The DEA Propaganda piece currently featured at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry has been a hot topic on this (see here and here) and many other blogs.

Finally, I’ve come across some great pictures from inside the exhibit, courtesy of Mark Draughn of the Windy Pundit. We’ve all heard about the highly offensive display of wreckage from the World Trade Center and from the Pentagon, but I didn’t realize how many other aspects of the exhibit are just plan silly. It opens, for example, with a heart-wrenching picture of a car wreck in which a family died and the driver was on several drugs. But how does this evil make drugs any different from alcohol?

Another is a life-size model of a Drug Den, complete with peeling wallpaper so that you will Know Your Dope Fiend. Lastly, there is an insulting to my intelligence poster of several DEA agents, all lined up like action heroes. The certainly un-staged picture is also, of course, more than sufficiently representative of several cultures.

The DEA really has embarrassed themselves here.

Norm Stamper has a pretty good idea of how deadly the War on Drugs has become for both Mexicans and Americans. In an article accessible here, Stamper outlines reasons why putting an end to prohibition would bring an immediate end to drug-related violence–the most obvious of which is that a regulated drug industry would put the dealers and traffickers out of business. According to Stamper, the industry could be regulated so as to keep drugs away from children and users off of the roads.

Hearing from Stamter and from LEAP gives one the impression that it is not law enforcement-types that are the problem here, but legislators. But what about the DEA? If local cops can see the detrimental effects of the Drug War, than why not DEA officials? The DEA is a very strange organization indeed.

Courtesy of the Agitator here is a video clip about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group discussed in this post. The clip is not only persuasive in its argument (i.e. that the War on Drugs is useless, counterproductive, and breeds violence) but also moving in its display of law officers’ honesty.

Here is a link to LEAP’s official website.

This November, voters in both Colorado and Nevada will be able to decide on an amendment that legalizes the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana for individuals over the age of 21. The movement to get the question on the ballot in CO was led by SAFER Colorado (Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation), which secured far more than the number of signatures required.

It appears, however, that groups like SAFER (as well as Marijuana Policy Project and Nevada’s own Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana ) may have to be content with just “mainstreaming” the issue. In the case of Colorado, for example, newspaper polls show the initiative losing 51% to 37%. SAFER remains optimistic, however, citing the last-minute nature of their efforts. They feel that the fight has just begun.

Thanks to StoptheDrugWar.org for the story.

“Plan Columbia,” which was instituted by the Clinton Administration as an attempt to eradicate cocaine supplies in Columbia by fumigating coca farms, has resulted in a near zero change in the price and purity of the drug on American streets, according to a New York Times story. Overall, there is as much coca being grown today in Columbia as there ever was, and more is being supplied to the world than is being demanded. To put it another way, tons of American taxpayer money is being spent on “Plan Columbia,” yet cocaine is as available as ever. We might as well be setting that money on fire.

This is not to mention the political instability that the War on Drugs breeds in the region, as the current president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is the former president of the coca growers union.

Thanks once again to Pete Guthier’s Drug War Rant, I’ve been directed to an AP story on Yahoo news that points to the all-time high amount of opium cultivation that is currently taking place in Afghanistan.

According to the article, the West has spent millions in counternarcotics money, only to see opium cultivation go up by 40% in the last year. The Taliban (big surprise–see my last post) had virtually eradicated the opium trade when it was ousted five years ago, but is now reportedly using drug money, as large-scale dealers and religious insurgents now face a common enemy: us.

The problem here is that we want to Westernize these Middle Eastern countries as much as possible by introducing democracies and free market economies, but don’t quite see that, especially the latter, allows for the laws of supply and demand to dictate production. Guthier makes a similar point in his post. The soundest economic option for Afghan farmers is to grow opium, so why wouldn’t they?

See this previous post for British politician’s reaction to the opium eradication project in Afghanistan.

The negative outcry in response to the DEA exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry has finally reached the mainstream media, as a recent article about it has appeared in the Washington Post.

The wave of criticism of the exhibit has relied in part upon traditional arguments connecting the ineffective War of Drugs to prohibition, but has also used newer arguments that call into question the DEA’s connection between terrorism and drug trafficking. Perhaps the most offensive part of the exhibit is the use of post-9/11 patriotism in order to justify the War on Drugs by drawing the spurious conclusion that terror cells are funded in large part by drugs (which, of course, would be impossible given a regulated drug trade). And as the Post article points out, the exhibit fails to mention the fact that the Taliban publically condemned the heroin trade. This shouldn’t be surprising since the claim that religious zealots would be willingly funded by the the sale of narcotics is a difficult pill to swallow indeed.

As I have said before, the most important (and difficult) thing for the anti-prohibition movement to acheive is to reach an audience outside its own circles. Hopefully, mainstream articles like this one, as well as the DEA’s own insulting propaganda, will reach this wider audience.

The DEA Exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry has come under fire recently by both anti-prohibitionists and non-activists alike for being a blatant piece of propaganda that offensively and spuriously links the failing War on Drugs to terrorism.

Click here for a press release put out by DrugWarRant, which also offers detailed reasons on its own site to support the belief that the museum is horribly embarrased by the ridiculous exhibit.

I say let the exhibit run; it will only make the DEA look even more pathetic and foolish.

Click here for a site put together to counter the exhibit.

Finally! Pete Guthier of Drug War Rant recently got his letter to the editor of Central Illnois paper “The Pantagraph” published online. I say “finally” because it is about time that sensible opponents of irrational drug policies get their voices heard in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, the only people who visit these anti-war-on-drugs blogs (including this one) are those who are already convinced. We need to get the message out to the non-converted in order to enact some actual change. Otherwise, we are just preaching to the proverbial choir.

Guthier’s letter (which can be read here) argues against the silly policy of making mandatory drug testing a condition of participation in school activities. This testing not only unnecessarily fosters a hostile relationship between students and authority, but it is also ineffective because, as Guthier’s letter points out, the “at-risk” kids are exactly the ones NOT participating in school activities and therefore will not be tested (thankfully, it is illegal to blindly test everybody). Furthermore, this policy completely removes the possibility that these kids will participate in positive extracurricular programs, thereby perpetuating the negativity of their situations.

A recently revitalized drug enforcement training course for MA police has been criticized by Jack Cole, former NJ state trooper and founder of Law Enforcement Officers Against Prohibition (LEAP), for being a “total waste of money.”

LEAP calls for the legalization of drugs on the widely-known grounds that the War on Drugs has been both unsuccessful and counterproductive, and has contributed to a dramatic increase of drug-related violence. Cole cites the case of tobacco, the use of which has drastically decreased while remaining legal.

Click here for full story.

And click here for a link to Cole’s recent interview on NPR. Thanks to Drug War Rant for the link.