Vodka tasting
- posted by Michael @ 1:14 PM

There is an informative post in Slate on the qualities of different vodkas. Among other things, it describes the results of a tasting test of 11 different premium brands commonly available in the US. Swedish Absolut that I used to like didn't do too well. My current favorite, Three Olives made in England, was not tested. Nonetheless, I got some useful information from the post. Can't wait to verify at least some of the results. Perhaps Vice Squad can have its own test at some future date.

The Slate post also contains a link to a story about Russia's Yukos allegedly getting in some trouble in April 2004 for marketing vodka distilled from ... no, not oil, but hemp seeds. The vodka was made in the Czech Republic. The offense of the Yukos-owned gas station apparently was not the sale of the vodka itself, but the statement on the bottle's label that referred to the vodka being made from hemp. Such a statement appears to be against the Russian law on advertisement that prohibits promoting drug use. Well, Yukos probably wished this were its greatest problem.

Labels: alcohol, hemp, marketing, Russia

 
Vicewire, 829/2004
- posted by Ryan @ 9:06 PM

1) 19 workers for the British government have been fired for viewing pornography at work, and another 200 have been sternly reprimanded. London paper The Sun reported the charges and brought to the reader's attention that one scurrilous employee viewed over 103,000 "hardcore" images.

2) A student was taken out of school for wearing a shirt that said "Hempstead, NY". Unfortunately for our poor law enforcement officers, it was the name of his former town in, yes, New York, rather than an attempt to gratify the use of weed.

3) Here's a story about searching for a drug to cure cocaine and other drug addictions that may already have some other use.

4) In a real surprise, apparently the head of the Haitian national police was involved in drug smuggling.

5) Drunken driving deaths declined in 2003 by 3 percent, the first decline since 1999.

6) And finally, China has launched a national campaign against drugs in the entertainment sector.

Labels: alcohol, Britain, China, driving, hemp, pornography, Vicewire

 
The Chicago Tribune's Hemp Farm
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:59 PM

Stephen Young, author of Maximizing Harm, tells the tale of an experimental farm run by the Chicago Tribune in the 1930s that grew hemp. His article, "The Colonel's Weed," appeared in the July 30th edition of the Chicago Reader. (The Colonel in the title refers to Robert McCormick, long-time editor and publisher of the Trib.) The idea behind the farm, the progress of which was tracked in a regular Trib column, was to promote innovation among farmers during the dark days of the Depression. Instead, the farm captured the attention of the feds, whose pressure put an end to the hemp experiment -- and for that matter, all US hemp farming -- following the 1937 passage of the Marijuana Tax Act. My synopsis doesn't do justice to the article, however, and the details are quite interesting.

Vice Squad member Mike and Libby at Last One Speaks recently have talked about the efforts at destroying wild hemp, which generally has a THC content much too low to attract smokers. The concluding sentences of "The Colonel's Weed" mention this phenomenon, and the amazing hardiness of the hemp plant:

Hemp still grows in Illinois. The Tribune reported in 1998 that $450,000 had been spent by state police the previous year to destroy roughly ten million uncultivated hemp plants, many descended from the Hemp for Victory effort in World War II. If ingested, none of those plants would have given anyone a buzz. In 2002 another 633,000 wild hemp plants were obliterated.

The numbers vary from year to year, but the battle continues. It may be possible to willfully ignore hemp's virtues, but its essential nature makes it difficult to eradicate. It is, after all, a weed. Only months after it's slashed and burned, hemp sprouts again, pushing its head to the sun.

Labels: Chicago, hemp

 
Recent Drug War Stuff on the Web
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:39 PM

A couple days ago I updated the potential Venezuelan drug decriminalization story thanks to a link to this week's Drug War Chronicle. The same issue contains a few other stories that are worthy of mention:

(1) The country with the highest rate of executions (in per capita terms) is Singapore. The majority of those executed have been convicted of drug offenses. Singapore hangs people who are caught with quantities of drugs that are sufficient to generate a legal presumption that the possessors are traffickers, though the amounts that trigger that presumption are not huge. Amnesty International has issued a report critical of the workings of the Singapore justice system. (Incidentally, Saudi Arabia is second in per capita (bad terminology in this case) executions.)

(2) The chewing of coca leaves is traditional in parts of South America. Bolivia allows limited amounts of coca to be grown legally to provide a supply for this traditional practice. Now the legal coca farmers are attempting to have those "limited amounts" increased.

(3) Salvia, "a Mexican herb with weird psychedelic properties," is apparently popular at a US Air Force base in Oklahoma. The herb is not illegal in the US, it seems -- funny that the expectation is that a psychoactive plant is illegal! The Air Force base is unhappy, though, and is now threatening to punish military personnel who use salvia. The linked article from Drug War Chronicle provides the Air Force's definition of a drug: 'any intoxicating substance, other than alcohol, that is inhaled, injected, consumed or introduced into the body in any manner for purposes of altering mood or function.' You mean they let folks in the military drink?

Drug WarRant points to a few excellent stories, too. First, there's this LA Times article (registration required) on industrial hemp. Here's a sample: "Among the world's major industrial democracies, only the United States still forbids hemp farming. If an American farmer were to fill a field with this drugless crop, the government would consider him a felon. For selling his harvest he would be guilty of trafficking and would face a fine of as much as $4 million and a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Provided, of course, it is his first offense."

Two other stories that Drug WarRant highlights are drawn from Left Flank Shooters. One is an update on the safe injection site for intravenous drug addicts that was opened in Vancouver in September; a second is an academic paper that looks at the relationship between drug law enforcement and crime using data from counties in New York state. (An exaggerated version of the bottom line would be, More Drug War, More Crime.)

Labels: Asia, coca, drugs, hemp, salvia, Singapore

 
Hemp and Code Names and Victory in Russia
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:35 PM

Michael Alexeev, an economist at Indiana University, has passed along a report on a hemp confiscation
in the Amur region of the Russian Far East (click here if your Russian is good). Seems that agents of the
federal drug control agency Gosnarkontrol have apprehended three locals and confiscated 430 kilos of
dried hemp. The seizure and the arrests were part of the program code-named "Hemp-2003." (Professor
Alexeev's comment on the name: Doesn't it sound like a jazz festival? Still, it sure beats Operation Holocaust.)
The authorities have filed a criminal suit against the three villagers. If convicted, the culprits will face prison
terms from 7 to 15 years. It looks like Russia, too, can now safely declare victory in the War on Drugs.

Industrial hemp is illegal in the US, though not illegal in many other parts of the world. Hemp food products may
be on the verge of escaping the jurisdiction of the DEA.

Labels: hemp, Russia