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Shutting 'Em Up
The folks at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition emailed this morning to highlight an amendment that Chuck Grassley is offering to a bill that would create a National Criminal Justice Commission. Here's the amendment:
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings....that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense
under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
See? If you want to make sure your experts don't come to conclusions you dislike, just prohibit them from talking about those conclusions. Then they don't really exist. That's the American way of science.
And it's becoming the British way of science too, at least when it comes to drug policy. The Brits used to at least pretend to listen to their experts, but, as Mark Kleiman explains:
That has changed under the New Labour government, which has also taken a number of other steps to “Americanize” British governmental practice, for example by building up the power of the Prime Minister’s office vis-a-vis the ministries, in which the ministers are famously captives of their civil-service officials. In some ways, this is a “democratizing” step, elevating the importance of the beliefs and values of elected politicians over those of unelected experts. But that doesn’t mean that those of us in the business of being, and training, experts have to like it, and insofar as expert beliefs track objective reality more closely than do voters’ prejudices, it also means making decisions with a weaker connection to the actual phenomena.
When the head of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs gave a careful, analytic lecture arguing that cannabis and LSD were over-controlled compared to more harmful drugs such as alcohol, the Home Secretary promptly sacked him on the grounds that for a scientific advisor to express an opinion touching policy made it impossible to have confidence in the adviser’s objectivity. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullsh*t. What the Home Secretary clearly means is that the Government is committed to the War on Drugs and isn’t interested in any advice that might get in the way.
More here on the British dustup.
You are going to see this
You are going to see this kind of reaction as long as cannibis has the remotest chance of taking your mind off the dear sweet baby Jesus.
Brits
And this is of course, one of the reasons we had our little revolution. The next one should be to bottle up all the right-wing crazies, put them in Texas, and build a 30 meter high wall around the whole thing. Hey, I can wish, can't I ?
Get a move on with your revolution.
If left to his own devices, Brown would probably not have picked this fight (although Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, is the nominal dickhead, Brown's fingerprints are all over this). And who's arse is Brown's firmly head stuck up? Why, Washington's collective one of course, oh, and Rupert Murdoch's (but a fat lot of good that has done him).
I've been distantly
I've been distantly following the British drug policy dustup, and I must confess I don't understand the motivation of the Brown government. Is there some kind of electoral gold to be found in renewing the War on Drugs? I was under the impression that most voters in developed countries -- I would have thought this even more true of the British than, say, the Americans -- have grown weary of said war, and are skeptical of the efforts of politicians to protect themselves from themselves. Anyway, maybe some Labour folks have done polling suggesting otherwise.
Peace on the home front
One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights or to Cuba for political prisoners. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as life is flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
Only on the authority of a clause about interstate commerce does the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Administration fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period. Drug juries exclude bleeding hearts.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. John Doe’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with his maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.
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