Quick hits

There's a lot of drug war stories today so here's a quick hit list for those of you who come here for drug policy reform news.

Good news for major drug smugglers. Thanks to Bush's neverending war on terror, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs. They pulled their survelliance aircraft out, including BlackHawk helicopters and unmanned drones. Virtually all the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida and part of the Carribean are now uncovered. I wonder that means Jamaican pot will make a comeback. [h/t Jules Siegel]

Karzai withstood US pressure and Aghanistan won't allow herbicide bombings of their poppies. A wise choice. It would only cause ill will among an already restive population. Good for him for standing up to Bush on this.


This has been percolating for a while now, but here's fresh evidence that Ecstasy is on its way to becoming the new favored drug for certain psychiatric disorders.


John Hawkins of Right Wing News has an editorial in defense of the drug war that is just so wrong, wrong wrong, it cries out for a response. I'm thinking someone with better creds than me should see if Human Events would publish an op-ed in rebuttal.

And from Politico, the Beltway's newest insider news source and quickly becoming a fav of mine, NIDA vandalizes its Wikipedia entry to better reflect its propaganda. This is short and rather amusing. There's been a battle going on over the entry between NIDA and real people, with furious editing going on. At one point recently it had come to this.

Folks wondering what NIDA does now get four basic, non-controversial sentences followed by 10 links to federal Web sites. And at the bottom of the page is a plea from Wikipedia: "This article about a medical organization or association is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."

According to the update, the entry has been updated back to its orginal form along with an added section on how NIDA tried to sabotage the entry.

Finally I have no link for this but I received an email saying there was some adulterated marijuana going around. Apparently some unscrupulous dealers are spraying skunk bud with microscopic glass beads to mimic resin. Consumers complained of mouth and throat irritation. As far as I can tell the problem is confined to the UK but, as always, buyer beware.