Category Archives: War On Drugs

President Rodrigo 'The Punisher' Duterte has a controversial, deadly take on stamping out drug crimes in the Philippines.

Philippine's President Rodrigo Duterte. Picture: AFP Photo/Noel Celis

LAUNCHED a year ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes brutal war on drugs has resulted in thousands of deaths, yet the street price of crystal methamphetamine in Manila has fallen and surveys show Filipinos are as anxious as ever about crime.

Duterte took power on June 30 last year, vowing to halt the drug abuse and lawlessness he saw as symptoms of virulent social disease.

Thanks to his campaign, government officials say, crime has dropped, thousands of drug dealers are behind bars, a million users have registered for treatment, and future generations of Filipinos are being protected from the scourge of drugs.

There are thousands of people who are being killed, yes, said Oscar Albayalde, Metro Manilas police chief told Reuters. But there are millions who live, see?

A growing chorus of critics, however, including human rights activists, lawyers and the countrys influential Catholic Church, dispute the authorities claims of success.

They say police have summarily executed drug suspects with impunity, terrorising poorer communities and exacerbating the very lawlessness they were meant to tackle.

This president behaves as if he is above the law that he is the law, wrote Amado Picardal, an outspoken Filipino priest, in a recent article for a Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines publication. He has ignored the rule of law and human rights.

The drug wars exact death toll is hotly disputed, with critics saying the toll is far above the 5,000 that police have identified as either drug-related killings, or suspects shot dead during police operations.

Most victims are small-time users and dealers, while the masterminds behind the lucrative drug trade are largely unknown and at large, say critics of Dutertes ruthless methods.

If the strategy was working the laws of economics suggest the price of crystal meth, the highly addictive drug also known as shabu, should be rising as less supply hits the streets.

But the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agencys own data suggests shabu has become even cheaper in Manila.

Drug suspects are rounded up during an anti-illegal drugs operation at an informal settlers community at the Manila Islamic Center in Manila on October 7, 2016. Picture: AFP Photo/Noel CelisSource:AFP

Shanty dwellers living inside the cemetery look at bodies being buried on January 24, 2017 in Manila, Philippines. Many bodies of victims of extrajudicial killings lay unclaimed in a morgue as funerals have had to deal with an upsurge in fatalities from the drug war. Picture: Getty Images/Dondi TawataoSource:Getty Images

In July 2016, a gram of shabu cost 1,200-11,000 pesos (A$88-$800), according to agencys figures. Last month, a gram cost 1,000-15,000 pesos ($73-$1100), it said.

The wide ranges reflect swings in availability and sharp regional variations. Officials say Manilas street prices are at the lowest end of the range. And that has come down, albeit by just a few dollars.

If prices have fallen, its an indication that enforcement actions have not been effective, said Gloria Lai of the International Drug Policy Consortium, a global network of non-governmental groups focused on narcotics.

The problem is, according to Derrick Carreon, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agencys spokesman, that while nine domestic drug labs have been busted, shabu smuggled in from overseas has filled the market gap.

Demand needs to be addressed because there are still drug smugglers, Carreon said.

While smuggled shabu has kept the price down in the capital, the official data shows the price has gone up in the already substantially more expensive far-flung regions, like the insurgency-racked southern island of Mindanao.

Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao last month after militants inspired by Islamic State stormed Marawi City, and the armys failure to retake the city quickly has dented the presidents image as a law-and-order president.

A woman hugs her husband, who was shot dead by an unidentified gunman in Manila on July 23, 2016. Picture: AFP Photo/Noel CelisSource:AFP

An alleged drug dealer and victim of a summary execution lies dead on a main thoroughfare on July 23, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The victim was an alleged drug peddler, a claim disputed by his wife. Picture: Getty Images/Dondi TawataoSource:Getty Images

AFRAID OF THE DARK

Surveys by Social Weather Stations (SWS), a leading Manila pollster, reveal a public broadly supportive of Dutertes anti-drug campaign, but troubled by its methods and dubious about its effectiveness.

SWS surveys in each of the first three quarters of Dutertes rule showed a very high satisfaction with the anti-drug campaign, said Leo Laroza, a senior SWS researcher.

In the most recent survey, published on April, 92 per cent said it was important that drug suspects be captured alive.

Respondents also reported a 6.3 per cent rise in street robberies and break-ins. More than half of those polled said they were afraid to venture out at night, a proportion that had barely changed since the drug war began, said Laroza.

People still have this fear when it comes to their neighbourhoods, he said. It has not gone down.

Public and police perceptions of crime levels seem to diverge.

The number of crimes committed in the first nine months of Dutertes rule has dropped by 30 per cent, according to police statistics cited by the presidents communications team.

Albayalde, the capitals police chief, said people, particularly in Manila, felt safer now, especially due to a crackdown on drug users who he said commit most of the crime.

In the first 11 months of Dutertes rule, police say 3,155 suspects were shot dead in anti-drug operations. Critics maintain that many of them were summarily executed.

Police say they have investigated a further 2,000 drug-related killings, and have yet to identify a motive in at least another 7,000 murders and homicides.

Human rights monitors believe many of these victims were killed by undercover police or their paid vigilantes, a charge the police deny.

For residents of Navotas fishport, a warren of shacks near Manilas docks, the body count is too high. There were nine killings in a single night in Navotas earlier this month, according to local media.

In mid-May, said resident Mary Joy Royo, a dozen gunmen arrived on motorbikes and abducted her mother and stepfather. Their corpses were found later with execution-style gunshots to the head and torso.

They should be targeting the drug lords, Royo told Reuters. The victims of the drug war are the poor people.

The dead body of Valien Mendoza, a suspected drug dealer, gunned down by unidentified assailants in Manila. Picture: AFP Photo/Noel CelisSource:AFP

Maria Espinosa crying outside the funeral parlour where the body of her dead 16-year-old son, Sonny Espinosa, was taken in Manila. Picture: AFP Photo/Noel CelisSource:AFP

RIPPLE EFFECT

As the death toll has risen, so has domestic and international outrage.

In October, the Hague-based International Criminal Court said it could investigate the killings if they were committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.

Police operations were halted for much of February after it emerged that anti-drug police abducted and killed a South Korean businessman last year, but the outcry over the rising body count has rarely slowed the killing or led to prosecutions.

The Philippine Commission on Human Rights is investigating 680 drug-war killings.

In this country the basic problem is impunity, Chito Gascon, the commissions chairman, said. No one is ever held to account for the worst violations. Ever.

Police chief Albayalde says that the forces Internal Affairs Service (IAS) investigates all allegations of abuse by his officers.

We do not tolerate senseless killings, he said. We do not just kill anybody.

IAS told Reuters it had investigated 1,912 drug-related cases and recommended 159 officers for dismissal due to misconduct during anti-drug operations, although it didnt know whether any had yet been dismissed.

Earlier this month, 19 police officers charged with murdering two drug suspects in their jail cell in November were released on bail and now face trial for the lesser crime of homicide.

Duterte, who has repeatedly urged police to kill drug suspects, had already vowed to pardon the officers if they were convicted.

You have a head of state who says, Kill, kill, kill, a head of state who says, Ive got your back, said CHRs Gascon. That has a ripple effect.

Marawi, on the southern island of Mindanao,has become the latest victim of Islamic State linked attacks beyond the Middle East. Since declaring martial law on the city, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has apologised for the military offensive that has left Marawi in ruins.

Follow this link:

One year on: Has the Punisher fixed the crime? - NEWS.com.au

From a very important article in The Intercept by Jon Schwartz The History Channel Is Finally Telling the Stunning Secret Story of the War on Drugs (emphasis added):

The History Channel is showing a new four-part series called Americas War on Drugs. Not only is itan important contribution to recent American history, its also the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50years.

That core truth is: The War on Drugs has always been a pointless sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with some of the worlds largest drug cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971 (see chart above), top narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest levels of power in America.

On the one hand, this shouldnt be surprising. The voluminous documentation of this fact in dozens of books has long been available to anyone with curiosity and a library card. Yet somehow, despite the fact the U.S. has no formal system of censorship, this monumental scandal has never before been presented in a comprehensive way in the medium where most Americans get their information: TV.

Thats why Americas War on Drugs is a genuine milestone. Weve recently seen how ideas that once seemed absolutely preposterous and taboo for instance, that the Catholic Church was consciously safeguarding priests who sexually abused children, or that Bill Cosby may not have been the best choice for Americas Dad can after years of silence finally break through into popular consciousness and exact real consequences. The series could be a watershed in doing the same for the reality behind one of the most cynical and cruel policies in U.S. history.

That this series exists at all shows that were at a tipping point with this brazen, catastrophic lie. We have to push hard enough to knock it over.

You can watch a 4-minute overview of the series above and you can watch full episodes of the series online here:

Episode 1 Acid, Spies, & Secret Experiments

Episode 2 Cocaine, Cartels, & Crack Downs

Episode 3 Gangs, Prisons, & Meth Queens (requires sign-in with your cable TV provider)

Episode 4 Heroin, Terrorists, & Kings of Pain (requires sign-in with your cable TV provider)

Bottom Line: As Ive written before, Im confident that in a future, more enlightened, advanced, open-minded and tolerant America, well look back on Americas immoral, senseless, expensive and failed War on Drugs Otherwise Peaceful Americans Who Chose to Ingest or Smoke Plants, Weeds and Recreational Substances Proscribed by Arbitrary Government Regulations with the shame, contempt, and embarrassment that it so rightfully deserves for such cruel, intolerant, and inhumane treatment of our fellow citizens (and our children and family dogs). Kudos to The History Channel for making such an important contribution to bringing us much closer to that future reckoning with such an embarrassing and shameful chapter of Americas history that matches (if not exceeds) Americas previous failed, costly and shameful War on Alcohol Otherwise Peaceful Americans Who Chose to Ingest Recreational Beverages Proscribed by Arbitrary Government Regulations during the 1930s.

Read the original:

History Channel tells stunning secret story of War on Drugs - from ... - American Enterprise Institute

From a very important article in The Intercept by Jon Schwartz The History Channel Is Finally Telling the Stunning Secret Story of the War on Drugs (emphasis added):

The History Channel is showing a new four-part series called Americas War on Drugs. Not only is itan important contribution to recent American history, its also the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50years.

That core truth is: The War on Drugs has always been a pointless sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with some of the worlds largest drug cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971 (see chart above), top narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest levels of power in America.

On the one hand, this shouldnt be surprising. The voluminous documentation of this fact in dozens of books has long been available to anyone with curiosity and a library card. Yet somehow, despite the fact the U.S. has no formal system of censorship, this monumental scandal has never before been presented in a comprehensive way in the medium where most Americans get their information: TV.

Thats why Americas War on Drugs is a genuine milestone. Weve recently seen how ideas that once seemed absolutely preposterous and taboo for instance, that the Catholic Church was consciously safeguarding priests who sexually abused children, or that Bill Cosby may not have been the best choice for Americas Dad can after years of silence finally break through into popular consciousness and exact real consequences. The series could be a watershed in doing the same for the reality behind one of the most cynical and cruel policies in U.S. history.

That this series exists at all shows that were at a tipping point with this brazen, catastrophic lie. We have to push hard enough to knock it over.

You can watch a 4-minute overview of the series above and you can watch full episodes of the series online here:

Episode 1 Acid, Spies, & Secret Experiments

Episode 2 Cocaine, Cartels, & Crack Downs

Episode 3 Gangs, Prisons, & Meth Queens (requires sign-in with your cable TV provider)

Episode 4 Heroin, Terrorists, & Kings of Pain (requires sign-in with your cable TV provider)

Bottom Line: As Ive written before, Im confident that in a future, more enlightened, advanced, open-minded and tolerant America, well look back on Americas immoral, senseless, expensive and failed War on Drugs Otherwise Peaceful Americans Who Chose to Ingest or Smoke Plants, Weeds and Recreational Substances Proscribed by Arbitrary Government Regulations with the shame, contempt, and embarrassment that it so rightfully deserves for such cruel, intolerant, and inhumane treatment of our fellow citizens (and our children and family dogs). Kudos to The History Channel for making such an important contribution to bringing us much closer to that future reckoning with such an embarrassing and shameful chapter of Americas history that matches (if not exceeds) Americas previous failed, costly and shameful War on Alcohol Otherwise Peaceful Americans Who Chose to Ingest Recreational Beverages Proscribed by Arbitrary Government Regulations during the 1930s.

More:

History Channel tells stunning secret story of War on Drugs from the beginning it was a political war on people - American Enterprise Institute

By Renee Hoagenson

Hello, my name is Renee Hoagenson, candidate for the office of United States House of Representatives in the November 2018 elections.

On June 15 my campaign held a town hall in Columbia, during which many questions were asked covering a variety of subjects. There were several questions regarding the addiction epidemic and the related subject of incarceration.

In the Friday Tribune article covering this event, I am quoted as saying that my personal opinion is that most drugs should be legal so that addiction could be addressed in the open. This quote is presented as my platform in my bid for Congress. My opponents reply indicated that I advocate the use of drugs by children in schools.

First, let me be clear that no child should ever be given any recreational drugs or alcohol. This insinuation by Vicky Hartzlers office is false and opportunistic. This sort of rhetoric is damaging to the public discussion and stands in the path of making meaningful progress in combatting addiction in our country.

So what is the nature of this problem and what can be done?

Addiction is a chronic brain disorder. It is a health issue. Much research has been conducted on this issue shedding light on the physiological processes that happen in an addicts body and brain. We know, for instance, that 95 percent of addiction begins during adolescence. Some people are more vulnerable to addiction due to predispositions that include genetics, emotional trauma and mental illness.

We also know that there is treatment available that is effective in restoring an alcoholic or addicts mental health. Sometimes this treatment is effective the first time, sometimes it requires a cumulative approach. It usually requires an ongoing recovery practice to achieve and maintain a drug-free, healthy life.

Its easy to misunderstand the addicts plight as a weakness of character or a moral failing. Loved ones often are perplexed as to why the addict shows tremendous willpower regarding every area but this. Its confusing to think that the addict chooses to ruin his life with excessive alcohol or drug use.

Indeed, the addict feels alone and misjudged, unable to find the words to adequately explain the feeling of compulsion. This is compounded by the fear of being incarcerated should they seek help. So the addict suffers silently (or not so silently) in shame and stigma trying to manage the itinerant fallout of his behavior.

According to the Department of Justice, one third of drug offenders in prison had no prior criminal history. More than 40 percent will return within two years on another drug-related incident. We are imprisoning sick people, further desecrating their lives when we could be helping them at far less cost.

In Facing Addiction in America, the Surgeon General reports that we save $10-$12 in incarceration costs for every dollar we spend in treatment. Think about that, if we took 10 percent of the budget we currently spend to incarcerate drug offenders and instead spent it on treatment, we would have fewer active drug addicts. Treatment rehabilitates people, restoring them to the community and their families. The penal system costs 90 percent more and helps no one.

Not only is treatment more effective for addiction, it is less expensive to society overall. The National Institute of Health reports that drug addiction treatment reduces drug use and its associated health and social costs including reducing drug-related crime, justice system costs and healthcare. Add in the related financial and emotional costs to the family. Also, consider the incalculable costs of bringing an effective worker back into the community and their family.

Addiction touches at least one in three adults in someway, occurring in at least one in ten people. When adults struggle for emotional balance it is impossible to be an effective role model for their children, perpetuating this heartbreaking cycle.

We have tried the War on Drugs for the last 40 years. It doesnt work; its a failed campaign. Addiction rates and drug-related death rates continue to increase. Its time to look at the addiction epidemic in our country from a different perspective.

Renee Hoagenson is a candidate for the Fourth Congressional District seat.

Read the original:

War on drugs is an abject failure - Columbia Daily Tribune

Last weeks revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was plotting to target medical marijuana providers was largely obscured by his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee the next day. In a letter written to Congress on May 1, Sessions argues that because marijuana remains illegal under the controlled substances act, representatives should disregard longstanding protections against the prosecution of medical cannabis. These protections had just been renewed as part of a budgetary bill two days prior. Its no coincidence that when the bill hit President Donald Trumps desk on May 6, he included a signing statement that largely echoed the attorney generals sentiments. On May 10, Sessions outdid himself when he issued a memorandum calling on US Attorneys to seek the harshest punishment allowed by law when prosecuting drug crimes, directly overturning the more lenient sentencing guidelines pushed forth by Eric Holder in 2013.

This threatens to undo significant progress that drug war opponents have made in recent years. Since Colorado voters made the Rocky Mountain State the first to legalize recreational cannabis in 2013, eight other states have followed suit. Added with the 21 states that allow medicinal cannabis, 60percent of Americans live in a jurisdiction that has legalized marijuana. Moreover, former President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of over 1,000 non-violent drug offendersmore than any previous president.

In the current political environment, ramping up the War on Drugs would cause backlash for both the Trump administration and the GOP. In 2018, incumbent Republicans in states that have legalized marijuana would be forced to answer for an administration intent on disregarding the will of voters. Conversely, any Democrat running on a pro-marijuana platform would gain an instant boost in support as well as financial backing from an increasingly profitable cannabis industry. Come 2020, the issue would also give a boost to Democratic presidential candidatessuch as Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, both of whom have expressed support for legalization.

Even if Trump loses in 2020 and these policies are overturned by a future administration, their impact over the next four years could prove devastating. If Sessions memo is followed by federal prosecutors, it would mean an increase in the enforcement of mandatory minimum laws, which remove judicial discretion and carry automatic 10 and 20 year sentences. Prior to Holder ratcheting back enforcement of these laws, they led to disproportionate sentences on numerous occasions. In one instance, a man was sentenced to a triple life prison sentences merely for introducing two drug dealers to each other. In another, a man was sentenced to a 42-year prison term for selling crack, a sentence the judge was obligated to impose under the three strikes law because he had two previous misdemeanor arrests for selling pot.

Increased enforcement of medical marijuana laws will lead to more horror stories such as these and will further increase the U.S. prison population, which is already the largest in the world. For medical cannabis users, many of which suffer from debilitating health conditions, a federal crackdown would make it more difficult for them to get the relief they need. It could also increase the risk many users already face of losing child custody.

For drug war opponents, the ultimate goal is that Congress pass a law decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level. This would be the only surefire way to both restrain Sessions and ensure that somebody of his ilk never again sets their sights on the War on Drugs.

View original post here:

Jeff Sessions Ramps up War on Drugs, Sets Sights on Medical ... - Observer

America's War on Drugs, History Channel"There's a huge story to be told," says Anthony Lapp, "about the actual extent of the U.S. government's involvement in drug trafficking."

And that's exactly the story Lapp and his co-producers Julian Hobbs and Elli Hakami tell in a mesmerizing four-part series that debuted this week on cable TV's History Channel. Through dramatic recreations and in-depth interviews with academic researchers, historians, journalists, former federal agents, and drug dealers, America's War on Drugs (watch full episodes online here) tells true tales of how, for instance, the CIA and Department of Defense helped to introduce LSD to Americans in the 1950s.

"The CIA literally sent over two guys to Sandoz Laboratories where LSD had first been synthesized and bought up the world's supply of LSD and brought it back," Lapp tells Nick Gillespie in a wide-ranging conversation about the longest war the U.S. government has fought. "With that supply they began a [secret mind-control] program called MK Ultra which had all sorts of other drugs involved."

The different episodes cover the history of drug prohibition, the rise of the '60s drug counterculture; heroin epidemics past and present; how drug policy has warped U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia, Central America, Afghanistan, and beyond; the bipartisan politics of prohibition; and much more. America's War on Drugs features exclusive and rarely seen footage and documents how, time and time again, the government was often facilitating trade and use in the very drugs it was trying to stamp out. The show's website adds articles, short videos, and more information in an attempt to produce an "immersive experience" that will change how viewers think and feel about prohibition.

Lapp, who has worked at Vice, Huffington Post, and elsewhere, tells Gillespie that he is particulary excited to see his series air on the History Channel because it's an indicator the drug-policy reform is in the air. Though not a libertarian himself, he says "a great trait of libertarianism...is that knowledge and reason will eventually win out over keeping things in the dark, making things taboo." Even when it veers off into questionable territory (such as the role of the government in creating the crack epidemic of the 1980s), America's War on Drugs performs the invaluable function of furthering a conversation about drug policies and attitudes that have caused far more harm than they have alleviated.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Image: America's War on Drugs, History Channel.

Subscribe, rate, and review the Reason Podcast at iTunes.

Listen at SoundCloud below:

Don't miss a single Reason podcast! (Archive here.)

Subscribe at iTunes.

Follow us at SoundCloud.

Subscribe at YouTube.

Like us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

This is a rush transcriptcheck all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hi I'm Nick Gillespie and this is the Reason podcast. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you're there.

Today we're talking with Anthony Lappe who along with Julian Hobbs and Elli Hakami has produced a four part docuseries called America's War on Drugs for the History Channel. You can go to history.com to watch the series and read more about our country's longest war. The series aired this week and it will be in reruns on History Channel, so check it out there.

Anthony, thanks for joining the Reason podcast.

Anthony Lappe: It's great to be here Nick.

Gillespie: Give us the big picture first. Who's your audience for this and what do you hope to bring to people through the docuseries?

Lappe: The exciting thing about this project really is the fact that it's on the History Channel. I honestly didn't believe it was actually going to air until it started airing on Sunday night and I was sitting there watching it because what we do here is actually pretty radical. I don't think anyone has ever really told this story fully on mainstream cable television before. We take a very critical look at the entire history of the war on drugs. In particular, looking at American foreign policy and how the Central Intelligence Agency is not just been involved in a couple of bad apples here and there. In couple rogue operations as a lot of these drug trafficking allegations have been called before.

But actually very directly involved in drug trafficking not only drug trafficking but in the largest drug trafficking stories of our time. Whether that's in the secret tests that introduced LSD to the United States or heroin during the late 60's and early 70's from southeast Asia, to cocaine during the late 70's and early 80's onto opium and heroin coming out of Afghanistan. There's a huge story to be told there about the actual extent of the US government's involvement in drug trafficking.

Gillespie: Let's talk first about the old days of MK Ultra and mind control and the way that the CIA actually helped introduce LSD evolved drugs into America, to American minds. What was going on in the 50's with the CIA and how did they become involved in introducing LSD to Americans?

Lappe: This is a story that a lot of your listeners may have heard about, people have heard about MK Ultra and I had as well, but I never really understood the full origins of the story. They go all the way back to the 1950's. During the 1950's of course, US and the Soviet Union are locked in a battle for hearts and minds around the world and psychoactive drugs were a big part of the Cold War psychological warfare programs on both sides.

The CIA had heard rumors that the Soviet Union was starting to use LSD at this point as a truth serum to see if they could break spies and get them to expose details, admit they were spies et cetera. The CIA literally sent over two guys to Sandoz Laboratories where LSD had first been synthesized and bought up the world's supply of LSD and brought it back. With that supply they began a program called MK Ultra which had all sorts of other drugs involved.

In particular they started doing secret tests around the country. Some of them using in veteran's hospitals and through the military. Others were in mental hospitals, a lot of basic, pretty much a lot of them were unwitting people, mental patients. But one of the incredible stories we found, I never knew this before, is that Ken Kesey, famously the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and really the guy who started the famous acid tests in the San Francisco Bay area, it was really the godfather of acid movement. As a Stanford grad student, or sorry an undergrad, was part of a test at the Menlo Park Veteran's hospital. Loved it so much that he got a job in the lab, stole all the acid, went up to San Francisco and started his acid test. That was the origins of how LSD was introduced into United States. This was also happening in other places around the country. It was just that Ken Kesey was the progenitor of the entire movement. It literally was the CIA.

Gillespie: That is a real challenge to all good thinking Libertarians like myself. Small L Libertarians who say that the government can never do anything right. The manage to strangely change the course, not of, I guess maybe of Cold War history, but certainly of American cultural history through their actions. The first episode of the series, and again check these out on history.com, the History Channel if you have, you can download their app and take a look at it. Plus there's other material there that's well worth delving into.

You look at the prehistory of Richard Nixon's declaration of a war on drugs in the early 70's, what were some of the motivating factors you found behind Nixon declaring war on drugs? Very early in the 70's he talked about, famously used the phrase, declaring a war on drugs, that illegals drugs were the number one enemy facing America. What was going on, things like pot and acid and heroin rose to that level of attention from the federal government?

Lappe: You really had two strains happening. You had the psychedelic movement which was heavily influenced by acid which the CIA itself had introduced, which is just my blowing right. Then you had pot as well which basically increasing numbers of young people were smoking. Nixon declares famously this war on drugs in June 1971. At the same time there was a massive heroin epidemic that really was ravaging mostly the eastern seaboard. What a lot people don't realize is that too in part, you could argue another case of blow back from our own operations.

During the mid 60's to late 60's there was a famous, everyone knows, a war against communist forces in Vietnam but also next door there was a gigantic secret war happening in Laos that officially we were not supposed to be fighting. Both politically it was radioactive for Johnson to declare another front but there were also treaties that said that we couldn't have troops on the ground both with Laos and we had an agreement, a sort of tacit agreement with the Soviet Union they wouldn't put troops on the ground.

There was a massive clandestine CIA operation in Laos running this secret war. People have probably heard of this CIA airline called Air America. Basically we go into business helping a local warlord named Vang Pao. When we started the war in the mid 60's, around 65, Vang Pao was a sort of somewhat populous, anti-communist leader of the Hmong hill people in Laos and was peripherally involved in growing opium because that's really what the cash crop was in that area.

By 1968, 1969 into 1970 Vang Pao was the biggest heroin trafficker on the planet. Some of his partners were the Sicilian mobsters that we had gone into business to put in Havana Cuba and south Florida to try to kill Fidel Castro. Basically we had created this huge network or aided this huge network of international drug trafficking that created a massive heroin epidemic which has only been surpassed by the current opioid crisis and we go into that later.

What happens is, there's all this heroin in the theater of war in southeast Asia, a lot of troops are getting hooked, famously they all start bringing this heroin back and heroin really starts devastating the inner city and there was a legitimate belief by a lot of people that really it was out of control and crime rates were really skyrocketing especially in cities like New York. So Nixon was under a lot of pressure. He had run in 1960 under the banner of law and order and the country was literally falling apart by 1971 in his eyes.

Gillespie: As you were saying, the crime really ratcheted up. It started in the 50's but it really ratcheted up in the 60's, there was the perception that people were leaving cities in droves to avoid crime. You talk, I think, in the first episode, it's something that in 1960 the government figures had something like 50,000 heroin addicts around the country or heroin users and it had crept up to something like 200,000 or 500,000 by about 1970.

Lappe: Yeah.

Gillespie: Part of it Nixon was a law and order guy and there's, you go into this a bit at your site as well as in the show that John Ehrlichman one of Richard Nixon's chief lieutenants in a 1990, 94 interview with Dan Baum who ultimately published a story in Harper's about this, that he said that the war on pot and the war on drugs was really a way to control black people. There was also this sense that the urban American was going to hell in a hand basket as well.

Follow up question for that is, the war on drugs gets birthed out of mixed feeling and Nixon and there's some footage in one of the episodes of Ronald Reagan denouncing the use of acid in the 60's and obviously became drug warrior himself as president. There was a strong bipartisan element to the war on drugs because even people, Jimmy Carter seemed to be okay with the idea of pot legalization or decriminalization until events overtook him and he became a staunch drug warrior. People like Bill Clinton, people like Barack Obama also added to the drug war. What is the, I guess that's a long wind up for a pretty simple question, what is it about the war on drugs that pulls such support from Democrats and Republicans across the board?

Lappe: I think this is pretty deep question because I think it goes to what I found in working on this project which is really one of the most epic projects I've ever worked on in my life in terms of the amount of research we did. I think drugs have always played a scapegoat role in our society where we see other social forces, in particular economic forces and other things that have been pressures on communities and it's very easy to point the finger at drugs. In some ways it's a natural reaction to try to crack down on them in the harshest way. Of course by cracking down on drugs are an inanimate object, there is no such thing as a crack down on drugs. You're cracking down on people. And when you crack down on people, that has a reverberating effect. It also can be used as a tool.

Nixon is probably one of the most cynical politicians in our history but maybe not the worst in my opinion. He saw it purely, in my opinion, as a political move. As a way to take out this, he believed he had all these enemies that were growing around him, all these social movements, you had black nationalism, you had increasingly radicalized hippie movement that had turned from a peacenik movement into a more dangerous, whether underground type of operations. There was a feeling that society was unraveling to some degree. That was in large part because it was because we lived in a oppressive racist society and there was a war that in 1968, everyone knew was at a stalemate or that we had lost but continued going on. People don't realize half the people died, of our soldiers after 1968 when Nixon ran under this completely cynical lie that he had a secret plan to end the war [Editor's note: Journalism historian Joseph W. Campbell has documented that Candidate Nixon never publicly made such a pledge, which continues to be cited frequently.].

There was all these other forces going on in drugs were very easy way to demonize people.

Gillespie: At the website, at history.com, among the various things you have in timelines or whatnot that are worth going back to. The early attempts to link cocaine with black people and if you want to crack down on cocaine because white women may be taking it or something, you crack down on black people. When pot became illegal, under federal law, became effectively illegal in the 1930's, it was identified with Mexicans. Chinese and opium was a problem. It is fascinating in the 60's you have with something like LSD the youth movement and hippies and then again when ecstasy which was made illegal in the 80's thanks in large part to Joe Biden.

The identification of a subculture or subgroup or a particular ethnic group that you can crack down on is one of the really haunting elements, I think, of the drug war and that comes through in this, in this series. Talk a bit about how particularly after 9/11 part of the series, and I think you're absolutely right in looking at it, that what this does in a way that is really fresh and interesting is look at how foreign policy, US foreign policy has been both guided and infected by the drug war. Talk a bit about the post 9/11 era and how have fears of narco-terrorism really changed the way we go about our foreign policy?

Lappe: Narco-terrorism is a term that started, that was introduced after 9/11, shortly after really. We show how in the first Superbowl after 9/11, the Partnership for Drug Free America began running this very eerie infamous ad now where you had a bunch of kids saying, "I supported terrorists, I supported a suicide bomber, I did this." Basically saying because I did drugs I was helping all of these different terrorists groups et cetera. When the incredible irony is that our own government has been knee deep in drug trafficking for decades.

There was a big push though it was completely ironic and what we show in our last episode which is the post 9/11 era, is we actually have an undercover DEA agent. This was a huge theme that we saw throughout our series was the tension between the DEA and the CIA. I'll paint the picture of what was happening in Afghanistan.

In the late 1990's, opium has always been one of or the biggest cash crop in Afghanistan. During the 1990's there was a massive civil war. All sides were using opium to finance themselves. The Taliban comes in to power and starts taxing at first, opium growers but by the late 90's the Taliban is having a huge PR problem. They're chopping off women's heads in stadiums and they're blowing up the Buddhas. They were becoming an international pariah. They pulled this incredible PR coup where they said they were cracking down on opium. When really all they were doing were stockpiling it. Basically they launched this whole fake crackdown that got the UN off their back. The US, we even in 2000, sent them $40 million of aid money to help, quote unquote, crackdown on opium. But really what was happening was they were stockpiling opium and then after 9/11 used those stockpiles to ramp up their war effort.

At the time of 9/11, Afghanistan was about 30% of the world's heroin. Today it's about 90%. What Afghanistan has become is a drug war. People never talk about it in that context but Afghanistan is a giant drug war. The Taliban have, to quote REM, lost their religion. They're really are not much of a religious force any more as they are just any other militant insurgency group that is trying to take down a government. There isn't much, they're not putting a lot of effort into their Sharia program. They basically have become gigantic drug traffickers. But also our allies in Afghanistan. Including in the early days, Hamid Karzai's brother, Wali Karzai was the biggest heroin trafficker and drug lord who controlled all the traffic in Kandahar. Who was completely protected by the CIA.

I talked to soldiers who literally their job was to guard the opium fields of our local warlord allies. This heroin has had a major impact on the world's drug stage. It should be noted a lot of the heroin that comes into the United States is coming from Mexico now but a lot of it is coming from Afghanistan, especially on the east coast and in Canada. It's a really incredible story that no one really talks about. There's a great reporter that is one of our contributors to the show named, Gretchen Peters, wrote a book called, Seeds of Terror. That essentially is her thesis.

We also have great stories about the undercover DEA agents who were fighting to try to take down drug traffickers at the same time the CIA was undermining their efforts.

Gillespie: It's a phenomenal drama that unfolds and it has these dark, rich, historical ironies that abound throughout the series. The odds are good now at least and actually in a story that's up at the website, you guys talk about Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General under Donald Trump. Who has really, he's pledged to really redouble efforts at least domestically, on the war on drugs which you guys point out at least in it's Nixonian phase has been going on for 50 years. It's really more like a 100 years when you go all the way back to things like the Harrison Narcotics Act.

It's failing, it doesn't seem to have much effect on drug usage rates, they seem to be independent of enforcement, there's obviously problems with surgeon opiod use that is it's own tangled web of unintended consequences and weird interventions into markets. At the same time the odds are phenomenal that pot is going to be fully legal in the US within the next decade if not before. During the campaign, weirdly Donald Trump seemed to be at times okay with the idea of different states deciding what kind of marijuana policies, obviously the Sessions factors a big difference from that. Are you optimistic that we're at least entering the beginning of the end of the drug war, to borrow a terrible Vietnam phrase that there's light at the end of the tunnel in terms of American attitudes towards currently illegal drugs, and rethinking the drug war?

Lappe: There's no doubt that things are moving in that direction in the same way there's no doubt that things like gay rights and LGBT rights are moving in a certain direction. Jeff Sessions essentially is a weird outlier, historical blip, as you said, to try to pin Trump down on any one ideology or stance is literally impossible. He said we were going to stop all our foreign wars, yet he's sending 8,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Whatever Trump has said on the war on drugs is sort of irrelevant.

But Sessions is just a weird dinosaur throwback to another era that I think is just going to be, if he survives the next three years. Will just be a blip in the road towards eventually people moving, starting with marijuana towards legalization both for, at least, nationwide to medicinal use if not most states towards recreational use. Because people are seeing that it doesn't really have any negative effects, there isn't really a gigantic increase in use and there's great benefits to society in terms of being able to tax it and make it a normalized thing. I think a big part of the problem with drugs and Dr. Carl Hart at Columbia is one of the most iconoclastic guys on this and he's in our series, he's out on the far fringes of this. But what he really says is, the problem with drugs is not drugs. The problem is drug use and misuse and people being idiots with drugs and not knowing how to use them.

Gillespie: But it's hard to know how to use them if you're not allowed to freely and openly discuss the facts, your experiences, your parents, we have enough problems with alcohol abuse and that's fully legal. When you start talking about these other drugs it's hard to get good information.

Lappe: Right. It's the same thing with these abstinence programs. You see wherever there's abstinence programs there's more STD's, there's more pregnancies because people are ignorant. I think that's a great trait of libertarianism even though I don't believe in everything you guys believe in. Is that knowledge and reason will eventually win out over keeping things in the dark, making things taboo. I think that people are rational and when it comes ... There's always going to be people who are going to abuse something, just the same way people abuse alcohol or any substance. I think there is a general consensus that we're moving in a particular direction and I think that ultimately it's going to be better for society.

Gillespie: I hope so and think that your series that was on History Channel will being rerun there as well as it's available on history.com along with a lot of other articles and timelines, does a really good job of helping to start that discussion which has been waiting to happen for decades now.

We have been talking with Anthony Lappe who along with Julian Hobbs and Elli Hakami has produced a great four part series for History Channel called, America's War on Drugs. It's available online and look for it on your basic cable package.

Anthony, thanks so much for talking to the Reason podcast today.

Lappe: Thanks a lot, it was a lot of fun.

Gillespie: This has been the Reason podcast, I'm Nick Gillespie, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you're there. Thanks so much.

See more here:

How the CIA Turned Us onto LSD and Heroin: Secrets of America's ... - Reason (blog)

It was just 14 months ago when Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom told a state oversight council that meth use had gone off the charts and was out of control in parts of South Dakota.

Since then, the state has appropriated several hundred thousand dollars to bolster treatment opportunities, start a marketing campaign to warn youth and others of the dangers of meth, and to incentivize those on probation and parole to stop using a drug that is almost instantly addicting.

It appears, however, that these efforts have been akin to putting a finger in a dyke that is about to crumble. Meth use has skyrocketed in the past year and is often a key ingredient in violent crimes.

Now, however, meth and the madness and mayhem it creates has a rival and experts say its potency makes it far more dangerous. Its called fentanyl analog and should alarm everyone who is concerned about public health and public safety.

On Tuesday, the Lawrence County States Attorneys Office announced that nine people were indicted on 50 felony drug charges. The primary drug cited was fentanyl analog. The investigation that led to the indictments came after two Spearfish residents, ages 23 and 38, died in January after using the synthetic opioid that the National Institute on Drug Abuse says is 50 to 100 more times potent than morphine, making it extraordinarily lethal.

The Lawrence County indictments come just one week after a 19-year-old Chamberlain man was arrested for possessing 20,000 fentanyl pills worth $500,000.

Until recently, fentanyl has been seen as primarily a big-city problem in a few states. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 80 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred in 10 eastern states.

Since then, however, this killer drug has swept through the nation and now has surfaced in central and western South Dakota where many of us feel insulated from drug epidemics and their fatal consequences. The drug, however, has the potential to sweep through a state like a plague. In New Hampshire, for example, the number of fentanyl-related deaths climbed from 145 to 283 from 2014 to 2015, according to the National Drug Early Warning System. The states population is only around 1.3 million people.

In Lawrence County, 37-year-old Eric Reeder now faces 20 felony charges, including two counts of first-degree manslaughter. Spearfish police said the suspect told them he ordered the fentanyl on the darknet and they were delivered to him. Also facing a first-degree manslaughter charge is 32-year-old Ashley Kristina Kuntz.

The Lawrence County Sheriffs Office, the Lawrence County States Attorneys Office and Spearfish police are to be congratulated for pursuing this case and seeking convictions on manslaughter charges. Its become all too clear that our ongoing war on drugs has become a lot tougher and the stakes are even higher.

It is a problem that requires an immediate and strong response from law enforcement. In the meantime, we all have a duty to report any suspected drug activity to law enforcement and to do everything possible to protect our families and loved ones from this devastating drug.

See original here:

War on drugs just got tougher - Watertown Public Opinion

Fresno Bee

Do you want better streets or a bigger 'war on drugs'? Fresno Bee President Richard Nixon did not see the slaughter of innocents when he launched the War on Drugs. Of course, his staff thought he did it to punish hippies, anti-war protesters and blacks. Politicians invent wars as diversionary tactics when they ...

Continue reading here:

Do you want better streets or a bigger 'war on drugs'? - Fresno Bee

Philippine Sen. Leila de Lima, a former human rights commissioner and one of President Rodrigo Duterte's most vocal opponents, waves to supporters after appearing at a court in suburban Manila on Feb. 24. She was arrested on drug-related charges that she denies. Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Philippine Sen. Leila de Lima, a former human rights commissioner and one of President Rodrigo Duterte's most vocal opponents, waves to supporters after appearing at a court in suburban Manila on Feb. 24. She was arrested on drug-related charges that she denies.

She has no phone, no laptop, no Internet and no air conditioning inside her cell. It's 93 degrees outside, but Leila de Lima looks remarkably composed.

The Philippine senator spends much of her time reading and attending to Senate business as best she can, though she isn't allowed to vote. De Lima, a 57-year-old grandmother, was imprisoned in February on President Rodrigo Duterte's orders, after poking the bear one too many times. The charges against her, which she denies, include taking money from jailed drug dealers.

The final straw for the mercurial and combative Duterte, de Lima believes, was her Senate investigation into the president's bloody war on drugs, which has left more than 7,000 dead since last summer in encounters with police and in so-called vigilante killings.

"I knew he was going to be pissed off and come after me," de Lima says. "He's very, very vindictive." But, she says, "I didn't imagine it would be this severe."

It's not the first time de Lima and Duterte have tangled. In fact, de Lima says, her incarceration is part of a "personal vendetta" by the president that started after she began an investigation of him in 2009, when she headed the Philippines Commission on Human Rights and he was mayor of Davao City.

De Lima was exploring Duterte's alleged links to the so-called Davao Death Squad that operated during his two decades as mayor. The group used tactics similar to those employed by police and vigilantes in Duterte's current bloody war on drugs. De Lima's investigation centered on more than 100 extrajudicial killings in Davao City, allegedly carried out by the death squad.

"He will never forget what I did investigating the Davao Death Squad," de Lima says. "It's very, very personal."

After Duterte's election as president, and de Lima's as senator, many including Duterte himself believed some sort of confrontation was inevitable. "Do not pick a fight with me," Duterte warned her in May 2016. "You will lose."

But as head of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, de Lima launched an investigation into Duterte's war on drugs on July 13, 2016.

"By that time, the killings had already started," she says. "By the second week in July, the body count was already approaching 1,000."

Duterte was livid.

"De Lima, you are finished," he declared at a news conference in Davao City a few weeks later.

He then embarked on a public campaign of shaming de Lima, who has admitted to having had a relationship with her former driver. Duterte accused de Lima of being an "immoral woman" who, during her time as the country's justice secretary, was "not only screwing her driver, she was screwing the nation."

Duterte also accused de Lima of taking bribes from drug dealers to finance her Senate campaign and suggested her best course of action might be to "hang herself."

But de Lima held her ground.

"If this is his way of stopping the Senate's investigation on the extrajudicial killings, he can try until he finally silences me or the Senate," she told reporters in August. "But I think it is already clear what is being done to me is what will happen to anyone who does not bow to the wishes of the president."

And it wasn't just the president, says Jose Manuel Diokno, the law school dean at Manila's De La Salle University and one of de Lima's lawyers.

"She really got it from the president himself and from everybody else in the government and from the trolls," he says. "And that included even a fake sex video and all of that, all designed for one thing, and that was to destroy her reputation."

De Lima's colleague, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, gets angry just thinking about it.

Duterte "seems to react disproportionately to women who challenge his version of reality," she says. "And it really validated the warning signs we'd had since the campaign about human rights and about women's rights. ... They did that through the very vicious online social media campaign against her ... and using aspects even of her personal life that, in a mature debate, should be off-limits."

Even more alarming, Hontiveros says, is that "after going after Sen. Leila, the trolls turned their attentions on Vice President Leni [Robredo], using similar voice, similar tactics and infrastructure and content generation and funding for their campaign also against the vice president."

Robredo has also been somewhat critical of the president and his methods.

As for de Lima, she remains unrepentant and unbowed in her jail cell at the Philippine National Police headquarters at Camp Crame, in metro Manila.

She isn't allowed to leave. But de Lima does get regular visits from her son and grandson. She denies all the charges against her and says she never took money from drug dealers.

"It's a demolition job," she insists, "orchestrated by the president."

Her lawyers are working to get her freed. "There is absolutely no basis for any of these allegations against her," Diokno says. The evidence he has seen is the "word of convicted criminals ... that won't stand up in court."

But no court date has been set, and de Lima isn't optimistic that she will be freed anytime soon.

For now, she has her food delivered from outside just in case.

"He's unstable," de Lima says of Duterte. "He's got a dark psychology."

Nevertheless, the president's approval rating is high between 75 percent and 80 percent, according to the latest opinion polls. This might help explain why there hasn't been much public outcry about de Lima's continued detention.

But the case has left many Filipinos wondering and worried: If this can happen to a sitting senator, what about ordinary people?

The answer may be found in the thousands of dead in the war on drugs to date. Almost all of them were ordinary Filipinos living in metro Manila's poorer neighborhoods. De Lima says that is one reason she has ended up in jail because of her outspokenness about their deaths.

"I won't be silenced or cowed," she says. "These extrajudicial killings have to stop."

Original post:

Jailed Philippine Senator: 'I Won't Be Silenced Or Cowed' - NPR

By David Cole and Marc Mauer By David Cole and Marc Mauer June 22 at 2:45 PM

David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Marc Mauer is executive director of the Sentencing Project.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is right to be concerned about recent increases in violent crime in some of our nations largest cities, as well as a tragic rise in drug overdoses nationwide [Lax drug enforcement means more violence, op-ed, June 18]. But there is little reason to believe that his response reviving the failed war on drugs and imposing more mandatory minimums on nonviolent drug offenders will do anything to solve the problem. His prescription contravenes a growing bipartisan consensus that the war on drugs has not worked. And it would exacerbate mass incarceration, the most pressing civil rights problem of the day.

Sessionss first mistake is to conflate correlation and causation. He argues that the rise in murder rates in 2015 was somehow related to his predecessor Eric Holders August 2013 directive scaling back federal prosecutions in lower-level drug cases. That policy urged prosecutors to reserve the most serious charges for high-level offenses. Holder directed them to avoid unnecessarily harsh mandatory minimum sentences for defendants whose conduct involved no actual or threatened violence, and who had no leadership role in criminal enterprises or gangs, no substantial ties to drug trafficking organizations and no significant criminal history. (Mandatory minimums can lead to draconian sentences, as in the case of Ramona Brant, a first-time offender sentenced to life imprisonment for her part in distributing drugs at the direction of an abusive boyfriend). Individuals who met the stringent criteria of Holders policy would still be prosecuted, but they would be spared overly long mandatory minimums. Sessions offers no evidence that this policy caused the recent spikes in violent crime or drug overdoses. There are three reasons to doubt that there is any significant connection between the two.

First, federal prosecutors handle fewer than 10 percent of all criminal cases, so a modest change in their charging policy with respect to a subset of drug cases is unlikely to have a nationwide impact on crime. The other 90 percent of criminal prosecution is conducted by state prosecutors, who were not affected by Holders policy.

Second, the few individuals who benefited from Holders policy by definition lacked a sustained history of crime or violence or any connections to major drug traffickers.

Third, the increases in violent crime that Sessions cites are not nationally uniform, which one would expect if they were attributable to federal policy. In 2015, murder rates rose in Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore, to be sure. But they declined in Boston and El Paso, and stayed relatively steady in New York, Las Vegas, Detroit and Atlanta. If federal drug policy were responsible for the changes, we would not see such dramatic variances from city to city.

Nor is there any evidence that increases in drug overdoses have anything to do with shorter sentences for a small subset of nonviolent drug offenders in federal courts. Again, the vast majority of drug prosecutions are in state court under state law and are unaffected by the attorney generals policies. And the rise in drug overdoses is a direct result of the opioid and related heroin epidemics, which have been caused principally by increased access to prescription painkillers from doctors and pill mills. That tragic development calls for treatment of addicts and closer regulation of doctors, not mandatory minimums imposed on street-level drug sellers, who are easily replaced in communities that have few lawful job opportunities.

Most disturbing, Sessions seems to have no concern for the fact that the United States leads the world in incarceration; that its prison population is disproportionately black, Hispanic and poor; or that incarceration inflicts deep and long-lasting costs on the very communities most vulnerable to crime in the first place. As of 2001, 1 of every 3 black male babies born that year could expect to be imprisoned in his lifetime, and while racial disparities have been modestly reduced since then, African Americans are still a disproportionate share of the prison population. Mass incarceration has disrupted families, created even greater barriers to employment and increased the likelihood that the next generation of children will themselves be incarcerated. Advocates as diverse as the Koch brothers and George Soros, the Center for American Progress and Americans for Tax Reform, the American Civil Liberties Union and Right on Crime agree that we need to scale back the harshness of our criminal justice system.

Rather than expanding the drug war, Sessions would be smarter to examine local conditions that influence crime and violence, including policing strategies, availability of guns, community engagement and concentrated poverty. Responding to those underlying problems, and restoring trust through consent decrees that reduce police abuse, hold considerably more promise of producing public safety. Sessionss revival of the failed policies of the past, by contrast, has little hope of reducing violent crime or drug overdoses.

Visit link:

Jeff Sessions wants a new war on drugs. It won't work. - Washington Post