[Vision2020] To Daily News: Why Stonewalling Oxycodone Gate?

Tue Jul 17 10:55:26 PDT 2012

Thanks, Wayne.  I, too, have been wondering why we’ve not heard further
about the local incident in the firehouse.  I certainly hope it’s not to
protect those involved in the incredibly poor management decision-making,
but if it is, it certainly won’t be the first time  L

Saundra

Moscow, ID

Act as if what you do makes a difference.

~ William James

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Art Deco
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 6:51 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] To Daily News: Why Stonewalling Oxycodone Gate?

 <http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

<http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytim
es.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&sn2=336c557e/4f3dd5d2&sn1=84e9b341/ba4
2e34f&camp=FSL2012_ArticleTools_120x60_1787509c_nyt5&ad=BOSW_120x60_June13_N
oText&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fbeastsofthesouthernwild
> 

  _____  

July 16, 2012

Rise in Pill Abuse Forces New Look at U.S. Drug Fight

By DAMIEN CAVE
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/damien_cave/in
dex.html>  and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_s_schm
idt/index.html> 

MEXICO CITY — America’s drug problem is shifting from illicit substances
like cocaine to abuse of prescription painkillers, a change that is forcing
policy makers to re-examine the long and expensive strategy of trying to
stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. 

This rethinking extends beyond the United States, where policy makers are
debating how to better reduce demand for painkillers. The effects would also
be felt here and in Central America: With the drug wars in Mexico
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/me
xico/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  inflaming violence, some argue that the
money now used for interdiction could be better spent building up the
institutions — especially courts and prosecutors’ offices — that would lead
to long-term stability in Mexico and elsewhere. 

“The policies the United States has had for the last 41 years have become
irrelevant,” said Morris Panner
<http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/initiatives/latin_america/events/2010/mont
h11/guatemala_17.php> , a former counternarcotics prosecutor in New York and
at the American Embassy in Colombia, who is now an adviser at Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government. “The United States was worried about shipments
of cocaine and heroin for years, but whether those policies worked or not
doesn’t matter because they are now worried about Americans using
prescription drugs.” 

The same sense that there is a need for a new approach was expressed last
week by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a former federal prosecutor, who
declared the war on drugs “a failure” that imprisons people who really need
treatment. 

While a major change in policy is not imminent — “It’s all aircraft
carriers, none of it moves on a dime,” as one senior Obama administration
official put it — the election of a new president
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/world/americas/enrique-pena-nieto-confirm
ed-as-mexico-vote-winner.html>  in Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, is very
likely to have an immediate impact on the debate. Mr. Peña Nieto has
promised to focus not on drugs but rather on reducing the violent crimes
that most affect Mexicans. 

Mexico and other countries nearby, especially Honduras, El Salvador and
Guatemala, are withering under a metastasizing threat: violence caused by
drug traffickers battling for power, to move drugs, extort businesses, and
kidnap and kill for ransom. The American response so far has mostly involved
a familiar escalation of force, characterized by the addition of law
enforcement and military equipment and personnel to help governments too
weak to combat trafficking on their own. 

But in Mexico, a focus of American antidrug efforts in recent years, a shift
in priorities is already apparent. Since 2010, programs for building the
rule of law and stronger communities have become the largest items in the
State Department’s antidrug budget, with the bulk of the money assigned to
Mexico. That amounts to a reversal from 2008 and 2009, when 70 percent was
allocated to border security and heavy equipment like helicopters. 

Even some officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Justice
Department say they now recognize that arresting kingpins and seizing large
drug shipments have failed to make Mexico more stable, largely because of
corruption and other flaws in the Mexican justice system. 

American officials say they are now focused on training Mexican prison
guards, prosecutors and judges, while supporting Mexican programs aimed at
keeping at-risk youths from joining gangs. 

“We see crime as the leading threat in some countries to economic growth and
the leading threat to democracy,” said Mark Feierstein
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-more-k
ey-administration-posts-5122010> , the United States Agency for
International Development assistant administrator for Latin American and the
Caribbean. 

Still, law enforcement remains a major element of the government’s strategy,
as the deployment of a commando-style squad of D.E.A. agents in Honduras has
demonstrated. And the Obama administration has ruled out drug legalization,
despite expanding support for the idea in Latin America, while designating
about 60 percent of the federal antidrug budget of roughly $25 billion a
year to supply-side efforts, with 40 percent to demand, as the government
has for decades. 

Eric L. Olson <http://www.wilsoncenter.org/staff/eric-l-olson> , a security
analyst with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the
growing debate had, so far, mostly led to confusion. “Some U.S. officials
favor building institutions; others think it’s hopeless,” he said. 

Other experts are more critical of the Obama administration, pointing to the
continued focus on cocaine interdiction, especially in Honduras, where the
D.E.A. squad has been involved in a series of recent raids. One left four
people dead, including two pregnant women, and in another one, last week,
two people who were said to be smugglers were killed. 

“It just hasn’t worked,” said Mark L. Schneider
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about/staff/advocacy/washington/mark-schneide
r.aspx> , a special adviser on Latin America at the International Crisis
Group. “All interdiction and law enforcement did was shift cultivation from
Colombia to Peru, and the increase in interdiction in the Caribbean drove
trafficking to Mexico, and now with the increase in violence there it has
driven trafficking to Central America as the first stop. So it is all
virtually unchanged.” 

What has changed is Americans’ use of cocaine. 

The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that an
estimated 1.5 million people had used cocaine in the previous month, down
from 2 million in 2002 and, according to an earlier government survey, 5.8
million in the mid-1980s. (Methamphetamine use has also fallen in recent
years, while heroin use was up somewhat, to 239,000 users in 2010 from
213,000 in 2008.) 

Some officials argue the cocaine decline shows that supply-side efforts have
worked, but experts note that prices in the United States have held mostly
steady since the late 1980s, suggesting the prominent role of a decrease in
demand. Mark A. R. Kleiman <http://publicaffairs.ucla.edu/mark-ar-kleiman> ,
a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles,
said that in the United States, cocaine had simply run its course among
aging addicts. “What you’re recording,” he said, “is the rate at which they
are dying or quitting.” 

Now the drugs most likely to land Americans in emergency rooms cannot be
interdicted. Studies show that prescription painkillers, and stimulants to a
lesser extent, are the nation’s biggest drug problem. The same survey that
identified 1.5 million cocaine users in 2010 found 7 million users of
“psychotherapeutics.” Of the 36,450 overdose deaths in the United States in
2008, 20,044 involved a prescription drug, more than all illicit drugs
combined. 

And whereas cocaine and heroin have been concentrated in big cities,
prescription drug abuse has spread nearly everywhere. “Today there is drug
use in every county in Ohio, and the problem is worse in rural areas,” said
Mike DeWine <http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/> , the attorney general of
Ohio. 

“This is an urgent, urgent issue that needs to be addressed promptly,” said
Dr. Nora D. Volkow <http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/directors-page> ,
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. So far, she said, the
response from government and the health care industry has been inadequate. 

But momentum for a broader change in domestic drug policy — as in foreign
policy — appears to be building. D.E.A. officials say they have recently
created 37 “tactical diversion squads” focusing on prescription drug
investigations, with 26 more to be added over the next few years. 

“Unfortunately,” said Representative Mary Bono Mack <http://bono.house.gov/>
, a Republican from California who is co-chairwoman of the Congressional
Caucus on Prescription Drug Abuse, “it’s because more and more members are
hearing from back home in their district that people are dying.” 

Damien Cave reported from Mexico City, and Michael S. Schmidt from
Washington.

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

  <http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg> 

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