Tag: War on Drugs

“Patriots” at Work.

The LA Times relates the sad story of Ansar Mahmood, who has paid a heavy price for being a Muslim in America after 9/11. In not-unrelated news, Ashcroft cracks down on lenient sentencing. Perhaps they’ll reconsider his nephew’s drug bust, then.

Know thy enemy.

The Boston Globe sheds a little light into the dark corridors of oppo research. Of course we already know Dubya was a alcoholic cokehead who went AWOL for a year to escape a drug test and had so little sense that he’d drive around drunk…and we still elected him for four years. So skeletons in the closet just ain’t what they used to be.

Not that Complicated.

Good riddance, Nick and Norm. In what alcoholics commonly refer to as a “moment of clarity,” the ONDCP thankfully gives up on their controversial and often misleading drugs-and-terror ad campaign. Perhaps the admin’s drug warriors have figured out what Dubya can’t seem to recognize – some arguments have to be made without resort to 9-11. Or perhaps the ad gurus finally figured out the simple error in their twisted logic: No prohibition, no inflated drug profits. Not that complicated. Update: Medley offers a concise summary of recent developments – Instead of reducing ineffective spending, [ONDCP] is eliminating the research that shows its spending is ineffective. Brilliant.

Stoner Math.

If our new Ministry of Information is run with half the honesty and integrity of our ONDCP, it looks like everything will end up just swimmingly. Turns out Dubya’s drug czar grossly misrepresented marijuana potency several times in order to help bury the recent Nevada referendum.

Stating the Obvious.

Salon delves into the case of Noelle Bush before Florida’s courts. Who would’ve guessed that a Governor’s daughter would receive special treatment, or that GOP lawmakers would prescribe different rules for the masses than they would their own family members?

Rockefeller’s Drug Insanity.

Bob Herbert takes aim at the Rockefeller drug laws, now almost thirty years old. The ethnic differentials in the enforcement of the drug laws are extraordinary. While there is wide use of illegal drugs across the ethnic spectrum, including among whites, 94 percent of the people doing time for drug offenses in the state of New York are black or Hispanic. Indeed, according to one of the laws’ original sponsors, “New York now sends more African-American and Latino men to prison each year than it graduates from its state colleges and universities.”