26 Sep 2013

Can The United Nations Block US MJ Legalization?

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The United Nations International Narcotics Control Board’s latest annual report expressed dismay at the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado and urged “the Government of the United States to take necessary measures to ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties in its entire territory”. This led many media outlets to report that the U.S. had violated the UN drug control treaties to which it is a signatory. U.S. obligations under the treaties, and indeed the broader international future of marijuana legalization, are complex matters. But the essential points can be summarized in a 4-part Q&A.

1. Is the U.S. currently in violation of the UN treaties it signed agreeing to make marijuana illegal? No. The U.S. federal government is a signatory to the treaty, but the States of Washington and Colorado are not. Countries with federated systems of government like the U.S. and Germany can only make international commitments regarding their national-level policies. Constitutionally, U.S. states are simply not required to make marijuana illegal as it is in federal law. Hence, the U.S. made no such commitment on behalf of the 50 states in signing the UN drug control treaties.

Some UN officials believe that the spirit of the international treaties requires the U.S. federal government to attempt to override state-level marijuana legalization. But in terms of the letter of the treaties, Attorney General Holder’s refusal to challenge Washington and Colorado’s marijuana policies is within bounds.

2. Can the UN punish countries that legalize marijuana? Only to a small degree. The UN International Narcotics Control Board is the keeper of the drug treaties and regularly chastises governments that violate their commitments. This can be embarrassing in international diplomatic circles, but no nation has ever collapsed due to embarrassment.

Because the International Narcotics Control Board has power over the production and transport of the legal medical supply of drugs it could in theory punish a country that legalized marijuana by imposing punitive controls on pain medications. But the international humanitarian outcry over such an action would be enormous. Further, the countries that produce the most opiate painkillers are not easy to push around (e.g., Australia, India, The United States). It is thus safe to assume that crimping the medical supply of drugs is a trigger that the Narcotics Control Board is not going to pull.

3. Does the entire UN drug treaty system need to be undone in order for countries to legalize recreational marijuana? No. Marijuana is just one of many psychoactive substances made illegal by the UN drug control treaties. Some drug legalization activists hope that if support for marijuana legalization grows internationally, it will require all UN drug treaties to be revised, thereby granting an opportunity to legalize cocaine, heroin and every other drug at the same time. This is a misreading both of international political sentiment and UN protocol.

Even among nations with some sympathy towards marijuana legalization, there is minimal enthusiasm for allowing, say, the Phillip Morris corporation to sell cocaine legally throughout the world as it does cigarettes. If the price of changing UN treaties regarding marijuana is legalizing all drugs, many otherwise sympathetic nations will vigorously oppose the action.

But as it happens, it’s a moot point because under U.N. protocol, new treaties supersede old treaties. Thus, if the nations of the world ever agree that they want to legalize recreational marijuana, they can write a new treaty focused just on that drug. This would nullify only the marijuana-related provisions of the overall UN drug control framework, leaving the status of other currently illegal drugs unaffected.

4. Wouldn’t a new UN marijuana drug treaty just be a vehicle for the U.S. to push its tough marijuana policies worldwide? Get ready for a surprise. If all nations adopted current U.S. marijuana policy, the result would be significant relaxation of international control over marijuana. Prior to the Obama Administration, a Rand Corporation study found that the level of marijuana enforcement in the U.S. was similar to that of Western Europe. Since Obama was elected, marijuana enforcement intensity has plummeted and the federal government has dropped its longstanding opposition to state-level marijuana decriminalization and legalization efforts.

Last but not least, remember that the only legal recreational marijuana markets in the world are not in the Netherlands or in Portugal but right here in the United States. Transplanting current U.S. marijuana policy worldwide via a new UN treaty would mean somewhat more liberal marijuana control policy in Europe, and dramatically more relaxed policy in most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

In short, supporters of marijuana legalization don’t really need to worry about the UN drug control treaties. Whether marijuana legalization sweeps the world or not depends on something far more fundamental: What people around the world decide is the best approach to the drug.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Keith Humphreys, Professor of Psychiatry, Stanford University
Published: September 25, 2013
Copyright: 2013 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

20 May 2013

Americas Coalition Suggests MJ Laws Be Relaxed

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A comprehensive report on drug policy in the Americas released Friday by a consortium of nations suggests that the legalization of marijuana, but not other illicit drugs, be considered among a range of ideas to reassess how the drug war is carried out.

The report, released by the Organization of American States walked a careful line in not recommending any single approach to the drug problem and encouraging “flexibility.”

Prompted by President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia at the Summit of the Americas last year to answer growing dissatisfaction and calls for new strategies in the drug war, the report’s 400 pages mainly summarize and distill previous research and debate on the subject.

But the fact that it gave weight to exploring legalizing or de-penalizing marijuana was seized on by advocates of more liberal drug use laws as a landmark and a potential catalyst for less restrictive laws in a number of countries.

“This takes the debate to a whole other level,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates more liberal drug use laws. “It effectively breaks the taboo on considering alternatives to the current prohibitionist approach.”

The report said “the drug problem requires a flexible approach,” and “it would be worthwhile to assess existing signals and trends that lean toward the decriminalization or legalization of the production, sale and use of marijuana.

“Sooner or later decisions in this area will need to be taken,” it said. “On the other hand, our report finds no significant support, in any country, for the decriminalization or legalization of the trafficking of other illicit drugs.”

Some analysts interpreted the inclusion of decriminalization as a thumb in the eye to the United States, the country with the heaviest drug consumption and one that has spent several billion dollars on drug interdiction in the Americas, only to find that marijuana and cocaine continue to flow heavily and that violence has surged in Mexico and Central America as the drugs move north.

The report comes two weeks before an O.A.S. meeting in Guatemala, whose president has been open to legalizing marijuana and where the central topic is drug policy in the hemisphere. Uruguay’s president has put forward a plan for the government to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana.

“The region’s leaders expressed their frustration with the limits and exorbitant costs of current policies and their hunger for a fuller, more creative debate,” said John Walsh, a drug policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

But the United States has so far rejected legalization as a solution to drug violence.

A State Department spokesman, William Ostick, said the report would be carefully reviewed and discussed with fellow O.A.S. members in Guatemala.

“We look forward to sharing our latest research and experiences on drug prevention and treatment, and to strengthening operational law enforcement cooperation with our partners around the globe in support of our common and shared responsibility for the world drug problem,” he said. “We know other leaders will similarly bring their own data, and anticipate a productive and useful dialogue.”

Kevin Sabet, director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida, said advocates of drug liberalization were overplaying the significance of the report, which he said contained a lot the Obama administration would agree with.

He said a discussion of legalization was only natural, particularly since two American states, Washington and Colorado, have moved in that direction.

But the report, he said, also suggested that countries in the hemisphere needed to redouble their efforts to fight the impunity of drug gangs, something often overlooked or played down in the debate on the war on drugs. The report notes that drug organizations have atomized into a range of gangs carrying out kidnapping, extortion and other crimes.

“Institutions in the drug-producing nations are going to have to change the way they do business,” Mr. Sabet said. “You cannot only rely on reducing demand and ignore deep-seated institutional problems.”

Mr. Santos, in accepting the report in Bogota, said more study was needed. “Let it be clear that no one here is defending any position, neither legalization, nor regulation, nor war at any cost,” he said. “What we have to do is use serious and well-considered studies like the one the O.A.S. has presented us with today to seek better solutions.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 18, 2013, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Americas Coalition Suggests Marijuana Laws Be Relaxed.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Randal C. Archibold
Published: May 18, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

27 Apr 2013

Pot Legalization Won’t Change Mission

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The nation’s drug czar said Wednesday the legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado won’t change his office’s mission of fighting the country’s drug problem by focusing on addiction treatment that will be available under the federal health overhaul.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the National Drug Control Policy, released President Barack Obama’s 2013 strategy for fighting drug addiction Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. The strategy includes a greater emphasis on using public health tools to battle addiction and diverting non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons.

“The legal issue of Washington and Colorado is really a question you have to go back to the Department of Justice,” Kerlikowske said when asked about the impact the two states would have on national drug policy.

The key to the administration’s efforts to deliver health care to drug addicts is in the federal health care overhaul because it will require insurance companies to cover treatment for substance abuse disorders, as they currently do for chronic diseases like diabetes. That change could lead to addiction treatment for several million more people.

“Treatment shouldn’t be a privilege limited to those who can afford it, but it’s a service available to all who need it,” Kerlikowske said.

The strategy outlined by Kerlikowske also supports a greater emphasis on criminal justice reforms that include drug courts and probation programs aimed at reducing incarceration rates. It also will include community-based policing programs designed to break the cycle of drug use, crime and incarceration while steering law enforcement resources to more serious offenses.

Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief, said addiction needs to be acknowledged as a disease that can be diagnosed and treated. He said the debate over the nation’s drug problem has become locked in a highly charged ideological debate in which there are no simple answers.

“We’re not going to solve it by drug legalization, and we’re certainly not in my career going to arrest our way out of this problem, either, and these two extreme approaches really aren’t guided by the experience, the compassion or the knowledge that’s needed,” Kerlikowske said.

Kerlikowske was joined by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Anthony Batts, Baltimore’s police commissioner; and Dr. Eric Strain, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and Research at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

Batts noted that Maryland lawmakers this year showed signs of becoming more lenient on laws relating to marijuana, and he expressed his opposition to leniency. The state Senate passed a bill to decriminalize the possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana, but the bill did not pass in the House of Delegates.

Batts said he views marijuana as a “starter drug.”

“I’m seeing more takeover robberies — people breaking into houses — surrounding marijuana, and it is dealing with younger people who are doing these takeover robberies that are resulting in murders, shootings and killings,” Batts said.

Newshawk: The GCW
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Brian Witte, The Associated Press
Published: April 24, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press

26 Apr 2013

Pot Legalization Won’t Change Mission

posted in: Cannabis News | 0

The nation’s drug czar said Wednesday the legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado won’t change his office’s mission of fighting the country’s drug problem by focusing on addiction treatment that will be available under the federal health overhaul.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the National Drug Control Policy, released President Barack Obama’s 2013 strategy for fighting drug addiction Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. The strategy includes a greater emphasis on using public health tools to battle addiction and diverting non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons.

“The legal issue of Washington and Colorado is really a question you have to go back to the Department of Justice,” Kerlikowske said when asked about the impact the two states would have on national drug policy.

The key to the administration’s efforts to deliver health care to drug addicts is in the federal health care overhaul because it will require insurance companies to cover treatment for substance abuse disorders, as they currently do for chronic diseases like diabetes. That change could lead to addiction treatment for several million more people.

“Treatment shouldn’t be a privilege limited to those who can afford it, but it’s a service available to all who need it,” Kerlikowske said.

The strategy outlined by Kerlikowske also supports a greater emphasis on criminal justice reforms that include drug courts and probation programs aimed at reducing incarceration rates. It also will include community-based policing programs designed to break the cycle of drug use, crime and incarceration while steering law enforcement resources to more serious offenses.

Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief, said addiction needs to be acknowledged as a disease that can be diagnosed and treated. He said the debate over the nation’s drug problem has become locked in a highly charged ideological debate in which there are no simple answers.

“We’re not going to solve it by drug legalization, and we’re certainly not in my career going to arrest our way out of this problem, either, and these two extreme approaches really aren’t guided by the experience, the compassion or the knowledge that’s needed,” Kerlikowske said.

Kerlikowske was joined by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Anthony Batts, Baltimore’s police commissioner; and Dr. Eric Strain, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and Research at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

Batts noted that Maryland lawmakers this year showed signs of becoming more lenient on laws relating to marijuana, and he expressed his opposition to leniency. The state Senate passed a bill to decriminalize the possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana, but the bill did not pass in the House of Delegates.

Batts said he views marijuana as a “starter drug.”

“I’m seeing more takeover robberies — people breaking into houses — surrounding marijuana, and it is dealing with younger people who are doing these takeover robberies that are resulting in murders, shootings and killings,” Batts said.

Newshawk: The GCW
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Brian Witte, The Associated Press
Published: April 24, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press

16 Apr 2013

Teen marijuana use Common because of Canadian Drug Policy

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The high rate of marijuana use among Canada’s youth is a by-product of strict drug control, pot activist and BC Green Party candidate Jodie Emery said.

Canada has the highest rate of cannabis use among young people in developed countries, according to a recent report by UNICEF. In Canada, 28 per cent of kids aged 11, 13 and 15 reported having used cannabis in the last 12 months. The data comes from a 2009-2010 World Health Organization (WHO) survey of 29 developed countries.

Canada also had the highest rates of youth marijuana use in a similar WHO survey conducted eight years prior, but the rate has gone down from 40 per cent to 28 per cent. While the situation may have improved, young people continue to use cannabis at a very high rate, despite laws against it.

In the Netherlands, a country known for its relaxed drug policy, only 17 per cent of youth said they used cannabis. Emery said that this actually makes sense.

“In countries with more liberal drug laws, the use of marijuana and other drugs is lower,” she said, a view that corresponds to the report’s findings.

Emery argued that the legalization and regulation of drugs help control the substance and keep it out of the hands of young people. When drugs are illegal, they’re controlled by criminal organizations, and gangs “give it to anyone who wants it,” she said. Further, these gangs make money off of prohibited drugs, so Emery asserts that politicians who support prohibition are in fact supporting gangs.

The health impacts of marijuana use are limited, and Emery says it’s no worse than alcohol, but a criminal record due to drug possession can have a life-long impact.

“The law causes more harm to young people than does the substance itself, Emery stated. “That needs to change.”

Emery makes it clear that she doesn’t condone marijuana use among children, and cited a report that suggested 16 could be an appropriate minimum age for marijuana use. The 2002 report, from a special committee to the Canadian Senate, recommended the legalization and regulation of marijuana. It said cannabis laws should only prohibit what causes demonstrable harm to others: illegal trafficking, impaired driving, and selling it to people under the age of sixteen.

Last November, a poll by Forum Research found that 65 per cent of Canadians support the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. And yet, marijuana remains banned, with an exception for medical use.

Emery and many other proponents of legalization suggest that Canada follow the example of Washington state, which voted in November to legalize marijuana. The state will be regulating the sale of marijuana, while banning sales to young people, in the same way that alcohol is regulated.

Source: http://www.vancouverobserver.com/life/health/teen-marijuana-use-common-because-canadian-drug-policy-says-pot-activist

Author: Chris Lane