From here.

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La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,900m above sea level – an altitude where even two flights of stairs makes your heart race like a hummingbird – is home to the most celebrated bar in all of South America: Route 36, the world’s first cocaine lounge. I sit back to take in the scene – table after table of chatty young backpackers, many of whom are taking a gap year, awaiting a new job or simply escaping the northern hemisphere for the delights of South America, which, for many it seems, include cocaine.

“Since they are an after-hours club and serve cocaine the neighbours tend to complain pretty fast. So they move all the time. Maybe if they are lucky they last three months in the same place, but often it is just two weeks. Route 36 is a movable feast,” says a Bolivian newspaper editor who asked not to be named. “One day it is in one zone and then it pops up in another area. Certainly it is the most famous among the backpacker crowd but there are several other places that are offering cocaine as well. Because Route 36 changes addresses so much there is a lot of confusion about how many cocaine bars are out there.”

“The owner has paid off all the right people,” in the words of a waiter. I wonder if these people do not include Bolivia’s most prominent coca grower, Marxist President Evo Morales.

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Mexican prosecutors say the move does not amount to legalisation.

They say it is designed to prevent corrupt police from seeking bribes from small-time drug users, and to encourage addicts to seek treatment.

The move comes amid a drug war in Mexico that has claimed more than 11,000 lives in the last three years.

Those found in possession of the equivalent of four joints of marijuana, or four lines of cocaine will no longer be viewed as criminals.

Instead they will be encouraged to seek government-funded drug treatment, which will be compulsory if users are caught a third time.

The new law applies to a wide range of drugs, including heroin and methamphetamine.

So far, so good. But:

Despite this change in the law, the Mexican government says it has no intention of permitting full legalisation of drugs – which some analysts suggest is the only way to take the trade from the hands of criminal gangs.

They realize what they must do to achieve their stated goal, but they will never do it because… because… Why, exactly?

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A “friend” of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.

The video, which the shooter initially hoped to sell for $2 million before scaling back his price to $400,000, shows a 20-something woman with light skin and long brown hair taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder.

The woman appears to resemble Ashley Biden, 27, a social worker for a Delaware child-welfare agency and a visible presence during her father’s campaign for the White House.

Biden has been an outspoken crusader against drugs, coining the term “drug czar” in 1982 while campaigning for a more forceful “war on drugs.”

Well, Biden knows what to do, then. Right? Or do all those drug laws he has sponsored say “For the little people only” in fine print at the bottom?

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Legalization is desirable for all drugs, not just marijuana. The health risks of marijuana are lower than those of many other drugs, but that is not the crucial issue. Much of the traffic from Mexico or Colombia is for cocaine, heroin and other drugs, while marijuana production is increasingly domestic. Legalizing only marijuana would therefore fail to achieve many benefits of broader legalization.

He even mentions the argument that should really come first in any discussion of drug prohibition:

It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual liberty with drug prohibition.

That he mentions it only briefly, and at the very end, is, of course, an indication of the sad state of things with the U.S. government: no one has any illusions that respect for individual liberty is of much concern to the people in Washington.

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Drugs are a threat that cuts across borders, which is why Latin America must establish dialogue with the United States and the European Union to develop workable alternatives to the war on drugs. Both the U.S. and the EU share responsibility for the problems faced by our countries, since their domestic markets are the main consumers of the drugs produced in Latin America.

(Via Anne Leary whose proposed solution is simple and straightforward: “legalize it, then let’s go after Big Drugs!”)

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“He’s sitting there on Saturday, and 12 cops kick in the door with guns drawn, search the house, and find 5, maybe 6 grams of pot,” [attorney Dick] Harpootlian said about his client, who was arrested in the first raid at the Wells Point Drive home near Ballentine.

“They never asked him, ‘Who sold you the pot?’” Harpootlian continued. “They were asking, ‘Were you at the party with Michael Phelps? Did you see him using marijuana?’ It was all about Michael Phelps.”

The charges resulted from Saturday’s raids and are not connected to the November party that Phelps attended.

Harpootlian, the former top prosecutor for Richland and Kershaw counties, and [attorney Joe] McCulloch contend Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott is conducting an overzealous investigation of their clients to try to get evidence against Phelps.

“The sheriff’s department is deploying resources they are normally reserving for major drug dealers and major criminals,” said McCulloch, also a former prosecutor.

Lott has said he would charge Phelps if he found evidence the superstar swimmer had committed a crime.

Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals in the Summer Olympics in China, has publicly confirmed he was pictured holding a marijuana pipe during an early November party at the Blossom Street house, though he hasn’t specifically admitted using marijuana.

On Saturday, deputies seized four laptop computers, a desktop computer, a computer storage drive and a cell phone in the raid at the lake home — supposedly looking for pictures of Phelps, Harpootlian and McCulloch said.

Richland County, South Carolina, must be a happy place if its biggest crime problem is some guy keeping five grams of pot in his house. I guess they will now put their sheriff’s tank on eBay.

(Via Reason.)

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Don’t send me any more e-mails complaining that if Phelps were black, he’d be dropped by his sponsors, locked in a cell next to O.J. Simpson and banned from all international competition.

If Phelps had dark skin and answered to “Jerome Washington,” he’d be headed to Disney World, toting the Super Bowl MVP trophy he stole from James Harrison and Big Ben Roethlisberger.

America’s war on drugs is a scam to lock up poor people, a prop to advance political careers and an easy way for corrupt police and politicians to funnel millions of untraceable dollars into their own pockets.

And you really want to play the if-so-and-so-was-black game over a dorky white swimmer pulling on a bong? Are you really that simple-minded?

The black president smoked weed. Rush Limbaugh was a junkie. Brett Favre had a fling with prescriptions. In college, I was Saddam Hussein and Crown and Chronic were my weapons of mass destruction.

If there is any double standard, it’s that white folks are held to a higher standard than blacks. Which is the form racism takes in a post-racial society.

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