Common Dreams: "The Bush administration yesterday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a federal appellate court ruling protecting medical marijuana patients and caregivers from prosecution by the federal government. If the high court agrees to take the case, the safety and well-being of tens of thousands of patients in states that have enacted medical marijuana laws will hang in the balance. The case, known as Ashcroft v. Raich, was funded in part by the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). Angel McClary Raich suffers constant pain from an inoperable brain tumor. Last year, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the 'cultivation, possession, and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and not for exchange or distribution is ...not a matter of federal concern.' " But, as ever, the increasingly intrusive Bush government wants to make it their business and if they have their way, help to make Raich's final days a living hell.

"The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Tuesday a ruling that the government cannot revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who recommend medical marijuana to sick patients. Without any comment, the justices rejected a Bush administration appeal of the ruling that bars the government from punishing and from even investigating a doctor's conduct because of a recommendation that a patient use marijuana... [Perjurer] General Theodore Olson of the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court and said the decision impaired the government's power 'to enforce the law in an area vital to the public health and safety.' He said the appeals court decision imposed 'sweeping and unprecedented restrictions on the government's ability even to investigate possible violations of the law.' Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union... opposed the appeal. They called the government policy censorship of speech covered by the physician-patient relationship."

Former drug war advocate Forest Tennant "concedes that only a small percentage of drug users become addicted, that the drug laws are not very effective at preventing abuse, and that any increase in addiction that follows the repeal of prohibition is apt to be small.... Tennant says the 9-11 attacks had a big impact on his thinking about drug policy. He recognized that the connection between drugs and terrorism, cited by the government to justify the war on drugs, was actually a consequence of prohibition, which makes the drug trade a highly lucrative business and delivers it into the hands of criminals. 'We've got to take the profit out of it.'... Tennant is also troubled by the impact that U.S. drug policy has on countries such as Colombia, where it empowers thugs and guerillas, sows violence, undermines law and order, and wreaks havoc on the economy. And he believes the war on drugs has fostered systemic corruption in the United States. 'We need to try something different,' he says."

AP reports: "Ed Rosenthal, the self-proclaimed 'Guru of Ganja,' walked free Wednesday after a federal judge sentenced him to one day in prison for a marijuana conviction. Rosenthal, 58, was found guilty in February of growing more than 100 plants in an Oakland warehouse and could have faced as much as 60 years behind bars. Rosenthal had argued his actions were legal under a 1996 law passed by California voters that permits marijuana use for medical purposes. He also said he was acting as an agent for the city of Oakland's medical marijuana program. But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer did not allow the jury to hear those arguments. The jury found Rosenthal guilty of marijuana cultivation, but several jurors later said they would have acquitted him if they had known he was growing the plants for patients in Oakland."

NORML's Paul Armentano writes: "Numbers never lie. Or do they? With government, it's simply a matter of who's keeping the books... Last year, Congress earmarked nearly $19 billion -- nearly twice what it spent on military operations in Afghanistan -- to enforce U.S. drug laws. This year's totals, however, are remarkably different. According to the White House's 2003 'National Drug Control Strategy,' released in February, the Bush administration will now only spend some $11.2 billion fighting drugs. How can this be?... On closer inspection, it's clear that this year's supposed belt-tightening is only illusory. Thanks to new Enron-styled accounting procedures initiated by the White House, America's drug war costs a lot less than it used to -- at least on paper." The War on Drugs is a scam, with the Bush Family playing both ends against the middle. While BushDaddy's CIA collaborates with Drug Cartels, BushBuddies like George Wackenhut make out with for-profit prisons, and cheap labor.

Dean E. Murphy reports for the NY Times: "A federal jury [in California]...found the author of marijuana books and advice columns, Ed Rosenthal, guilty of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy. Under mandatory sentencing laws, Mr. Rosenthal faces a minimum of five years in prison. Mr. Rosenthal, 58, who admitted to growing the plants for distribution under California's medicinal marijuana law, known as Proposition 215, called the verdict a 'terrible decision' and vowed to fight it. His lawyers said they would prepare motions for a new trial immediately. 'What the federal government is trying to do is destroy Prop 215 and eliminate medical marijuana from California,' Mr. Rosenthal said. Proposition 215 'will outlive the Bush administration, it will outlive Ashcroft and it will outlive all of these cruel people who want to stop people from getting their medicine.'"

Alex Johnson reports for MSNBC: "John Walters, director of the drug policy office, also barnstormed the country in the final weeks giving speeches in states where statewide or local ballot measures were in play. The Marijuana Policy Project filed a formal complaint with the Office of Special Counsel this week seeking Walters' removal for allegedly violating federal regulations limiting government officials' involvement in political campaigns. Critics also accused him of diverting federal money earmarked for drug treatment and addiction-prevention programs to the political effort. 'He broke the law by using the authority of his office to conduct a political campaign, and it was absolutely a campaign of lies and distortions designed to frighten people,' Mirken said... Experts said the larger legal-marijuana movement should build on its success selling the idea of medical marijuana to the public."

From Slate: "One Reason For the ballot-box failure may have been the full-throttle, anti-marijuana campaign tour by White House Drug Czar John P. Walters. Walters, whose official title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, inveighed against the demon weed in campaign swings through Ohio, Arizona, and Nevada (twice). At the heart of Walters' sermon: 'It is not your father's marijuana.' Today's users, he claims, confront pot that's up to 30 times stronger than what aging baby boomers smoked...In an early September op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Walters wrote: 'In 1974, the average THC content of marijuana was less than 1 percent. But by 1999, potency averaged 7 percent.' This is plain wrong. According to the federal government's own Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, 1999's average was 4.56 percent. Referring to Walters' 7 percent figure, Dr. Mahmoud A. ElSohly, who runs the project, says, 'That's not correct for an overall average.'"

What does a patrician Republican NY state senator have in common with the African-American grandmother whose son is doing hard time for selling cocaine? Salon.com reports: "They're part of a growing grass-roots movement to reform New York's drug laws, which are among the nation's harshest. In New York state, first-time, nonviolent drug offenders routinely receive higher sentences than rapists and murderers....There are roughly 21,000 people now serving drug sentences in New York state prisons, constituting about a third of the state's inmate population. Though studies show that most drug users and drug sellers are white, 94 percent of New York's drug inmates are black and Latino...."Noelle Bush forges a prescription and goes to rehab...if that was my daughter, she would have gotten a mandatory five-year sentence" says Teresa Aviles, a 54-year-old Bronx police clerk whose son, Isidro, died of an untreated, undiagnosed illness after serving eight years of a 27-year federal prison term."

Jason Bennetto from the Independent writes, "Britain is expected to be hit by a flood of heroin after a gigantic increase in the production of opium in Afghanistan, the United Nations will warn today. A UN survey estimates the farmers will grow 2,700 tons of opium this year compared with 185 tons in 2001, a 1,400 per cent jump. In July 2000, the Taliban government banned farmers from growing the opium poppies, but since the regime was toppled, production of the lucrative crop has resumed. Afghanistan is the source of 75 per cent of the world's heroin and 90 per cent of Britain's supply. Evidence suggests heroin supplies to western Europe had been running low, an international drugs conference in Paris will be told." Let's see, no bin Laden, no Mullah Omar, lost freedoms, and now more drugs. Great war on terrorism, Dubya. NOT!

The US is obsessed with keeping drugs out of schools and out of sports. But the military is turning fighter pilots into drug addicts in order to fight wars - which may be responsible for "collateral damage", according to the Toronto Star. "U.S. jet fighter pilots, responsible for at least 10 deadly 'friendly fire' accidents in the Afghanistan war, have regularly been given amphetamines to fly longer hours. Then when they return to base, the pilots are given sedatives by air force doctors to help them sleep, before beginning the whole cycle again on the next mission, often less than 12 hours later... The U.S. Air Force Surgeon-General's Office in Washington confirmed pilots are given the stimulant Dexedrine, generically known as dextroamphetamine, to stay alert during combat missions in Afghanistan. Pilots refer to Dexedrine as 'go-pills.' The sleeping pills they are given, called Ambien (zolpidem) and Restoril (temazepam), are referred to as 'no-go pills.'"

"The only place in the world that seems to have the right idea about how to handle the drug problem is the Netherlands. There is no 'War on Drugs' there, because the Dutch do not see the need to wage war against a sector of their own population. Rather, drugs are a social problem, and the focus there is on humanizing drug addicts, not demonizing them as we do in America. The Dutch way seems to be working. The famous coffeeshops that pepper many Dutch towns hold the secret. In the coffeeshops you can buy literally dozens of kinds of marijuana. The police do not see these shops or their customers as a threat, and they let the cannabis trade take its course. The police can shut down a coffeeshop cannabis operation at any time if the coffeeshop sells more than a few grams per customer, and if cannabis is sold to underage clients...cocaine and heroin are not huge problems because the Dutch have been effective in educating their citizens on the perils of hard drug addiction."

Writes Keiler Hook: "The war on drugs funds corruption and terrorism; prohibition drives up the cost of illegal drugs 17,000 percent. We make millionaires of terrorists and drug dealers by our drug policies. Hey, at least we do fill our prisons with nonviolent offenders, a great tribute to our justice system. The drug war has been a failure. Reform of this policy would reduce harm from drugs. Instead this policy harms everyone, even nonusers; invading our lives, from our pocketbooks to our privacy. Many jobs in this country will not hire you without taking a drug test. Adults have to pee into a jar so that other adults can check what they have consumed. Corporations quiz potential employees with questions that target not only the use of drugs, but one's feeling about the use of drugs. Why have we let the government do this to us? Where has our freedom of choice gone? We disagree with the War on Drugs and these corporations do not hire us. The government has encouraged these policies."

According to George W. Bush's new anti drug commercials, if you ever smoked pot at a party you are a murderer just like Osama Bin Laden. Well George, looking back at your past drug use, you are a terrorist by your own standards. Add to this, the CIA's connection with the Bush family to the Iran Contra criminal activity and your appointing Otto Reich, who is a known terrorist, this makes you the biggest terrorist in America. Does this policy apply to Bushies and people who are upper class cokeheads and people who call in and falsify drug prescriptions or just lower class crackheads and 1960 liberal potheads? Are you, your kids, your niece, and your sister going to turn yourself in for harboring terrorists and causing 9/11? When will your face appear on an ad in your new ad campaign?

Arianna Huffington writes that Bush's anti-drug "ads make it seem like the next logical step in the war on terrorism is dropping Daisy Cutters on America's high schools and shipping teenage drug users off to Guantanamo Bay. With 54% of high school seniors admitting they've used illicit drugs, it's going to get awfully crowded down in Cuba. [But] bin Laden and al-Qaida used tens of millions of dollars in profits from the diamond industry to fund their operations. So how come we didn't see a commercial with a woman, say, a senator's wife, fingering the diamonds on her sparkling tennis bracelet and admitting: 'I helped kids learn how to kill'? And, given the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers, and most of the detainees in Cuba, came from Saudi Arabia -- where the ruling family, glutted with oil profits, has coddled extremists for decades -- why no taxpayer-funded ad showing a soccer mom filling up her SUV and saying: 'I helped blow up buildings'?" What about Pat Robertson and his diamond mine interests?

"To President [sic] Bush: I'm writing to express my disappointment that $3.2 million were spent on misguided, anti-drug ads, aired during the Super Bowl, when important drug treatment and rehabilitation programs remain under funded.. It makes no sense for the government to buy the most expensive airtime there is to air spots that seem designed mainly to link the popular War on Terrorism with the unpopular War on Drugs. Only a third of federal anti-drug money is earmarked for prevention and treatment programs -- even though waiting lists for treatment programs are so long as to be cruel. Yet out of these limited funds, your administration spent $3.2 million to air two 30-second commercials. By almost any measure, the United States' War on Drugs continues to be an abject failure... I urge you stop the ad campaign and reallocate the money to proven treatment programs." Sign the letter!

"The Drug Enforcement Administration, under the direction of Asa Hutchinson…has announced rules to ban certain brands of a wide variety of foods – 'beer, cheese, coffee, corn chips, energy drink, flour, ice cream, snack bars, salad oil, soda and veggie burgers' -- if they contain trace amounts of THC [hempseed/hempseed oil]…Says the DEA: 'If you wish to err on the side of caution, you may freely dispose of the product. As stated in the rules that DEA published on Oct. 9, 2001, anyone who has purchased a food or beverage product that contains THC has 120 days (until Feb. 6, 2002) to dispose of the product without penalty under federal law.'" Will they next ban chocolate? After all, eating 25 lbs. of chocolate will result in a marijuana-like buzz (per the NIMH). Once again Republicans are hypocrites, most recently about Big Government. Asa 'Hempseed Madness' Hutchinson belongs with kooks like Donald 'Star Wars' Rumsfeld and Gale 'Magic Ice Roads' Norton.

Shrub's choice to lead the fight against drugs, John Walters, certainly reflects Shrub's own character. He is as reactionary as a hypocritical Victorian era missionary, viciously hawkish, wants to fill our jails with everyone who so much as looks like they may have sniffed pot in the past 24 hours, and is unabashedly racist. He is just the sort of man to turn the war on drugs into Armageddon, leaving no winners, only devastation, in its wake. Now a coalition of civil rights and drug reform groups are launching a campaign to prevent Walters' nomination from being approved. One of the key tip offs to Walters' real colors came in May, when he told the 'Weekly Standard' (a rightwing rag) that everything would be just fine if we could explode the following "myths"…that we lock up too many people merely for possession, that criminal penalties for minor offenses are too stiff, and that young black men are unfairly treated by the criminal justice system.

"Bush is expected to name Representative Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican with a long interest in drug issues, as the new head of the Drug Enforcement Administration...Mr. Hutchinson…was one of the House managers in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton." Said Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy: "It generally looks like more of the same." Yes indeed -- the War on Drugs is a Bush/CIA racket that plays both ends against the middle -- with the cartels and their (Bush CIA) allies the clear winners. While CIA and DEA agents ostensibly fight the War on Drugs in Latin American jungles -- the CIA gets its hands dirty. Back in the US, addicts are driven to crimes of desperation due to exorbitant prices caused by prohibition. And draconian drug laws send users to prisons, where they serve as a super cheap source of labor for the Prison-Industrial complex -- that includes for-profit prisons run by Bush backers like Wackenhut Inc. (See "copvcia.com" for more)

"Bush's introduction of a new drug czar with a reputation for favoring crop eradication in the Andes over treatment in US cities included surprising remarks from Bush about the need to 'reduce demand' by curing users of their addiction. This contradiction left observers of the nation's drug problem wondering exactly what Bush's intentions are…Like so many Bush appointees, the new man, John P. Walters, served in the administration of Bush's father" under then-Drug Czar Bill Bennett. Walters and Bennett used their office to moralize against drug use, rather than to treat it as a health problem. Is it any wonder that the UN just tossed us off of the Drug Committee? We now have the Bush Crime Family back in power. The Bushes have long been suspected of working both sides of the fence, especially through CIA activities with the drug cartels. Bush Daddy's CIA finally admitted to at least tolerating Contra drug trafficking. Contra crack flooded US streets in the 1980's.

"The United States said on Saturday its own anti-drug surveillance plane located U.S. missionaries for the Peruvian Air Force jet that shot them down over the Amazon jungle, killing an American woman and her baby, saying they were mistaken for drug smugglers." Those killed were Ronni Bowers of the Harrisburg, PA-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and her daughter Charity. "The State Department spokesman said the U.S. aircraft was in the area as part of a long-standing U.S. program to support anti-drug efforts in Peru, involving the State Department, CIA, Defense Department, Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies." Bush Daddy's CIA is still "fighting" the drug war, even though the CIA finally admitted to its complicity in contra drug trafficking (see www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html).

"John Walters, a hard-liner who was former drug czar William Bennett's deputy during the first Bush administration, has emerged as the leading candidate to become director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy." The article continues that "the Bennett-Walters drug office was characterized by widespread use of the bully pulpit to issue harsh moral condemnations of users of illegal drugs, little distinction between marijuana and drugs like heroin and cocaine and an emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation. Walters and Bennett also made a decision to stop the longtime practice of representing drug use as a health matter, arguing that doing so made drug users too sympathetic." Since leaving the ONDCP, "Walters, who has taught political science at several universities, is president of the conservative group The New Citizenship Project, which advocates an enhanced role for religion in American public life." In 1998, Richard Mellon Scaife gave $77K to the New Citizenship Project.

"The Bush administration will enforce a previously ignored law that denies financial aid to college students with drug convictions. Hundreds of thousands of applicants who did not answer a drug conviction question on their applications were not denied aid during the Clinton administration, despite the law saying they should have been. Now, failure to answer the question will result in rejection of the application...Critics say the law unfairly punishes less wealthy applicants because they are the ones who need financial aid and encourages people with drug convictions to lie." Said Shawn Heller, director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy: "If they tell the truth, they're not going to get their aid; but if they lie, they are going to get their aid. It sets a terrible example." Meanwhile, "Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has filed a bill to overturn it." Given the substantial allegations of Bush's habitual drug use and scrubbed drug arrests -- can you say hypocrite?

Mexico's president has dropped a bombshell before next month's Summit of the Americas by telling Mexican newspapers that legalizing drugs is the only way to win the expensive and bloody war against narcotics trafficking. Crossing a line Latin American leaders traditionally do not tread, President Vicente Fox speculated in weekend interviews with two Mexican newspapers that the only way to win the war against drugs was by legalizing them and, thereby, eliminating the profit-motive and violence that goes with illegal trafficking.