NewsTrust - Drugs - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Zakaria: Incarceration nation

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Fareed Zakaria - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - Something caught my eye the other day. Pat Robertson, the high priest of the religious right, had some startling things to say about drugs. "I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Mr. Robertson said in a recent interview. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think. This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded." The reason Robertson is for legalizing marijuana is that it has created a prison problem in America that is well beyond what most Americans imagine.

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The Supreme Court closes the door to justice

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Has the Supreme Court lost faith in the American court system? That is a strange question to ask about the justices who sit at the top of the country's judicial hierarchy. But in case after case in the just-completed term, the court, usually in 5-4 decisions with the conservatives in the majority, denied access to the courts.

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Call Off the Global Drug War

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jimmy Carter - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - To make drug policies more humane and more effective, the U.S. should rehabilitate non-violent, casual drug users, and undermine the power of organized crime.

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Mr Ainsworth is right: the war has failed

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - Dec. 17 (Editorial) - It is depressing how stale and weary have been the responses to the suggestion from the former Labour Cabinet minister, Bob Ainsworth, that many recreational drugs should be decriminalised. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, issued a swift denunciation of the former minister's "irresponsible ideas" saying they did not reflect the view of the leader, party or public. When the Prime Minister's office was asked whether Mr Ainsworth's ideas merited consideration, it issued a one-word answer: No.

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Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - A chief of the Mafia Cruenza, one of the biggest drug gangs in the 1980s, was recorded expressing his gratitude for the war on drugs as 'good for business'

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Moonshine or the Kids?

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - May. 23 (Opinion) - On the annual win-a-trip journey, finding families without enough money to pay school fees, but with plenty for booze and cigarettes.

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Killer fungus is no mystery to Afghan poppy growers

Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nushin Arbabzadah - May. 17 (Opinion) - Afghanistan's opium producers believe they are victims of a biological attack by the United States...

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The Performance-Enhanced Military

Fri, 07 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Tim Hsia - May. 07 (Opinion) - Although there has been much attention devoted to the military’s use of drugs to medicate mental illnesses, there has been little attention focused on the sharp rise of supplements used by service members.

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The most dangerous drug isn't meow meow. It isn't even alcohol ...

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - Mephedrone, otherwise known as meow meow. Photograph: Rex Features I'm a lightweight; always have been. I didn't get properly drunk until I was 25, on a night out which culminated in a spectacular public vomiting in a Chinese restaurant. Ever wondered

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Karzai faces anger in Marjah

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Asia Times - By Aziz Ahmad Tassal - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai faced an angry reception from people in the southern town of Marjah following a major military assault against the Taliban.

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Homeopathy and the nocebo effect

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Ben Goldacre - Nov. 28 (Opinion) - Can a sugar pill have a side-effect? Interestingly, a paper published in the journal Pain next month looks at just this issue. It found every single placebo-controlled trial ever conducted on a migraine drug, and looked at the side-effects reported by the people in the control group, who received a dummy "placebo" sugar pill instead of the real drug. Not only were these side-effects common, they were also similar to those of whatever drug the patients thought they might be receiving.

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Accept the facts – and end this futile 'war on drugs'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - The prohibitionists are – from the best intentions and the highest motives – unleashing a catastrophe. Human beings have been finding ways to get stoned or high since we lived in caves. In our attempt to end this natural impulse, we have created a problem worse than drug use itself.

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Eugene Robinson - Eugene Robinson on the Afghan drug trade

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:08:56 -0700

Washington Post - Oct. 29 - The opium poppy was introduced to Afghanistan more than 2,300 years ago by the armies of Alexander the Great. His forces were eventually driven out, like those of every would-be conqueror since. The poppy has proved more tenacious.

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Time for the U.S. to Get Out of Afghanistan

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By George F. Will - Sep. 01 (Opinion) - U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.

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Afghanistan Votes

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 21 (Editorial) - The next president will need full support from the United States, NATO and the Afghan people to defeat the Taliban.

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Fighting for Afghanistan's women

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Heather Harvey - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - It is not the main reason for troop presence, but Nato and the US must ensure Afghan women?s rights aren?t traded for politics In case we?re tempted to think otherwise, the government has taken to repeating the mantra that Afghanistan is a war for our own security about once every half an hour. Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth insists that the dreadful attrition rate in Helmand is about . For the doubters and those quick to cry "mission creep", the implication is clear: it?s not about curbing the heroin trade, it?s not about defending women?s rights and it?s not about having a neo-imperialist military boot print in the unstable Af-Pak zone. It?s not even about defeating the Taliban for its own sake. Beating the Taliban is deemed important ...

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Funds for the Taliban

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - Jul. 30 (Editorial) - US special envoy Richard Holbrooke’s statement in Brussels that the Taliban receive more money from their sympathisers in the Gulf countries than they obtain from the illegal narcotics trade in Afghanistan deserves to be taken note of. As we wrote in in our issue of June 29, 'misguided concepts of philanthropy' contribute in no small measure to the Taliban’s coffers.

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Nanny reveals tragic secret life of Jackson

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Times - By Maurice Chittenden, John Harlow Los Angeles - Jun. 28 (Interview) - The nanny says she once called in the singer’s mother, Katherine, and sister, Janet, to attempt an “intervention”, trying to persuade the singer to come to terms with his addiction. Instead Jackson turned on her, accusing her of betraying him. “He didn’t want to listen; that was one of the times he let me go,” she told Barak.

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Panama wrong choice for Obama's first trade deal

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By David Batker, Stephanie Celt - May. 27 (Opinion) - Panama's "comparative advantage" is tax evasion. The more money multinational companies shift to hokey Panamanian subsidiaries, the fewer taxes they owe in the U.S. And secrecy in the Panamanian banking sector secures foreign investment of another sort. The U.S. State Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency have identified Panama's financial sector as a primary repository and conduit for Colombian and Mexican narco-trafficking cartels.

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Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Joe Klein - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - Beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York's, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy.

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The Scientific Activist: THC Gives Cancer Cells the Munchies Too

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ScienceBlogs.com - By Nick Anthis - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - THC and other cannabinoids are actively being investigated for various useful clinical purposes, including the treatment of cancer through the inhibition of tumor growth.

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How to stop the drug wars

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Mar. 06 (Editorial) - Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

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Presidential Candidates on Marijuana

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By John Tierney - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - For patients and doctors who want to use medical marijuana for pain relief, there's more good news from researchers -- and maybe signs of change in Washington. Barth Wilsey and colleagues at the University of California at Davis report in the Journal of Pain that medical marijuana proved effective in treating patients suffering from nerve damage related due to diabetes, spinal injury, multiple sclerosis and other causes. The study, which included a control group of patients who were given placebo cigarettes, found that the patients given real marijuana cigarettes experienced significant pain relief.

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Your forest on drugs: America's cocaine habit destroys national parks

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By David Biello - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - In Guatemala, drug traffickers clear a new landing strip on average once every six months to avoid being caught. And, over the last 15 years, trafficking has eliminated half the nesting trees of the scarlet macaw. At El Mirador, the jungle-covered remains of a once flourishing Mayan city, its pending listing as a new national park will likely invite narco-traffickers to take over the home of those same scarlet macaws as well as white-lipped peccaries, jaguars and other animals.

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The Buried Story Of The Steroid Scandal

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - By Bob Schieffer - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a ballplayer. We didn't have coaches back then until we got to high school. We learned the game from each other and from copying the major leaguers. We copied everything from their swings to the way they walked. Because they chewed tobacco, I chewed. It was part of the game.

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