Quote:As Charles Siragusa's memoirs show, the U.S. has long attempted to carry out its anti-drug activities in other countries and to have its favoured policies and programs implemented abroad. It has also worked doggedly to block other countries from trying any drug policy not in line with its own strict-prohibition approach.
Thus the US drug czar keeps bopping up north as Canada moves to decriminalize pot. Last visit, he suggested Canada was had a 'moral duty' to abide by previous agreements. He didn't mention the ABM treat in this conversation.
(Pinching Max's cute li'l cheek...)
yeah, dys, makes a person not even care about reading, either backward or forward........sigh..........good night to sit and watch the lights.......good music? Leonard Cohen, In My Secret Life............
Now about the drug czar.........whatever that man is up to, he should be trotted out and bullied in front of his peers.
Sorry, Blatham, I'm trying to take the subject seriously, but......well, later, ok?
In the late '60s, my Dad, retired from The Military, was employed as Senior Counsel with The Siagusa Comittee. I had occasion to meet Charley Siragusa many times. He looked sort of like a white haired version of Ben Stiller from The Seinfeld Show. He had a wierd, almost squeaky voice. He wore good suits poorly, Aqua Velva, a couple of gaudy rings, wing-tip shoes, and a cheap wristwatch. His sense of humor took a decidedly politically-incorrect turn when cocktailed. He took himself quite seriously, and he took considerable affront if anyone else in the room failed to. He was rude to waiters. On many of my encounters with the gentleman, I was amused that Charley never had any idea how stoned I was at those dinners. Some of the conversation was fascinating.
The juicy bits often involved ideologic foes. But mostly, they pretty much all stuck to business or to politics. There are some very odd skeletons in some very stuffy closets.
timber
Hee hee...
btw, I think you mean Jerry Stiller. Ben's the young un.
Yeah ... Jerry .... wasn't that "Stiller and Meara" ... his first act?
timber
Yup. Anne Meara is Ben's mom.
i may not have the facts as clear as i would like but i saw a program on PBS about a family that had legal authority to use pot for medical reasons in California but were being harassed by Federal Narcs so they moved to Canada and if i understand it correctly the US is trying to extradite them back for prosecution.
timber
You're a fount of information. And possibly a good source for quality smoke.
dys...yes, the lady you speak of lives on one of the islands off the coast here. I don't recall the specifics of the case (growing for medicinal use, I think) and the US is spending a lot of time trying to get her back for prosecution.
Just tonight on PBS I saw something about Colombia. Seems the USA spends the most money in foreign aid on Colombia, mostly to the military for waging a war on drugs, except that the military itself is closely tied with the rebel group most successful in growing and distributing drugs.
It's seemed to me for years (while raising three kids with an eagle eye on how they seemed when they got home - forgetting about my own youth) that we've been going about this all wrong. Make something forbidden fruit - and it quickly becomes very desireable. We should take a look at patterns of behavior in history. After all, cocoa was considered a drung among the Aztecs.
Drooling, red-eyed, feather-bedecked, cocoa-crazed hellions running amoc, ripping the beating hearts from their hapless victims .... It's not Columbia we should worry about, its Nestles.
timber
The issue of "go pills" and "sleep pills" so that pilots can do their jobs has me reeling. I was married to a Naval Aviator for four years he flew many missions in Viet Nam, was an instructor at Pensacola, and a Aviation Recruiter. Now I was around these people for a long time and I hear lots of stories re combat flying etc. Not once did anyone ever mention "pills" now according the DOD they were used in Viet Nam this issue must have been highly classified.
And I have to add that these guys were drinking as well, yes folks they drink on air craft carriers, at least the officer's do and that was no secret. In fact Admiral Morrison (Jim's dad) was my husband air group commander and he used to issue special little cards for a 00 landing saying, "I owe you one martini at the Cubi O club". I still have a couple of them so now we are talking taking pills to stay awake, taking pills to go to sleep, and drinking condoned openly at that time by high level commanders.
Who is it that said we do not posion our own people?
In my opinion, I think that making such a big deal of drugs makes it more desirable for people. I know that when I was young I did my share of experimenting and I remember the biggest thrill was that it was illegal. That's just the way young people think.
Vancouver, my home city, recently completed a mayorality election. The candidate who won (by a large margin) had been a coroner here and had for many years been vocal on matters of drug policy. In the election, his campaign relied mainly on his promise to establish a 'harm reduction strategy' as the best way to approach the problems associated with drug use. In the week preceding that election, the US drug czar caught a plane to Vancouver to tell we locals that, for example, marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin and a couple of other things. We listened politely, and offered a ride back to the airport. But, speeches, however silly and lacking credibility, are not all that will be going on between the US and Canada on these issues.
Quote:More disquieting than high-level American policies is the use of quiet pressure tactics. One such tactic was used in Australia in 1996.
For the most part, Australia has followed the orthodox drug policies favoured by the U.S., but high levels of heroin addiction, along with the threat of AIDS, have fostered a strong movement in Australia toward the so-called "harm reduction" approach. This is the idea that the top goal of drug policy shouldn't necessarily be to reduce drug use, but to reduce the harms done by drug use -- even if that requires easing the ban on drug possession. One harm-reduction policy is "heroin maintenance," in which serious heroin addicts who haven't been able to break their addiction are prescribed legal heroin. Heroin maintenance has been shown in some studies to lead to dramatic decreases in deaths by overdose and in crimes committed by addicts. There have been equally dramatic increases in health and employment. With their lives in some semblance of order, addicts are often better able to voluntarily reduce their drug use and even kick their addiction -- both of which happen at far greater rates than without heroin maintenance.
Australia began considering a heroin maintenance trial project in the early 1990s. By 1996, it was a serious proposal being reviewed by several committees of health experts.
That year, Bill Clinton's top international drug enforcer, Bob Gelbard, flew to the Australian state of Tasmania. Officially, Mr. Gelbard went to inspect the state's opium poppy industry, an operation licensed by the UN to produce morphine and codeine for medical use. While in Tasmania, Mr. Gelbard invited the members of a state committee considering the heroin maintenance trial to speak with him.
Dr. David Pennington, a respected Australian expert on drugs and the chair of the committee meeting with the American, recalls that Mr. Gelbard was "very courteous" but emphatic that it would be a terrible mistake for Australia to deviate from "the straight, hard-line position." Mr. Gelbard, says Dr. Pennington, made it "clear that the State Department considered this issue an absolutely critical one."
Mr. Gelbard, he says, also mentioned Tasmania's opium poppy industry, worth $160 million ( Aus ) per year. He "pointed out that Australia was allowed by ( the UN ) to have its poppy industry in Tasmania," says Dr. Pennington. And "if ( the UN ) were to decide that Australia were not a reliable country, that of course that industry could be at risk." The American, notes Dr. Pennington, avoided saying explicitly that an unwelcome decision would jeopardize the industry. "On the other hand, it was a very heavy hint."
Nonetheless, Dr. Pennington's committee recommended the heroin trial go ahead. So did a federal committee made up of top health and police officials from across Australia.
But in 1997, after heavy lobbying from the frightened poppy industry and the government of Tasmania, the Australian federal cabinet rejected the advice of the expert committees. The cabinet said it would "send the wrong message" about drug use.
mama
I saw the Lehrer piece on Columbia too. But this story - US support for right wing military branches or paramilitaries who commit regular atrocities on local populations so as to ensure 'stability' - isn't in any aspect particular to Columbia. There is a very long list of such countries.
This is our way of exporting democracy -- another flawed product of our leader's myopic view of society. Abe Lincoln had it right and making criminals out of pot smokers is was of the most ridiculous victimless crime laws on the books in the U.S. I've heard all the hue and cry about it not being victimless. "They other commit crimes." "It impairs driving skills." Blah Blah Blah. I don't know what these people think alcohol does. Drugs are a more serious problem and California now has rehabilitation laws to replace the incarceration. True, you can lead a horse to water...
However, getting more people into rehabs and 12 step programs lowers the odds that they'll return to drug use. Our programs to stop the drug producing countries from producing is another example of our inadequate diplomacy. I suppose since we believe that the drug problem is killing and/or making Americans sick, that's another excuse to become the aggressor. That means aggressive in our talk as well as militarily.
Am viciously unaware of the specifics of U.S. role in the global "War on Drugs" (as our propagandists would have it), and look forward to reading the article when time and inclination permit...
Just a couple of things that pop back into my head regarding prohibition.
It seems to me that one factor in possible success of heroin-maintenance is the agitation brought on by procuring an illegal dose. Naturally there is already stress inherent in addiction. Add to this the stress of coming up with money, and then of finding your dealer or somebody else who's holding if dealer is unavailable, and you've got a great deal of tension built up by the time the drugs are at hand. The natural solution to elevated stress is a big shot. And since you're dealing with illicit junk, you can never be 100% sure about the purity, so you can amp your dose up a little more, just to make sure. Voila, overdose. ('Scuse me, just mulling about this on a personal level, which the policy-makers don't seem to do.)
And my obligatory contribution to threads of this nature -- criminalization tends to make drugs more available to the people the policy-makers purport to be most concerned with keeping them away from: children. When I was growing up (in an "idyllic" mountain town), we had a hell of a time getting our hands on beer, but pot, crank, and acid were all readily available, and there was sporadic access to coke, crack, opium and heroin even if you didn't know the right people.
Will print articles and read at some point...
