Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (71 page)

2
Phil Mailer,
Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?
38-9.

3
Hugo Gil Ferreira and Michael W. Marshall,
Portugal’s Revolution: Ten Years On
, 5.

4
Martin Kayman,
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Portugal
, 74.

5
Artur Domoslawski,
Drug Policy in Portugal: The Benefits of Decriminalizing Drug Use
, 13.

6
Ibid., 15. Kellen Russoniello, “The Devil (and Drugs) in the Details: Portugal’s Focus on Public Health as a Model for Decriminalization of Drugs in Mexico,”
Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics
12 (2012), 382.

7
Michael Specter, “Getting a Fix,”
New Yorker
, October 17, 2011.

8
ibid.

9
Russoniello, “The Devil (and Drugs) in the Details,” 385.

10
João told me the name of both the politician and his brother, who subsequently died of an unrelated cause, but he asked me not to make their names public to respect the privacy of the family. Several other people raised this story with me: it appears to be common knowledge in Portugal.

11
European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction report
“Drug Policy profiles: Portugal” on Portugal 2012, p12.

12
Otto Pohl, “Portugal shifts aim in drug war,”
Christian Science Monitor
, October 11, 2001.

13
Specter, “Getting a Fix,”
New Yorker
, Oct 17, 2011.

14
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds.,
Prison Profiteers
, 27–35.

15
This account of the thinking behind the changes in Portuguese drug laws was also informed by Mirjam van het Loo et al., “Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal: the Development of a Policy,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
582, July 2002, 49–63.

16
Russoniello, “The Devil (and Drugs) in the Details,” 386–88.

17
You will be asked to pay 20 percent of the costs if you are judged to be able to afford it.

18
João agrees with Bruce Alexander and Gabor Maté that even if the currently banned drugs could be somehow be made to disappear, addicts would simply shift to other addictions. “I believe most of them would develop other kinds of addictions—legal substances or other kinds,” he says: “What really matters is the relation the individual has with the substance, and not the substance itself.”

19
Artur Domoslawski,
Drug Policy in Portugal
, 18.

20
This account of how street teams work is also informed by the street team I spent an afternoon with in Lisbon.

21
He attributes the fact that the police no longer beat addicts at anything like the same rate not primarily to the decriminalization, but to the fact that one addict died in a beating.

22
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1206820109.abstract via http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19396351 both accessed November 21, 2012.

23
They were speaking in English—the lesson was integrated into an English lesson—but some of them spoke it a little awkwardly (although a lot better than in any foreign language class I’ve ever seen in Britain). This is my best understanding of what they were saying. It was all recorded.

24
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2011/01/16/drug_experiment/, accessed January 9, 2014. See also http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/133086356/Mixed-Results-For-Portugals-Great-Drug-Experiment, accessed same date.

25
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Statistical Bulletin 2010
.

26
BJC article http://www.scribd.com/doc/46235617/What-Can-We-Learn-From-The-Portuguese-Decriminalization-of-Illicit-Drugs, page 1006.

27
Ibid., 1015. Domoslawski,
Drug Policy in Portugal
, 36.

28
http://www.latimes.com/nation/shareitnow/la-sh-heroin-comeback-20140203,0,5569498.story, accessed February 20, 2014; http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/02/23/philip-seymour-hoffman-and-danger-romanticizing-heroin/dJhAQgBSmvtzNpPK4HYTRP/story.html, accessed February 23, 2014.

29
European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction report
“Drug Policy profiles: Portugal” on Portugal 2012, 20.

30
Domoslawski,
Drug Policy in Portugal
, 19.

31
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf, accessed February 5, 2013.

32
http://www.ibtimes.com/pros-cons-drug-legalization-us-246712, accessed December 7, 2012.

Chapter 17: The Man in the Well

1
My interviewees were President Mujica, Lucia Topolansky (his wife), Mauricio Rosencoff (also a dissident kept in the well and one of Mujica’s oldest friends), Miguel Angel Campodonico (Mujica’s biographer), Rolando Sasso (editor of Mujica’s speeches, also a political prisoner under the dictatorship), Representative Julio Bango, Representative Sebastian Sabini, drug czar Julio Calzada, the writer Eduardo Galeano (his old friend), his chief of staff Diego Carnepa, Dr. Raquel Parquet (an expert on drug treatment who has advised the government), Federico Grana, Geoffrey Ramsay, Guillermo Garat, Juan Tubino, Juan Vaz, and his opponents Representatives Geraldo Amarilla and Veronica Alonzo.

2
Mujica en Búsqueda
, 21.

3
Mujica en Búsqueda
, and this account of his childhood is also informed by interviews with Topolansky, Campodonico, and Sasso.

4
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/josé-mujica-uruguays-robin-hood-guerrillas-9066?page=1, accessed October 8, 2013.

5
Ibid.

6
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_24-9-2005_pg9_1, accessed December 23, 2012; http://inside.org.au/reading-agatha-christie/, accessed same date. See also M.E.L. Mallowan, “Mallowan’s Memoirs: Agatha and the Archaeologist,” http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2450603.ece, 223–24, accessed same date.

7
Sasson interview.

8
Memorias del Calabozo
by Rosencoff et al, 371.

9
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2385-celebrating-compromises-in-uruguay-mujica-inaugurated-as-president, accessed October 8, 2013.

10
Topolansky interview.

11
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493, accessed December 15, 2012.

12
Robert Greenfield,
Timothy Leary: A Biography
, 333.

13
Ibid., 273.

14
Ibid., 355.

15
Ibid., 168.

16
Many other passionate advocates of LSD were horrified by his belief that it should be given to juveniles. See ibid., 427.

17
Ibid., 308.

18
Ibid., 380, 557.

19
 . . .” Ibid., 108.

20
Ibid., 392.

21
Ibid., 397.

22
Ibid., 532.

23
Szasz,
Ceremonial Chemistry
, 198.

24
Medical Research Council website: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Achievementsimpact/Storiesofimpact/Smoking/index.htm, accessed February 10, 2013.

25
Miron,
Drug War Crimes
, 47.

26
MacCoun and Reuter,
Drug War Heresies
, 240.

27
Ibid., 256. This was also broadly true of U.S. states that decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s. See Mary O’Leary, “Data shows pot use probably won’t grow,”
New Haven Register
, June 12, 2011.

28
MacCoun and Reuter,
Drug War Heresies
, 257.

29
Ibid., 258.

30
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE7992IX20111010, accessed December 1, 2012.

31
http://stash.norml.org/bigbook/monthly-adult-use-by-state.html, accessed March 3, 2013.

32
http://dmarkanderson.com/Point_Counterpoint_07_31_13_v5.pdf, accessed November 27, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/19/david-nutt-alcohol-cannabis-cafes, accessed November 20, 2012.

33
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-10-31/news/ct-oped-1031-chapman-20131031_1_medical-marijuana-marijuana-use-drug-use, accessed December 2, 2013.

34
Miron,
Drug War Crimes
, 26. Miron notes that it has been falling before national prohibition was introduced; but this may be because most states had introduced their own prohibitions during this period.

35
MacCoun and Reuter,
Drug War Heresies
, 28.

36
Tom Feiling,
The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World
, 270.

37
There were some caveats to his support for legalization; these emerged in our conversation.

38
http://norml.org/news/1999/01/07/dutch-marijuana-use-half-that-of-america-study-reveals, accessed December 2, 2013; see also “Addiction” doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03572.x; Robert J. MacCoun, “What Can We Learn from the Dutch Coffee Shop System?” Working Paper for Rand Corporation. As accessed http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR768.pdf on June 24, 2014.

39
See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47064492/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/t/hardball-chris-matthews-monday-april/#.T9-Ds82TSqk, accessed May 1, 2012.

40
For good references, read Jacob Sullum’s account of Hart’s theories, at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2013/11/04/everything-youve-heard-about-crack-and-meth-is-wrong/, accessed November 10, 2013. Miron,
Drug War Crimes
, 48. See also page 40 of the RAND Report at http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf, accessed January 14, 2014.

Chapter 18: High Noon

1
From the Colorado campaign I talked on the record to Mason Tvert, Steve Fox, Art Way, Joe Megyesy, Brian Vicente, Christian Sederberg, Tom Tancredo, Barbara Brohl, and Betty Aldworth. From the Washington campaign I talked to Alison Holcomb, Tonia Winchester, Pete Holmes, Roger Rofmann, Maru Mora Villapando, and Charlie Mandigo.

2
There was also a woman in the leading team in Colorado, Betty Aldworth. Her analysis, however, was closer to the Washington team’s. There were also some male spokespeople for the Washington team, but they were not its leaders.

3
http://archive.saferchoice.org/safercolorado06/pressroomcf1a.html?id=1159426802, accessed January 2, 2014.

4
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19040726.2.31, accessed January 2, 2014.

5
While this initial duel received little press, the wider duel between Mason Tvert and John Hickenlooper—which began, in some ways, here—played a huge role in the drug war.

6
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/colorados-beer-brewing-governor-critiques-the-white-house-beer/262018/, accessed January 2, 2014.

7
At the same time, he issued the same challenge to Pete Coors—the owner of the Coors beer empire—who was a prominent Republican in the state. The challenge was bipartisan.

8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaN5ERdnHrw, accessed January 2, 2014.

9
Mason was later told he did not have to testify.

10
http://thecollegianur.com/2012/10/10/richmond-alumnus-is-leading-advocate-to-legalize-marijuana/29323/, accessed January 2, 2014.

11
Fox, Armentano, and Tvert,
Marijuana Is Safer
, 139.