Ignore Harm Reduction of Highlighting Agricultural Mercantilism- Drug Policy Alliance

of the enormous continuing mega boondoggle of Tobacco Mercantilism Against Coca

We're not going to move forward with your proposal below on agricultural policy because I believe it's still not a clear connection for many of our attendees, and doesn't touch on their main work areas. As for the topic of coca, we won't be having an entire panel, but if you come to the conference I think you'll find that it's addressed on a couple of them, primarily panels with a South / Latin America focus.

Drug Policy Alliance- August 15, 2011

Coca is the stimulant described as the safest natural stimulant plant, whereas Tobacco the most dangerous- taking some 100 million plus lives during the first century of mass manufactured Virginia Bright Leaf cigarettes.

Coca was what the U.S. government via its United States Department of Agriculture targeted for its sale and use as a "Tobacco habit cure" and its growing popularity particularly through the southeastern U.S. where Tobacco predominates politically and agriculturally.

Coca was what the British medical journalist Anita Bennett informed the 1993 'Latin America' where she met myself and Ira Glasser who then expressed an avid interest in her notation of the utility of coca tea to women for easing childbirth (relaxing the muscles of the vagina) and hence reducing the tragic instances of brain damaged newborns.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-was-criminal-mercantilism-to-protect.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html

The DPF to its credit approved the COCA ’95 panel proposal that I moderated with speakers Roger Rumrill, Anthony Richard Henman, Dr. Jorge Hurtado (by video) and UCLA’s Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, which was that breakout panel session’s 2nd best attended (including Ethan Nadelman and Jacob Sullum), bested only by a California topic specific panel at a conference held that year in Santa Monica, California. It also deserves credit for publishing Anthony Richard Henman’s paper in its 1989 conference compendium, as well as my papers "The Ever-changing Ever confused Popular Conception of Cocaine"; "Cocaine Prohibition Water or Gasoline [for treating the flames of drug abuse]"; and "Cocaine Conversion- Onwards to Coca!" respectively in 1990, 1991 and 1992 (though strangely in contrast to the 1989 Henman article, don’t appear within the DPA online library). Likewise, I appreciate being placed upon the DPF cocaine panels in 1991 and 1992, plus Ethan Nadelman’s decision placing me upon the Foreign Trade panel that latter year.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/11/17-years-ago-just-say-whoa.html

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKYlQNnzOpX5EBKZe8rlBmduhyphenhyphensOEYkfB0wfBHF-lkm5xuJ1Yqywkh9hiBijKR4KKXIwgf47drcIHL5mOo3KlWu_mJtszuGb3S5IPDHM1MOlIrR8mu_Px7DIVSJExaqPMhO0cOMp4LnKc/s1600-h/City+Paper+JSW+December+18+1992+p26_1280.GIF

Yet ever since the DPF/DPA has seriously stalled out on the Coca issue.

It stopped holding a cocaine panel at each year’s conference (even as continuing otherwise regarding MJ). It has relegated coca to a sub-topic within a generally female ‘Latin America’ panel.

It denied every paper proposal that I have made to them after 1992, and have published or presented precious little regarding coca- a rare exception being an excellent 1st place awarded paper in the DPF’s brief (1996-2000) ‘Student Paper Competition’ – appearing as a presentation hand-written into the schedule at the conference itself and thus not appearing in the printed conference materials.

It denied my 1994 panel proposal- ‘Coca- Turning Over a New Leaf Towards Reducing Health Care Costs’, that had the support of Harvard’s Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who phoned DPF President Arnold S. Trebach, only to be rebuffed.

It denied all of my other proposed panels regarding Coca as well as the broader issue of the drug war’s perversion of drug forms and modes of use, such as that in 1997- ‘Tinctures of Opium, Wines of Coca, etc: Popular, Pre-Prohibition Uses of Natural Plants Perverted by Drug Prohibition into today's "Hard" Drug Plague’.

Should not that alone have qualified Coca as ‘HARM REDUCTION’?

It’s undeniably bad to ban whole Coca- ensuring that cocaine is only available in highly concentrated forms.

It’s undeniably worse to ban Coca- ensuring that the far larger markets in general for stimulants is denied Coca, while the stimulant that is the one that those pushing the early 1900s Coca ban were evidently most concerned with protecting- the one that’s the most politically established in the U.S., and the one most dangerous: Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco.



Yet drug policy reform organizations utterly neglect this broader issue of this Panama Canal construction era Agricultural Mercantilism (the U.S. took over the Canal Project in 1903 and completed and opened it in the year of the Harrison ‘Narcotic’ Act banning ‘Coca, cocaine, etc”- 1914- with the USDA exploring the domestic feasibility of Coca, Opium and other drug crops agricultural potential): the shameful history of the USDA-AMA-APhA Tobacco-Pharma alliance embodied by such figures involved with this trio of special interests described as a ‘knight showing great prowess’ Harvey Washington Wiley, and the subsequent decades many cigarette advertisements in medical journals. Though the DPF/DPA accepted by 1999 ‘History Panel’ proposal, I, along with the Coca-cocaine issue and the early politicking of the AMA-APhA and USDA would be excluded, including at the subsequent such panel in 2003.

Harvey Wiley Resume
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-resume-1915.html

Given their relative safety this has been an absolute disaster for health care costs:

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-leaf-stands-out-among-all.html

In each major category of intoxicant used by our species, there appear to be one or two drug plants that researchers have noted, are more controllable, hence safer, than all the other plants or synthetics in that category. Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, licit and illicit, as the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency.

And they would know that in 1914:

... there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who die every year from the excessive use of cigarettes; and yet I find Senators still pulling away at the cigarette as though t were a perfectly harmless thing. I believe the Senator will agree with me that there are many thousands of people who die from what is called tobacco cancer, a cancerous growth affecting the throat from overuse of cigars; and we find perhaps 60 percent of the Senators pulling away at the cigar as unconcerned as though no one were dying as a result of these cigars...

U.S. Congress, Senator Porter James McCumber (R) North Dakota, August 15, 1914

Nonetheless our governments have proven their loyalty to this apostasy from common sense with the descent into and continuation of this criminal mercantilism primarily for the sake of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco that came in the early 1900s.

The United National World Health Organization reports that Tobacco cigarettes have cost some 100 million premature deaths during the 1900s.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/tobaccos-relative-toll.html

How would finally beginning to highlight this suppression of coca/protection of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco not qualify as HARM REDUCTION?


Illustration: 1900s sales chart of cigarette production spikes at the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 drug control statutes.

By banning Coca, and protecting Tobacco- conveniently ‘grandfathered’ by the 1906’s Act’s exclusion of its USDA based jurisdiction [!] over substances not included in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia – allowing its mass sale in a fashion that would otherwise be considered adulterated and misbranded for the unlabeled additives, and reckless for such as burn accelerants to boost sales while increasing house fires, the authorities have not merely created the black market perversion of Coca into concentrated cocaine, rather they have additionally suppressed and denied a highly useful stimulant, for the sake of allowing the rapid spread of the most dangerous and physically addictive stimulant that’s politically established in the U.S. This has undeniably tremendous costs economically in lost productivity, lives and enormously increased medical costs.

The DPA must not pretend that such does not qualify as “HARM REDUCTION”.

Holding this panel proposal “Agricultural Mercantilism” would be excellent as a start.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/agrilcultural-politics-of-drug-policy_27.html

Panel Proposal for 2009 Drug Policy Alliance International Conference

Harvey Wiley

Agricultural policies gave forth the existing drug control regimen; this dates back to its milestone of the 1906 U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act granting the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) the power to ban a substance from interstate commerce via declaring an ingredient as deleterious to health, and of limiting its jurisdiction to substances within the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from which Tobacco was conveniently dropped 1 year earlier in 1905.

Since the U.S.D.A. was established to promote agricultural commodities, its empowerment would have severely unappreciated detriments regarding the market protection of the most intrinsically toxic yet domestic agricultural commodity of Tobacco from the foreign 'menace' of least toxic Coca.

With the public health thus beneath mercantilism, the consequences have been thus severe for numerous people, entities and interests.

Potential Speakers:

Sharon Y. Eubanks , former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, and the lead prosecutor for a R.I.C.O. act suit against the major cigarette companies by the U.S. department of justice, who in 2005 resigned in response to the Bush administration’s commands to reduce the proposed settlement by 90%. She gave interviews to CBS about this.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/06/bush-administration-accused-of-rigging.html

Marialuisa S. Gallozzi is a food, drug and insurance company attorney. Since 1987 she has been with the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington and Burling, long established with food and drug law. In 1988, she was assigned “primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] foundation” according to a letter dated March 1990 appearing in the 1988-1990 Biennial Report of the Drug Policy Foundation (a reform organization) by its Presidents Dr. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin Zeese, crediting her with giving them valuable advice.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-advised-by-c.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html

Her activities include that upon GMO plant made pharmaceuticals, as a panelist of “Perils and Pitfalls of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals” with her paper “The U.S. Food Industry’s View of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals”, viewable here.

Her published papers include "Inactive Ingredients in Over-the-Counter Drug Products," Regulatory Affairs FOCUS magazine (August 2002).

She is prominent within insurance law, so described as:

Rising star Marialuisa Gallozzi enters the tables in recognition of her vast experience in asbestos, silica, pharmaceutical and other coverage claims, in addition to insurer insolvencies. Described as “an expert on London insolvency matters and schemes of arrangement,” she works with US, Bermuda and London market insurers and captive insurers. Peers consider her “an intellectually strong negotiator and adviser with excellent judgment.”

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About Covington & Burling:
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html

It was initially founded in 1919 by Judge James Harry Covington, a former U.S. Representative from the 4th District of Maryland (1909-1913) who was in office shortly after the enactment of the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, through the time leading to the 1914 Harrison Act, and who was appointed as a Judge by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. It became Covington and Burling with the addition of Chicago lawyer Edward Burling, who was married to Louise Peasley, a daughter of railroad tycoon James C. Peasley of the Burlington Railroad also president of the National State Bank (of whom another daughter Mathilda was married to Frederic A. Delano- uncle of later U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was on the original Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1914), who moved to Washington, D.C. to become chief counsel of the Shipping Board during World War I, following U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's government’s nationalization of the railroads and seizing control of the shipping industry. (The early 1900s brought a sharp increase in federal law-making, not limited to the 1906 Food and Drug Act and the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.)

The founders of Covington & Burling foresaw the pervasive effects of the forthcoming era of federal legislation, regulation, and taxation. In 1919, they sought to create a firm in the nation's capital that could advise and represent corporations located anywhere in the nation or the world on a wide range of legal issues. Today our Washington office has over 300 lawyers representing clients according to the highest standards and fulfilling the firm's strong commitment to public service. Our lawyers are supported by nearly 100 paralegals and by information management specialists in the library, and in the litigation and practice support, and technology departments.

http://www.covingtonandburling.com/offices/washington/description.html

This firm’s oldest practices is its presence in food and drug law, with its web-site in 2005 listing 18 attorneys at its Washington, D.C. headquarters – 9 partners including two former Chief Counsels to the Food and Drug Administration (including Marialuisa Gallozzi, ”assigned to take primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] Foundation”), and 9 associates – who devote all or a major portion of their time to this practice, plus 6 additional lawyers at its offices in London and Brussels. According to the firm’s site at

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid52689/description.html

Covington & Burling has a large and comprehensive food and drug law practice. The Firm’s food and drug practice began at the Firm’s founding in 1919 with representation of the National Canners Association (now the National Food Processors Association and still a client). From that time, the Firm’s practice has steadily expanded to include all types of food and drug work and work relating to scientific and technology research. Past and present clients for which the Firm serves as general counsel or principal outside counsel include the Animal Health Institute, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Bakers Association, American Forest & Paper Association, Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology, Corn Refiners Association, Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, Epilepsy Foundation of America, Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, International Dairy Foods Association, National Food Laboratories, National Pharmaceutical Council, Consumer Healthcare Products Association and Toxicology Forum.

This work includes political organization on behalf of its clientèle industries. According to the firm’s site at

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid6266/description.html

The Firm was actively involved on behalf of major clients in connection with each important statutory revision in the federal food and drug laws, including the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and its major amendments, including —

the Pesticide Amendments of 1954,
the Food Additives Amendment of 1958,
the Color Additive Amendments of 1960,
the Drug Amendments of 1962,
the Animal Drug Amendments of 1968,
the Medical Device Amendments of 1976,
the Orphan Drug Act,
the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984,
the Generic Animal Drug and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1988,
the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1988,
the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990,
the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990,
the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992,
the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act of 1994,
the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994,
the Animal Drug Availability Act of 1996,
the FDA Export Reform and Enhancement Act of 1996,
the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, and
the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997.

Our lawyers have advised or represented clients in a wide range of legislative matters at both the federal and state levels. We have prepared draft legislation and analyzed legislative proposals, including interaction with Congressional members and staff. We have prepared Congressional testimony and advised clients in connection with committee and subcommittee hearings. Our lawyers have advised clients on compliance with new statutory enactments, and represented trade association clients in rulemaking proceedings to implement new statutes. As the 104th Congress undertook to address the issues of general regulatory reform and more specifically FDA reform, firm lawyers played a major role in conjunction with food, drug and cosmetic industry trade associations and other clients in analyzing and drafting legislative reform proposals, and in preparing testimony for presentation at committee hearings.

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid6266/description.html

Covington & Burling’s clientele amongst pharmaceutical and agriculture related firms includes:

GlaxoSmithKline, Monsanto, Merck, Warner-Lambert (Pfizer), Eli Lilly, The Balli Group

Covington for decades has been a preeminent antitrust advisor, regularly providing U.S. and EU antitrust advice to Rx and OTC pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms around the world in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, litigation, R&D collaborations, licensing transactions and other strategic transactions. We have been home to four former heads of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and two Chairmen of the ABA Antitrust Law Section - a unique distinction among law firms actively practicing in the antitrust area.

Unmentioned in the firm’s web site is its long established activities as one of, if not unquestionably in every way the world’s largest, legal representative of such agricultural-commodity related industries in one way or another, of pharmaceutical and Tobacco (cigarette) interests.

Covington & Burling also represents every major American tobacco company, including Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co., Philip Morris Inc., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, as well as the now-defunct industry trade association, the Tobacco Institute. The firm helped develop and coordinate the Whitecoat Project, an attempt to keep controversy alive regarding the dangers of passive smoking by hiring scientists to back up and attempt to give credibility to the tobacco industry's point of view that second-hand smoke is not a health risk.

According to internal tobacco industry documents analyzed in 1999 by Public Citizen and the Center for Justice and Democracy, Covington & Burling was a principle organizer and funding conduit for tort reform efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry. Covington & Burling has acted as a pipeline to direct money from its tobacco industry clients to tort reform groups in the states and across the country. For example, in 1995, the tobacco industry allocated nearly $5.5 million to the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), more than half of ATRA’s $10.2 million budget according to the Associated Press.8

A memo written by a Covington & Burling partner that year reveals the extent to which the law firm helped orchestrate the tobacco industry's tort reform agenda. Written to the industry’s "Tort Reform Policy Committee," the memo called for an expansion of efforts, including a "communications program … intended to enhance our ability to enact favorable legislation at both the federal and state level." The memo noted that "these media activities, to be effective, must not be linked to the tobacco industry."

Covington & Burling is also one of the largest contributors of pro bono work for a wide array of causes from Big Brothers/Sisters to medical marijuana (Therapeutic Cannabis), and has provided valuable legal assistance in a number of such cases, including that by that firm’s Partner Dr. Michael Michelson. This includes work for various tax exempt status Foundations dedicated to some issue or another, including the Drug Policy Foundation. Philanthropic and Grant-Making Organizations.

The Firm’s lawyers are regularly sought out to advise on the creation, reorganization and funding of private foundations (including family and company foundations, as well as foundations affiliated with associations or other tax-exempt entities), supporting organizations and public charities and the use of charitable contributions to accomplish specific client goals. In addition, charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts, which require analysis of the federal and state income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax consequences of each structure, are used to achieve clients’ charitable, tax and family goals. Our clients include the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, the Packard Humanities Institute, Verizon Foundation and UTC Foundation. In one instance we represent affiliated grant-making organizations worth well in excess of $1 billion.

Covington & Burling’s practice with foundations is a long established connection, with the name Frederic A. Delano (Edward Burling’s bother in law by marriage), appearing amongst the 1909 founders of the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C. (with Daniel Coit Gilman, Cleveland H. Dodge, Andrew Dickson White, and Elihu Root, Darius Ogden Mills and William E. Morrow), and in 1921 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was incorporated by Frederic A. Delano, Robert S. Brookings, Elihu Root, who became its first president, John W. Davis, Dwight Morrow, James T. Shotwell. Frederic A. Delano’s name appears as the 1924 founder of the influential Washington D.C. planning group “Committee of 100.”

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The Drug Policy Alliance grossly undersells drug policy reform by limiting 'Harm Reduction' more simply towards things as clean needles and safer crack pipes.

Coca Come Back
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/02/coca-come-back.html

Legalize Coca - Joep Oomen

http://www.akzept.org/pdf/aktuel_pdf/nr10/legalizeCocaineJoepOomen.pdf

LEGALISE COCA LEAVES – AND BREAK THE CONSENSUS

In April of this year, the International Narcotics Control Board was reported to have seriously discussed the possibility of sanctioning countries which fail to adhere to their obligations to the UN Conventions on drugs. One possible sanction could be the embargo on morphine supplies to such a country. So you can imagine: If a country like Jamaica would decide to allow the production and distribution of cannabis to its citizens Jamaican cancer patients would be deprived of morphine.

The INCB could just as well have praised the Thai police for executing hundreds of drug consumers this year, the US government for jailing 1 million non-violent drug offenders, or the Colombian government for fumigating 260.000 hectares of coca and opium in such a way that farmers will be unable to grow anything on these fields for the coming 15 to 20 years.

The Western world is confused. If we compare drug policy to a supertanker, the captains are drunk and have lost control. While most local governments in Europe are embracing the principle of harm reduction, some national governments like in Italy and France are starting to re-criminalise the consumption of drugs. But such a move is nothing but a final spasm of a dying body. As with other things, people’s opinion and attitudes change with time. Thanks to the success of local experiences that create the evidence of what drug policy reformers are saying for decades, governments in several countries throughout the world have installed legal reforms that alleviate the worst and most visible consequences of the drug phenomenon. This is a process that will undoubtedly end with the establishment of a legal framework in which drugs will be distributed and consumed.

Meanwhile in other countries, especially in those where illicit drug production and transport takes place, governments follow a policy of "Zero Tolerance", imposed upon them by what is called 'the international community', most often represented by the UN drug control agency, the United States Embassador and to a lesser degree, the European Union representatives.

In the Andean countries, those that mainly produce coca leaves and their derivatives, the harms caused by drug control policies are much more direct and visible than in Europe: violence, human rights violations and corruption. Western governments are not only aware of this – they endorse it financially and politically.

What to think of the case of Juana Quispe, a member of the city council of Chimoré, one of the villages of the Chapare, the main cocaproducing region in Bolivia. Quispe is chosen for the MAS party of coca growers leader Evo Morales, one of the main opposers to the former Bolivian president Sánchez de Lozada. On 14 September 2003, police forces raided her house, and flew her to La Paz, about 450 kilometres away, to put her in jail together with her 5 months old baby, accusing her of being a terrorist. The police reports to have found some dynamite sticks in Juana’s house, which after some research by journalists turn out to be useless. Juana and her comrades say the police has planted the sticks in her house, but the judges have initiated the investigation against her. She is free now, but only because her baby is too young to live separated from his mother. When he is one year old, his mother could be detained again, and end up with a sentence of 20 years, after a legal trial that does not deserve that name. And she is a city councellor, you can imagine what happens with a simple farmer.

In the 1980s, the coca farmers in the Chapare have seen how US forces that were supposedly fighting coca cultivation organised cocaine transports which had to generate the money and weapons that other US forces delivered to the contras in Nicaragua. In the 1990s, when the Cold War had ended, they have heard the US commanders say that coca cultivation had become a giant threat to US national security.

As militarisation of their region (one soldier for every 7 families) continues until today, when coca leaves grown in Bolivia are used mainly for domestic consumption, they start to understand that this war is not about coca. It is not even about drugs. The soldiers are there to ensure control over a region which has large reserves of natural resources like oil, gas, water and genetic material.

Meanwhile, European authorities play the role of the 'good policeman', not involved in eradication but in so-called 'alternative development', substitution programmes for coca which are considered by the majority of the farmers as a fraud, a terrible waste of time, as they have failed completely to alleviate poverty in the region, much less eliminate coca production.

1

As with prohibition as a whole, the key question is: How did we come into this mess? What was the ban on coca leaves about in the first place? The arguments that were used to put coca on the List of Controlled Substances that is annexed to the UN Single Convention originate from a time when the science of anthropology was poorly developed. Western authorities did not have any problem with considering indigenous people in the Andes as backward, lazy and useless. So when the United States proposed to wipe out coca consumption, a practice that had existed for at least seven thousand years in South and Central America without ever causing any adverse effect on anyone, nobody with any influence re-acted.

In Andean culture, coca leaves are a medicine, a gift of nature, a source of vitamines and energy for those who work the land in the mountains or the mines. Besides, it is a central element of social contacts, an instrument of communication, the fuel of a complex society based on reciprocity. Above all, it is sacred. Without coca, the Andean culture would not exist.

When it was still politically correct to investigate the issue in Western countries, scientists have proven that many of coca’s medicinal applications are useful in a Western context too: they talk of potential uses as an antidepressive agent, a remedy against diabetes, obesity, sexual impotence, acute lack of energy, typically the diseases that have appeared in the West during the past decade. Of course we do not imagine Europeans go around with a ball of leaves in their mouth (although one should do it this way, it is actually very nice) but there are many different ways to avoid that esthetical problem.

There will be a market for coca products in the Western countries. We shall never forget that the only exception to the ban on coca in 1961 was given to the use of coca in a soft drink that today sells 1 billion liters every 24 hours: Coca Cola. When the company tried to put a new coca leaf free version of the drink on the market in 1986, public protests against this in the US increased so much, that the company had to go back to the classical version – with coca leaves inside – within months.

The international legalisation of coca leaves and its inoffensive derivatives is the first step to solve the current dilemma. With such a measure, US and other governments would have no justification left to force Andean countries to erradicate coca cultivation. The control over cultivation and elaboration of the leaves could be organised in close co-operation with existing organisations of coca producers. The producers themselves would counter the irrational extension of coca cultivation as this would damage economic and ecological sustainability of the sector.

The aim would not be to eliminate the black market, as this would be impossible to accomplish, but to reduce it to a minimum. Therefore strict agreements need to be made and respected concerning the extension of cultivation, production and trade. A truly independent international authority could be created that supervises the quality of the products and guarantees fair prices to both producer and consumer.

Proposing the legalisation of coca leaves and traditional products such as tea, chewing gum or toothpaste, may look like a futile request now.

In fact it is an important step towards a more just and effective drug policy, which would be easier to take than for the case of any other product, because of the following arguments.

• Coca in its natural form has no known negative effects or effects that could be stigmatised as such. This proposal would count with the support from many citizens, also those who are not immediately in favour of legal heroin.
• The measure can be defended with the argument of offering realistic 'alternatives' to coca farmers who now grow for the cocaine industry.
• If Europe would decide to legalise the import of inoffensive coca tea, it could obtain the sympathy and political support of many developing countries, including those that do not favour 'harm reduction' right now. It would make its official attitude to favour humanitarian and rational instead of moral and repressive answers more credible.

2

• Finally, coca tea is quite a trendy artefact; it might well be a way to attract 'rebel youth' to coca in a way that's many times healthier!

One experience we had in 1995, during our first campaign to legalise coca, was in the Luxembourg parliament, the Chambre de Deputees. One member proposed a parliamentary resolution to ask the government to allow the import of coca leaves and inoffensive derivates to the country. The resolution was approved unanimously in the session of 22 February 1995. The next morning the US Embassy called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg to ask if the deputies had become crazy. Until now the government has chosen to ignore the resolution, but this could be taken up again. Or could anyone imagine the UN proposing to cut off all morphine supplies to hospitals in Luxembourg?

If one or more European countries would agree to legalise traditional coca products this will break the current consensus on maintaining the UN Conventions intact. The debate that would follow such a decision would be focussing on issues that countries need to agree upon before starting to design a new model for international drug policy: human rights, sustainability of drug trade, a rational approach to drug consumption etc.

Coca has a symbolic value: for the indigenous movement in the Andean Region, it is a symbol of the glorious past before the Spanish Conquistadores arrived. At the moment it has become the banner of a movement that is on the brink of obtaining the end of 500 years white domination. This is already happening in Bolivia, Peru is to follow.

It should also become one of the symbols of the future that is in front of us, if one day the world decides to replace drug prohibition with a rational, just, effective, sustainable and pragmatic alternative.

In other words, a drug policy that respects the right of every human being to enjoy all conditions and opportunities offered by nature to live and develop in healthy and human conditions. That day may still look remote at the moment. But across the world several citizens groups have taken the most important step, that is the first one. Only if we manage to unite these efforts, we have a chance to convince politicians: finally it is their perception of what it is a great deal of the general public wants that decides their choice.

Joep Oomen – European NGO Council on Drug Policy
www.encod.org

Georgetown Simplistic "Thinking"

http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/ronpaul/

WAR ON DRUGS: Paul would immediately end the war on drugs. All dangerous drugs would be legal if they were approved by a state government.[29]

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This may imply that MJ, Coca and Opium are more dangerous than alcohol, caffeine (Coffee, tea, other caffeinated beverages and caffeine pills, and other forms of concentrated caffeine), and that prohibition somehow makes things safer, particularly by eliminating Coca and Opium in favor of concentrated cocaine and concentrated opiates.

It was written by Gregory Hilton, of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service National Security Studies Program, and appears within an article of his "The Case Against Ron Paul", at his blog "The DC World Affiars Blog"

http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/ronpaul/
http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/

The blog is described as:

This Blog is focused on students in the National Security Studies Program, the DC Diplomatic Community, and anyone else who has assisted my course, "The United States in World Affairs.".

Accordingly, the National Security Studies Program:

http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/nssp/

The term National Security Studies Program has been in use since 1965, but the official launch was in March of 1977 when Georgetown University established a program under that banner. At the same time the American Security Council’s Congressional Conference Center became an off campus center for Georgetown, and the university emblem was displayed at the entrance of the estate. The NSSP then offered a Master’s Degree in International Security Affairs which was jointly conducted by Georgetown and the Department of Defense, with ASC’s assistance.

This first Director and the founder of the program was by Dr. Stephen P. Gibert. He was then and remains to this day a professor of government at Georgetown. The NSSP was then the only advanced degree-granting program in national security studies in the United States and Europe. The faculty was composed of experts in the field, and classes were held in the Pentagon on weekdays, and at ASC’s Conference Center on weekends. ASC also provided over $1 million in financial assistance for the NSSP.

The first class of forty students was enrolled in September 1977. They were scheduled to graduate in June of 1979 with a Master of Arts degree in government and a Certificate in National Security Studies. Beginning with the first group, the classes were generally made up of equal numbers of military officers, and civilians from government agencies.

Some were sent by the services of other countries; a fair percentage already were advanced degree holders or graduates of the service War Colleges. It was hoped that the horizons opened for them by their acquaintance with national security and strategy would have in time a significant impact on policy as those individuals rose to positions of prominence. To obtain a Master’s Degree the student had to be enrolled at Georgetown, and they had to meet the universities vigorous requirements.

Today many academic institutions offer national security studies programs, but Georgetown’s remains the largest. The current faculty includes former Ambassadors Chester Crocker, Robert Galluci and Donald McHenry, as well as the former National Security Advisor to President Clinton, Anthony Lake.

National Security Studies Programs have now been established at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, George Washington, the University of Chicago, the University of Georgia; the University of Illinois, the Army War College; the Industrial College of the Armed Forces; the College of Naval Warfare; the Naval Post Graduate School; the National Security Institute and the George C. Marshall College of International and Security Studies.

In addition to assisting the Georgetown program, ASC continued to administer its own NSSP. While the NSSP’s curriculum often changed, several key courses were always maintained. These included “Counterintelligence and Covert Operations” by James J. Angleton; the “U.S./Soviet Military Balance” by Generals George Keegan and Dan Graham; “Cuba’s Foreign Policy” by Dr. Herminio Portell Vila; “The United States in World Affairs” by Greg Hilton; “The Peace Through Strength Strategy” by John M. Fisher; “The Rising Tide: Free Markets and Free Trade” by Colonel Philip S. Cox; “Latin America’s Democratic Transition” by Colonel Samuel T. Dickens USAF (Ret); “Congressional Oversight in Defense and Foreign Policy” by Dr.Lren Thompson of Georgetown University; “Russia’s Global Strategy” by Ambassador William Kintner and Col. Ray Sleeper; and “Arms Control and Verification” by Thomas B. Smith.

The 25th anniversary of Georgetown’s National Security Studies Program was held in 2001, and the University honored ASC with an impressive plaque and presentation. The 25th anniversary was also a decision time for ASC. Veteran Chairman John M. Fisher had often expressed his desire to step down from the programs many administrative burdens, and it was clear the NSSP had outgrown the Congressional Conference Center. The Center will always be an important part of the NSSP’s history, but its primary drawback was that is was located too far away from the nation’s capital (a 79 mile drive), and it was only able to accommodate 60 residential students.

THE NSSP TODAY

The Georgetown University program is today known as the Peace and Security Studies Program, and it is part of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. The new Security Studies Program is awarding doctoral degrees. When Georgetown renamed its program, ASC kept the original name. For ASC the program began with annual conferences in the 1950′s and it was expanded steadily over the years to include a Fall, Spring and Summer Semester.

When potential students contact me I always refer them to the Application Form. This should be downloaded and sent to us along with your resume, and a writing sample (preferably a paper you have already submitted for academic credit). A letter of recommendation is also useful, particularly if it is from a Member of Congress, a Foreign Service Officer, a U.S. Flag Officer or a former member of the Peace Corps.

The “Frequently Asked Questions” section will hopefully address many of your concerns...

Gregory Hilton's blog does not have a tag for anything regarding the drug war, coming only as close as a tag for "Health Policy" which nonetheless fails to address the 'drug war'. Hilton's field appears to be primarily security related matters, as can be expected from Georgetown University, founded and run by the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order in 1789 (during the period of time 1774-1814 when the Order was officially 'suppressed'), and where the U.S. 'PATRIOT Act was crafted.

Concerning his brief attention given in his anti Ron Paul piece to the 'drug war' I suggest this reading list for Professor Hilton:

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-war-promotes-drug-abuse-over-drug.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/03/drug-war-tobacco-pharma-agricultural.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/01/drug-statutes-infinitely-worse-than.html

Instead of what I have written as a blogger, starting out with my initial South Capitol Mall blog in 2006, and as a drug policy, Coca Leaf history researcher since 1987, we get this overly simplistic, overly generalized muddled slop. It comes out throughout the MSM. Its style is found in publications particularly as "Readers' Digest" examplified (concerning the 'drug war') by Yale's David Musto- that blur the reputations of Coca and highly concentrated cocaine. Alas this comes out also through the 'prestigious' & expensive educational institutions, adhering to a sacred doctrine of white is black and black is white Soviet style brainwashing, coalescing as a within the Beltway fortress that festers upon deliberately confusing/misinterpreting ill effects of what it does, as somehow justifying throwing more good money and lives down the multi-trillion dollar continuing mega boondoggle of the ‘drug war’ , particularly Jesuit Georgetown University, the virtual fist in the glove of the U.S. State Department.

All distracting from the broader picture of manipulative political control- mercantilism.

DPA Conference Coverage of Coca, Opium, & Equal Protection Under the Law?

For their 2011 conference this November, I've made a number of proposals to the Drug Policy Alliance, including a paper presentation about the drug war's agricultural and pharmaceutical mercantilist basis and its thus far under-appreciated costs of this destructive mercantilism masqueraded as being misguided 'progressivism', a panel upon agricultural-pharma mercantilism, history, Coca and Opium, and the idea of my presentation within a History or Latin America or other existing panel.

This follow 2+ decades of scholarly activism, including proposals to the DPA's pre-incarnation as the Drug Policy Foundation since 1990, with their publication that year of my paper "The Ever-changing, Ever-Confused Popular Conception of 'Cocaine'", "Cocaine Prohibition- Water or Gasoline for treating the flames of drug abuse" in 1991, and "Cocaine Conversion- Onwards to Coca!" in 1992.


http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/11/17-years-ago-just-say-whoa.html
About 5 weeks ago via Facebook, upon inquiring at the DPA page was told that the decision were expected to go out by the first week of June.

The latest information is that:

(3:43) Some decisions have gone out already, the rest should follow very soon. We received many proposals!

(3:44) There should be a partial list available at the start of August.

Hopefully this shall include Evo Morales, President of Bolivia (who we hear and see so little about in the media compare to say Venezuela's Hugo Chavez), particularly THIS YEAR for officially DENOUNCING the 1961 U.N. Single 'Narcotics' Convention.

Constitution Party Alas Isn’t: Subverts Liberty to the Continuing Cigarette-Pharma Mercantilism

http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php#Drug%20Abuse
Drug Abuse

The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The 4th Amendment states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Constitution Party will uphold the right of states and localities to restrict access to drugs and to enforce such restrictions. We support legislation to stop the flow of illegal drugs into these United States from foreign sources. As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered.

At the same time, we will take care to prevent violations of the Constitutional and civil rights of American citizens. Searches without probable cause and seizures without due process must be prohibited, and the presumption of innocence must be preserved.

Ignores 1st amendment; 8th amendment; 9th amendment; 14th amendment.

1st amendment- freedom of religion

8th amendment- freedom from excessive punishments

9th amendment- freedom of un-enumerated rights retained by the people

14th amendment- equal protection under the law- scientific consistency, not the nonsense of altogether banning cocaine while allowing the sale of concentrated caffeine powder without poison warning labels.

Uses 10th amendment as vehicle to continue the status quo via the States. with its nanny state interpretation and twisting of powers to rights from the people to the State governments, while offering the 4th amendment as a mere fig leaf.

Employs other word tricks in pursuit of the status quo agenda that seem more moderate than they really are, restrict rather than prohibit, yet with no real limit of the scope of this police power.

For instance don’t think about requiring scientific consistency equal protection under the law, rather maintain ‘beliefs’ lacking truth.

It even asserts the idea of the U.S. with its criminal mercantilism for Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco cigarettes having “As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered” a blatant scam as it’s the U.S’s favored Tobacco that kills some 6 million people worldwide annually, and an estimated by the UN WHO 100 million plus during the last century.

That’s some legacy.

Obama Proving Himself to Be A Dick

Obama High School Graduation Handshake: 1979
Think about it, the first U.S. President born during the term of John F. Kennedy,who ends up cancelling a proposed new Moon Project as too expensive and we've already been there done that,insists upon continuing the $1/5th+ trillion a year continuing mega boondoggle of agricultural cigarette pharma mercantilism known as the 'drug war', shunning Bolivia's Morales Coca initiative, and betraying his 2008 campaign pledge to respect State and local statutes regarding regulated medicinal Marijuana.

http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/30/white-house-overrides-2009-mem
The Department of Justice sent out a memo Wednesday instructing the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and leading officials in the U.S. Attorneys Office to treat medical marijuana shops as top priorities for prosecutors and drug investigators.

"Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law," the memo reads. "Consistent with resource constraints and the discretion you may exercise in your district, such persons are subject to federal enforcement action, including potential prosecution. State laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law with respect to such conduct, including enforcement of the CSA."

The memo, authored by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, "clarifies" a memo released in 2009 that declared medical marijuana sales in states that have legalized it to be a low priority for law enforcement and prosecutors. The so-called "Ogden memo" first appeared to drug law reformers as evidence that President Obama was dialing back the war on drugs. The DEA and U.S. Attorneys office continued to raid and prosecute state-legal grow operations and marijuana shops after the memo was first circulated, leading reformers to conclude that Obama was lying when he said that his administration would not be doing those things.

The memo written by Cole and addressed to DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart and several members of the U.S. Attorney's office is a severe amendment to the Ogden memo. "The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime that provides a significant source of revenue to large scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels," the memo reads.

The Department of Justice enables legislative crime starting with that of perjury with charges against Marijuana "is a dangerous drug", and continuing via racketeering and extortion via the prohibition statutes of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, that rests upon a highly stretched definition of the U.S. Congress's Constitutionally assigned power to regulate interstate commerce running roughshod over 1st, 8th, 9th, 10th and 14th Amendment concerns, indeed with this ever being so challenged in totality.

Marijuana is what a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency judge in 1989 declared one of the world's safest theraupeutic agents not known to have caused any deaths (and note that the DEA is headquarted in northern Virginia, the state where 'Virginia' Bright leaf tobacco was created and developed into the last century's cigarettes- adulterated and misbranded by the standard applied to any other human consumable (except alcoholic beverages).

By so banning Marijuana, and indeed Coca leaf and Opium, the government is committing perjury in a conspiracy to maintain a criminal mercantilism scheme for the market protection of other commodities, notably 'Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco', various phramaceuticals (prescription 'patent medicines' or 'medications'), plus alcoholic beverages.

This is particularly so, regarding pharma, as that same government approves the manufacture and sale as a prescription pharma medication, of Marijuana's very essence in pill form- Sativex.

By banning a natural substance while permitting its synthesis into a pill, the government is going to end up increasing health care costs for the sake of what essentially a market protection racket.

Meanwhile, the ban on Coca and Opium shifts their ultimate use infinitely for the worse into concentrated forms and dosing increasing dangerous of snorted and especially smoked toxi-mania tending forms of 'drug use/abuse'- creating and maintaining the problem for maintaining yet more bloat of a 'drug treatment' industry.

If Obama or any other governing official so insists upon so radically driving up our health care costs (to say nothing about the enormous police-court-incarceration bloat), how the hell can anyone trust such an entity to provide a health care insurance program that's not ruinously expensive?

Ron Paul & Barney Frank's Bill Curtailing Federal MJ Prohibition

New proposed legislation, reportedly authored by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, would curtail the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement, limiting it to cross-border or interstate smuggling, though continuing to allow states to maintain prohibition under an ancient regime preference for the 10th amendment as opposed to the 9th Amendment.

This proposed law, H.R. 2306 initial co-sponsors include Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich.; Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.; Jared Polis, D-Colo.; and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland.

H. R. 2306 A BILL

To limit the application of Federal laws to the distribution and consumption of marihuana, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011″

SEC. 2. APPLICATION OF THE CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT TO MARIHUANA.

Part A of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:

SEC. 103. APPLICATION OF THIS ACT TO MARIHUANA.

a.PROHIBITION ON CERTAIN SHIPPING OR TRANSPORTATION.

-This Act shall not apply to marihuana, except that it shall be unlawful only to ship or transport, in any manner or by any means whatsoever, marihuana, from one State, Territory, or District of the United States, or place noncontiguous to but subject to the jurisdiction thereof, into any other State, Territory, or District of the United States, or place noncontiguous to but subject to the jurisdiction thereof, or from any foreign country into any State, Territory, or District of the United States, or place noncontiguous to but subject to the jurisdiction thereof, when such marihuana is intended, by any person interested therein, to be received, possessed, sold, or in any manner used, either in the original package or otherwise, in violation of any law of such State, Territory, or District of the United States, or place noncontiguous to but subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

b.PENALTY. -Whoever knowingly violates sub-section (a) shall be fined under title 18, United States 26 Code, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

SEC. 3. DEREGULATION OF MARIHUANA.

a.REMOVED FROM SCHEDULE OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES. -Schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812(c)) is amended—

1.by striking “marihuana”; and
2.by striking “tetrahydrocannabinols”.

b.REMOVAL OF PROHIBITION ON IMPORT AND EXPORT. -Section 1010 of the Controlled Substances Importand Export Act (21 U.S.C. 960) is amended—

1.by striking subparagraph (G) of subsection(b)(1);
2.by striking subparagraph (G) of subsection(b)(2); and
3.by striking paragraph (4) of subsection (b).

SEC. 4. CONFORMING AMENDMENTS TO CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT.

a.Section 102(44) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802(44)) is amended by striking “marihuana”.
b.Part D of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 841 et seq.) is amended as follows:
1.In section 401—
A.by striking subsection (b)(1)(A)(vii);
B.by striking subsection (b)(1)(B)(vii);
C.by striking subsection (b)(1)(D); and
D.by striking subsection (b)(4).
2.In section 402(c)(2)(B), by striking “marihuana”
3.In section 403(d)(1), by striking “marihuana”
4.In section 418(a), by striking the last sentence
5.In section 419(a), by striking the last sentence
6.In section 422(d), in the matter preceding paragraph (1), by striking “marijuana”.
7.In section 422(d)(5), by striking “, such as a marihuana cigarette,”

SEC. 5. CONSTRUCTION.

No provision of this Act shall be construed to affect Federal drug testing policies, and each Federal agency shall conduct a review of its drug testing policies not later than 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act to ensure that the language of any such policy is in accordance with this section.

As reported here, H.R. 2306 is now being blocked by Rep. Lamar Smith (R) Texas, who ironically was endorsed by H.R. 2306 co-sponsor Ron Paul.



Direct Link:
http://youtu.be/KmJqSLNy8ms

Ron Paul in italics

I just want a quick statement on why you are encouraging your supporters to support Lamar Smith, 22 year incumbent, 2 time bailout voter, voted for the war in Iraq; we are curious down here in Austin.

I have made an agreement that I will support the incumbents of Texas- Republican incumbents of Texas.
I am in the Republican Party.
I am the most independent Republican within Congress.
But there’s a limit to how much independence one can get away with within Washington, D.C.

Make of it what you will on the dynamics here, leading up to this, and that to follow.