calderon of Mexico admitted on Sunday that despite five years of all-out war against the drug cartels in his country, the organizations continue to pose “an open threat” to democracy in Mexico. He must have lost the part of his speech that would have detailed how his own Drug War has done exactly the same thing.

In a frankly worded speech marking the start of his sixth and last year in office, Calderon said interference in elections by drug gangs “is a new fact, a worrisome fact,” reports Tracy Wilkinson at the Los Angeles Times. “It is a threat to everyone,” Calderon said.
President Calderon was probably thinking about last month’s local elections in Michoacan, his home state, where drug traffickers intimidated voters and told people how to vote.

The Weed Blog

​Conference Will Spotlight Devastating Impact of Drug War on Mexico, Latin America and U.S. Latino Communities
 
More than a thousand activists, experts, health professionals, elected officials, students and law enforcement will gather in Los Angeles November 2-5 for the 2011 International Drug Policy Reform Conference.
 
Among a broad range of topics, part of the conference program will focus on the destructive impact of the drug war on Latin American and Latino communities, and the urgent need for a new and more effective approach. Several panels and roundtable discussions – featuring prominent scholars, activists, journalists, human rights defenders, peace movement leaders and current and former officials – will address the failure of current drug policies for Latin Americans and Latinos, and the possibilities for critical reforms in the future.



Photo: FrontPageMag.com
The Drug War has resulted in about 16,000 deaths in Mexico over the past three years.

​When substance abuse treatment professionals start calling for the legalization of marijuana, we can be sure that we are mainstreaming our message of cannabis liberation.

That’s why Toke of the Town is running this guest editorial by Steven Lo, who is affiliated with AllTreatment.com, an online resource which offers help in finding drug rehab centers.

Let me quickly add that Toke of the Town does not endorse or support any form of “marijuana rehab,” whatever that’s supposed to entail, and that we believe the entire concept of “marijuana addiction” is so deeply flawed as to be useless.