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Featured MUST SEE: Retired Undercover Drug Cop Explains the Drug War

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by poncho, Sep 20, 2015.

  1. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Jack Cole knows about the "war on drugs" from several perspectives. He retired as a Detective Lieutenant after a 26-year career with the New Jersey State Police—fourteen in narcotics, mostly as an undercover officer. His investigations spanned cases from street drug users to international "billion-dollar" drug trafficking organizations. Jack ended his undercover career living nearly two years in Boston and New York City, posing as a fugitive drug dealer wanted for murder, while tracking members of a terrorist organization that robbed banks, planted bombs in corporate headquarters, court-houses, police stations, and airplanes and ultimately murdered a New Jersey State Trooper.

    Jack is a founding member and for eight years was executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization representing 100,000 cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, and supporters from 120 countries, who know a system of legalized regulation of all drugs will remove the violence which is the result of drug prohibition. He is now their Board Chair.

    After retiring, Jack dealt with the emotional residue left from his participation in this failed and destructive war on drugs by working to reform current drug policy. He moved to Boston to continue his education. Jack holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice and a Masters degree in Public Policy. During the seven years he spent in the Public Policy Ph.D. Program at the University of Massachusetts, his major focus was on the issues of race and gender bias, brutality and corruption in law enforcement. Jack believed ending drug prohibition would go a long way toward correcting those problems, so in 2002, when the Marijuana Policy Project offered $50,000 start up money for an organization of police who would call for the decriminalization of one ounce of marijuana, Jack dropped out of his Ph.D. program to found LEAP—and surprised MPP by calling for the legalization and regulation of all drugs.

     
    #1 poncho, Sep 20, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2015
  2. targus

    targus New Member

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    Sorry, but I don't have the hour plus to watch a video.

    How about the Cliff Notes version first?
     
  3. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    So don't watch it.

    Sorry, but I don't have the time to do your homework for you. If you'd like to be informed you'll make the time for it.
     
    #3 poncho, Sep 21, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 21, 2015
  4. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Marijuana prohibition can do more harm than good, doctors tell federal parties

    Put public health 1st in pot policies, addiction doctors suggest

    In a commentary published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, addiction doctors describe the negative aspects of prohibiting cannabis use, such as fuelling the illegal drug trade and the high costs and harms associated with policing and prosecuting people.

    "We're hoping to provide some direction to policy-makers in Canada to encourage them to rethink their current policies around cannabis, to move away from prohibition because it doesn't work and has a lot of harms associated with it," Dr. Sheryl Spithoff, a family physician and addiction doctor at Women's College Hospital in Toronto and one of the coauthors of the paper, said in an interview.

    Often the harms from prohibition versus harms from potential increased use of cannabis are falsely pitted against each other, Spithoff and her team said. But cannabis prohibition has shown to have no effect on rates of use in developed countries.

    Continue . . . http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/marijuana-pot-legalize-cmaj-1.3236904
     
  5. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    The Police Dept that Began Helping Drug Users Instead of Arresting Them, Just Called Out Big Pharma

    Gloucester, MA – After making national headlines for instituting a policy of helping addicts rather than locking them up, the Gloucester Police Department is “calling out” big pharma executives as the real drug dealers in the U.S.

    Instead trying to arrest their way out of a problem, however, this department is seeking real solutions, without the use of any force.

    Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/po...eal-drug-dealers-america/#PhRLxVTrtSxu7pi5.99


    “The War on Drugs is Over, and We Lost,” Meet the Police Chief Who’s Starting a Revolution

    Gloucester, MA — Leonard Campanello is not your average police officer, which makes him even more of an atypical police chief. While police departments across the United States double down on the war on drugs with more military gear and violence, Campanello is doing it right.

    While cops continue busting down doors of suspected drug users, and killing their dogs, or killing them, Campanello is reaching out his hand. The Gloucester Police Department serves the small town of 30,000 people, and when they experienced their fourth heroin death in three months, Campanello realized that police violence was not the way to deal with the problem.

    “The war on drugs is over,” Campanello said in an interview. “And we lost. There is no way we can arrest our way out of this. We’ve been trying that for 50 years. We’ve been fighting it for 50 years, and the only thing that has happened is heroin has become cheaper and more people are dying.”

    The fact that a police chief is unafraid to speak such truth to power is astonishing. Despite the war on drugs being an abject failure and an immoral stain on humanity, police departments across the country continue to support it. Those who speak out against it are shunned by the same Police Unions who lobby congress for more strict drug laws.

    However, Campanello says, no more.

    Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/th...hief-starting-revolution/#dkjWFL58AjVO2q0f.99

     
    #5 poncho, Sep 23, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 23, 2015
  6. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Captain Peter Christ (ret.), co-founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) brings his powerful yet entertaining critique of the War on Drugs to the St. Albans, VT Rotary.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCf-Et2_Mc
     
  7. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    U.S. Government Helped Rise of Mexican Drug Cartel: Report

    The U.S. government allowed the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to carry out its business unimpeded between 2000 and 2012 in exchange for information on rival cartels, an investigation by El Universal claims.

    Citing court documents, the Mexican newspaper reports that DEA officers met with top Sinaloa officials over fifty times and offered to have charges against cartel members dropped in the U.S., among other pledges.

    Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior research scholar in law and economics at Columbia University, says that the tactic has been previously used in Colombia, Cambodia, Thailand and Afghanistan.

    Continue . . . http://world.time.com/2014/01/14/dea-boosted-mexican-drug-cartel/

    Was Operation Fast And Furious Really Part Of A Secret Deal Between The DEA And Mexico's Sinaloa Drug Cartel?

    An investigation by a major Mexican newspaper, El Universal, has concluded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency entered into agreements—dating back to 2000 and continuing through 2012—with Mexico’s largest drug trafficking gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.

    According to Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a highly placed member of the Sinaloa cartel and the son of top Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the deal involved the cartel providing information about rival Mexican drug gangs to the DEA in exchange for the U.S. government agreeing not to interfere with Sinaloa shipments into the United States and the dismissal of criminal charges against cartel participants.

    In a series of court fillings in a criminal case against Zambada-Niebla filed in the federal court in Chicago, it is alleged that the U.S. efforts were part of a strategy previously employed by the U.S. government in combatting Colombian drug cartels whereby the government would “divide and conquer” by making sweetheart deals with one cartel in order to gain information to be used in destroying the cooperating cartel’s rivals.

    Continue . . . http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/01/14/was-operation-fast-and-furious-really-part-of-a-secret-deal-between-the-dea-and-mexicos-sinaloa-drug-cartel/

    Taxpayers are paying $60 for every pot plant the DEA destroys in Oregon

    The DEA has budgeted $760,000 in marijuana eradication funds for Oregon this year, according to KGW. Considering that marijuana is now legal in that state, many Oregonians — including some members of Congress — are questioning whether that's a sensible endeavor. They are trying to defund the federal anti-pot program that costs about $18 million a year overall.

    The DEA defends the cannabis eradication program on the grounds that much of the marijuana grows it targets in Oregon and elsewhere are the products of Mexican drug cartel activity. "This program has proven effective in dismantling and disrupting drug trafficking organizations," DEA spokesperson Joseph Moses told KGW.

    Continue . . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/24/taxpayers-are-paying-60-for-every-pot-plant-the-dea-destroys-in-oregon/

    Is this a DEA program to protect the profits of it's favored Sinaloa Cartel?
     
    #7 poncho, Sep 25, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 25, 2015
  8. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Despite billions spent to eradicate opium crops in Afghanistan, the crop is more popular than ever there, leading many to wonder whether some U.S. forces may actually be encouraging its growth and the heroin it later becomes.

    In July, the Centers for Disease Control warned of record-breaking numbers of heroin deaths in the United States. “Heroin use more than doubled among young adults ages 18–25 in the past decade,” the CDC reported.

    In the same month, it was reported that opium production is stronger than ever in Afghanistan, which now produces 90 percent of the world’s supply of the plant that’s refined to create heroin. This rise in production would have been impossible prior to the U.S.-led invasion, and it comes despite some $8.4 billion spent in counternarcotics efforts by the U.S., specifically designated to wipe out opium production in Afghanistan.

    In fact, as Global Post reported in October, under the watchful eye of the U.S., opium use expanded to new parts of Afghanistan and growers now make use of modern, advanced agricultural technologies.

    Continue . . . http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-26/rumors-persist-cia-helps-export-opium-afghanistan
     
  9. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Bolivian Coca Cultivation Declines After US Kicked Out

    In 2008, Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked out the US ambassador and the DEA. Since then, reports HuffPo, Bolivia, a traditional coca-growing region, “has … managed to reduce coca leaf cultivation, especially over the past five years. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total production of dried coca leaf fell 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and has fallen by an average of nearly 10 percent each year since 2011.”

    Bolivia now has the “lowest coca crop in the region”, according to a non-profit NGO focusing on coca-growing, while US allies Colombia and Peru have the highest. “Colombia … according to the United Nations, [has] seen a significant increase in coca cultivation over the past year…”

    Morales said he “could mention many countries in the world where there is this [drug] problem and how it has grown with U.S. presence,” referring to places like US-occupied Afghanistan, where opium cultivation has risen dramatically over the past several years.

    HuffPo further notes that under Morales, Bolivia’s economy has boomed and extreme poverty has plummeted, most likely “because of his refusal to follow the path” desired by the US.

    This mirrors the trend in the region generally, of which The Guardian reports: “the US lost most of its influence in Latin America over the past 15 years, and the region has done quite well, with a sharp reduction in poverty for the first time in decades . The Washington-based International Monetary Fund has also lost most of its influence over the middle-income countries of the world, and these have also done remarkably better in the 2000s.”

    Since losing control over Bolivia due to mass protests in 2006 followed by elections, the US has pursued its traditional role of democracy deterrence, taking efforts to “undermine” Morales’s leadership.

    Continue . . . http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/bolivian-coca-cultivation-declines-after-us-kicked-out.html
     
  10. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Oregon becomes third U.S. state to allow recreational marijuana sales

    PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Marijuana sales for recreational use began in Oregon on Thursday as it joined Washington state and Colorado in allowing the sale of a drug that remains illegal under U.S. federal law.

    Oregon residents 21 years and older can buy up to a quarter-ounce (seven grams) of dried pot at roughly 200 existing medical-use marijuana dispensaries as a new law took effect.

    Backers hope the law will help curb a flourishing black market, but opponents say it heightens drug use and access by children.

    Continue . . . http://news.yahoo.com/oregon-becomes-third-u-state-allow-recreational-marijuana-110715972.html
     
  11. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    How the DEA Uses “Parallel Construction” to Hide Unconstitutional Investigations

    Earlier this year, I highlighted the fact that unconstitutional surveillance was in many ways birthed by the pointless, misguided and utterly failed, “War on Drugs.” Here’s an excerpt from that post, titled, How NSA Surveillance Was Birthed from the Drug War – The DEA Tracked Billions of Phone Calls Pre 9/11:

    The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.

    The similarities between the NSA program and the DEA operation established a decade earlier are striking – too much so to have been a coincidence, people familiar with the programs said. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, “It’s very hard to see (the DEA operation) as anything other than the precursor” to the NSA’s terrorist surveillance.

    The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. “This was aimed squarely at Americans,” said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That’s very significant from a constitutional perspective.”

    In light of this, it should surprise no one that the DEA continues to use unconstitutional, “classified” methods when targeting suspects. Since the collection of this evidence would be questioned in a courtroom, the DEA suggests using a procedure known as “parallel construction” to avoid any controversy in the public record. This is how it works.

    From Muckrock:

    Continue . . . http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/1...e-unconstitutional-investigations/#more-28031
     
  12. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    BEN CARSON: INTENSIFY THE DRUG WAR

    Says police state necessary to combat “hedonistic activity”

    Presidential candidate Ben Carson told Glenn Beck that if elected he will intensify the war on drugs. He also said he opposes the legalization of marijuana.



    “Absolutely,” the retired neurosurgeon said when asked by Beck if he intends to continue the war on drugs. “I intend to fight.”

    According to a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, Carson is now the Republican frontrunner. His favorability stands at 28%, 9 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump’s 19%.

    In 2010 alone the federal government spent over $15 billion combatting the use and distribution of illegal drugs, while state and local governments spent $25 billion.

    The same year police around the country made 1.5 million arrests for drug violations. Arrests for possession of marijuana accounted for 48.3 percent of these arrests, according to FBI statistics.

    In 2012, FBI data shows, police made one marijuana arrest every 42 seconds.

    Earlier this week a Gallup poll found 58% of American adults believe marijuana should be legalized. Last year the number was 51%.

    Alaska, Colorado, Washington and Oregon and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use while twenty-three states have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

    Despite public support for marijuana legalization, as president Carson would work to keep drugs illegal. He would spend more federal money and dedicate more law enforcement resources to enforcing drug laws and imprisoning offenders.

    Continue . . . http://www.infowars.com/ben-carson-intensify-the-drug-war/


    How do you combat drug use? Simple, do more of the same things that haven't worked in 40 years!

     
  13. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Another echo chamber, poncho.
    Getting to be a habit.
     
  14. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Just trying to give people some perspective what are you doing besides complaining about it?
     
  15. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Most of us don't bother to read spam.

    You should pick your spots to enlighten us.

    These echo chambers are being largely ignored...by everyone but you. Obviously.
     
  16. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    The view counts call your opinion into question.

    Put the lemons away and start posting some threads of your own. It's not my fault you're losing the infowar.

    BTW, you do realize that the more you complain about about my "echo chambers" in my threads you're increasing the views they get right? I should be thanking you for that.

    People seem to enjoy reading our little encounters. Thank you for helping me spread the word. ;)
     
    #16 poncho, Oct 24, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2015
  17. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Not really. I keep checking to see if anyone has responded. I'm sure many others do to.

    It's looks like you're just on a self satisfying ego trip.

    It'll be awhile before I start spamming a thread just to make myself feel relevant.
     
  18. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Lack of response doesn't mean people aren't reading what I post.

    Just because you need people to respond to feel relevant doesn't mean I have to. That's the great thing about being an individual. We don't all have to think like you, while that might be a bummer in your mind I'm quite happy about it. :)
     
  19. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Then by all means, since your ego requires it, keep it up.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     
  20. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    600 churches do something about the War on Drugs!


    Meet the remarkable Pastor Eric Dupee and learn how New England's United Methodist Churches joined forces with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to put an end to today's Prohibition.


    The Drug War and Race Relations


    Art Way from the Drug Policy Alliance and Jason Thomas from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) join host Mike Krause to talk about the effects of four decades of the war on drugs, as it pertains to law enforcement and minority communities.

    Press Release: LEAP ED Neill Franklin Part of Law Enforcement Leaders, Top Cops and Prosecutors for Criminal Justice Reform
    Posted by Darby Beck

    LAW ENFORCEMENT LEADERS LAUNCH NEW GROUP

    Top Police and Prosecutors Declare Need for Criminal Justice Reform

    Washington D.C. – Today, more than 130 top police and prosecutors from all 50 U.S. states, including LEAP executive director Major Neill Franklin (Ret.) are holding a conference to launch a new group, Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration (LELRCI). The group is releasing a reportexplaining their mission: to reduce crime and improve public safety by reducing needless incarceration and harmful mandatory minimum sentences, and improving access to rehabilitation services for those with mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders. They propose de-felonizing minor crimes as California has done with Prop. 47, and ultimately, strengthening community-police relations.

    Continue . . . http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com/2015/10/press-release-leap-ed-neill-franklin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+LawEnforcementAgainstProhibition+(Law+Enforcement+Against+Prohibition)
     
    #20 poncho, Oct 25, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2015
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