Recently in Vermont a Democratic group hosted Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand. Sand brought refreshing dialogue on the failure of the War on Drugs. He made many comparisons to the war in Iraq saying, both were based on deliberately misleading the public, and neither had a foreseeable end in sight.
comparing things to the War in Iraq is a great way to raise discussions on subjects, especially the War on Drugs. The difference between the two is one is a total failure in the eyes of the public based on the facts they have seen, and the other is a total failure based on the facts the public isn't allowed to see.
Sand also noted, "Addiction is up, violence is up, government expenditures are up, and access to drugs is up."
Of the four people participating in the discussion, only Hartford Police Chief Glen Cutting, he noted a three point approach to controlling drugs. They are education, treatment, enforcement. With the market of supply and demand second to none Marijuana and other drugs aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The idea that the "Just Say No" mentality is keeping children safer is a total sham. Not teaching children the truth and factual information about drugs is a very dangerous coin to flip. This reality motivated the start up of a Harm Reduction Center here at FPC that will becoming perfected in the coming weeks.
Then ofcoarse you have the failure of the enforcement part of the plan. Its easier for a child to get marijuana then cigarettes. Maybe this should lighten many up to what's really going on, just because you scare away the drug dealers from being near schools with harsh mandatory minimum sentencing doesn't stop the children from procuring what they wish to spend there allowance money on.
Thankfully Vermont and New Hampshire are taking the "Maine" approach by decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. Now this may not sound like much but, every time we write a piece of paper as opposed to lock someone in a jail cell money will be coming in as opposed to flowing out.

A semester after being named outstanding chapter for a small college, SSDP is ready to keep the fun and facts comming. Soon we will be opening a Harm Reduction Center in the middle of our campus center. This will provide factual drug safety information, Peer counseling with qualified trained students, and just somewhere people can go to see what we are really all about. Also this semester we are hoping to do a forum with Keene Democrat Charles Weed about the marijuana and hemp bills he is sponsoring in the State legislature. This semester will also feature our first Hempfest, this is going to be a great event with bands and speakers from across New England comming out in support of NH's discussion on failed marijuana policy. Also we will be Co-sponsoring a screening of the ACLU & Flex Your Rights video "Busted: A citizens guide to police encounters". This passed unanimously in the SGA and we hope to bring the knowledge of constitutional rights

Recently I have been following the media from many perspectives around the bill going through the NH legislator that would end criminal penalties for the possession and sale of Marijuana. New Hampshire's Legislature spent 3 hours in committee hearings over the bill last Wensday. Two of the men who spoke were from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Officer Bradley Jardis was originally scheduled to speak here at Franklin Pierce last semester. However LEAP Executive Director Jack Cole, also the second member of LEAP at the hearing last week, came to and spoke to a packed room.
New Hampshire papers have taken different spins on it, a Laconia paper featured an Editorial stating
"There is no substantive reason to tinker with the law against the sale and use of marijuana and we trust the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee will find the bill "inexpedient to legislate."

Then ofcoarse you could go with the World Health Organization who stated in their March 1998 report on Cannabis,
"there are good reasons for saying that [the risks from cannabis] would be unlikely to seriously [compare to] the public health risks of alcohol and tobacco even if as many people used cannabis as now drink alcohol or smoke tobacco."

So I guess we can call that a point in favor of legalization.

Then again our own government said that the social policy around marijuana wasn't working in a 1972 report commissioned by Richard Nixon.
""Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it. This judgment is based on prevalent use patterns, on behavior exhibited by the vast majority of users and on our interpretations of existing medical and scientific data. This position also is consistent with the estimate by law enforcement personnel that the elimination of use is unattainable."

Now 30 years after this report marijuana possession arrests made up 780,000 of the total 1.8 million drug arrests in the US in 2005

There are those papers out there that took it to the facts and quoted Officer Jardis well. Then you get opinion pieces out there that did not even feature the officers commentary to the hearing. Trying to force opinions on people that are based on propaganda doesn't help democracy prosper.

Rep. Charles Weed (D-Keane) is presenting a progressive piece of legislation that will do more good then harm. Every time a squad car is on patrol ,instead of driving marijuana smokers back to the station, the public will be that much safer.

Today I came across a Nashua Telegraph Editorial.

Its about the Grow ops that were Recently busted in the Granite state.
"Law enforcement agencies last week seized 11 expensive houses in New Hampshire that were being used to grow marijuana."

The editor made a good point in his Conclusion at the beginning of the piece.
"These pot growing operations are disturbing because they show that organized crime has managed to gain a foothold in the Granite State. "

People should really be looking at the Cause and Effect relationship between these grow ops and Marijuana prohibition as a whole, undeniably the reason these grow ops are being set up in the first place.

" Law enforcement agencies seized 11 expensive homes in Andover, Pembroke, Concord, Canterbury, Hopkinton, Weare and other communities and confiscated 7,000 high-quality marijuana plants. The police called it the biggest drug bust in state history.
"

The largest bust in state history?? The "Live Free or Die State," was not exactly known for its cultivation, being dwarfed by Vermont to the west, and even Massachusetts to the south ,which has its number one cash crop listed as marijuana. Now one bust later this is being seen as a "Major" problem. Well i hate to be the one to break it to all of the good people in New Hampshire but the problem is not the Marijuana, its who is growing it.

Right now if these houses had not been raided there crop could of ended up scattered all over the area. This scattering comes with things like untaxed profits, and the risk of marijuana ending up in the hands of children. Both of these being side effects of prohibition.

These Grow ops according to the DEA, are "often run by groups of Vietnamese or Hispanic people or by motorcycle gangs, but freelancers operate them as well." Its nice to see the DEA pointing out the racial disparities in the drug trade, and by that I mean the ones being caught aren't white. Well except for the Motorcycle Gangs.

With pounds of these buds Supposedly worth 3,000 to 4,000 dollars, the reality of ending marijuana growing in the area anytime soon with a profit margin like that is unrealistic. This Margin is also an effect of Prohibition. The risks even with these 11 houses going down are minimal, this being proven by the fact the largest bust in state history was just 11 houses.

As we keep enforcing these silly laws think to yourself why people are selling marijuana and the dangers that come with certain types of people profiting off of an industry where the demands for high quality product are always high. With Minimal Risks, Tons of Cash, and supreme head stash would you? The third being the least scientific of the three.

The Editorial concluded with this paragraph.

"As long as an enormous amount of money can be made by manufacturing illegal substances, greedy or desperate people will make them. Last week's arrests put a dent in the supply and let organized crime know that New Hampshire's on the lookout. But the drug busts were more frightening than consoling because they suggest that not only can organized crime operate here, but that it does."

How do you make the Columbian ecological disaster funded by the US tax payer funded that much more of a Failure?

This Article from the Miami Herald is about DEA leaks in Columbia. Essentially not only are we destroying a nations Rain Forrest, but we are letting them waste US dollars on a failed corrupt plan to curve cocaine production. The plausibility of controlling a country that does not even have control of itself is nothing new to the US, and of coarse the neighbors hate us.

"BOGOTA - The former director of Colombia's FBI, known as DAS, ordered that
information compromising agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration be leaked to drug traffickers, former DAS official Rafael Garcia
has told government investigators.

Garcia, once chief of DAS' computer systems, confirmed to El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview from prison that he has told Supreme Court investigators that Jorge Noguera ordered him to deliver the information to the traffickers. "

Your probably wondering how difficult it is to steal operational plans from the DEA, well its actually much simpler then you think. All you need is a smile, a position in Columbian FBI (DAS), and a USB jump drive.

There is money for everyone in Columbian cocaine market, especially government officials willing to give the slip on the DEA. Yet we continue to push money into this region that just continues to destroy the Rain Forrest. The more DEA planes drop there herbicide, then the farther into the Forrest the growers have to go. This is just a never ending cycle of deforestation.

They aren't only letting the Cartels know what is going on, but they are helping them disappear.

"He delivered the information from late 2002 until late 2004, Garcia said, when he was fired from the DAS on charges that he had deleted the records of drug traffickers from DAS computers. "

Columbia is a spider web of corruption because Americans love coke, not because of the farmer on the hillside going blind because of the DEA spraying. As a country we need to devolp our own way of dealing with the disease of addiction.

Maybe the Colombians will get sick of the DEA destroying there country and look to America's newest drug niche "The Acid Drought".

In the recent elections marijuana initiatives came up across the country. There is a lot of misguided views on exactly why people are putting so much time and money into this cause. If the US government were to legalize and regulate marijuana it would immediately save us 10 to 14 billion dollars a year. This is according to visiting Harvard professor, Dr. Jeffrey Miron's 2005 report on the subject or Marijuana regulation. The report was endorsed by over 500 respected economists. The Marijuana Policy Project based out of DC has said that money could secure all of the former Soviet Union's "Loose Nukes" within 3 years. As national security budgets continue to increase, wouldn't it be nice to free up some tax dollars. Politicians on both sides are afraid to touch the issue unless they are in numbers, which was seen with the override of a governors veto in Rhode Island. Medical Marijuana is another issue completely, that being an issue of compassion and science. A DEA judge one called it one of the safest natural therapeutic substances known to man. Federal courts have said doctors are allowed to talk to patients about it if they think it might be useful, but cant "Prescribe" it. I just don't understand the sense in this. Every year marijuana possession arrests are going up, and leading all other drug arrests combined. Amazingly in perspective most arrest made in the War on Drugs are for a substance nobody has ever overdosed on. So it comes down to how responsible Americans are going to want to see the money they put into this country work.

The SSDP "Just Say Know" conference in DC was one of the best experiences I have had in a long time. On Friday we went and met with our congressmen I was lucky enough to have three. Meeting with John Tierney, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy's staffers was really empowering for myself and the other members of my group. Friday night featured the SSDP congress, during which we went over ideas that will bring the organization into the future.
The drug war education day was also excellent. It featured some of the best speakers I have ever seen at a conference including Bill Press from MSNBC and syndicated Chicago Tribune Columnist Clarence Page. They spoke on the way that the media covers the war on drugs, and coming from to people who have been so successful in the industry they were critiquing really put it into perspective. That Night was the awards ceremony and we didn't leave empty handed. Jon Perri won Student Activist of the Year, he deserves it not many people in this movement are as dedicated as he is. Jon also got elected to the Board of directors. The other award we took home was Outstanding Chapter for a small college. This was a great thing for all the dedicated kids up at FPC. To be able to stand in front of my peers and to be awarded for my passion was an awesome experience.
Sunday was Activist Training day. I had the privilege of attending an Advanced Media workshop with former Democratic National committee press Secretary Terry Micheal. He was amazing and explained what has to be done to get the Newspapers and other media outlets to care about drug policy. He was very interesting and talked about Op-eds he has written about Neo-prohibitionist thinking and the failure of the drug policy movement to take initiative in critiquing the coverage of newspapers.
This conference was awesome and I'm looking to spend the summer in DC on an internship. Thanks to everyone who has supported SSDP over the past year. The amount of support and strength of our friendships has truly dimmed out the negativity on this campus.