Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

By Stephen C. Webster

Tipped off by two unnamed individuals, MyFox Boston claims to have unearthed a police report placing Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) at the home of his longtime partner when police arrested the man and charged him with marijuana cultivation, possession and paraphernalia.

In a telephone interview, Frank acknowledged he was present for the bust but denied knowledge that James Ready was growing cannabis. He reportedly told police during the August, 2007 incident that he only smokes cigars and would not be able to identify marijuana if he came across it.

Charges against Ready were dropped after he admitted to possession and paid a fine, MyFox added.

Congressman Frank, while professing to be unable to identify cannabis if he came across it, is no stranger to progressive positions on its prohibition. In April 2008, he proposed federal legislation that would have removed penalties for adult possession of the plant. Appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, he jokingly referred to it as the “Make Room for Serious Criminals Bill.”

“I think it is poor law enforcement to keep on the books legislation that establishes as a crime something which in fact society does not seriously wish to prosecute,” he said in a media advisory. “In my view, having federal law enforcement agents engaged in the prosecution of people who are personally using marijuana is a waste of scarce resources better used for serious crimes.”

Frank was also a co-sponsor of Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) bill that sought to legalize the farming of industrial hemp. Hemp is a drug-free relative of cannabis and can be used to make thousands of commercial goods, from food to paper, clothing, hygiene products and more. It is currently illegal to grow hemp in the United States.

Speaking to MyFox Boston reporter Alison Bologna, Frank called the arrest of his partner “one of those unfortunate incidents that happened in the past.” Pressed by the reporter on whether he had seen Ready’s cannabis, he said, “I didn’t see it, the police didn’t charge me with seeing it. It was out of sight of where I was; it was around the other side of the house.”

Court records did not mention Frank’s presence at time of the arrest, the report noted. However, sources who tipped off the news organization claimed the original police report listed the congressman as a witness.

This video is from MyFox Boston, broadcast Nov. 6, 2009.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Government fires top adviser for challenging its hardline policy on cannabis and ecstasy

By Jeremy Laurance
October 31, 2009

The Government’s drugs tsar was forced to resign last night for stating his view that cannabis, ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol.

The Home Secretary Alan Johnson asked Professor David Nutt to resign as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), saying he had “lost confidence” in his ability to give impartial advice.

But last night Professor Nutt, who is head of psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol, retaliated, accusing the Government of “misleading” the pubic in its messages about drugs and of “Luddite” tendencies.

He was backed by other senior scientists and politicians.

Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said: “The Government cannot expect the experts who serve on its independent committees not to voice their concern if the advice they give is rejected even before it is published. “I worry that the dismissal of Professor Nutt will discourage academic and clinical experts from offering their knowledge and time to help the Government in the future.”

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, where Professor Nutt made his comments, said: “I’m dismayed that the Home Secretary appears to believe that political calculation trumps honest and informed scientific opinion. The message is that, when it comes to the Home Office’s relationship with the research community, honest researchers should be seen but not heard.” He added it was “a bad day for science and for the cause of evidence-informed policy making”.

Professor Nutt had become a thorn in the side of ministers with his criticisms of drugs policy. He clashed with former home secretary Jacqui Smith when he suggested ecstasy, which causes 30 deaths a year, was less dangerous than horse-riding, which causes 100 deaths a year. He also argued that, to prevent one episode of schizophrenia linked to cannabis use, it would be necessary to “stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using” the drug.

Most drugs experts believe his analysis is right. But ministers did not want to hear the truth or at least to be reminded of it repeatedly. The Home Secretary asked him to consider his position after a recent lecture in which attacked what he called the “artificial” separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs. Last night Professor Nutt said he stood by his comments. “My view is policy should be based on evidence. It’s a bit odd to make policy that goes in the face of evidence. The danger is they are misleading us. The scientific evidence is there: it’s in all the reports we published. Our judgements about the classification of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy have been based on a great deal of very detailed scientific appraisal.

“Gordon Brown makes completely irrational statements about cannabis being ‘lethal’, which it is not. I’m not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy. I think most scientists will see this as an example of the Luddite attitude of governments towards science.”

He repeated his view that cannabis was “not that harmful” and that parents should be more worried about alcohol.

“The greatest concern to parents should be that their children do not get completely off their heads with alcohol because it can kill them … and it leads them to do things which are very dangerous, such as to kill themselves or others in cars, get into fights, get raped, and engage in other activities which they regret subsequently. My view is that, if you want to reduce the harm to society from drugs, alcohol is the drug to target at present.”

In a recent broadside, Professor Nutt accused Jacqui Smith, who oversaw the reclassification of cannabis from Class C to Class B, of “distorting and devaluing” scientific research. He said her decision to reclassify cannabis as a “precautionary step” sent mixed messages and undermined public faith in government science.

“I think we have to accept young people like to experiment – with drugs and other potentially harmful activities – and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm. We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong.”

The Home Office said Mr Johnson had written to Professor Nutt expressing “surprise and disappointment” over his remarks. Mr Johnson said in the letter that Professor Nutt had gone beyond providing evidence to “lobbying” for changes to policy. He said: “As Home Secretary it is for me to make decisions, having received advice from the [Council] … It is important that the Government’s messages on drugs are clear and as an adviser you do nothing to undermine the public understanding of them … I am afraid the manner in which you have acted runs contrary to your responsibilities.”

The shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: “This was an inevitable decision after his latest ill-judged contribution to the debate, but it is a sign of lack of focus at the Home Office that it didn’t act sooner, given that he has done this before.”

But Phil Willis, chairman of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said: “I am writing immediately to the Home Secretary to ask for clarification as to why Sir David Nutt has been relieved of duties as chair of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs at a time when independent scientific advice to Government is essential. It is disturbing if an independent scientist should be removed for reporting sound scientific advice.”

Claudia Rubin from Release – a national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law – said the expert should not have been penalised. “It’s a real shame and a real indictment of the Government’s refusal to take any proper advice on this subject,” she said.

Source

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Insurgents in Afghanistan are using heroin as a tactical weapon against US forces, hoping to emulate the drug problems that plagued US troops in Vietnam and Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, says a new investigative report.

In a report at the Daily Beast, author Gerald Posner cites “an internal US intelligence report” that “concluded [insurgents] are targeting American troops in an effort to undermine their effectiveness, while raising cash to pay for new recruits and weaponry.”

The report brings up inevitable comparisons to the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s and the Soviet war in Afghanistan that ended two decades ago. It also raises the possibility that the conflict in Afghanistan will spill over into the streets of America as returning troops bring their addictions home with them.

Posner told MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan on Tuesday that drug addiction played a major role in the military failure of those two wars.

“In Vietnam we ended up with a nearly 20 percent addiction rate to China White,” Posner said. (A 1971 report on drug addiction among US soldiers in Vietnam pegged the number closer to 15 percent.)

“Soviet soldiers came back from Afghanistan with addictions,” Posner continued, noting that Russia is now the world’s largest per-capita user of heroin “as a result of those returning Soviet fighters.”

Posner said the Army and the Veterans Administration are “preparing in their hospitals for what might be a deluge” of addicted soldiers coming home from Afghanistan.

“Today’s Taliban are yesterday’s mujaheddin, who fought the Soviets,” Posner said on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting. “They understand that this is an additional weapon.”

The Daily Beast article states:

This heroin bomb then does collateral damage back home. The returning soldiers brought home a heroin problem to Russian cities that grew exponentially during the past two decades. This past March, Russia’s anti-narcotics bureau announced that the country had become the planet’s “No. 1 heroin consumer.”

Today’s Taliban-fighting Americans were yesterday’s mujahideen-fighting Soviets. They saw how heroin helped disable a foreign fighting force more than 20 years ago. And that lesson isn’t lost on them.

Former CIA special agent Jack Rice, who also appeared on MSNBC with Posner, said the fact that insurgents are taking military salaries from soldiers and using that money to fight the United States clearly illustrates the dilemma President Barack Obama faces as he mulls granting a request from top soldiers in Afghanistan to add ground troops to the US mission there.

“Think of this as your biggest problem: We have the Taliban, which are very good administrators — they’re just drug dealers — on one side, versus the Afghan government, which are horrible administrators, and in many ways also drug dealers,” Rice said. “That’s where President Obama is right now, dead center of that point.”

Rice described the situation as a “disaster.”

Posner also said on Morning Meeting that insurgents have developed the ability to produce smokeable heroin in their labs, making it easier for the drug to spread through society.

Ratigan noted that 90 percent of the world’s heroin is produced in Afghanistan.

Posner is probably best known for his 1993 book Case Closed, which argued that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who shot President John F. Kennedy. The book proved a popular counterpoint at the time to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which argued in favor of a broad conspiracy.

But the book has been severely criticized by many JFK assassination researchers, including some who agree that Oswald acted alone. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, described Case Closed as a “blatantly biased attempt to prove the unprovable.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, broadcast Oct. 20, 2009.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

DEA says key ICE official sold info about informants, ran Panamanian cocaine to Spain via US ports

Richard Padilla Cramer, a 26-year veteran anti-drug official, is behind bars, arrested after officials accused him of directing a massive cocaine shipment to Spain via the United States, and selling important information in law enforcement databases to a vicious Mexican drug cartel.

In other words, Cramer, a key Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent who worked in Guadalajara and Nogales, Arizona, was allegedly “a secret ally of drug lords,” reported The Los Angeles Times.

“The suspected criminal activity that Richard Padilla Cramer has been charged with occurred in 2007 while he was working as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Guadalajara, Mexico, according to a criminal complaint issued on Aug. 28 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami,” noted The Arizona Star.

“Cramer’s duties as the ICE attache in Guadalajara included serving as a liaison with Mexican police,” the paper noted. “But the investigation revealed that he worked for ‘a very high-level drug lord,’ the federal official said. In a dark twist on the trend of former federal officials going into private consulting, the 26-year government veteran became a full-time adviser to traffickers after retiring from ICE in January 2007, the complaint says.”

Arizona-based Green Valley News and Sun added: “He is accused of negotiating cocaine shipments from Panama to Spain while he was working for ICE out of the Guadalajara office, according to a criminal complaint filed against him by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, where federal prosecutors say the majority of the acts occurred. Authorities say Cramer will be extradited to Florida.

“The complaint also says Cramer and the smuggling organization invested about $400,000 in a 660-pound shipment of cocaine. The cocaine was shipped from Panama and went through the U.S. en route to Spain, where it was seized in June 2007. He also is accused of selling confidential information from law enforcement databases to an unidentified drug cartel.”

That information, “allegedly helped the Mexican drug lord conduct an internal hunt for [...] informants, whose families would be kidnapped in retaliation, the complaint said,” noted the Times.

“He educated the cartel on how American law enforcement flips informants and the processes behind warrants and record checks,” added The Nogales International. “Sometime before he retired from ICE in 2007, a lead figure in the cartel encouraged Padilla Cramer to leave the agency and, instead, go to work for the cartel. Federal prosecutors have not identified publicly which cartel Padilla Cramer went to work for.”

The paper added: “Negotiations broke down between Padilla Cramer and the head of the trafficking organization that was looking for someone to blame for the losses in Spain. A fourth informant finally approached American law enforcement and told them he spoke with Padilla Cramer on a push-to-talk phone. On Aug. 19, the DEA arrested Padilla Cramer at his house in a gated community in Sahuarita.”

On Sept. 4, Cramer was sent to Florida to face drug trafficking charges, where he currently awaits trial.

Related Posts:

• Police stop more than 1 million people on street

41 percent of the U.S. population say they’ve tried cannabis at least once in their lives, 10 percent say they’ve used it in the last year.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has once again released their annual survey on “drug use and health” — you know, the one where representatives of the federal government go door-to-door and ask Americans if they are presently breaking state and federal law by using illicit drugs. The same survey where respondents have historically under reported their usage of alcohol and tobacco — these two legal substances — by as much as 30 to 50 percent, and arguably under report their use of illicit substances by an even greater margin. The same survey that — despite these inherent limitations — “is the primary source of statistical information on the use of illegal drugs by the U.S. population.” Yeah, that one.

So what does the government’s latest round of ’statistical (though highly questionable) information’ tell us? Nothing we didn’t already know.

Despite 70+ years of criminal prohibition, marijuana still remains widely popular among Americans, with over 102 million Americans (41 percent of the U.S. population) having used it during their lifetimes, 26 million (10 percent) having used it in the past year, and over 15 million (6 percent) admitting that they use it regularly. (By contrast, fewer than 15 percent of adults have ever tried cocaine, the second most ‘popular’ illicit drug, and fewer than 2 percent have ever tried heroin — so much for that supposed ‘gateway effect.’) Predictably, all of the 2008 marijuana use figures are higher than those that were reported for the previous year — great work John Walters!

Equally predictably, the government’s long-standing prohibition and anti-pot ’scare’ campaigns have done little, if anything, to dissuade young people from trying it. According to the survey, 15 percent of those age 14 to 15 have tried pot (including 12 percent in the past year), as have 31 percent of those age 16 to 17 (a quarter of which have done so in the past year) — percentages that make marijuana virtually as popular as alcohol among these age groups. By age 20, 45 percent of adolescents have tried pot, and nearly a third of those age 18 to 20 have done so in the past year. And by age 25, 54 percent of the population has admittedly used marijuana.

Question: Does anyone still believe that marijuana prohibition is working — or that all of these people deserve to be behind bars?

For too long, advocates of prohibition have framed their arguments on the false assumption that the continued enforcement of said laws “protects our children.” As the numbers above illustrate, this premise is nonsense. In fact, just the opposite is true.

The government’s war on cannabis and cannabis consumers endangers the health and safety of our children. It enables young people to have unregulated access to marijuana — easier access than they presently have to alcohol. It enables young people to interact and befriend pushers of other illegal, more dangerous drugs. It compels young people to dismiss the educational messages they receive pertaining to the potential health risks posed by the use of “hard drugs” and prescription pharmaceuticals, because kids say, “If they lied to me about pot, why wouldn’t they be lying to me about everything else, too?”

Most importantly, the criminal laws are far more likely to result in having our children arrested, placed behind bars, and stigmatized with a lifelong criminal record than they are likely to in any way discourage them to try pot.

In short, what the results from the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health is simple and consistent; in fact, we say it all the time: Remember prohibition? It still doesn’t work!

Related Posts:

• Police stop more than 1 million people on street
• GE: 10,000 applications for 90 factory jobs
• Bayer Pesticides Blamed For Honeybee Deaths

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a Mexican rehabilitation clinic near the U.S. border on Wednesday, lining up patients before killing 17 of them.

Drug gangs have targeted rehab clinics in the manufacturing city of Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, accusing them of protecting dealers from rival gangs.

The attack was one of the deadliest in President Felipe Calderon’s three-year war against drug cartels, despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez who constantly patrol the city’s streets.

The suspected hitmen stormed their way into the drug and alcohol rehab clinic in Ciudad Juarez and forced patients into a line in a corridor before shooting them, the army and the El Diario newspaper said.

“Armed men shot at about 20 people, killing 17 of them and injuring three,” said army spokesman Enrique Torres.

In a separate attack on Wednesday, gunmen killed the deputy police chief in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan in western Mexico.

Jose Manuel Revueltas, appointed just two weeks ago, was intercepted by heavily armed men in two vehicles as he drove down a busy avenue in the state capital, Morelia, a few blocks from police headquarters, police said.

Revueltas, 38, and his two bodyguards died in the intense gunfire that also killed a man traveling on a bus.

Revueltas was a close aide of Michoacan’s leftist governor, Leonel Godoy. Calderon has placed a heavy military presence in the state.

Calderon has staked his presidency on crushing the cartels whose brazen fight for control of smuggling routes into the United States worries Washington and has killed more than 13,000 people since late 2006.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged full support for Calderon’s drug war but the $1.4 billion promised to Mexico in 2007 to help fight the powerful cartels is only trickling in, with $214 million so far released for equipment and training.

Related Posts:

• An `Unknown Holocaust’ and the Hijacking of History
• Expert on Structured Finance and Derivatives: Rampant Fraud and Ponzi Scheme Caused Crisis
• Mirror Imaging Unlocks Masonic Messages in US Symbols

An Interior Ministry official said the dismissals were being carried out at all Mexican border facilities, and that the customs agents were being replaced.

Customs agents were sacked after some were found to be linked to contraband operations, according to sources at the ministry.

Agents in Nuevo Laredo, on the border with the southern US state of Texas, were called in Saturday to be told they were fired, and to hand in their badges and weapons. A total of 1,100 agents were sacked, Mexican media said.

Army troops took over customs border posts temporarily on Sunday.

Mexico and the United States share a border that stretches across some 2,000 miles (3,220 kilometers) and are partners with Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico is in the midst of a raging war on organized crime, and has expressed serious concern about US weapons crossing into the country.

During a visit to Mexico last week, US President Barack Obama praised President Felipe Calderon for his controversial military crackdown on the country’s drug gangs, which involves more than 36,000 troops.

The United States has pledged around 1.6 billion dollars to tackle drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America under the Merida Initiative, which also includes funds for training and equipment to boost security on the Mexican side of the border.

The Obama administration has acknowledged the US role in the violence, pledging to stem the flow of weapons into Mexico and curb demand for drugs in the United States, one of the world’s top cocaine consumers.

Related Posts:

• Government Directive Addresses Traveler’s Attempt To Prevent Search In A Timely Fashion
• A cold start to fall: over 4500 new snowfall, low temp, and lowest max temp records set in the USA this last week
• Obama and Workers’ Rights in America
• Jackass Alert! USDA: Oh no you didn’t!

MARK STEVENSON
AP News

Aug 21, 2009 06:49 EST

Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government’s grueling battle against drug traffickers.

Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico’s corruption-prone police from shaking down casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check.

“This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty,” said Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney general’s office.

The new law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution.

Espino del Castillo says, in practice, small users almost never did face charges anyway. Under the previous law, the possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts.

“We couldn’t charge somebody who was in possession of a dose of a drug, there was no way … because the person would claim they were an addict,” he said.

Despite the provisions, police sometimes hauled in suspects and demanded bribes, threatening long jail sentences if people did not pay.

“The bad thing was that it was left up to the discretion of the detective, and it could open the door to corruption or extortion,” Espino del Castillo said.

Anyone caught with drug amounts under the new personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory.

The maximum amount of marijuana for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 “lines.” For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.

Mexico has emphasized the need to differentiate drug addicts and casual users from the violent traffickers whose turf battles have contributed to the deaths of more than 11,000 people since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006.

But one expert saw potential for conflict under the new law.

Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said the new law posed “a serious contradiction” for the Calderon administration.

“If they decriminalize drugs it could lead the army, which has been given the task of combating this, to say ‘What are we doing’?” he said.

Officials said the legal changes could help the government focus more on big-time traffickers.

Espino del Castillo said since Calderon took office, there have been over 15,000 police searches related to small-scale drug dealing or possession, with 95,000 people detained — but only 12 to 15 percent of whom were ever charged with anything.

Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government’s grueling battle against drug traffickers.

Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico’s corruption-prone police from shaking down casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check.

“This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty,” said Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney general’s office.

The new law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution.

Espino del Castillo says, in practice, small users almost never did face charges anyway. Under the previous law, the possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts.

Related Posts:

• Unemployment Edges Up to Great Depression Level

What a croc of absolute and complete SHIT. They spend half the article saying that it’s been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that cannabis causes psychosis in healthy people, then they admit that the doctor who performed the tests has said that the findings offered “additional evidence that can elicit temporary psychotic-like effects in some people” – ie: if you are predisposed to it then you may have issues. Yet the media have blown this out of proportion as usual and have jumped to conclusions.

Not to mention the fact that the doctor admits that the studies didn’t look into the effects of CBD in unison with THC – something that is a MAJOR factor in how the process of putting cannabis into our bodies works.

Complete, total and utter tripe. The writer of this article should be ashamed of themselves.

Related Posts:

• Bayer Pesticides Blamed For Honeybee Deaths
• India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
• The Population Reduction Agenda For Dummies
• End “The Fed Scam” Now!
• Is America on the Verge of a Geriatric Crime Wave?