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Cannabis strain

2017-12-01T18:10:20Z

Adm1n: Created page with "Cannabis strain - Mean a Strain or Variety Of Cannabis"

Cannabis strain - Mean a Strain or Variety Of Cannabis

Calamus

2015-08-21T14:13:56Z

JChidiac:

Term for [[cannabis]] often used in ancient writings. See [[Fragrant Cane]].

Cannabinoid receptors

2015-08-14T15:27:57Z

JChidiac: Created page with "See CB1 and CB2."

See [[CB1]] and [[CB2]].

Dutch style

2015-08-14T15:20:04Z

JChidiac: Created page with "See Backroll."

See [[Backroll]].

Flagrolling

2015-08-14T15:19:17Z

JChidiac:

See [[Backroll]].

Fragrant Cane

2015-05-28T13:40:28Z

JChidiac:

Fragrant cane or [[calamus]] is the term for cannabis most widely found in the Holy Bible, for example in Exodus 30:23. It has been recorded to have been used in the making of holy anointing oils for special rituals.

Excerpt from Exodus Chapter 3:

"(22) Then the Lord said to Moses, (23) “Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels[e] of fragrant calamus, (24) 500 shekels of cassia—all according to the sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil. (25) Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil. (26) Then use it to anoint the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant law, (27) the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, (28) the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand. (29) You shall consecrate them so they will be most holy, and whatever touches them will be holy."

War on drugs

2015-04-27T22:55:14Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''War on Drugs''' is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to define and..."

'''War on Drugs''' is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to define and reduce the [[illegal drug trade]]. This initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of what participating governments and the UN define as illegal psychoactive drugs. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by United States President Richard Nixon—the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control—during which he declared drug abuse "public enemy number one". That message to the Congress included text about devoting more federal resources to the "prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted", but that part did not received the same public attention as the term "war on drugs". The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that the United States spends $51 billion annually on the War on Drugs.

On May 13, 2009, Gil Kerlikowske—the current Director of the [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]] (ONDCP)—signaled that the Obama administration did not plan to significantly alter drug enforcement policy, but also that the administration would not use the term "War on Drugs", because Kerlikowske considers the term to be "counter-productive". ONDCP's view is that "drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated... making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe." One of the alternatives that Kerlikowske has showcased is the drug policy of Sweden, which seeks to balance public health concerns with opposition to drug legalization. The prevalence rates for cocaine use in Sweden are barely one-fifth of those in Spain, the biggest consumer of the drug.

In June 2011, a self-appointed Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report on the War on Drugs, declaring: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and years after President Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed." The report was criticized by organizations that oppose a general legalization of drugs.

== History ==

''Main article: History of United States drug prohibition

See also: [[Legal history of cannabis in the United States]]''

Although Nixon declared "drug abuse" to be public enemy number one in 1971, the policies that his administration implemented as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 were a continuation of drug prohibition policies in the U.S., which started in 1914. Less well-known today is that the Nixon Administration also repealed the federal 2–10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs. Robert DuPont, the "Drug czar" in the Nixon Administration, stated it would be more accurate to say that Nixon ended, rather than launched, the "war on drugs". DuPont also argued that it was the proponents of drug legalization that popularized the term "war on drugs".

The first U.S. law that restricted the distribution and use of certain drugs was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. The first local laws came as early as 1860.

In 1919, the United States passed the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, with exceptions for religious and medical use.

In 1920, the United States passed the National Prohibition Act (Volstead Act), enacted to carry out the provisions in law of the 18th Amendment.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in the United States Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930 (46 Stat. 585).

In 1933, the federal prohibition for alcohol was repealed by passage of the 21st Amendment.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly supported the adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. The New York Times used the headline "Roosevelt Asks Narcotic War Aid".[20]

In 1937, the[[ Marijuana]] Transfer Tax Act was passed. Several scholars have claimed that the goal was to destroy the [[hemp]] industry, largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. These scholars argue that with the invention of the decorticator, hemp became a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These scholars believe that Hearst felt[dubious – discuss] that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, United States Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the DuPont's new synthetic fiber, nylon, and considered[dubious – discuss] its success to depend on its replacement of the traditional resource, hemp.However, there were circumstances that contradict these claims. One reason for doubts about those claims is that the new decorticators did not perform fully satisfactorily in commercial production. To produce fiber from hemp was a labor-intensive process if you include harvest, transport and processing. Technological developments decreased the labor with hemp but not sufficient to eliminate this disadvantage.

On October 27, 1970, Congress passes the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which, among other things, categorizes controlled substances based on their medicinal use and potential for addiction.

In 1971, two congressmen released an explosive report on the growing heroin epidemic among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam; ten to fifteen percent of the servicemen were addicted to heroin, and President Nixon declared drug abuse to be "public enemy number one".

In 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration was created to replace the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

As early as 1982, Vice President George H. W. Bush and his aides began pushing for the involvement of the CIA and U.S. military in drug interdiction efforts.

The [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]] (ONDCP) was originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988, which mandated a national anti-drug media campaign for youth, which would later become the [[National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign]]. The director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug czar, and it was first implemented in 1989 under President George H. W. Bush, and raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993. These activities were subsequently funded by the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 1998. The Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 codified the campaign at 21 U.S.C. § 1708.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report on June 2, 2011 alleging that "The War On Drugs Has Failed". The commissioned was made up of 22 self-appointed members including a number of prominent international politicians and writers. U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin also released the first ever National Prevention Strategy.

On May 21, 2012, the U.S. Government published an updated version of its Drug Policy. The director of ONDCP stated simultaneously that this policy is something different from the "War on Drugs":

*The U.S Government sees the policy as a "third way" approach to drug control; an approach that is based on the results of a huge investment in research from some of the world's preeminent scholars on disease of substance abuse.

*The policy does not see drug legalization as the "silver bullet" solution to drug control.

*It is not a policy where success is measured by the number of arrests made or prisons built.

At the same meeting was a declaration signed by the representatives of Italy, the Russian Federation, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States in line with this: "Our approach must be a balanced one, combining effective enforcement to restrict the supply of drugs, with efforts to reduce demand and build recovery; supporting people to live a life free of addiction".

== United States domestic policy ==

=== Arrests and incarceration ===

''Main article: Effect of drug offenses on mass incarceration''

According to Human Rights Watch, the War on Drugs caused soaring arrest rates which deliberately disproportionately targeted African Americans.

The present state of incarceration in the U.S. as a result of the war on drugs arrived in several stages. By 1971, different stops on drugs had been implemented for more than 50 years (for e.g. since 1914, 1937 etc.) with only a very small increase of inmates per 100,000 citizens. During the first 9 years after Nixon coined the expression "War on Drugs", statistics showed only a minor increase in the total number of imprisoned.

After 1980, the situation began to change. In the 1980s, while the number of arrests for all crimes had risen by 28%, the number of arrests for drug offenses rose 126%. The US Department of Justice, reporting on the effects of state initiatives, has stated that, from 1990 through 2000, "the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates." In addition to prison or jail, the United States provides for the deportation of many non-citizens convicted of drug offenses.

In 1994, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the "War on Drugs" resulted in the incarceration of one million Americans each year.

In 2008, the Washington Post reported that of 1.5 million Americans arrested each year for drug offenses, half a million would be incarcerated. In addition, one in five black Americans would spend time behind bars due to drug laws.

Federal and state policies also impose collateral consequences on those convicted of drug offenses, such as denial of public benefits or licenses, that are not applicable to those convicted of other types of crime.

=== Sentencing disparities ===

In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed laws that created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for the possession or trafficking of crack when compared to penalties for trafficking of powder cocaine,[60] which had been widely criticized as discriminatory against minorities, mostly blacks, who were more likely to use crack than powder cocaine. This 100:1 ratio had been required under federal law since 1986. Persons convicted in federal court of possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine received a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in federal prison. On the other hand, possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same sentence. In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act cut the sentencing disparity to 18:1.

According to Human Rights Watch, crime statistics show that—in the United States in 1999—compared to non-minorities, African Americans were far more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and received much stiffer penalties and sentences.

Statistics from 1998 show that there were wide racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and deaths. African-American drug users made up for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes. Nationwide African-Americans were sent to state prisons for drug offenses 13 times more often than other races, even though they only supposedly comprised 13% of regular drug users.

D.C. Mayor Marion Barry captured on a surveillance camera smoking crack cocaine during a sting operation by the FBI and D.C. Police.
Anti-drug legislation over time has also displayed an apparent racial bias. University of Minnesota Professor and social justice author Michael Tonry writes, "The War on Drugs foreseeably and unnecessarily blighted the lives of hundreds and thousands of young disadvantaged black Americans and undermined decades of effort to improve the life chances of members of the urban black underclass."

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided that the government needed to make an effort to curtail the social unrest that blanketed the country at the time. He decided to focus his efforts on illegal drug use, an approach which was in line with expert opinion on the subject at the time. In the 1960s, it was believed that at least half of the crime in the U.S. was drug related, and this number grew as high as 90 percent in the next decade. He created the Reorganization Plan of 1968 which merged the Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs within the Department of Justice. The belief during this time about drug use was summarized by journalist Max Lerner in his celebrated[citation needed] work America as a Civilization (1957):

As a case in point we may take the known fact of the prevalence of reefer and dope addiction in Negro areas. This is essentially explained in terms of poverty, slum living, and broken families, yet it would be easy to show the lack of drug addiction among other ethnic groups where the same conditions apply.

Richard Nixon became president in 1969, and did not back away from the anti-drug precedent set by Johnson. Nixon began orchestrating drug raids nationwide to improve his "watchdog" reputation. Lois B. Defleur, a social historian who studied drug arrests during this period in Chicago, stated that, "police administrators indicated they were making the kind of arrests the public wanted". Additionally, some of Nixon's newly created drug enforcement agencies would resort to illegal practices to make arrests as they tried to meet public demand for arrest numbers. From 1972 to 1973, the Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement performed 6,000 drug arrests in 18 months, the majority of the arrested black.

The next two Presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, responded with programs that were essentially a continuation of their predecessors. Shortly after Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 he delivered a speech on the topic. Reagan announced, "We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we're running up a battle flag."[70] For his first five years in office, Reagan slowly strengthened drug enforcement by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and forfeiture of cash and real estate for drug offenses, policies far more detrimental to poor blacks than any other sector affected by the new laws.

Then, driven by the 1986 cocaine overdose of black basketball star Len Bias,[dubious – discuss] Reagan was able to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act through Congress. This legislation appropriated an additional $1.7 billion to fund the War on Drugs. More importantly, it established 29 new, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. In the entire history of the country up until that point, the legal system had only seen 55 minimum sentences in total. A major stipulation of the new sentencing rules included different mandatory minimums for powder and crack cocaine. At the time of the bill, there was public debate as to the difference in potency and effect of powder cocaine, generally used by whites, and crack cocaine, generally used by blacks, with many believing that "crack" was substantially more powerful and addictive. Crack and powder cocaine are closely related chemicals, crack being a smokeable, freebase form of powdered cocaine hydrochloride which produces a shorter, more intense high while using less of the drug. This method is more cost effective, and therefore more prevalent on the inner-city streets, while powder cocaine remains more popular in white suburbia. The Reagan administration began shoring public opinion against "crack", encouraging DEA official Robert Putnam to play up the harmful effects of the drug. Stories of "crack whores" and "crack babies" became commonplace; by 1986, Time had declared "crack" the issue of the year. Riding the wave of public fervor, Reagan established much harsher sentencing for crack cocaine, handing down stiffer felony penalties for much smaller amounts of the drug.

Reagan protégé and former Vice-President George H. W. Bush was next to occupy the oval office, and the drug policy under his watch held true to his political background. Bush maintained the hard line drawn by his predecessor and former boss, increasing narcotics regulation when the First National Drug Control Strategy was issued by the Office of National Drug Control in 1989.

The next three presidents – Clinton, Bush and Obama – continued this trend, maintaining the War on Drugs as they inherited it upon taking office. During this time of passivity by the federal government, it was the states that initiated controversial legislation in the War on Drugs. Racial bias manifested itself in the states through such controversial policies as the "stop and frisk" police practices in New York city and the "three strikes" felony laws began in California in 1994.

In August 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law that dramatically reduced the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine, which disproportionately affected minorities.

=== Common drugs ===

A huge part of the "Drug War" is the "Mexican Drug War" and is very well known. Many drugs are distributed out of "Mexico" into the "United States". Such as "Cocaine", "Marijuana", "Meth", "Heroin" etc.

"Cocaine" is found on leaves from the "South American" "coca plant". It is illegal in all fifty states, along with "crack cocaine" (the cheaper version of cocaine but has a much greater penalty). Having possession is when he or she knowingly has it on his or her person or personal, such as a backpack or purse. According to the Criminal Defense Lawyer article, the possession of cocaine with no prior conviction and it is in the first offense the person will be sentenced to a maximum of one year in "prison" or fined $1,000, if not both. If the person has a prior conviction, whether it is a "narcotic" or "cocaine", they will be sentenced to two years in "prison", $2,500 fine but can also be sentenced both. With two or more convictions of possession prior to this present offense, they can be sentenced to 90 days in "prison" along with a $5,000 fine.

"Marijuana" is from a "cannabis" plant and the dried up flower leaves and clusters are what is ingested and or smoked. It also a very popular "drug" in the US and all over the world. If the possession of it is not as great as "cocaine" or "heroin". In some states in the US the drug is becoming legal and more states are considering it. Over 80 million of Americans have tried this type of "drug". The Criminal Defense Lawyer article claims that, depending on the age of person and how much the person has been caught for possession, they will be fined and could plea bargain into going to a treatment program versus going to "prison". In each state the convictions differ along with how much of the "marijuana" they have on their person.

In addition, the Criminal Defense Lawyer article explains that "crystal meth" is specifically made up of "chemicals". It is described as a white powdery substance or can come in a rock form. If caught with the possession of "crystal meth", the punishment can vary from just being fined to a long felony conviction. When the person has a lot of "meth" on their person, there sentence will be a much longer one then someone who has hardly any.

"Heroin" is an "opiate" that is highly addictive. Furthermore, the Criminal Attorney article states if you caught selling or possessing "heroin", you can be charged with a "felony" and face two-four years in "prison" and could be fined to a maximum of $20,000.

== United States foreign policy and covert military activities ==

Some scholars have claimed that the phrase "War on Drugs" is propaganda cloaking an extension of earlier military or paramilitary operations. Others have argued that large amounts of "drug war" foreign aid money, training, and equipment actually goes to fighting leftist insurgencies and is often provided to groups who themselves are involved in large-scale narco-trafficking, such as corrupt members of the Colombian military.

== War in Vietnam ==

From 1963 to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, marijuana usage became common among U.S. soldiers in non-combat situations. Some servicemen also used heroin. Many of the servicemen ended the heroin use after returning to the United States but came home addicted. In 1971, the U.S. military conducted a study of drug use among American servicemen and women. It found that daily usage rates for drugs on a worldwide basis were as low as two percent. However, in the spring of 1971, two congressmen released an alarming report alleging that 15% of the servicemen in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. [[Marijuana ]]use was also common in Vietnam. Soldiers who used drugs had more disciplinary problems. The frequent drug use had become an issue for the commanders in Vietnam, in 1971 it was estimated that 30,000 servicemen were addicted to drugs, most of them to heroin.

From 1971 on, therefore, returning servicemen were required to take a mandatory heroin test. Servicemen who tested positive upon returning from Vietnam were not allowed to return home until they had passed the test with a negative result. The program also offered a treatment for heroin addicts.

Elliot Borin's article "The U.S. Military Needs its Speed"—published in Wired on February 10, 2003—reports:

But the Defense Department, which distributed millions of amphetamine tablets to troops during World War II, Vietnam and the Gulf War, soldiers on, insisting that they are not only harmless but beneficial.

In a news conference held in connection with Schmidt and Umbach's Article 32 hearing, Dr. Pete Demitry, an Air Force physician and a pilot, claimed that the "Air Force has used (Dexedrine) safely for 60 years" with "no known speed-related mishaps."

The need for speed, Demitry added "is a life-and-death issue for our military."

=== Operation Intercept ===

One of the first anti-drug efforts in the realm of foreign policy was President Nixon's Operation Intercept, announced in September 1969, targeted at reducing the amount of cannabis entering the United States from Mexico. The effort began with an intense inspection crackdown that resulted in an almost shutdown of cross-border traffic. Because the burden on border crossings was controversial in border states, the effort only lasted twenty days.

=== Operation Just Cause ===

Main articles: Operation Just Cause and Operation Nifty Package

On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of the government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S. which, in exchange, tolerated his drug trafficking activities, which they had known about since the 1960s. When the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. When CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of tolerating his drug operations. Operation Just Cause, whose purpose was to capture Noriega and overthrow his government; Noriega found temporary asylum in the Papal Nuncio, and surrendered to U.S. soldiers on January 3, 1990. He was sentenced by a court in Miami to 45 years in prison.

=-= Plan Colombia ===

Main articles: Plan Colombia and Paramilitarism in Colombia

As part of its Plan Colombia program, the United States government currently provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year of military aid, training, and equipment to Colombia,[90] to fight left-wing guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), which has been accused of being involved in drug trafficking.

Private U.S. corporations have signed contracts to carry out anti-drug activities as part of Plan Colombia. DynCorp, the largest private company involved, was among those contracted by the State Department, while others signed contracts with the Defense Department.

Colombian military personnel have received extensive counterinsurgency training from U.S. military and law enforcement agencies, including the School of Americas (SOA). Author Grace Livingstone has stated that more Colombian SOA graduates have been implicated in human rights abuses than currently known SOA graduates from any other country. All of the commanders of the brigades highlighted in a 2001 Human Rights Watch report on Colombia were graduates of the SOA, including the III brigade in Valle del Cauca, where the 2001 Alto Naya Massacre occurred. US-trained officers have been accused of being directly or indirectly involved in many atrocities during the 1990s, including the Massacre of Trujillo and the 1997 Mapiripán Massacre. US military schools and manuals have been training Latin American officers in Colombia and in the region at large since the 1960s. Much controversy resulted from the publication of SOA manuals revealed that instructors had trained soldiers in torture.

In 2000, the Clinton administration initially waived all but one of the human rights conditions attached to Plan Colombia, considering such aid as crucial to national security at the time.

The efforts of U.S. and Colombian governments have been criticized for focusing on fighting leftist guerrillas in southern regions without applying enough pressure on right-wing paramilitaries and continuing drug smuggling operations in the north of the country. Human Rights Watch, congressional committees and other entities have documented the existence of connections between members of the Colombian military and the AUC, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist group, and that Colombian military personnel have committed human rights abuses which would make them ineligible for U.S. aid under current laws.

In 2010, the Washington Office on Latin America concluded that both Plan Colombia and the Colombian government's security strategy "came at a high cost in lives and resources, only did part of the job, are yielding diminishing returns and have left important institutions weaker."

Mexico is scheduled to receive US$1.6 billion in equipment and strategic support from the United States through the Mérida Initiative

=== Mérida Initiative ===

The Mérida Initiative is a security cooperation between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America. It was approved on June 30, 2008, and its stated aim is combating the threats of drug trafficking and transnational crime. The Mérida Initiative appropriated $1.4 billion in a three-year commitment (2008–2010) to the Mexican government for military and law enforcement training and equipment, as well as technical advice and training to strengthen the national justice systems. The Mérida Initiative targeted many very important government officials, but it failed to address the thousands of Central Americans who had to flee their countries due to the danger they faced everyday because of the war on drugs. There is still not any type of plan that addresses these people. No weapons are included in the plan.

=== Aerial herbicide application ===

Main article: Plan Colombia § Fumigation strategy and criticisms

The United States regularly sponsors the spraying of large amounts of herbicides such as glyphosate over the jungles of Central and South America as part of its drug eradication programs. Environmental consequences resulting from aerial fumigation have been criticized as detrimental to some of the world's most fragile ecosystems;[102] the same aerial fumigation practices are further credited with causing health problems in local populations.

=== U.S. operations in Honduras ===

In 2012, the U.S. sent DEA agents to Honduras to assist security forces in counternarcotics operations. Honduras has been a major stop for drug traffickers, who use small planes and landing strips hidden throughout the country to transport drugs. The U.S. government made agreements with several Latin American countries to share intelligence and resources to counter the drug trade. DEA agents, working with other U.S. agencies such as the State Department, the CBP, and Joint Task Force-Bravo, assisted Honduras troops in conducting raids on traffickers' sites of operation.[104]

== Public support and opposition in the United States ==

Further information: Arguments for and against drug prohibition

The War on Drugs has been a highly contentious issue since its inception. A poll on October 2, 2008, found that three in four Americans believed that the War On Drugs was failing.[105]

At a meeting in Guatemala in 2012, three former presidents from Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia said that the war on drugs had failed and that they would propose a discussion on alternatives, including decriminalization, at the Summit of the Americas in April of that year. Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said that the war on drugs was exacting too high a price on the lives of Central Americans and that it was time to "end the taboo on discussing decriminalization". At the summit, the government of Colombia pushed for the most far-reaching change to drugs policy since the war on narcotics was declared by Nixon four decades prior, citing the catastrophic effects it had had in Colombia.

Several critics have compared the wholesale incarceration of the dissenting minority of drug users to the wholesale incarceration of other minorities in history. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, for example, writes in 1997 "Over the past thirty years, we have replaced the medical-political persecution of illegal sex users ('perverts' and 'psychopaths') with the even more ferocious medical-political persecution of illegal drug users."

== Socio-economic effects ==

=== Creation of a permanent underclass ===

Penalties for drug crimes among American youth almost always involve permanent or semi-permanent removal from opportunities for education, strip them of voting rights, and later involve creation of criminal records which make employment more difficult.[110] Thus, some authors maintain that the War on Drugs has resulted in the creation of a permanent underclass of people who have few educational or job opportunities, often as a result of being punished for drug offenses which in turn have resulted from attempts to earn a living in spite of having no education or job opportunities.[110]

=== Costs to taxpayers ===

According to a 2008 study published by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, the annual savings on enforcement and incarceration costs from the legalization of drugs would amount to roughly $41.3 billion, with $25.7 billion being saved among the states and over $15.6 billion accrued for the federal government. Miron further estimated at least $46.7 billion in tax revenue based on rates comparable to those on tobacco and alcohol ($8.7 billion from marijuana, $32.6 billion from cocaine and heroin, remainder from other drugs).

Low taxation in Central American countries has been credited with weakening the region's response in dealing with drug traffickers. Many cartels, especially Los Zetas have taken advantage of the limited resources of these nations. 2010 tax revenue in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, composed just 13.53% of GDP. As a comparison, in Chile and the U.S., taxes were 18.6% and 26.9% of GDP respectively. However, direct taxes on income are very hard to enforce and in some cases tax evasion is seen as a national pastime.

=== Impact on growers ===

The status of coca and coca growers has become an intense political issue in several countries, including Colombia and particularly Bolivia, where the president, Evo Morales, a former coca growers' union leader, has promised to legalise the traditional cultivation and use of coca. Indeed, legalization efforts have yielded some successes under the Morales administration when combined with aggressive and targeted eradication efforts. The country saw a 12-13% decline in coca cultivation in 2011 under Morales, who has used coca growers' federations to ensure compliance with the law rather than providing a primary role for security forces.

The coca eradication policy has been criticised for its negative impact on the livelihood of coca growers in South America. In many areas of South America the coca leaf has traditionally been chewed and used in tea and for religious, medicinal and nutritional purposes by locals. For this reason many insist that the illegality of traditional coca cultivation is unjust. In many areas the US government and military has forced the eradication of coca without providing for any meaningful alternative crop for farmers, and has additionally destroyed many of their food or market crops, leaving them starving and destitute.

== U.S. government involvement in drug trafficking ==

Further information: CIA drug trafficking

The CIA, DEA, State Department, and several other U.S. government agencies have been implicated in relations with various groups involved in drug trafficking.

=== CIA and Contra cocaine trafficking ===

Further information: CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US

A lawsuit filed in 1986 by two journalists represented by the Christic Institute argued that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other parties were engaged in criminal acts, including financing the purchase of arms with the proceeds of cocaine sales.

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concludes that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras are involved in drug trafficking... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly receive financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." The report further states that "the Contra drug links include... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News, and later in his book Dark Alliance, detailing how Contras, had been involved in distributing crack cocaine into Los Angeles whilst receiving money from the CIA. Contras used money from drug trafficking to buy weapons

Webb's premise regarding the U.S. Government connection was initially attacked at the time by the media. It is now widely accepted that Webb's main assertion of government "knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers" was correct. In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report[120] that while seemingly refuting Webb's claims of knowledge and collaboration in its conclusions did not deny them in its body. Hitz went on to admit CIA improprieties in the affair in testimony to a House congressional committee. Some of Webb's work acknowledging is now widely accepted.

=== Heroin trafficking operations involving the CIA, U.S. Navy and Sicilian Mafia ===

Further information: Collaborations between the United States government and Italian Mafia

According to Rodney Campbell, an editorial assistant to Nelson Rockefeller, during World War II, the United States Navy, concerned that strikes and labor disputes in U.S. eastern shipping ports would disrupt wartime logistics, released the mobster Lucky Luciano from prison, and collaborated with him to help the mafia take control of those ports. Labor union members were terrorized and murdered by mafia members as a means of preventing labor unrest and ensuring smooth shipping of supplies to Europe.

According to Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in order to prevent Communist party members from being elected in Italy following World War II, the CIA worked closely with the Sicilian Mafia, protecting them and assisting in their worldwide heroin smuggling operations. The mafia was in conflict with leftist groups and was involved in assassinating, torturing, and beating leftist political organizers.

== Efficiency of war on drugs in the United States ==

In 1986, the US Defense Department funded a two-year study by the RAND Corporation, which found that the use of the armed forces to interdict drugs coming into the United States would have little or no effect on cocaine traffic and might, in fact, raise the profits of cocaine cartels and manufacturers. The 175-page study, "Sealing the Borders: The Effects of Increased Military Participation in Drug Interdiction", was prepared by seven researchers, mathematicians and economists at the National Defense Research Institute, a branch of the RAND, and was released in 1988. The study noted that seven prior studies in the past nine years, including one by the Center for Naval Research and the Office of Technology Assessment, had come to similar conclusions. Interdiction efforts, using current armed forces resources, would have almost no effect on cocaine importation into the United States, the report concluded.

During the early-to-mid-1990s, the Clinton administration ordered and funded a major cocaine policy study, again by RAND. The Rand Drug Policy Research Center study concluded that $3 billion should be switched from federal and local law enforcement to treatment. The report said that treatment is the cheapest way to cut drug use, stating that drug treatment is twenty-three times more effective than the supply-side "war on drugs".

The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs published its findings in 2001 on the efficacy of the drug war. The NRC Committee found that existing studies on efforts to address drug usage and smuggling, from U.S. military operations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia, to domestic drug treatment centers, have all been inconclusive, if the programs have been evaluated at all: "The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect." The study, though not ignored by the press, was ignored by top-level policymakers, leading Committee Chair Charles Manski to conclude, as one observer notes, that "the drug war has no interest in its own results".

During alcohol prohibition, the period from 1920 to 1933, alcohol use initially fell but began to increase as early as 1922. It has been extrapolated that even if prohibition had not been repealed in 1933, alcohol consumption would have quickly surpassed pre-prohibition levels. One argument against the War on Drugs is that it uses similar measures as Prohibition and is no more effective.

In the six years from 2000 to 2006, the U.S. spent $4.7 billion on Plan Colombia, an effort to eradicate coca production in Colombia. The main result of this effort was to shift coca production into more remote areas and force other forms of adaptation. The overall acreage cultivated for coca in Colombia at the end of the six years was found to be the same, after the U.S. Drug Czar's office announced a change in measuring methodology in 2005 and included new areas in its surveys. Cultivation in the neighboring countries of Peru and Bolivia increased, some would describe this effect like squeezing a balloon.

Similar lack of efficacy is observed in some other countries pursuing similar[citation needed] policies. In 1994, 28.5% of Canadians reported having consumed illicit drugs in their life; by 2004, that figure had risen to 45%. 73% of the $368 million spent by the Canadian government on targeting illicit drugs in 2004–2005 went toward law enforcement rather than treatment, prevention or harm reduction.

Richard Davenport-Hines, in his book The Pursuit of Oblivion, criticized the efficacy of the War on Drugs by pointing out that

10–15% of illicit heroin and 30% of illicit cocaine is intercepted. Drug traffickers have gross profit margins of up to 300%. At least 75% of illicit drug shipments would have to be intercepted before the traffickers' profits were hurt.

Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, described U.S. foreign drug policy as "failed" on grounds that "for 10 years, there has been a considerable sum invested by the Peruvian government and another sum on the part of the American government, and this has not led to a reduction in the supply of coca leaf offered for sale. Rather, in the 10 years from 1980 to 1990, it grew 10-fold."

At least 500 economists, including Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman, George Akerlof and Vernon L. Smith, have noted that reducing the supply of marijuana without reducing the demand causes the price, and hence the profits of marijuana sellers, to go up, according to the laws of supply and demand. The increased profits encourage the producers to produce more drugs despite the risks, providing a theoretical explanation for why attacks on drug supply have failed to have any lasting effect. The aforementioned economists published an open letter to President George W. Bush stating "We urge...the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition... At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences that result from [[marijuana ]]prohibition."

The declaration from the World Forum Against Drugs, 2008 state that a balanced policy of drug abuse prevention, education, treatment, law enforcement, research, and supply reduction provides the most effective platform to reduce drug abuse and its associated harms and call on governments to consider demand reduction as one of their first priorities in the fight against drug abuse.

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005[citation needed] (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana "easy to obtain". That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys. The Drug Enforcement Administration states that the number of users of marijuana in the U.S. declined between 2000 and 2005 even with many states passing new medical marijuana laws making access easier, though usage rates remain higher than they were in the 1990s according to the NSDUH.[140]

ONDCP stated in April 2011 that there has been a 46 percent drop in cocaine use among young adults over the past five years, and a 65 percent drop in the rate of people testing positive for cocaine in the workplace since 2006. At the same time, a 2007 study found that up to 35% of college undergraduates used stimulants not prescribed to them.

== Legality ==

Main article: Legality of the War on Drugs

The legality of the War on Drugs has been challenged on four main grounds in the US.

*It is argued that drug prohibition, as presently implemented, violates the substantive due process doctrine in that its benefits do not justify the encroachments on rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. On July 27, 2011, U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven ruled that Florida's legislation purporting to eliminate intent as an element of the crime of drug possession was unconstitutional. Commentators explained the ruling in terms of due process.

*Freedom of religious conscience legally allows some (for example, members of the Native American Church) to use peyote with definite spiritual or religious motives. The sacramental use of dimethyltryptamine in the form of Ayahuasca is also allowed for members of União De Vegetal. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment implies no requirement for someone to be affiliated to an official church – therefore leaving some ambiguity.

*It has been argued that the Commerce Clause means that the power to regulate drug use should be state law not federal law.

*The inequity of prosecuting the war on certain drugs but not alcohol or tobacco has also been called into question. Prohibition of alcohol required the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. It has been argued that prohibition of marijuana would also require an amendment to the Constitution, but no such amendment has been made.

== Alternatives ==

Several authors believe that the United States' federal and state governments have chosen wrong methods for combatting the distribution of illicit substances. Aggressive, heavy-handed enforcement funnel individuals through courts and prisons, instead of treating the cause of the addiction, the focus of government efforts has been on punishment. By making drugs illegal rather than regulating them, the War on Drugs creates a highly profitable black market. Jefferson Fish has edited scholarly collections of articles offering a wide variety of public health based and rights based alternative drug policies.

In the year 2000, the United States drug-control budget reached 18.4 billion dollars, nearly half of which was spent financing law enforcement while only one sixth was spent on treatment. In the year 2003, 53 percent of the requested drug control budget was for enforcement, 29 percent for treatment, and 18 percent for prevention. The state of New York, in particular, designated 17 percent of its budget towards substance-abuse-related spending. Of that, a mere one percent was put towards prevention, treatment, and research.

In a survey taken by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), it was found that substance abusers that remain in treatment longer are less likely to resume their former drug habits. Of the people that were studied, 66 percent were cocaine users. After experiencing long-term in-patient treatment, only 22 percent returned to the use of cocaine. Treatment had reduced the number of cocaine abusers by two-thirds. By spending the majority of its money on law enforcement, the federal government had underestimated the true value of drug-treatment facilities and their benefit towards reducing the number of addicts in the U.S.

In 2004 the federal government issued the National Drug Control Strategy. It supported programs designed to expand treatment options, enhance treatment delivery, and improve treatment outcomes. For example, the Strategy provided SAMHSA with a $100.6 million grant to put towards their Access to Recovery (ATR) initiative. ATR is a program that provides vouchers to addicts to provide them with the means to acquire clinical treatment or recovery support. The project's goals are to expand capacity, support client choice, and increase the array of faith-based and community based providers for clinical treatment and recovery support services. The ATR program will also provide a more flexible array of services based on the individual's treatment needs.

The 2004 Strategy additionally declared a significant 32 million dollar raise in the Drug Courts Program, which provides drug offenders with alternatives to incarceration. As a substitute for imprisonment, drug courts identify substance-abusing offenders and place them under strict court monitoring and community supervision, as well as provide them with long-term treatment services. According to a report issued by the National Drug Court Institute, drug courts have a wide array of benefits, with only 16.4 percent of the nation's drug court graduates rearrested and charged with a felony within one year of completing the program (versus the 44.1% of released prisoners who end up back in prison within 1-year). Additionally, enrolling an addict in a drug court program costs much less than incarcerating one in prison.[150] According to the Bureau of Prisons, the fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in 2006 was $24,440. The annual cost of receiving treatment in a drug court program ranges from $900 to $3,500. Drug courts in New York State alone saved $2.54 million in incarceration costs.

Describing the failure of the War on Drugs, New York Times columnist Eduardo Porter noted:

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard who studies drug policy closely, has suggested that legalizing all illicit drugs would produce net benefits to the United States of some $65 billion a year, mostly by cutting public spending on enforcement as well as through reduced crime and corruption. A study by analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California research organization, suggested that if marijuana were legalized in California and the drug spilled from there to other states, Mexican drug cartels would lose about a fifth of their annual income of some $6.5 billion from illegal exports to the United States.

Many believe that the War on Drugs has been costly and ineffective largely because inadequate emphasis is placed on treatment of addiction. The United States leads the world in both recreational drug usage and incarceration rates. 70% of men arrested in metropolitan areas test positive for an illicit substance, and 54% of all men incarcerated will be repeat offenders.

Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs

2015-04-27T22:37:41Z

Adm1n: /* Rescheduling proposals */

The '''Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs''' of 1961 is an international treaty to prohibit production and supply of specific (nominally narcotic) drugs and of drugs with similar effects except under licence for specific purposes, such as medical treatment and research. As noted below, its major effects included updating the Paris Convention of 13 July 1931 to include the vast number of synthetic opioids invented in the intervening thirty years and a mechanism for more easily including new ones. From 1931 to 1961, most of the families of synthetic opioids had been developed, including drugs in whatever way related to methadone, pethidine, morphinans and dextromoramide and related drugs; research on fentanyls and piritramide was also nearing fruition at that point.

Earlier treaties had only controlled opium, coca, and derivatives such as morphine, heroin and cocaine. The Single Convention, adopted in 1961, consolidated those treaties and broadened their scope to include[[ cannabis]] and drugs whose effects are similar to those of the drugs specified. The Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the World Health Organization were empowered to add, remove, and transfer drugs among the treaty's four schedules of controlled substances. The International Narcotics Control Board was put in charge of administering controls on drug production, international trade, and dispensation. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was delegated the Board's day-to-day work of monitoring the situation in each country and working with national authorities to ensure compliance with the Single Convention. This treaty has since been supplemented by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which controls LSD, MDMA, and other psychoactive pharmaceuticals, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which strengthens provisions against money laundering and other drug-related offenses.

As of February 2015, the Single Convention has 185 state parties. The Holy See plus all member states of the United Nations are state parties, with the exception of Chad, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, South Sudan, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

== Regulation of cannabis ==

=== Cultivation ===

The Single Convention places the same restrictions on[[ cannabis]] cultivation that it does on opium cultivation. Article 23 and Article 28 require each Party to establish a government agency to control cultivation. Cultivators must deliver their total crop to the agency, which must purchase and take physical possession of them within four months after the end of harvest. The agency then has the exclusive right of "importing, exporting, wholesale trading and maintaining stocks other than those held by manufacturers."

In the United States, the National Institute on Drug Abuse fulfills that function. NIDA administers a contract with the University of Mississippi to grow a 1.5 acre (6,000 m²) crop of [[cannabis]] every other year; that supply comprises the only licit source of cannabis for medical and research purposes in the United States. Similarly, in 2000, Prairie Plant Systems was awarded a five-year contract to grow cannabis in the Flin Flon mine for Health Canada, that nation's licit cannabis cultivation authority.

Article 28 specifically excludes industrial hemp from these regulations, stating, "This Convention shall not apply to the cultivation of the cannabis plant exclusively for industrial purposes (fibre and seed) or horticultural purposes." Hemp-growing countries include China, Romania, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, and Hungary.

=== Rescheduling proposals ===

There is some controversy over whether [[cannabis]] is "particularly liable to abuse and to produce ill effects" and whether that "liability is not offset by substantial therapeutic advantages," as required by Schedule IV criteria. In particular, the discovery of the [[cannabinoid receptor]] system in the late 1980s revolutionized scientific understanding of [[cannabis]]' effects, and much anecdotal evidence has come to light about the drug's medical uses. The Canadian Senate committee's report notes,

<blockquote>At the U.S.’s insistence, [[cannabis]] was placed under the heaviest control regime in the Convention, Schedule IV. The argument for placing cannabis in this category was that it was widely abused. The WHO later found that [[cannabis]] could have medical applications after all, but the structure was already in place and no international action has since been taken to correct this anomaly.</blockquote>

The Commentary points out the theoretical possibility of removing[[ cannabis]] from Schedule IV:

<blockquote>Those who question the particularly harmful character of [[cannabis ]]and cannabis resin may hold that the Technical Committee of the Plenipotentiary Conference was under its own criteria not justified in placing these drugs in Schedule IV; but the approval of the Committee's action by the Plenipotentiary Conference places this inclusion beyond any legal doubt. Should the results of the intensive research which is at the time of this writing being undertaken on the effects of these two drugs so warrant, they could be deleted from Schedule IV, and these two drugs, as well as [[extract]]s and tinctures of [[cannabis]], could be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II.</blockquote>

Cindy Fazey, former Chief of Demand Reduction for the United Nations Drug Control Programme, has pointed out that it would be nearly impossible to loosen international[[ cannabis]] regulations. Even if the Commission on Narcotic Drugs removed cannabis from Schedule IV of the Single Convention, prohibitions against the plant would remain imbedded in Article 28 and other parts of the treaty. Fazey cited amendment of the Articles and state-by-state denunciation as two theoretical possibilities for changing cannabis' international legal status, while pointing out that both face substantial barriers.

In a 2002 interview, INCB President Philip O. Emafo condemned European cannabis decriminalization measures:

<blockquote>It is possible that the cannabis being used in Europe may not be the same species that is used in developing countries and that is causing untold health hazards to the young people who are finding themselves in hospitals for treatment. Therefore, the INCB's concern is that cannabis use should be restricted to medical and scientific purposes, if there are any. Countries who are party to the Single Convention need to respect the provisions of the conventions and restrict the use of drugs listed in Schedules I to IV to strictly medical and scientific purposes.</blockquote>

However, Kathalijne Buitenweg on the European Parliament's Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs issued a report on 24 March 2003 criticizing the Single Convention's scheduling regime:

<blockquote>These schedules show that the main criterion for the classification of a substance is its medical use. In view of the principle according to which the only licit uses is those for medical or scientific purposes (art. 4), plants or substances deprived of this purpose are automatically considered as particularly dangerous. Such is the case for cannabis and cannabis resin which are classified with heroin in group IV for the sole reason that they lack therapeutic value. A reason which is in any event disputable, since cannabis could have numerous medical uses.</blockquote>

There have been several lawsuits over whether cannabis' Schedule IV status under the Single Convention requires total prohibition at the national level. In 1970, the U.S. Congress enacted the Controlled Substances Act to implement the UN treaty, placing marijuana into Schedule I on the advice of Assistant Secretary of Health Roger O. Egeberg. His letter to Harley O. Staggers, Chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, indicates that the classification was intended to be provisional:

<blockquote>Some question has been raised whether the use of the plant itself produces "severe psychological or physical dependence" as required by a schedule I or even schedule II criterion. Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule I at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue.</blockquote>

The reference to "certain studies" is to the then-forthcoming[[ National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse]]. In 1972, the Commission released a report favoring decriminalization of marijuana. The Richard Nixon administration took no action to implement the recommendation, however. In 1972, the[[ National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws]] filed a rescheduling petition under provisions of the Act. The government declined to initiate proceedings on the basis of their interpretation of U.S. treaty commitments. A federal Court ruled against the government and ordered them to process the petition (NORM] v. Ingersoll 497 F.2d 654 (1974)). The government continued to rely on treaty commitments in their interpretation of scheduling related issues concerning the NORML petition, leading to another lawsuit (NORML v. DEA 559 F.2d 735 (1977)). In this decision, the Court made clear that the Act requires a full scientific and medical evaluation and the fulfillment of the rescheduling process before treaty commitments can be evaluated. See [[Removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act]].

Cannabis leaves (as opposed to[[ buds]]) are a special case. The Canadian Health Protection Branch's Cannabis Control Policy: A Discussion Paper found that, while the Single Convention requires nations to take measures against the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, cannabis buds, a ban is not required on licit production, distribution, and use of the leaves.

<blockquote> The Single Convention defines "cannabis" as the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops) from which the resin has not been extracted. (Art. 1, s-para. 1(b)) It is generally accepted that this definition permits the legalization of the leaves of the cannabis plant, provided that they are not accompanied by the flowering or fruiting tops. However, uncertainty arises by virtue of paragraph 3 of Article 28 which requires parties to the Convention to "adopt such measures as may be necessary to prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, the leaves of the cannabis plant." In summary, it appears that parties are not obliged to prohibit the production, distribution and use of the leaves (since they are not drugs, as defined the Convention), although they must take necessary, although unspecified, measures to prevent their misuse and diversion to the illicit trade.</blockquote>

ENCOD

2015-04-26T22:51:46Z

Adm1n: Created page with "The '''European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies''' (ENCOD), originally European Ngo Council On Drugs and development is a network of European non-governmental o..."

The '''European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies''' (ENCOD), originally European Ngo Council On Drugs and development is a network of European non-governmental organisations and citizens concerned with the impact of current international drug policies on the lives of the most affected sectors in North and South. Since 1994 they have been working to advocate more just and effective drugs control policies, which include an integrated solution for all problems related to the global drugs phenomenon.

== History ==

ENCOD was set up in 1993 thanks to the support of the European Commission, as an NGO counterpart to the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction. However, the Management Board of the EMCDDA later decided to ignore any NGO involvement in the work of the EMCDDA.

In 1998 a Manifesto for just and effective drug policies was redacted by 14 NGOs from Europe, Africa and South America, then signed by hundreds of organizations, companies, political parties, and citizens.

ENCOD is a self-financed and independent network, legally based in Belgium, and is steered by a Committee composed citizens from different EU countries (5 people after the 2013 General assembly).

== Mission ==

ENCOD has three primary objectives:

*To improve understanding of the causes and effects of the drugs trade,

*To contribute to the elaboration of just and effective drugs control policies,

*To bring about greater consistency between drugs control efforts and economic and social policies.

ENCOD is implementing these objectives in three ways:

*it facilitates coordination, information exchange and joint analysis between its members,

*it carries out joint information campaigns, aimed at the general public,

*it carries out joint advocacy activities, aimed at policy-makers and the media.

== Activities ==

=== Advising and organizational activities ===

*In 1998, publication of the Manifesto for just and effective drug policies

*Annual participation in the round table organized by the Commission on narcotic drugs (CND)

*In 2006 ENCOD organised with the support of the Greens–European free alliance and European united left a meeting in the European parliament in Brussels

*From 7th to 9 March 2008 ENCOD co-organised an international meeting in Vienna for a European alternative in drug policies[10] called Drug Peace Days

*In the early 2000s, setup of the [[Cannabis Social Club]] concept and rules

*Advise and counselling about drug policies possible changes.

*In March 2014, participation in the annual meeting of the Commission on narcotic drugs (CND). Set up of an alternative press center during the meeting.

=== Public campaigns ===

*In 2003, 'Spread the Seeds' campaign

*In 2011, publication of the Code of conduct for a European [[Cannabis Social Club]], the basic structural rules of non-prifot and transparency, that were used by many Cannabis social clubs in Spain,

*Belgium, Czech republic, United Kingdom, France etc.

*In 2013 and 2014, European campaign for the elections to European Parliament "Manifesto for safe and healthy drug policies in Europe".

== See also ==

*[[Drug policy reform]]

*[[Prohibition of drugs|Prohibition (drugs)]] — drug prohibition law — arguments for and against drug prohibition

*[[War on drugs]]

*[[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]]

Drug policy of Portugal

2015-04-26T22:43:25Z

Adm1n: /* Amount limits */

The '''drug policy of Portugal''' was put in place in 2000, and was legally effective from July 2001. The new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. However, the offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than ten days' supply of that substance.

In April 2009, the Cato Institute published a comprehensive case study of the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal. Empirical data from that report indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates. However, drug-related pathologies - such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage - have decreased dramatically. In 1999, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV amongst injecting drug users in the European Union. The number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among drug users has decreased to 13.4 cases per million in 2009 but that is still high above the European average of 2.85 cases per million. There were 2000 new cases a year, in a country of 10 million people. 45% of HI reported AIDS cases recorded in 1997 originated among IV drug users, so targeting drug use was seen as an effective avenue of HIV prevention. The number of heroin users was estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000 at the end of the 1990s. This led to the adoption of The National Strategy for the Fight Against Drugs in 1999. A vast expansion of harm reduction efforts, doubling the investment of public funds in drug treatment and drug prevention services, and changing the legal framework dealing with minor drug offenses were the main elements of the policy thrust.

== Harm reduction ==

Main article: Harm reduction

The needle exchange program, "Say NO! to a used syringe," is a nationwide syringe exchange program which has been ongoing since October 1993, involving some 2,500 pharmacies throughout Portugal. It is run by the National Committee against AIDS - set up by the Ministry of Health and the National Association of Pharmacies - a nongovernmental organisation representing the majority of Portuguese pharmacies. All drug users can exchange used syringes at pharmacy counters across the country. They get a kit with clean needle syringes, a condom, rubbing alcohol and a written message motivating for AIDS prevention and addiction treatment. From 1994 to 1999, pharmacies delivered around 3 million syringes annually.

Several low threshold projects were initiated after 1999, particularly in the period 2003-2005, where outreach teams have promoted safe injection practices and supplied needles and injecting equipment on the street. Many of these projects are still running.

At programme start, a media campaign was launched by television, radio and the press, and posters were put up in discothèques and bars in order to attract the attention of the target population to the problems associated with drug addiction, in particular HIV transmission through needle-sharing.

Project objectives have been threefold: To reduce frequency of sharing needles and syringes, to change other IDU (Intravenous Drug User) behaviors that create negative attitudes among the population in general, and to change attitudes towards IDUs in the general population to facilitate addiction prevention and treatment.

== Expanding drug treatment ==

In 1987, the Centro das Taipas in Lisbon was created, an institution specialising in the treatment of drug addicts. This centre consisted of a consultation service, a day centre and a patient detoxification unit. This facility was the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, and was the first in the network of centres specialising in treating drug addiction which now covers the whole country.

Healthcare for drug users in Portugal is organised mainly through the public network services of treatment for illicit substance dependence, under the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, and the Ministry of Health. In addition to public services, certification and protocols between NGOs and other public or private treatment services ensure a wide access to quality-controlled services encompassing several treatment modalities. The public services provided are free of charge and accessible to all drug users who seek treatment.

There are 73 specialised treatment facilities (public and certified private therapeutic communities), 14 detoxification units, 70 public outpatient facilities and 13 accredited day centres. Portugal is divided into 18 districts. There is full coverage of drug outpatient treatment across all but four districts (districts not covered are located in the north of the country: Viana do Castelo, Bragança, Viseu and Guarda).

=== Substitution treatment ===

Substitution treatment is today widely available in Portugal, through public services such as specialised treatment centres, health centres, hospitals and pharmacies as well as NGOs and non-profit organisations.

The Portuguese substitution programme started in 1977 in Oporto. The CEPD/North (Study Centre on Drug Prevention/North), using methadone as the substituting substance, was the only unit using opioid substitution until 1992. However, the increase in numbers of drug addicts (including an "explosion" at the beginning of the 1990s), together with the growth of AIDS and hepatitis C among this population, led to a change in attitude. After 1992, methadone-substitution programmes were extended to several CATs (Centres of Assistance to drug addicts). Overall, the programmes were medium or high threshold. With the exception of occasional activities in a slum area in Lisbon, there were no true low-threshold programmes (risk- and harm reduction) prior to 2001.

From 2000 to 2008, the number of people in Portugal receiving substitution treatment increased from 6040 to 25 808 (24 312 in 2007), 75% of whom were in methadone maintenance treatment. The remaining patients received high dosage buprenorphine treatment.

Buprenorphine had been available since 1999, and later also the buprenorphine/naloxone combination.

Decree-Law 183/2001 Article 44.1 and Decree-Law 15/93 Article 15.1-3 stipulate that methadone treatment can be initiated by treatment centres whereas buprenorphine treatment can be initiated by any medical doctor, specialised medical doctors and treatment centres. From 2004, there was also the provision of buprenorphine in pharmacies.

=== After-care and social re-integration ===

After-care and social re-integration of drug users in Portugal is organised through three major programmes targeting different regions in Portugal (Programa Vida Emprego, Programa Quadro Reinserir and the PIDDAC incentives for re-integration). All three programmes finance different initiatives and projects supporting drug users through training opportunities, employment support, and/or housing.

=== Monitoring drug treatment ===

A national treatment monitoring system is being developed but has not yet been implemented in all regions. National routine statistics from outpatient centres on substitution clients are available (for clients in methadone and buprenorphine programmes).

== Laws and regulations ==

In July 2001, a new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than ten days' supply of that substance. This was in line with the de facto Portuguese drug policy before the reform. Drug addicts were then to be aggressively targeted with therapy or community service rather than fines or waivers.Even if there are no criminal penalties, these changes did not legalize drug use in Portugal. Possession has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers.

== Regulation ==

Individuals found in possession of small quantities of drugs are issued summons. The drugs are confiscated, and the suspect is interviewed by a “Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction” (Comissões para a Dissuasão da Toxicodependência – CDT). These commissions are made up of three people: A social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney. The dissuasion commission have powers comparable to an arbitration committee, but restricted to cases involving drug use or possession of small amounts of drugs. There is one CDT in each of Portugal’s 18 districts.

The committees have a broad range of sanctions available to them when ruling on the drug use offence. These include:

*Fines, ranging from €25 to €150. These figures are based on the Portuguese minimum wage of about €485 (Banco de Portugal, 2001) and translate into hours of work lost.

*Suspension of the right to practice if the user has a licensed profession (e.g. medical doctor, taxi driver) and may endanger another person or someone's possessions.

*Ban on visiting certain places (e.g. specific discothèques)

*Ban on associating with specific other persons.

*Foreign travel ban.

*Requirement to report periodically to the committee.

*Withdrawal of the right to carry a gun.

*Confiscation of personal possessions.

*Cessation of subsidies or allowances that a person receives from a public agency.

If the person is addicted to drugs, they may be admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility or be given community service, if the dissuasion committee finds that this better serves the purpose of keeping the offender out of trouble. The committee cannot mandate compulsory treatment, although its orientation is to induce addicts to enter and remain in treatment. The committee has the explicit power to suspend sanctions conditional upon voluntary entry into treatment. If the offender is not addicted to drugs, or unwilling to submit to treatment or community service, he or she may be given a fine.

== Law enforcement ==

Every year, Portuguese law enforcement bodies confiscate several tonnes of cocaine, with a record amount of more than 34.5 tonnes seized in 2006. A regular increase in quantities of [[cannabis]] resin seized could also be observed over recent years, though there has been a recent decline between 2008 (61 tonnes) and 2009 (23 tonnes).

== Observations ==

There is little reliable information about drug use, injecting behaviour or addiction treatment in Portugal before 2001, when general population surveys commenced. Before that, there were the indicators on lifetime prevalence amongst youth, collected as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), and some other (less reliable) data available through the EMCDDA.

Thorough studies on how the various efforts have been implemented were not conducted. Thus, a causal effect between strategy efforts and these developments cannot be firmly established. There are, however, statistical indicators that suggest the following correlations between the drug strategy and the following developments, from July 2001 up to 2007:

*Increased uptake of treatment.

*Reduction in new HIV diagnoses amongst drug users by 17%

*Reduction in drug related deaths, although this reduction has decreased in later years. The number of drug related deaths is now almost on the same level as before the Drug strategy was implemented.
However, this may be accounted for by improvement in measurement practices, which includes a doubling of toxicological autopsies now being performed, meaning that more drugs related deaths are likely to be recorded.

*Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1% It has been proposed that this effect may have been related to the candor of interviewees, who may have been inclined to answer more truthfully due to a reduction in the stigma associated with drug use. However, during the same period, the use of heroin and cannabis also increased in Spain and Italy, where drugs for personal use was decriminalised many years earlier than in Portugal while the use of Cannabis and heroin decreased in the rest of Western Europe.[20]

*Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined.

*Drug-related criminal justice workloads decreased.

*Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly.

== Legal status of cannabis in Portugal ==

=== Consumption and possession ===

In Portugal, recreational use of[[ cannabis]] is forbidden by law; also the medicinal use is not yet officially recognized (there is debate and legislators have proposed bills in the Portuguese Parliament). Portugal signed all the UN conventions on narcotics and psychotropic to date. With the 2001 decriminalization bill, the consumer is now regarded as a patient and not as a criminal (having the amount usually used for ten days of personal use is not a punishable crime) but repression persists. One can be sent to a dissuasion committee and have a talk or must pay a fee. According to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, illegal drug use among Portuguese teenagers declined after 2001, and 45 percent of the country's heroin addicts sought medical treatment. But critics of the policy, such as the Association for a Drug-Free Portugal, say overall consumption of drugs in the country has actually risen by 4.2 percent since 2001 and claim the benefits of decriminalization are being "over-egged."

=== Cultivation and distribution ===

The cultivation of [[cannabis]], even on a very small-scale home grown basis for personal use only, can legally be prosecuted. However, an unknown number of enthusiasts of small-scale home-cultivation grow the plants with a high degree of secrecy due to the legal punishment they could face if prosecuted, and due to potential social stigma as well. In neighboring Spain, small-scale cultivation of [[cannabis]] plants for personal use only, is tolerated by the authorities and there are many grow shops across the country selling their products physically and online. In 2003 another update to the "Portuguese drugs law" brought the criminalization of the possession of [[cannabis]] seeds, except certified industrial [[hemp| hemp seed]]. This law made the buying of [[cannabis]] seeds from legal and financially transparent online [[cannabis]] seed shops based in other European Union member states, such as neighboring Spain or the Netherlands, an unlawful transaction when performed by Portuguese residents. The provision of seeds and tools to produce and consume cannabis is also illegal in the country. Production and distribution of hemp products is legal but regulated. There are a small number of hemp shops in Portugal and hemp products are legal.

== Amount limits ==

Amount limits of possession for personal consumption are:

*25 g [[Cannabis]] (herb)

*5 g [[Hashish]]

*2.5 g [[Hash oil|Cannabis Oil]]

*0.5 g Pure [[THC]]

*500 µg LSD

*1 g MDMA

*2 g Cocaine (Hydrochloride)

*0.3 g Cocaine (Benzoylecgonine)

*1 g Heroin

*1 g Methadone

*2 g Morphine

*10 g Opium

*1 g Amphetamine

*0.1 g PCP

If a person is caught with an amount exceeding these values, it's considered possession for sale.

== European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction ==

Portugal hosts the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the agency of the European Union specialised in collecting and disseminating official data on the drug situation in the European Union. Physician João Goulão, the primary architect of Portugal's drug policy, is chairman of the EMCDDA.

== See also ==

*[[Drug policy of the Netherlands]]

Drug prohibition law

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Adm1n: /* List by jurisdiction of principal drug prohibition laws */

'''Drug prohibition law''' is prohibition-based law by which governments prohibit, except under licence, the production, supply, and possession of many, but not all, substances which are recognized as drugs, and which corresponds to international treaty commitments in the [[Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]] 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988.

When produced, supplied or possessed under licence, otherwise prohibited drugs are known as controlled drugs. The aforementioned legislation is the cultural institution and social fact that de facto divides world drug trade as illegal vs legal, according to geopolitical issues. The United Nations has its own drug control programme, as part of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which was formerly called the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP), and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs is the central drug policy-making body within the United Nations system.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is an independent and quasi-judicial control organ for the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions. It is important to note that there are several different sets of "schedules", or lists, of controlled drugs. One is the INCB schedules (four schedules numbered I-IV), while another is the United States' [[Controlled Substances Act]] schedules of controlled substances (five schedules, numbered I-V). Other countries also have different classifications and numbers of lists, such as those of the United Kingdom and Canada.

== History and founding principles ==

Drug prohibition law is based on the view that some drugs, notably opium poppy, coca, and substances derived from these plants, are so addictive or dependence inducing and so dangerous, in terms of potential effects on the health, morality and behaviour of users, that they should be rarely, if ever, used.

Psychotropic substances covered by drug control law include psilocybin mushrooms and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

The following treaties are no longer in force, being superseded in 1961 by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs:

*International Opium Convention, signed at The Hague on 23 January 1912

*Agreement concerning the Manufacture of, Internal Trade in and Use of Prepared Opium, signed at Geneva on 11 February 1925

*Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs, signed at Geneva on 13 July 1931

*Agreement for the Control of Opium Smoking in the Far East, signed at Bangkok on 27 November 1931

== Licensing ==

Otherwise prohibited drugs may be licensed for medical, research and industrial purposes.

Pharmaceutical companies, also known as drug companies, work under drug control licenses.

Hemp production from the [[Cannabis]] plant is an example of an industrial purpose.

== Recreational and self-medicational drug use ==

Recreational use and self-medicational use are not licensed under drug prohibition laws, although other drugs, not covered by such laws, may be legally available for this purpose. Alcohol and tobacco are notable examples of legally available recreational drugs. Aspirin is an example of a drug legally available for self-medicational purposes.

Health, moral, and behavior issues, and legal issues, are associated with alcohol and tobacco use, but these are not addressed through drug prohibition laws.

Addiction to a prohibited drug may not be considered a legitimate reason for using it, even if the drug is obtained from a licensed source, or a substitute may be provided, for example, methadone instead of heroin. Generally, however, those addicted to prohibited drugs are expected to find other ways of coping with their addictions, or to risk suffering the law enforcement penalties associated with illegal possession.

== Enforcement ==

There is an extensive illegal trans-national industry supplying prohibited drugs for recreational use. Thus, while drug prohibition laws remain in force, there is perpetual law enforcement action directed against the illegal industry, which also impacts supply for self-medication.

Although it is directed against illegal recreational drugs, and not against drugs licensed under prohibition laws or against drugs beyond the scope of prohibition laws, the law enforcement is sometimes called the [[war on drugs]].

== Criticism ==

Arguments for and against

See also Social Effects, Legal Dilemmas, Decriminalisation and Social control

Drug prohibition is responsible for enriching "organised criminal networks", according to some critics while the hypothesis that the prohibition of drugs generates violence is consistent with research done over long time-series and cross-country facts.

In the United Kingdom, where the principal piece of drug prohibition legislation is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, criticism includes:

*Drug classification: making a hash of it?, Fifth Report of Session 2005–06, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which said that the present system of drug classification is based on historical assumptions, not scientific assessment

*Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse, David Nutt, Leslie A. King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore, The Lancet, 24 March 2007, said the act is "not fit for purpose" and "the exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary"

*The Drug Equality Alliance (DEA) argue that the Government is administering the Act arbitrarily, contrary to its purpose, contrary to the original wishes of Parliament and therefore illegally. They are currently assisting and supporting several legal challenges to this alleged maladministration.

== List by jurisdiction of principal drug prohibition laws ==

*Australia: Standard for the Uniform Scheduling of Drugs and Poisons

*Belize: Misuse of Drugs Act (Belize)

*Canada: [[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act]]

*Estonia: Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (Estonia)

*India: Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act

*Netherlands: Opium Law

*New Zealand: Misuse of Drugs Act 1975

*Pakistan: Control of Narcotic Substances Act 1997

*Philippines: Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002

*Poland: Drug Abuse Prevention Act 2005 (article in Polish Wikipedia)

*Republic of Ireland: Misuse of Drugs Act (Ireland)

*Republic of South Africa: Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act 1992

*Singapore: Misuse of Drugs Act (Singapore)

*Thailand: Psychotropic Substances Act (Thailand) and Narcotics Act

*United Kingdom: [[Misuse of Drugs Act 1971]] and Drugs Act 2005

*United States: [[Controlled Substances Act]]

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

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Adm1n: Created page with "'''Law Enforcement Against Prohibition''' (LEAP) is a 501(c)3 non-profit, international, educational organization comprising former and current police officers, government age..."

'''Law Enforcement Against Prohibition''' (LEAP) is a 501(c)3 non-profit, international, educational organization comprising former and current police officers, government agents and other law enforcement agents who oppose the current War on Drugs. LEAP was founded on March 16, 2002 by five police officers. It is modeled after Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an organization which earned its credibility by utilizing speakers who had been on the frontlines of the war they later denounced. LEAP now has more than 100,000 members and supporters, approximately 5,000 of whom are from law enforcement, though many choose to remain anonymous. There are 148 speakers living in thirty-five different states in the United States and sixteen other countries. As of January 2014 LEAP has members and supporters in 190 countries.

== Goals ==

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the War on Drugs and to lessen the rates of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

LEAP has two primary goals:

*To educate the public, the media and policymakers about the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug use and the elevated crime rates more properly related to drug prohibition than to drug pharmacology.

*To restore the public's respect for law enforcement, which has been greatly diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition.

LEAP's main strategy for accomplishing these goals is to create a constantly growing speakers bureau staffed with knowledgeable and articulate former drug-warriors who describe the impact of current drug policies on police/community relations, the safety of law enforcement officers and suspects, police corruption and misconduct, and the excessive financial and human costs associated with current drug polices.

=== Legalization vs. Decriminalization ===

LEAP is a drug law reform organization that believes legalized regulation is the only ethical and efficient way to undo the damage caused by the War on Drugs. Legalized regulation would result in a system in which the sale and distribution of drugs is regulated by a government body similar to the regulation of alcohol and tobacco, thereby inhibiting, and eventually removing, the criminal monopoly on the sale of current illicit drugs.

LEAP does support incremental change, which the organization believes ultimately betters the lives of United States citizens. LEAP has supported bills which would decriminalize up to one [[ounce]] of [[marijuana]], legalize [[medical marijuana]], and implement harm reduction strategies in communities and was instrumental in the passage of initiatives to legalize marijuana in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. According to LEAP, their support for incremental change does not conflict with their stance on legalization because they see these steps as means to an end, not ends in themselves.

In 2014, LEAP drafted and disseminated its "Proposed Amendment of United Nations Drug Treaties -- 2014," a comprehensive amendment that would displace much of the United Nations 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and all its drug schedules, repeal the 1971 Convention On Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and replace them all with a single amended and consolidated treaty. The proposed amended treaty, to be called "The 2016 Single Convention on Drugs", would vest primary control and regulation of illicit drugs and abused licit drugs in the hands of individual sovereign nations within a cooperative yet voluntary international framework; expand the scope of regulated and controlled mind-altering substances to include alcohol and tobacco; and allow experimentation with new drug policies that encouraged health and harm-reduction strategies on a national and regional basis, consonant with individual freedom and "The [United Nations] Universal Declaration of Human Rights," displacing the prohibition, criminalization, top-down, one-size-fits-all existing UN drug policy paradigm. In March 2014, LEAP sent its Proposed Amendment of UN Drug Treaties to world leaders and every signatory nation encouraging support, signature and filing of the LEAP draft of amended treaty, or one like it, with the UN Secretary-General to start the ball rolling toward specific and concrete reform at the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS 2016) regarding world drug policy.

== Membership ==

Membership in LEAP is open to anyone but only current or former members of law enforcement are eligible to be public speakers for LEAP. As of January 2014 LEAP has members and supporters in 190 countries.

=== Board of Directors ===

LEAP’s Board of Directors is made up of Jack Cole, who retired as a lieutenant after 26 years in the New Jersey State Police—14 years in their Narcotic Bureau; Peter Christ, a retired police captain from Tonawanda, New York; Terry Nelson, a former federal agent in Border Patrol, US Customs and Homeland Security; James E. Gierach, a former assistant state's attorney of Cook County, Illinois; David Bratzer, a Canadian police officer; Stephen Downing, former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department; Diane Goldstein, retired lieutenant commander from the Redondo Beach Police Department; Maria Lucia Karam, retired judge in Brazil; Alice Huffman, President of the California State NAACP; Annie Machon, former British Secret Service Intelligence Officer; Tony Ryan, retired police officer from Denver, Colorado; Leigh Maddox, Special Assistant State's Attorney and Retired Maryland State Police Captain. Neill Franklin, retired Maryland State Police major, serves as LEAP's executive director.

=== Advisory Board ===

The advisory board of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition consists of Romesh Bhattacharji, former drug czar (India); Vince Cain, former Chief Coroner of British Columbia and retired RCMP chief superintendent (Canada); Senator Larry Campbell, former mayor of Vancouver and retired RCMP officer (Canada); retired Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Crispin (Australia), Member of Parliament Libby Davies (Canada); Carel Edwards, former anti-drug coordinator for the European Union; U.S. District Court Judge Warren William Eginton; Gustavo de Greiff, former Attorney General of Colombia; Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico; Judge John L. Kane Jr., United States District Court for the District of Colorado; Justice Ketil Lund, retired Supreme Court Justice from Norway; Sheriff Bill Masters, Colorado; Joseph McNamara, retired police chief of the San Jose Police Department; Norm Stamper, retired police chief of the Seattle Police Department; Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation; Thomas P. Sullivan, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Robert W. Sweet, Senior Judge of the US District Court Southern District of New York; Hans van Dujin, retired Dutch police union president (the Netherlands); Francis Wilkinson, former Chief Constable of the Gwent Police Force (United Kingdom).

=== Speakers Bureau ===

All of LEAP's speakers are current or former drug-warriors. Police, parole, probation, and corrections officers, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, and FBI and DEA agents participate in LEAP activities. LEAP speakers speak at rotary clubs, conferences, forums, and events on high school and college campuses which are often organized by chapters of [[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]].

== Media ==

Pro-legalization police officers, judges, prosecutors and other criminal justice professionals who speak for LEAP are regularly featured in news media.

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/us/officers-punished-for-supporting-eased-drug-laws.html

CNN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMcwldPOFA

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/23/marijuana-legalization-ballot-proposals/1642803/

MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49814649

Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4389739/last-minute-push-for-prop-19/?playlist_id=86912

=== Video ===

LEAP released an eight minute promotional DVD aimed at providing further insight into the organization's perspective and role in drug reform.

== See also ==

*[[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]]

*[[War on Drugs]]

*[[Drug Policy Alliance]]

*[[DrugWarRant]]

*NORML ([[National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws]])

Drug policy reform

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Adm1n: /* Organisations involved in lobbying, research and advocacy */

'''Drug policy reform''', also known as drug law reform, is any proposed changes to the way governments respond to the socio-cultural influence on perception of psychoactive substance use. Proponents of drug policy reform believe that prohibition of drugs—such as [[cannabis]], opioids, cocaine, amphetamines and hallucinogens—has been ineffectual and counterproductive. They argue that, rather than using laws and enforcement as the primary means to responding to substance use, governments and citizens would be better served by reducing harm and regulating the production, marketing, and distribution of currently illegal drugs in a manner similar to (or some would say better than) how alcohol and tobacco are regulated.

Proponents of drug law reform argue that relative harm should be taken into account in the scheduling of controlled substances. Addictive drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and caffeine have been a traditional part of Western culture for centuries and are legal, when in fact the first two are more harmful than some substances scheduled under Schedule I. The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, rated the hallucinogen psilocybin (Schedule I) less toxic than Aspirin. The Dutch government found this also to be true.

The addictive properties of the drug nicotine in tobacco are often compared with heroin or cocaine, but tobacco is legal, even though the World Health Organization (WHO) in the 2002 World Health Report estimates that in developed countries, 26% of male deaths and 9% of female deaths can be attributed to tobacco smoking. According to the American Heart Association, "Nicotine addiction has historically been one of the hardest addictions to break." The pharmacologic and behavioral characteristics that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

== History of drug policy reform ==

Initial attempts to change the punitive drug laws which were introduced all over the world from the late 1800s onwards were primarily based around recreational use. Timothy Leary was one of the most prominent campaigners for the legal and recreational use of LSD. In 1967, a "Legalise pot" rally was held in Britain.

However, as death toll from the drug war rose, other organisations began to form to campaign on a more political and humanitarian basis. The Drug Policy Foundation formed in America and Release, a charity which gives free legal advice to drugs users and currently campaigns for drug decriminalization, also incorporated in the 1970s.

Today, the focus of the world's drug policy reform organisations is on the promotion of harm reduction in the Western World, and attempting to prevent the catastrophic loss of human life in developing countries where much of the world's supply of heroin, cocaine, and [[marijuana]] are produced. Drug policy reform advocates point to failed efforts such as the Mexican Drug War, which according to some observers has claimed as many as 80,000 lives, as signs that a new approach to drug policy is needed.

In 2014 within the European Union, a European Citizens' Initiative called Weed like to talk was launched with the aim of starting a debate in Europe about the legalization of the production, sale and use of [[marijuana]] in the European Union and finding a common policy for all EU member states. As of June 30, 2014, the initiative has collected 100,000 signatures from citizens in European member states. Should they reach 1 million signatures, from nationals of at least one quarter of the member states, the European Commission will be required to initiate a legislative proposal and a debate on the issue.

== Proposed alternatives ==

=== Harm reduction ===

''Main article: Harm reduction''

Harm reduction refers to a range of public health policies designed to reduce the harmful consequences associated with recreational drug use and other high risk activities. Harm reduction is put forward as a useful perspective alongside the more conventional approaches of demand and supply reduction.

Many advocates argue that prohibitionist laws criminalize people for suffering from a disease and cause harm, for example by obliging drug addicts to obtain drugs of unknown purity from unreliable criminal sources at high prices, increasing the risk of overdose and death. Its critics are concerned that tolerating risky or illegal behaviour sends a message to the community that these behaviours are acceptable.

=== Decriminalization ===

''Main article: Drug liberalization''

Drug decriminalization calls for reduced control and penalties compared to existing laws. Proponents of drug decriminalization generally support the use of fines or other punishments to replace prison terms, and often propose systems whereby illegal drug users who are caught would be fined, but would not receive a permanent criminal record as a result. A central feature of drug decriminalization is the concept of harm reduction.

Drug decriminalization is in some ways an intermediate between prohibition and legalization, and has been criticized as being "the worst of both worlds", in that drug sales would still be illegal, thus perpetuating the problems associated with leaving production and distribution of drugs to the criminal underworld, while also failing to discourage illegal drug use by removing the criminal penalties that might otherwise cause some people to choose not to use drugs. Portugal was the first country in the world that has decriminalized the use of all drugs. This generally means anyone caught with any type of drug, if it classifies as being for personal consumption rather than sale, will not be imprisoned. However, Mexico City has decriminalized certain drugs and Greece has just announced that it is going to do so. Spain has also followed the Portugal model. Italy after waiting 10 years to see the result of the Portugal model, which Portugal deemed a success, has since recently followed suit. In May 2014, the Criminal Chamber of the Italian Supreme Court upheld a previous decision in 2013 by Italy's Constitutional Court, to reduce the penalties for the convictions for sale of soft drugs.

Some other countries have virtual decriminalization for [[marijuana]] only, in three US states, Colorado,Washington, and Oregon, one Australian state(SA) and in the Netherlands there are legal [[marijuana]] cafes. In the Netherlands these cafes are called "[[Cannabis coffee shop|coffee shops]]"

=== Legalization ===

Drug legalization calls for the end of government-enforced prohibition on the distribution or sale and personal use of specified (or all) currently banned drugs. Proposed ideas range from full legalization which would completely remove all forms of government control, to various forms of regulated legalization, where drugs would be legally available, but under a system of government control which might mean for instance:

*mandated labels with dosage and medical warnings,

*restrictions on advertising,

*age limitations,

*restrictions on amount purchased at one time,

*requirements on the form in which certain drugs would be supplied,

*ban on sale to intoxicated persons,

*special user licenses to purchase particular drugs.

The regulated legalization system would probably have a range of restrictions for different drugs, depending on their perceived risk, so while some drugs would be sold over the counter in pharmacies or other licensed establishments, drugs with greater risks of harm might only be available for sale on licensed premises where use could be monitored and emergency medical care made available. Examples of drugs with different levels of regulated distribution in most countries include: caffeine (coffee, tea), nicotine (tobacco), ethyl alcohol (beer, wine, spirits), and antibiotics.

Full legalization is often proposed by groups such as libertarians who object to drug laws on moral grounds, while regulated legalization is suggested by groups such as [[Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]] who object to the drug laws on the grounds that they fail to achieve their stated aims and instead greatly worsen the problems associated with use of prohibited drugs, but who acknowledge that there are harms associated with currently prohibited drugs which need to be minimized. Not all proponents of drug re-legalization necessarily share a common ethical framework, and people may adopt this viewpoint for a variety of reasons. In particular, favoring drug re-legalization does not imply approval of drug use.Decriminalization and legalisation is also supported by rationalists, who also support free adult access to all plants that grow in the earth as an essential human right, currently being denied by most governments.

== Groups advocating change ==

The Senlis Council, a European development and policy thinktank, has, since it conception in 2002, advocated that drug addiction should be viewed as a public health issue rather than a purely criminal matter. The group does not support the decriminalisation of illegal drugs. Since 2003, the Council has called for the licensing of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in order to manufacture poppy-based medicines, such as morphine and codeine, and to combat poverty in rural communities, breaking ties with the illicit drugs trade. The Senlis Council outlined proposals for the implementation of a village based poppy for medicine project and calls for a pilot project for Afghan morphine at the next planting season.

== Organisations involved in lobbying, research and advocacy ==

=== Canada ===

*[[Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs]]

=== Europe ===

*Beckley Foundation

*European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD) (Branches in Austria, Germany and Norway)

*Transform Drug Policy Foundation

*Drug Equality Alliance (DEA)

*Release (agency) (United Kingdom)

*Re:Vision Drug Policy Network (United Kingdom)

Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK (United Kingdom)

== New Zealand ==

The STAR Trust

== United States ==

*American Civil Liberties Union

*[[Americans for Safe Access]]

*[[Drug Policy Alliance]]

*[[High Times]]

*[[High Times Freedom Fighters]]

*[[Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]]

*Lindesmith Center

*[[Marijuana Policy Project]]

*MASS CANN/NORML

*Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)

*[[National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws]]

*[[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]]

*[[Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access]]

*[[November Coalition]] (United States)

== Political parties with drug law reform policies ==

*Australian Greens

*Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand

*Green Party of England and Wales

*Liberal Democrats

*Australian Sex Party

== See also ==

*[[Cannabis Social Club]]

*[[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]]

*[[War on drugs]]

*[[Arguments for and against drug prohibition]]

Misuse of Drugs Act 1971

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Adm1n: /* See also */

The '''Misuse of Drugs Act 1971''' is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It represents action in line with treaty commitments under the [[Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]], the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

Offences under the Act include:

*Possession of a controlled drug unlawfully

*Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply it

*Supplying or offering to supply a controlled drug (even where no charge is made for the drug)

*Allowing premises you occupy or manage to be used unlawfully for the purpose of producing or supplying controlled drugs

It is often presented as little more than a list of prohibited drugs and of penalties linked to their possession and supply. In practice, however, the act establishes the Home Secretary as a key player in a drug licensing system. Therefore, for example, various opiates are available legally as prescription-only medicines, and [[cannabis]] ([[hemp]]) may be grown under licence for 'industrial purposes'. The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, created under the 1971 Act, are about licensing of production, possession and supply of substances classified under the act.

The act creates three classes of controlled substances, A, B, and C, and ranges of penalties for illegal or unlicensed possession and possession with intent to supply are graded differently within each class. The lists of substances within each class can be amended by order, so the Home Secretary can list new drugs and upgrade, downgrade or delist previously controlled drugs with less of the bureaucracy and delay associated with passing an act through both Houses of Parliament.

Critics of the Act say that its classification is not based on how harmful or addictive the substances are, and that it is unscientific to omit substances like tobacco and alcohol.

== Provisions ==

=== Section 37 - Interpretation ===

Section 37(5) became spent on the repeal of sections 8 to 10 of the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933. It was repealed by Group 7 of Part 17 of Schedule 1 to the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 2004.

== List of controlled drugs ==

''Main article: Drugs controlled by the UK Misuse of Drugs Act''

The Act sets out four separate categories: Class A, Class B, Class C and temporary class drugs. Substances may be removed and added to different parts of the schedule by statutory instrument, provided a report of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has been commissioned and has reached a conclusion, although the Secretary of State is not bound by the council's findings.

*Class A includes heroin, cocaine, crack, MDMA ("ecstasy"), methamphetamine, LSD and psilocybin mushrooms

*Class B includes amphetamine, cannabis, codeine, ketamine, methoxetamine and methylphenidate. Any class B drug that is prepared for injections becomes a class A substance.

*Class C includes GHB, diazepam, flunitrazepam and most other tranquillisers, sleeping tablets and benzodiazepines as well as anabolic steroids.

*Temporary Class includes 6-APB, 5-APB, 25C-NBOMe, 25B-NBOMe and 25I-NBOMe

== Penalties ==

The penalties for drug offences depend on the class of drug involved. These penalties are enforced against those who do not have a valid prescription or licence to possess the drug in question. Thus it is not illegal for someone to possess heroin, a class A drug, so long as it was administered to them legally (by prescription).

Class A drugs attract the highest penalty, and imprisonment is both "proper and expedient". The maximum penalties possible are as follows:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Offence !! Court !! Class A !! Class B/Temporary class !! Class C
|-
| rowspan=2| Possession
| Magistrates
| 6 months / £5000 fine
| 3 months / £2500 fine
| 3 months / £500 fine
|-
| Crown
| 7 years / unlimited fine
| 5 years / unlimited fine
| 2 years / unlimited fine
|-
| rowspan=2| Supply and possession<br>with intent to supply
| Magistrates
| 6 months / £5000 fine
| 6 months / £5000 fine
| 3 months / £2000 fine
|-
| Crown
| Life / unlimited fine
| 14 years / unlimited fine
| 14 years / unlimited fine
|}

== International cooperation ==

The act makes it a crime to assist in, incite, or induce, the commission of an offence, outside the UK, against another nation's corresponding law on drugs. A corresponding law is defined as another country's law "providing for the control and regulation in that country of the production, supply, use, export and import of drugs and other substances in accordance with the provisions of the[[ Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]]" or another drug control treaty to which the UK and the other country are parties. An example might be lending money to a United States drug dealer for the purpose of violating that country's [[Controlled Substances Act]].

== History ==

The Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 controlled amphetamines in the United Kingdom in advance of international agreements and was later used to control LSD.

Before 1971, the UK had a relatively liberal drugs policy and it was not until United Nations influence had been brought to bear that controlling incidental drug activities was employed to effectively criminalise drugs use. It is noted that bar the smoking of opium and [[cannabis]]; Section 8, part d, under the 1971 Act was not an offence (relating to the prosecution of the owner of a premises/building inside of which controlled drugs were being used). Section 8 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 was amended by Regulation 13 of Misuse of Drugs Regulations 1985 and Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. These amendments were however repealed in 2005 by Schedule 1 (part 6) of the Drugs Act 2005,.

The Current Section 8 covers: people knowingly allowing premises they own, manage, or have responsibility for, to be used by any other person for:

*administration or use of any controlled drug

*supply of any controlled drug

*the production or cultivation of controlled drugs, (such as growing cannabis, making Crystal meth, preparing Magic mushrooms).

== Criticism and controversy ==

Comparison of the perceived harm for various psychoactive drugs from a poll among medical psychiatrists specialized in addiction treatment (David Nutt et al. 2007).

Notable criticism of the act includes:

*Drug classification: making a hash of it?, Fifth Report of Session 2005–06, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which said that the present system of drug classification is based on historical assumptions, not scientific assessment.

*Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse, David Nutt, Leslie A. King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore, The Lancet, 24 March 2007, said the act is "not fit for purpose" and "the exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary."

The Transform Drug Policy Foundation offers rational criticism of the harms caused by the Government's current prohibitionist drug policy. The Drug Equality Alliance (DEA) has launched legal actions against the UK Government's partial and unequal administration of the Act's discretionary powers, making particular reference to the arbitrary exclusion of alcohol and tobacco on the subjective grounds of historical and cultural precedents contrary to the Act's policy and objects.

[[Cannabis classification in the United Kingdom|Classification of cannabis]] has become especially controversial. In 2004, [[cannabis]] was reclassified from class B to class C, in accordance with advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). In 2009, it was returned to class B, against ACMD advice.

In February 2009 the UK government was accused by its most senior expert drugs adviser Professor David Nutt of making a political decisions with regard to drug classification in rejecting the scientific advice to downgrade ecstasy from a class A drug. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) report on ecstasy, based on a 12-month study of 4,000 academic papers, concluded that it is nowhere near as dangerous as other class A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine, and should be downgraded to class B. The advice was not followed. Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, was also widely criticised by the scientific community for bullying Professor David Nutt into apologising for his comments that, in the course of a normal year, more people died from falling off horses than died from taking ecstasy. Professor Nutt was later sacked by Alan Johnson (Jacqui Smith's successor as Home Secretary); Johnson saying "It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them. I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD."

In May 2011, a report named Taking Drugs Seriously was released by Demos. It discusses several issues with the current system, since its enactment in 1971. It states that the constant presence of new drugs will make it difficult for the government to keep up with the latest situation - over 600 drugs are now classified under the act. Comparison levels of harm previously demonstrated by David Nutt show that alcohol and tobacco were among the most lethal, while some class A drugs, such as MDMA, LSD, and magic mushrooms, were among the least harmful.

== See also ==

*[[Arguments for and against drug prohibition]]

*[[Drug policy reform]]

*[[Prohibition of drugs|Prohibition (drugs)]]

*[[Controlled Substances Act]] (US)

*[[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act]] (Canada)

Illegal drug trade

2015-04-26T21:10:53Z

Adm1n: Created page with "Drug dealing is the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of..."

Drug dealing is the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.

A UN report has stated that "the global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion in 2003." With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.

== History ==

''See also: History of opium in China''

Chinese edicts against opium smoking were made in 1729, 1796 and 1800. Addictive drugs were prohibited in the west in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the early 19th century, an illegal drug trade in China emerged. The Chinese government retaliated by enforcing a ban on the import of opium that led to the First Opium War (1839–1842) between Great Britain and Qing dynasty China. Chinese authorities had banned opium, but the United Kingdom forced China to allow British merchants to trade opium. Trading in opium was lucrative, and smoking opium had become common in the 19th Century, so British merchants increased trade with the Chinese. As a result of this illegal trade, by 1838 the number of Chinese opium addicts had grown to between four and twelve million. The Second Opium War broke out in 1856, with the British joined this time by the French. After the two opium wars, the British Crown, via the treaties of Nanking and Tianjin, took large sums of money from the Chinese government through this illegal trade, which were referred to as "reparations".

In 1868, as the result of the increased use of opium, the UK restricted the sale of opium in Britain by implementing the 1868 Pharmacy Act. In the United States, control of opium was a state responsibility until the introduction of the Harrison Act in 1914, following the passing of the International Opium Convention in 1912.

Between 1920 and 1933, alcohol was banned in the United States. This law was considered to have been very difficult to enforce and resulted in the growth of many criminal organizations, including the modern American Mafia.

The Australian Crime Commission's illicit drug data report for 2011–2012 was released in Western Sydney on 20 May 2013, and revealed that the seizures of illegal substances in Australia during the reporting period were the largest in a decade, due to record interceptions of amphetamines, cocaine and steroids.

The beginning of the 21st century saw a drug use increase in North America and Europe, with a particularly increased demand for[[ marijuana]] and cocaine. As a result, international organized crime syndicates such as the Sinaloa Cartel and 'Ndrangheta have increased cooperation among each other in order to facilitate trans-Atlantic drug trafficking. Another illicit drug with increased demand in Europe is hashish, which is generally smuggled from Morocco to Spain, where it is later exported to its final markets (mostly France and Western Europe).

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), the chief drug policymaking body at the United Nations, held its annual meeting in Vienna, Austria in mid-March 2014, following a period of historic drug policy reforms throughout the world—such as the decision of the Uruguay government to become the first national jurisdiction in the world to legalize cannabis. The International Drug Policy Consortium stated in the lead-up to the meeting that "[t]he meeting itself is likely to feature standoffs between reform-oriented countries and governments that favour failed criminal justice models, which have resulted in mass incarceration and rampant human rights abuses such as the death penalty for non-violent drug offences." The support of drug policy reform by Joanne Csete, deputy director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program, was also published in the consortium's media release that “[t]here will be no shortage of governments that seek to bury their heads in the sand and pretend these drug policy reforms aren’t happening. But try as they might, the movement for drug law reform is unstoppable.”

== Legal penalties ==

See also: Capital punishment for drug trafficking

Drug trafficking is widely regarded by lawmakers as a serious offense around the world. Penalties often depend on the type of drug (and its classification in the country into which it is being trafficked), the quantity trafficked, where the drugs are sold and how they are distributed. If the drugs are sold to underage people, then the penalties for trafficking may be harsher than in other circumstances.

Drug smuggling carries severe penalties in many countries. Sentencing may include lengthy periods of incarceration, flogging and even the death penalty (in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere). In December 2005, Van Tuong Nguyen, a 25 year old Australian drug smuggler, was hanged in Singapore after being convicted in March 2004. In 2010, two people were sentenced to death in Malaysia for trafficking 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of cannabis into the country. Execution is mostly used as a deterrent, and many have called upon much more effective measures to be taken by countries to tackle drug trafficking, such as for example targeting specific criminal organisations (which are often also active in the smuggling of other goods (i.e. wildlife) and even people In some cases, even links between policians and the criminal organisations have been proven to exist, so more thorough monitoring of this could also help in reducing the problem.

== Effects of the illegal drug trade on societies ==

The countries of drug production and transit are some of the most affected by the drug trade, though countries receiving the illegally imported substances are also adversely affected. For example, Ecuador has absorbed up to 300,000 refugees from Colombia who are running from guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug lords. While some applied for asylum, others are still illegal immigrants. The drugs that pass from Colombia through Ecuador to other parts of South America create economic and social problems.

Honduras, through which an estimated 79% of cocaine passes on its way to the United States, has the highest murder rate in the world. According to the International Crisis Group, the most violent regions in Central America, particularly along the Guatemala–Honduras border, are highly correlated with an abundance of drug trafficking activity.

=== Violent crime ===

In many countries worldwide, the illegal drug trade is thought to be directly linked to violent crimes such as murder. This is especially true in developing countries, such as Honduras, but is also an issue for many developed countries worldwide. In the late 1990s in the United States the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated that 5% of murders were drug-related.

After a crackdown by US and Mexican authorities in the first decade of the 21st century as part of tightened border security in the wake of the September 11 attacks, border violence inside Mexico surged. The Mexican government estimates that 90% of the killings are drug-related.

A report by the UK government's Drug Strategy Unit that was leaked to the press, stated that due to the expensive price of highly addictive drugs heroin and cocaine, drug use was responsible for the great majority of crime, including 85% of shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries and 54% of robberies. It concluded that "[t]he cost of crime committed to support illegal cocaine and heroin habits amounts to £16 billion a year in the UK"

== Illegal cocaine trade via West Africa ==

Cocaine produced in Colombia and Bolivia increasingly has been shipped via West Africa (especially in Cape Verde, Mali, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau and Ghana). The money is often laundered in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.

Cargo planes are now also used for transport from the production countries to West Africa. Before this, cocaine was only shipped to the US.Because the market became saturated there, illicit drug traders decided to increase shipping to Europe. When these new drug routes were uncovered by authorities, West Africa was chosen as a stop-over. In 2005, police[where?] intercepted a major cocaine shipment for the first time.

According to the Africa Economic Institute, the value of illicit drug smuggling in Guinea-Bissau is almost twice the value of the country's GDP. Police officers are often bribed. A police officer's normal monthly wage of €75($95) is less than 2% of the value of 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of cocaine (€7000 or $8958).[citation needed] The money can also be laundered using real estate. A house is built using illegal funds, and when the house is sold, legal money is earned. When drugs are sent over land, through the Sahara, the drug traders have been forced to cooperate with terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb.

== Main drug trafficking route in Asia ==

A large amount of drugs are smuggled into Europe from Asia. The main source of these drugs is Afghanistan. Farmers in Afghanistan produce drugs which are smuggled into the West and central Asia. Iran is a main route for smugglers. The Border Police Chief of Iran says his country "is a strong barrier against the trafficking of illegal drugs to Caucasus, especially the Republic of Azerbaijan."

In South Asia drug smuggling is considered to be Organized business. From two decades, it is rapidly increasing. It makes UNODC (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime) and INCB (International Narcotic Control Board)officials tensed. India shares 4096 km border with Bangladesh. Smugglers access bordering areas to pursuit their interest. Opium, Morphine, Pethidine hydrochloride, Heroin, Yaba ATC above all Phensedyl.

== Profits ==

Statistics about profits from the drug trade are largely unknown due to its illicit nature. In its 1997 World Drugs Report the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated the value of the market at $4 trillion, ranking drugs alongside arms and oil among the world's largest traded goods. An online report published by the UK Home Office in 2007 estimated the illicit drug market in the UK at £4–6.6 billion a year

In December 2009 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa claimed illegal drug money saved the banking industry from collapse. He claimed he had seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse during 2008. He said that a majority of the $352 billion (£216bn) of drug profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result:

<blockquote>"In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor...Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities...there were signs that some banks were rescued that way".</blockquote>

Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drug money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame.

== Drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere ==

''Main article: Drug cartel''
''See also: Drug trafficking organizations''

=== Background ===

There are several arguments on whether or not free trade has a correlation to an increased activity in the illicit drug trade. Currently, the structure and operation of the illicit drug industry is described mainly in terms of an international division of labor. Free trade can open new markets to domestic producers who would otherwise resort to exporting illicit drugs. Additionally, extensive free trade among states increases cross-border drug enforcement and coordination between law enforcement agencies in different countries. However, free trade also increases the sheer volume of legal cross-border trade and provides cover for drug smuggling—by providing ample opportunity to conceal illicit cargo in legal trade. While international free trade continues to expand the volume of legal trade, the ability to detect and interdict drug trafficking is severely diminished. Towards the late 1990s, the top ten seaports in the world processed 33.6 million containers. Free trade has fostered integration of financial markets and has provided drug traffickers with more opportunities to launder money and invest in other activities. This strengthens the drug industry while weakening the efforts of law enforcement to monitor the flow of drug money into the legitimate economy. Cooperation among cartels expands their scope to distant markets and strengthens their abilities to evade detection by local law enforcement. Additionally, criminal organizations work together to coordinate money-laundering activities by having separate organizations handle specific stages of laundering process.[40] One organization structures the process of how financial transactions will be laundered, while another criminal group provides the “dirty” money to be cleaned. By fostering expansion of trade and global transportation networks, free trade encourages cooperation and formation of alliances among criminal organizations across different countries. The drug trade in Latin America emerged in the early 1930s. It saw significant growth in the Andean countries, including Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina. The underground market in the early half of the 20th century mainly had ties to Europe. After World War II, the Andean countries saw an expansion of trade, specifically with cocaine.

=== The United States ===

==== Background ====

The effects of the illegal drug trade in the United States can be seen in a range of political, economic and social aspects. Increasing drug related violence can be tied to the racial tension that arose during the late 20th century along with the political upheaval prevalent throughout the 1960s and 70s. The second half of the 20th century was a period when increased wealth, and increased discretionary spending, increased the demand for illicit drugs in certain areas of the United States.

==== Political impact ====

A large generation, the baby boomers, came of age in the 1960s. Their social tendency to confront the law on specific issues, including illegal drugs, overwhelmed the understaffed judicial system. The federal government attempted to enforce the law, but with meager affect.

[[Marijuana]] was a popular drug seen through the Latin American trade route in the 1960s. Cocaine became a major drug product in the later decades. Much of the cocaine is smuggled from Colombia and Mexico via Jamaica. This led to several administrations combating the popularity of these drugs. Due to the influence of this development on the U.S. economy, the Reagan Administration began "certifying" countries for their attempts at controlling drug trafficking. This allowed the US to intervene in activities related to illegal drug transport in Latin America. Continuing into the 1980s, the United States instated stricter policy pertaining to drug transit through sea. As a result, there was an influx in drug-trafficking across the Mexico–US border. This increased the drug cartel activity in Mexico. By the early 1990s, so much as 50% of the cocaine available in the United States market originated from Mexico, and by the 2000s, over 90% of the cocaine in the United States was imported from Mexico. In Colombia, however, there was a fall of the major drug cartels in the mid-1990s. Visible shifts occurred in the drug market in the United States. Between the years 1996 and 2000, US consumption of cocaine had dropped by 11%.

In 2008, the United States government initiated another program, known as The Merida Initiative, to help combat drug trafficking in Mexico. This program increased US security assistance to $1.4bn over several years, which helped supply Mexican forces with "high-end equipment from helicopters to surveillance technology." Despite US aid, Mexican "narcogangs" continue to outnumber and outgun the Mexican Army, allowing for continued activities of drug cartels across the US-Mexico border.

==== Social impacts ====

Although narcotics are illegal in the US, they have become integrated into the nation's culture and are seen as a recreational activity by sections of the population. Illicit drugs are considered to be a commodity with strong demand, as they are typically sold at a high value. This high price is caused by a combination of factors that include the potential legal ramifications that exist for suppliers of illicit drugs and their high demand. Despite the constant effort by politicians to win the war on drugs, the US is still the world’s largest importer of illegal drugs.

Throughout the 20th century, narcotics other than cocaine also crossed the Mexican border, meeting the US demand for alcohol during 1920s Prohibition, opiates in the 1940s, marijuana in the 1960s, and heroin in the 1970s. Most of the U.S. imports of drugs come from Mexican drug cartels. In the United States, around 195 cities have been infiltrated by drug trafficking that originated in Mexico. An estimated $10bn of the Mexican drug cartel’s profits come from the United States, not only supplying the Mexican drug cartels with the profit necessary for survival, but also furthering America's economic dependence on drugs.

==== Demographics ====

With a large wave of immigrants in the 1960s and onwards, the United States saw an increased heterogeneity in its public. In the 1980s and 90s, drug related homicide was at a record high. This increase in drug violence became increasingly tied to these ethnic minorities. Though the rate of violence varied tremendously among cities in America, it was a common anxiety in communities across urban America. An example of this could be seen in Miami, a city with a host of ethnic enclaves. Between 1985 and 1995, the homicide rate in Miami was one of the highest in the nation—four times the national homicide average. This crime rate was correlated with regions with low employment and was not entirely dependent on ethnicity.

The baby boomer generation also felt the effects of the drug trade in their increased drug use from the 1960s to 80s. Along with substance abuse, criminal involvement, suicide and murder were also on the rise. Due to the large amount of baby boomers, commercial marijuana use was on the rise. This increased the supply and demand for [[marijuana]] during this time period.

==== Political influences ====

Corruption in Mexico has contributed to the domination of Mexican cartels in the illicit drug trade. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Mexico's political environment allowed the growth of drug-related activity. The loose regulation over the transportation of illegal drugs and the failure to prosecute known drug traffickers and gangs increased the growth of the drug industry. Toleration of drug trafficking has undermined the authority of the Mexican government and has decreased the power of law enforcement officers in regulation over such activities. These policies of tolerance fostered the growing power of drug cartels in the Mexican economy and have made drug traders wealthier. Many states in Mexico lack policies that establish stability in governance. There also is a lack of local stability, as mayors cannot be re-elected. This requires electing a new mayor each term. Drug gangs have manipulated this, using vacuums in local leadership to their own advantage.

In 1929, The Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI) was formed to resolve the chaos resulting from the Mexican Revolution. Over time, this party gained political influence and had a major impact on Mexico's social and economic policies. The party created ties with various groups as a power play in order to gain influence, and as a result created more corruption in the government. One such power play was an alliance with drug traffickers. This political corruption obscured justice, making it difficult to identify violence when it related to drugs. By the 1940s, the tie between the drug cartels and the PRI had solidified. This arrangement created immunity for the leaders of the drug cartels and allowed drug trafficking to grow under the protection of the government officials. During the 1990s, the PRI lost some elections to the new National Action Party(PAN). Chaos again emerged as elected government in Mexico changed drastically. As the PAN party took control, drug cartel leaders took advantage of the ensuing confusion and used their existing influence to further gain power. Instead of negotiating with the central government as was done with the PRI party, drug cartels utilized new ways to distribute their supply and continued operating through force and intimidation. As Mexico became more democratized, the corruption fell from a centralized power to the local authorities. Cartels began to bribe local authorities, thus eliminating the structure and rules placed by the government—giving cartels more freedom. As a response, Mexico saw an increase in violence caused by drug trafficking.

The corruption cartels created resulted in distrust of government by the Mexican public. This distrust became more prominent after the collapse of the PRI party. In response, the presidents of Mexico, in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, implemented several different programs relating to law enforcement and regulation. In 1993, President Salinas created the National Institute for the Combat of Drugs in Mexico. From 1995–1998, President Zedillo established policies regarding increased punishment of organized crime, allowing "[wire taps], protected witnesses, covert agents and seizures of goods", and increasing the quality of law enforcement at the federal level. From 2001–2005, President Vicente Fox created the Federal Agency of Investigation. These policies resulted in the arrests of major drug-trafficking bosses:

Arrested Drug Traffickers
Year Person Cartel
1989 Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo Sinaloa Cartel
1993 Joaquín Guzmán Loera Sinaloa Cartel
1995 Héctor Luis Palma
1996 Juan Garcia Abrego Gulf Cartel
2002 Ismael Higuera Guerrero Tijuana Cartel
Jesus Labra Tijuana Cartel
Adan Amezcua Colima Cartel
Benjamin Arellano Felix Tijuana Cartel
2003 Osiel Cardenas Gulf Cartel

==== Mexico's economy ====

Over the past few decades drug cartels have become integrated into Mexico’s economy. Approximately 500 cities are directly engaged in drug trafficking and nearly 450,000 people are employed by drug cartels. Additionally, the livelihood of 3.2 million people is dependent on the drug cartels. Between local and international sales, such as to Europe and the United States, drug cartels in Mexico see a $25–30bn yearly profit, a great deal of which circulates through international banks such as HSBC. Drug cartels are fundamental in local economics. A percentage of the profits seen from the trade are invested in the local community. Such profits contribute to the education and healthcare of the community. While these cartels bring violence and hazards into communities, they create jobs and provide income for its many members.

==== Culture of drug cartels ====

Major cartels saw growth due to a prominent set culture of Mexican society that created the means for drug capital. One of the sites of origin for drug trafficking within Mexico, was the state of Michoacán. In the past, Michoacán was mainly an agricultural society. This provided an initial growth of trade. Industrialization of rural areas of Mexico facilitated a greater distribution of drugs, expanding the drug market into different provinces. Once towns became industrialized, cartels such as the Sinaloa Cartel started to form and expand. The proliferation of drug cartel culture largely stemmed from the ranchero culture seen in Michoacán. Ranchero culture values the individual as opposed to the society as a whole. This culture fostered the drug culture of valuing the family that is formed within the cartel. This ideal allowed for greater organization within the cartels. Gangs play a major role in the activity of drug cartels. MS-13 and the 18th Street gang are notorious for their contributions and influence over drug trafficking throughout Latin America. MS-13 has controlled much of the activity in the drug trade spanning from Mexico to Panama Female involvement is present in the Mexican drug culture. Although females are not treated as equals to males, they typically hold more power than their culture allows and acquire some independence. The increase in power has attracted females from higher social classes. Financial gain has also prompted women to become involved in the illegal drug market. Many women in the lower levels of major drug cartels belong to a low economic class. Drug trafficking offers women an accessible way to earn income. Females from all social classes have become involved in the trade due to outside pressure from their social and economic environments.

=== Colombia ===

==== Political ties ====

It was common for smugglers in Colombia to import liquor, alcohol, cigarettes and textiles, while exporting cocaine. Personnel with knowledge of the terrain were able to supply the local market while also exporting a large amount of product. The established trade that began in the 1960s involved Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Cuba. Peasant farmers produced coca paste in Peru and Bolivia, while Colombian smugglers would process the coca paste into cocaine in Colombia, and trafficked product through Cuba. This trade route established ties between Cuban and Colombian organized crime. From Cuba, cocaine would be transported to Miami, Florida; and Union City, New Jersey. Quantities of the drug were then smuggled throughout the US. The international drug trade created political ties between the involved countries, encouraging the governments of the countries involved to collaborate and instate common policies to eradicate drug cartels. Cuba stopped being a center for transport of cocaine following the establishment of a communist government in 1959. As a result Miami and Union City became the sole locations for trafficking. The relations between Cuban and Colombian organized crime remained strong until the 1970s, when Colombian cartels began to vie for power. In the 1980s and 90s, Colombia emerged as a key contributor of the drug trade industry in the Western Hemisphere. While the smuggling of drugs such as [[marijuana]], poppy, opium and heroin became more ubiquitous during this time period, the activity of cocaine cartels drove the development of the Latin American drug trade. The trade emerged as a multinational effort as supplies (i.e. coca plant substances) were imported from countries such as Bolivia and Peru, were refined in Colombian cocaine labs and smuggled through Colombia, and exported to countries such as the US.

==== Colombia's economy ====

Colombia has had a significant role in the illegal drug trade in Latin America. While active in the drug trade since the 1930s, Colombia's role in the drug trade did not truly become dominant until the 1970s. When Mexico eradicated marijuana plantations, demand stayed the same. Colombia met much of the demand by growing more [[marijuana]]. Grown in the strategic northeast region of Colombia, marijuana soon became the leading cash crop in Colombia. This success was short-lived due to anti-marijuana campaigns that were enforced by the US military throughout the Caribbean. Instead, drug traffickers in Colombia continued their focus on the exportation of cocaine. Having been an export of Colombia since the early 1950s, cocaine remained popular for a host of reasons. Colombia's location facilitated its transportation from South America into Central America, and then to its destination of North America. This continued into the 1990s, when Colombia remained the chief exporter of cocaine. The business of drug trafficking can be seen in several stages in Colombia towards the latter half of the 20th century. Colombia served as the dominant force in the distribution and sale of cocaine by the 1980s. As drug producers gained more power, they became more centralized and organized into what became drug cartels. Cartels controlled the major aspects of each stage in the traffic of their product. Their organization allowed cocaine to be distributed in great amounts throughout the United States. By the late 1980s, intra-industry strife arose within the cartels. This stage was marked by increased violence as different cartels fought for control of export markets. Despite this strife, this power struggle led to then having multiple producers of coca leaf farms. This in turn caused an improvement in quality control and reduction of police interdiction in the distribution of cocaine. This also led to cartels attempting to repatriate their earnings which would eventually make up 5.5% of Colombia's GDP. This drive to repatriate earnings led to the pressure of legitimizing their wealth, causing an increase in violence throughout Colombia.

Throughout the 1980s, estimates of illegal drug value in Colombia ranged from $2bn to $4bn. This made up about 7-10% of the $36bn estimated GNP of Colombia during this decade. In the 1990s, the estimates of the illegal drug value remained roughly within the same range (~$2.5bn). As the Colombian GNP rose throughout the 90's ($68.5bn in 1994 and $96.3bn in 1997), illegal drug values began to comprise a decreasing fraction of the national economy. By the early 1990s, although Colombia led in the exportation of cocaine, it found increasing confrontations within its state. These confrontations were primarily between cartels and government institutions. This led to a decrease in the drug trade's contribution to the GDP of Colombia; dropping from 5.5% to 2.6%. Though a contributor of wealth, the distribution of cocaine has had negative effects on the socio-political situation of Colombia and has weakened its economy as well.

==== Social impacts ====

By the 1980s, Colombian cartels became the dominant cocaine distributors in the US. This led to the spread of increased violence throughout both Latin America and Miami. In the 1980s, two major drug cartels emerged in Colombia: the Medellin and Cali groups. Throughout the 90's however, several factors led to the decline of these major cartels and to the rise of smaller Colombian cartels. The U.S. demand for cocaine dropped while Colombian production rose, pressuring traffickers to find new drugs and markets. In this time period, there was an increase in activity of Caribbean cartels that led to the rise of an alternate route of smuggling through Mexico. This led to the increased collaboration between major Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers. Such drastic changes in the execution of drug trade in Colombia paired with the political instabilities and rise of drug wars in Medellin and Cali, gave way for the rise of the smaller Colombian drug trafficking organizations (and the rise of heroin trade). As the drug trade’s influence over the economy increased, drug lords and their networks grew in their power and influence in society. The occurrences in drug-related violence increased during this time period as drug lords fought to maintain their control in the economy. Typically a drug cartel had support networks that consisted of a number of individuals. These people individuals ranged from those directly involved in the trade (such as suppliers, chemists, transporters, smugglers, etc.) as well as those involved indirectly in the trade (such as politicians, bankers, police, etc.). As these smaller Colombian drug cartels grew in prevalence, several notable aspects of the Colombian society gave way for further development of the Colombian drug industry. For example, until the late 1980s, the long-term effects of the drug industry were not realized by much of society. Additionally, there was a lack of regulation in prisons where captured traffickers were sent. These prisons were under-regulated, under-funded, and under-staffed, which allowed for the formation of prison gangs, for the smuggling of arms/weapons/etc., for feasible escapes, and even for captured drug lords to continue running their businesses from prison.

== Trade in specific drugs ==

=== Cannabis ===

''Main article: [[Legality of cannabis]]''

While the recreational use of (and consequently the distribution of) [[cannabis]] is illegal in most countries throughout the world, it is available by prescription or recommendation in many places, including Canada and some US states, with Washington state and Colorado being the two first states to legalize[[ marijuana]] for recreational use, although importation and distribution is prohibited at the federal level. Beginning in 2014, Uruguay will be the first country to legalize cultivation, sale, and consumption of [[cannabis]] for recreational use for adult residents.

[[Cannabis]] use is tolerated in some areas, most notably the Netherlands which has legalized the possession and licensed sale (but not cultivation) of the drug. Many nations have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of [[marijuana]]. Due to the hardy nature of the[[ cannabis]] plant, [[marijuana ]]is grown all across the world and is today the world's most popular illegal drug with the highest level of availability. [[Cannabis]] is grown legally in many countries for industrial, non-drug use (known as [[hemp]]) as well. Cannabis-hemp may also be planted for other non-drug domestic purposes, such as seasoning that occurs in Aceh.

The demand for [[cannabis]] around the world, coupled with the drug's relative ease of cultivation, makes the illicit[[ cannabis]] trade one of the primary ways in which organized criminal groups finance many of their activities. In Mexico, for example, the illicit trafficking of cannabis is thought to constitute the majority of many of the cartels' earnings, and the main way in which the cartels finance many other illegal activities; including the purchase of other illegal drugs for trafficking, and for acquiring weapons that are ultimately used to commit murders (causing a burgeoning in the homicide rates of many areas of the world, but particularly Latin America).

=== Alcohol ===

''Main article: Ethanol''

Alcohol, in the context of alcoholic beverages rather than denatured alcohol, is illegal in a number of countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and this has resulted in a thriving illegal trade in alcohol.[vague] The manufacture, sale, transportation, importation and exportation of alcoholic beverage were illegal in the United States during the time known as the Prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s.

=== Heroin ===

''Main article: Heroin''

Up until around 2004 the majority of the world's heroin was produced in an area known as the Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia).However, by 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This amounted to an export value of about US$64 billion, with a quarter being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords and drug traffickers. Another significant area where poppy fields are grown for the manufacture of heroin is Mexico.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the price of heroin is typically valued 8 to 10 times that of cocaine on American streets, making it a high-profit substance for smugglers and dealers. In Europe (except the transit countries Portugal and the Netherlands), for example, a purported gram of street heroin, usually consisting of 700–800 mg of a light to dark brown powder containing 5-10% heroin base, costs €30-70, making the effective value per gram of pure heroin €300-700. Heroin is generally a preferred product for smuggling and distribution—over unrefined opium due to the cost-effectiveness and increased efficacy of heroin.

Because of the high cost per volume, heroin is easily smuggled. A US quarter-sized (2.5 cm) cylindrical vial can contain hundreds of doses. From the 1930s to the early 1970s, the so-called French Connection supplied the majority of US demand. Allegedly, during the Vietnam War, drug lords such as Ike Atkinson used to smuggle hundreds of kilos of heroin to the US in coffins of dead American soldiers (see Cadaver Connection). Since that time it has become more difficult for drugs to be imported into the US than it had been in previous decades, but that does not stop the heroin smugglers from getting their product across US borders. Purity levels vary greatly by region with Northeastern cities having the most pure heroin in the United States.

Penalties for smuggling heroin or morphine are often harsh in most countries. Some countries will readily hand down a death sentence (e.g. Singapore) or life in prison for the illegal smuggling of heroin or morphine, which are both internationally Schedule I drugs under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

=== Methamphetamine ===

''Main article: Methamphetamine''

Methamphetamine is another popular drug among distributors. Three common street names are "crystal meth", "meth", and "ice".

According to the Community Epidemiology Work Group, the number of clandestine methamphetamine laboratory incidents reported to the National Clandestine Laboratory Database decreased from 1999 to 2009. During this period, methamphetamine lab incidents increased in mid-western States (Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio), and in Pennsylvania. In 2004, more lab incidents were reported in Missouri (2,788) and Illinois (1,058) than in California (764). In 2003, methamphetamine lab incidents reached new highs in Georgia (250), Minnesota (309), and Texas (677). There were only seven methamphetamine lab incidents reported in Hawaii in 2004, though nearly 59 percent of substance abuse treatment admissions (excluding alcohol) were for primary methamphetamine abuse during the first six months of 2004. As of 2007, Missouri leads the United States in drug-lab seizures, with 1,268 incidents reported. Often canine units are used for detecting rolling meth labs which can be concealed on large vehicles, or transported on something as small as a motorcycle. These labs are more difficult to detect than stationary ones, and can often be obscured among legal cargo in big trucks.

Methamphetamine is sometimes used in inject-able form, placing users and their partners at risk for transmission of HIV and hepatitis C. "Meth" can also be inhaled, most commonly vaporized on aluminum foil or in a glass pipe. This method is reported to give "an unnatural high" and a "brief intense rush".

In South Africa methamphetamine is called "tik" or "tik-tik".[citation needed] Children as young as eight are abusing the substance, smoking it in crude glass vials made from light bulbs.Since methamphetamine is easy to produce, the substance is manufactured locally in staggering quantities.

The government of North Korea currently operates methamphetamine production facilities. There, the drug is used as medicine because no alternatives are available; it also is smuggled across the Chinese border.

The Australian Crime Commission's illicit drug data report for 2011–2012 stated that the average strength of crystal methamphetamine doubled in most Australian jurisdictions within a 12-month period, and the majority of domestic laboratory closures involved small "addict-based" operations.

=== Temazepam ===

''Main article: Temazepam''

Temazepam, a strong hypnotic benzodiazepine, is illicitly manufactured in clandestine laboratories (called jellie labs) to supply the increasingly high demand for the drug internationally. Many clandestine temazepam labs are in Eastern Europe. The labs manufacture temazepam by chemically altering diazepam, oxazepam or lorazepam. "Jellie labs" have been identified and shutdown in Russia, the Ukraine, Czech Republic, Latvia and Belarus.

In the United Kingdom, temazepam is the most widely-abused legal prescription drug. It is also the most commonly abused benzodiazepine in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Russia, the People's Republic of China, New Zealand, Australia and some parts of Southeast Asia. In Sweden it has been banned due to a problem with drug abuse and a high rate of death caused by temazepam alone relative to other drugs of its group. Surveys in many countries show that temazepam, MDMA, nimetazepam, and methamphetamine rank among the top illegal drugs most frequently abused.

Illegal drug trade in the United States

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The U.S. Federal Government is an opponent of the illegal drug trade; however, state laws vary greatly and in some cases contradict federal laws. Despite the US government's official position against the drug trade, US government agents and assets have been implicated in the drug trade and were caught and investigated during the Iran-Contra scandal, implicated in the use of the drug trade as a secret source of funding for the USA's support of the Contras. Page 41 of the December 1988 Kerry report to the US Senate states that "indeed senior US policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contra's funding problem."

The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. The [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]] estimates that $100 billion worth of illegal drugs were sold in the U.S. in 2013.

Acclaimed investigator and former DEA agent Michael Levine has alleged that the CIA participated in orchestrating the 1980 Cocaine Coup in Bolivia to install an Operation Condor military government, in place of the pre-coup civilian government. The pre-coup government had collaborated with the DEA in bringing leaders of the Roberto Suarez cartel to justice, and Levine alleges that the CIA not only intervened judicially to release the extradited cartel leaders and allow their flight to Bolivia, but also enabled them to collaborate with right-wing military factions in overthrowing the civilian government that had collaborated with the DEA. The drug links of the coup government were obvious to the international community, which led to the coup becoming termed "the Cocaine Coup" by historians. Levine alleges that one of the CIA agents who participated in the coup was Klaus Barbie, the former SS Nazi known as the "Butcher of Lyon," who had previously collaborated with the CIA in Bolivia during the capture and execution of Che Guevara.

Contrary to its official goals, the US has suppressed research on drug usage, although the CIA researched regardless during MKULTRA. For example, in 1995 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) announced in a press release the publication of the results of the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken. However, a decision in the World Health Assembly banned the publication of the study. In the sixth meeting of the B committee the US representative threatened that "If WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed". This led to the decision to discontinue publication. A part of the study has been released. Several government-sponsored reports by commissioned experts have pointed to public substance abuse treatment as opposed to criminalization as the only effective way to battle the public health crisis caused by drugs; these recommendations have been mostly ignored by US government officials, and in some cases suppressed.

== War on Drugs ==

''Main article: [[War on Drugs]]''

The "War on Drugs" is a term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, and the stated aim to define and reduce the illegal drug trade. This initiative includes a set of drug policies of the United States that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal psychoactive drugs. The term was first used by U.S. President Richard Nixon, and was later popularized by the media.

== Minors ==

The U.S. government's most recent 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12–17 sold illegal drugs during the twelve months preceding the survey. The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.8% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).

Despite over US$7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for [[marijuana]] offenses in 2005 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find [[marijuana]] “easy to obtain.” That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.

In 2009, the Justice Department identified more than 200 U.S. cities in which Mexican drug cartels "maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors" - up from 100 three years earlier.

Drug Enforcement Administration

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The '''Drug Enforcement Administration''' (DEA) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States. Not only is the DEA the lead agency for domestic enforcement of the [[Controlled Substances Act]], sharing concurrent jurisdiction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it also has sole responsibility for coordinating and pursuing U.S. drug investigations abroad.

== History and mandate ==

The Drug Enforcement Administration was established on July 1, 1973, by Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1973, signed by President Richard Nixon on July 28. It proposed the creation of a single federal agency to enforce the federal drug laws as well as consolidate and coordinate the government's drug control activities. Congress accepted the proposal, as they were concerned with the growing availability of drugs. As a result, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE); approximately 600 Special Agents of the Bureau of Customs, Customs Agency Service; and, other federal offices merged to create the DEA.

From the early 1970s, DEA headquarters was located at 1405 I ("Eye") Street NW in downtown Washington, D.C. With the overall growth of the agency in the 1980s (owing to the increased emphasis on federal drug law enforcement efforts) and a concurrent growth in the headquarters staff, DEA began to search for a new headquarters location; locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, and various abandoned military bases around the U.S. were considered. However, then–Attorney General Edwin Meese determined that the headquarters had to be located in close proximity to the Attorney General's office. Thus, in 1989, the headquarters relocated to 600–700 Army-Navy Drive in the Pentagon City area of Arlington, Virginia, near the Metro station with the same name.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh attacked the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it housed regional offices for the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and DEA, all of which had carried out raids that he viewed as unjustified intrusions on the rights of the people; this attack caused the deaths of two DEA employees, one task force member, and two contractors in the Oklahoma City bombing. Subsequently, the DEA headquarters complex was classified as a Level IV installation under United States federal building security standards, meaning it was to be considered a high-risk law enforcement target for terrorists. Security measures include hydraulic steel roadplates to enforce standoff distance from the building, metal detectors, and guard stations.

In February 2003, the DEA established a Digital Evidence Laboratory within its Office of Forensic Sciences.

== Organization ==

The DEA is headed by an Administrator of Drug Enforcement appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Administrator reports to the Attorney General through the Deputy Attorney General. The Administrator is assisted by a Deputy Administrator, the Chief of Operations, the Chief Inspector, and three Assistant Administrators (for the Operations Support, Intelligence, and Human Resources Divisions). Other senior staff include the chief financial officer and the Chief Counsel. The Administrator and Deputy Administrator are the only presidentially-appointed personnel in the DEA; all other DEA officials are career government employees. DEA's headquarters is located in Arlington, Virginia across from the Pentagon. It maintains its own DEA Academy located on the United States Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia along with the FBI Academy. It maintains 21 domestic field divisions with 227 field offices and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries. With a budget exceeding 2.415 billion dollars, DEA employs over 10,800 people, including over 5,500 Special Agents. Becoming a Special Agent with the DEA is a competitive process.

== Structure ==

*Administrator
**Deputy Administrator
***Human Resource Division
****Career Board
****Board of Professional Conduct
****Office of Training
***Operations Division
****Aviation Division
****Office of Operations Management
****Special Operations Division
****Office of Diversion Control
****Office of Global Enforcement
****Office of Financial Operations
***Intelligence Division
****Office of National Security Intelligence
****Office of Special Intelligence
****El Paso Intelligence Center
****OCDETF Fusion Center
***Financial Management Division
****Office of Acquisition and Relocation Management
****Office of Finance
****Office of Resource Management
***Operational Support Division
****Office of Administration
****Office of Information System
****Office of Forensic Science
****Office of Investigative Technology
***Inspection Division
****Office of Inspections
****Office of Professional Responsibility
****Office of Security Programs
***Field Divisions and Offices

=== Special Agents ===

As of 2011 there were 4,890 agents employed by the Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA agents starting salary is $49,746–$55,483. After four years working as an agent, the salary jumps to above $92,592.

After receiving a conditional offer of employment, recruits must then complete a 19-week rigorous training which includes lessons in firearms proficiency (including basic marksmanship), weapons safety, tactical shooting, and deadly-force decision training. In order to graduate, students must maintain an academic average of 80 percent on academic examinations, pass the firearms-qualification test, successfully demonstrate leadership and sound decision-making in practical scenarios, and pass rigorous physical-task tests. Upon graduation, recruits earn themselves the title of DEA Special Agent.

The DEA excludes from consideration job-applicants who have a history of any use of narcotics or dangerous illicit drugs. Investigation usually includes a polygraph test for special-agent, diversion-investigator, and intelligence research specialist positions.

<blockquote>Applicants who are found, through investigation or personal admission, to have experimented with or used narcotics or dangerous drugs, except those medically prescribed, will not be considered for employment with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Exceptions to this policy may be made for applicants who admit to limited youthful and experimental use of [[marijuana]]. Such applicants may be considered for employment if there is no evidence of regular, confirmed usage and the full-field background investigation and results of the other steps in the process are otherwise favorable.</blockquote>

The DEA's relatively firm stance on this issue contrasts with that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in 2005 considered relaxing its hiring policy relevant to individual drug-use history.

=== Aviation Division ===

The DEA Aviation Division or Office of Aviation Operations (OA) (formerly Aviation Section) is an airborne division based in Fort Worth Alliance Airport, Texas. The current OA fleet consists of 106 aircraft and 124 DEA pilots.

The DEA shares a communications system with the Department of Defense for communication with state and regional enforcement independent of the Department of Justice and police information systems and is coordinated by an information command center called the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) near El Paso, Texas.

=== Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams ===

Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams are the enforcement arm of the DEA's Drug Flow Attack Strategy. Their stated mission is to "plan and conduct special enforcement operations; train, mentor, and advise foreign narcotics law enforcement units; collect and assess evidence and intelligence in support of U.S. and bilateral investigations."

As of January 2010, FAST fields five teams. One team is always stationed in Afghanistan conducting Counter Narcotics (CN), Counter Terrorism (CT), Direct Action (DA) missions. The remaining four teams are stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. FAST originally was created to solely conduct missions in Afghanistan to disrupt the Afghan opium trade but has evolved into a global action arm for the U.S. Department of Justice and DEA.

Selection for FAST is extremely difficult; attrition rates are usually above 50%. Selection is rumored to last 8 weeks where events such as timed runs, timed rucksack marches, obstacle courses, land navigation and many other events are conducted daily. Once selection is complete, advanced training begins with emphasis in small unit tactics, and close quarters battle. To prevent candidates from pacing themselves and ensuring they give a maximum effort, candidates attending FAST selection are not informed of the standards for each event, only whether they have passed or failed.

=== Special Operations Division ===

The DEA Special Operations Division (SOD) is a division within the DEA, which forwards information from wiretaps, intercepts and databases from various sources to federal agents and local law enforcement officials. The SOD came under scrutiny following the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.

== Budget ==

The DEA budget was directed toward three of five major goals of U.S. drug eradication:

*Demand reduction ($3.3 million) via anti-legalization education, training for law enforcement personnel, youth programs, support for community-based coalitions, and sports drug awareness programs.

*Reduction of drug-related crime and violence ($181.8 million) funding state and local teams and mobile enforcement teams.

*Breaking foreign and domestic sources of supply ($1.0149 billion) via domestic cannabis eradication/suppression; domestic enforcement; research, engineering, and technical operations; the Foreign
*Cooperative Investigations Program; intelligence operations (financial intelligence, operational intelligence, strategic intelligence, and the El Paso Intelligence Center); and drug and chemical diversion control.

== Firearms ==

DEA agents' primary service weapons are the Glock 22 and Glock 23 in .40 S&W caliber ammunition, and agents can also qualify to use the Glock 27 and SIG Pro in .40 S&W, and they also have the option of using the newly appointed Smith & Wesson M&P series pistol.

Special Agents may qualify with their own personally-owned handguns and certain handguns are allowed to be used with permission from the DEA Firearms office in Quantico, VA. Agents are required to attend tactical and firearms proficiency training quarterly, and to qualify with their handguns twice per year. The DEA has one of the toughest pistol qualification courses of fire in all of federal law enforcement (even Federal Air Marshals transitioning to the DEA are rumored to struggle with it) but the agency only provides 24 hours (six separate 4-hour sessions over a course of 3 weeks, with two sessions per week) of non-remedial handgun live fire range training before requiring new agent trainees in the academy at Quantico to shoot it to qualify on their issued Glock 22 .40 S&W service weapon.

Basic Agent Trainees (BATs) who fail the initial pistol qualification course of fire are placed in a remedial program to receive additional training. In remedial training, BATs receive 5 extra two-hour range sessions, for a total of 10 more hours of live fire training on their issued sidearm for those BATs who are struggling with marksmanship, in order to further aid them in helping pass the pistol qual. After passing their pistol qualification, Basic Agent Trainees move on to receive formal training on the DEA's standard-issue long guns and will continue to frequently shoot their agency-issued sidearm that they have already qualified on. In all, BATs receive a total of 32 firearms training sessions, when combining classroom instruction, gear issue, and pistol, rifle and shotgun live fire training at the DEA Academy. They will shoot the qualification courses for all 3 weapons systems during their initial training, but must pass their final qualification attempts only on their Glock pistols in order to become a Special Agent. Passing the agency qualification course of fire on the rifle and shotgun are only necessary if DEA Special Agents actually choose to use those weapons operationally in the field.

Trained to use shoulder-fired weapons, the Rock River LAR-15, adopted in 2004, is the standard carbine of DEA. The Colt 9mm SMG was previously issued, but no longer in service. Agents are required to complete a two-day (16 hour) proficiency course in order to carry a shoulder weapon on enforcement operations. They may carry a Rock River LAR-15 or LWRC M6A2 carbine as authorized, personally-owned weapons, provided they meet the same training and proficiency standards. Although less prevalent since adoption of the LAR-15, the Remington 870 shotgun is also in service with the DEA.

== Impact on the drug trade ==

''Main article: [[Illegal drug trade]]''

In 2005, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related assets and $477 million worth of drugs. According to the White House's Office of Drug Control Policy, the total value of all of the drugs sold in the U.S. is as much as $64 billion a year, giving the DEA an efficiency rate of less than 1% at intercepting the flow of drugs into and within the U.S. Critics of this theory (including recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman, prior to his death a member of [[Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]]) point out that demand for illegal drugs is inelastic; the people who are buying drugs will continue to buy them with little regard to price, often turning to crime to support expensive drug habits when the drug prices rise. One recent study by the DEA showed that the price of cocaine and methamphetamine is the highest it has ever been while the quality of both is at its lowest point ever. This is contrary to a collection of data done by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which states that purity of street drugs has increased, while price has decreased. In contrast to the statistics presented by the DEA, the United States Department of Justice released data in 2003 showing that purity of methamphetamine was on the rise.

=== Registration and licensing ===

"Operation Somalia Express" was an 18-month investigation which included the coordinated takedown of a 44-member international narcotics-trafficking organization responsible for smuggling more than 25 tons of khat from the Horn of Africa to the United States.

The DEA has a registration system in place which authorizes medical professionals, researchers and manufacturers access to "Schedule I" drugs, as well as Schedules 2, 3, 4 and 5. Authorized registrants apply for and, if granted, receive a "DEA number". An entity that has been issued a DEA number is authorized to manufacture (drug companies), distribute, research, prescribe (doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, etc.) or dispense (pharmacy) a controlled substance.

=== Diversion control system ===

Many problems associated with drug abuse are the result of legitimately-manufactured controlled substances being diverted from their lawful purpose into the illicit drug traffic. Many of the analgesics, depressants and stimulants manufactured for legitimate medical use can often carry potential for dependence or abuse. Therefore those scheduled substances have been brought under legal control for prevention and population safety. The goal of controls is to ensure that these "controlled substances" are readily available for medical use, while preventing their distribution for illicit distribution and non-medical use. This can be a difficult task, sometimes providing difficulty for legitimate patients and healthcare providers while circumventing illegal trade and consumption of scheduled drugs.

Under federal law, all businesses which manufacture or distribute controlled drugs, all health professionals entitled to dispense, administer or prescribe them, and all pharmacies entitled to fill prescriptions must register with the DEA. Registrants must comply with a series of regulatory requirements relating to drug security, records accountability, and adherence to standards.

All of these investigations are conducted by Diversion Investigators (DIs). DIs conduct investigations to uncover and investigate suspected sources of diversion and take appropriate civil and administrative actions. Prescription Database Management Programs (PDMP) aid and facilitate investigation and surveillance.

=== MDMA DEA scheduling overturn ===

In 1985 MDMA and its analogues were under review by the American government as a drug for potential of abuse. During this time, several public hearings on the new drug were held by the DEA. Based on all of the evidence and facts presented at the time, the DEA's administrative law judge did not see MDMA and its analogues as being of large concern and recommended that they be placed in Schedule III. The DEA administrator, expressing concern for abuse potential, overruled the recommendation and ruled that MDMA be put in Schedule I, the [[Controlled Substances Act]]'s most restrictive category.

== Criticism ==

The DEA has been criticized for placing highly restrictive schedules on a few drugs which researchers in the fields of pharmacology and medicine regard as having medical uses. Critics assert that some such decisions are motivated primarily by political factors stemming from the U.S. government's War on Drugs, and that many benefits of such substances remain unrecognized due to the difficulty of conducting scientific research. A counterpoint to that criticism is that under the Controlled Substances Act it is the Department of Health and Human Services (through the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse), not the DEA, which has the legal responsibility to make scientific and medical determinations with respect to drug scheduling; no drug can be scheduled if the Secretary of Health and Human Services recommends against it on a scientific or medical basis, and no drug can be placed in the most restrictive schedule (Schedule I) if DHHS finds that the drug has an accepted medical use. Jon Gettman's essay Science and the End of Marijuana Prohibition describes the DEA as "a fall guy to deflect responsibility from the key decision-makers" and opines, "HHS calls the shots when it comes to [[marijuana]] prohibition, and the cops at DEA and the general over at ONDCP take the heat."

The DEA is also criticized for focusing on the operations from which it can seize the most money, namely the organized cross-border trafficking of marijuana. Some individuals contemplating the nature of the DEA's charter advise that, based on danger, the DEA should be most focused on cocaine. Others suggest that, based on opiate popularity, the DEA should focus much more on prescription opiates used recreationally, which critics contend comes first before users switch to heroin.

Practitioners who legally prescribe medicine however must possess a valid DEA license. According to federal law the budget of the entire DEA is to be paid by these license fees. In 1984 a three-year license cost $25. In 2009 the fee for a three-year license was $551. Some have likened this approach to license fees unreasonable, "like making pilot licenses support the entire Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) budget."

== Costs ==

The total budget of the DEA from 1972 to 2014 according to the agency website was $50,565,000.00 with 11,025 employees in 2014. For the data available for the year 2013 the average cost per arrest made was $90,300.

== Civil liberties ==

Others, such as the Cato Institute and the Drug Policy Alliance criticize the very existence of the DEA and the War on Drugs as both hostile, and contrary, to the concept of civil liberties by arguing that anybody should be free to put any substance they choose into their own bodies for any reason, particularly when legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs are also open to abuse, and that any harm caused by a drug user or addict to the general public is a case of conflicting civil rights. Recurrently, billions of dollars are spent yearly, focusing largely on criminal law and demand reduction campaigns, which has resulted in the imprisonments of thousands of U.S. citizens. Demand for recreational drugs is somewhat static as the market for most illegal drugs has been saturated, forcing the cartels to expand their market to Europe and other areas than the United States.[citation needed] United States federal law registers [[cannabis]] as a Schedule I drug, yet it is common for illicit drugs such as cannabis to be widely available in most urban, suburban, and even rural areas in the United States, which leads drug legalization proponents to claim that drug laws have little effect on those who choose not to obey them, and that the resources spent enforcing drug laws are wasted. As it relates to the DEA specifically, the vast majority of individual arrests stemming from illegal drug possession and distribution are narrow and more local in scope and are made by local law enforcement officers, while the DEA tends to focus on larger, interstate and international distribution networks and the higher-ranking members of such organizations in addition to operating in conjunction with other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies along U.S. borders.

Some groups advocate legalization of certain controlled substances under the premise that doing so may reduce the volume of illicit trafficking and associated crime as well as yield a valuable tax source, although some of the results of drug legalization have raised doubt about some of these beliefs. For example, [[marijuana]] is now available as a palliative agent, in Canada, with a medical prescription. Yet 86% of Canadians with HIV/AIDS, eligible for a prescription, continue to obtain [[marijuana]] illegally (AIDS Care. 2007 Apr;19(4):500-6.) However, this could be due to the availability or quality of illegal [[cannabis]] compared to provisions by government sources. Bureaucratic impediments may also discourage patients from actually attempting to receive it from the government.

=== Incarceration of Daniel Chong ===

An April 2012 DEA raid on a California home led to the incarceration of Daniel Chong for several days under conditions of neglect. The 23-year-old student attending the University of California, San Diego was taken into custody along with eight other people when the DEA executed a raid on a suspected MDMA distribution operation at a residence that he was visiting to celebrate the April 20 [[cannabis]] "holiday" known as "[[420]]". According to Chong, the DEA agents questioned him and told him that he could go home, one even offering him a ride home, but instead he was transferred to a holding cell and confined for five days without any food or water, although Chong said he ingested a powdery substance that was left for him, which was later found to be methamphetamine. After five days and two failed suicide attempts, DEA agents found Chong. He was taken to the hospital, where he spent three days in intensive care, because his kidneys were close to failing. No criminal charges were filed against Chong. A DEA spokesperson stated that the extended detention was accidental and the acting special agent in charge of the San Diego DEA office issued an apology to Chong. Chong disputes the claim of accidental neglect, saying that DEA personnel ignored his calls for help. His attorney stated an intent to file a claim against the federal government and some members of California's delegation to the Congress called for further investigation of the incident.

=== Department of Justice Smart on Crime Program ===

On 12 August 2013, at the American Bar Association's House of Delegates meeting, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the "Smart on Crime" program, which is "a sweeping initiative by the Justice Department that in effect renounces several decades of tough-on-crime anti-drug legislation and policies." Holder said the program "will encourage U.S. attorneys to charge defendants only with crimes "for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins…" Running through Holder's statements, the increasing economic burden of over-incarceration was stressed. As of August 2013, the Smart on Crime program is not a legislative initiative but an effort "limited to the DOJ's policy parameters."

=== International ===

The DEA was accused in 2005 by the Venezuelan government of collaborating with drug traffickers, after which President Hugo Chávez decided to end any collaboration with the agency. In 2007, after the U.S. State Department criticized Venezuela in its annual report on drug trafficking, the Venezuelan Minister of Justice reiterated the accusations: "A large quantity of drug shipments left the country through that organization,...[]..We were in the presence of a new drug cartel." In his 1996 series of articles and subsequent 1999 book, both titled Dark Alliance, journalist Gary Webb asserts that the DEA helped harbor Nicaraguan drug traffickers. Notably, they allowed Oscar Danilo Blandon political asylum in the USA despite knowledge of his cocaine trafficking organization.

The government of Bolivia has also taken similar steps to ban the DEA from operating in the country. In September 2008, Bolivia drastically reduced diplomatic ties with the United States, withdrawing its ambassador from the US and expelling the US ambassador from Bolivia. This occurred soon after Bolivian president Evo Morales expelled all DEA agents from the country due to a revolt in the traditional coca-growing Chapare Province. The Bolivian government claimed that it could not protect the agents, and Morales further accused the agency of helping incite the violence, which claimed 30 lives. National agencies were to take over control of drug management. Three years later, Bolivia and the US began to restore full diplomatic ties. However, Morales maintained that the DEA would remain unwelcome in the country, characterising it as an affront to Bolivia's "dignity and sovereignty".

In the Netherlands, both the Dutch government and the DEA have been criticized for violations of Dutch sovereignty in drug investigations. According to Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch journalist present at the 2005 trial of Henk Orlando Rommy, the DEA has admitted to activities on Dutch soil. Earlier, then Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner, had denied to the Dutch parliament that he had given permission to the DEA for any such activities, which would have been a requirement by Dutch law in order to allow foreign agents to act within the territory.

=== Special Operations Division fabricated evidence trails ===

In 2013 Reuters published a report about the DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD) stating that it conceals where an investigative trail about a suspect truly originates from and creates a parallel set of evidence given to prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers. This DEA program mainly affects common criminals such as drug dealers. The concealment of evidence means the defendant is unaware how his or her investigation began and will be unable to request a review possible sources of exculpatory evidence. Exculpatory evidence may include biased witnesses, mistakes, or entrapment. Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge who had served from 1994 to 2011 and a Harvard Law School professor, stated that "It is one thing to create special rules for national security. Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations." Andrew O'Hehir of Salon wrote that "It’s the first clear evidence that the “special rules” and disregard for constitutional law that have characterized the hunt for so-called terrorists have crept into the domestic criminal justice system on a significant scale."

=== Cannabis Rescheduling ===

A 2014 report by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and the [[Drug Policy Alliance]] accuses the DEA of unfairly blocking the removal of cannabis from Schedule I. The report alleges that the methods employed by the DEA to achieve this include: delaying rescheduling petitions for years, overruling DEA administrative law judges, and systematically impeding scientific research. The DEA continues to refuse the removal of [[cannabis ]]from Schedule I despite wide-scale acceptance of the substance among the medical community, including 76% of doctors, for the treatment of various disease.

=== Domestic anti-drug advocacy ===

The DEA, in addition to enforcement, also regularly engage in advocacy, specifically against rescheduling [[marijuana]], by publishing policy-based papers on certain drugs. Some[who?] have criticized the DEA for using tax-dollars in what they call an attempt to change public opinion, which they call an overreach from the scope of the agency's job of enforcement, and that by releasing such non-peer-reviewed reports is a transparent attempt to justify its own activities. They have claimed that since the DEA is not, by law, an advocacy group, but a legal enforcement group, that those press releases are tantamount to what they consider domestic propaganda

== Raids on [[medical marijuana]] dispensaries ==

The DEA has taken a particularly strong stance on enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act on persons and organizations acting within state laws that allow [[medical cannabis]] cultivation and distribution.

"The people of California and the County of Santa Cruz have overwhelmingly supported the provision of [[medical marijuana]] for people who have serious illnesses," county Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt told the San Francisco Gate. "These people (blocking the road) are people with AIDS and cancer and other grave illnesses. To attack these people, who work collectively and have never taken money for their work, is outrageous."

As a result, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, with the City and County of Santa Cruz, has sued the DEA, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and the ONDCP. The most recent court decision rejected the government's motion to dismiss, which allows discovery to move forward. The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the decision as "a first-of-its-kind ruling."

More recently, the DEA has escalated its enforcement efforts on the recently proliferated Los Angeles area medical cannabis collectives. On July 25, 2007, the DEA raided the California Patients Group, Hollywood Compassionate Collective, and Natural Hybrid (NHI Caregivers) in Hollywood, California. Earlier that day, the operators of those collectives participated in a press conference with LA City Council members announcing the City's intention to regulate the collectives and asking the DEA to halt raids on collectives while the City drafted regulations.The dispensary operator of Natural Hybrid (NHI Caregivers) was forced to close down the collective due to the tremendous loss caused by the DEA conducted joint task force raid against them.

On December 13, the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 was passed. This Act states in part that the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration cannot use Federal funds to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of [[medical marijuana]].

== DEA Museum ==

In 1999, the DEA opened the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum in Arlington, Virginia. The original permanent exhibit – Illegal Drugs in America: A Modern History – remains the museum's centerpiece. The exhibit features "the more than 150 year history of drugs and drug abuse in the DEA," including a considerable collection of drug paraphernalia and an image of a smiling drug vendor under the heading "Jimmy's Joint."

== In popular culture ==

=== Fictional agents ===

*Tom Hanson and Douglass Penhall, 21 Jump Street

*Felix Leiter, Licence to Kill

*Norman Stansfield, Léon: The Professional

*Peter Scottson, Weeds

*Carina Miller, Chuck

*Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez, Breaking Bad

*Paige Arkin, Graceland

*Don Fitzgerald, We're the Millers

*Nick Archer, Scandals Series; Killer Date

*Max Payne, Max Payne

=== Film ===

*Sabotage starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and others about DEA Special Operation Team gone rogue.

Drugs in the United States

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In the United States, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act definition of a drug includes "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals." Consistent with that definition, the U.S. separately defines narcotic drugs and controlled substances, which may include non-drugs, and explicitly excludes tobacco, caffeine and alcoholic beverages.

== Federal drug policy ==

''Main article: [[Federal drug policy of the United States]]''

*[[History of United States drug prohibition]]

*[[Office of National Drug Control Policy]]

*[[Drug Enforcement Administration]]

== War on Drugs ==

''Main article: [[War on Drugs]]''

The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, and the stated aim to define and reduce the illegal drug trade. This initiative includes a set of drug policies of the United States that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal psychoactive drugs. The term "War on Drugs" was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971.

== Drug courts ==

''Main article: Drug courts in the United States''

The first Drug court in the United States took shape in Miami-Dade County, Florida in 1989 as a response to the growing crack-cocaine problem plaguing the city. Chief Judge Gerald Wetherington, Judge Herbert Klein, then State Attorney Janet Reno and Public Defender Bennett Brummer designed the court for nonviolent offenders to receive treatment. This model of court system quickly became a popular method for dealing with an ever increasing number of drug offenders. Between 1984 and 1999, the number of defendants charged with a drug offense in the Federal courts increased 3% annually, from 11,854 to 29,306. By 1999 there were 472 Drug Courts in the nation and by 2005 that number had increased to 1262 with another 575 Drug Courts in the planning stages; currently all 50 states have working Drug Courts. There are currently about 120,000 people treated annually in Drug Courts, though an estimated 1.5 million eligible people are currently before the courts. There are currently more than 2,400 Drug Courts operating throughout the United States.

== Pharmacological drugs ==

*Pharmacies in the United States

*Prescription drug prices in the United States

*National Drug Code

== Doping in sports ==

''Main article: Doping in the United States''

Doping is the taking of performance-enhancing drugs, generally for sporting activities. Doping has been detected in many sporting codes, especially baseball and football.

== Recreational drugs by type ==

=== Alcohol ===

''Main article: Alcohol in the United States''

*Prohibition in the United States

*Alcohol consumption by youth in the United States

*Alcohol-related traffic crashes in the United States

=== Cannabis ===

''Main article: [[Cannabis in the United States]]''

*[[Medical cannabis in the United States]]

*[[Decriminalization of non-medical cannabis in the United States]]

*[[Legal history of cannabis in the United States]]

*[[Removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act]]

=== Cocaine ===

''Main article: Cocaine in the United States''

=== Methamphetamine ===

''Main article: Methamphetamine in the United States''

=== Tobacco ===

''Main article: Tobacco in the United States''

*History of commercial tobacco in the United States

*Cigarette taxes in the United States

== See also ==

*[[Illegal drug trade in the United States]]

*[[Prohibition of drugs|Drug prohibition]]

*[[National Institute on Drug Abuse]]

Federal drug policy of the United States

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Drug use has increased in all categories since the beginning of prohibition on January 17, 1920, with the exception of opium; its use is at a fraction of its peak level. A major decline in the use of opium started after the Harrison Act of 1914 was initiated. Use of heroin peaked between 1969 and 1971, [[marijuana]] between 1978 and 1979, and cocaine between 1987 and 1989.

Between 1972 and 1988, the use of cocaine increased more than fivefold. The usage patterns of the current two most culturally popular drugs: amphetamines and ecstasy, have shown similar gains.

An overarching effort to impose mandatory penalties for federal drug crimes took place in the 1980s. This caused many drug crimes that were common at the time to carry mandatory minimum sentences of 5 to 10 years in a federal prison.

Secretly, many senior officials of the Reagan administration illegally trained and armed the Nicaraguan Contras, who were funded by the shipment of large quantities of cocaine into the United States using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities. Funding for the Contras was also obtained through the illegal sale of weaponry to Iran. When this practice was discovered and condemned in the media, it was referred to as the Iran–Contra affair.

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, legalizing the growing and use of [[marijuana]] for medical purposes. This created significant legal and enforcement conflict between federal and state government laws. Courts have since decided that a state law in conflict with a federal law concerning [[cannabis ]]is not valid. Cannabis is restricted by federal law (see [[Gonzales v. Raich]]). In 2010 California Proposition 19 (also known as the Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Act) was defeated with 53.5% 'No' votes, and 46.5% 'Yes' votes.

Pursuant to regulations (34 C.F.R. 86) required by the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendments of 1989 (codified at 20 U.S.C. § 1011i), as a condition of receiving funds or any other form of financial assistance under any Federal program, an institution of higher education must certify that it has adopted and implemented a drug prevention program which adheres to regulations in 34 C.F.R. 86.100. It has recently gained renewed attention due to [[Colorado Amendment 64]].

== Drug Policy beginning to relax in new Millennia ==

A review of failed drug policies at the turn of the century has given way to more relaxed US Drug Policies. The Reagan, and Nixon administration's "War on Drugs" policy has proved to be a disaster. US prisons are packed with drug users from laws that were implemented in the 1980s. The US has more inmates serving time than any other nation. At this writing, the number is about to reach 2.5 million inmates, of which half are incarcerated on drug related offenses.

Many States looking for a solution to this issue, are considering 'Rehabilitation' as opposed to 'Incarceration' for drug users. As of January 2015, 23 States and the District of Columbia have made the use of[[ Marijuana]] legal for medical use. Seven more States are close to adopting the same policies, and Colorado has legalized [[Marijuana ]]completely. Other drugs will come up against much stronger opposition to legalize, however, many Americans believe that all drugs should be legalized, and also believe that eventually it will happen. The money that is now being spent to incarcerate drug users would be redirected to rehabilitation, and drug education.

== See also ==

*[[History of United States drug prohibition|History of drug prohibition in the United States]]

*[[Office of National Drug Control Policy]]

*[[Drug Enforcement Administration]]

*[[Drugs in the United States]]

*[[War on Drugs]]

Drug policy of the Netherlands

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Adm1n:

The drug policy of the Netherlands officially has four major objectives:

1.To prevent recreational drug use and to treat and rehabilitate recreational drug users.

2.To reduce harm to users.

3.To diminish public nuisance by drug users (the disturbance of public order and safety in the neighborhood).

4.To combat the production and trafficking of recreational drugs.

By contrast, most other countries take the point of view that recreational drug use is detrimental to society and must therefore be outlawed. This has caused friction between the Netherlands and other countries about the policy for [[cannabis]], most notably with France and Germany. As of 2004, Belgium seems to be moving toward the Dutch model and a few local German legislators are calling for experiments based on the Dutch model. Switzerland has had long and heated parliamentary debates about whether to follow the Dutch model on cannabis, most recently deciding against it in 2004; currently a ballot initiative is in the works on the question. A new law came into force in the Netherlands requiring people to have membership cards to gain entry to coffeeshops, these cards are only available to residents of the Netherlands who need to apply for the card, (known as a 'weed pass') this was promptly adopted by several provinces including the cities of Maastricht and Eindhoven, there were proposals for this to apply to Amsterdam in 2012, although after fierce opposition from the Mayor of Amsterdam and many coffeeshop owners in Amsterdam the Government decided to allow the individual provinces to determine their own policy, of which Amsterdam rejected the membership cards and therefore the entry to coffeeshops and the sale of cannabis remains permissible to anyone over the age of 18. By test, a few coffeeshops in the south of the Netherlands were already forced to handle this new law. Residents are complaining about growing criminality problems due to drug dealers in the streets.

If seen to fruition, which seems likely, the new laws will reduce tourism in the Netherlands dramatically and cost the exchequer millions in lost revenue and well-established business are forecast to go bankrupt. The club owners argue that the previous law opened the door for other European nations with relaxed attitudes on cannabis to capitalize on the niche in the market and take the valuable tourist resource. Maastricht’s association of coffee shop owners lost in June 2012 in a Dutch court a legal challenge of the new rules against the city's mayor. Amsterdam has decided to not enforce the new law and will continue to sell to tourists.

In the last few years drug tourism and certain strains of cannabis with higher concentrations of [[THC]] have challenged the former policy in the Netherlands and led to a more restrictive approach; for example, a ban on selling cannabis to tourists in coffee shops suggested to start late 2011. In October 2011 the Dutch government proposed a new law to the Dutch parliament, that will put cannabis with 15% THC or more onto the list of hard drugs. If the law comes into effect, it would prohibit "coffee shops" from selling cannabis of that potency. The government finds motivation from its experts' assertions, that cannabis of that strength have an "unacceptable risk" associated with its usage. Today, about 80% of the "coffee shops" sell, among their products, such kind of cannabis.

While the legalization of cannabis remains controversial, the introduction of heroin-assisted treatment in 1998 has been lauded for considerably improving the health and social situation of opiate-dependent patients in the Netherlands.

== Public health ==

Large-scale dealing, production, import and export are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, even if it does not supply end users or coffeeshops with more than the allowed amounts. Exactly how coffeeshops get their supplies is rarely investigated, however. The average concentration of THC in the cannabis sold in coffeeshops has increased from 9% in 1998 to 18% in 2005. This means that less plant material has to be consumed to achieve the same effect. One of the reasons is plant breeding and use of greenhouse technology for illegal growing of cannabis in Netherlands. The former minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner announced in June 2007 that cultivation of cannabis shall continue to be illegal.

== Non-enforcement ==

The drug policy of the Netherlands is marked by its distinguishing between so called "soft" and "hard drugs". An often used argument is that alcohol, which is claimed by some scientists as a hard drug, is legal and a soft drug can't be more dangerous to society if it's controlled. This may refer to the Prohibition in the 1920s, when the U.S. government decided to ban all alcohol. Prohibition created a golden opportunity for organized crime syndicates to smuggle alcohol, and as a result the syndicates were able to gain considerable power in some major cities. Cannabis remains a controlled substance in the Netherlands and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanors, punishable by fines. Coffee shops are also technically illegal but are flourishing nonetheless. However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted.

This is because the Dutch Ministry of Justice applies a gedoogbeleid (tolerance policy) with regard to the category "soft drugs": an official set of guidelines telling public prosecutors under which circumstances offenders should not be prosecuted. This is a more official version of a common practice in other European countries wherein law enforcement sets priorities regarding offenses on which it is important enough to spend limited resources.

According to current gedoogbeleid the possession of a maximum amount of five grams cannabis for personal use is not prosecuted. Cultivation is treated in a similar way. Cultivation of 5 plants or less is usually not prosecuted when they are renounced by the cultivator.

Proponents of gedoogbeleid argue that such a policy practices more consistency in legal protection than without it. Opponents of the Dutch drug policy either call for full legalization, or argue that laws should penalize morally wrong or deviant behavior, whether enforceable or not. In the Dutch courts, however, it has long been determined that the institutionalized non-enforcement of statutes with well defined limits constitutes de facto decriminalization. The statutes are kept on the books mainly due to international pressure and in adherence with international treaties. A November 2008 poll showed that a 60% majority of the Dutch population support the legalisation of soft drugs. The same poll showed that 85% supported closing of all cannabis coffee shops within 250 meters walking distance from schools.

== Drug law enforcement ==

Importing and exporting of any classified drug is a serious offence. The penalty can run up to 12 to 16 years if it is hard drug trade, maximum 4 years for import or export of large quantities of cannabis. It is prohibited to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of any drug that affects driving ability to such an extent that you are unable to drive properly. (Section 8 of the 1994 Road Traffic Act section 1). The Dutch police have the right to do a drug test if they suspect influenced driving. For example, anybody involved in a traffic accident may be tested. Causing an accident that inflicts bodily harm, while under influence of any drug, is seen as a crime that may be punished by up to 3 years in prison (9 years in case of a fatal accident). Suspension of driving license is also normal in such a case (maximum 5 years). Schiphol, a large international airport near Amsterdam, has long practiced a zero tolerance policy regarding airline passengers carrying drugs. In 2006 there were 20,769 drug crimes registered by public prosecutors and 4,392 persons received an unconditional prison sentence The rate of imprisonment for drug crimes is about the same as in Sweden, which has a zero tolerance policy for drug crimes.

Despite the high priority given by the Dutch government to fighting illegal drug trafficking, the Netherlands continue to be an important transit point for drugs entering Europe. The Netherlands is a major producer[20] and leading distributor of cannabis, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and other synthetic drugs, and a medium consumer of illicit drugs. Despite the crackdown by Interpol on traffic and illicit manufacture of temazepam, the country has also become a major exporter of illicit temazepam of the "jelly" variety, trafficking it to the United Kingdom and other European nations. The Netherlands' special synthetic drug unit, set up in 1997 to coordinate the fight against designer drugs, appears to be successful.[citation needed] The government has intensified cooperation with neighbouring countries and stepped up border controls. In recent years, it also introduced so-called 100% checks and bodyscans at Schiphol Airport on incoming flights from Dutch overseas territories Aruba and Netherlands Antilles to prevent importing cocaine by means of swallowing balloons by mules.

Although drug use, as opposed to trafficking, is seen primarily as a public health issue, responsibility for drug policy is shared by both the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sports, and the Ministry of Justice.

The Netherlands spends more than €130 million annually on facilities for addicts, of which about fifty percent goes to drug addicts. The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs, reaching about ninety percent of the country's 25,000 to 28,000 hard drug users. The number of hard drug addicts has stabilized in the past few years and their average age has risen to 38 years, which is generally seen as a positive trend. Notably, the number of drug-related deaths in the country remains amongst the lowest in Europe.

On 27 November 2003, the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner announced that his government was considering rules under which coffeeshops would only be allowed to sell soft drugs to Dutch residents in order to satisfy both European neighbors' concerns about the influx of drugs from the Netherlands, as well as those of Netherlands border town residents unhappy with the influx of "drug tourists" from elsewhere in Europe. The European Court of Justice ruled in December 2010 that Dutch authorities can ban coffee shops from selling marijuana to foreigners. The EU court said the southern Dutch city of Maastricht was within its rights when it introduced a "weed passport" in 2005 to prevent foreigners from entering cafés that sell marijuana.

In 2010 the owner of Netherlands's largest cannabis selling coffee shop was fined 10 million euros for breaking drug laws by keeping more than the tolerated amount of cannabis in the shop. He was also sentenced to a 16 week prison term.

== Results of the drug policy ==

Criminal investigations into more serious forms of organized crime mainly involve drugs (72%). Most of these are investigations of hard drug crime (specifically cocaine and synthetic drugs) although the number of soft drug cases is rising and currently accounts for 69% of criminal investigations.

In a study of the levels of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy, meth and other amphetamine in wastewater from 42 major cities in Europe Amsterdam came near the top of the list in every category but meth.

In the province of North-Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, the organized crime organizations form the main producer of MDMA, amphetamine en cannabis in Europe. Together with the proximity of the ports of Antwerp and especially Rotterdam where heroin and cocaine enter the European continent, this causes these substances to be readily available for a relative low price. Therefor there is a large quantity drugs of a relative high quality with few pollution available. This means that users will not have to rely on more polluted substances with greater health risks. Together with an approach that focusses on easily accessible health care, harm reduction and prevention, this causes the medical condition of the Dutch addicts to be less severe than that of many other countries.

== Implications of international law ==

The Netherlands is a party to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The 1961 convention prohibits cultivation and trade of naturally-occurring drugs such as cannabis; the 1971 treaty bans the manufacture and trafficking of synthetic drugs such as barbiturates and amphetamines; and the 1988 convention requires states to criminalize illicit drug possession:

Subject to its constitutional principles and the basic concepts of its legal system, each Party shall adopt such measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the possession, purchase or cultivation of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances for personal consumption contrary to the provisions of the 1961 Convention, the 1961 Convention as amended or the 1971 Convention.

The International Narcotics Control Board typically interprets this provision to mean that states must prosecute drug possession offenses. The conventions clearly state that controlled substances are to be restricted to scientific and medical uses. However, Cindy Fazey, former Chief of Demand Reduction for the United Nations Drug Control Programme, believes that the treaties have enough ambiguities and loopholes to allow some room to maneuver. In her report entitled The Mechanics and Dynamics of the UN System for International Drug Control, she notes:

Many countries have now decided not to use the full weight of criminal sanctions against people who are in possession of drugs that are for their personal consumption. The Conventions say that there must be an offence under domestic criminal law, it does not say that the law has to be enforced, or that when it is what sanctions should apply. . . . Despite such grey areas latitude is by no means unlimited. The centrality of the principle of limiting narcotic and psychotropic drugs for medical and scientific purposes leaves no room for the legal possibility of recreational use. . . . Nations may currently be pushing the boundaries of the international system, but the pursuit of any action to formally legalize non-medical and non-scientific drug use would require either treaty revision or a complete or partial withdrawal from the current regime.

The Dutch policy of keeping anti-drug laws on the books while limiting enforcement of certain offenses is carefully designed to reduce harm while still complying with the letter of international drug control treaties. This is necessary in order to avoid criticism from the International Narcotics Board, which historically has taken a dim view of any moves to relax official drug policy. In their annual report, the Board has criticised many governments, including Canada, for permitting the medicinal use of cannabis, Australia for providing injecting rooms and the United Kingdom for proposing to downgrade the classification of cannabis, which it has since done (although this change was reversed by the Home Secretary on 7 May 2008 against the advice of its own commissioned report)

== Recent developments ==

The liberal drug policy of the authorities in the Netherlands especially led to problems in "border hot spots" that attracted "drug tourism" as well as trafficking and related law enforcement problems in towns like Enschede in the East and Terneuzen, Venlo, Maastricht and Heerlen in the South. In 2006, Gerd Leers, then mayor of the border city of Maastricht, on the Dutch-Belgian border, criticised the current policy as inconsistent, by recording a song with the Dutch punk rock band De Heideroosjes. By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates. The latter suggestion has widely been interpreted as rhetorical. Leers's comments have garnered support from other local authorities and put the cultivation issue back on the agenda.

In November 2008, Pieter van Geel, the leader of the CDA (Christian Democrats) in the Dutch parliament, called for a ban on the cafés where marijuana is sold. He said the practice of allowing so-called coffee shops to operate had failed. The CDA had the support of its smaller coalition partner, the CU (ChristenUnie), but the third party in government, PvdA (Labour), opposed. The coalition agreement worked out by the three coalition parties in 2007 stated that there would be no change in the policy of tolerance. Prominent CDA member Gerd Leers spoke out against him: cannabis users who now cause no trouble would be viewed as criminals if an outright ban was to be implemented. Van Geel later said that he respected the coalition agreement and would not press for a ban during the current government's tenure .

By 2009, 27 coffee shops selling cannabis in Rotterdam, all within 200 metres from schools, must close down. This is nearly half of the coffee shops that currently operate within its municipality. This is due to the new policy of city mayor Ivo Opstelten and the town council. The higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis in Netherlands create a growing opposition to the traditional Dutch view of cannabis as a relatively innocent soft drug. Supporters of coffee shops state that such claims are often exaggerated and ignore the fact that higher content means a user needs to use less of the plant to get the desired effects, making it in effect safer. Dutch research has however shown that an increase of THC content also increase the occurrence of impaired psychomotor skills, particularly among younger or inexperienced cannabis smokers, who do not adapt their smoking-style to the higher THC content. Closing of coffeeshops is not unique for Rotterdam. Many other towns have done the same in the last 10 years.

In 2008, the municipality of Utrecht imposed a Zero Tolerance Policy to all events like the big dance party Trance Energy held in Jaarbeurs. However, such zero-tolerance policy at dance parties are now becoming common in the Netherlands and are even stricter in cities like Arnhem.

The two towns Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom announced in October 2008 that they would start closing all coffee shops, each week visited by up to 25000 French and Belgian drug tourists, with closures beginning in February 2009.

In May 2011 the Dutch government announced that tourist are to be banned from Dutch coffee shops, starting in the southern provinces and at the end of 2011 in the rest of the country. In a letter to the parliament, the Dutch health and justice ministers said that, "In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end".

A government committee delivered in June 2011 a report about Cannabis to the Dutch government. It includes a proposal that cannabis with more than 15 percent THC should be labeled as hard drugs. Higher concentrations of THC and drug tourism have challenged the current policy and led to a re-examination of the current approach; for e.g. ban of all sales of cannabis to tourists in coffee shops from end of 2011 was proposed but currently only the border city of Maastricht has adopted the measure in order to test out its feasibility. According to the initial measure, starting in 2012, each coffee shop was to operate like a private club with some 1,000 to 1,500 members. In order to qualify for a membership card, applicants would have to be adult Dutch citizens, membership was only to be allowed in one club.

In Amsterdam 26 coffeeshops in the De Wallen area will have to close their doors between 1 September 2012 and 31 August 2015.

A Dutch judge has ruled that tourists can legally be banned from entering cannabis cafés, as part of new restrictions which come into force in 2012.

'''Law banning "magic mushrooms"'''

In October 2007, the prohibition of hallucinogenic or "magic mushrooms" was announced by the Dutch authorities.

On April 25, 2008, the Dutch government, backed by a majority of members of parliament, decided to ban cultivation and use of all magic mushrooms. Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen proposed a three day cooling period in which clients would be informed three days before actually procuring the mushrooms and if they would still like to go through with it they could pick up their spores from the smart shop. The ban has been considered a retreat from liberal drug policies.[50] This followed a few deadly incidents mostly involving tourists. These deaths were not directly caused by the use of the drug per se, but by deadly accidents occurring while under the influence of magic mushrooms.

As of December 1, 2008, all psychedelic mushrooms are banned. However, schlerotia (what are termed as "truffles"), mushroom spores, and active mycellium cultures remained legal and are readily available in the "smartshops", the stores in the Dutch cities that sell legal drugs, herbs and related gadgets.

'''Supply control'''

The relatively recent increase in the cocaine trafficking business has been largely focused on the Caribbean area. Since early 2003, a special law court with prison facilities has been operational at Schiphol airport. Since the beginning of 2005, there has been 100% control of all flights from key countries in the Caribbean. In 2004, an average of 290 drug couriers per month were arrested, decreasing to 80 per month by early 2006.

== See also ==

[[Legality of cannabis by country]]

Global Commission on Drug Policy

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Adm1n: Created page with "The '''Global Commission on Drug Policy''' (GCDP) is a panel of 22 world leaders and intellectuals which issued an assessment in 2011 of the global War on Drugs, opening its r..."

The '''Global Commission on Drug Policy''' (GCDP) is a panel of 22 world leaders and intellectuals which issued an assessment in 2011 of the global War on Drugs, opening its report with "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." The emphasis in drug policy on harsh law enforcement over four decades has not accomplished its goal of banishing drugs and has in fact spawned wide, dramatic eruptions of violence, the report continued. By way of alternative, the GCDP report "advocates decriminalizing drug use by those who do no harm to others."

The commission has been formed to "bring to the international level an informed, science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies. [It built] on the successful experience of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy."

On September 9th, 2014 the Commission issued its new report Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work. "The report reflects the evolution in the thinking of the Commissioners, who reiterate their demands for decriminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and greater emphasis on public health approaches and now also call for permitting the legal regulation of psychoactive substances. The Commission is the most distinguished group of high-level leaders to ever call for such far-reaching changes."

== Membership ==

Membership of the GCDP Board is:

*Aleksander Kwaśniewski (Poland), former President of Poland

*Asma Jahangir (Pakistan), human rights activist, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions

*Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), writer and public intellectual (died May 15, 2012)

*César Gaviria (Colombia), former President of Colombia

*Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), former President of Mexico

*Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), former President of Brazil (chair)

*George Papandreou (Greece), former Prime Minister of Greece

*George P. Shultz (United States), former Secretary of State (honorary chair)

*Javier Solana (Spain), former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy

*John C. Whitehead (United States), banker and civil servant, chair of the World Trade Center Memorial

*Jorge Sampaio (Portugal), former President of Portugal

*Kofi Annan (Ghana), former Secretary-General of the United Nations

*Louise Arbour (Canada), former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, president of the International Crisis Group

*Maria Cattaui (Switzerland), member of the Board, Petroplus Holdings; former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce

*Marion Caspers-Merk (Germany), former State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health (Germany)

*Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), writer and public intellectual, Nobel Prize laureate

*Michel Kazatchkine (France), UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

*Paul Volcker (United States), former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

*Pavel Bém (Czech Republic) former Mayor of Prague, member of the Parliament, Czech Republic

*Ricardo Lagos (Chile) former President of Chile

Richard Branson (United Kingdom), entrepreneur, advocate for social causes, founder of the Virgin Group, co-founder of The Elders

*Ruth Dreifuss (Switzerland), former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs

*Thorvald Stoltenberg (Norway), former Minister of Foreign Affairs and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

== Reactions to report ==

=== Immediate ===

Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian physician who specializes in study and treatment of addiction, was interviewed on Democracy Now! about the report.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed in The New York Times explicitly endorsing the recommendations of the commission, saying they were in line with the policies of his administration; and saying it was the policies of the succeeding Reagan administration which had moved U.S. policy so far toward punitive alternatives. Carter's piece elicited several published responses, including one from an analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy who drew attention to the current White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's immediate rejection of GCDP's recommendations and defense of the "balanced drug control efforts" of the U.S. federal government; and others which agreed and disagreed with Carter's views.

Brian Lehrer had Ethan Nadelmann, founder and director of the Drug Policy Alliance, on Lehrer's radio show to detail the GCDP report and how that might impact U.S. anti-drug policies.

Sir Ronald Sanders, a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat, wrote in favor of the recommendations and endorsement of President Carter's expressed views.

=== Extended ===

Peter Hakim prominently cited the GCDP report in an October, 2011, "rethinking [of] U.S. drug policy".

The Beckley Foundation's Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform antedated the release of the GCDP report but integrated the GCPD into its November, 2011, British House of Lords meetings. Professor Robin Room (University of Melbourne) was preparing a "Rewriting the UN Drug Conventions Report" based on amendments to the UN drug control conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988 for the Initiative; and Professor Stephen Pudney (Institute for Social and Economic Research) was preparing "the first-ever Cost-benefit Analysis of the control of cannabis through regulation and taxation in the UK" for it. Amanda Feilding of the Foundation and other peers led the effort and attracted some criticism for it.

== Background papers ==

as of 2011-11-25

*"Demand reduction and harm reduction", by Dr Alex Wodak AM

*"Drug policy, criminal justice and mass imprisonment", by Bryan Stevenson

*"Assessing supply-side policy and practice: Eradication and alternative development, by David Mansfield

*"The development of international drug control: Lessons learned and strategic challenges for the future" by Martin Jelsma

*"Drug policy: Lessons learned and options for the future", by Mike Trace

*"The drug trade: The politicization of criminals and the criminalization of politicians" by Moisés Naím

According to the blog Sensi Seeds, "The Commission is now preparing another six papers covering its main areas of enquiry – the results of current drug-control measures, harm reduction and suggestions for improved policies. Naturally, more attention is focused on hard drugs due to the far greater damage associated with them; however, two of these papers will specifically address the issue of [[cannabis]]" legalization and decriminalization, including "Paper 4: Criminal justice challenges".

== General ==

Three Canadian politicians in August 2013 admitted to having use [[marijuana]] in their lifetimes. [[Marijuana]] remains illegal, except for medicinal use, in Canada.

Prohibition of drugs

2015-04-26T04:17:21Z

Adm1n: /* Drug prohibition laws */

The '''prohibition of drugs''' through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of the prohibited drugs.

While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the manufacture, distribution, marketing, sale and use of certain drugs, for instance through a prescription system. Only certain drugs are banned with a "blanket prohibition" against all possession or use. The most widely banned substances include psychoactive drugs, although blanket prohibition also extends to some steroids and other drugs. Many governments do not criminalize the possession of a limited quantity of certain drugs for personal use, while still prohibiting their sale or manufacture, or possession in large quantities. Some laws set a specific volume of a particular drug, above which is considered ipso jure to be evidence of trafficking or sale of the drug. Drug prohibition is responsible for enriching "organised criminal networks", according to some critics while the hypothesis that the prohibition of drugs generates violence is consistent with research done over long time-series and cross-country facts.

Some Islamic countries prohibit the use of alcohol (see list of countries with alcohol prohibition). Many governments levy a sin tax on alcohol and tobacco products, and restrict alcohol and tobacco from sales or gifts to minors. Other common restrictions include bans on outdoor drinking and indoor smoking. In the early 20th Century, many countries had alcohol prohibition. These include The United States (1920–1933), Finland (1919–1932), Norway (1916–1927), Canada (1901–1948), Iceland (1915–1922) and the Russian Empire/USSR (1914–1925).

== History ==

The cultivation, use, and trade of psychoactive and other drugs has occurred since ancient times. Concurrently, authorities have often restricted drugs' possession and trade for a variety of political and religious reasons. In the 20th century, the United States led a major renewed surge in drug prohibition called the "War on Drugs". Today's [[War on Drugs]] is particularly motivated by the desire to prevent drug use, which is perceived as detrimental to society.

=== Early drug laws ===

Huichol religion worshiped the god of Peyote, a drug.

The prohibition on alcohol under Islamic Sharia law, which is usually attributed to passages in the Qur'an, dates back to the 7th century. Although Islamic law is often interpreted as prohibiting all intoxicants (not only alcohol), the ancient practice of [[hashish]] smoking has continued throughout the history of Islam, against varying degrees of resistance. A major campaign against hashish-eating Sufis was conducted in Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries resulting among other things in the burning of fields of [[cannabis]].

Though the prohibition of illegal drugs was established under Islamic law, particularly against the use of [[hashish]] as a recreational drug, classical jurists of medieval Islamic jurisprudence accepted the use of [[hashish]] for medicinal and therapeutic purposes, and agreed that its "medical use, even if it leads to mental derangement, should remain exempt [from punishment]". In the 14th century, the Islamic scholar Az-Zarkashi spoke of "the permissibility of its use for medical purposes if it is established that it is beneficial."

In the Ottoman Empire, Murad IV attempted to prohibit coffee drinking to Muslims as haraam, arguing that it was an intoxicant, but this ruling was overturned soon after his death in 1640. The introduction of coffee in Europe from Muslim Turkey prompted calls for it to be banned as the devil's work, although Pope Clement VIII sanctioned its use in 1600, declaring that it was "so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." The early association between coffeehouses and seditious political activities in England, led to the banning of such establishments in the mid-17th century.

A number of Asian rulers had similarly enacted early prohibitions, many of which were later forcefully overturned by Western colonial powers during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1360, for example, King Ramathibodi I, of what is now Thailand, prohibited opium consumption and trade. The prohibition lasted nearly 500 years until 1851, when King Rama IV allowed Chinese migrants to consume opium. While the Konbaung Dynasty prohibited all intoxicants and stimulants during the reign of King Bodawpaya (1781–1819). As the British colonized parts of Burma from 1852 they overturned local prohibitions and established opium monopolies selling Indian produced opium.

In late Qing Imperial China, opium imported by the British East India Company was consumed by all social classes in Southern China. Between 1821 and 1837, imports of the drug increased fivefold. The drain of silver to India and widespread social problems that resulted from this consumption prompted the Chinese government to attempt to end the trade. This effort was initially successful, with the destruction of all British opium stock in May 1839. However, to protect their commerce, the British declared war on China in the First Opium War. China was defeated and the war ended with the Treaty of Nanking, which protected foreign opium traders from Chinese law.

=== First modern drug regulations ===

The first modern law in Europe for the regulating of drugs was the Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom. There had been previous moves to establish the medical and pharmaceutical professions as separate, self-regulating bodies, but the General Medical Council, established in 1863, unsuccessfully attempted to assert control over drug distribution. The Act set controls on the distribution of poisons and drugs. Poisons could only be sold if the purchaser was known to the seller or to an intermediary known to both, and drugs, including opium and all preparations of opium or of poppies, had to be sold in containers with the seller's name and address. Despite the reservation of opium to professional control, general sales did continue to a limited extent, with mixtures with less than 1 per cent opium being unregulated.

After the legislation passed, the death rate caused by opium immediately fell from 6.4 per million population in 1868 to 4.5 in 1869. Deaths among children under five dropped from 20.5 per million population between 1863 and 1867, to 12.7 per million in 1871, and further declined to between 6 and 7 per million in the 1880s.

In the United States, the first drug law was passed in San Francisco in 1875, banning the smoking of opium in opium dens. The reason cited was "many women and young girls, as well as young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the Chinese opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise." This was followed by other laws throughout the country, and federal laws which barred Chinese people from trafficking in opium. Though the laws affected the use and distribution of opium by Chinese immigrants, no action was taken against the producers of such products as laudanum, a tincture of opium and alcohol, commonly taken as a panacea by white Americans. The distinction between its use by white Americans and Chinese immigrants was thus based on the form in which it was ingested: Chinese immigrants tended to smoke it, while it was often included in various kinds of generally liquid medicines often (but not exclusively) used by people of European descent. The laws targeted opium smoking, but not other methods of ingestion.

Britain also passed the All-India Opium Act of 1878, which similarly formalized social distinctions, by limiting recreational opium sales to registered Indian opium-eaters and Chinese opium-smokers and prohibiting its sale to workers from Burma.

Following passage of a regional law in 1895, Australia's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 addressed opium addiction among Aborigines, though it soon became a general vehicle for depriving them of basic rights by administrative regulation. Opium sale was prohibited to the general population in 1905, and smoking and possession was prohibited in 1908.

Despite these laws, the late 19th century saw an increase in opiate consumption. This was due to the prescribing and dispensing of legal opiates by physicians and pharmacists to relieve painful menstruation. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 opiate addicts lived in the United States at the time, and a majority of these addicts were women.

=== Changing attitudes and the drug prohibition campaign ===

Thomas Brassey was appointed the head of the Royal Opium Commission in 1893 to investigate the opium trade and make recommendations on its legality.

Since Britain's victory over the Qing Empire in the First Opium War, British traders had sold large amounts of opium to the Chinese to balance their trade. Attitudes towards the morality of this business were slow to change, but in 1874 the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade was formed in England by Quakers led by the Rev. Frederick Storrs-Turner. By the 1890s, increasingly strident campaigns were waged by Protestant missionaries in China for its abolition. The first such society was established at the 1890 Shanghai Missionary Conference, where British and American representatives, including John Glasgow Kerr, Arthur E. Moule, Arthur Gostick Shorrock and Griffith John, agreed to establish the Permanent Committee for the Promotion of Anti-Opium Societies.

Due to increasing pressure in the British parliament, the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone approved the appointment of a Royal Commission on Opium to India in 1893. The commission was tasked with ascertaining the impact of India's opium exports to the Far East, and to advise whether the trade should be ended and opium consumption itself banned in India or not. After an extended inquiry the Royal Commission rejected the claims made by the anti-opiumists in regard to the harm wrought to India by this traffic and the issue was buried for another 15 years.

The missionary organizations were outraged over the Royal Commission on Opium's conclusions and set up the Anti-Opium League in China; the league gathered data from every Western-trained medical doctor in China and published Opinions of Over 100 Physicians on the Use of Opium in China. This was the first anti-drug campaign to be based on scientific principles, and it had a tremendous impact on the state of educated opinion in the West.[20] In England, the home director of the China Inland Mission, Benjamin Broomhall, was an active opponent of the opium trade, writing two books to promote the banning of opium smoking: The Truth about Opium Smoking and The Chinese Opium Smoker. In 1888, Broomhall formed and became secretary of the Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic and editor of its periodical, National Righteousness. He lobbied the British Parliament to stop the opium trade. He and James Laidlaw Maxwell appealed to the London Missionary Conference of 1888 and the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to condemn the continuation of the trade. As Broomhall lay dying, an article from The Times was read to him with the welcome news that an international agreement had been signed ensuring the end of the opium trade within two years.

Newspaper article from The Daily Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana in 1912 reporting on a drug arrest, a month after the International Opium Convention was signed and ratified at The Hague.

In 1906, a motion to 'declare the opium trade "morally indefensible" and remove Government support for it', initially unsuccessfully proposed by Arthur Pease in 1891, was put before the House of Commons. This time the motion passed. The Chinese government banned opium soon afterwards.

These changing attitudes led to the founding of the International Opium Commission in 1909. An International Opium Convention was signed by 13 nations at The Hague on January 23, 1912 during the First International Opium Conference. This was the first international drug control treaty and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on January 23, 1922. The Convention provided that "The contracting Powers shall use their best endeavours to control, or to cause to be controlled, all persons manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade."

The treaty became international law in 1919 when it was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. The role of the Commission was passed to the League of Nations, and all signatory nations agreed to prohibit the import, sale, distribution, export, and use of all narcotic drugs, except for medical and scientific purposes.

== Prohibition ==

In the UK the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, passed at the onset of the First World War, gave the government wide-ranging powers to requisition property and to criminalise specific activities. A moral panic was whipped up by the press in 1916 over the alleged sale of drugs to the troops of the British Indian Army. With the temporary powers of DORA, the Army Council quickly banned the sale of all psychoactive drugs to troops, unless required for medical reasons. However, shifts in the public attitude towards drugs – they were beginning to be associated with prostitution, vice and immorality, led the government to pass further unprecedented laws, banning and criminalising the possession and dispensation of all narcotics, including opium and cocaine. After the war, this legislation was maintained and strengthened with the passing of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920. Home Office control was extended to include raw opium, morphine, cocaine, ecogonine and heroin.

Hardening of Canadian attitudes toward Chinese opium users and fear of a spread of the drug into the white population led to the effective criminalization of opium for nonmedical use in Canada between 1908 and the mid-1920s.

In the USA, the Harrison Act was passed in 1914, and required sellers of opiates and cocaine to get a license. While originally intended to regulate the trade, it soon became a prohibitive law. It soon became legal precedent that any prescription for a narcotic given by a physician or pharmacist – even in the course of medical treatment for addiction – constituted conspiracy to violate the Harrison Act. In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled in Doremus that the Harrison Act was constitutional and in Webb that physicians could not prescribe narcotics solely for maintenance. In Jin Fuey Moy v. United States, the court upheld that it was a violation of the Harrison Act even if a physician provided prescription of a narcotic for an addict, and thus subject to criminal prosecution. This is also true of the later [[Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 |Marijuana Tax Act]] in 1937. Soon, however, licensing bodies did not issue licenses, effectively banning the drugs.

The American judicial system did not initially accept drug prohibition. Prosecutors argued that possessing drugs was a tax violation, as no legal licenses to sell drugs were in existence; hence, a person possessing drugs must have purchased them from an unlicensed source. After some wrangling, this was accepted as federal jurisdiction under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

=== Alcohol prohibition ===

''Main article: Prohibition''

The prohibition of alcohol commenced in Finland in 1919 and in the United States in 1920. Because alcohol was the most popular recreational drug in these countries, reactions to its prohibition were far more negative than to the prohibition of other drugs, which were commonly associated with ethnic minorities, prostitution, and vice. Public pressure led to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in Finland in 1932, and in the United States in 1933. Residents of many provinces of Canada also experienced alcohol prohibition for similar periods in the first half of the 20th century.

In Sweden, a referendum in 1922 decided against an alcohol prohibition law (with 51% of the votes against and 49% for prohibition), but starting in 1914 (nationwide from 1917) and until 1955 Sweden employed an alcohol rationing system with personal liquor ration books ("motbok").

== War on Drugs ==

''Main article: [[War on Drugs]]''

In response to rising drug use among young people and the counterculture movement, government efforts to enforce prohibition were strengthened in many countries from the 1960s onward. Support at an international level for the prohibition of psychoactive drug use became a consistent feature of United States policy during both Republican and Democratic administrations, to such an extent that US support for foreign governments has often been contingent on their adherence to US drug policy. Major milestones in this campaign include the introduction of the [[Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs]] in 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971 and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in 1988. A few developing countries where consumption of the prohibited substances has enjoyed longstanding cultural support, long resisted such outside pressure to pass legislation adhering to these conventions. Nepal only did so in 1976.

In 1972, United States President Richard Nixon announced the commencement of the so-called "War on Drugs." Later, President Reagan added the position of drug czar to the President's Executive Office.
Opium poppies growing in Afghanistan, a major source of drugs today.

In 1973, New York introduced mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment for possession of more than four ounces (113g) of a so-called hard drug, called the Rockefeller drug laws after New York Governor and later Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Similar laws were introduced across the United States.

California's broader 'three strikes and you're out' policy adopted in 1994 was the first mandatory sentencing policy to gain widespread publicity and was subsequently adopted in most United States jurisdictions. This policy mandates life imprisonment for a third criminal conviction of any felony offense.

A similar 'three strikes' policy was introduced to the United Kingdom by the Conservative government in 1997. This legislation enacted a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years for those convicted for a third time of a drug trafficking offense involving a class A drug.

== Calls for legalization, relegalization or decriminalization ==

The terms relegalization, legalization, and decriminalization are used with very different meanings by different authors, something that can be confusing when the claims are not specified. Here are some variants:

*Sales of one or more drugs for personal use become legal, at least if sold in a certain way.

*Sales of an extracts with a specific substance become legal sold in a certain way, for example on prescription.

*Use or possession of small amounts for personal use do not lead to incarceration if it is the only crime, but it is still illegal; the court or the prosecutor can impose a fine. (In that sense, Sweden both legalized and supported drug prohibition simultaneously.)

*Use or possession of small amounts of small amounts for personal use do not lead to incarceration. The case is not treated in an ordinary court, but by a commission that may recommend treatment or sanctions including fines. (In that sense is Portugal both legalized and supporting drug prohibitions).

In recent years, movements have grown around the world proposing the relegalization and decriminalization of drugs. For instance, there is a movement for [[Legal history of cannabis in Canada |cannabis legalization in Canada]], as well as the [[Marijuana Party of Canada]]. Drug liberalization policies are often supported by proponents of liberalism and libertarianism on the grounds of individual freedom.

There are also growing countermovements. Prohibition of drugs is supported by proponents of conservative values but also by many other types of NGO's that are not liked to conservative political parties. A growing number of NGO organizations in many countries have joined the international network World Federation Against Drugs. WFAD members support the United Nations narcotics conventions.

In 2002, five (former) police officers created Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a NGO that has gained a lot of media attention for the fact, that support for a regulation of drug sales also comes from the "other side" of the drug war and that maintaining a global corruption pyramid for the tax-free Mafia monopoly isn't a good idea, compared to controlling access, age and quality.

The former Director of the [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]], the Drug Czar John P. Walters, has described the drug problem in the United States as a "public health challenge", and he has publicly eschewed the notion of a "war on drugs." He has supported additional resources for substance abuse treatment and has touted random student drug testing as an effective prevention strategy. However, the actions of the Office of National Drug Control Policy continue to belie the rhetoric of a shift away from primarily enforcement-based responses to illegal drug use.

On February 22, 2008 the President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, called on the world to legalize drugs, in order, he said, to prevent the majority of violent murders occurring in Honduras. Honduras is used by cocaine smugglers as a transiting point between Colombia and the US. Honduras, with a population of 7 million suffers an average of 8–10 murders a day, with an estimated 70% being as a result of this international drug trade. The same problem is occurring in Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Mexico, according to Zelaya.

In January 2012 Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos made a plea to the United States and Europe to start a global debate about legalizing drugs. This call was echoed by the Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, who announced his desire to legalize drugs, saying "What I have done is put the issue back on the table."

In a report dealing with HIV in June 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) of the UN called for the decriminalization of drugs particularly including injected ones. This conclusion put WHO at odds with broader long-standing UN policy favoring criminalization.

Four states of the United States (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) have as of 2014 legalized the sale of [[marijuana]] for personal recreational use, despite the fact that recreational use remains illegal under U.S. federal law. The conflict between state and federal law is as of this writing (2015) unresolved.

== Drug prohibition laws ==

See also [[Drug prohibition law]]

The following individual drugs, listed under their respective family groups (e.g., barbiturates, benzodiazepines, opiates), are the most frequently sought after by drug users and as such are prohibited or otherwise heavily regulated for use in many countries:

*Among the barbiturates, pentobarbital (Nembutal), secobarbital (Seconal), and amobarbital (Amytal)

*Among the benzodiazepines, temazepam (Restoril; Normison; Euhypnos), flunitrazepam (Rohypnol; Hypnor; Flunipam), and nimetazepam (Erimin)

*[[Cannabis]] products, e.g., [[marijuana]], [[hashish]], and hashish oil

*Among the dissociatives, phencyclidine (PCP), and ketamine are the most sought after.

*hallucinogens such as LSD, mescaline, peyote, and psilocybin

*Empathogen-entactogen drugs like MDMA ("Ecstasy")

*Among the narcotics, it is opiates such as morphine and codeine, and opioids such as diacetylmorphine (Heroin), hydrocodone (Vicodin; Hycodan), oxycodone (Percocet; Oxycontin), hydromorphone (Dilaudid), and oxymorphone (Opana).

*Sedatives such as GHB and methaqualone (Quaalude)

*Stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamine (Adderall), dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), methamphetamine (Desoxyn), methcathinone, and methylphenidate (Ritalin).

The regulation of the above drugs varies in many countries. Alcohol possession and consumption by adults is today widely banned only in Islamic countries and certain states of India. The United States, Finland, and Canada banned alcohol in the early part of the 20th century; this was called Prohibition. Although alcohol prohibition was repealed in these countries at a national level, there are still parts of the United States that do not allow alcohol sales, even though alcohol possession may be legal. Bhutan is the only country in the world where possession and use of tobacco is illegal. In some parts of the world, provisions are made for the use of traditional sacraments like ayahuasca, iboga, and peyote. In Gabon, Africa, iboga (tabernanthe iboga) has been declared a national treasure and is used in rites of the Bwiti religion. The active ingredient, ibogaine, is proposed as a treatment of opioid withdrawal and various substance use disorders.

In countries where alcohol and tobacco are legal, certain measures are frequently undertaken to discourage use of these drugs. For example, packages of alcohol and tobacco sometimes communicate warnings directed towards the consumer, communicating the potential risks of partaking in the use of the substance. These drugs also frequently have special sin taxes associated with the purchase thereof, in order to recoup the losses associated with public funding for the health problems the use causes in long-term users. Restrictions on advertising also exist in many countries, and often a state holds a monopoly on manufacture, distribution, marketing, and/or the sale of these drugs.

=== Legal Dilemmas ===

In the United States, there is considerable legal debate about the impact these laws have had on Americans' civil rights. Critics claim that the War on Drugs has lowered the evidentiary burden required for a legal search of a suspect's dwelling or vehicle, or to intercept a suspect's communications. However, many of the searches that result in drug arrests are often "commissions" to search a person or the person's property.

People who consent to a search, knowing full well that they possess contraband, generally consent because they are ignorant of the fact that they have the right to decline permission to search. Under the laws of most U.S. states, police are not required to disclose to suspects that they have the right to decline a search. Even when a suspect does not give permission to search, police are often known to state in arrest affidavits and even provide sworn testimony that the suspect consented to the search, secure in the knowledge that a judge will normally weigh all questions of credibility in favour of law enforcement and against the accused.

Similarly, in cases where the accused does not consent to a search, courts have generally held police to a very low standard of reasonable suspicion and/or probable cause in drug cases, essentially endorsing "fishing expeditions" by stop-and-search highway interdiction police.

The sentencing statutes in the United States Code that cover controlled substances are notoriously intricate. For example, a first-time offender convicted in a single proceeding for selling [[marijuana ]]three times, and found to have carried a gun on him all three times (even if it were not used) is subject to a minimum sentence of 55 years in federal prison.

Drug sentencing guidelines under state law in America are generally much less harsh than the federal sentencing guidelines, although great irregularities exist. The vast majority of drug felonies and almost all drug misdemeanors in the United States are prosecuted at the state level. The federal government tends to prosecute only drug trafficking cases involving large amounts of drugs, or cases which have been referred to federal prosecutors by local district attorneys seeking the harsher sentences provided under the federal sentencing guidelines. In rare instances, some defendants are prosecuted both federally and by the state for the same drug trafficking conduct. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a defendant does not face double jeopardy if he is convicted and sentenced by both the state and federal government for the same underlying criminal conduct.

Sometimes, crimes not directly related to drug use and sale. For example, the United States recently brought charges against club owners for maintaining a place of business where '''a)''' Ecstasy is known to be frequently consumed; '''b)''' paraphernalia associated with the use of Ecstasy is sold and/or widely tolerated (such as glow sticks and pacifiers); and '''c)''' "chill-out rooms" are created, where Ecstasy users can cool down (Ecstasy users in club settings tend to dance for extended periods of time, raising the user's blood temperature). These are being challenged in court by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Drug Policy Alliance.

Drug prohibition has created several legal dilemmas. For example many countries allow the use of undercover law enforcement officers solely or primarily for the enforcement of laws against use of certain drugs. Many of these officers are allegedly allowed to commit crimes if it is necessary to maintain the secrecy of the investigation, or in order to collect adequate evidence for a conviction. Some people have criticized this practice as failing to ensure equality under the law because it grants police officers the right to commit crimes that no other citizen could commit without potential consequences.

Another legal dilemma is the creation in several countries of a legal loopholes allowing for arbitrary arrest and prosecution. This is the result of several drugs such as Dimethyltryptamine, GHB, and morphine being illegal to possess but also inherently present in all humans as a result of endogenous synthesis. Since some jurisdictions classify possession of drugs to include having the drug present in the blood in any concentration, all residents of such countries are technically in possession of multiple illegal drugs at all times.

The [[War on Drugs]] has stimulated the creation of international law enforcement agencies (such as Interpol), mostly in Western countries. This has occurred because a large volume of illicit drugs come from Third-World countries.

=== Social control ===

In Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory (1975), senior US government researchers Louis Jolyon West and Ronald K. Siegel explain how drug prohibition can be used for selective social control:

<blockquote>“ The role of drugs in the exercise of political control is also coming under increasing discussion. Control can be through prohibition or supply. The total or even partial prohibition of drugs gives the government considerable leverage for other types of control. An example would be the selective application of drug laws… against selected components of the population such as members of certain minority groups or political organizations ”</blockquote>

Academic Noam Chomsky argues that Drug laws are currently, and have historically, been used by the state to oppress sections of society it opposes:

<blockquote>“ Very commonly substances are criminalized because they're associated with what's called the dangerous classes, poor people, or working people. So for example in England in the 19th century, there was a period when gin was criminalized and whiskey wasn't, because gin is what poor people drink. ”</blockquote>

=== Legal highs and prohibition ===

In 2013 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reported that there are 280 new legal drugs, known as legal highs, available in Europe. One of the best known, mephedrone, was banned in the United Kingdom in 2010. On November 24, 2010, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced it would use emergency powers to ban many synthetic [[cannabinoids]] within a month. An estimated 73 new psychoactive synthetic drugs appeared on the UK market in 2012. The response of the Home Office has been to create a temporary class drug order which bans the manufacture, import and supply but not the possession of named substances.

== Penalties ==

=== United States ===

''Main article: [[Federal drug policy of the United States |Drug policy of the United States]]''

Drug possession is the crime of having one or more illegal drugs in one's possession, either for personal use, distribution, sale or otherwise. Illegal drugs fall into different categories and sentences vary depending on the amount, type of drug, circumstances, and jurisdiction.

In the U.S., the penalty for illegal drug possession and sale can vary from a small fine to a prison sentence. In some states, marijuana possession is considered to be a petty offense, with the penalty being comparable to that of a speeding violation. In some municipalities, possessing a small quantity of [[marijuana]] in one's own home is not punishable at all. Generally, however, drug possession is an arrestable offense, although first-time offenders rarely serve jail time.

Federal law makes even possession of soft drugs, such as [[cannabis]], illegal, though some local governments have laws contradicting federal laws.

In the U.S., the War on Drugs is thought to be contributing to a prison overcrowding problem. In 1996, 59.6% of prisoners were drug-related criminals. The U.S. population grew by about +25% from 1980 to 2000. In that same 20 year time period, the U.S. prison population tripled, making the U.S. the world leader in both percentage and absolute number of citizens incarcerated. The United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the prisoners.

=== Australia ===

A Nielsen poll in 2012 found that only 27% of voters favoured decriminalisation. Australia has steep penalties for growing and using drugs even for personal use. with Western Australia having the toughest laws.

There is an associated anti-drug culture amongst a significant number of Australians. Law enforcement targets drugs, particularly in the party scene.

In 2012, crime statistics in Victoria revealed that police were increasingly arresting users rather than dealers, and the Liberal government banned the sale of bongs that year.

=== The Netherlands ===

''Main article: [[Drug policy of the Netherlands]]''

In the Netherlands, cannabis and other "soft" drugs are partly decriminalised in small quantities. The Dutch government treats the problem as more of a public health issue than a criminal issue. Contrary to popular belief, [[cannabis]] is still illegal, mostly to satisfy the country's agreements with the United Nations. [[Cannabis coffee shop |Coffee shops]] that sell [[cannabis]] to people 18 or above are tolerated in some cities, and pay taxes like any other business for their[[ cannabis]] and [[hashish]] sales, although distribution is a grey area that the authorities would rather not go into as it is not decriminalised. Many "coffee shops" are found in Amsterdam and cater mainly to the large tourist trade; the local consumption rate is far lower than in the US.

Netherlands has the highest antidrug related public expenditure per capita of all countries in EU (139 EUR per capita, 2004).

Similarly to the rest of the European Union member states and American democracies, controlled drugs are illegal in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, illegal drugs are consumed worldwide, causing concern in the international community. According to the United Nations Drug Control Programme, results in the 2001 World Drug Report estimate "that the extent of drug abuse in the world involves about 180 million people, which represents 3% of the global population. The majority of drug users (80%) used [[cannabis]], followed by amphetamine-type stimulants such as methamphetamine, amphetamine and substances of the ecstasy group (16%), cocaine (8%), heroin (5%) and other opiates (2%)".

The administrative bodies responsible for enforcing the drug policies include the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, and the Ministry of Finance. Local authorities also shape local policy, within the national framework. The prohibition policy is heavily influenced by the international community (through the United Nations), especially the neighboring states of France and Germany, which pressure the kingdom to be more strict, for they are directly affected through the illegal trafficking of narcotics coming from the Netherlands.

Legally, possession, manufacturing, trafficking, importation and exportation are forbidden. Nonetheless, it is not an offense to use drugs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003). There are different penalties involved when breaking the law, which may include a monetary fine, imprisonment, or both. To apply the law, the government differentiates between "soft" and "hard" drugs. Soft drugs are considered to produce less harm to both the individual and society, these being used mainly for folk medicine and recreational purposes. This category encompasses [[cannabis]] (nederwiet), [[hashish]] and some fungi. Hard drugs are considered to cause considerable personal harm through addiction and physical detriment, as well as nuisance to society, by increasing crime and deteriorating families. Cocaine, heroin, etc. belong to this category.

Along with these two categories, there is a pyramid of priority when it comes to prosecution by law enforcement agencies.

#The handling and trade of hard drugs is on the zenith, being a joint target not only by the Netherlands, but also by the international community. This can be punished by maximum sentences of twelve years of imprisonment and/or a fine of up to €45,000.

#The second priority is given to the production and trade of soft drugs. Deviation from the AHOJ-G criteria for coffee shops may result in up to four years of imprisonment and/or a fine of €45,000.

#The third priority focuses on hard drug users. Instead of labelling the users of hard drugs as "criminals", the state aims to rehabilitate users and prevent others from becoming addicted. However, disturbance to society caused by the consumption of hard drugs can result in one year of prison and/or a €11,250 fine. Lastly, individuals possessing more than five grams for personal consumption, or disturbing the public, can go to prison for one month and/or be fined €2,250.

There are varying rules within these categories, for example the amount possessed, the role played in the transaction and the intent of the goods.

Regarding coffee shops, the line between law and practice thins. A coffee shop is a heavily controlled business establishment where individuals can purchase a personal dose of soft drugs in the form of [[joint]]s, pastry, drinks and packages. In theory illegal, these shops must abide by governmental and local regulations, as well as meet the AHOJ-G criteria, an acronym for: No Advertising, Hard drugs, Nuisance of any kind, Jongeren (minors under 18), and a limit of five grams per transaction. Additionally, the maximum stock at any time is five hundred grams. Local governments may impose additional rules, such as closing times, zoning (coffee shops may not be close to schools), and parking restrictions. The rationale behind coffee shops is to keep citizens away from the hard drugs scene, bringing them to a safe, social, and regulated environment.

When analysing the Dutch model, both disadvantages and advantages can be drawn when comparing the results with other countries. On a moral argument, tolerating soft drugs can be seen as the defeat of the government against hedonism. Additionally, decades of growing and perfecting cannabis and hashish has resulted in increased levels of the main active hallucinogenic constituent [[tetrahydrocannabinol]] (THC), as levels have doubled, making the derived products more powerful, and therefore requiring less to achieve the desired effect.

The coffee shop will lose its license if it caught selling to minors. Though there was a slight increase of use at the beginning, the rates balanced out some years later. The presence of coffee shops does not translate in public urge for experimentation. In fact, most people that did not consume drugs before the enhancement of the policy continue not to use them.

When compared to other countries, Dutch drug consumption falls in the European average at six per cent regular use (twenty-one per cent at some point in life) and considerably lower than the Anglo-Saxon countries headed by the United States with an eight per cent recurring use (thirty-four at some point in life). Experts have come to the conclusion that the policies applied do not play a striking role in these statistics, though there is debate over this issue (CEDRO, 2004).

While there has been talk for over a decade about preventing foreigners from entering Dutch [[cannabis]] coffeeshops by requiring customers to possess a 'weedpass', this legislation has not been enacted, so Dutch coffeeshops continue to sell [[cannabis]] openly to both locals and foreigners. However a small number of Southern principalities (including Roosendaal and Maastricht) in Holland now require customers to carry identification proving that they are resident in Holland.

=== Indonesia ===

Indonesia carries a maximum penalty of death for drug dealing, and a maximum of 15 years prison for drug use.

In 2004, Australian citizen Schappelle Corby was convicted of smuggling 4.4 kilograms of [[cannabis]] into Bali, a crime that carried a maximum penalty of death. Her trial reached the verdict of guilty with a punishment of 20 years imprisonment. Corby claimed to be an unwitting drug mule.

Australian citizens known as the "Bali Nine" were caught smuggling heroin, and each face the death penalty.

In August 2005, Australian model Michelle Leslie was arrested with two Ecstasy pills. She pleaded guilty to possession and in November 2005 was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment, which she was deemed to have already served, and was released from prison immediately upon her admission of guilt on the charge of possession.

At the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, Indonesia, along with India, Turkey, Pakistan and some South American countries opposed the criminalisation of drugs.

== Methods of law enforcement ==

Because the possession of drugs is a victimless crime that can be committed in privacy, the enforcement of prohibitionist laws requires methods of law enforcement to inspect even private property. In societies with strong property laws or individual rights, this may present a risk for conflicts or violations of rights.

Disrupting the market relies on eradication, interdiction and domestic law enforcement efforts.
Dareton police search the vehicle of a suspected drug smuggler in Wentworth, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, near the border with Victoria

Through cooperation with governments such as those of Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan, coca (the plant source for cocaine) and poppy (the plant source for opium and heroin) are eradicated by the United States and other allies such as the United Kingdom, so that the crops cannot be processed into narcotics. Eradication can be accomplished by aerial spraying or manual eradication. However, the eradication is only temporary as the harvest fields can usually be replanted after a certain amount of time. The government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has resisted criticism of aerial spraying of coca and poppy and has seen major reductions in both crops according to the United Nations Office of Crime and Drugs (See also Plan Colombia). In 2003, over 1,300 square kilometers of mature coca were sprayed and eradicated in Colombia, where at the start of the year, approximately 1,450 square kilometers had been planted. This strategic accomplishment prevented the production over 500 tonnes of cocaine, sufficient to supply all the cocaine users in both US and Europe for one year. Further, it eliminated upward of $100 million of illicit income in Colombia. No effect on prices or availability in the marketplace has been noted, and the actual number of acres of coca planted seems to have actually increased, largely shifting to more remote areas or into neighboring countries. Aerial spraying also has the unintended consequence of destroying legitimate crop fields in the process.

Interdiction is carried out primarily by aerial and naval armed forces patrolling known trafficking zones. From South America to the United States most drugs traverse either the Caribbean Sea or the Eastern Pacific, usually in "go-fast" boats that carry drug cargos and engines and little else.

Investigation on drug trafficking often begins with the recording of unusually frequent deaths by overdose, monitoring financial flows of suspected traffickers, or by finding concrete elements while inspecting for other purposes. For example, a person pulled over for traffic violations may have illicit drugs in his or her vehicle, thus leading to an arrest and/or investigation of the source of the materials. The United States federal government has placed a premium on disrupting the large drug trafficking organizations that move narcotics into and around the United States, while state and local law enforcement focus on disrupting street-level drug dealing gangs.

=== Drug control strategy ===

Present drug control efforts utilize several techniques in the attempt to achieve their goal of eliminating illegal drug use:

*Disrupting the market for drugs

*Prevention efforts that rely on community activism, public information campaigns to educate the public on the potential dangers of drug use

*Law-enforcement efforts against elements of the supply chain, through surveillance and undercover work

*Providing effective and targeted substance abuse treatment to dependent users

== Alternatives to prohibition ==

See also: [[Arguments for and against drug prohibition]]

On February 11, 2009 a document called Drugs and democracy in Latin America: Towards a paradigm shift was signed by several Latin American political figures, intellectuals, writers and journalists as commissioners of the Latin American Initiative on Drugs and Democracy. The document questioned the war on drugs and points out its failures. It also indicates that prohibition has come with an extensive social cost, especially to the countries that take part in the production of illicit drugs. Although controversial, the document does not endorse either the production or consumption of drugs but recommends for both a new and an alternative approach. The document argues that drug production and consumption has become a social taboo that inhibits the public debate because of its relationship to crime and as consequence it confines consumers to a small circle where they become more vulnerable to the actions of organized crime. The authors also demand for a close review to the prohibitive strategies of the United States and the study of the advantages and limits of the damage reduction strategy followed by the European Union. The proposal uses three paradigms as an alternative:

*The treatment of consumption as a problem of public health.

*The reduction of consumption through the dissemination of information and prevention.

*A new focus towards organized crime.

The document favors the European policies towards drug consumption since according to the authors it is more humane and efficient. The signers of this document are: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ernesto Zedillo, Cesar Gaviria, Paulo Coelho, Enrique Santos, Mario Vargas Llosa, Moisés Naím, Tomas Eloy Martinez

Two years later in mid-2011, the core of the Initiative and its commission were extended and endorsed in a report issued by the [[Global Commission on Drug Policy]]. Joining the three former presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Llosa on the Global Commission were former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz and Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker; Carlos Fuentes, Mexican writer and public intellectual; John C. Whitehead, formerly of Goldman Sachs; and Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Legality of the War on Drugs

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Several authors have put forth arguments concerning the legality of the War on Drugs. In his essay The Drug War and the Constitution, Libertarian philosopher Paul Hager makes the case that the War on Drugs in the United States is an illegal form of prohibition, which violates the principles of a limited government embodied in the Constitution. Alcohol prohibition required amending the Constitution, because this was not a power granted to the federal government. Hager asserts if this is true, then [[Prohibition of drugs |marijuana prohibition]] should likewise require a Constitutional amendment.

== Federalism argument ==

In her dissent in [[Gonzales v. Raich]] (a case argued by Randy Barnett), Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued that drug prohibition is an improper usurpation of the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the power to prohibit should be reserved by the states. In the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a stronger dissent expressing a similar idea. Chief Justice William Rehnquist joined O'Connor's dissent.

== Substantive due process ==

Another argument against drug prohibition is based on the notion that its practice violates implicit rights within the substantive due process doctrine. It has been suggested that anti-drug laws do not achieve enough reasonable benefit to State interests to justify arbitrarily restricting basic individual liberties that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. One proponent of this notion is attorney Warren Redlich.

In 2002, the U.S. State of Florida attempted to eliminate criminal intent as an element of the crime of drug possession. On July 27, 2011, U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven ruled that the Florida law was unconstitutional, saying that the elimination of the element of intent was "atavistic and repugnant to the common law". Nellie King, president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, explained the ruling in terms of due process. The ruling is subject to appeal.

The substantive due process argument is sometimes used in [[medical marijuana]] cases. [[NORML]] once wrote in an amicus brief on [[United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative]] that the right to use [[medical marijuana]] to save one's life is within the rights established by the substantive due process. However, the Supreme Court found against the [[medical marijuana]] dispensary and for the United States in the aforementioned case. Some apparently believe that this invalidates the substantive due process argument against the [[Controlled Substances Act]].

However, the Supreme Court expressly declined to rule on the issue of substantive due process in the aforementioned case, ruling against the [[medical marijuana]] dispensary in question on grounds of statutory construction, as the Court found that there was no standalone medical necessity defense in the [[Controlled Substances Act]]. Justice Clarence Thomas' majority opinion clearly explains that the Court did not consider any Constitutional arguments in coming to the conclusion that it reached. As Justice Thomas expressly states in his majority opinion: "Finally, the Cooperative contends that we should construe the Controlled Substances Act to include a medical necessity defense in order to avoid what it considers to be difficult constitutional questions. In particular, the Cooperative asserts that, shorn of a medical necessity defense, the statute exceeds Congress’ Commerce Clause powers, violates the substantive due process rights of patients, and offends the fundamental liberties of the people under the Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. As the Cooperative acknowledges, however, the canon of constitutional avoidance has no application in the absence of statutory ambiguity. Because we have no doubt that the [[Controlled Substances Act]] cannot bear a medical necessity defense to distributions of [[marijuana]], we do not find guidance in this avoidance principle. Nor do we consider the underlying constitutional issues today. Because the Court of Appeals did not address these claims, we decline to do so in the first instance." As such, the question of the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act under the doctrine of substantive due process remains an open one, undecided by the Supreme Court, and debated by the citizens of the United States. Even some opponents of the substantive due process argument who support the War on Drugs have noted that the doctrine could potentially lead to the invalidation of anti-drug laws.

== Rule of law ==

It is argued that the reverse burden of proof in drug-possession cases is incompatible with the rule of law in that the power to convict is effectively taken from the courts and given to those who are willing to plant evidence.

== Legal vs. illegal drugs ==

Many have also stressed the inequality of certain drugs remaining illegal while others that are equally harmful are completely legal. Examples of this include both tobacco and alcohol being legal in most countries and with few inter-personal restrictions despite them both being seriously harmful to a person's health.

Many countries practice heavy taxation on tobacco and alcohol products, and use these funds to pay for treatment and prevention programs.

== Inequities in prosecution ==

''Further information: Race and the War on Drugs''

The social consequences of the drug war have been widely criticized by such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union as being racially biased against minorities and disproportionately responsible for the exploding United States prison population. According to a report commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and released in March 2006 by the Justice Policy Institute, America's "Drug-Free Zones" are ineffective at keeping youths away from drugs, and instead create strong racial disparities in the judicial system. The Obama administration is implementing new plans for the War on Drugs to put an end to disparity in how African American Communities are treated unfairly.

== Freedom of religion and conscience ==

''Further information: Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal''

A special problem is created by government prohibition of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, and ayahuasca. Some people use such substances with definite spiritual or religious motives. Use of peyote and ayahuasca is currently legal in the US for members of certain recognized religions (e.g., Native American Church). However nothing in the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment implies that sincere and responsible exercise of freedom of religion or conscience requires formal affiliation with an established religious denomination.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

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The '''Controlled Drugs and Substances Act''' is Canada's federal drug control statute. Passed in 1996 under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's government, it repeals the Narcotic Control Act and Parts III and IV of the Food and Drug Act and establishes eight Schedules of controlled substances and two Classes of precursors. It provides that "The Governor in Council may, by order, amend any of Schedules I to VIII by adding to them or deleting from them any item or portion of an item, where the Governor in Council deems the amendment to be necessary in the public interest."

The Act serves as the implementing legislation for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

== List of drugs ==

A complete list of drugs scheduled in Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act can be found here. This list is what is reflected below. Some less common chemicals are omitted.

On March 12, 2012, controversial Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act was passed into law. Amphetamines and their isomers, derivatives, and analogues, including MDA and MDMA (Ecstasy), as well as potential "date rape drugs" flunitrazepam and GHB were rescheduled from Schedule III to Schedule I. Dealers of Schedule I drugs now face mandatory minimum sentencing of 1 year imprisonment. Also, the rescheduling imposes harsher punishment for possession.

=== Schedule I ===

*Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum), its preparations, derivatives, alkaloids and salts, including:
#Opium
#Codeine (methylmorphine)
#Morphine (7,8–didehydro–4,5–epoxy–17–methylmorphinan–3,6–diol)
#Thebaine (paramorphine)
and the salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives of the substances set out in subitems (1) to (4), including:
#Acetorphine (acetyletorphine)
#Acetyldihydrocodeine (4,5–epoxy–3–methoxy–17–methylmorphinan–6–ol acetate)
#Benzylmorphine (7,8–didehydro–4,5–epoxy–17–methyl–3–(phenylmethoxy) morphinan–6–ol)
#Codoxime (dihydrocodeinone O–(carboxymethyl) oxime)
#Desomorphine (dihydrodeoxymorphine)
#Diacetylmorphine (heroin)
#Dihydrocodeine (4,5–epoxy–3–methoxy–17–methylmorphinan–6–ol)
#Dihydromorphine (4,5–epoxy–17–methylmorphinan–3,6–diol)
#Ethylmorphine (7,8–didehydro–4,5–epoxy–3–ethoxy–17–methylmorphinan–6–ol)
#Etorphine (tetrahydro–7α–(1–hydroxy–1–methyl-butyl)–6,14–endo–ethenooripavine)
#Hydrocodone (dihydrocodeinone)
#Hydromorphinol (dihydro–14–hydroxymorphine)
#Hydromorphone (dihydromorphinone)
#Methyldesorphine (Δ6–deoxy–6–methylmorphine)
#Methyldihydromorphine (dihydro–6–methylmorphine)
#Metopon (dihydromethylmorphinone)
#Morphine–N–oxide (morphine oxide)
#Myrophine (benzylmorphine myristate)
#Nalorphine (N–allylnormorphine)
#Nicocodine (6–nicotinylcodeine)
#Nicomorphine (dinicotinylmorphine)
#Norcodeine (N–desmethylcodeine)
#Normorphine (N–desmethylmorphine)
#Oxycodone (dihydrohydroxycodeinone)
#Oxymorphone (dihydrohydroxymorphinone)
#Pholcodine (3–[2–(4–morpholinyl)ethyl]morphine)
#Thebacon (acetyldihydrocodeinone)
but not including
#Apomorphine (5,6,6a,7–tetrahydro–6–methyl–4H–dibenzo[de,g]quinoline–10,11–diol)
#Cyprenorphine (N–(cyclopropylmethyl)–6,7,8,14–tetrahydro–7α–(1–hydroxy–1–methylethyl)–6,14–endo–ethenonororipavine)
#Nalmefene (17-(cyclopropylmethyl)-4,5α-epoxy-6-methylenemorphinan-3,14-diol)
##Naloxone (4,5α-epoxy-3,14-dihydroxy-17-(2-propenyl)morphinan-6-one)
##Naltrexone (17-(cyclopropylmethyl)-4,5α-epoxy-3,14-dihydroxymorphinan-6-one)
#Narcotine (6,7–dimethoxy–3–(5,6,7,8–tetra-hydro–4–methoxy–6–methyl–1,3–dioxolos [4,5–g]isoquinolin–5–yl)–1(3H)–isobenzofuranone)
#Papaverine (1–[(3,4–dimethoxyphenyl)methyl]–6,7–dimethoxyisoquinoline)
#Poppy seed
*Coca (Erythroxylon), its preparations, derivatives, alkaloids and salts, including:
#Coca leaves
#Cocaine (benzoylmethylecgonine)
#Ecgonine (3–hydroxy–2–tropane carboxylic acid)

*Phenylpiperidines, their intermediates, salts, derivatives and analogues and salts of intermediates, derivatives and analogues, including:
#Allylprodine (3–allyl–1–methyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Alphameprodine (α–3–ethyl–1–methyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Alphaprodine (α–1,3–dimethyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Anileridine (ethyl 1–[2–(p–aminophenyl)ethyl]–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Betameprodine (ß–3–ethyl–1–methyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Betaprodine (ß–1,3–dimethyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Benzethidine (ethyl 1–(2–benzyloxyethyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Diphenoxylate (ethyl 1–(3–cyano–3,3–diphenylpropyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Difenoxin (1–(3–cyano–3,3–diphenylpropyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Etoxeridine (ethyl 1–[2–(2–hydroxyethoxy) ethyl]–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Furethidine (ethyl 1–(2–tetrahydrofurfury loxyethyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Hydroxypethidine (ethyl 4–(m–hydroxyphenyl)–1–methylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Ketobemidone (1–[4–(m–hydroxyphenyl)–1–methyl–4–piperidyl]–1–propanone)
#Methylphenylisonipecotonitrile (4–cyano–1–methyl–4–phenylpiperidine)
#Morpheridine (ethyl 1–(2–morpholinoethyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Norpethidine (ethyl 4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Pethidine (ethyl 1–methyl–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Phenoperidine (ethyl 1–(3–hydroxy–3–phenylpropyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Piminodine (ethyl 1–[3–(phenylamino)propyl]–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Properidine (isopropyl 1–methyl–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Trimeperidine (1,2,5–trimethyl–4–phenyl–4–piperidinol propionate)
#Pethidine Intermediate C (1–methyl–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
but not including
#Carbamethidine (ethyl 1–(2–carbamylethyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)
#Oxpheneridine (ethyl 1–(2–hydroxy–2–phenylethyl)–4–phenylpiperidine–4–carboxylate)

*Phenazepines, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Proheptazine (hexahydro–1,3–dimethyl–4–phenyl–1H–azepin–4–ol propionate)
but not including
#Ethoheptazine (ethyl hexahydro–1–methyl–4–phenyl–azepine–4–carboxylate)
#Metethoheptazine (ethyl hexahydro–1,3–dimethyl–4–phenylazepine–4–carboxylate)
#Metheptazine (ethyl hexahydro–1,2–dimethyl–4–phenylazepine–4–carboxylate)

*Amidones, their intermediates, salts, derivatives and salts of intermediates and derivatives including:
#Dimethylaminodiphenylbutanonitrile (4–cyano–2–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenylbutane)
#Dipipanone (4,4–diphenyl–6–piperidino–3–heptanone)
#Isomethadone (6–dimethylamino–5–methyl–4,4–diphenyl–3–hexanone)
#Methadone (6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanone)
#Normethadone (6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–hexanone)
#Norpipanone (4,4–diphenyl–6–piperidino–3–hexanone)
#Phenadoxone (6–morpholino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanone)

*Methadols, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Acetylmethadol (6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol acetate)
#Alphacetylmethadol (α–6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol acetate)
#Alphamethadol (α–6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol)
#Betacetylmethadol (ß–6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol acetate)
#Betamethadol (ß–6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol)
#Dimepheptanol (6–dimethylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol)
#Noracymethadol (α–6–methylamino–4,4–diphenyl–3–heptanol acetate)

*Phenalkoxams, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Dimenoxadol (dimethylaminoethyl 1–ethoxy–1,1–diphenylacetate)
#Dioxaphetyl butyrate (ethyl 2,2–diphenyl–4–morpholinobutyrate)
#Dextropropoxyphene ([S–(R*,S*)]–α–[2–(dimethylamino)–1–methylethyl]–α–phenylbenzeneethanol, propanoate ester)

*Thiambutenes, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Diethylthiambutene (N,N–diethyl–1–methyl–3,3–di–2–thienylallylamine)
#Dimethylthiambutene (N,N,1–trimethyl–3,3–di–2–thienylallylamine)
#Ethylmethylthiambutene (N–ethyl–N,1–dimethyl–3,3–di–2–thienylallylamine)

*Moramides, their intermediates, salts, derivatives and salts of intermediates and derivatives including:
#Dextromoramide (d–1–(3–methyl–4–morpholino–2,2–diphenylbutyryl)pyrrolidine)
#Diphenylmorpholinoisovaleric acid (2–methyl–3–morpholino–1,1–diphenylpropionic acid)
#Levomoramide (l–1–(3–methyl–4–morpholino–2,2–diphenylbutyryl)pyrrolidine)
#Racemoramide (d,l–1–(3–methyl–4–morpholino–2,2–diphenylbutyryl) pyrrolidine)

*Morphinans, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Buprenorphine (17–(cyclopropylmethyl)–α–(1,1–dimethylethyl)–4,5–epoxy–18,19–dihydro–3–hydroxy–6–methoxy–α–methyl–6,14–ethenomorphinan–7–methanol)
#Drotebanol (6ß,14–dihydroxy–3,4–dimethoxy–17–methylmorphinan)
#Levomethorphan (l–3–methoxy–17–methylmorphinan)
#Levorphanol (l–3–hydroxy–17–methylmorphinan)
#Levophenacylmorphan (l–3–hydroxy–17–phenacylmorphinan)
#Norlevorphanol (l–3–hydroxymorphinan)
#Phenomorphan (3–hydroxy–17–(2–phenylethyl)morphinan)
#Racemethorphan (d,1–3–methoxy–17–methylmorphinan)
#Racemorphan (d,l–3–hydroxy–N–methylmorphinan)
but not including
#Dextromethorphan (d–1,2,3,9,10,10a–hexahydro–6–methoxy–11–methyl–4H–10,4a–iminoethano–phenanthren)
#Dextrorphan (d–1,2,3,9,10,10a–hexahydro–11–methyl–4H–10,4a–iminoethanophenanthren–6–ol)
#Levallorphan (l–11–allyl–1,2,3,9,10,10a–hexahydro–4H–10,4a–iminoethanophenanthren–6–ol)
#Levargorphan (l–11–propargyl–1,2,3,9,10,10a–hexahydro–4H–10,4a–iminoethanophenanthren–6–ol)
#Butorphanol (17–(cyclobutylmethyl)morphinan–3,14–diol)
#Nalbuphine (17–(cyclobutylmethyl)–4,5α–epoxymorphinan–3,6α, 14–triol)

*Benzazocines, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Phenazocine (1,2,3,4,5,6–hexahydro–6,11–dimethyl–3–phenethyl–2,6–methano–3–benzazocin–8–ol)
#Metazocine (1,2,3,4,5,6–hexahydro–3,6,11–trimethyl–2,6–methano–3–benzazocin–8–ol)
#Pentazocine (1,2,3,4,5,6–hexahydro–6,11–dimethyl–3–(3–methyl–2–butenyl)–2,6–methano–3–benzazocin–8–ol)
but not including
#Cyclazocine (1,2,3,4,5,6–hexahydro–6,11–dimethyl–3–(cyclopropylmethyl)–2,6–methano–3–benzazocin–8–ol)

*Ampromides, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Diampromide (N–[2–(methylphenethylamino)propyl] propionanilide)
#Phenampromide (N–(1–methyl–2–piperidino) ethyl) propionanilide)
#Propiram (N–(1–methyl–2–piperidinoethyl)–N–2–pyridylpropionamide)

*Benzimidazoles, their salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives including:
#Clonitazene (2–(p–chlorobenzyl)–1–diethylaminoethyl–5–nitrobenzimidazole)
#Etonitazene (2–(p–ethoxybenzyl)–1–diethylaminoethyl–5–nitrobenzimidazole)
#Bezitramide (1–(3–cyano–3,3–diphenylpropyl)–4–(2–oxo–3–propionyl–1–benzimidazolinyl)–piperidine)

*Phencyclidine (1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)piperidine), its salts, derivatives and analogues and salts of derivatives and analogues, including:
#Ketamine (2-(2-chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexanone)

*Piritramide (1–(3–cyano–3,3–diphenylpropyl)–4–(1–piperidino)piperidine–4–carboxylic acid amide), its salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives

*Fentanyls, their salts, derivatives, and analogues and salts of derivatives and analogues, including:
#Acetyl–α–methylfentanyl (N–[1–(α–methylphenethyl)–4–piperidyl] acetanilide)
#Alfentanil (N–[1–[2–(4–ethyl–4,5–dihydro–5–oxo–1H–tetrazol–1–yl)ethyl]–4–(methoxymethyl)–4–piperidyl]propionanilide)
#Carfentanil (methyl 4–[(1–oxopropyl)phenylamino]–1–(2–phenethyl)–4–piperidinecarboxylate)
#p–Fluorofentanyl (4′fluoro–N–(1–phenethyl–4–piperidyl) propionanilide)
#Fentanyl (N–(1–phenethyl–4–piperidyl) propionanilide)
#ß–Hydroxyfentanyl (N–[1–(ß–hydroxyphenethyl)–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
#ß–Hydroxy–3–methylfentanyl (N–[1–(ß–hydroxyphenethyl)–3–methyl–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
#α–Methylfentanyl (N–[1–(α–methylphenethyl)–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
#α–Methylthiofentanyl (N–[1–[1–methyl–2–(2–thienyl) ethyl]–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
#3–Methylfentanyl (N–(3–methyl–1–phenethyl–4–piperidyl) propionanilide)
#3–Methylthiofentanyl (N–[3–methyl–1–[2–(2–thienyl) ethyl]–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
##Remifentanil (dimethyl 4-carboxy-4-(N-phenylpropionamido)-1-piperidinepropionate)
#Sufentanil (N–[4–(methoxymethyl)–1–[2–(2–thienyl)ethyl]–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)
#Thiofentanyl (N–[1–[2–(2–thienyl)ethyl]–4–piperidyl] propionanilide)

*Tilidine (ethyl2–(dimethylamino)–1–phenyl–3–cyclohexene–1–carboxylate), its salts, derivatives and salts of derivatives
#Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), its salts, derivatives, isomers and analogues and salts of derivatives, isomers and analogues

*Methamphetamine (N,α-dimethylbenzeneethanamine), its salts, derivatives, isomers and analogues and salts of derivatives, isomers and analogues

*Amphetamines, their salts, derivatives, isomers and analogues and salts of derivatives, isomers and analogues including:
#Amphetamine (α-methylbenzene-ethanamine)
#N-ethylamphetamine (N-ethyl-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#4-methyl-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (STP) (2,5-dimethoxy-4,α-dimethylbenzeneethanamine)
#3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) (α-methyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (2,5-dimethoxy-α-methylbenzene-ethanamine)
#4-methoxyamphetamine (4-methoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#2,4,5-trimethoxyamphetamine (2,4,5-trimethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (N,α-dimethyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#4-ethoxy-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (4-ethoxy-2,5-dimethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#5-methoxy-3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (7-methoxy-α-methyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#N,N-dimethyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (N,N, α-trimethyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#N-ethyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (N-ethyl-α-methyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#4-ethyl-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (DOET) (4-ethyl-2,5-dimethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#4-chloro-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (4-chloro-2,5-dimethoxy-α-methyl-benzeneethanamine)
#4-ethoxyamphetamine (4-ethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)
#Benzphetamine (N-benzyl-N,α-dimethylbenzeneethanamine)
#N-Propyl-3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (α-methyl-N-propyl-1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine)
#N-(2-Hydroxyethyl)-α-meth-ylbenzeneethanamine
#N-hydroxy-3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (N-[α-methyl-3,4-(methylenedioxy)phenethyl]hydroxylamine)
#3,4,5-trimethoxyamphetamine (3,4,5-trimethoxy-α-methylbenzeneethanamine)

*Flunitrazepam (5-(o-fluorophenyl)-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-7-nitro-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one) and any of its salts or derivatives 4-hydroxybutanoic acid (GHB) and any of its salt.

=== Schedule II ===

*[[Cannabis]], its preparations, derivatives and similar synthetic preparations. {{http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-38.8/page-25.html#h-29}}
**including:
***Cannabidiol (2–[3–methyl–6–(1–methylethenyl)–2–cyclohexen–1–yl]–5–pentyl–1,3–benzenediol)
***Cannabinol (3–n–amyl–6,6,9–trimethyl–6–dibenzopyran–1–ol)
***Nabilone ((±)–trans–3–(1,1–dimethylheptyl)–6,6a, 7,8,10,10a–hexahydro–1–hydroxy–6,6–dimethyl–9H–dibenzo[b,d]pyran–9–one)
***Pyrahexyl (3–n–hexyl–6,6,9–trimethyl–7,8,9, 10–tetrahydro–6–dibenzopyran–1–ol)
***Tetrahydrocannabinol (tetrahydro–6,6,9–trimethyl–3–pentyl–6H–dibenzo[b,d]pyran–1–ol)
***3-(1,2-dimethylheptyl)-7,8,9,10-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (DMHP)
**but not including:
***Non–viable Cannabis seed, with the exception of its derivatives
***Mature Cannabis stalks that do not include leaves, flowers, seeds or branches; and fiber derived from such stalks

=== Schedule III ===

#[Repealed, 2012, c. 1, s. 45]
#Methylphenidate (α–phenyl–2–piperidineacetic acid methyl ester) and any salt thereof
#Methaqualone (2–methyl–3–(2–methylphenyl)–4(3H)–quinazolinone) and any salt thereof
#Mecloqualone (2–methyl–3–(2–chlorophenyl)–4(3H)–quinazolinone) and any salt thereof
#LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) (N,N–diethyllysergamide) and any salt thereof
#DET (N,N–Diethyltryptamine) (3–[(2–diethylamino) ethyl]indole) and any salt thereof
#DMT (N,N–Dimethyltryptamine) (3–[(2–dimethylamino) ethyl]indole) and any salt thereof
#N–Methyl–3–piperidyl benzilate (LBJ) (3–[(hydroxydiphenylacetyl)oxy]–1–methylpiperidine) and any salt thereof
#Harmaline (4,9–dihydro–7–methoxy–1–methyl–3H–pyrido(3,4–b)indole) and any salt thereof
#Harmalol (4,9–dihydro–1–methyl–3H–pyrido(3,4–b)indol–7–ol) and any salt thereof
#Psilocin (3–[2–(dimethylamino)ethyl]–4–hydroxyindole) and any salt thereof
#Psilocybin (3–[2–(dimethylamino)ethyl]–4–phosphoryloxyindole) and any salt thereof
#PCE (N–(1–phenylcyclohexyl)ethylamine) and any salt thereof
#TCP (1–[1–(2–Thienyl) cyclohexyl]piperidine) and any salt thereof
#PCPr (1–Phenyl–N–propylcyclohexanamine) and any salt thereof
#Rolicyclidine (1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl) pyrrolidine) and any salt thereof
#Mescaline (3,4,5–trimethoxybenzeneethanamine) and any salt thereof, but not peyote (lophophora)
#4–Methylaminorex (4,5–dihydro–4–methyl–5–phenyl–2–oxazolamine) and any salt thereof
#Cathinone ((–)–α–aminopropiophenone) and any salt thereof
#Fenetylline (d,l–3,7–dihydro–1,3–dimethyl–7–(2–[(1–methyl–2–phenethyl)amino]ethyl)–1H–purine–2, 6–dione) and any salt thereof
#Methcathinone (2–Methylamino–1–phenyl–1–propanone) and any salt thereof
#Benzylcyclidine (1–[1–(Phenylmethyl)cyclohexyl]piperidine) and any salt thereof
#4-methyl-PCP (1–[1–(4–Methylphenyl)cyclohexyl]piperidine) and any salt thereof
#2C-B (4–bromo–2,5–dimethoxybenzeneethanamine) and any salt, isomer or salt of isomer thereof
#and 26. [Repealed, 2012, c. 1, s. 46]
#[Repealed, 2012, c. 1, s. 46]
#Aminorex (4,5-dihydro-5-phenyl-2-oxazolamine) and any salt thereof
#Etryptamine (3-(2-aminobutyl)indole) and any salt thereof
#Lefetamine ((-)-N,N-dimethyl-α-phenylbenzeneethanamine) and any salt thereof
#Mesocarb (3-(α-methylphenethyl)-N-(phenylcarbamoyl)sydnone imine) and any salt thereof
#Zipeprol (4-(2-methoxy-2-phenylethyl)-α-(methoxyphenylmethyl)-1-piperazineethanol) and any salt thereof
#Amineptine (7-[(10,11-dihydro-5H-dibenzo[a,d]cyclohepten-5-yl)amino]heptanoic acid) and any salt thereof
#BZP (Benzylpiperazine) (1-benzylpiperazine) and its salts, isomers and salts of isomers
#TFMPP (Trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine) (1-(3-trifluoromethylphenyl)piperazine) and its salts, isomers and salts of isomers

=== Schedule IV ===

*Anabolic Steroids

*Benzodiazepines (e.g. triazolam, alprazolam (Xanax), diazepam (Valium)), except flunitrazepam (Rohypnol)

*Most barbiturates, including those used as general anesthetics and those indicated for seizure disorders and anxiety disorders are ultra-short to short acting, or long-acting, or those considered to be mild hypnotics. These include: phenobarbital, barbital, sodium thiopental, butalbital, and mephobarbital.

*Cathine

*Others

=== Schedule V ===

*Propylhexedrine

=== Schedule VI (Precursors)===

=== Schedule VII ===

Substance Amount 1. [[Cannabis]] resin 3 kg 2. Cannabis (marijuana) 3 kg

=== Schedule VIII ===

Substance Amount 1. Cannabis resin 1 g 2. Cannabis (marijuana) 30 g 1996, c. 19, Sch. VIII; SOR/97-230, s. 16.

== Laws ==

=== Possession ===

If treated as an indictable offence, the penalty is:

'''Schedule I''': Maximum 7 years imprisonment
'''Schedule II''': (exceeding amounts set in Schedule VIII): Maximum 5 years imprisonment
'''Schedule III''': (Requires a prescription or license to legally possess.) Maximum 3 years imprisonment
'''Schedule IV''': It is not an offence to possess a Schedule IV substance for personal use; however, Subsection (2) of Section (4) of the CDSA states that "no person shall seek or obtain a substance or authorization from a practitioner to obtain a substance in schedules I through IV." unless the person discloses to the practitioner particulars relating to the acquisition by the person of every substance in those Schedules, and of every authorization to obtain such substances, from any other practitioner within the preceding thirty days. Subsection (7) then states that it is an indictable offence to contravene subsection (2). Therefore, it is an indictable offence to attempt to acquire a Schedule IV substance but not an offence for possession. Section 5 provides that possession for the purpose of trafficking of a Schedule IV substance is an offence.

If treated as a summary conviction offence, the penalty is:

Maximum $1000 fine for first offence and/or maximum 6 months imprisonment.
Maximum $2000 fine for subsequent offence and/or maximum 1 year imprisonment.

Note: For amounts not exceeding those set in Schedule VIII, maximum fine of $1000 and/or maximum 6 months imprisonment is the only punishment.

=== Trafficking/Possession for the Purpose of ===

If tried as an indictable offence, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule I''' or '''Schedule II''' (exceeding amounts set in Schedule VII): Maximum life imprisonment

*Mandatory minimum 1 year jail sentence for trafficking a Schedule I drug under 1 kg, 2 years if amount exceeds 2 kg

'''Schedule II''' (not exceeding amounts set in Schedule VII): Maximum 5 years imprisonment
'''Schedule III''': Maximum 10 years imprisonment
'''Schedule IV''': Maximum 3 years imprisonment

Or, if tried as a summary conviction, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule III''': Maximum 18 months imprisonment
'''Schedule IV''': Maximum 1 year imprisonment

=== Exportation/Possession for the Purpose of ===

If tried as an indictable offence, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule I''' or '''Schedule II''': Maximum life imprisonment
'''Schedule III''' or '''Schedule IV''': Maximum 10 years imprisonment
'''Schedule V''' or '''Schedule VI''': Maximum 3 years imprisonment

Or, if tried as a summary conviction, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule III''' or '''Schedule IV''': Maximum 18 months imprisonment
'''Schedule V''' or '''Schedule VI''': Maximum 1 year imprisonment

=== Production ===

If tried as an indictable offence, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule I''' or '''Schedule II''' (excluding cannabis): Maximum life imprisonment
'''[[Cannabis]]''': Maximum 7 years imprisonment
'''Schedule III''': Maximum 10 years imprisonment
'''Schedule IV''': Maximum 3 years imprisonment

Or, if tried as a summary conviction, the defendant is liable to:

'''Schedule III''': Maximum 18 months imprisonment
'''Schedule IV''': Maximum 1 year imprisonment

== Amendments to the act ==

In November 2007, the Justice Minister Rob Nicholson introduced Bill C-26, which proposed a number of mandatory minimum penalties imposed on those who commit drug offences. On February 27, 2009 bill C-15, a re-introduction of C-26 received first reading in the 2nd Session of the 40th Parliament of Canada. On June 9, 2009, the House of Commons passed Bill C-15, and it is now awaiting study and approval by the Senate. On December 14, 2009, the Senate passed Bill C-15, with some amendments, for approval by the House of Commons. When the Canadian Parliament dissolved in a prorogation on January 31, 2010, Bill C15, along with all unpassed legislation then tabled before the Commons, fell. However it will be reintroduced when parliament resumes with a new session in March. In the official press release they explain "...We will reintroduce in their original form the consumer safety law (Bill C-6) and the anti-drug-crime law (Bill C-15).... We will seek Opposition agreement to proceed expeditiously with other Government legislation -- particularly laws urgently needed to fight crime...."

The current session of parliament passed Bill C-10 early in 2012, receiving Royal Assent in March. The final legislation sees changes made to four areas of the CDSA, outlining mandatory minimum sentences for offences relating to the trafficking and production of various controlled substances. Mandatory minimum sentencing does not apply to simple possession and trafficking in smaller amounts.

== See also ==

*[[Controlled Substances Act]] (US)

Controlled Substances Act

2015-04-23T22:04:46Z

Adm1n: Created page with "The '''Controlled Substances Act''' (CSA) was passed by the 91st United States Congress as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and sign..."

The '''Controlled Substances Act''' (CSA) was passed by the 91st United States Congress as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. The CSA is the federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use and distribution of certain substances is regulated. The Act also served as the national implementing legislation for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

The legislation created five Schedules (classifications), with varying qualifications for a substance to be included in each. Two federal agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, determine which substances are added to or removed from the various schedules, though the statute passed by Congress created the initial listing, and Congress has sometimes scheduled other substances through legislation such as the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Prevention Act of 2000, which placed gamma hydroxybutyrate in Schedule I. Classification decisions are required to be made on criteria including potential for abuse (an undefined term), currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and international treaties.

== History ==

The nation first outlawed addictive drugs in the early 1900s and the International Opium Convention helped lead international agreements regulating trade. The Food and Drugs Act of 1906 was the beginning of over 200 laws concerning public health and consumer protections. Others were the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1938), and the Kefauver Harris Amendment of 1962.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon announced that the Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, was preparing a comprehensive new measure to more effectively meet the narcotic and dangerous drug problems at the federal level by combining all existing federal laws into a single new statute. The CSA did not only combine existing federal drug laws but it also changed the nature of federal drug law policies, expanded the scope of federal drug laws and expanded Federal law enforcement as pertaining to controlled substances.

Part F of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 established the [[National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse]]—known as the Shafer Commission after its chairman, Raymond P. Shafer—to study [[cannabis]] abuse in the United States. During his presentation of the commission's First Report to Congress, Shafer recommended the decriminalization of [[marijuana]] in small amounts, saying,

<blockquote>[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.
</blockquote>

Rufus King notes that this stratagem was similar to that used by Harry Anslinger when he consolidated the previous anti-drug treaties into the Single Convention and took the opportunity to add new provisions that otherwise might have been unpalatable to the international community. According to David T. Courtwright, "the Act was part of an omnibus reform package designed to rationalize, and in some respects to liberalize, American drug policy." (Courtwright noted that the Act became, not libertarian, but instead repressionistic to the point of tyrannical, in its intent.) It eliminated mandatory minimum sentences and provided support for drug treatment and research.King notes that the rehabilitation clauses were added as a compromise to Senator Jim Hughes, who favored a moderate approach. The bill, as introduced by Senator Everett Dirksen, ran to 91 pages. While it was being drafted, the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, to be passed by state legislatures, was also being drafted by the Department of Justice; its wording closely mirrored the Controlled Substances Act.

Since its enactment in 1970, the Act has been amended several times:

*The Medical Device Amendments of 1976.

*The Psychotropic Substances Act of 1978 added provisions implementing the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

*The Controlled Substances Penalties Amendments Act of 1984.

*The Chemical Diversion and Trafficking Act of 1988 (implemented August 1, 1989 as Article 12) added provisions implementing the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and

*Psychotropic Substances that went into force on November 11, 1990.

*The Anabolic Steroids Act, passed as part of the Crime Control Act of 1990, which placed anabolic steroids into Schedule III:30

*The Domestic Chemical Diversion and Control Act of 1993 (effective on April 16, 1994) in response to the methamphetamine trafficking.

*The Federal Analog Act.

*The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008

*The Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (EPCS) 2010.

DEA Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) rule that was published in the Federal Register on 3/31/2010 and became effective on 6/1/2010. Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Prescriptions_for_Controlled_Substances Source: Drug Enforecement Administration (DEA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ). http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/ecomm/e_rx/faq/practitioners.htm To view the entire EPCS CFR DEA rule (Title 21, document citation 75, FR, Start Page 16235): http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/ecomm/e_rx/faq/practitioners.htm http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/manuals/pharm2/pharm_content.htm#9

(An official version of this publication may be obtained directly from the Government Printing Office (GPO))

The Wikipedia link for the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Federal_Regulations

Effective October 6, 2014, hydrocodone combination products (HCP), have been reclassified from Schedule III to Schedule II drugs.

== Enforcement authority ==

The Drug Enforcement Administration was established in 1973, combining the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and Customs’ drug agents. Proceedings to add, delete, or change the schedule of a drug or other substance may be initiated by the DEA, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or by petition from any interested party, including the manufacturer of a drug, a medical society or association, a pharmacy association, a public interest group concerned with drug abuse, a state or local government agency, or an individual citizen. When a petition is received by the DEA, the agency begins its own investigation of the drug.

The DEA also may begin an investigation of a drug at any time based upon information received from laboratories, state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies, or other sources of information. Once the DEA has collected the necessary data, the Deputy Administrator of DEA, requests from HHS a scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation as to whether the drug or other substance should be controlled or removed from control. This request is sent to the Assistant Secretary of Health of HHS. Then, HHS solicits information from the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and evaluations and recommendations from the [[National Institute on Drug Abuse]] and, on occasion, from the scientific and medical community at large. The Assistant Secretary, by authority of the Secretary, compiles the information and transmits back to the DEA a medical and scientific evaluation regarding the drug or other substance, a recommendation as to whether the drug should be controlled, and in what schedule it should be placed.

The medical and scientific evaluations are binding to the DEA with respect to scientific and medical matters. The recommendation on scheduling is binding only to the extent that if HHS recommends that the substance not be controlled, the DEA may not control the substance. Once the DEA has received the scientific and medical evaluation from HHS, the DEA Administrator will evaluate all available data and make a final decision whether to propose that a drug or other substance be controlled and into which schedule it should be placed. Under certain circumstances, the Government may temporarily schedule a drug without following the normal procedure. An example is when international treaties require control of a substance. In addition, 21 U.S.C. § 811(h) allows the Attorney General to temporarily place a substance in Schedule I "to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety". Thirty days' notice is required before the order can be issued, and the scheduling expires after a year; however, the period may be extended six months if rulemaking proceedings to permanently schedule the drug are in progress. In any case, once these proceedings are complete, the temporary order is automatically vacated. Unlike ordinary scheduling proceedings, such temporary orders are not subject to judicial review.

The CSA also creates a closed system of distribution for those authorized to handle controlled substances. The cornerstone of this system is the registration of all those authorized by the DEA to handle controlled substances. All individuals and firms that are registered are required to maintain complete and accurate inventories and records of all transactions involving controlled substances, as well as security for the storage of controlled substances.

== Treaty obligations ==

The Congressional findings in 21 USC §§ 801(7), 801a(2), and 801a(3) state that a major purpose of the CSA is to "enable the United States to meet all of its obligations" under international treaties. The CSA bears many resemblances to these Conventions. Both the CSA and the treaties set out a system for classifying controlled substances in several Schedules in accordance with the binding scientific and medical findings of a public health authority. Under 21 U.S.C. § 811 of the CSA, that authority is the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under Article 3 of the Single Convention and Article 2 of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the World Health Organization is that authority.

The domestic and international legal nature of these treaty obligations must be considered in light of the supremacy of the United States Constitution over treaties or acts and the equality of treaties and Congressional acts. In Reid v. Covert the Supreme Court of the United States addressed both these issues directly and clearly holding:

<blockquote>[N]o agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.
Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . ."

There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates, as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI, make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in "pursuance" of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights—let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition—to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government, and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.

There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. For example, in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U. S. 258, 133 U. S. 267, it declared:

"The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent."
This Court has repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that, when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument.</blockquote>

According to the Cato Institute, these treaties only bind (legally obligate) the United States to comply with them as long as that nation agrees to remain a state party to these treaties. The U.S. Congress and the President of the United States have the absolute sovereign right to withdraw from or abrogate at any time these two instruments, in accordance with said nation's Constitution, at which point these treaties will cease to bind that nation in any way, shape, or form.

A provision for automatic compliance with treaty obligations is found at 21 U.S.C. § 811(d), which also establishes mechanisms for amending international drug control regulations to correspond with HHS findings on scientific and medical issues. If control of a substance is mandated by the Single Convention, the Attorney General is required to "issue an order controlling such drug under the schedule he deems most appropriate to carry out such obligations," without regard to the normal scheduling procedure or the findings of the HHS Secretary. However, the Secretary has great influence over any drug scheduling proposal under the Single Convention, because 21 U.S.C. § 811(d)(2)(B) requires the Secretary the power to "evaluate the proposal and furnish a recommendation to the Secretary of State which shall be binding on the representative of the United States in discussions and negotiations relating to the proposal."

Similarly, if the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs adds or transfers a substance to a Schedule established by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, so that current U.S. regulations on the drug do not meet the treaty's requirements, the Secretary is required to issue a recommendation on how the substance should be scheduled under the CSA. If the Secretary agrees with the Commission's scheduling decision, he can recommend that the Attorney General initiate proceedings to reschedule the drug accordingly. If the HHS Secretary disagrees with the UN controls, however, the Attorney General must temporarily place the drug in Schedule IV or V (whichever meets the minimum requirements of the treaty) and exclude the substance from any regulations not mandated by the treaty, while the Secretary is required to request that the Secretary of State take action, through the Commission or the UN Economic and Social Council, to remove the drug from international control or transfer it to a different Schedule under the Convention. The temporary scheduling expires as soon as control is no longer needed to meet international treaty obligations.

This provision was invoked in 1984 to place Rohypnol (flunitrazepam) in Schedule IV. The drug did not then meet the Controlled Substances Act's criteria for scheduling; however, control was required by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. In 1999, an FDA official explained to Congress:

<blockquote>Rohypnol is not approved or available for medical use in the United States, but it is temporarily controlled in Schedule IV pursuant to a treaty obligation under the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. At the time flunitrazepam was placed temporarily in Schedule IV (November 5, 1984), there was no evidence of abuse or trafficking of the drug in the United States.</blockquote>

The Cato Institute's Handbook for Congress calls for repealing the CSA, an action that would likely bring the United States into conflict with international law, were the United States not to exercise its sovereign right to withdraw from and/or abrogate the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and/or the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances prior to repealing the Controlled Substances Act. The exception would be if the U.S. were to claim that the treaty obligations violate the United States Constitution. Many articles in these treaties—such as Article 35 and Article 36 of the Single Convention—are prefaced with phrases such as "Having due regard to their constitutional, legal and administrative systems, the Parties shall . . ." or "Subject to its constitutional limitations, each Party shall . . ." According to former United Nations Drug Control Programme Chief of Demand Reduction Cindy Fazey, "This has been used by the USA not to implement part of article 3 of the 1988 Convention, which prevents inciting others to use narcotic or psychotropic drugs, on the basis that this would be in contravention of their constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech".

== Schedules of controlled substances ==

Placing a drug or other substance in a certain Schedule or removing it from a certain Schedule is primarily based on 21 USC §§ 801, 801a, 802, 811, 812, 813, and 814. Every schedule otherwise requires finding and specifying the "potential for abuse" before a substance can be placed in that schedule. The specific classification of any given drug or other substance is usually a source of controversy, as is the purpose and effectiveness of the entire regulatory scheme.

<blockquote>The term "controlled substance" means a drug or other substance, or immediate precursor, included in schedule I, II, III, IV, or V of part B of this subchapter. The term does not include distilled spirits, wine, malt beverages, or tobacco, as those terms are defined or used in subtitle E of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

—21 U.S.C. § 802(6)</blockquote>

Some have argued that this is an important exemption, since alcohol and tobacco are the two most widely used drugs in the United States. Also of significance, the exclusion of alcohol includes wine which is sacramentally used by many major religious denominations in the United States.

== Schedule I controlled substances ==

''Main article: List of Schedule I drugs (US)''

Schedule I substances are those that have the following findings:

<blockquote>
A.The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
B.The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
C.There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.</blockquote>

No prescriptions may be written for Schedule I substances, and such substances are subject to production quotas by the DEA.

Under the DEA's interpretation of the CSA, a drug does not necessarily have to have the same "high potential for abuse" as heroin, for example, to merit placement in Schedule I:

<blockquote>[W]hen it comes to a drug that is currently listed in schedule I, if it is undisputed that such drug has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and it is further undisputed that the drug has at least some potential for abuse sufficient to warrant control under the CSA, the drug must remain in schedule I. In such circumstances, placement of the drug in schedules II through V would conflict with the CSA since such drug would not meet the criterion of "a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." 21 USC 812(b). (emphasis added)

—Drug Enforcement Administration, Notice of denial of petition to reschedule [[marijuana]] (2001)</blockquote>

Sentences for first-time, non-violent offenders convicted of trafficking in Schedule I drugs can easily turn into de facto life sentences when multiple sales are prosecuted in one proceeding. Sentences for violent offenders are much higher.

Drugs in this schedule include:

*αMT (alpha-methyltryptamine), an anti-depressant from the tryptamine family; first developed in the Soviet Union and marketed under the brand name Indopan.

*BZP (benzylpiperazine), a synthetic stimulant once sold as a designer drug. It has been shown to be associated with an increase in seizures if taken alone.[30] Although the effects of BZP are not as potent as MDMA, it can produce neuroadaptions that can cause an increase in the potential for abuse of this drug.

*Cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant found in the shrub Catha edulis (khat).

*DMT (dimethyltryptamine), a naturally-occurring psychedelic drug that is widespread throughout the plant kingdom and endogenous to the human body. DMT is the main psychoactive constituent in the psychedelic South American brew, ayahuasca, for which the UDV are granted exemption from DMT's schedule I status on the grounds of religious freedom.

*Etorphine, a semi-synthetic opioid possessing an analgesic potency approximately 1,000–3,000 times that of morphine.

*GHB, a general anaesthetic and treatment for narcolepsy-cataplexy and alcohol withdrawal with minimal side-effects and controlled action but a limited safe dosage range. It was placed in Schedule I in

*March 2000 after widespread recreational use led to increased emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and deaths. This drug is also listed in Schedule III for limited uses, under the trademark Xyrem.

*Heroin (diacetylmorphine), which is used in some European countries as a potent pain reliever in terminal cancer patients, and as second option, after morphine (it is about twice as potent, by weight, as morphine).

*LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a semi-synthetic psychedelic drug famous for its involvement in the counterculture of the 1960s.

*[[Marijuana]] and its [[cannabinoids]]. Pure (–)-trans-Δ9-[[tetrahydrocannabinol]] is also listed in Schedule III for limited uses, under the trademark Marinol. Ballot measures in several states such as Colorado, Washington, Oregon and others have made allowances for recreational and medical use of marijuana and/or have decriminalized possession of small amounts of [[marijuana]] – such measures operate only on state laws, and have no effect on Federal law. Despite such ballot measures, and multiple studies showing medicinal benefits, marijuana nevertheless remains on Schedule I, effective across all U.S. states and territories.

*MDMA ("ecstasy"), a stimulant, psychedelic, and entactogenic drug which initially garnered attention in psychedelic therapy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The medical community originally agreed upon placing it as a Schedule III substance, but the government denied this suggestion, despite two court rulings by the DEA's administrative law judge that placing MDMA in Schedule I was illegal. It was temporarily unscheduled after the first administrative hearing from December 22, 1987 – July 1, 1988.

*Mescaline, a naturally-occurring psychedelic drug and the main psychoactive constituent of peyote (Lophophora williamsii), San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi), and Peruvian torch cactus (Echinopsis peruviana).

*Methaqualone (Quaalude, Sopor, Mandrax), a sedative that was previously used for similar purposes as barbiturates, until it was rescheduled.

*Peyote (Lophophora williamsii), a cactus growing in nature primarily in northeastern Mexico; one of the few plants specifically scheduled, with a narrow exception to its legal status for religious use by members of the Native American Church.

*Psilocybin and psilocin, naturally-occurring psychedelic drugs and the main psychoactive constituents of psilocybin mushrooms.

*Controlled substance analogs intended for human consumption (as defined by the Federal Analog Act)

== Schedule II controlled substances ==

''Main article: List of Schedule II drugs (US)''

Schedule II substances are those that have the following findings:

<blockquote>
A.The drug or other substances have a high potential for abuse

B.The drug or other substances have currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, or currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions

C. Abuse of the drug or other substances may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.</blockquote>

Except when dispensed directly by a practitioner, other than a pharmacist, to an ultimate user, no controlled substance in Schedule II, which is a prescription drug as determined under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 USC 301 et seq.), may be dispensed without the written prescription of a practitioner, except that in emergency situations, as prescribed by the Secretary by regulation after consultation with the Attorney General, such drug may be dispensed upon oral prescription in accordance with section 503(b) of that Act (21 USC 353 (b)). With exceptions, an original prescription is always required even though faxing in a prescription in advance to a pharmacy by a prescriber is allowed. Prescriptions shall be retained in conformity with the requirements of section 827 of this title. No prescription for a controlled substance in schedule II may be refilled. Notably no emergency situation provisions exist outside the Controlled Substances Act's "closed system" although this closed system may be unavailable or nonfunctioning in the event of accidents in remote areas or disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Acts which would widely be considered morally imperative remain offenses subject to heavy penalties.

These drugs vary in potency: for example fentanyl is about 80 times as potent as morphine (heroin is roughly four times as potent). More significantly, they vary in nature. Pharmacology and CSA scheduling have a weak relationship.

Because refills of prescriptions for Schedule II substances are not allowed, it can be burdensome to both the practitioner and the patient if the substances are to be used on a long-term basis. To provide relief, in 2007, 21 C.F.R. 1306.12 was amended (at 72 FR 64921) to allow practitioners to write up to three prescriptions at once, to provide up to a 90-day supply, specifying on each the earliest date on which it may be filled.

Drugs in this schedule include:

*Cocaine (used as a topical anesthetic)

*Methylphenidate (Ritalin), Methylphenidate HCl (Concerta), and Dexmethylphenidate (Focalin): treatment of ADHD, narcolepsy, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome

*Amphetamine (originally placed on Schedule III, but moved to Schedule II in 1971): treatment of ADHD, narcolepsy

*Amphetamine mixed salts (Adderall), Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) and Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse): treatment of ADHD, narcolepsy

*Methamphetamine and Dextromethamphetamine (Desoxyn): treatment of ADHD, obesity

*Opium and opium tincture (Laudanum): treatment as a potent antidiarrheal

*Fentanyl and most other strong pure opioid agonists, i.e. levorphanol, opium

*Methadone: treatment of heroin addiction, extreme chronic pain

*Oxycodone (semi-synthetic opioid; active ingredient in Percocet, OxyContin, and Percodan)

*Oxymorphone (semi-synthetic opioid; active ingredient in Opana)

*Morphine

*Hydromorphone (semi-synthetic opioid; active ingredient in Dilaudid, Palladone)

*Pure codeine and any drug for non-parenteral administration containing the equivalent of more than 90 mg of codeine per dosage unit;

*Hydrocodone In any formulation as of October 2014 (Examples include Vicodin, Lortab, Norco, Tussionex);

*Secobarbital (Seconal)

*Pethidine (USAN: Meperidine; Demerol)

*Pure diphenoxylate

*Phencyclidine (PCP);

*Short-acting barbiturates, such as pentobarbital, Nembutal;

*Nabilone (Cesamet) A synthetic cannabinoid. An analogue to dronabinol (Marinol) which is a Schedule III drug.

*Tapentadol (Nucynta) A drug with mixed opioid agonist and norepinepherine re-uptake inhibitor activity.

== Schedule III controlled substances ==

''Main article: List of Schedule III drugs (US)''

Schedule III substances are those that have the following findings:

<blockquote>
A.The drug or other substance has a potential for abuse less than the drugs or other substances in schedules I and II.

B.The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

C. Abuse of the drug or other substance may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.</blockquote>

Except when dispensed directly by a practitioner, other than a pharmacist, to an ultimate user, no controlled substance in schedule III or IV, which is a prescription drug as determined under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 USC 301 et seq.), may be dispensed without a written or oral prescription in conformity with section 503(b) of that Act (21 USC 353 (b)). Such prescriptions may not be filled or refilled more than six months after the date thereof or be refilled more than five times after the date of the prescription unless renewed by the practitioner. A prescription for controlled substances in Schedules III, IV, and V issued by a practitioner, may be communicated either orally, in writing, or by facsimile to the pharmacist, and may be refilled if so authorized on the prescription or by call-in. Control of wholesale distribution is somewhat less stringent than Schedule II drugs. Provisions for emergency situations are less restrictive within the "closed system" of the Controlled Substances Act than for Schedule II though no schedule has provisions to address circumstances where the closed system is unavailable, nonfunctioning or otherwise inadequate.

Drugs in this schedule include:

*Anabolic steroids (including prohormones such as androstenedione);

*Intermediate-acting barbiturates, such as talbutal or butalbital;

*Buprenorphine (semi-synthetic opioid; active in Suboxone, Subutex)

*Dihydrocodeine when compounded with other substances, to a certain dosage and concentration.

*Ketamine, a drug originally developed as a safer, shorter-acting replacement for PCP (mainly for use as a human anesthetic) but has since become popular as a veterinary and pediatric anesthetic;

*Xyrem, a preparation of GHB used to treat narcolepsy. Xyrem is in Schedule III but with a restricted distribution system. All other forms of GHB are in Schedule I;

*Marinol, synthetically prepared [[tetrahydrocannabinol ]](officially referred to by its INN, dronabinol) used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, as well as appetite loss caused by AIDS;

*Paregoric, an antidiarrheal and anti-tussive, which contains opium combined with camphor (which makes it less addiction-prone than laudanum, which is in Schedule II);

*Phendimetrazine Tartrate, a stimulant synthesized for use as an anorexiant;

*Benzphetamine HCl (Didrex), a stimulant designed for use as an anorexiant;

*Fast-acting barbiturates such as secobarbital (Seconal) and pentobarbital (Nembutal), when combined with one or more additional active ingredient(s) not in Schedule II (e.g., Carbrital (no longer marketed), a combination of pentobarbital and carbromal).

*Ergine (lysergic acid amide), listed as a sedative but considered by some to be psychedelic. An inefficient precursor to its N,N-diethyl analogue, LSD, ergine occurs naturally in the seeds of the common garden flowers Turbina corymbosa, Ipomoea tricolor, and Argyreia nervosa.

== Schedule IV controlled substances ==

''Main article: List of Schedule IV drugs (US)''

"Placement on schedules; findings required Schedule IV substances are those that have the following findings:

<blockquote>
A.The drug or other substance has a low potential for abuse relative to the drugs or other substances in schedule III

B.The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States

C.Abuse of the drug or other substance may lead to limited physical dependence or psychological dependence relative to the drugs or other substances in schedule III</blockquote>

Control measures are similar to Schedule III. Prescriptions for Schedule IV drugs may be refilled up to five times within a six-month period. A prescription for controlled substances in Schedules III, IV, and V issued by a practitioner, may be communicated either orally, in writing, or by facsimile to the pharmacist, and may be refilled if so authorized on the prescription or by call-in.

Drugs in this schedule include:

*Benzodiazepines, such as alprazolam (Xanax), chlordiazepoxide (Librium), clonazepam (Klonopin), diazepam (Valium); Lorazepam (Ativan):
**temazepam (Restoril) (note that some states require specially coded prescriptions for temazepam);
**flunitrazepam (Rohypnol) (note that flunitrazepam is not used medically in the United States);

*The benzodiazepine-like Z-drugs: zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone (Imovane), eszopiclone (Lunesta), and zaleplon (Sonata) (zopiclone is not commercially available in the U.S.);

*Chloral hydrate, a sedative-hypnotic;

*Long-acting barbiturates such as phenobarbital;

*Some partial agonist opioid analgesics, such as pentazocine (Talwin);

*The stimulant-like drug modafinil (sold in the U.S. as Provigil) as well as its (R)-enantiomer armodafinil (sold in the U.S. as Nuvigil);

*Difenoxin, an antidiarrheal drug, such as when combined with atropine (Motofen) (difenoxin is 2–3 times more potent than diphenoxylate, the active ingredient in Lomotil, which is in Schedule V);

*Tramadol (Ultram);

*Carisoprodol (Soma).

== Schedule V controlled substances ==

''Main article: List of Schedule V drugs (US)''

Schedule V substances are those that have the following findings:

<blockquote>
A.The drug or other substance has a low potential for abuse relative to the drugs or other substances in schedule IV

B.The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States

C.Abuse of the drug or other substance may lead to limited physical dependence or psychological dependence relative to the drugs or other substances in schedule IV.</blockquote>

No controlled substance in schedule V which is a drug may be distributed or dispensed other than for a medical purpose. A prescription for controlled substances in Schedules III, IV, and V issued by a practitioner, may be communicated either orally, in writing, or by facsimile to the pharmacist, and may be refilled if so authorized on the prescription or by call-in.

Drugs in this schedule include:

*Cough suppressants containing small amounts of codeine (e.g., promethazine+codeine);

*Preparations containing small amounts of opium or diphenoxylate (used to treat diarrhea);

*Some anticonvulsants, such as pregabalin (Lyrica), lacosamide (Vimpat) and retigabine (ezogabine) (Potiga/Trobalt);

*Pyrovalerone (used to treat chronic fatigue and as an appetite suppressant for weight loss);

*Some centrally-acting antidiarrheals, such as diphenoxylate (Lomotil) when mixed with atropine (to make it unpleasant for people to grind up, cook, and inject). Difenoxin with atropine (Motofen) has been moved to Schedule IV. Without atropine, these drugs are in Schedule II.

== Federal regulation of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine ==

''See also: Pseudoephedrine → National Legislation → United States''

Due to pseudoephedrine (PSE) and ephedrine being widely used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, the U.S. Congress passed the Methamphetamine Precursor Control Act which places restrictions on the sale of any medicine containing pseudoephedrine. That bill was then superseded by the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, which was passed as an amendment to the Patriot Act renewal and included wider and more comprehensive restrictions on the sale of PSE-containing products. This law requires customer signature of a "log-book" and presentation of valid photo ID in order to purchase PSE-containing products from all retailers.

Additionally, the law restricts an individual to the retail purchase of no more than three packages or 3.6 grams of such product per day per purchase – and no more than 9 grams in a single month. A violation of this statute constitutes a misdemeanor. Retailers now commonly require PSE-containing products to be sold behind the pharmacy or service counter. This affects many preparations which were previously available over-the-counter without restriction, such as Actifed and its generic equivalents.

== Alternatives to scheduling ==

The UK Science and Technology Select Committee published a 2006 report which suggested that the current system of recreational drug classification in the UK was arbitrary and unscientific and that a more scientific measure of harm should be used for classifying drugs. The new classification system suggested that heroin, cocaine, alcohol, benzodiazepines, methamphetamine, and tobacco have a high or a very high risk of harm or abuse potential, whilst cannabis, LSD, and Ecstasy were all below the two legal drugs in harm or abuse potential.

A 2007 report by the The Lancet, in the UK published a journal about researchers having introduced an alternative method for drug classification. This new system uses a "nine category matrix of harm, with an expert Delphic procedure, to assess the harms of a range of illicit drugs in an evidence-based fashion." The new classification system suggested that alcohol and tobacco were in the mid-range of harm, while [[cannabis]], LSD, and MDMA were all less harmful than the two legal drugs.

== Criticism ==

There has been criticism against the schedule classifications of the listed drugs and substances in the CSA, citing undefined terms.

Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act

2015-04-20T22:51:36Z

Adm1n: /* Drafting the Law */

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws developed the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act in 1934 due to the lack of restrictions in the Harrison Act of 1914. The act was a revenue-producing act and, while it provided penalties for violations, it did not give authority to the states to exercise police power regarding either seizure of drugs used in illicit trade or punishment of those responsible.

Harry J. Anslinger, a member of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, campaigned and lobbied for passage of the Uniform State Narcotic Act and the Hearst newspaper media chain was an effective ally in his campaign for passage. The draft of the act was submitted to the American Bar Association at its meeting in Washington in 1932, and it was officially approved by that body and sent to various states the following year. The purpose of the act was to make the law uniform in various states with respect to controlling the sale and use of narcotic drugs. The Commissioners on Uniform State Laws intended to effectively safeguard and regulate narcotic drugs throughout all of the states.

Initially, only nine states adopted the uniform state statute. President Roosevelt supported adoption of the Act in many more states in a message on Columbia radio network in March 1935. Anslinger launched a nationwide media campaign declaring that marijuana causes temporary insanity. The advertisements featured young people smoking marijuana and then behaving recklessly, committing crimes, killing themselves and others, or dying from marijuana use. The propaganda campaign was a success and all states signed on.

== Background ==

Prior to 1890, laws concerning opiates were strictly imposed on a local city or state-by-state basis. One of the first was in San Francisco in 1875, where it became illegal to smoke opium outside of opium dens. It did not ban the sale, import or use otherwise. In the next 25 years, different states enacted opium laws ranging from outlawing opium dens altogether to making possession of opium, morphine and heroin without a physician's prescription illegal.

The first Congressional act that levied taxes on morphine and opium passed in 1890. From that time on, the federal government has had a series of laws and acts directly aimed at opiate use, abuse, and control. These are outlined below.

=== Pure Food and Drug Act ===

The Pure Food and Drug Act was created in 1906 to prevent the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated, misbranded, poisonous, or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors. If caught, the punishment included fines and prison time.

=== Smoking Opium Exclusion Act ===

The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 banned the importation, possession, and use of "smoking opium." The act became the first federal law to ban the use of non-medical substances; however, the act did not regulate opium-based medications.

=== The Harrison Act ===

The Harrison Act, also known as the Harrison Narcotic Act, was passed in 1914. It was the first measure to control narcotics trafficking. The act approached control through a revenue path—requiring those who transported, sold, or possessed narcotics to report it to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to pay taxes. The Harrison Act limited opium availability to only small amounts as prescribed by doctors, who were required to register and pay taxes on the amounts they prescribed.

=== Supreme Court ===

The United States Supreme Court ratified the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act in Webb et al., v. United States and United States v. Doremus, then again in Jin Fuey Moy v. United States, in 1920, holding that doctors may not prescribe maintenance supplies of narcotics to people addicted to narcotics. However, it does not prohibit doctors from prescribing narcotics to wean a patient off of the drug.

It was also the opinion of the court that prescribing narcotics to habitual users was not considered "professional practice" - hence it was considered illegal for doctors to prescribe opioids for the purposes of maintaining an addiction. It can be argued that today’s addiction medications are not intended to maintain an addiction but to facilitate addiction remission. In which case, this opinion of the court should not preclude practitioners from prescribing buprenorphine or methadone to patients suffering from an addictive disorder.

=== Heroin Act ===

The Heroin Act was passed in 1924. The act prohibited the manufacture, importation, and possession of heroin, including the medicinal use of the drug.

=== Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act ===

The Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act was enacted in 1922 to assure proper control of importation, sale, possession, production, and consumption of narcotics.

=== Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms ===

"The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is a unique law enforcement agency in the United States Department of Justice that protects our communities from violent criminals, criminal organizations, the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, the illegal use and storage of explosives, acts of arson and bombings, acts of terrorism, and the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco products."

The bureau decided they needed a uniform law in order to help keep control over illegal activity. Therefore, the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act was established.

== Necessity ==

The Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act in 1934 was implemented due to the lack of restrictions in the Harrison Act of 1914. The act was a revenue-producing act and, while it provided penalties for violations, it did not give authority to the states to exercise police power regarding either seizure of drugs used in illicit trade or punishment of those responsible.

The purpose of the act was to make the law uniform in the various states with respect to controlling the sale and use of narcotic drugs. The Commissioners on Uniform State Laws intended to effectively safeguard and regulate narcotic drugs throughout all of the states.

== Drafting the Law ==

The first tentative draft was prepared and submitted by a committee of commissioners in conjunction with Dr. William C. Woodward, Executive Secretary of the Bureau of Legal Medicine and Legislation of the American Medical Association, in 1925 at the commissioners meeting. The chairman of the committee established the first draft, but never presented it in the meeting. The first draft included the following definitions:

*"[[Cannabis indica]]" or "[[cannabis sativa]]" shall include any compound, manufacture, salt, derivative or preparation thereof and any synthetic substitute for any of them identical in chemical composition.

*"Habit forming drugs" shall mean coca leaves, opium, "cannabis indica" or "cannabis sativa".

There was not an explanation in the committee report or in the proceedings about the inclusion of cannabis under the prohibited or regulated drugs; therefore, the draft was recommitted for further study.

The second tentative draft was modified and presented in 1928. The draft, again, was not discussed at the conference but recommitted for further study.

After discussing the problems with the previous draft, two third drafts were submitted and presented in 1929, but both were recommitted for further study. The second third tentative draft was the first draft to remove [[cannabis]] from the definition of "habit forming drugs" and to include only a supplemental provision for dealing with the drug.

The chairman of the committee on the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act, Judge Deering, insisted on further research due to the inability to consult with the newly created Bureau of Narcotics. At this time the bureau was without a commissioner, but shortly afterward, Anslinger was appointed to the position.

After receiving suggestions from Commissioner Anslinger, the committee presented a fourth tentative draft to the national conference in September 1931. The section dealing with [[marijuana]] was identical to that included in the 1930 revised version of the third tentative draft. The national conference directed the committee to return the next year with a fifth tentative or final draft.

<blockquote>"The fifth (and final) tentative draft was adopted by the National Conference of Commissioners on October 8, 1932. There were some major changes in the Uniform Act between the fourth and the fifth tentative drafts with regard to the regulation of marijuana. Although the marijuana provisions remained supplemental to the main body of the act, any state wishing to regulate sale and possession of marijuana was instructed to simply add cannabis to the definition of 'narcotic drugs,' in which case all the other provisions of the act would apply to marijuana as well as the opiates and cocaine. It appears that the change from a supplemental section to a series of amendments to the relevant sections of the act was preferred by the Narcotics Bureau. The only opposition to adoption of the final draft came from some commissioners who objected to tying the uniform state law to the terms of the federal Harrison Act. This last obstacle to adoption of the act was overcome by the argument that a number of states had already passed such legislation so that the federalism problem should not stand in the way; the act was adopted 26-3. These floor arguments at the national conference are a most important indication that no one challenged or even brought up the issue of the designations of the drugs to be prohibited. Moreover, this brief debate confirms the notion that the Act received very little attention of any of the Commissioners other than those sitting on the committee that drafted it."</blockquote>

Examination of the annual proceedings of the commissioners immediately suggests several conclusions about the drafting and proposal of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act.

<blockquote>1.It was drafted in conjunction with the American Medical Association and after 1930, with Commissioner Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

2.It was not one of the more controversial uniform laws and it was given little consideration during the full meetings of the commissioners.

3.Impetus for the legislation, especially the optional marijuana provisions, came from the Bureau of Narcotics itself.

4.No scientific study of any kind was undertaken before the optional marijuana section was proposed.

5.The first three tentative drafts included marijuana within the general part of the act while the last two (including the one finally adopted by the commissioners) made marijuana the subject of a separate, optional provision.

6.The model for all the drafts of the uniform act was the 1927 New York State statute.</blockquote>

== Accomplishments ==

The Uniform Narcotic Drug Act was designed to aid the United States in carrying out its international obligations under the Hague Convention. The act diminished the growth and spread of the traffic in illicit narcotics by replacing the present inadequate and conflicting state laws. It utilized and called in to full exercise the powers that reside in the states alone, permitting prosecution in such cases as illegal possession, over which the federal courts have no jurisdiction.

Also the act made a necessary division of responsibility in narcotic law enforcement between the federal and several state governments. It was designed to coordinate enforcement machinery through mandatory cooperation of state with federal officers. In addition, it prohibited sales and transfers of narcotic drugs except under state licenses, to include manufacturers and wholesalers; a requirement solely within the power of the states.

Prohibit production of narcotic drugs within state borders, except by specific license and under strict regulation. Include within the definition of narcotic drugs those narcotics that may be prepared synthetically (such as tropococaine) as well as those directly derived from opium and coca leaves.

Provide for revocation of licenses for violations of the state narcotic law, making direct control of this phase of enforcement beyond the power of the federal government.

Strengthen enforcement by making admissible as evidence what are normally privileged communications when they are used to procure unlawfully a narcotic drug.

Require the return of the unused portion of a narcotic drug to the practitioner when no longer required as a medicine by the patient.

Permit of prosecution in all cases of those obtaining narcotic drugs by fraud or deceit, and particularly in those cases where narcotics are obtained by means of false or altered prescriptions.

Arguments for and against drug prohibition

2015-04-19T22:45:16Z

Adm1n:

Arguments about the prohibition of drugs, and over drug policy reform, are subjects of considerable controversy. The following is a presentation of major drug policy arguments, including those for drug law enforcement on one side of the debate, and arguments for drug law reform on the other.

== Efficiency ==

=== Drug laws are effective ===

Supporters of prohibition claim that drug laws have a successful track record suppressing illicit drug use since they were introduced 100 years ago. The licit drug alcohol has current (last 12 months) user rates as high as 80-90% in populations over 14 years of age, and tobacco has historically had current use rates up to 60% of adult populations, yet the percentages currently using illicit drugs in OECD countries are generally below 1% of the population excepting [[cannabis]] where most are between 3% and 10%, with six countries between 11% and 17%.

In the 50-year period following the first 1912 international convention restricting use of opium, heroin and cocaine, the United States' use of illicit drugs other than [[cannabis]] was consistently below 0.5% of the population, with cannabis rising to 1-2% of the population between 1955 and 1965. With the advent of the counter-culture movement from the late 1950s, where illicit drug use was promoted as mind-expanding and relatively harmless, illicit drug use rose sharply. With illicit drug use peaking in the 1970s in the United States, the "Just Say No" campaign, initiated under the patronage of Nancy Reagan, coincided with recent (past month) illicit drug use decreases from 14.1% in 1979 to 5.8% in 1992, a drop of 60%.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, has drawn attention to the drug policy of Sweden, arguing:

<blockquote>Sweden is an excellent example. Drug use is just a third of the European average while spending on drug control is three times the EU average. For three decades,[nb 1] Sweden has had consistent and coherent drug-control policies, regardless of which party is in power. There is a strong emphasis on prevention, drug laws have been progressively tightened, and extensive treatment and rehabilitation opportunities are available to users. The police take drug crime seriously. Governments and societies must keep their nerve and avoid being swayed by misguided notions of tolerance. They must not lose sight of the fact that illicit drugs are dangerous - that is why the world agreed to restrict them.

—Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC (March 2007). "Cannabis... call it anything but "soft"", The Independent (UK).</blockquote>

In Europe, Sweden spends the second highest percentage of GDP, after the Netherlands, on drug control. The UNODC argues that when Sweden reduced spending on education and rehabilitation in the 1990s in a context of higher youth unemployment and declining GDP growth, illicit drug use rose but restoring expenditure from 2002 again sharply decreased drug use as student surveys indicate. In 1998, a poll run by SIFO of 1,000 Swedes found that 96% wanted stronger action by government to stop drug abuse, and 95% wanted drug use to remain illegal.

Criticizing governments that have relaxed their drug laws, Antonio Maria Costa, speaking in Washington before the launch of the World Drug Report in June 2006, said:

<blockquote>After so many years of drug control experience, we now know that a coherent, long-term strategy can reduce drug supply, demand and trafficking. If this does not happen, it will be because some nations fail to take the drug issue sufficiently seriously and pursue inadequate policies. Many countries have the drug problem they deserve.</blockquote>

== Drug laws are ineffective ==

One of the prominent early critics of prohibition in the United States was August Vollmer, founder of the School of Criminology at University of California, Irvine and former president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In his 1936 book The Police and Modern Society, he stated his opinion that:

<blockquote>Stringent laws, spectacular police drives, vigorous prosecution, and imprisonment of addicts and peddlers have proved not only useless and enormously expensive as means of correcting this evil, but they are also unjustifiably and unbelievably cruel in their application to the unfortunate drug victims. Repression has driven this vice underground and produced the narcotic smugglers and supply agents, who have grown wealthy out of this evil practice and who, by devious methods, have stimulated traffic in drugs. Finally, and not the least of the evils associated with repression, the helpless addict has been forced to resort to crime in order to get money for the drug which is absolutely indispensable for his comfortable existence.

The first step in any plan to alleviate this dreadful affliction should be the establishment of Federal control and dispensation – at cost – of habit-forming drugs. With the profit motive gone, no effort would be made to encourage its use by private dispensers of narcotics, and the drug peddler would disappear. New addicts would be speedily discovered and through early treatment, some of these unfortunate victims might be saved from becoming hopelessly incurable.

Drug addiction, like prostitution, and like liquor, is not a police problem; it never has been, and never can be solved by policemen. It is first and last a medical problem, and if there is a solution it will be discovered not by policemen, but by scientific and competently trained medical experts whose sole objective will be the reduction and possible eradication of this devastating appetite. There should be intelligent treatment of the incurables in outpatient clinics, hospitalization of those not too far gone to respond to therapeutic measures, and application of the prophylactic principles which medicine applies to all scourges of mankind.</blockquote>

Stephen Rolles, writing in the British Medical Journal, argues:

<blockquote>Consensus is growing within the drugs field and beyond that the prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems, such as adulterated drugs and the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C infection among injecting drug users, but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market. These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market, corruption of law enforcement and governments.</blockquote>

These conclusions have been reached by a succession of committees and reports including, in the United Kingdom alone, the Police Foundation, the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, the Royal Society of Arts, and the UK Drug Policy Consortium. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has also acknowledged the many "unintended negative consequences" of drug enforcement.

The editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Fiona Godlee, gave her personal support to Rolles' call for decriminalisation, and the arguments drew particular support from Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who said we should be treating drugs "as a health issue rather than criminalising people" and "this could drastically reduce crime and improve health".

Danny Kushlik, head of external affairs at Transform, said the intervention of senior medical professionals was significant. He said: "Sir Ian's statement is yet another nail in prohibition's coffin. The Hippocratic oath says: 'First, do no harm'. Physicians are duty bound to speak out if the outcomes show that prohibition causes more harm than it reduces."

Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, made comments in a report in the profession's magazine, in which he said that drug-related crime costs the UK economy about £13bn a year and that there was growing evidence that decriminalisation could free up police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.

A report sponsored by the New York County Lawyers' Association, one of the largest local bar associations in the United States, argues on the subject of US drug policy:

<blockquote>Notwithstanding the vast public resources expended on the enforcement of penal statutes against users and distributors of controlled substances, contemporary drug policy appears to have failed, even on its own terms, in a number of notable respects. These include: minimal reduction in the consumption of controlled substances; failure to reduce violent crime; failure to markedly reduce drug importation, distribution and street-level drug sales; failure to reduce the widespread availability of drugs to potential users; failure to deter individuals from becoming involved in the drug trade; failure to impact upon the huge profits and financial opportunity available to individual "entrepreneurs" and organized underworld organizations through engaging in the illicit drug trade; the expenditure of great amounts of increasingly limited public resources in pursuit of a cost-intensive "penal" or "law-enforcement" based policy; failure to provide meaningful treatment and other assistance to substance abusers and their families; and failure to provide meaningful alternative economic opportunities to those attracted to the drug trade for lack of other available avenues for financial advancement.

Moreover, a growing body of evidence and opinion suggests that contemporary drug policy, as pursued in recent decades, may be counterproductive and even harmful to the society whose public safety it seeks to protect. This conclusion becomes more readily apparent when one distinguishes the harms suffered by society and its members directly attributable to the pharmacological effects of drug use upon human behavior, from those harms resulting from policies attempting to eradicate drug use.

With aid of these distinctions, we see that present drug policy appears to contribute to the increase of violence in our communities. It does so by permitting and indeed, causing the drug trade to remain a lucrative source of economic opportunity for street dealers, drug kingpins and all those willing to engage in the often violent, illicit, black market trade.

Meanwhile, the effect of present policy serves to stigmatize and marginalize drug users, thereby inhibiting and undermining the efforts of many such individuals to remain or become productive, gainfully employed members of society. Furthermore, current policy has not only failed to provide adequate access to treatment for substance abuse, it has, in many ways, rendered the obtaining of such treatment, and of other medical services, more difficult and even dangerous to pursue.</blockquote>

In response to claims that prohibition can work, as claimed by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, drawing attention to the drug policy of Sweden Henrik Tham has written that sometimes it's domestically important to stress drug policy as successful, as the case of Sweden where this notion is important, serving "the function of strengthening a threatened national identity in a situation where the traditional 'Swedish model' has come under increasingly hard attack from both inside and outside the country." Tham questions the success of the Swedish model - "The shift in Swedish drug policy since around 1980" ...(more difficult to receive nolle prosequi for minor drug crimes)[nb 1] ..."towards a more strict model has according to the official point of view been successful by comparison with the earlier, more lenient drug policy. However, available systematic indicators show that the prevalence of drug use has increased since around 1980, that the decrease in drug incidence was particularly marked during the 1970s and that some indicators point towards an increase during the 1990s."

Leif Lenke and Börje Olsson from Stockholm University have conducted research that showed how drug use have followed the youth unemployment in close correlation. They noted that unlike most of Europe, Sweden did not have widespread and lingering youth unemployment until the early 1990s financial crisis, suggesting that unattractive future prospects may contribute to the increase in drug use among the young. CAN, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs, 2009 report stated that the increase in drug use have continued since the 1990s with a slight dip in the mid-2000.

The professor emeritus in criminology at the University of Oslo, Nils Christie, pointed out Sweden as the hawk of international drug policy in a 2004 book. He said that Sweden are serving the role of being welfare alibi for, and lending legitimacy to the US drug war. Adding that USA and Sweden have had an extraordinary influence on UNODC as the biggest donor countries. Sweden was the second biggest donor financing 8% of the UNODC budget behind the European Commission in 2006, followed by the US. In 2007 and 2008 Sweden was the fourth biggest donor, behind the European Commission, USA and Canada. In 2009 it was the third, as USA withdrew some of its funding.

An editorial in The Economist argued:

<blockquote>fear [of legalisation] is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates.</blockquote>

Antonio Maria Costa's conviction that "countries have the drug problem they deserve" if they fail to follow the 'Swedish Model' in drug control has also been criticised in Peter Cohen's work - Looking at the UN, smelling a rat.

In 2011 report Global Commission on Drug Policy stated that "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world".

== Deterrence ==

=== Arguments that prohibition discourages drug use ===

A 2001 Australian study of 18- to 29-year-olds by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research suggests that prohibition deters illicit drug use. 29% of those who had never used [[cannabis]] cited the illegality of the substance as their reason for never using the drug, while 19% of those who had ceased use of [[cannabis]] cited its illegality as their reason.

Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the US ONDCP argues,

<blockquote>Controls and prohibitions help to keep prices higher, and higher prices help keep use rates relatively low, since drug use, especially among young people, is known to be sensitive to price. The relationship between pricing and rates of youth substance use is well-established with respect to alcohol and cigarette taxes. There is literature showing that increases in the price of cigarettes triggers declines in use."</blockquote>

The DEA argues "Legalization has been tried before—and failed miserably. Alaska's experiment with legalization in the 1970s led to the state's teens using [[marijuana]] at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska's residents to vote to re-criminalize [[marijuana]] in 1990."

Drug Free Australia has cited the Netherlands as an example of drug policy failure because it is soft in approach. They argue that the Dutch idea of going soft on cannabis dealers, thereby creating a "separation of markets" from hard drug dealers has failed to stem the initiation to drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines, saying that, in 1998, the Netherlands had the third highest cannabis and cocaine use in Europe. According to Barry McCaffrey of US Office of Drug Control Policy, Dutch tolerance has allowed the Netherlands to become a criminal epicentre for illicit synthetic drug manufacture, particularly ecstasy, as well as the home for production and worldwide export of strains of [[cannabis]] with [[THC]] reportedly 10 times higher than normal. Gil Kerlikowske has attested that, where there were once thousands of [[cannabis]] cafés there are now only several hundred. Levels of [[cannabis]] use, in 2005 only marginally higher than in 1998, while other European countries have accelerated past them, are more likely, Drug Free Australia argues, the result of a growing intolerance of [[cannabis]] in the Netherlands rather than a growing tolerance. Drug Free Australia has also argued that British reductions in [[cannabis]] use after softer legislation may be more so the result of heavy UK media exposure of the stronger evidence of links between [[cannabis]] and psychosis.

== Arguments that prohibition does not discourage drug use ==

It has been suggested that drug law reform could reduce the use of hard drugs as it has in countries such as The Netherlands. According to a 2009 annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Dutch are among the lowest users of [[marijuana]] or [[cannabis]] in Europe, despite the Netherlands' policy on soft drugs being one of the most liberal in Europe, allowing for the sale of [[marijuana]] at "coffee shops", which the Dutch have allowed to operate for decades, and possession of less than 5 grams (0.18 oz).

British Crime Survey statistics indicated that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds using [[cannabis]] decreased from 28% a decade ago to 21%, with its declining popularity accelerating after the decision to downgrade the drug to class C was announced in January 2004. The BCS figures, published in October 2007, showed that the proportion of frequent users in the 16-24 age group (i.e. who were using cannabis more than once a month), fell from 12% to 8% in the past four years.

The use of drugs by minors is much more difficult to control with drugs prohibited. To effectively regulate the sellers of drugs so as to ensure that they only sell drugs to adults, drugs must be legalized, and the sellers licensed. With drugs prohibited, sellers are "underground" and therefore nearly impossible to control. Licensed sellers in a community sometimes attempt to increase their income by selling to minors, but when the community suspects such activity, it is a trivial task to discover which of the licensed sellers is breaking the law, and then put them out of business. Underground sellers may adhere to a "code or honor" and not sell to minors, but, when they do sell to minors, it is very difficult to expose. The difficulty results from the somewhat sophisticated culture of underground drug sales and use that has evolved, with one of the most fundamental adaption mechanisms of this culture that the sellers and consumers act such in such a manner so as to make it as difficult as possible for outsiders to discover information about their activities, including, of course, who is selling to whom.

== Gateway drug theory ==

Main article: Gateway drug theory

=== Arguments that cannabis is a gateway drug ===

The US Drug Enforcement Agency's "2008 Marijuana Sourcebook" argues that recent research supports the gateway hypothesis that certain drugs (such as [[cannabis]]) act as gateways to use of 'harder' drugs such as heroin, either because of social contact or because of an increasing search for a better high. Proponents cite studies such as that of 311 same sex twins, where only one twin smoked [[cannabis]] before age 17, and where such early [[cannabis]] smokers were five times more likely than their twin to move on to harder drugs. However, opposition groups have explained this result as due to the fact that [[marijuana]] users are forced to purchase from illegal drug dealers, thus increasing their accessibility to 'harder' drugs.

=== Arguments that cannabis is not a gateway drug ===

Several research studies have addressed the question whether [[cannabis]] leads to the use of harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin. A study of drug users in Amsterdam over a 10-year period conducted by Jan van Ours of Tilburg University in the Netherlands concluded that [[cannabis]] is not a stepping stone to using cocaine or heroin. The study found that there was little difference in the probability of an individual taking up cocaine as to whether or not he or she had used [[cannabis]].

The US Institute of Medicine found no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of [[marijuana]] are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.

In the American Journal of Public Health, Andrew Golub and Bruce Johnson of the National Development and Research Institute in New York wrote that young people who smoked [[marijuana]] in the generations before and after the baby boomers did not appear to be likely to move on to harder drugs.

Researchers from the independent Rand Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica, California, looking at data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse between 1982 and 1994, concluded that teenagers who took hard drugs did so whether they had first tried [[cannabis]] or not.

== Health ==

=== Health arguments for drug laws ===

Advocates of prohibition argue that particular drugs should be illegal because they are harmful. Drug Free Australia for example argues "That illicit drugs are inherently harmful substances is attested by the very nomenclature of the 'harm reduction' movement." The U.S. government has argued that illegal drugs are "far more deadly than alcohol" saying "although alcohol is used by seven times as many people as drugs, the number of deaths induced by those substances is not far apart. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during 2000, there were 15,852 drug-induced deaths; only slightly less than the 18,539 alcohol-induced deaths." Ratios of the harms of illicit opiates to licit alcohol and tobacco in Australia are similar, with 2 deaths per hundred opiate users per annum versus 0.22 deaths per hundred for alcohol (9 times less) per year and 0.3 for tobacco (7 times less).

The DEA has said:

<blockquote>[[Marijuana]] is far more powerful than it used to be. In 2000, there were six times as many emergency room mentions of [[marijuana]] use as there were in 1990, despite the fact that the number of people using [[marijuana]] is roughly the same. In 1999, a record 225,000 Americans entered substance abuse treatment primarily for marijuana dependence, second only to heroin—and not by much. [...] According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "Studies show that someone who smokes five joints per week may be taking in as many cancer-causing chemicals as someone who smokes a full pack of cigarettes every day." Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, including the most harmful substances found in tobacco smoke. For example, smoking one marijuana cigarette deposits about four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered tobacco cigarette. [...] The short-term effects are also harmful. They include: memory loss, distorted perception, trouble with thinking and problem solving, loss of motor skills, decrease in muscle strength, increased heart rate, and anxiety.[[ Marijuana]] impacts young people's mental development, their ability to concentrate in school, and their motivation and initiative to reach goals. And [[marijuana]] affects people of all ages: Harvard University researchers report that the risk of a heart attack is five times higher than usual in the hour after smoking [[marijuana]].

—US Drug Enforcement Administration (2003). "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization"</blockquote>

Many of the deaths from using [[cannabis]], other than from car accidents while intoxicated or violence and aggression, are more likely to figure in the longer term, just as with tobacco, where both nicotine overdose and [[cannabis]] overdose are extremely rare. While ecstasy may have lower rates of immediate mortality than some other illicits, there is a growing science on the already recognized considerable health harms of ecstasy. Drug Free Australia argues that distinctions between "soft" and "hard" drugs are entirely artificial, and titling cannabis "soft" or ecstasy "recreational" does not lessen the extensive harms of these substances.

[[Gil Kerlikowske]], director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) argues that in the United States, illegal drugs already cost $180 billion a year in health care, lost productivity, crime, and other expenditures, and that number would only increase under legalization because of increased use.

Drug Free Australia claims arguments that increased health harms of illicit drugs are the result of lack of government regulation of their purity and strength are not well supported by evidence. In Australia, which has had the highest opioid mortality per capita in the OECD, studies found that "overdose fatality is not a simple function of heroin dose or purity. There is no evidence of toxicity from contaminants of street heroin in Australia." Drug Free Australia claims that other causes of death such as suicide, murder and accidents are an effect of the drug themselves, not of their purity or otherwise.

==== Addiction ====

Drug Free Australia argues "Regarding the freedom of choice of those addicted to a drug, it is important to recognize that addiction is defined as compulsive by its very nature and that addictions curb individual freedom." [...] "As is the case with alcohol addiction, illicit drug addictions likewise serve to keep many such users functionally in poverty and often as a continued burden on friends, family and society. Where it is argued that all disabilities are a burden on society it must be recognized that most disabilities are not the result of a choice, whereas the decision to recreationally use illicit drugs is most commonly free, and with the knowledge that they may lead to an abundance of addictions."

=== Health arguments for drug law reform ===

There is evidence that many illicit drugs pose comparatively fewer health dangers than certain legal drugs. The health risks of MDMA (Ecstasy) have been exaggerated for instance, the risks from[[ cannabis ]]use also overstated, and health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater, even than from cocaine use for example (occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems).

==== Health benefits ====

Many trials have shown beneficial effects associated with psychoactive drug use -

There is evidence that MDMA (ecstasy) can treat or cure post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in cases of terminal illness.

LSD has been widely researched as a therapeutic agent, and has shown effectiveness against alcoholism, frigidity and various other disorders. See Psychedelic therapy.

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital found members of a religious group regularly using peyote scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects who did not use the hallucinogen.

A 2007 study by Santos et al. found that users of ayahuasca scored better on tests measuring anxiety and hopelessness than people who did not use the drug.

==== Quality control ====

According to a World Health Organisation report: "As cannabis is an illegal drug its cultivation, harvesting and distribution are not subject to quality control mechanisms to ensure the reliability and safety of the product used by consumers. It is well recognised in developing countries, such as Kenya, that illicit alcohol production can result in the contamination with toxic by-products or adulterants that can kill or seriously affect the health of users. The same may be true of illicit drugs such as opiates, cocaine and amphetamine in developed societies."

The government cannot enforce quality control on products sold and manufactured illegally. Examples include: the easier to make derivative MDA being sold as MDMA, heroin users unintentionally injecting brick dust, quinine, or fentanyl with which their heroin had been cut; and heroin/cocaine overdoses occurring as a result of users not knowing exactly how much they are taking.

The illegality of injectable drugs leads to a scarcity of needles which causes an increase in HIV infections. An easy cure to this problem, while upholding the illegality of drugs, is the Dutch policy of distributing free needles. The money spent on both increased health costs due to HIV infections and drug prohibition itself causes a drain upon society.

Studies on the effects of prescribing heroin to addicts as practiced in many European countries have shown better rates of success than any other available treatment in terms of assisting long-term users establish stable, crime-free lives. Many patients were able to find employment, some even started a family after years of homelessness and delinquency.

==== Block to research ====

The illegality of many recreational drugs may be dissuading research into new, more effective and perhaps safer recreational drugs. For example, it has been proposed that a drug with many of the same desired effects as alcohol could be created with fewer adverse health effects.

==== Misleading health statistics ====

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has tried to suggest that illegal drugs are "far more deadly than alcohol", arguing that "although alcohol is used by seven times as many people as drugs, the number of deaths induced by those substances is not far apart", quoting figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), claiming "during 2000, there were 15,852 drug-induced deaths; only slightly less than the 18,539 alcohol-induced deaths."

The DEA's use of such figures is questionable however. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association gave the number deaths caused by alcohol in year 2000 as 85,000 - over four and a half times greater than the DEA's preferred figure.[nb 2] The DEA's argument also overlooks tobacco, causing 435,000 US deaths in year 2000. And, the CDC definition of "drug-induced death" includes suicides using drugs, accidental overdose,[nb 3] and deaths from medically prescribed (not illegal) drugs. An analysis of drug-induced deaths for the 20-year period 1979–1998 found the vast majority attributable to accidental overdose, and suicide by drug taking, which together account for about 76 percent of all such deaths. Taking into account deaths from non-illegal drugs leaves only 21 percent of CDC "drug-induced death" figures actually due to the use of "illegal" drugs.

Claims that [[cannabis]] is far more powerful than it used to be are also dubious, with "scare figures" skewed by comparing the weakest [[cannabis]] from the past with the strongest of today. Figures regarding emergency room mentions of [[marijuana]] use can be misleading too, as "mention" of a drug in an emergency department visit does not mean that the drug was the cause of the visit.

=== Medical uses ===

A document published for the non-profit advocacy organization Europe Against Drugs (EURAD) argues that "one cannot vote for a medicine" and that a scientific approval basis is essential. It says that EU rules set out strict criteria for the acceptance of a drug for medical use:

"All active ingredients have to be identified and their chemistry determined. They have to be tested for purity with limits set for all impurities including pesticides, microbe & fungi and their products. These tests have to be validated and reproduced if necessary in an official laboratory. Animal testing will include information on fertility, embryo toxicity, immuno-toxicity, mutagenic and carcinogenic potential. Risks to humans, especially pregnant women and lactating mothers, will be evaluated. Adequate safety and efficacy trials must be carried out. They must state the method of administration and report on the results from different groups, i.e. healthy volunteers, patients, special groups of the elderly, people with liver and kidney problems and pregnant women. Adverse drug reactions (ADR) have to be stated and include any effects on driving or operating machinery."

==== Arguments against medical uses of prohibited drugs ====

According to Janet D. Lapey, M.D., of Concerned Citizens For Drug Prevention, " Due to a placebo effect, a patient may erroneously believe a drug is helpful when it is not. This is especially true of addictive, mind-altering drugs like [[marijuana]]. A [[marijuana]] withdrawal syndrome occurs, consisting of anxiety, depression, sleep and appetite disturbances, irritability, tremors, diaphoresis, nausea, muscle convulsions, and restlessness. Often, persons using [[marijuana]] erroneously believe that the drug is helping them combat these symptoms without realizing that actually [[marijuana]] is the cause of these effects. Therefore, when a patient anecdotally reports a drug to have medicinal value, this must be followed by objective scientific studies."

The US Drug Enforcement Administration also says:

<blockquote>There is a growing misconception that some illegal drugs can be taken safely. For example, savvy drug dealers have learned how to market drugs like Ecstasy to youth. Some in the Legalization Lobby even claim such drugs have medical value, despite the lack of conclusive scientific evidence.

—US Drug Enforcement Administration (2003). "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization"</blockquote>

==== Arguments for medical uses of prohibited drugs ====

Most of the psychoactive drugs now prohibited in modern societies have had medical uses in history. In natural plant drugs like opium, coca, [[cannabis]], mescaline, and psilocybin, the medical history usually dates back thousands of years and through a variety of cultures.

Psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin (the main ingredient in most hallucinogenic mushrooms) are the subject of renewed research interest because of their therapeutic potential. They could ease a variety of difficult-to-treat mental illnesses, such as chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and alcohol dependency. MDMA (Ecstasy) has been used for cognitive enhancement in people with Parkinson's Disease, and has shown potential in treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

==== Lack of access to controlled medications ====

Under prohibition, millions of people find it very difficult to obtain controlled medications, particularly opiate pain-relievers. The United Nations 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires that opiates be distributed only by medical prescription, but this is impractical in many areas.

Transnational Institute, June 2008:

<blockquote>According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) there is now an unmet demand in opiates. Ironically, the current drug control regulations hamper access to controlled opiate medications for therapeutic use. Many patients are unable to access morphine, methadone or an equivalent opioid. Global medical morphine consumption would rise five times if countries would make morphine available at the level of the calculated need, according to a recent WHO estimate.</blockquote>

New York Times, September 2007:

<blockquote>Under Sierra Leone law, morphine may be handled only by a pharmacist or doctor, explained Gabriel Madiye, the hospice's founder. But in all Sierra Leone there are only about 100 doctors — one for every 54,000 people, compared with one for every 350 in the United States.... "How can they say there is no demand when they don't allow it?" he [Madiye] asked. "How can they be so sure that it will get out of control when they haven't even tried it?"</blockquote>

== Economic ==

=== Economic arguments for prohibitive drug laws ===

The DEA argues that "compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction—whether in taxpayer dollars or in pain and suffering—government spending on drug control is minimal."

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, has said:

<blockquote>The economic argument for drug legalization says: legalize drugs, and generate tax income. This argument is gaining favour, as national administrations seek new sources of revenue during the current economic crisis. This legalize and tax argument is un-ethical and uneconomical. It proposes a perverse tax, generation upon generation, on marginalized cohorts (lost to addiction) to stimulate economic recovery. Are the partisans of this cause also in favour of legalizing and taxing other seemingly intractable crimes like human trafficking? Modern-day slaves (and there are millions of them) would surely generate good tax revenue to rescue failed banks. The economic argument is also based on poor fiscal logic: any reduction in the cost of drug control (due to lower law enforcement expenditure) will be offset by much higher expenditure on public health (due to the surge of drug consumption). The moral of the story: don't make wicked transactions.

—Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC (June 2009). Preface to World Drug Report 2009.</blockquote>

Gil Kerlikowske, current director of the US ONDCP, argues that legalizing drugs, then regulating and taxing their sale, would not be effective fiscally.

<blockquote>The tax revenue collected from alcohol pales in comparison to the costs associated with it. Federal excise taxes collected on alcohol in 2007 totaled around $9 billion; states collected around $5.5 billion. Taken together, this is less than 10 percent of the over $185 billion in alcohol-related costs from health care, lost productivity, and criminal justice. Tobacco also does not carry its economic weight when we tax it; each year we spend more than $200 billion on its social costs and collect only about $25 billion in taxes.

— Gil Kerlikowske, current director of the ONDCP (April 2010). Why Marijuana Legalization Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety.</blockquote>

Former directors of the ONDCP, John P. Walters and Barry McCaffrey have accused billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling, of bankrolling the pro-pot or drug legalisation movement. "These people use ignorance and their overwhelming amount of money to influence the electorate", Walters said. Billionaire US financier, George Soros said in his autobiography, "I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available." . The drug legalization lobby's vigorous and well funded promotion in media and schools of a 'safe use of illegal drugs' message. indicates that drug prohibition is in the midst of a pitched battle waged by those who are accepting not only of the drug user but who also strongly promote an acceptance of drug use itself.

==== Prohibition of hemp industry ====

Opposition to the legalisation of hemp, which uses plants of the [[cannabis]] genus for commercial purposes, centres on the fact that those wanting to legalize the use of [[cannabis ]]for recreational and medical purposes themselves present it as their Trojan horse for that very purpose:

<blockquote>Alex Shum, importers of hemp fabric, "feel that the way to legalize marijuana is to sell marijuana legally. When you can buy marijuana in your neighbourhood shopping mall, IT`S LEGAL! So, they are going to produce every conceivable thing out of hemp.

— [[High Times]], "Hemp Clothing is Here!", March 1990</blockquote>

=== Economic arguments for drug law reform ===

The United States efforts at drug prohibition started out with a US$350 million budget in 1971, and was in 2006 a US$30 billion campaign. These numbers only include direct prohibition enforcement expenditures, and as such only represent part of the total cost of prohibition. This $30 billion figure rises dramatically once other issues, such as the economic impact of holding 400,000 prisoners on prohibition violations, are factored in.

The war on drugs is extremely costly to such societies that outlaw drugs in terms of taxpayer money, lives, productivity, the inability of law enforcement to pursue mala in se crimes, and social inequality. Some proponents of decriminalization say that the financial and social costs of drug law enforcement far exceed the damages that the drugs themselves cause. For instance, in 1999 close to 60,000 prisoners (3.3% of the total incarcerated population) convicted of violating [[marijuana]] laws were behind bars at a cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year. In 1980, the total jail and prison population was 540,000, about one-quarter the size it is today. Drug offenders accounted for 6% of all prisoners. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, drug offenders now account for nearly 51%.

It has been argued that if the US government legalised [[marijuana]] it would save $7.7 billion per year in expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Also, that [[marijuana]] legalization would yield tax revenue of $2.4 billion annually if it were taxed like all other goods and $6.2 billion annually if it were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.

==== The creation of drug cartels ====

Mass arrests of local growers of [[marijuana]], for example, not only increase the price of local drugs, but lessens competition. Only major retailers that can handle massive shipments, have their own small fleet of aircraft, troops to defend the caravans and other sophisticated methods of eluding the police (such as lawyers), can survive by this regulation of the free market by the government

<blockquote>[…] it is because it's prohibited. See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

—Milton Friedman</blockquote>

==== Effect on producer countries ====

The United States' "War on Drugs" has added considerably to the political instability in South America. The huge profits to be made from cocaine and other South American-grown drugs are largely because they are illegal in the wealthy neighbouring nation. This drives people in the relatively poor countries of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil to break their own laws in organising the cultivation, preparation and trafficking of cocaine to the States. This has allowed criminal, paramilitary and guerrilla groups to reap huge profits, exacerbating already serious law-and-order and political problems. Within Bolivia, the political rise of current president Evo Morales is directly related to his grassroots movement against US-sponsored coca-eradication and criminalization policies. However, coca has been cultivated for centuries in the Andes. Among their various legitimate uses, coca leaves are chewed for their mild stimulant & appetite suppression effects, and steeped as a tea which is known to reduce the effects of human altitude sickness. Rural farmers in the poor regions in which coca has historically been cultivated often find themselves at the difficult and potentially violent intersection of government-sponsored eradication efforts, illegal cocaine producers & traffickers seeking coca supplies, anti-government paramilitary forces trafficking in cocaine as a source of revolutionary funding, and the historical hardships of rural subsistence farming (or the its typical alternative - abandoning their land and fleeing to an urban slum). In some regions, farmers' coca and other crops are frequently destroyed by U.S.-sponsored eradication treatments (usually sprayed from the air with varying degrees of discrimination), whether or not the farmers directly supply the cocaine trade, thereby destroying their livelihoods. Agricultural producers in these countries are pushed further to grow coca for the cocaine trade by the dumping of subsidised farming products (fruit, vegetables, grain etc.) produced by Western countries (predominantly US and EU agricultural surpluses) (see BBC reference, below), which reduces the prices they could otherwise receive for alternate crops such as maize. The net effect can be a depression of prices for all crops, which can both make the farmer's livelihood more precarious, and make the cocaine producers' coca supplies cheaper.

After providing a significant portion of the world's poppy for use in heroin production, Afghanistan went from producing practically no illegal drugs in 2000 (following banning by the Taliban), to cultivating what is now as much as 90% of the world's opium. The Taliban is currently believed to be heavily supported by the opium trade there.

Furthermore, the sale of the illegal drugs produces an influx of dollars that is outside the formal economy, and puts pressure on the currency exchange keeping the dollar low and making the export of legal products more difficult.

==== Prohibition of hemp industry ====

''Main article: [[Hemp]]''

The War on Drugs has resulted in the outlawing of the entire hemp industry in the United States. Hemp, which is a special cultivar of [[Cannabis Sativa]], does not have significant amounts of psychoactive ([[THC]]) substances in it, less than 1%. Without even realizing the plant had been outlawed several months prior, Popular Mechanics magazine published an article in 1938 entitled The New Billion-Dollar Crop anticipating the explosion of the hemp industry with the invention of machines to help process it. Recently, governmental refusal to take advantage of taxing [[hemp]] has been a point of criticism. Hemp has a large list of potential industrial uses including textiles, paper, rope, fuel, construction materials, and biocomposites (for use in cars for example). Hemp has some drawbacks, however, one being that the long fibers in hemp are only a part of the outer bast, and this has contributed to hemp having only modest commercial success in countries (for example in Canada) where it is legal to harvest hemp.

The seed of the hemp plant is highly nutritious. Rare for a plant, it contains all essential amino acids. Rare for any food, it is a good source of alpha-linolenic acid, an omega 3 fatty acid which is deficient in most diets.

== Crime, terrorism and social order ==

=== Arguments for prohibitive drug laws ===

While concerns are sometimes expressed that the "war on drugs" can never be won, there is a failure to recognize that other justifiably costly policing wars such as "blitzes" on speeding can likewise never be won. Such blitzes reduce and contain speeding, as with policing of illicit drug use. Failure to police speeding drivers simply allows inordinate harm to be inflicted on other individuals. Speeding is not legalized simply because it can never be eradicated.

There is an argument that much crime and terrorism is drug related or drug funded and that prohibition should reduce this.

Former US president George W. Bush, in signing the Drug-Free Communities Act Reauthorization Bill in December 2001, said, "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

The US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) says that drug-related offences may include violent behavior resulting from drug effects.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration claims:

<blockquote>Crime, violence and drug use go hand in hand. Six times as many homicides are committed by people under the influence of drugs, as by those who are looking for money to buy drugs. Most drug crimes aren't committed by people trying to pay for drugs; they're committed by people on drugs.

—US Drug Enforcement Administration (2003). "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization"</blockquote>

The U.S. government began the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program in 1987 to collect information on drug use among urban arrestees. In 1997, the National Institute of Justice expanded and reengineered the DUF study and renamed it the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. ADAM is a network of 34 research sites in select U.S. cities.

DUF research indicates that:

*Frequent use of hard drugs is one of the strongest indicators of a criminal career.

*Offenders who use drugs are among the most serious and active criminals, engaging in both property and violent crime.

*Early and persistent use of cocaine or heroin in the juvenile years is an indicator of serious, persistent criminal behavior in adulthood.

*Those arrested who are drug users are more likely than those not using drugs to be rearrested on pretrial release or fail to appear at trial.

Criminal behavior can importantly be the direct result of drug use which can cause emotional/brain damage, mental illness and anti-social behavior. Psychoactive drugs can have a powerful impact on behavior which may influence some people to commit crimes that have nothing to do with supporting the cost of their drug use. The use of drugs changes behavior and causes criminal activity because people will do things they wouldn't do if they were rational and free of the drug's influence. Cocaine-related paranoia is an example. If drug use increases with legalization, so will such forms of related violent crime as assaults, drugged driving, child abuse, and domestic violence.

That higher prices make the trade lucrative for criminals is recognized but countered by the argument that capitulating to illicit drug use on these grounds makes no more sense than capitulating to those who continue to traffic in human lives, a more expensive business because of its illegality and therefore more lucrative for the criminal, but necessary for the rights of vulnerable citizens.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says that the idea that our nation's prisons are overflowing with otherwise law abiding people convicted for nothing more than simple possession of marijuana is a myth, "an illusion conjured and aggressively perpetuated by drug advocacy groups seeking to relax or abolish America's marijuana laws." ONDCP state that the vast majority of inmates in state and federal prison for marijuana have been found guilty of much more than simple possession. Some were convicted for drug trafficking, some for marijuana possession along with one or more other offenses. And many of those serving time for marijuana pled down to possession in order to avoid prosecution on much more serious charges. In the US, just 1.6 percent of the state inmate population were held for offences involving only marijuana, and less than one percent of all state prisoners (0.7 percent) were incarcerated with marijuana possession as the only charge. An even smaller fraction of state prisoners were first time offenders (0.3 percent). The numbers on the US federal prisons are similar. In 2001, the overwhelming majority of offenders sentenced for marijuana crimes were convicted for trafficking and only 63 served time for simple possession.

Detective superintendent Eva Brännmark from the Swedish National Police Board, in a speech given to Drug Free Australia's first international conference on illicit drug use, said:

<blockquote>The police have been able to solve other crimes, e.g. burglaries, thefts and robberies, by questioning people arrested for using drugs. Some even provide information about people who are selling drugs, and the police have seized large amounts of drugs as a result of information from people brought in for a urine test. Many interrogations of drug abusers have also resulted in search warrants and the recovery of stolen property.

—Brännmark, Eva (2007). "Law Enforcement – the Swedish Model" in Drug Free Australia's First International Conference on Illicit Drug Use.</blockquote>

The argument that drug addicts of certain drugs are forced into crime by prohibition should first and foremost highlight the fact that this argument presupposes and underlines the addictive nature of some illicit drugs (which legalization proponents often downplay), addictive enough to create a viable criminal supply industry. Secondly, the harms of increased addictive drug use, which as previously outlined would be a consequence of legalization and its cheaper prices, far outweigh the current crime harms of prohibition. It is worth pointing out, this argument is not useful for substances such as LSD and mescaline, with no addictive properties.

=== Arguments for drug law reform ===

==== Violence and profits of drugs traffickers ====

Prohibition protects the drug cartel insofar as it keeps the distribution in the black market and creates the risk that makes smuggling profitable. As former federal narcotics officer Michael Levine states in relation to his undercover work with Colombian cocaine cartels, from Lamar

"I learned that not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they counted on it to increase the market price and to weed out the smaller, inefficient drug dealers. They found U.S. interdiction efforts laughable. The only U.S. action they feared was an effective demand reduction program. On one undercover tape-recorded conversation, a top cartel chief, Jorge Roman, expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it "a sham put on for the American taxpayer" that was actually "good for business".

Critics of drug prohibition often cite the fact that the end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 led to immediate decreases in murders and robberies to support the argument that legalization of drugs could have similar effects. Once those involved in the narcotics trade have a legal method of settling business disputes, the number of murders and violent crime could drop. Robert W. Sweet, a federal judge, strongly agrees: "The present policy of trying to prohibit the use of drugs through the use of criminal law is a mistake". When alcohol use was outlawed during prohibition, it gave rise to gang warfare and spurred the formation of some of the most well known criminals of the era, among them the infamous Al Capone. Similarly, drug dealers today resolve their disputes through violence and intimidation, something which legal drug vendors do not do. Prohibition critics also point to the fact that police are more likely to be corrupted in a system where bribe money is so available. Police corruption due to drugs is widespread enough that one pro-legalization newsletter has made it a weekly feature.

Drug money has been called a major source of income for terrorist organizations. Critics assert that legalization would remove this central source of support for terrorism. While politicians blame drug users for being a major source of financing terrorists, no clear evidence of this link has been provided. US government agencies and government officials have been caught trafficking drugs to finance US-supported terrorist actions in events such as the Iran-Contra Affair, and Manuel Noriega but the isolated nature of these events precludes them from being major sources of financing.

==== Corruption ====

Human rights organizations and legal scholars have claimed that drug prohibition inevitably leads to police corruption.

On 2 July 2010, former Interpol President Jackie Selebi was found guilty of corruption by the South African High Court in Johannesburg for accepting bribes worth $156,000 from a drug trafficker. After being charged in January 2008, Selebi resigned as president of Interpol and was put on extended leave as National Police Commissioner of South Africa.

==== Stigma of conviction ====

Despite the fact that most drug offenders are non-violent, the stigma attached to a conviction can prevent employment and education

== Children being lured into the illegal drug trade ==

Janet Crist of the White House [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]] mentioned that the anti-drug efforts have had "no direct effect on either the price or the availability of cocaine on our streets". Additionally, drug dealers show off expensive jewelry and clothing to young children. Some of these children are interested in making fast money instead of working legitimate jobs. Drug decriminalization would remove the "glamorous Al Capone-type traffickers who are role-models for the young".

The lack of government regulation and control over the lucrative illegal drug market has created a large population of unregulated drug dealers who lure many children into the illegal drug trade. The U.S. government's most recent 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12–17 sold illegal drugs during the previous 12 months preceding the survey. The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.7% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).

Despite more than $7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005, the federally funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana "easy to obtain." That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.

==== Legal dilemmas ====

Several drugs such as dimethyltryptamine, morphine and GHB are illegal to possess but are also inherently present in all humans as a result of endogenous synthesis. Since some jurisdictions classify possession of drugs to include having the drug present in the blood in any concentration, all residents of such jurisdictions are technically in possession of multiple illegal drugs at all times.

==== User cost of drugs ====

When the cost of drugs increases, drug users are more likely to commit crimes in order to obtain money to buy the expensive drugs. Legalizing drugs would make drugs reasonably cheap.

== Discriminatory ==

=== Arguments for inconsistent drug laws ===

In response to the issue of consistency with regard to drug prohibition and the dangers of alcohol former director of the ONDCP John P. Walters, has said, "It's ludicrous to say we have a great deal of problems from the use of alcohol so we should multiply that with [[marijuana]]".

== Arguments against inconsistent drug laws ==

Since alcohol prohibition ended and the [[War on Drugs]] began there has been much debate over the issue of consistency among legislators with regard to drug prohibition. Many anti-prohibition activists focus on the well-documented dangers of alcohol (such as alcoholism, cystisis, domestic violence, brain and liver damage). In addition to anecdotal evidence, they cite statistics to show more deaths caused by drunk driving under the influence of alcohol than by drivers under the influence of marijuana, and research which suggests that alcohol is more harmful than all but the most "dangerous" drugs. When the level of harm associated with the other drugs includes harm that arises solely as a result of the drugs illegality rather than merely that danger which is associated with actually using the drugs, only heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methadone were shown to be more harmful than the legal drug alcohol.

A 2002 DAWN report for the USA records two possible drug-induced deaths where [[marijuana]] was the only drug found. Legal drugs however, have been the cause of more than half a million deaths a year: 480,000 from tobacco smoking-related illnesses and 80,000 from alcohol abuse. Together, tobacco and alcohol cause about 20% of all yearly deaths in the USA.

It is argued that inconsistency between the harm caused and the legal status of these common drugs undermines the declared motives of the law enforcement agencies to reduce harm by prohibition, for example of [[marijuana]].

In February 2009, the UK government was accused by its most senior expert drugs adviser Professor David Nutt of making political decisions with regard to drug classification, for example in rejecting the scientific advice to downgrade ecstasy from a class A drug. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) report on ecstasy, based on a 12-month study of 4,000 academic papers, concluded that it is nowhere near as dangerous as other class A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine, and should be downgraded to class B. The advice was not followed. Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, was also widely criticised by the scientific community for bullying Professor David Nutt into apologising for his comments that, in the course of a normal year, more people died from falling off horses than died from taking ecstasy. Professor Nutt was later sacked by Jacqui Smith's successor as Home Secretary Alan Johnson; Johnson saying "It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them. I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD."

==== Consistency between drugs ====

In the United States, defendants convicted of selling crack cocaine receive equal sentences to those convicted of selling 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine. This disparity was lessened during the Obama administration when the Fair Sentencing Act 2010 changed the ratio to 18 to 1. The majority of offenders convicted for selling crack are poor and/or black, while the majority of those convicted for selling cocaine are not.

==== Same policy for distinct drugs ====

Many drug policies group all illegal drugs into a single category. Since drugs drastically vary in their effects, addictive potential, dosages, methods of production, and consumption the arguments either way could be seen as inconsistent.

==== Race and enforcement of drug laws ====

It has been alleged that current drug laws are enforced in such a way as to penalize non-whites more harshly and more often than whites, and to penalize the poor of all races more harshly and more often than the middle and upper classes. For example, up until 2012 crack cocaine carried penalties one hundred times more severe than cocaine despite the fact that these drugs are essentially identical. Especially in urban black communities, convictions were nearly exclusively for crack, while cocaine use is statistically much higher among affluent whites

== Civil rights ==

=== Civil rights arguments for prohibitive drug laws ===

Article 33 of the United States Convention on the Rights of the Child reads:

<blockquote>States Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties and to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of such substances.</blockquote>

Drug Free Australia argues:

<blockquote>The notion that illicit drug use is a victimless crime and that everyone should be free to do what they want with their body disregards the web of social interactions that constitute human existence. Affected by an individual's illicit drug use are children, parents, grandparents, friends, colleagues, work, victims of drugged drivers, crime victims, elder abuse, sexual victims etc. Illicit drug use is no less victimless than alcoholism.</blockquote>

Drug Free Australia gives the example that in 2007 one in every nine children under the age of 18 in the United States lived with at least one drug dependent or drug abusing parent. 2.1 million children in the United States live with at least one parent who was dependent on or abused illicit drugs.

The Christian Institute argues that there is no point in having criminal laws unless those caught breaking them will at least face prosecution. Less serious offenses, such as failing to complete a census form, may also attract a criminal record, so the contention that criminalizing drug use is draconian can be seen as overstatement.

<blockquote>"Parental substance dependence and abuse can have profound effects on children, including child abuse and neglect, injuries and deaths related to motor vehicle accidents, and increased odds that the children will become substance dependent or abusers themselves. Up-to-date estimates of the number of children living with substance-dependent or substance-abusing parents are needed for planning both adult treatment and prevention efforts and programs that support and protect affected children."</blockquote>

Drug Free Australia concludes any democratic society that deems the use of a certain drug to present unacceptable harm to the individual user, to present unacceptable harm to the users' surrounding community or to transfer too great a burden to the community will seek legislation which will curb that particular freedom of the individual.

Sweden's centre-right alliance government Moderate Party advocates "Zero tolerance for crime", arguing:

<blockquote>Few things restrict people's freedom as much as the consequences of violence, drugs and criminality in society.

—The Swedish Moderate Party (June 2006). Zero tolerance for crime - policy summary published prior to the Swedish general election in 2006.</blockquote>

Many people argue that only drug dealers should be fought and not the drug users themselves. But this rests on the fundamental error that big-time drugs smugglers and dealers hawk illicit drugs to new consumers. This is most often not the case. Rather it is the users themselves that are mostly responsible for recruiting new users through networks of friends or relatives demonstrating that users need to be targeted as the recruiters of new drug use, and that an emphasis on early rehabilitation for young users is the best answer to curbing widespread dealing. Sweden's mandatory rehabilitation program has resulted in the lowest drug use levels in the developed world.

The freedom of choice of those addicted to a drug is also questioned, recognizing that addiction is defined as compulsive by its very nature and that addictions in and of themselves curb individual freedom. Likewise, the proposal that addictive drugs should be legalized, regulated and opened to "free market dynamics" is immediately belied by the recognition that the drug market for an addict is no longer a free market – it is clear that they will pay any price when needing their drug.

=== Civil rights arguments for drug law reform ===

==== Cognitive liberty ====

Main article: Cognitive liberty

Authors such as Aldous Huxley, and Terence McKenna believed what persons do in private should not be regulated by the government. It is argued that persons should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies, including the recreational use of drugs, as long as they do not harm others. Such arguments often cite the harm principle of philosopher John Stuart Mill who urged that the state had no right to intervene to prevent individuals from doing something that harmed them, if no harm was thereby done to the rest of society: 'Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign' and 'The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.' The argument is that drug use is a victimless crime and as such the government has no right to prohibit it or punish drug consumers, much like the government does not forbid overeating, which causes significantly more deaths per year. This can be equated with the quest for freedom of thought.

=== Spiritual and religious ===

<blockquote>We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiosity can legitimately send its attention and where it can not. It's an essentially preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue, because what we're talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. In fact, not a religious sensibility, the religious sensibility.

—Terence McKenna in: Non-Ordinary States Through Vision Plants, Sound Photosynthesis, Mill Valley CA., 1988, ISBN 1-56964-709-7</blockquote>

Some religious groups including the União do Vegetal, the Native American Church, the Bwiti religion and the Rastafari movement (see religious and spiritual use of cannabis) use psychoactive substances as sacrament in religious rituals. In some religious practice, drugs are sometimes used as a conduit to an oceanic feeling or divine union, equated with mysticism or entheogenic ('that which causes God to be within an individual') experiences. In others, the 'entactogenic' qualities of drugs are used to enhance feelings of empathy among congregations.

==== Personal development and exploration ====

Some people believe that altered states of consciousness enable many people to push the boundaries of human experience, knowledge and creativity. There is thus a moral imperative to experiment with drugs in terms of human progress, teleological development, or just increased artistic creativity; such ideas are central to Cognitive Liberty, Stoned Ape Hypothesis and Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception.

In PiHKAL, Alexander Shulgin, argues that the psychedelics help us learn about ourselves; indeed that is where the name "psychedelic" (mind expanding) comes from.

<blockquote>I am completely convinced that there is a wealth of information built into us, with miles of intuitive knowledge tucked away in the genetic material of every one of our cells. Something akin to a library containing uncountable reference volumes, but without any obvious route of entry. And, without some means of access, there is no way to even begin to guess the extent and quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature.

—Alexander Shulgin in: PiHKAL, Introduction p.xvi, Transform Press, CA., 1991, ISBN 0-9630096-0-5</blockquote>

== Moral and ethical reasons ==

=== Moral arguments for prohibitive drug laws ===

=== Moral arguments for drug law reform ===

Many people, including some religious groups, argue that the war on drugs is itself immoral.

In 2007 Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales, one of Britain's most senior police officers, said "If policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral, to be replaced with an evidence-based unified system (specifically including tobacco and alcohol) aimed at minimisation of harms to society."

The author and physician Andrew Weil has commented on the peculiar attitude and emotional bias of some people who think "drug taking is bad", but who nevertheless consume alcohol, and formulate the unhelpful conception "We drink. Therefore alcohol is not a drug."

The UK drug policy reform group Release believe that the stigma attached to drug use needs to be removed. Release's actions have included challenging such stigmatisation with its "Nice People Take Drugs" advertising campaign.

== Political ==

=== Sending out signals ===

==== Arguments for sending out signals ====

Some argue that sending out signals should be a consideration of drug policy. Previous UK Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker argued "is not part of any system with respect to drugs [...] not only trying to send messages out to people who misuse drugs but also about trying to send messages out to people out there in the community?"

In response to the UK government's official drugs advisory body's opposition to cannabis reclassification (upwards, from a class C to a class B drug) in 2008, prime minister Gordon Brown said: "I believe that if we're sending out a signal, particularly to teenagers – and particular those at the most vulnerable age, young teenagers – that in any way we find cannabis acceptable, given all we know about the way that[[ cannabis]] is being sold in this country, that is not the right thing to do. There's a stronger case now for sending out a signal that [[cannabis]] is not only illegal, it's unacceptable."

==== Arguments against sending out signals ====

The Science and Technology Committee appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the Government's handling of scientific advice, risk and evidence in policy making agreed with Transform Drug Policy Foundation's view that "Criminal law is supposed to prevent crime, not 'send out' public health messages". Transform warned that sending out signals could backfire by "fostering distrust of police and public health messages amongst young people". The Select Committee's report said "The Government's desire to use the Class of a particular drug to send out a signal to potential users or dealers does not sit comfortably with the claim that the primary objective of the classification system is to categorise drugs according to the comparative harm associated with their misuse. It is also incompatible with the Government's stated commitment to evidence based policy making since it has never undertaken research to establish the relationship between the Class of a drug and the signal sent out and there is, therefore, no evidence base on which to draw in making these policy decisions."

=== Political calculation ===

==== Arguments for political calculation ====

John Donnelly, writing for the Boston Globe on the presidential race of 2000, suggested that the candidates' silence on drug policy may stem from a widely shared belief that any position even hinting at reducing penalties for drug use would be political suicide. Charles R. Schuster, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Presidents Reagan and Bush (Snr.), was reported as saying in 1997, "Talking sense about drug policy in today's climate of opinion can be political suicide."

Drug policy academic Mark A.R. Kleiman has argued:

<blockquote>There are things we can do about drug policy that would reduce the number of people in prison, and the extent of drug abuse and drug related crime. Legalization isn't one of them because there's not public support for it. And if we acknowledge the fact that, from the point of view of the majority of the population it's a loser, then it's not as if we can talk them out of that, so I think the legalization debate is mostly a distraction from doing the real work of fixing our drug policies

—Scott Morgan, quoting Mark Kleiman, Rule #1 of Drug Legalization is Don't Talk About Drug Legalization, Drug Reform Coordination Network, February 2008.</blockquote>

Scott Morgan reports how he once attended a discussion of Peter Reuter and David Boyum's book An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy, in which the authors admitted ignoring the legalization option in their analysis. Boyum claimed that there was no legitimate political support for ending the drug war and that he and Reuter had therefore confined themselves to recommendations that they thought were politically viable.

==== Arguments against political calculation ====

Two teenagers deaths in March 2010 triggered nationwide concern about the drug mephedrone in the UK. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended a ban on 29 March, which was quickly passed into law, but the decision was criticised for being politically rather than scientifically driven and led to the resignation of the ACMD's Eric Carlin, the eighth member of the council to leave in five months in protest at what was seen as political interference. Toxicology reports released later in May 2010 revealed that the boys had never taken the drug.

Professor Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said: "This shocking news should be a salutary lesson to tabloid journalists and prejudiced politicians who held a gun to the heads of the ACMD and demanded that this drug should be banned before a single autopsy had been completed [...] The politicians talk about using drug classification as a way of sending 'messages' to young people. I fear that the only message that will be sent by the hasty decision on mephedrone is that the drug laws deserve no respect."

Professor David Nutt, the former chairman of the ACMD, said: "the previous government's rush to ban mephedrone never had any serious scientific credibility – it looks much more like a decision based on a short-term electoral calculation. This news demonstrates why it's so important to base drug classification on the evidence, not fear, and why the police, media and politicians should only make public pronouncements once the facts are clear."

== Public opinion ==

=== Public opinion on prohibitive drug laws ===

A direct example of societal attitudes driving the International Drug Conventions is the 1925 speech by the Egyptian delegate M. El Guindy to the 1925 Geneva Convention forum which prohibited [[cannabis]] – largely reproduced in Willoughby, W. W.; In the late 19th and early 20th century drug use was regarded by the public "as alone a habit, vice, sign of weakness or dissipation", similar to the view of those who could not control their use of the licit drug alcohol. The use of illicit drugs has been prohibited internationally since 1912, an entire century, because of international agreement that the general community has a greater right to protect itself from the harms of illicit drug use than does an individual user to use a harmful substance recreationally.

Currently there is still greater public support for the continued prohibiting of illicit drug use than there is for legalizing and regulating the use of these substances. In the United States 82% of those polled by the Family Research Association in 1998 were opposed to the legalization of heroin and cocaine in the same manner as alcohol is legal. In October 2009 a Gallup poll found that 54% of those polled were against the legalization of cannabis. In Australia, which has had the highest levels of illicit drug use in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (or OECD) countries for more than a decade,according to a 2007 survey, 95% of Australians do not support the legalization of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, and 79% do not support the legalization of cannabis.

It can be argued that the negative attitudes to illicit drug use which issued in the international drug Conventions, with prohibitions against their use 100 years ago, still exist today. Taking again statistics from Australia, 97% disapprove of the regular use of heroin, 96% disapprove the regular use of amphetamines or cocaine, and 76.5% disapprove of the regular use of cannabis. In any democracy where "the will of the people" is respected by its political representatives, the prohibition of these substance might well be expected to remain intact.

=== Public opinion on drug law reform ===

According to Transform Drug Policy Foundation, over the past decade there has been strong shift in public opinion in favour of drug policy reform. This shift has taken place despite successive government's reluctance to consider or debate the subject, or even call to for an independent inquiry.

A national telephone survey conducted in 1993 found that between 52% and 55% of Australians believed that growing and possessing cannabis for personal use should be legalised.

An ICM poll of 1201 people for The Guardian in 1998 found that 47% believed that the illegality of drugs actually encourages young people to try them.

46% of UK adults in a 2002 Guardian poll (of 1075) felt that drug addicts who register themselves as such should have access to certain illegal drugs via prescription.

An ICM poll of 1008 UK adults (aged 16+) for The Guardian in 2008 found that 38% would support a scheme, similar to that established in Portugal and Spain, whereby it is not a criminal offence to possess and use drugs privately.

Following President Barack Obama's win of the 2008 presidential election, Change.gov hosted a service on their website named the Citizen's Briefing Book allowing United States citizens to give their opinion on the most important issues in America, and allow others to vote up or down on those ideas. The top ten ideas are to be given to Obama on the day of his inauguration, January 20, 2009. The most popular idea according to respondents was "Ending Marijuana Prohibition", earning 92,970 points and obtaining a total of 3,550 comments. The second most popular hope, by contrast, was "Commit to becoming the "Greenest" country in the world." with 70,470 points.

[[Marijuana]] has seen a renaissance in its utopian representation in films such as the suburban satire American Beauty (1999, dir. Sam Mendes) and the stoner comedy Pineapple Express (2008, dir. David Gordon Green). Another venue for contemporary criticism of marijuana prohibition is television, such as the SHOWTIME series Weeds (2005–2012, dev. Jenji Kohan); the HBO series True Blood (2008-present, dev. Alan Ball); and adult animation shows such as South Park, Family Guy, and American Dad!.

David Simon, creator of the television series The Wire, in 2011 told U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that he'd "give him another season of the HBO show for an end to the war on drugs." Holder had invited show stars Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn, and Jim True-Frost to Washington on behalf of an anti-drug public relations campaign and at the time called on Simon and Ed Burns for another season or a movie of the show. Simon replied via a letter to a newspaper offering the trade.

History of United States drug prohibition

2015-04-18T22:26:27Z

Adm1n: /* Timeline */

This is a timeline of the history of drug prohibition in the United States.

== Timeline ==

'''Around 1860''': Efforts to regulate the sale of pharmaceuticals began, and laws were introduced on a state-to-state basis that created penalties for mislabeling drugs, adulterating them with undisclosed narcotics, and improper sale of those considered "poisons". Poison laws generally either required labels on the packaging indicating the harmful effects of the drugs or prohibited sale outside of licensed pharmacies and without a doctor's prescription. Prominent pharmaceutical societies at the time supported the listing of [[cannabis]] as a poison.

'''1880''': The U.S. and Qing Dynasty China complete an agreement prohibiting the shipment of opium between the two countries; Qing China itself was still reeling from the effects of fighting the Opium War after a failed attempt to stem the British importing of opium into China proper (see Lin Zexu).

'''1906''':The Pure Food and Drug Act requires that certain specified drugs, including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, morphine, and[[ cannabis]], be accurately labeled with contents and dosage. Previously many drugs had been sold as patent medicines with secret ingredients or misleading labels. Cocaine, heroin, [[cannabis]], and other such drugs continued to be legally available without prescription as long as they were labeled. It is estimated that sale of patent medicines containing opiates decreased by 33% after labeling was mandated.

'''1911''': United States first Opium Commissioner argues that of all the nations of the world, the United States consumes most habit-forming drugs per capita.

'''1914''': The first recorded instance of the United States enacting a ban on the domestic distribution of drugs is the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. This act was presented and passed as a method of regulating the production and distribution of opiate-containing substances under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, but a section of the act was later interpreted by law enforcement officials for the purpose of prosecuting doctors who prescribe opiates to addicts.

'''1919''': Alcohol prohibition in the U.S. first appeared under numerous provincial bans and was eventually codified under a federal constitutional amendment in 1919, having been approved by 36 of the 48 U.S. states.

'''1925''': United States supported regulation of [[cannabis]] as a drug in the International Opium Convention. and by the mid-1930s all member states had some regulation of [[cannabis]].

'''1932''': Democrat Franklin Roosevelt ran for President of the United States promising repeal of federal laws of Prohibition of alcohol.

'''1933''': Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is repealed. The amendment remains the only major act of prohibition to be repealed, having been repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.

'''1935''' President Roosevelt hails the International Opium Convention and application of it in US. law and other anti-drug laws in a radio message to the nation.

'''1937''': Congress passed the [[Marihuana Tax Act of 1937|Marijuana Tax Act]]. Presented as a $1 nuisance tax on the distribution of [[marijuana]], this act required anyone distributing the drug to maintain and submit a detailed account of his or her transactions, including inspections, affidavits, and private information regarding the parties involved. This law, however, was something of a "Catch-22", as obtaining a tax stamp required individuals to first present their goods, which was an action tantamount to confession. This act was passed by Congress on the basis of testimony and public perception that [[marijuana]] caused insanity, criminality, and death.

'''1951''': The 1951 Boggs Act increased penalties fourfold, including mandatory penalties.

'''1956''': The Daniel Act increased penalties by a factor of eight over those specified in the Boggs Act. Although by this time there was adequate testimony to refute the claim that [[marijuana]] caused insanity, criminality, or death, the rationalizations for these laws shifted in focus to the proposition that [[marijuana]] use led to the use of heroin, creating the gateway drug theory.

'''1965''': In Laos, the CIA's airline, Air America, began flying Hmong (Meo) opium out of the hills to Long Tieng and Vientiane. This opium was being refined into high grade no. 4 heroin, which is what was being used by U.S. soldiers. During the Laotian Civil War, Long Tieng served as a town and airbase operated by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.

'''1969''': Psychiatrist Dr. Robert DuPont conducts urinalysis of everyone entering the D.C. jail system in August 1969. He finds 44% test positive for heroin and starts the first methadone treatment program in the Department of Corrections in September 1969 for heroin addicts.

'''1970''': The [[Controlled Substances Act]] (CSA) was enacted into law by Congress. The CSA is the federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use and distribution of certain substances is regulated.

'''1971''': The Vietnam War is linked with concerns over drugs and the Nixon administration coins the term [[War on Drugs]].

*Starting in 1965, the CIA's Airline, Air America had been flying opium for the Hmong (Meo) hill tribe opium farmers until as late as 1971. "Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle region has become a mass producer of high-grade no. 4 heroin for the American market." The heroin refined in Laos was being shipped to Vietnam and this high grade fluffy white no. 4 heroin is what was being used by U.S. soldiers there.

*May: Congressmen Robert Steele (R-CT) and Morgan Murphy (D-IL) release an explosive report on the growing heroin epidemic among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam.

*June 17: Nixon declares war on drugs.He characterized the abuse of illicit substances as "public enemy number one in the United States". Under Nixon, the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This legislation is the foundation on which the modern drug war exists. Responsibility for enforcement of this new law was given to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and then in 1973 to the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration. During the Nixon era, for the only time in the history of the war on drugs, the majority of funding goes towards treatment, rather than law enforcement.

*Later in the month the U.S. military announces they will begin urinalysis of all returning servicemen. The program goes into effect in September and the results are favorable: "only" 4.5% of the soldiers test positive for heroin.

'''1972''', March 22: The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends legalizing possession and sales of small amounts of [[marijuana]]. Nixon and the Congress ignore the suggestion

'''1974''': A Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. James O. Eastland on The Marihuana-hashish epidemic and its impact on United States security invited 21 scientists of the first rank from seven different countries to testify, including Gabriel G. Nahas and Nils Bejerot. The testimony of these experts showed that the evidence accumulated by scientific researchers on[[ marijuana]] had turned dramatically against this drug.

'''1979''': Illegal drug use in the U.S. peaks when 25 million of Americans used an illegal drug within the 30 days prior to the annual survey.

'''1988''': Near the end of the Reagan administration, the[[ Office of National Drug Control Policy ]]was created for central coordination of drug-related legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. In recognition of his central role, the director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug Czar. The position was raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993.

'''1992''' Illegal drug use in the U.S. fell to 12 million people.

'''1993''', December 7: Joycelyn Elders, the Surgeon General, said that the legalization of drugs "should be studied", causing a stir among opponents.

'''1998''': The government commissions the first-ever full study of drug policy, to be carried out by the National Research Council (NRC); the Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs is headed by Econometrician Charles Manski.

'''2001''': The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs is published. The study reveals that the government has not sufficiently studied its own drug policy, which it calls "unconscionable". (see more under Efficacy of the War on Drugs)

'''2001''': 16 million in the U.S. were drug users.

'''2008''' Several reports state the benefits of drug courts compared with traditional courts. Using retrospective data, researchers in several studies found that drug courts reduced recidivism among program participants in contrast to comparable probationers between 12% to 40%. Re-arrests were lower five years or more later. The total cost per participant was also much lower. [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]] reports that the Actual youth drug use, as measured as the percent reporting past month use has declined from 19,4% to 14,8% among middle and high school students between 2001 and 2007.

'''2009''' Gil Kerlikowske, the current Director of the [[Office of National Drug Control Policy]], signaled that the Obama Administration would not use the term "War on Drugs," as he claims it is counter-productive and is contrary to the policy favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce drug use. "Being smart about drugs means working to treat people who go to jail with a drug problem so when they get out and return to the communities you protect, you will be less likely to re-arrest them".

'''2010''' [[California Proposition 19 (2010)|California Proposition 19]] (also known as the Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Act) was defeated, with 53.5% of California voters voting "No" and 46.5% voting "Yes."

'''2010''' The Fiscal Year 2011 National Drug Control Budget proposed by the Obama Administration devote significant new resources, $340 million, to the prevention and treatment of drug abuse.

'''2012''' Colorado and Washington (state) pass laws to legalize the consumption, possession, and sale of [[marijuana]].

'''2014''' Alaska and Oregon pass laws to legalize the consumption, possession, and sale of [[marijuana]].

Drug Policy Alliance

2015-04-18T12:24:53Z

Adm1n: /* Overview */

'''The Drug Policy Alliance''' (DPA) is a New York City-based non-profit organization, led by executive director Ethan Nadelmann, with the principal goal of ending the American "War on Drugs". The stated priorities of the organization are the decriminalization of responsible drug use, the promotion of harm reduction and treatment in response to drug misuse, and the facilitation of open dialog about drugs between youth, parents, and educators.

== Overview ==

The Drug Policy Alliance was formed when the Drug Policy Foundation and the [[Lindesmith Center]] merged in July 2000.

The organization has offices in five states as well as a national affairs office in Washington, D.C., which lobbies for federal reform. Administrative and media headquarters are located in New York City, NY. The office for legal affairs is located in Berkeley, CA, with two additional state offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The remaining three state offices are located in Trenton, NJ, Santa Fe, NM, and Denver, CO.

Veteran journalist Walter Cronkite spoke out against the War on Drugs in support of the Drug Police Alliance. He appeared in advertisements on behalf of the organization and wrote a fundraising letter, which was also published in the Huffington Post. In the letter, Cronkite wrote: "Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."

== Mission ==

"The Drug Policy Alliance envisions a just society in which the use and regulation of drugs are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights, in which people are no longer punished for what they put into their own bodies but only for crimes committed against others, and in which the fears, prejudices and punitive prohibitions of today are no more.

Our mission is to advance those policies and attitudes that best reduce the harms of both drug misuse and drug prohibition, and to promote the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and bodies."

== Main issues ==

=== Cannabis ===

DPA believes that[[ cannabis ]]should be legal for medicinal purposes of severely ill individuals. They are working state-by-state to educate and inform governors and the people about their beliefs on medicinal [[marijuana]]. They present their success with the compassionate use bill which brought [[medical marijuana]] access to New Mexico in 2007.

=== The failed drug war ===

DPA believes that the War on Drugs in America has failed. They present the argument that the United States has spent billions of dollars on making the country drug-free, but many illicit drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and many others, are purer and more prevalent than ever before.

=== Overdose ===

DPA presents the fact that 26,000 lives were lost in the U.S to the accidental overdose of drugs, the highest its ever been. They present the Drug Overdose Reduction Act as their solution.

=== Parents, teens, and drugs ===

DPA believes that we need to give young people access to credible information regarding decisions and information on drugs. They believe that open and honest dialogue is the key, and with this idea started the Safety First Project.

=== State by state ===

DPA presents the argument that all drugs are different and pose different risks. So, their response is to create policies for individual specific drugs rather than bundling them. They believe that successful harm reduction plays a pivotal role in this topic.

=== Health approacher ===

DPA believes that harm reduction is the best solution to drug abuse and argues that it is not a source for the promotion of drug legalization, rather a movement to reduce the harm of drug abuse in our society.

=== Law ===

DPA believes that many of the arrests for drug possession have been conflicting with many areas of our constitutional rights as Americans. They have been fighting for these rights through their Office of Legal Affairs. DPA has also provided funding for Flex Your Rights, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about their constitutional rights during police encounters.

=== Communities affected ===

DPA believes that the war on drugs does not affect all of our population the same way. They believe that the following four groups suffer the most: Women, Minorities, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender, and Dance, Music and Entertainment.

=== Drug policy around the world ===

DPA states that many countries around the world are approaching their own war on drugs in a different way than the United States does and that many of the countries can lead as examples for many new approaches in the U.S.

=== Financers ===

The U.S. billionaire George Soros (born in Budapest 1930) has been a major financier of the organization with annual contributions of $4 million per year.

== Results ==

DPA was a source of support for California's Proposition 36. "Prop 36" and the formation of the Drug Courts gave non-violent drug offenders the opportunity to seek treatment in drug rehabilitation programs rather than serve jail sentences. The Drug Courts also removed unlicensed drug rehabs as options for fulfilling probation requirements.

DPA was primarily responsible for California’s 1996 landmark[[ medical marijuana]] law, Proposition 215, which made [[cannabis]] available to seriously ill patients as well as reduced criminal penalties for possession. DPA continued to weigh in on drug policy legislation with [[California Proposition 215 (1996)|Proposition 215]] in Alaska in 1998, Oregon in 1998, Washington in 1998, Maine in 1999, Colorado in 2000, Nevada in 1998 and 2000 and New Mexico in 2007.

In 2000, DPA helped push California’s landmark treatment-not-incarceration law called Proposition 36. It replaces jail time with substance abuse treatment for first and second time nonviolent drug offenders. More than 84,000 people were removed from jail and graduated from treatment.

In 2006, DPA got the “Blood-borne Pathogen Harm Reduction Act,” signed into law. It allows up to six cities to establish syringe access programs. This helps prevent the spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

DPA has worked across the country to pass the “911 Good Samaritan Immunity Laws”. These laws are to help encourage overdose witnesses to call 911. They reduce drug possession charges for those who seek medical help. DPA led a campaign in New Mexico to pass the law and were successful in 2007.

DPA is also working to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing and racially biased crack/cocaine sentencing schemes at the state and federal levels.

DPA supported the bill that legalized [[cannabis ]]in Uruguay in 2013.

== DPA awards ==

DPA gives annual awards to "honor advocates, elected officials and organizations for their courageous work in reforming drug laws.". These include

*Edward M. Brecher Award for Achievement in the Field of Journalism

*Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform

*Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship

*Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action

*Norman E. Zinberg Award for Achievement in the Field of Medicine

*H.B. Spear Award for Achievement in the Field of Control and Enforcement

*Justice Gerald Le Dain Award for Achievement in the Field of Law

*Dr. Andrew Weil Award for Achievement in the Field of Drug Education

== See also ==

*[[Arguments for and against drug prohibition]]

*[[Decriminalization of marijuana in the United States]]

*[[War on Drugs]]

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

2015-04-18T12:16:19Z

Adm1n: /* Campaigns */

'''Students for Sensible Drug Policy''' (SSDP) is an international non-profit advocacy and education organization based in Washington D.C. SSDP is focused on reforming drug policy in the United States and internationally.

SSDP was first founded in 1998 by a small group of U.S. students from Rochester Institute of Technology and George Washington University in response to that year's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which contained a provision denying student loans and grants to students with drug convictions.

Betty Aldworth has served as Executive Director since February, 2014 and Stacia Cosner serves as Deputy Director. Drew Stromberg serves as Outreach Director, and Scott Cecil and Jake Agliata serve as the organization's Outreach Coordinators. The Board of Directors is currently chaired by Sam Tracy, a student at the University of Connecticut.

SSDP functions through somewhat autonomous chapter networks in universities, colleges, and high schools around the world promoting student and teacher activism for change in policy and attitudes toward [[Legality of cannabis|marijuana prohibition]], drug use and drug abuse, and drug policies. As of July 2014, there are more than 200 chapters of SSDP worldwide, with the largest concentrations in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and the UK. SSDP's staff is headquartered in Washington DC.

== Campaigns ==

SSDP was founded around the issue of the drug provision in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which denies federal financial aid to students with marijuana or other drug convictions. The HEA has been criticized for disproportionately affecting minorities, working-class, and disabled students.

In addition to opposition of the Higher Education Act, current SSDP campaigns include the promotion of Call 911 Good Samaritan Policies, changing campus drug policies, promoting drug education and counseling, ending zero tolerance policies, advocating the end of the international war on drugs, promoting an end to government anti-drug ads, influencing President Obama, lowering the drinking age, getting politicians to go on the record about drug policy, removing educational barriers for students in prison, working against student drug testing, and advocating for marijuana policy reform.

In addition to working on issues that primarily affect students, many of SSDP's chapters work on local and state-level campaigns such as marijuana deprioritization, lowest law enforcement priority policies for [[marijuana]], [[marijuana]] decriminalization, [[marijuana ]]legalization , reinstating voting rights to felons convicted of drug charges, and safe access to [[]]medical marijuana. Chapters are also known to hold day-long festivals to promote their cause on campus, with excellent results.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy also wrote an amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court case Morse v. Frederick.

== SSDP v. Rep. Mark Souder ==

Representative Mark Souder of Indiana is well known in SSDP as the author of the Aid Elimination Penalty in the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998. Souder is seen by SSDP as one of the foremost proponents of what they view as invisible [[marijuana]] policies. Souder has declined to engage in a debate with SSDP members regarding the Aid Elimination Penalty, and has called the organization "nonsensical" and "legalizers". The "legalizers" comment came in a Dear Colleague letter written by Souder supporting the Higher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty. SSDP has since responded with a professionally written letter signed by over fifteen other organizations who also oppose the Aid Elimination Penalty including; the United Methodist Church, the National Education Association, the World Summit on the Information Society, and the American Federation of Teachers.

== Former Executive Directors ==

June 1, 2010 - September, 2013: Aaron Houston

DrugWarRant

2015-04-15T22:46:58Z

Adm1n:

'''DrugWarRant''' is a website created by activist Peter Guither that specifically advocate the termination of War on Drugs in United States. It has a Bulletin Board System, a blog, and other functions, including a comprehensive guide to the Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Raich, a case dealing with [[medical marijuana]] and states' rights. The site caused controversy when, in 2004, Illinois Congressman Jerry Weller used the site's endorsement of his opponent Tari Renner in order to accuse him of supporting drug legalization. Renner denounced Weller's vicious negative campaign, and the site also gave a disclaimer.

In 2006, when the Drug Enforcement Administration tried to assert a connection between illegal drugs and terrorism, the blog rebuked the Agency, saying the War on Drugs was actually causing worse crime and terrorism.

Notably, the site features a list of "drug war victims", commemorating people who it says have died because of the excess of drug prohibition.

The founder of DrugWarRant, Peter Guither, is currently an assistant to the dean of College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University.

== See also ==

*[[Drug Policy Alliance]]

*[[Marijuana Policy Project]]

*[[National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws]]

*[[November Coalition]]

*[[Students for Sensible Drug Policy]]

ADPF 187

2015-04-15T22:40:45Z

Adm1n: /* See also */

'''ADPF 187''' (June 15, 2011), is a landmark Brazil Supreme Court case. The rapporteur Celso de Mello voted in favor of protests of decriminalization of drugs.

== Right ==

After of the decision of the Supreme Court, the people will not be penalized:

People can to protest in favor of decriminalization of drugs.

==High Court decision==

[[File:STF Plenario.jpg|thumb|right|Supreme Court of Brazil.]]

===Judiciary representation===
{| class="wikitable"
! Supreme Court members
! width="55pt"|Ministers
! width="55pt"|Yes
! width="55pt"|No
|-
|align="left"|Antonio Cezar Peluso
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|Carlos Ayres Britto
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|Carmen Lúcia Antunes Rocha
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|Ellen Gracie Northfleet
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|José Celso de Mello Filho
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|Marco Aurélio Mello
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"|Enrique Ricardo Lewandowski
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="left"[Luiz Fux
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="center"|'''Total'''
|align="center"|'''08'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#abd5f5"|'''08'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#FFDEAD"|'''0'''
|-
|}

===Legislative representation===
{| class="wikitable"
! Attorney General of Brazil
! width="55pt"|Prosecutor
! width="55pt"|Yes
! width="55pt"|No
|-
|align="left"|Roberto Gurgel
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="center"|'''Total'''
|align="center"|'''1'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#abd5f5"|'''1'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#FFDEAD"|'''0'''
|-
|}

===Executive representation===
{| class="wikitable"
! Solicitor-General of Brazil
! width="55pt"|Solicitor General
! width="55pt"|Yes
! width="55pt"|No
|-
|align="left"|Luís Inácio Adams2
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|1
|align="center"|
|-
|align="center"|'''Total'''
|align="center"|'''1'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#abd5f5"|'''1'''
|align="center" bgcolor="#FFDEAD"|'''0'''
|-
|}

===Amici curiae===
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="10" style="text-align: center;" | Amici curiae (Support for ADPF 187) (02)
|-
|align="left"|Associação Brasileira de Estudos Sociais de Psicoativos – ABESUP
|align="left"|Instituto Brasileiro de Ciências Criminais – IBCCRIM
|}

== See also ==

*[[Global Marijuana March]]

*[[Cannabis]]

Adam Bierman

2015-04-15T22:22:37Z

Adm1n: /* MedMen */

'''Adam Bierman''' (born February 8, 1982) is a serial entrepreneur and consultant for the legal[[ marijuana ]]industry in Los Angeles, California. He is managing partner of [[MedMen]], a consulting and management firm serving the licensing, design and management needs of the legal [[marijuana]] industry.

== Early life ==

Bierman was born in Scottsdale, Arizona to Mindy Bierman, a social worker who held a Master of Social Work, and Rick Bierman, who worked as a corporate attorney.

Bierman spent time in Arizona and in Texas before moving to Maryland, where he lived until 1989. He then moved to California where attended La Costa Canyon High School in northwest San Diego County.

He attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts (2000-2001), Los Angeles City College (2001-2002), and University of Southern California in Los Angeles (2002-2003). He studied political science and made the Dean’s list throughout his higher education. Other than his year at Brandeis, he has resided in California as an adult.

== Early career ==

While at Los Angeles City College, Bierman started the TPSM Sports Agency. The agency grew to represent more than 40 professional baseball players, some of whom are now playing in the major leagues, including Evan Longoria, Jerry Blevins, Efren Navarro, Casey Fien, and Ryan Cook. The agency was ultimately acquired by XTS Sports.

Bierman was living out of the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his brother when he started the business, launching without any financial backing or even a credit card in his name. At the time, he was a baseball player for Los Angeles City College. A number of his friends and teammates who were entering the draft asked him to be their agent, which led to the idea for the company. He experienced his first amateur draft while in the process of transferring to the University of Southern California, then ultimately left the school when the demands of the business became too overwhelming to balance with his studies.

== [[MedMen]] ==

In 2010, Bierman founded MedMen in Los Angeles with Andrew Modlin, his design-focused business partner and fellow entrepreneur. MedMen is a turnkey management company providing services for the [[cannabis]] industry. It was launched to serve the emerging and rapidly expanding multibillion dollar legal [[marijuana]] market.

Since its inception, MedMen has helped more than 100 businesses in the U.S. navigate the complexities of entering and succeeding in the legal [[marijuana]] market, from effectively completing state applications to managing the day-to-day operations of a mature business. In 2014, it secured $3.75 million in financing to launch operations in Nevada and Illinois, funding which represented the largest capital investment at the time in a full-service cannabis management firm. In February 2015, MedMen obtained the state and local permits required to open a [[medical marijuana]] cultivation facility in Henderson, Nevada, marking the first full suite of licenses in that state for the company.

MedMen brings together expertise in three critical areas—licensing, design and management—to help businesses maximize their space and brand identity, and grow a legitimate and stable operation. The objective of the firm is to help ensure each business is following the proper legal and compliance procedures, but also meeting its potential in the areas of raising capital and securing financing, as well as with real estate, interior design, construction, security, staffing, marketing, graphic design, website design, and maintenance.

Bierman’s role at MedMen is to help clients navigate all aspects of the industry. Charged with fundraising, business development, and operational oversight, Bierman fuels the company through profitable deals to ensure it has the resources to expand and run as efficiently as possible.

Modlin is a design expert who heads MedMen’s creative team and is charged with improving the patient experience, in addition to setting up cultivation space and opening marijuana businesses. Michael Reifsteck joined the team as chief financial officer. Reifsteck previously served as corporate controller of the yogurt company, Chobani. During his time at Chobani, the company grew from $260 million to $1.2 billion in revenue.

The company also brought on board specialists in nuclear pharmacy, chemistry, and large-scale commercial grow environments. Its programmers are working on creating software that runs[[ marijuana ]]grows as efficiently as cucumber and tomato grows.

For his work with MedMen, Bierman has appeared on and been featured in a number of major news outlets and publications, including CNBC, Fortune magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. He has also appeared on the cover of the Los Angeles Business Journal and has become a regular blogger with The Huffington Post.

== Personal life ==

Bierman resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two infant sons. He donates to causes related to the legalized [[marijuana]] industry. He is a supporter of CannaMoms, a group which advocates for legislation favoring the rights and options of parents who want to use [[cannabis]] to care for critically ill children.

He also supports the [[Marijuana Policy Project]], which aims to reform U.S. marijuana laws, advocating for policies that reduce or eliminate penalties for the medical and non-medical use of [[marijuana]]. [[MedMen]] commits a percentage of its gross revenue to the group.

Andy Sanborn

2015-04-15T22:09:05Z

Adm1n:

'''Andy Sanborn''' is a Republican member of the New Hampshire Senate, representing the 9th district since 2010.

== Early life, education and career ==

Sanborn was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire. He studied marketing, finance, and economics at New England College. He worked in commercial lending for 15 years and was employed by an international leasing company in Chicago. Sanborn owns The Draft sports bar in Concord and is on the board of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association.

Sanborn also owns and leases real estate. His tenants at Phat Stuff, a head shop in Keene, were raided by the DEA in 2014.

=== Marijuana legalization ===

In January 2014, Sanborn was the subject of a public controversy regarding a contentious email exchange with a constituent over the issue of [[Legality of cannabis|marijuana legalization]]. An email from a constituent supporting marijuana legalization received a heated response from Sanborn, who opposes legalization, including legislation making its way through the state legislature. Sanborn wrote in the email, "I’m thinking if I call the [organization you received a scholarship from] and ask their opinion on legalization, they may have a different opinion (not to mention may be asking you for their scholarship money back…)." The constituent was believed to be a college freshman and a recipient of a scholarship, information that Sanborn declined to say how it was obtained. Sanborn responded to the controversy thus: "My e-mail was not a suggestion that I could or would work to revoke any scholarship, only to highlight that those involved with awarding him those funds may have made a different decision had he expressed similar pro-marijuana legalization efforts to them when applying."

=== Health care ===

Sanborn is opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and compared it to the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214. He also opposed the creation of a state-run exchange under the act.

== Electoral history ==

Sanborn made an unsuccessful run for the District 7 seat in the New Hampshire Senate in 2008. He ran again in 2010, this time successfully. After redistricting, he ran in District 9, defeating Lee C. Nyquist in the 2012 general election. Sanborn considered running for Governor in the 2014 elections, but announced he would no longer be seeking the Republican nomination on September 27, 2013. He was reelected in 2014.

== Legislative committees ==

Sanborn is a member of the following committees:

*Health and Human Services Committee (chair)
*Energy & Natural Resources Committee
*Ways & Means Committee

== Personal life ==

Sanborn is married to Laurie Sanborn, a representative for Hillsborough 41 in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He collects Ferraris and Porsches.

Starks, Maine

2015-04-15T22:04:06Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Starks''' is a town in Somerset County, Maine, United States. The town was named after General John Stark of the Revolutionary War. The population was 640 at the 2010 censu..."

'''Starks''' is a town in Somerset County, Maine, United States. The town was named after General John Stark of the Revolutionary War. The population was 640 at the 2010 census.

== Geography ==

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 32.13 square miles (83.22 km2), of which, 31.59 square miles (81.82 km2) of it is land and 0.54 square miles (1.40 km2) is water.

== Demographics ==

=== 2010 census ===

As of the census of 2010, there were 640 people, 273 households, and 167 families residing in the town. The population density was 20.3 inhabitants per square mile (7.8/km2). There were 395 housing units at an average density of 12.5 per square mile (4.8/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 98.6% White, 0.3% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 0.2% from other races, and 0.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.6% of the population.

There were 273 households of which 28.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.9% were married couples living together, 5.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.8% had a male householder with no wife present, and 38.8% were non-families. 29.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.34 and the average family size was 2.92.

The median age in the town was 42.1 years. 21.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.2% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 26.5% were from 25 to 44; 30.7% were from 45 to 64; and 14.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the town was 51.7% male and 48.3% female.

=== 2000 census ===

As of the census of 2000, there were 578 people, 224 households, and 159 families residing in the town. The population density was 18.4 people per square mile (7.1/km²). There were 321 housing units at an average density of 10.2 per square mile (4.0/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 98.27% White, 0.17% African American, 0.35% Native American, 0.17% Asian, and 1.04% from two or more races.

There were 224 households out of which 33.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.8% were married couples living together, 6.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.6% were non-families. 22.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 5.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.58 and the average family size was 3.01.

In the town the population was spread out with 27.3% under the age of 18, 6.6% from 18 to 24, 26.1% from 25 to 44, 31.7% from 45 to 64, and 8.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 104.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 110.0 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $30,313, and the median income for a family was $33,462. Males had a median income of $30,208 versus $20,357 for females. The per capita income for the town was $13,764. About 12.1% of families and 16.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.1% of those under age 18 and 17.4% of those age 65 or over.

== Marijuana legalization ==

In 1992, the town of Starks made the first legal vote for [[Legal history of cannabis in the United States|marijuana legalization]] since the 1970s. Two ordinances written by Dave Wilkinson from neighboring Chesterville were voted on by thirteen Maine towns in the spring of 1992, an event which dominated the local news for a few weeks. One ordinance required that helicopters should not fly lower than 2000 feet over the town except in emergency. The other permitted the cultivation and possession of two pounds' dry weight of [[cannabis]]. Don Christen and Maine Vocals lobbied hard for votes. When Starks became the only town to pass both ordinances, it became national news. Wilkinson and other activists went to New York to appear on the "Faith Daniels Show," the high point of the media attention. The following year, the ordinances were repealed.

Starks continues to serve as a focal point among proponents of marijuana legalization in New England. A local farmer, Harry Brown, has hosted weekend festivals, concerts, and rallies to support the repeal of [[cannabis]] prohibition on his hillside since 1991.

== Notable people ==

Edwin F. Ladd, US congressmen from North Dakota

California Proposition 19 (1972)

2015-04-15T21:11:06Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Proposition 19''', also known as the '''California Marijuana Initiative (CMI)''', was a ballot initiative on the November 7, 1972 California statewide ballot. If it had pas..."

'''Proposition 19''', also known as the '''California Marijuana Initiative (CMI)''', was a ballot initiative on the November 7, 1972 California statewide ballot. If it had passed, the measure would have removed penalties in the State of California for persons 18 years of age or older for using, possessing, growing, processing, or transporting marijuana for personal use. The California Marijuana Initiative’s organizers coordinated a huge grassroots organizing drive to place the measure on the ballot. The initiative qualified for the November statewide ballot in June 1972. The initiative was defeated by the voters with 66.5% No votes to 33.5% Yes votes.

Supporters of Proposition 19 argued that decriminalization was supported by scientific research and the government’s own experts and that enforcing criminal penalties was costing a fortune in taxpayer dollars and ruining the lives of ordinary people. Opponents contended that marijuana was dangerous and unpredictable and that decriminalization would encourage drug abuse and damage society.

== Effects of the Bill ==

Proposition 19 would have decriminalized the personal use, possession, and manufacture of marijuana by adults in the state of California. It would not have affected existing laws against sales, other commercial activities, and dangerous behavior. The official ballot summary stated that the measure "Removes state penalties for personal use. Proposes a statute which would provide that no person eighteen years or older shall be punished criminally or denied any right or privilege because of his planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, processing, otherwise preparing, transporting, possessing or using marijuana. Does not repeal existing, or limit future, legislation prohibiting persons under the influence of marijuana from engaging in conduct that endangers others." Indeed, if Proposition 19 had succeeded in decriminalizing personal marijuana activities in California, those activities would still have remained criminal violations of Federal law under the Controlled Substances Act.

== Fiscal Impact ==

The cost analysis by California's Legislative Analyst showed no increase in state or local costs. The analysis suggested a potential decrease in state and local criminal justice costs related to [[marijuana]].

== Main Arguments ==

Arguments in favor of Proposition 19 were made by Joel Fort, M.D. (Public Health Specialist and Criminologist; former Consultant on Drug Abuse for the World Health Organization), Mary Jane Fernandez (Educator), and Gordon S. Brownell, J.D. (Former Member of White House Staff [1969-1970]). Arguments opposing Proposition 19 were made by H. L. Richardson (State Senator, 19th District) and Dr. Harden Jones, Ph.D. (Professor of Medical Physics and Physiology; Asst. Director of Donner Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley).

=== Arguments In Favor ===

*Proposition decriminalizes personal use activities. It does not legalize marijuana or encourage its sale or use.
*Marijuana has been thoroughly researched and its effects are well understood. Decriminalization recommended by President Nixon's Commission on Marijuana and other conservative authorities.
*Marijuana is relatively safe compared to alcohol and tobacco, the two most popular legal drugs.
*Measure will save hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars through reductions in criminal justice expenditures.
*Current system destroys the lives of hundreds of thousands of normal people for engaging in personal behavior.

=== Arguments In Opposition ===

*Laws are deterrents. Legalization will encourage use and abuse.
*Marijuana is poorly researched and understood and has dangerous, unpredictable side effects.
*Marijuana is a gateway drug and potentially addicting.
*Countries that experimented with marijuana legalization experienced negative social consequences and again imposed criminal penalties.
*Marijuana legalization will result in social disintegration.

== History ==

Proposition 19 began in late 1971 as a concept by Foster City attorney Leo Paoli for a ballot initiative to reform California’s marijuana laws. Mr. Paoli enlisted the help of Stanford law professor John Kaplan and several leaders of fledging reform groups including Blair Newman and Mike Aldrich, the founder and the co-director of Amorphia, and Keith Stroup, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) as well as Russ Gamlin, Michael Walden of Shasta County, and Peter James, a veterans rights advocate with the Northern California Veterans Coalition. The reformers agreed upon a decriminalization measure and formed the California Marijuana Initiative (CMI) to lead the drive to obtain the 326,000 signatures required for the initiative’s inclusion on the ballot. CMI’s statewide efforts were coordinated by two attorneys with grassroots campaign experience: Robert H. A. Ashford, an anti-war activist, and Gordon Brownell, an ex-Republican campaign strategist. The CMI campaign attracted thousands of volunteers and 522,000 signatures by the June deadline.

==Polling History==

{| class="wikitable" style="width:80%"
|-
!Date of opinion poll
!Conducted by
!Sample size
!Yes
!No
!Undecided
!Margin of error
|-
| style="background:#f0f0f0;"| July 31–August 6, 1972
| Field Poll || 471 || 33% || '''62%''' || 5% || ±6.7%
|-
| style="background:#f0f0f0;"| September 29-October 7, 1972
| Field Poll || 1275 || 32% || '''61%''' || 7% || ±3%
|-
| style="background:#f0f0f0;"| October 30-November 1, 1972
| Field Poll || 1467 || 32% || '''51%''' || 17% || ±3%
|}

== Outcome ==

The California Marijuana Initiative appeared as Proposition 19 on the ballot for California’s statewide election held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Despite a passionate grassroots movement, supporters of the measure failed to persuade a majority of the electorate and it was defeated. The final voting results were Yes: 2,733,120 (33.5%); No: 5,433,393 (66.5%). However, the initiative did receive 51.26% of the votes in San Francisco County and 71.25% in Berkeley.

== See also ==

*[[California Proposition 19 (2010)]]

*[[Decriminalization of non-medical cannabis in the United States]]

*[[Cannabis in California]]

Carbon dioxide generator

2015-04-14T22:49:43Z

Adm1n: Created page with "A '''Carbon dioxide generator''' or CO2 generator is a machine used to enhance carbon dioxide levels in order to promote plant growth in greenhouses or other enclosed areas. C..."

A '''Carbon dioxide generator''' or CO2 generator is a machine used to enhance carbon dioxide levels in order to promote plant growth in greenhouses or other enclosed areas. Carbon dioxide generators have been used to help grow [[marijuana]]. They can be fueled with propane or natural gas. CO2 generators were used mostly by commercial growers until smaller and less expansive systems made the technology more widely available to hobbyists. The generators also give off heat. Using compressed CO2 is an alternative to generators.

Two of a Kind (Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton album)

2015-04-14T22:48:37Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Two of a Kind''' was a 1971 duet album by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. The album reached # 13 on the U.S. country albums charts. The album is unusual in that no single..."

'''Two of a Kind''' was a 1971 duet album by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. The album reached # 13 on the U.S. country albums charts. The album is unusual in that no single 45rpm releases were issued of any of the songs. (The track "The Pain of Loving You" was later released as the "B" side of "The Right Combination" from their 1972 album of the same name.)

"Curse of the Wild Weed Flower" is of note being an anti-[[marijuana]] song, one of the few country songs of the period to discuss drugs.

Parton later rerecorded "The Pain of Loving You" with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, as part of their 1987 Trio album.

Liner notes for the album are written by Don Howser, longtime announcer for The Porter Wagoner Show program.

Toledo Window Box

2015-04-14T22:46:08Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Toledo Window Box''' is the sixth album released by comedian George Carlin, and the fourth on the Little David label (distributed by Warner Bros. Records in this one instan..."

'''Toledo Window Box''' is the sixth album released by comedian George Carlin, and the fourth on the Little David label (distributed by Warner Bros. Records in this one instance; Carlin's other Little David albums were released by Warner Communications' Atlantic Records label). It was recorded on July 20, 1974 at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California, and released in November of that year. It was also included as part of the 1999 The Little David Years box set.

Toledo Window Box is a type of [[marijuana]] that Carlin said that a man once offered him - an antithesis to pot names like "Acapulco Gold" and "Colombian Red". This was Carlin's fourth and final gold album.

The front cover features Carlin wearing a white t-shirt with a planter growing marijuana plants, pointing his thumbs back at it, while the back cover shows Carlin wearing almost the same shirt but with the plants gone, while standing there red-eyed and looking "high". The version of the album in The Little David Years boxset includes a slip to put the CD in, which shows a picture of a burning joint. The sleeve could also pass as a rolling paper.

The name Toledo Window Box refers to a report Carlin read stating that the chief of police of Toledo, Ohio had gone to see a viewing of Reefer Madness and a training session by the FBI. Afterwards he made the statement that "You can grow enough marijuana in an average window box to drive the entire population of Toledo stark, raving mad". Carlin then stated that he wanted one of those Toledo Window Boxes.

Jeff Essmann

2015-04-14T22:44:43Z

Adm1n:

'''Jeff Essmann''' is the Senate Majority Leader for the 62nd Montana Legislature. He represents Senate District 28 in Billings, Montana as a Republican. Essman was initially elected in 2005. He is most notable for proposing Senate Bill 423 to reduce inappropriate use of [[medical marijuana]] in Montana.

Essmann aborted his campaign for Governor of Montana in the 2012 election after it was determined he lacked funds and support.

Emails obtained by the Great Falls Tribune in January of 2013 showed Essmann was part of a plot by far-right conservatives in the Montana legislature to quash bills by more moderate Republicans.

Otenabant

2015-04-14T11:21:52Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Otenabant (CP-945,598)''' is a drug which acts as a potent and highly selective CB1 antagonist. It was developed by Pfizer for the treatment of obesity, but development..."

'''Otenabant (CP-945,598)''' is a drug which acts as a potent and highly selective [[CB1]] antagonist. It was developed by Pfizer for the treatment of obesity, but development for this application has been discontinued following the problems seen during clinical use of the similar drug [[rimonabant]].

== See also ==

*[[Cannabinoid receptor antagonist]]

CP 55,244

2015-04-14T11:19:06Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''CP 55,244''' is a compound which is a cannabinoid receptor agonist. It has analgesic effects and is used in scientific research. It is an extremely potent CB1 full..."

'''CP 55,244''' is a compound which is a [[cannabinoid]] receptor agonist. It has analgesic effects and is used in scientific research. It is an extremely potent[[ CB1]] full agonist with a Ki of 0.21nM, making it more potent than the commonly used full agonist [[HU-210]].

== See also ==

*[[CP 47,497]]

Levonantradol

2015-04-14T11:17:11Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Levonantradol (CP 50,556-1)''' is a synthetic cannabinoid analog of dronabinol (Marinol) developed by Pfizer in the 1980s. It is around 30x more potent than THC, an..."

'''Levonantradol (CP 50,556-1)''' is a synthetic [[cannabinoid]] analog of dronabinol (Marinol) developed by Pfizer in the 1980s. It is around 30x more potent than [[THC]], and exhibits antiemetic and analgesic effects via activation of [[CB1]] and [[CB2]] [[cannabinoid]] receptors. Levonantradol is not currently used in medicine as dronabinol or nabilone are felt to be more useful for most conditions, however it is widely used in research into the potential therapeutic applications of [[cannabinoids]].

== Pharmacodynamics ==

Levonantradol is a full CB1 receptor agonist. Cannabinoid receptors belong to the superfamily of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), and endogenous cannabinoids naturally activate GPCRs. GPCRs modulate the inhibition of adenylyl cyclase and accumulation of the second messenger, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). The CB1 receptor is the most common GPCR in the central nervous system. The activation of CB1Rs decrease calcium conductance and increase potassium conductance in the brain. CB signaling naturally modulates synaptic transmission and mediates psychoactivity, and synthetic cannabinoids mimic these same actions. Although the efficacy of Levonantradol is dependent on the level of GCPR activity, Full agonists like Levonantradol have the ability to activate GPCRs and convert Gα into a high affinity state for GTP or low affinity state for GDP. Previous studies suggest that Levonantradol has a higher binding affinity and efficacy than other similar synthetic cannabinoids (e.g. Δ9-[[THC]]).

== Pharmacokinetics ==

Although Levonantradol has been extensively tested on animals including cats, rodents, and non-human primates. It has also been tested among cancer patient populations in clinical trials. Levonantradol is most commonly administered intramuscularly (I.M.), however it can also be administered orally. The dosage can range from 0.25 mg-3.0 mg every 2–4 hours, and the half-life is 1–2 hours. In order to administer Levonantradol intramuscularly, the drug must be dissolved in 5% ethanol, 5% emulphur, and 90% sterile saline. Synthetic cannabinoids like Levonantradol readily cross the blood-brain barrier because they are highly lipophilic and have low molecular weights. Levonantradol’s bioavailability is variable due to the first pass metabolism.

== Treatment ==

Levonantradol has been clinically tested in cancer patients for its pain relief and antiemetic benefits. Cancer patients that endure chemotherapy often develop intense nausea, and Levonantradol has been tested to reduce these emetic symptoms. It is often used instead of THC because it has a higher efficacy. Levonantradol also acts on pain pathways in the central nervous system, which enables the drug to alleviate pain. Studies have shown an absence of emetic side effects within the half-life of the Levonantradol administered. Other studies suggest that cannabinoid agonists can synergize opioid anti-nociception. Cannabinoid receptors are located in nociceptive pathways, and CBs can promote signal transduction in TRP channels. Although Levonantradol relieves nociceptive and postoperative pain, decreases nausea, and improves spasticity in addition to being more effective than placebos, it has yet to be approved as legal medicine. Researchers have concluded that Levonantradol is no more effective than Codeine, which is why they do not recommend expansion into clinical practice.

== Side effects ==

The side effects for Levonantradol include ptosis, sedation, and ataxia in non-human primates. In rodents, the symptoms include dysphoria, memory impairment, motor incoordination, reduced concentration, and disorientation. Levonantradol also decreases startle response. In humans, side effects include dry mouth, drowsiness, dizziness, altered perception, mild sedation, and lack of concentration. It can cause an increase in heart rate and decrease in blood pressure. Euphoric symptoms rarely occurred in subjects.

== See also ==

*[[CP 47,497]]

CP 55,940

2015-04-14T11:11:05Z

Adm1n:

'''CP 55,940''' is a [[cannabinoid]] which mimics the effects of naturally occurring [[THC]] (one of the psychoactive compounds found in [[cannabis]]). CP 55,940 was created by Pfizer in 1974 but was never marketed. It is currently used to study the[[ endocannabinoid]] system. Some effects that have been noted are a greatly decreased rates of lever pressing in exposed mice,[citation needed] and a greater reaction to opiates in exposed mice.

A study found that CP 55,940 can upregulate 5-HT2A receptors in mice.

CP 55,940 is 45 times more potent than Δ9-[[THC]], and fully antagonized by [[rimonabant]] (SR141716A).

CP 55,940 is considered a full agonist at both [[CB1]] and [[CB2]] receptors and has Ki values of 0.58nM and 0.68nM respectively, but is an antagonist at GPR55, the putative "CB3" receptor.

CP 55,940 showed protective effects on rat brain mitochondria upon paraquat exposure.

It also showed neuroprotective effects by reducing intracellular calcium release and reducing hippocampal cell death in cultured neurons subjected to high levels of NMDA.

CP 55,940 induced cell death in NG 108-15 Mouse neuroblastoma x Rat glioma hybrid brain cancer (genetically engineered mouse x rat brain cancer) cells.

== See also ==

*[[CP 47,497]]

O-1871

2015-04-14T11:06:16Z

Adm1n:

'''O-1871''' is a potent [[cannabinoid]] agonist which was invented by Billy R Martin and Raj K Razdan in 2002. It has a [[CB1]] receptor affinity of 2.0nM and a CB2 receptor affinity of 0.3nM. Structurally, O-1871 is a cyclohexylphenol derivative related to [[CP 47,497]], and so is illegal in most jurisdictions where CP 47,497 and its derivatives are banned. However the 3,3-dimethylcyclohexyl substituent of O-1871 can be replaced by various other groups, producing other potent compounds such as the cycloheptyl derivative O-1656 and the 2-adamantyl derivative O-1660, as well as the corresponding 3,5-dichlorophenyl derivative, which are not cyclohexylphenol derivatives.

== See also ==

*[[CP 55,940]]

*[[Cannabidiol]]

*[[Cannabicyclohexanol]]

(C9)-CP 47,497

2015-04-14T10:59:19Z

Adm1n: /* See also */

'''(C9)-CP 47,497''' (CP 47,497 dimethylnonyl homologue) is a synthetic cannabinoid, a CP 47,497 homologue.

Its systematic name is 2-[(1R,3S)-3-hydroxycyclohexyl]-5-(1,1-dimethylnonyl)phenol.

== See also ==

*[[Synthetic cannabis]]

*[[(C6)-CP 47,497]]

*[[CP 47,497|(C7)-CP 47,497]] (CP 47,497 itself)

*[[Cannabicyclohexanol|(C8)-CP 47,497]]

(C6)-CP 47,497

2015-04-14T10:55:24Z

Adm1n: /* See also */

'''(C6)-CP 47,497''' (CP 47,497 dimethylhexyl homologue) is a synthetic cannabinoid, a [[CP 47,497]] homologue.

Its systematic name is 2-[(1R,3S)-3-hydroxycyclohexyl]-5-(1,1-dimethylhexyl)phenol.

== See also ==

*[[Synthetic cannabis]]

*[[CP 47,497|(C7)-CP 47,497]] (CP 47,497 itself)

*[[Cannabicyclohexanol|(C8)-CP 47,497]]

*[[(C9)-CP 47,497]]

Cannabis in Maine

2015-04-14T10:47:19Z

Adm1n: /* State law */

'''Cannabis in Maine r'''elates to a number of legislative, legal, and cultural events surrounding use of [[cannabis]] ([[marijuana]], [[hashish]], [[THC]], kief, etc.). As of March 2015, [[medical marijuana]] is legal in Maine, [[marijuana]] overall is decriminalized, and [[marijuana]] is legalized in the cities of Portland and South Portland.

== State law ==

On November 2, 1999, Maine legalized [[medical marijuana]] when 62% of the populace voted yes on Question 2.

On May 1, 2009, Maine decriminalized [[cannabis]] when Governor John Baldacci signed legislation (LD 250) which made possession of 2.5 ounces or less a civil infraction.

== Municipal legalization ==

=== 2013 ===

On November 5, 2013, voters in Portland, Maine passed Question 1 by 67% which legalized the possession of 2.5 ounces within the city's limits.

=== 2014 ===

The separate municipality of South Portland voted to legalize [[marijuana]] in November 2014, succeeding with 6,326 to 5,755 in favor. During the same election, the city of Lewiston voted down legalization, 7,366 to 6,044 against.

== See also ==

*[[Legality of cannabis by U.S. jurisdiction]]

Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol

2015-04-14T10:17:17Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol (CISTA)''' is a political party in the United Kingdom which advocates for the legalisation of cannabis. The party was launched in Februar..."

'''Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol (CISTA)''' is a political party in the United Kingdom which advocates for the legalisation of [[cannabis]]. The party was launched in February 2015. The party is standing candidates in the 2015 General Election who will campaign for a Royal Commission to review the UK's drug laws relating to [[cannabis]] and push the economic argument for legalisation, which the party argues could generate £900 million in taxation. The party has proposed legalising the purchase of [[cannabis]] for adults over 21 years of age.

== See also ==

*[[Cannabis political parties]]

Intravenous marijuana syndrome

2015-04-13T22:52:59Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Intravenous marijuana syndrome''' is a distinct short-term clinical syndrome related to the intravenous injection of boiled cannabis broth, which had been filtered thro..."

'''Intravenous marijuana syndrome''' is a distinct short-term clinical syndrome related to the intravenous injection of boiled [[cannabis]] broth, which had been filtered through a cotton cloth. The syndrome has at least 25 known cases in the English language literature, but all of them prior to 1983.

It is postulated that contamination, perhaps from the cotton used to strain the liquid of the broth or from particulate plant matter getting through the straining method, could be cause for the cases of illnesses

Hans Moleman

2015-04-13T22:50:44Z

Adm1n: Created page with "'''Hans Moleman''' is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons and was the former mayor of Springfield. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, and first..."

'''Hans Moleman''' is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons and was the former mayor of Springfield. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, and first appeared in the episode "Principal Charming". He normally appears in a running gag, where he usually suffers unfortunate, seemingly fatal events.

== Biography ==

Hans Moleman is the retconned name of an earlier character named "Ralph Melish." A seemingly elderly man, Moleman is sometimes portrayed as a resident of the Springfield Retirement Home, although in a deleted scene from the episode "Brother from Another Series", he is shown to live in a small house under a dam. He has cataracts and is almost entirely blind, which has severely impaired his reading ability and has led to repeated revokings of his driver's license. He carries a cane to walk with. Although he appears to be elderly, in fact, Hans Moleman claims to be 31 years old, and that "drinking has ruined [his] life".

Like many recurring characters, Hans Moleman does not have a fixed occupation, but rather has had a wide variety of careers over the course of the series. Many of them have involved his unfortunate events.

In episode 13 of season 26, "Walking Big & Tall", he is revealed to be the former Mayor of Springfield; however, he was banished from Springfield by the angry town's folk on a horse when it was discovered by Moe the bartender that a song he made Springfield's city anthem 30 years previously was in fact a rip-off from another town's anthem.

== Unfortunate events ==

Much of the humor associated with Moleman has involved him cheating death innumerable times, usually highly improbably. He survived his car blowing up, catching on fire, trepanning, a severe head injury at the hands of a hallucinating Mr. Burns, the electric chair, being left inside a fluoroscope for possibly an entire weekend, being buried alive, being left forgotten and alive in a morgue, and being engulfed by an anti-escape orb. He was also run over by Homer in "The Parent Rap", after the whole family promised they would not commit any crimes for a whole year. Homer ran over Moleman again in The Simpsons Movie.

As pointed out on The Simpsons Archive episode capsule for "Sweets and Sour Marge", "When the people-ball is rolling toward Hans Moleman and Agnes Skinner, you can see another Moleman in the ball if you watch in slow motion. Although the second Moleman was most likely an animation mistake, The Archive suggested humorously it could indicate that each Moleman is a different person and that he does indeed die.

== Character ==

Hans first appeared as a character model for the season two episode "Principal Charming", but he looked so shriveled and unrealistic that Matt Groening proclaimed him to look like a "mole man". However, he was used in several episodes and later became a recurring character. According to the episode "Principal Charming", his name was Ralph Melish, which is a reference to the Monty Python sketch "The Adventures of Ralph Melish: Hot Dog and Knickers" from The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief. According to a DVD commentary for one episode, some number of viewers were offended by Moleman's appearance, and he was reused in order to annoy people of such a viewpoint. Matt Groening has said that Hans Moleman was inspired by Tex Avery's Droopy, who shares many of Moleman's deadpan and unassuming mannerisms. Moleman's appearance is based on an elderly man Groening had once seen at the DMV.