Legalize Freedom, End the Drug War

Joel Walbert

Jul 07, 2023

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Legalize freedom, celebrate God’s gift…

- Kottonmouth Kings “Who’s the Criminal”

From Humboldt Couty to Zero Tolerance, one inference can be made, the war on drugs is a war on us…

- Endeavour “The Drug Song”

Source: Mises Institute

My Forty-Year War on Reefer Madness

by James Bovard

07/06/2023

Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration had unleashed its “Just Say No” program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used nonapproved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on a promise to get “government off your backs”—double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history.

Like kids everywhere in the 1970s, I laughed at the 1936 movie Reefer Madness in my high school health class. I’d occasionally smoked marijuana but hadn’t felt compelled to burn down any orphanages afterward. When Reagan went on the antidrug warpath, I was “laying for him,” as Mark Twain would say.

The Herald Examiner was a conservative-leaning paper, so I slanted my argument accordingly: “Many heavy marijuana users voted Republican in 1982, so there is no proof that it causes irreparable brain damage.” I pointed out that legalizing and taxing marijuana could raise enough money to pay for the MX missile program that Reagan championed. (Pentagon boondoggles were much cheaper back then.) Ending marijuana prohibition would put hundreds of lawyers out of work, I cheerily noted. Reagan’s drug crackdown was playing to a culture war theme which I mocked in the final sentence of my piece: “Personally, I’m all in favor of locking up hippies, but we need to find a better reason.” The editor wisely deleted that last sentence before printing the article.

My attempts at humor were not universally appreciated. When I took the page from the Herald Examiner to a photocopy shop in uptown Washington, the cranky old manager was outraged by the article’s headline: “Making Pot a Crime Is, Well, Un-American.” He railed about how drugs were destroying the nation and wagged his finger so hard he almost threw his shoulder out of joint. The real problem, he said, was troublemakers like me. I just grinned at him and found another copy shop.

Two years later, writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune, I declared, “The only things drug laws achieve is to make drugs more dangerous, crime more prevalent, and government more obnoxious.” I scoffed, “If the FBI didn’t have a thousand agents chasing dope dealers, would the Soviets be having so much success stealing U.S. military secrets?” I also whacked the Feds’ narcotic nitwittery in the Detroit News and other papers.

My pieces had as much impact on the drug war as bouncing a ping pong ball off the hull of a battleship. After the drug war became politically profitable, the number of drug offenders in prisons rose tenfold. More people were locked up for drug offenses than for violent crimes, and possessing trace amounts of cocaine was often punished with longer sentences than rape, murder, or child molesting.

In 1992, I headed to Guatemala to give a few speeches on perfidious US protectionist policies. Outside of Guatemala City, I met farmers and small businessmen who explained to me how the US drug war was ravaging their country. A Guatemalan banker told me that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was involved in shooting down or forcing crash landings of small planes suspected of carrying drugs. A prominent Guatemalan politician told me, “If you criticize the Drug Enforcement Administration, you might lose your visa” and be banned from visiting the US.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, the Washington Times published my report on Guatemala: “U.S. anti-drug activities are wrecking the environment, terrorizing the people, and subverting the market economies that the U.S. loves to champion.” US aid was pouring into the coffers of military forces notorious for committing genocide against the Mayans and other minorities. I observed, “Giving the Guatemalan army more weapons to fight marijuana growers is like giving the Mafia bazookas to combat jaywalking in New York City.” Just in case I hadn’t riled up officialdom enough, I tossed in a closing line: “Exporting our drug war to Guatemala and other Latin American nations is Yankee Imperialism at its worst.”

Bingo: DEA chief Robert Bonner was enraged. “Columnist Sprays Tons of Misinformation over Your Pages” was the Washington Times’ headline for his response. Bonner claimed that I had done “a great disservice to your readers” and declared, “We certainly are not behaving as if the ‘drug war gives us the right to impose martial law on foreign nations,’ as Mr. Bovard contends.” The DEA later became notorious for wreaking havoc throughout Central America. The DEA was dousing Guatemala with Roundup pesticides, but Bonner claimed that “adverse human health effects . . . are virtually nonexistent.” Turn on late-night TV nowadays and you’ll see a torrent of ads soliciting class action claimants for American victims of Roundup. And the massive US aid for the Guatemalan military became a propellant for drug smuggling that was spearheaded by top generals and elite Special Forces units.

Writing about the drug war got me vilified from all sides. In early 1994, I pummeled DEA entrapment operations at Grateful Dead concerts in a Newsday article. My piece, headlined “Narcs Should Let the Deadheads Be,” pointed out that “abusive federal prosecutions” were destroying far more lives than LSD, the DEA’s pretext for witch hunts. One enraged antidrug zealot howled to Newsday, “Obviously, James Bovard sees the world through the same haze many Deadheads do,” and I was to blame for the “crime problem in this country” because I opposed holding people “accountable for their actions.” On the flipside, a fan of the band denounced me for “perpetuating false stereotypes of Deadheads,” including the notion that they tended to be “aging hippies.” As Joe Biden would say, “C’mon, man!”

Later that year, I began hammering and lampooning drug warriors for Playboy. A November 1994 piece blasted the use of drug courier profiles (later a favorite topic for social justice warriors). A December 1994 article headlined “Oops—You’re Dead! No-Knock Raids” helped put that proliferating atrocity on the national radar (followed by a 2000 update). I also flogged asset forfeiture abuses, the informant scourge (“Uncle Scam Wants You”), the prison industrial complex, and the perverse sentencing guidelines that made talking about drugs worse than murder. In a piece with an evergreen theme, I detailed how kinfolk of members of Congress and other powerful Washingtonians routinely received wrist slaps or had their drug charges dismissed (Senator John McCain’s wife was a prize example). And some folks think that type of favoritism only began with Hunter Biden.

At the end of the 1990s, I turned to the American Spectator to thump Clinton’s program that was deluging hundreds of square miles in Colombia with deadly pesticides to suppress coca production. The program got some bad press when US-funded crop dusters repeatedly fumigated school children, sickening many of the kids. Clinton administration officials trumpeted their drug war salvation mission at the same time the wife of the US military commander in Colombia was convicted for smuggling kilos of cocaine to New York. Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia’s ambassador to the US, attacked a piece I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. Moreno claimed the Clinton aid package was carefully targeted and would “strengthen law enforcement institutions and help protect human rights.” Alas, some of the torrent of US aid was diverted to “carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices,” crippling the nation’s judiciary that was exposing mass-murdering paramilitary groups allied to the governing regime.

During the George W. Bush administration, I jibed his drug czar for demonizing drug users in federally funded TV ads and portraying people who bought drugs as terrorist financiers threatening America with annihilation. Federal drug warriors arrested cancer patients who smoked marijuana to control chemo-induced nausea and busted doctors who gave suffering patients more painkillers than the DEA preferred. I ridiculed the federal vendetta against comedian Tommy Chong (and again here last year) who was sent to prison for selling bongs. Shortly after his arrest in 2003, Chong scoffed at the nationwide raids to seize drug paraphernalia: “I feel pretty sad, but it seems to be the only weapons of mass destruction they’ve found this year.”

After the global war on terrorism and Bush’s invasion of Iraq spiraled out of control, I shifted my focus away from the drug war. I still got in an occasional slap. A decade ago, I lamented in USA Today, “Too many lives have already been destroyed so that politicians could win votes by appearing to be tough on crime.”

Since that first piece in the Herald Examiner, more than ten million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations. Many states have legalized marijuana possession, but more people continue to be busted each year for marijuana offenses than for all violent crimes combined. The federal drug war continues with more drug fatalities than ever.

Actually, drug policy debates have become more depraved (if not demented) in recent years. During the 2020 election season, the media mostly portrayed Joe Biden as a progressive, compassionate alternative to President Donald Trump. But for decades, Biden had been the biggest drug warrior on Capitol Hill, championing policies that sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to prison. In a 2019 piece headlined “Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration,” the New York Times hyped Biden’s favorite fix: “Lock the S.O.B.s Up!” (That article ran before Biden had a lock on the Democratic presidential nomination.) Republicans seem hellbent on outboneheading Biden. Republican presidential frontrunner Trump is now calling for death penalties for drug dealers. Trump has not yet specified what other Taliban-style reforms he will endorse. Several Republican presidential candidates are calling for invading Mexico to curb drug imports. Maybe these wizards don’t realize that Pancho Villa got away a long time ago.

Before I fired my first salvo at the war on drugs, I was captivated by a line from an 1839 essay by British historian Thomas Macaulay: “It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime.” That line remains the best summary of the folly and inhumanity of criminalizing victimless crimes. As Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia wrote, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

As I wrote in my 1994 book Lost Rights, “The war on drugs is essentially a civil war to uphold the principle that politicians should have absolute power over what citizens put into their own bodies.” But there is scant hope that politicians will forfeit any punitive power regardless of how many lives they continue to blight.

Author:

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

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Source: LewRockwell.com

Legalizing Marijuana Is Not a Big Mistake

By Laurence M. Vance

June 15, 2023

Colorado and Washington were the first two states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in 2012. Delaware and Minnesota this year joined twenty-one other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing recreational marijuana. This was accomplished in both states by legislation instead of the usual ballot measure.

California was the first state to legalize the medical use of marijuana in 1996. Kentucky this year joined thirty-seven other states and the five U.S. territories in legalizing medical marijuana. This was also achieved by legislation.

The recreational and medical use of marijuana are both illegal in the states of Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Notwithstanding the states, the federal government still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) with “a high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use,” and “a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.” Possessing, growing, transporting, or distributing marijuana is a federal felony, with violations resulting in fines and/or imprisonment. And the Supreme Court, in the case of Gonzales v. Raich (2005), has ruled that the federal government has the authority to prohibit marijuana possession and use for any and all purposes.

New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat not only wants to keep it that way, he believes that the states’ legalizing marijuana is a big mistake. Douthat is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “where he studies American politics, culture, religion, and family life.” He is also a film critic at National Review.

Douthat is distressed that public support for marijuana legalization has climbed. He believes that “marijuana legalization as we’ve done it so far has been a policy failure, a potential social disaster, a clear and evident mistake.”

Legalization “isn’t necessarily striking a great blow against mass incarceration or for racial justice,” nor “is it doing great things for public health.” And of course, marijuana has the risks it has always had: “The broad downside risks of marijuana, beyond extreme dangers like schizophrenia, remain as evident as ever: a form of personal degradation, of lost attention and performance and motivation, that isn’t mortally dangerous in the way of heroin but that can damage or derail an awful lot of human lives.”

Douthat refers his readers to “an essay by Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute explaining his evolution from youthful libertarian to grown-up prohibitionist.” He acknowledges that the essay “will not convince readers who come in with stringently libertarian presuppositions—who believe on high principle that consenting adults should be able to purchase, sell and enjoy almost any substance short of fentanyl and that no second-order social consequence can justify infringing on this right.”

But Douthat has it wrong. Libertarians believe on principle that consenting adults should be able to purchase, sell and enjoy any substance including fentanyl and that no second-order social consequence can justify infringing on this right.

There should be no laws at any level of government for any reason regarding the buying, selling, growing, processing, transporting, manufacturing, advertising, using, possessing, or “trafficking” of any drug for any reason.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that the use of marijuana or any other drug is not harmful, dangerous, addictive, immoral, risky, or foolish. It just means that it is none of the government’s business as long as in doing so one doesn’t infringe upon the personal or property rights of others.

It is not the purpose of government to prevent people from engaging in bad habits, risky behavior, or immoral activities; protect people from harmful substances, unhealthy practices, or dangerous activities; or prohibit what people can buy, sell, or consume.

Liberty is never a mistake.

Author:

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from central Florida. He is the author of The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom; War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism; War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy; King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, and many other books. His newest books are and .

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Source: Future of Freedom Foundation

The Mule Shows Why the Drug War Will Never Be Won

by Jacob G. Hornberger

June 28, 2023

Last night, I watched The Mule, the drug-war movie on Netflix that was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. It was the second time I’ve seen the movie.

Eastwood also stars in the movie. He plays an elderly drug transporter for a drug cartel, which in drug-war parlance is called a “mule.”

As with many drug-war movies, you can’t help but like and sympathize with Eastwood. Every time he is close to being busted by the DEA and local law enforcement, the natural tendency is to root for Eastwood and not the cops.

Why does Eastwood risk getting caught and being sent to jail? Money! He needs it bad. His home is being foreclosed upon and he is barely surviving. Accepting the job as a drug mule not only provides him with money, it provides him with big money, enough to save his home and live a lavish lifestyle.

The movie demonstrates why the drug war will never be won. As officials crack down, they reduce the supply of drugs. The reduced supply causes prices to increase. The increase in prices and profits attract regular people who realize that they can score big and probably not get caught.

Now, I’m sure that there are drug warriors who would respond, “Jacob, that’s just in the movies. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.”

Oh, but they would be sorely wrong, as Yerlina Lantigua Hernandez DeNova, a permanent resident of the United States, would attest. According to the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in 2021 she was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport after arriving on a flight from the Dominican Republic. Officials found cocaine pellets in her purse and her bra. She also confessed that she had inserted such pellets in her vagina and anally.

The total weight of the cocaine seized from Hernandez was 3 pounds, with an estimated street value of close to $100,000. Naturally, they charged her with federal narcotics-related felonies.

How many other people are doing this sort of thing? That’s, of course, impossible to say. But I’d estimate lots. And I’d also estimate that only a small number of them ever get caught.

It’s just another reason why we should end this evil, immoral, destructive, and racially bigoted government program. They can’t win the war on drugs no matter what they do. All they end up doing is tempting regular people into the drug trade, only to have their lives destroyed with a felony prosecution, conviction, and incarceration.

I won’t tell you what happens to Clint Eastwood in The Mule.

This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Source: Phys.org

Medical, but hold the marijuana: new CBD source found in Brazil

by Joshua Howat Berger

In a laboratory tucked away on a sprawling university campus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian molecular biologist Rodrigo Moura Neto is running tests on a seemingly ordinary plant with a potent secret.

The fast-growing, homely plant, Trema micrantha blume, is native to the Americas, where it is widespread and often considered a weed.

But Moura Neto recently discovered its fruits and flowers contain one of the active ingredients in marijuana: cannabidiol, or CBD, which has shown promise as a treatment for conditions including epilepsy, autism, anxiety and chronic pain.

Crucially, he also found it does not contain the other main ingredient in pot, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive substance that makes people high.

That opens the possibility of an abundant new source of CBD, without the complications of cannabis, which remains illegal in many places.

The discovery has made something of an overnight academic star of Dr. Moura Neto, an affable, silver-haired 66-year-old who now has a packed schedule of meetings with patent experts and companies keen to tap the multi-billion-dollar CBD market.

"It was wonderful to find a plant (with CBD but) without THC, because you avoid all the mess around psychotropic substances," says Moura Neto, who has spent the better part of five decades researching in this small lab at Rio de Janeiro Federal University.

"That means the potential is enormous," he tells AFP.

His 10-member team recently won a 500,000-real ($104,000) public grant to expand his project, which will now identify the best methods to extract CBD from "Trema," then study its effectiveness as a substitute for medical marijuana.

Man in demand

Many of CBD's touted medical uses are still under research.

The compound is controversial, including in Brazil, where patients have gone to court to win the right to use it. They often have to import it at eye-watering prices, given that cultivating medical marijuana remains illegal—though there is legislation before Congress to change that.

Debates aside, demand for CBD is booming.

The global market for CBD last year was estimated at nearly $5 billion. Analytics firm Vantage Market Research projects it will grow to more than $47 billion by 2028, driven mainly by health and wellness use.

Interest in Moura Neto's research has been "huge," says Rosane Silva, the director of his laboratory, which sits off a hallway bustling with students and researchers in white lab coats.

"Lots of companies have been calling, looking to collaborate" on an eventual non-cannabis-based CBD medication, Silva says, standing beside what she calls the "magical plant."

A member of the Cannabaceae family—like cannabis—"Trema" can grow into a tree up to 20 meters (66 feet) tall.

Moura Neto says he and the university may explore patenting any innovations they find for extracting CBD from its tiny fruits and flowers.

But he is quick to add he won't patent "Trema" itself. He wants scientists everywhere to be able to research it.

"If I dreamed of being a billionaire, I wouldn't have become a professor," he says.

From policing to producing?

Moura Neto started studying CBD for a completely different reason: trained as a forensic geneticist, he would analyze the DNA of marijuana seized by police to help investigators trace its source.

When he came across a study that identified CBD in a related plant in Thailand—another member of the Cannabaceae family—he got the idea to test for it in "Trema."

He says turning his still-unpublished findings into a drug ready for market will take five to 10 years of research and clinical trials—if it is possible at all.

Cannabis, first domesticated in China more than 10,000 years ago, has been cultivated for millennia to hone its mind-altering and medicinal effects.

CBD from "Trema" might not work as well, or at all, Moura Neto says.

In the meantime, it's no use smoking the plant for a high.

"That definitely won't do anything for you," he laughs.