Say No to Drugs, or Say Nothing At All

Ted Galen Carpenter on efforts to ensure that pro-drug use messages can't get a hearing. Scariest detail:

The most ominous proposal for repressing pro-drug reform speech comes (not surprisingly) from the United Nations. The UN's International Narcotics Control Board has issued a report implicitly calling on member states to criminalize opposition to the war on drugs. Citing the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Trafficking in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, the INCB asserts that all governments are obligated to enact laws that prohibit "inciting" or "inducing" people to use illegal drugs and to punish such violations as criminal offenses.

If such a vague and chilling restriction on freedom of expression were not odious enough, the UN board contends that any portrayal that shows illicit drug use "in a favourable light" constitutes incitement and therefore should be banned as well. Since the report also repeatedly denounces medical marijuana initiatives as well as decriminalization or legalization proposals, even the most sedate advocacy of changing prohibitionist drug laws might run afoul of the censorship regime being pushed by the United Nations.

Comments

[James Merritt]

Ed says, "But they, too, will pass. That pesky 1st Ammendment keeps getting in the way."

It didn't seem to get in the way of the McCain-Feingold provisions that ban certain types of political speech (not funding, actual speech) in the immediate weeks before an election. If the Supreme Court doesn't reverse itself on at least that point, then I think we can't count on the First Amendment getting in the way of anything for very much longer, regardless of whenever and wherever Ridge, Ashcroft, and other patriots eventually go. This is one of the most egregious cases of the government saying 2+2=5 that I have ever seen in real life; any remaining faith I had that the principles of liberty are safe in the Supreme Court has been shaken to its foundation by that 6.5 temblor.

[JSM]

Hmmm, the UN is really a reflection of Bill Clinton. A purported champion of liberal causes while simultaneously advocating jail time for their supporters for doing something in the privacy of their home. (As long as the stereotypical liberal is a pot smoking hippy sympathist.) Makes you wonder what the outcome of the 2000 election would have been if there wasn't those pesky 700,000 people arrested on drug related charges in 1999.

The sky really has been falling all along!

[rst]

Yes, the unnamed official can say all he wants in support of the U.N.'s boundless rhetoric on the topic, but at the end of the day if they want to make it illegal, that takes an act of Congress that will survive scrutiny. Bush doesn't have the power to make law. Although I'm sure the administration is finding a workaround to that little Constitutional inconvenience as well.

[Swamp Justice]

Don't forget that this UN (and its Black Helicopters) wants to implement a worldwide ban on privately owned firearms: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul130.html

[GoonFood]

As if we needed any more reasons to get the US out of the UN... they slap a bit of icing on the cake. I say pull out and let those impotent fools flail about for a few decades then finally collapse under their own idiocy.

[SM]

R.C Dean wrote -
"They certainly are all in favor of governmental and supra-governmental oversight of damn near everything - guns, health, education, drugs, you name it."
Not to mention cloning, engineered foods etc.

[rst]

Many of these victims of tyranny were first disarmed by their governments.

Always the first step.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that the U.N. is neither to be trusted nor counted upon for any pressing world issues.

For a group that can't even get firearms and drug war rights straight, why anyone would require the U.S. to seek approval for a war from this absurd collection of retards, who knows.

[rst]

I say pull out

We can't. We are the U.N. The headquarters are in NY, and were they in any other country, terrorists would have long blown it up. Coffee Asinine lives in a Manhattan apt rent-free. Without the U.S. in the U.N. Milosevic would be piling more Muslim bodies into shallow graves and Kuwaiti Shiites would finally be learning the real reason the terrorists are pissed: we have the audacity to allow Shiites to live.

[josh]

I guess, buy Sullum's bood while you can!

Or maybe, get rid of it while you can!

[josh]

Err, that would be 'book,' not 'bood.'

Jacob's bood is not now, nor to my knowledge, ever was, for sale. My apologies to anyone who got their hopes up.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I'm actually quite surprised. Though I loath the concept of a global government, I am under the impression that the UN is pretty liberal on social issues. I don't see how this drug prohibitionism gets by the more enlightend European and Canadian members.

[amr]

Man, Just about every rapper I can think of breaks these rules with each release. Portraying drug use "in a favourable light," "inducing" drug use, etc.

The next time Snoop Dogg lectures me about getting the UN involved in Iraq, I'll just remind him that his albums are against UN guidelines (or whatever suggested laws are).

[amr]

Man, Just about every rapper I can think of breaks these rules with each release. Portraying drug use "in a favourable light," "inducing" drug use, etc.

The next time Snoop Dogg lectures me about getting the UN involved in Iraq, I'll just remind him that his albums are against UN guidelines (or whatever suggested laws are).

[Todd Fletcher]

Thank god we don't give a flying f*ck about what the UN wants in this country.

[digamma]

Here's the primary source. Carpenter's quotes come from Chapter 1.

[R. C. Dean]

Though I loath the concept of a global government, I am under the impression that the UN is pretty liberal on social issues.

Depends on what you mean by "liberal" and "social issues", I guess. I certainly find the UN takes the statist side on most every social issue except, perhaps, reproductive freedom. They certainly are all in favor of governmental and supra-governmental oversight of damn near everything - guns, health, education, drugs, you name it.

[xray]

Todd: You are funny. This is an example of US and UN policy being exactly in line. Actually, this evidence of the UN ignoring science, economics and common sense to pander to the American drug warriors should be encouraging to you flyingfuckers!

[Jean Bart]

Is this flying fucking being done on a commercial, government or private plane? Or does this have something to do with a magic carpet? 🙂

[Jean Bart]

Or Peter Pan? 🙂

[rst]

I am under the impression that the UN is pretty liberal on social issues.

There's still a U.N.? I hadn't noticed.

I'm not sure how seriously we need to take the recommendations of a group that put Libya in as chair of the UN Human Rights Commission. It is a grievance we hold with the government, that instead of treating the actual problem of drug addiction as the medical problem it is, they waste tax dollars, resources, Super Bowl Commercial time, and jail space on users and farmers. Unlike the U.N., whose member states chiefly sing a great tune about personal freedom but cannot yet wrap their minds around such a concept, we have this right in our Constitution called petitioning for the redress of grievances. The U.N. and Istook can kiss my oft-petitioning ass.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Great. Before, I was simply irritated by the UN's existence. Now I'm scared.

Xray: is there a "flyingfucker" miles program? Maybe Bush can use donated FFmiles to fund his Mars-shot boondogle.

[rst]

Now I'm scared.

Why, is it any harder to get greens? Fuck the U.N., and fuck Istook. Istook is a right-wing mouthpiece with a Christian Coalition pamphlet dispenser in his arsehole. It's sad that they'll never get it...the government is the absolute last place to which a rational person would ever look as a moral referent. Having never killed someone, neither by DUI, nor running a stop sign, nor tiring of an affair, nor funding a small military incursion into a village (because the best reciprocity for drug smuggling is killing South American villagers, of course) having never evaded my taxes, hidden oversight from the people, gone on vacation on taxpayer funds, , I'd say that my own moral standing - drug use notwithstanding - is far more resolute and certain than any of the putrid icons of waste and corruption which smear the hallowed halls of Congress. So when one of them waxes rhapsodic about what I choose to do behind my closed door and in the privacy of my own home, what does that matter? We are tiny and unnoticed. Keep your connections - if you're into that sort of thing - open, quiet, and small. Trust in the growing liberalism of the 9th and the likewise growing state tolerance towards medical marijuana use. Federalism is a good thing.

[Mona]

This UN move is not surprising. A few yrs back drug warrior and congresscritter Solomon (R-NY)proposed it should be illegal to advocate drug legalization. Then-drug czar McCaffrey reminded Solomon of that slight impediment, to wit: the First Amendment and that freedom of speech thingie.

But there is little comfort to be had there. When I took crim law in '91, my prof (who was uncomfortable at the thought of legalization) declared to the class that there are three issues which will cause a trial court to deem a search reasonable and the appellate courts to affirm, and these issues are: 1. Drugs, 2. Drugs, and 3.Drugs. If the 4th Amendment has given way to drug war hysteria, there is no good reason why the First should not as well.

[xray]

Mr Nice Guy: Are you suggesting we could give Bush our flyingfucks? I would be happy to donate all of em if it would end the WOD.

[ed]

The UN's efficacy in shaping US policy is minimal, I think, especially post-Iraq. The real threat is Ridge, Ashcroft, and other "patriots."
But they, too, will pass. That pesky 1st Ammendment keeps getting in the way.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Xray:

If they took all of the money wasted on the WOD and spent it on a Mars mission, I would be all for it.. As long as they put on a 3-d Mars image light show accompanied by a newly reformed Pink Floyd.