Andrew Colvin self-promotes at expense of executed men

AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin thinks the
futile War on Drugs is more important than young lives.

It’s disgusting – these senior police protecting their own pointless jobs by pleading Drug War platitudes. In refusing to apologise for the Indonesian executions of two Australians, AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin deflected a question raised by Senator Xenophon – why couldn’t the Bali Nine have been arrested on their return to Australia and these executions prevented?

The AFP, it seems, had alerted Indonesian police to the arrival of the Bali 9 drug smugglers despite knowing the death penalty could be enforced.

Colvin's excuses contained a list of drug war clichés. It ignored that most heroin casualties occur BECAUSE it is illegal, and ignored the success of supervised injecting centres in preventing overdoses and deaths – a far cheaper option than the ever more privatised drug enforcement and jail industry that Colvin eagerly supports.
 
Typically, Andrew Colvin used the same dodgy stats that Indonesia's President Widodo used to whip up horror at "the scourge of drugs" - "Families and communities destroyed by drugs" - "4,000 deaths from heroin (and other opioids)" over four years - and they've taken enough heroin off the streets for "eight hits for every man, woman and CHILD in Australia", because heroin dealers run around randomly injecting chilren, right? Never mind that taking that heroin off the streets neatly keeps the price up so criminals are eternally attracted to the trade and the cops keep their budgets, promotions and jobs etc etc.

He didn't even come up with a new cliché.

Stoned bunnies: More hilarious nonsense from the DEA

Maybe it's already happening? I found this one in Kings Cross.

Prohibitionists are really scraping the bottom of the spin barrel in their desperate campaign to preserve their jobs. If they had any sensible arguments they wouldn't have to plead this tripe.

A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent seriously told a Utah senate committee that legalising medical marijuana would lead to an epidemic of stoned rabbits. Ignoring of course that legal growers would simply fence off their crops from animals.

Agent Matt Fairbanks also brought up the spectre of illegal pot crops doing environmental damage, which has some truth to it. All the more reason to legalise it, you dolt!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/02/dea-warns-of-stoned-rabbits-if-utah-passes-medical-marijuana/

Indonesia's death penalty based on ludicrous evidence

With the 'Bali Two' facing likely execution in Indonesia, a politically threatened government is quoting "50 deaths per day because of drugs" to justify their populist decision to execute all convicted drug dealers including the Australians.

But the "50 deaths per day" is a rubbery extrapolation based, it seems, on only three (3) reports by other people that someone they knew "died because of drugs". This is not evidence in any accepted sense of the word.

Yes we know that drugs can be problematic for a very small minority of users but you will always find that these unfortunate people have other serious problems in their lives, so it's a bit facile to simply blame the drugs. It's also facile to think that prohibition stops the problems - in fact it causes most of them, as per the below billboard erected by former US drug police who have the courage to tell the truth.

Stoned driving not actually dangerous says official US traffic study

"Drivers who use marijuana are at a significantly lower risk of being in a crash than drivers who use alcohol, a new study from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows.

"And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana were no more likely to crash than those who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving, it found."
Still the demonisation continues, with Hunter region police regularly in the media reporting apparently shocking results when they do roadside drug test blitzes - with 30%-40% of drivers showing positive to cannabis. This sort of scare tactic means penalties for drug driving are at least equal to those for drunk driving. Not only is this stupid and unfair but the huge state budget allocated to its enforcement is simply a waste. However this massive budget might provide a clue why police are so keen to continue their scare campaign.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/stoned-drivers-are-a-lot-safer-than-drunk-ones-official-us-data-shows-20150209-13a7n0.html

Legal pot is not causing the sky to fall

More early data coming out of Colorado indicates that the legalisation of cannabis has not resulted in more young people consuming it - rather, the trend is in the opposite direction. Sooner or later, I think prohibitionists are going to have to give up one of their central arguments - their claim that legalisation will create "a tsunami of stoned zombies" wandering the streets. It was always a circular argument, based only on the assumption that prohibition prevented use in the first place.

The rich, ugly faces of prohibition again rear their lying heads

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson teamed up with Mel and Betty Sembler on Fred Thompson's
disastrous 2008 presidential campaign, too. Photo via Flickr user freddthompson

As usual when a serious pot law reform emerges, the lid is lifted off a vile, self-interested hypocritical pit of prohibitionists. Cops, the jail industry, the casino industry and people with drug-testing companies spew any lie they can think of to fool the people into voting their way. The most recent example is in Florida and this excellent piece in VICE lifts the lid off the rotten cauldron.

...the Drug Free America Foundation is a legal entity that has existed since the 1970s under the old name STRAIGHT Inc. Under the previous brand, the foundation operated as a drug rehab center that was embroiled in multiple scandals for allegedly torturing children who had been admitted for experimenting with pot.

...When cops bust a marijuana dealing operation, they employ something called asset forfeiture to seize property and auction it off. The process has generated over $1 billion for law enforcement divisions around the country since 2002

Just so you know what's really behind the anti-pot propaganda.

The Wizard of Oz and the opium effect

I was kindly given a 50" plasma TV on Saturday. After setting it up - and the set top box - with no manuals the rest of the weekend was a binge. Top pick, The Wizard of Oz. No wonder a whole generation grew up liking psychedelics!

In which Dorothy gets knocked out in an opium poppy field

"There will be no carbon tax in the Land of Oz!"

If only we could so simply escape the craziness.

Police forget to mention .268 blood alcohol in 'stoned driver' crash

Police really don't like it when pot gets legalised. They lose lots of budget, an easy way to boost their arrest statistics disappears and perhaps worst of all, there's all that property they can't confiscate any more.

So it looks as if, at least in one case in Colorado, they will go to any lengths to demonise legalisation. When a young guy crashed into two police cars blocking a freeway exit (with emergency lights flashing), they portrayed him as a stoned driver and forgot to mention his eye-crossing .268 percent blood alcohol content.

So really it was an extremely drunk driver with some cannabis also in his blood. As alcohol is many more times dangerous than cannabis for driving risk, the police story, gleefully amplified right across the media, is pretty close to an outright lie.

Kudos to The Washington Post (link above) for correcting the BS with their story headlined: "Colorado’s poster boy for ‘stoned driving’ was drunk off his gourd".

See my previous post for a rundown on how the prohibitionists are whipping up a scare campaign opposing legalisation in Colorado. The following graph from that Vox link puts things into perspective:

Prohibitionists try to demonise Colorado legalisation

Prohibitionist Kevin Sabet continues to throw up a moral panic smokescreen about cannabis legalisation in Colorado on behalf of SAM - Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

Sabet's latest portrays a pandemic of children admitted to hospital after ingesting legal cannabis, and more claims suggesting an epidemic of stoned drivers.

And Maureen Dowd, a New York journalist ingested possibly 16 times the recommended dose of cannabis and overdosed, having a pretty bad time which she described in print. Now, for some reason, she's not so keen on legalisation, even though it's equally possible to overdose under prohibition (in which case there's more reason for your paranoia!).

Indeed it seems that recommended doses are not printed on the labels of the cannabis candies, and it seemed Dowd was not advised and indeed didn't ask how much she should have taken - elementary information you gather before taking a couple of Aspirins.

These are good arguments for better regulation, not prohibition.

Luckily some astute writers have taken apart this latest wave of prohibitionist panic, showing that the problems happen to only a tiny minority of users, crime has gone down and even major pot seizures by Police in neighbouring states have plummeted.

Maureen Dowd's column is critiqued here and Kevin Sabet gets a dose of reality here.

A bouncer speaks his mind on the Cross

Chris is a Kings Cross Times reader who decided to throw in his two cents worth - hopefully he'll follow up with some titillating details!

My name is Chris Zlomanczuk. I've been working the doors in Kings Cross for years. I'm 25 born and bred in Sydney, have been been trying to break through as an actor for years and also have various business inspirations.

I've been working the doors since the age of 18 so I see a very different Kings Cross from the sensational headlines - although many of them are true.

There are too many names to recollect and too many faces to remember... I was scampered into strip joint THE LOVE MACHINE at age 15 and have since worked the strip at such places as Springfields bar, The Elk, The Bourbon, Empire, Sugarmill. Kit and Kaboodle, Piano Room, The Vegas, Trademark and Hugos and more. I've dined with legendary actors and business people at the famous Tropicana on Victoria St, the Piccolo on Roslyn, Cafe Hernandez on Kings Cross Rd, Bar Coluzzi on Victoria St. KINGS CROSS is a great place. I feel safer there with a local than anywhere, and it's not boring.

If I get sick of coffee shops I can head to other scenes - to The Stables Theatre for a show, or mixing and mingling with all sorts, sex workers, drug addicts, drug dealers, actors, dancers. singers, artists of all kinds. None of these people match the popular image put on them by the media.

Here, no one should be judged but unfortunately Kings cross will always be judged by the ignorant, including journalists and politicians. I've seen grams of heroin being dealt, heroin shot-up, I've seen and heard gun shots and massive Bikie brawls and still felt safe. It's all personal, and nothing to do with anyone unless you're looking for it....Kings cross is what it is and maybe everyone should lighten up and enjoy the colour!

Shock, horror! Pot causes heart attacks (or does it?)

You may have heard a few stories recently of people keeling over from a heart attack after smoking cannabis. While there is probably some increased risk from indulging for some people, at least one 'study' turns out to be very dodgy. It's been picked apart on the Alternet site:

The impetus for the mainstream media’s most recent fixation with the alleged dangers of pot is a French study, published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Investigators reviewed data collected by the French Addictovigilance Network, a national database of adverse case reports involving psychoactive substances, between the years 2006 to 2010.
Among the 9,936 total drug-related cases in the database, authors identified 35 cases (0.4 percent) in which both cardiovascular complications and cannabis were referenced.

Apart from the fact that 60% of the subjects also smoked tobacco, according to Alternet:

...it is unclear whether these subjects used cannabis in the hours prior to any adverse event. Toxicological analyses identified THC, marijuana’s primary psychoactive compound, in only 13 of the 35 total cases. In the other 22 cases, no toxicology result was available; cannabis was simply referenced in the subjects’ medical file. In all but three cases, marijuana was referenced in conjunction with other substances, some of which are well associated with health risks, such as cocaine, alcohol, tobacco, and opiates.

More detail in the original story (linked above).

Prohibitionists keep flogging evidence-free fearmongering

The increasing legalisation of cannabis in the US is putting prohibitionists further and further onto 'the back foot' as actual data emerge that contradict their fear memes. A chief among these is their claim that moves towards legalisation would "send the wrong message" and increase use among teens. Evidence that it isn't doing so has not stopped them from making the claim, as you can see at the bottom of this email chain (the email on behalf of prohibitionist Gary Christian). One point made is that, under legalisation, advertising and marketing of cannabis should NOT be allowed.


-----------------------------------------------

(Email from Paul Desseaur)

Here’s a similar article;

http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsarticle.aspx?articleid=1864116

(BTW- Why am I not surprised that Robert DuPont, (who, with his partner Bensinger makes millions per-annum from immunoassay urine screening), is opposed to any legalisation of cannabis use?).http://www.activistpost.com/2013/03/ex-dea-chief-lobbying-holder-to-nullify.html

This one sentence underpins the argument of the AACAP statement you have posted;

<<< Legalization of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes, even if restricted to adults, is likely to be associated with (a) decreased adolescent perceptions of marijuana’s harmful effects, (b) increased marijuana use among parents and caretakers, and (c) increased adolescent access to marijuana, all of which reliably predict increased rates of adolescent marijuana use and associated problems. >>>

Is there any evidentiary basis to these assertions?

The chain of reasoning seems intuitively logical, but what does the published research tell us?

The authors reference two articles to support that sentence, the first is this one;

Legalization of Marijuana: Potential Impact on Youth, Joffe + Yancy, Pediatrics, 2004.

Full text here;

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/6/e632.full.pdf+html

Watch this space - how long before Greg Hunt deletes this damning info on climate change?

Seems the Federal Government hasn't gotten around to pulling a web page that scientifically debunks global warming denier Ian Plimer's misleading nonsense. Crikey writes:

Plimer’s 2011 book —  How to Get Expelled From School (launched by John Howard and mailed by the IPA to hundreds of schools) — listed 101 questions for sceptical students to ask their “warmist” teachers, i.e. those who respect science. The federal Department of Climate Change (abolished by Abbott) prepared a response that thoroughly debunked his claims in words a child can understand. How long before Environment Minister Greg Hunt is instructed to have this demolition of Plimer taken down?

I've downloaded and saved the PDF but it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the truth to be hidden in the interests of Ian Plimer's fans like Gina Rinehart.

At the time of writing, the PDF is still online here.

I've previously blogged about Ian Plimer's unrepentant deceit here.

PS On 13 August 2014 the PDF is still up there on Greg Hunt's website. Perhaps Greg hasn't actually read it?

PPS today (18/8/16) I again checked the link and wouldn't you know it, it's gone! The department of misinformation has finally caught up. I will contact Crikey and let them know.

The US finances Mexico's biggest drug cartel: 100,000 die

This cash allegedly belonging to El Chapo was found in a car.
At the same time, the US was financing and arming his cartel.  

Well the Yanks certainly haven't changed their spots. Their recent much-publicised arrest of drug cartel supremo 'El Chapo' Guzman hides the fact that:

US agencies had armed and financed El Chapo's Sinaloa criminal empire for at least 12 years. That link has been substantiated by DEA and Justice Department court testimonies, and even US agents confirmed the financing had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors. But the American media barely reported how entrenched the American government has become in the Mexican drug trade.

You can read more about it in this report from The Guardian.

Instead we got triumphal pictures of his arrest and a slew of 'gangster porn' - photos of his mansions, gold-plated guns and stacks of cash.

Back in 2012 they arrested El Chapo's son only it turned out they got a humble used car salesman instead. That didn't stop them parading him in front of a salad bar of weapons and cash (see pic below). If it was the wrong guy, where did the loot come from? This is just one of the more blatant examples of the total bullshit fed to us by War on Drugs propagandists. Meanwhile 100,000 people have been killed in the phoney War, many in horrendously brutal circumstances.
As The Guardian asks, "Why aren't we putting US agencies on trial for financing El Chapo's drug war?"

Oops, wrong guy! But if so, where did all the loot
and weaponry come from for this photo op?

Drug 'crimes' fuelling prison growth

I know prohibition doesn't seem to rate as an issue among Australian human rights campaigners, but if you think incarcerating hundreds of thousands of mainly non-white people for a victimless 'crime' is serious, prohibition should be up there with refugees and Indigenous health etc.

This graph from the Pew Research Centre lays it on the table.

This gobsmacking growth in prisoners is happening in the USA, which is on its straps financially, with States and the taxpayer bearing the massive cost of this misconceived blunder.

In Australia, drugs prohibition has brought about prison trends along the same lines while fuelling the daily shootings in "South-Western Sydney", gang crime and the bikie issue. Yet no-one in the government or the media EVER mentions this major root cause of the problems. Would you see an article about Al Capone that doesn't mention prohibition? Never ever. So why the disjunction here and now?
Every time you hear about a shooting in SW Sydney, think "symptom of drug prohibition".

Read all about it here.

This is a landmark in the War against Kings Cross

OK I was wrong. I had predicted that 1.30 lockouts and 3am closing would result in more violence as the Kings Cross crowds battled it out over taxis. But after three weeks of the new regime it seems the crowds have simply stopped coming. It's a landmark in the eternal War against Kings Cross.

Bayswater Road last Saturday night, showing one of several
trailer-mounted signs flashing the new regime.

I took these photos on Saturday night, when the trial closure of Bayswater Road to through traffic was being trialled. The signage flagged a 9pm closure but at 9.30 they didn't seem to be in place and the crowds and traffic were so sparse there didn't seem to be much point.
It looks as if the authorities, too, have been caught offguard at people's desertion of Sydney's late-night entertainment precinct.
It makes sense though - when I pointed out the lack of people at 9.30, a friend said "people will come later". But if there is no "later", why would they come?
People have to eat somewhere, then they have to get into the city, or they go somewhere local for some cheaper drinks before heading in. The crowds used to really hit after midnight. But what's the point of that if you are going to be locked out of all venues at 1.30? It's not worth the trip in from the 'burbs. In today's mobile phone-fuelled, flexible social landscape, people from all over the city move about, change venues and meet their friends anywhere. The 1.30 lockout freezes all that.
These ill-conceived rules were made by old farts who still think in terms of their distant youth, before mobile phones (and before drugs that help people party all night were common currency - you know, the ones that are "controlled" by prohibition). I have heard more than one old killjoy say things like "Why can't these people just go home by midnight".
The baby has truly thrown out with the bathwater and when the data are in, I now predict a sorry tale of  lost jobs, business failure and - if the data are even collected - the displacement of drunken violence to other areas and private homes.
Welcome to the nanny state.

PS I'm told 25 staff have been sacked from the Kings Cross Hotel alone after the lockouts reduced their average 1am crowd from 900 to 200.

Maybe the lockouts have an upside - The Vegas Hotel seems to be getting creative
about pulling customers, with bloke and girly shows. But these sexy boys were finding
it hard to pull girls from nearly non-existent crowds.

Lockouts and new anti-alcohol laws simply deny the facts

There was a petition on the bar of my local against the NSW government's recent early lockout laws. I signed it. While I have been railing for years against this moral panic-driven nonsense, this piece by Bernard Keane on Crickey unpicks the hypocrisy of the laws and the media campaign behind it, particularly the shameful behaviour of the formerly trustworthy Sydney Morning Herald.

The piece is less than complimentary about media tart Dr Gordian Fulde from St Vincents Hospital, a doctrinaire prohibitionist who in my view should stick to his doctoring and keep his doctrines out of public commentary.

Writes Keane:

Fulde is insistent that violence is getting worse in Sydney and that alcohol is to blame. It is a claim that the Herald was happy to repeat. It is also a claim that is blatantly false... Last year’s Review of the Liquor Act 2007and Gaming and Liquor Administration Act 2007 showed that violent incidents on licensed premises had fallen 28% from 2007, and alcohol-related assaults had fallen 35% between 2008 and 2012. Assaults across NSW had also fallen significantly, as had hospital presentations for acute alcohol-related problems.
And for those who believe that review was a Big Grog conspiracy, you can go to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research site and look at the data yourself.

Here are the relevant data:

Keane again hits the nail on the head, ascribing the cheap populist campaign run by Sydney's newspapers to their plummetting circulation:

This takes us to the most relevant statistics about this whole sordid affair. The Sydney Morning Herald’s circulation is in freefall — it lost more than 15% of its circulation in the year to September. And in 2013, it fell 7 points in its readers’ trust, according to Essential Research’s trust in media survey, tumbling to 64%. The Telegraph is Australia’s least-trusted metro title — trusted by only 41% of its readers — and its circulation fell by nearly as much as the Herald’s in the year to September. They are two dying newspapers, each desperate to outdo the other.

The lockout laws so-far seem to be killing the Cross, which might please a few local NIMBYs but will cause hardship to all the hospitality workers and entertainers now thrown out of work.

Australia lags as world adapts to new industries

With the very public collapse of manufacturing in Australia you might think the country would nimbly leap to new industrial opportunities. Instead, we are losing them to more progressive nations.

Victoria's Hazelwood open-cut brown coal mine
still burning after some weeks.

Our race to the 19th century in fossil-based energy generation has robbed us of our once world-leading position in clean energy technology. Meanwhile South Korea, for instance, has a 3-month fast-track patent process for local innovations in clean energy, part of a program that devoted 2.7% of GDP to clean energy. By contrast, we have boosted our filthiest fossil fuel source, Victoria's brown coal mines, one of which is ironically now burning out of control after heatwave-induced bushfires. It is expected to burn for another two weeks. [Note: the fire was 'under control' as of 9 March - it burned for a little over four weeks. However there are coal mine fires on every continent except Antarctica including one in Pennsylvania that has burned since 1962.

Note#2: Radio National News reported on 21 March that the fire was officially "out"]

Then there is the Abbott Government's patchwork National Broadband Network. In a country ruled by 'the tyranny of distance', you might think state-of-the-art communications was essential.

The Coalition's internet connection vision.

But no, Malcolm Turnbull's fibre to the node concept will leave my copper connection to the home operating out of this pit just outside my front door (pictured). The cost savings inherent in this second-best model do not take into account the cost of repairing/replacing these copper tangles  left over from 100-year-old telephone technology. Impressive, no?

Now it's industrial hemp, a forest-saving, low irrigation crop with a thousand uses. As it has no intoxicating effects, there was never even any justification for banning it and now even the USA, which invented the ban, is legalising the growing of hemp. But conservative, backward Australia remains in the dark ages as it misses out on yet another opportunity to compete in the 21st century. Once the 'lucky country', should we now be known as the 'dumb country' as we race towards banana republic status?

Just say no - emblematic of Australia's
attitude to everything?

Prohibitionists AGAIN caught out telling porkies

SAM head Kevin Sabet - he doesn't
look stupid, so why is he telling
idiotic porkies?

'It's like saying 10% of people in Australia, Canada and Bolivia scratch their ears before breakfast, therefore 30% of people scratch their ears before breakfast. Duh.'

It must be difficult for prohibitionists now the changing face of history is proving their arguments to be little but hot air and fear mongering. So you can understand why they have to fall back on complete nonsense to keep the uninformed scared. But you'd think they could at least add up, especially if they call their organisation Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).

Close on the heels of their last misleading factoid, SAM's head Kevin Sabet has tweeted that - wait for it - 39% of HS students in Washington state report using marijuana that came from from a "medical" marijuana dispensary [his quote marks].

Shock, horror! See, they told us so - legalise it and a tsunami of pot smoking will destroy society!

Then Russ Belville from the Huffington Post looked at the source figures Sabet had quoted.  They showed only 14.9% of 12th-grade students said their pot usually came from a medical dispensary. The percentage fell for more junior grades, down to 3.8% for 9th graders.

Seems Sabet had simply added up all the percentages, apparently unaware that each one came from a different sample of people so adding them is nonsensical. It's like saying 10% of people in Australia, Canada and Bolivia scratch their ears before breakfast, therefore 30% of people scratch their ears before breakfast. Duh.

Meanwhile teenage cannabis use seems to have stayed pretty level during the rash of legalisation spreading across US states, so the scariest thing about Sabet's paper tiger is that the same smokers are getting their stuff from a legal rather than illegal source.

Embarrassed into a retreat, Sabet then tweeted implying that the students must be faking back pain or cancer, further spreading the egg over his face because the figures deal with cannabis that CAME FROM a dispensary - with no claim that the students had attended the dispensaries. It's all a bit subtle for a fossilised prohibitionist, I guess.

SAM's "smart" approach [my quote marks] apparently involves diverting cannabis users who are caught into treatment (or else get arrested again).

"The proposal is on par with forcing every alcohol user into treatment at their own cost or at a cost to the state," said Marijuana Policy Project communications director Mason Tvert. "In fact, it would be less logical because the science is clear that marijuana is far less toxic, less addictive, and less likely to be associated with acts of violence."

While Sabet denies that, everything I have previously read about SAM points in that direction.

Oh, Sabet also claims that 10% of cannabis users become addicted. No they don't, Kevin. In fact the commonly quoted figure of 9% is another dodgy bit of bad science from the prohibitionists, as the Huff Post again explains.

Old lies live on in the prohibitionist mind

No lie is too old or discredited to be recycled by our shock-jocks. The latest is Miranda Devine writing another prohibitionist rant in the Telegraph. I won't even link to the propaganda piece - why help them, even a tiny bit?

Suffice it to quote Devine's central lie, that "When the Howard government launched its Tough on Drugs strategy in 1997, drug use plummeted for the first time in three decades."

No, Miranda, it didn't. In fact Asian suppliers were switching from heroin to crystal meth and some young people were switching from cannabis to ecstasy and other chemical drugs, arguably a shift from less risky to more risky substances. This is a well-known symptom of prohibition, driving the drug industry to more potent, portable and profitable substances. The heroin drought coincided with the rise of ice.

In the same piece Devine bemoans that "A study in the Medical Journal of Australia last September found ambulance call-outs for crystal meth, aka ice, had tripled in two years."

Well, duh, Miranda. This is what happens under your beloved prohibition. But with the money you are paid to spread your poison, I guess truth is a minor consideration.

Global warming deniers lose court battle but leave taxpayers with the bill

Here's a nice, sober outline of how the international conspiracy against climate science operates. While the denialists lost their court case in New Zealand, they have successfully cast doubt on good science, wasted the time of parliament, scientists and the courts, and left taxpayers with the legal bill after liquidating the 'charitable trust' that appears to have had no function but to run this case.

As usual on The Conversation site, the comments add a lot more to the story (including the usual trolling by a climate 'sceptic').

Latest 'coward's punch' triggers more moral panic about Kings Cross

Sean McNeil, charged with the murder of Daniel Christie.

Sadly another young life has been ended by a violent thug king-hitting innocents in the street. Daniel Christie was attacked in Kings Cross on New Year's Eve and later died in hospital. Shaun McNeil, a self-described 'mixed martial arts expert', has been charged. Bizarrely, photos show has the name of his victim tattooed on his arm (while apparently sculling Bundy rum, the one said to contain "a bushfire and a bashing in every bottle").

Predictably the anti-Kings Cross hordes (most of them from elsewhere) have spun into loud chorus blaming venues and the AHA, and calling for lockouts, earlier closing of pubs and application of the Newcastle 'solution' to Kings Cross.

The facts, however, throw a few wet blankets over the moral panic.

The attack happened at 9pm. How would earlier closing have helped in this case? Do the anti-venue crowd propose 8pm closing?

Meanwhile violence rates in Kings Cross venues have dropped by about a third (a similar rate to that of Newcastle after the lockout regime) since the similar manslaughter of Thomas Kelly - which happened at almost the same spot and at 10 pm - also nothing to do with late-night venues.

And the "coward's punch" has been used to deadly effect in other places besides Kings Cross. Strangely the anti-Cross brigade do not raise a hue-and-cry in these cases.

So, what's the bet that Shaun McNeil is a Rugby League fan, like other recent king-hit killers? When is macho footy culture going to be dragged into this debate? That sacred cow is where the real problem lies.

Best drug scare stories of 2013

Here's a neat roundup of the latest crop of blatant bullshit the media publishes about illicit drugs - and some examples of prohibitionists picking up the bullshit they themselves create to back their fallacious arguments. One example: Police try to convict a man of murder because his girlfriend died after he gave her an acid trip. Shock, horror, scary, eh? Heard that one before?

The real story turned out to be somewhat different, however. Click the link above to find out what really happened.

More prohibitionist propaganda busted - it seems legal cannabis reduces road deaths

Prohibitionists in the US are bending over backwards to show legalisation of cannabis in some US states is causing the sky to fall in, just as they always predicted. Recently an Australian prohibitionist triumphantly circulated this 'important' information on email lists:

Panic stations! Legalisation has started a rush of those dangerous stoned drivers! We told you so! (SAM, by the way, is the new soft-pedalling face of prohibition.)

Smelling a rat, I immediately asked: "Was there a corresponding increase in traffic accidents?"

No reply.

I later speculated on the lists that police, deprived of their 'easy money' busting potheads, might be doing more drug-driving tests, which would account for the increase.

Then a list member posted the following, supporting my speculations:

"...according Washington State’s Traffic Safety Commission “Target Zero” data for 2013, the fatality rate from incidents involving drunk and/or drug-affected drivers is actually the LOWEST that has been recorded in more than seven years. http://www.wtsc.wa.gov/statistics-reports/crash-data/

"So far, the 2013 fatality rate is down 22% for alcohol-related road deaths, and down 30% for other-drug-related road deaths, compared to 2012.

"If more people really are driving whilst seriously impaired, why is there no spike in road fatalities?

"And yes Michael you are quite correct, police in Washington State have indeed conducted significantly more drug tests in 2013 than in previous years.

"That last piece of information comes from Bob Caulkins, the Media & Community Relations Officer for the Washington State Patrol:

"However, the number of tests being ordered has increased, on pace for 180 more than the prior year. It can also be true that cops are more likely to order a blood test in a pot case now. As Caulkins told Huffington Post, “We’re testing blood we didn’t test before.” So do we actually have more stoned drivers on the road or are cops now just better trained and incentivized to go after them?"

Then the post got even better:

"Could it be that greater access to marijuana equals less abuse of alcohol, leading to lower traffic deaths from both?

Let's see what Time magazine has to say on the subject:

Getting the facts about Thomas Kelly's manslaughter.

The War on Kings Cross continues, with the king-hit killing of Thomas Kelly being dragged in by both sides of the debate.

In letters to the Wentworth Courier, the AHA's Paul Nicolau rebuts a previous claim by local resident Jo Holder that Keiran Loveridge had been served alcohol in Kings Cross before he king-hit Thomas Kelly. In fact both are wrong. J Campbell's published Supreme Court judgement says:

"...before catching a taxi to Kings Cross where they went to a bar in Darlinghurst Road shortly before 9pm. There is no agreement about whether the offender consumed more alcohol in this bar."

The anti-alcohol brigade always blame venues for violence, claiming they don't apply Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) provisions, ie refusing to serve drunks. Apparently they ignore this in the interests of maximising their evil profits. However I can get absolutely shitfaced and still act sober enough to get into a pub and then served.

The judgement does say Loveridge had been refused entry to a bar in Bayswater Road at about 9.30pm immediately before he started on his violent rampage. Possibly this bar's correct application of RSA principles actually triggered or aggravated his violence, illustrating the dilemma venues have in managing pre-fuelled drunks - they are damned if they do or don't. It illustrates that RSA is an inexact science and tighter enforcement will not necessarily solve problems.

It also annoys me that this tragic crime has been enrolled by the anti-alcohol brigade in their campaign for earlier closing and lockouts at venues.  It happened at about 10pm folks. How would earlier closing have helped that?

Paul Nicolau also claims that violence in Kings Cross has already dropped by 37% as new precinct management principles have been applied over the past few years. This fits with what I know from local sources and neutralises the anti-alcohol brigade's mantra that Kings Cross should emulate Newcastle's lockout regime, which is said to have reduced violence by the same amount.

It's also interesting reading the rationale behind the controversial sentence imposed on Keiran Loveridge. I think it was a fair sentence by the standards of our legal system. However the role of Loveridge's involvement with Rugby League is seen as a mitigating factor rather than part of the problem, as I have previously blogged.

As legal cannabis spreads in the US, surprise! The sky has not fallen.

A map of the USA showing states in green that have
legalised medical marijuana use. States in orange
have legalised recreational use (as of November 2012).

It must be a worst-case scenario for prohibitionists. Their horror scenarios warning against legal cannabis, always evidence-free, are quickly being roundly refuted by reality.

As this New York Times story shows, there are no armies of stoned teenage zombies staggering around the streets, crime has not increased, there is no carnage on the roads and it looks as if less alcohol is being consumed - explaining why self-interested alcohol industry bodies oppose legalisation.

Meanwhile some counties are raking in a nice little tax earner.

True, there are some downsides. Some people have complained about the smell emanating from their neighbours' cannabis crops, a very serious first-world problem I would say. And precincts that didn't properly regulate medical marijuana outlets have had some local nuisances.

Still prohibitionists bang their drums, one police advocate complaining that new relaxed rules have resulted in "robberies of cash-rich marijuana farms in Northern California". I guess he would prefer to continue locking up disproportionate numbers of Blacks and Hispanics on pot charges instead of solving actual crime, or the old system where illegal growers could not report similar robberies and perhaps resort to illegal means of obtaining justice (the Al Capone/bikie gang factor). Or maybe he's just concerned that his fiefdom will shrink now it is no longer so super-sized by prohibition.

Meanwhile 58% of Americans support legalising the drug. Prohibitionists must be panicking (because one thing's for sure - most of them will not let reality change their ideology-based opinions).

Teen tragedy reported but the point is totally missed - again

Drugs for sale on the Silk Road site.

Again I found myself shouting at the TV last night as ABC's 7.30 reported on the death of James Munro at Sydney's recent Defcon festival after taking some pills.

His grief-stricken father was featured, saying the things you would expect someone to say in such horrible circumstances.

He and the editors focused the blame on the Silk Road website, now shut down. It seems James had bought his pills there, believing them to be MDMA ecstasy.

James and two friends had driven all night from Melbourne. While waiting in line to enter the festival,  the presence of police with sniffer dogs induced James to take his three pills. Within 15 minutes he was convulsing and later died in hospital after suffering a 42-degree temperature.

James' father thinks his son would still be alive if Silk Road had been shut down two weeks earlier, and he could be right.

But maybe not. The whole story is really about prohibition, and it is very arguable that prohibition killed James Munro. But, as usual, that subject was entirely absent from the story.

The elements of the tragedy are all too common.

The police and sniffer dogs who triggered James' tragic decision to drop a probable overdose of pills are simply the face of prohibition.

The story pointed out that no-one knows what is actually in these illicit substances - very true, but that too is entirely because of prohibition. If the better quality drugs were legal, regulated and properly labelled with dosages - like legal pharmaceuticals - most damage could be averted. What James suffered sounds like an allergic reaction, but to what?

Silk Road, a marketplace for unregulated, unlabelled drugs, also thrived under prohibition, and if it had been shut down earlier James could have obtained his drugs from another site or from the streets of Melbourne, so shutting it down may not have saved the teenager's life. That's also a feature of prohibition - shut down one dealer and several more pop up immediately.

Because most public discourse about drugs, like this story on 7.30, boils down to "Just say no", good constructive advice about safe drug use is hard to find.

The kids drove all night, so they were physically and mentally low before starting an all-day festival on drugs. Properly advised people would know this is not a good idea at all.

To report stories like this without mentioning prohibition is misleading, unbalanced and irresponsible, only perpetuating the prohibition framework that in fact contributes to the tragedies.

Aussie idiots chase their own tails but never mention the War

Discarded syringes in a Kings Cross gutter
- this is not what prohibition is supposed to look like.

Why are there so many idiots in Australia? Especially, it seems, among police, politicians, academics and journalists.

A lengthy piece on ABC Radio National this morning looked at the escalating War on Bikies in Queensland and Victoria, where they are apparently supplying methamphetamines (Ice) more and more into regional and country towns.

Duh, you dumbos, listen up: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS UNDER PROHIBITION!
As usual, however, prohibition was not mentioned once in any report on the above that I heard.

The brilliantly intelligent Queensland government is going to - wait for it - ban bikies from working in tattoo parlours!!! Woo-hoo, that'll do it!

RN's James Carlton this morning interviewed Criminal Law Professor Andreas Schloenhardt from Queensland University who specialises in organised crime and 'narcotrafficking'.

Carlton asked Prof Schloenhardt what was the root cause of the drugs/gangs problem. Professor Schloenhardt replied: "That's the $64 million dollar question". I'm thinking: "Here comes a mention of Prohibition!" but no -  he went on to say that we needed to do more research into the gangs and "engage" with them. Hello! Engage with the nice bikies and they'll just stop dealing drugs? Is this gentleman serious? No doubt the professor himself would be the best person to get any such funding.

Mind you Radio National might have edited out talk of prohibition, in which case I apologise to the good professor but it looks like the old pattern of people making money from prohibition having a vested interest in defending it.

Contrast this imbecilic Australian discourse with what's going on in the UK, where Durham's chief constable Mike Barton - the intelligence lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers - wrote an opinion piece in The Observer calling for decriminalisation and regulation of Class A drugs because "prohibition had put billions of pounds into the hands of villains who sell adulterated drugs on the streets".

Britain's police forces all map the activities of organised crime. In my force area we have 43 organised crime groups on our radar. Most of them have their primary source of income in illicit drug supply; all of them are involved in some way. These criminals are often local heroes and role models for young people who covet their wealth. Decriminalising their commodity will immediately cut off their income stream and destroy their power.

In a separate BBC piece, medical researchers show that the "War on illegal drugs is failing" because the drugs "are now cheaper and purer than at any time over the last 20 years".

The report said street prices of drugs had fallen in real terms between 1990 and 2010, while their purity and potency had increased. In Europe, for example, the average price of opiates and cocaine, adjusted for inflation and purity, decreased by 74% and 51% respectively between 1990 and 2010, the Vancouver-based centre said. The seven drug surveillance systems the study looked at had at least 10 years of information on the price and purity of cannabis, cocaine and opiates, including heroin.

Among the 945 comments underneath that story was this bit of light relief:

"Only a user loses drugs" - Wideboy

Drug addiction is less about the drugs

You often see public vitriol poured onto drug addicts, and the poor presentation and behaviour of some of them fuels a contempt that prohibitionists then enrol as a reason for further prohibition. However my knowledge of the drug addicts who inhabit the streets of Kings Cross is that they mostly have other serious problems such as illiteracy and/or a dysfunctional, violent and poverty-stricken family history. It seems to me that many are condemned to a miserable life and what solace they can obtain from drugs seems a relatively rational choice - a little comfort in a very hard life.

New research from the USA reinforces my view. Carl Hart, a black, dreadlocked associate professor at Columbia University, has been experimenting with people under controlled conditions by giving them crack and ice, and observing their choices when later offered money as an alternative to further doses. The results question the stereotypical addiction narrative because he found people will choose against drugs when they have an alternative. The NY Times article linked above concludes as follows:

So why do we keep focusing so much on specific drugs? One reason is convenience: It’s much simpler for politicians and journalists to focus on the evils of a drug than to grapple with the underlying social problems. But Dr. Hart also puts some of the blame on scientists.
“Eighty to 90 percent of people are not negatively affected by drugs, but in the scientific literature nearly 100 percent of the reports are negative,” Dr. Hart said. “There’s a skewed focus on pathology. We scientists know that we get more money if we keep telling Congress that we’re solving this terrible problem. We’ve played a less than honorable role in the war on drugs.”

Moral panic and the 'pathogenic narrative on drugs'.

Here's an interesting article describing the 'negative loop' that exists in the media and society about illicit drugs - a loop consisting of prohibition - negative media - moral panic - prohibition.

It flags the twisted basis of research into drugs in Australia (as typified by our National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, whose director Professor Jan Copeland has recently been getting active in online discussions, pushing her anti-cannabis stance - click the tags below for detailed stories about NCPIC).

An analysis of Australian discourse about psychoactive substance use explains this process in terms of the dominant pathogenic narrative of drugs, which limits discussion to their harm. Since Australian government funding is directed towards research that seeks to provide evidence of drug-related harm, the pathogenic narrative is self-reinforcing.

The article also explores the growing awareness that psychedelic drugs are not as dangerous as popular mythology holds and in fact may be very useful in treating some mental illnesses, especially MDMA's usefulness in treating post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

How anti-cannabis laws created crime in Holland

Sometimes live action video gets the message across better than words, words, words. Here's footage of a street dealer threatening people in a coffee shop when the ban on selling cannabis to tourists was lifted in Maastrecht and the dealer lost his customers. Then he is pursued, maced, arrested but still not charged.

Forget the hysteria, these are the real relative harms of drugs

The South China Morning Post has reported on the polarised cannabis debate in Hong Kong, where penalties for using it run to a HK$1 million fine and seven years in prison.

But the chart above puts the 'problem' into perspective (noting that, even in this analysis, the benefits of any of these drugs are not considered - itself a form of bias). Ignoring evidence and logic, the government remains staunchly conservative:

"A dangerous drug is a dangerous drug. We have a zero-tolerance policy," says Commissioner for Narcotics Erika Hui Lam Yin-ming.

But the SCMP report broaches a broader reality:

In 2010, the British medical journal the Lancet published a study on how harmful 20 different substances, from alcohol to cannabis to heroin, were to users and to people around them in the UK. The study put alcohol at the top of the list, followed by heroin, crack cocaine. Several others including tobacco, came in above cannabis. 

The scientific journal Nature published a review in January that said old research that had shown a link between long-term cannabis consumption and decreasing IQ among users no longer held water.

Early research questions stoned driving orthodoxy

Early, tentative research shows a significant drop in road deaths in US states with legal medical cannabis. Who'd a thought?

US Attorney-General pulls back from the War on Drugs

In a speech to the American Bar Association, US Attorney-General Eric Holder broaches a significant admission that the War on Drugs is ineffective and unsustainable:

As we come together this morning, this same promise must lead us all to acknowledge that – although incarceration has a significant role to play in our justice system – widespread incarceration at the federal, state, and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. It imposes a significant economic burden – totaling $80 billion in 2010 alone – and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate. 

As a nation, we are coldly efficient in our incarceration efforts. While the entire U.S. population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown at an astonishing rate – by almost 800 percent. It’s still growing – despite the fact that federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity. Even though this country comprises just 5 percent of the world’s population, we incarcerate almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. More than 219,000 federal inmates are currently behind bars. Almost half of them are serving time for drug-related crimes, and many have substance use disorders.

Holder goes on to outline plans to move away from mandatory sentencing, increase compassionate release and boost drug treatment programs. It's a small enough start and runs the danger of diluting anti-prohibition campaigns - but as Holder points out, the measures appear to have cross-party support (as well as being driven by GFC-related budget cuts). You've gotta start somewhere.

Chart from the Washington Post

Killing people in the name of prohibition is disgusting

This perceptive story in The Guardian clearly illustrates how barbaric the death penalty really is. Writer Brigid Delaney references the execution of Van Nguyen in Singapore, recently dramatised in Better Man on SBS.

But even this story, like all too many in the media, fails to name prohibition as a key driver of this violence. Delaney argues:

There is the argument that trafficking drugs leads to the death of countless others who use your drugs, and that death is a just punishment.

She rebuts it with this excellent quote from Auberon Waugh:

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one … So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

While that is succinctly put, it fails to address the key fallacy in the original argument - that it is prohibition itself that causes most drug-related deaths, not the drugs. Those who don't yet understand why this is should read this short article, which puts it simply.

Also not mentioned is my own first objection to execution: the very real possibility of a false verdict, leading to the state murdering an innocent person after putting them through the horror of Death Row.

Nevertheless, Brigid Delaney's story is an eloquent condemnation of the death penalty and I commend it.

And Nguyen's case is only the tip of the iceberg - see my previous post on this topic: War on drugs still killing and incarcerating.

The circular logic of prohibition

We prohibit a ‘bad’ drug on the rationale that it is dangerous, and then construct social policies that assure high risks related to the drug’s use - William L White

That just about sums up the circular logic of prohibition, as illustrated by the current rash of police warning people not to take illicit drugs because you never know what's in them. If that's the main reason not to take them, prohibition is clearly the problem.

These issues are explored in a book by Bill White, Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery.

The book is summarised nicely by blogger David Clark who lists some of the ways prohibition makes drugs more dangerous and describes this as immoral:

In essence, technology is being withheld in order to keep the risk of prohibited drug use high, in the hope it will deter use. This is morally wrong. The price of this approach is that people contract disease and die not because of the drug, but because of the social policy that prevents society from reducing risks associated with its use.

The irony is - and here we revisit the circular logic of prohibition - that the foundation of prohibition is always a 'moral' one (even if you ignore the religious element in the movement). Writes Clark:

The drug and its users are held responsible for a number of problems in society, and the survival of society can be portrayed as being dependent on prohibition of the drug. The drug, dealers and even users are viewed as ‘evil’, corrupting our young people. Anyone questioning these statements is attacked and sometimes characterised as part of the problem that needs to be eliminated.

This stigma then makes it harder for addicts to recover. This prompts prohibitionists to argue for even more prohibition, and the cycle goes on.

The Pope needs new media advisors - or a new brain

Oh dear. Pope Francis, whose public image vacillates between uber conservative and champion of the poor, has just revealed himself as a mindless uber conservative.

In a tour of Brazil punctuated by street riots from poor people protesting against the state expenditure on same, he has pontificated about drug prohibition.

He criticised South American governments who, facing the destruction of their societies and economies by the USA-driven War on Drugs, have espoused regulated legalisation.

"The scourge of drug-trafficking that favours violence and sows the seeds of suffering and death requires of society as a whole an act of courage," he said.

His prohibition stance misses out on the unfortunate fact that prohibition itself creates the violence and death. Just think Al Capone's Tommy-gun street shootings compared with your local pub taking a delivery of kegs in the morning. The Pope is effectively saying: "Illegal drugs create violence so you must make them more illegal", an idiotic circular argument.

Francis the Infallible Pontiff  then went all kind and human, saying this: "Rather it is necessary to confront the problems underlying the use of these drugs, by promoting greater justice, educating young people in the values that build up life in society, accompanying those in difficulty and giving them hope for the future."

As if this would be impossible under regulated legalisation, rather than infinitely more possible if it was government policy. His veneer of kindness is just code for a violent military crackdown on people who prefer drugs other than alcohol. He is either a Fool or Evil.

Or both?

Prohibition contradictions still thriving in mainstream media

Some of the false ecstasy pills thought to contain
chemicals more dangerous than MDMA. Legal pills
would come with a precise list of ingredients and
safe dosage information.

I've been facebooking rather then blogging for a while but I had to comment on this story from The Irish Times because it encapsulates the prohibitionist nonsense that too many supposedly quality news journals accept and regurgitate without balancing comment.  It's as if otherwise intelligent and cynical journalists are so completely blinded by prohibition propaganda that they are hypnotised into toeing the line like rabbits in headlights.

It seems an alarming number of people  have died recently in Scotland and Ireland after taking 'ecstasy' - eight in Ireland and six in Scotland.

As usual it seems the problem is not 'ecstasy' as in MDMA but other more dangerous chemicals such as PMA, 5IT or AMT.

Of course this is happening BECAUSE OF PROHIBITION, which ensures there is no regulation on the underground, untaxed drug trade. This of course is not mentioned, with police and doctors coming out with the usual howlers:

“It is a form of chemical Russian roulette: you don’t know what you are taking, you cannot be sure what they contain and you are putting yourself in harm’s way,” said Det Chief Supt Roy McComb.

That's true, Detective McComb - but it's only because of prohibition. So your statement is the perfect rationale for legalising and regulating the much safer drugs.

The same goes for this:

"...the police service has issued a warning about ecstasy bulked out with a slower-acting chemical, which carries an added risk because users may take extra pills under the misapprehension that the drug is not working."

 Sticking closely to the prohibitionist hymn sheet, Roy McComb also...

"...called for new laws to address the problem of so-called “legal highs”, substances which may be sold as plant food, bath crystals or pond cleaner, but which produce similar effects to controlled drugs.

Detective Chief Supt Roy McComb

"Controlled drugs", Det McComb?  IF THEY ARE "CONTROLLED", HOW COME SO MANY PEOPLE ARE APPARENTLY DYING FROM THEM? Not to mention that prohibition does jack up the price of illicit drugs and creates a market for the newer, untested drugs that sniffer dogs, for instance, are not trained to detect.

Nevertheless, McComb is on a roll:

“We need legislation to deal with the issue,” said Mr McComb. “There are many people out for a fast buck. People are selling products and they don’t know if that person is going to be alive the next day.”

Yes Detective McComb, that's what happens under prohibition.

But here's the real kicker. A common pattern when people have problems from illicit drugs is a reluctance to seek treatment BECAUSE OF PROHIBITION. Dr Richard Stevenson, Glasgow Royal Infirmary's senior specialty doctor in emergency medicine, said of the Scottish deaths:

"All the fatalities were due to symptoms which are treatable if help is sought early - sadly in these cases they all came into A and E too late."

The police in these cases are doing little more than featherbedding their own power and massive drug enforcement budgets. Too bad about the casualties.

Australia's propaganda rag goes over the top

Right here is the main problem with Australian politics. Are Murdoch's readers seriously as stupid as Sydney's Daily Telegraph assumes today? By contrast, Michelle Grattan on 'The Conversation' website gets it about right: "A media policy mouse with a modest roar. That won’t stop the media companies and the opposition treating it as a lion that must be slain." I know where I'd rather get my information.

Tony Abbott and the Liberals are uncannuly in touch with the mentality this nonsense creates and appeals to. They know just how to pitch meaningless but emotive sound-bites to this constituency: "Stop the boats;" "The carbon tax will ruin the economy;" "You can't trust Juliar".

Meanwhile Labor and The Greens labour on under the illusion that actually doing things for the good of the people, or being 'right' matters a damn. Those days are gone, folks. Welcome to the Brave New World.

And so much for the maxim that "The first one to mention the Nazis loses the debate". And using propagandists as fodder for your propaganda is cheeky to say the least.