With All the Pushers Finally Some Progress.

I am acutely aware of the current situation in Egypt. However I know from experience that once a chain of events such as this have been put in motion there is very little anyone can do to stop them running their natural course. So in the meantime I'm going to talk about something that has been developing in the US and South America recently.

On Monday (12/8/13) the US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is going to scale back the use of mandatory minimum prison sentences for offenders caught in possession of small amounts of illegal drugs who aren't involved in violence and don't have links to organised crime gangs. The practice of jailing drug offenders for mandatory prison terms has been a central policy of the US Justice system since President Richard Nixon began his "War on Drugs" in the early 1970's. It is also something that was sadly overlooked in the national debate over the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. While a succession of prominent black Americans including President Obama spoke about how they'd experienced non-black Americans cross the street in fear when they saw them coming no-one bothered to mention that 1 in every 2 murders in the US is committed by young, black men. In cities like Chicago that figure rises to 4 out of every 5 murders. Therefore the majority of people who cross the street when they see a young, black man approaching them were not doing so out of racism but from an understanding of the reality that they are twice as likely to be murdered by a black man then a non-black man.

There are of course a range of reasons why black American men a disproportionally involved in violent crime including poverty exacerbated by historical racism that denies them education opportunities and culture that seems to glamorise a life of crime often reinforced by musicians who have no real experience of crime. The College Dropout Kanye West immediately springs to mind. However a very significant part of the problem is the use of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. Far from being drug addicts, violent criminals or drug traffickers the majority of people who use drugs, especially marijuana are simple recreational users who often experiment for a short time before growing out of it. Therefore the damage they do to themselves and society as a whole is equivalent to teenagers trying to buy beer before they are old enough. However while the teenager buying the beer with the fake ID will at worst get a telling off from a police officer and their parents if the casual drug user is caught they will automatically be sent to prison for up to a year. This will obviously disrupt their education and destroy their future job prospects because in the US people really dislike employing former prison inmates. Part of the reason for that is US prisons can be extremely violent and brutal places so prisoners often have to get involved in gang activity in order to stay alive. So after being released with very poor job prospects and links to organised crime the casual drug is already very far along the road to becoming a drug addict or a violent criminal. As a result it seems that rather making society safer mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences are actually increasing violent crime levels. Therefore the decision to review/scrap them seems like the US taking a very positive step forward in the right direction.

However rather then being a positive effort to improve US society the timing of Holder's announcement seems like the US trying to force its way into the discussion about the liberalisation of attitudes to drug use across South America large parts of which are being torn apart by violence connected to the trade in illegal drugs. On July 31st (31/8/13) the lower house of Uruguay's Parliament voted not only to legalise the use of marijuana but to allow the government to control the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. This policy is expected to easily pass a vote in the upper house and become law. Although it goes much further than anybody else Uruguay is most certainly not alone amongst it's neighbours in its relaxed attitude to marijuana use. In 2009 Argentina's Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to punish people for personal use of marijuana effectively making the practice legal. Mexico allows people to possess up to five grams of marijuana for personal use and in 2012 Columbia's High Court ruled that people should not be imprisoned for marijuana use.

This change in attitude across South America is sending shock waves across the developed world primarily because it goes against the long standing prohibition policy of the United Nations (UN) that prevents any member state legalising the sale of certain narcotics such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Then there is the worry that liberalisation of marijuana use to lead to the liberalisation of the use of other drugs. Although I and most people consider marijuana to be equivalent to alcohol in terms of the risk it poses to its users South America's main drug export cocaine is a much more serious proposition that especially in its processed crack cocaine form is capable of doing very serious harm to both its users and society as a whole. Finally if you remember things like the Iran contras western intelligence agencies have in the past certainly done very well out of the illegal drug trade. An end to prohibition would certainly hurt their profit margins.

Therefore the US has been trying to enquire about attitudes towards illegal drugs across South America through things like the review of mandatory minimum sentences and the news today that infamous Hollywood madam Hedi Fleiss has been caught growing marijuana plants without a permit. With the illegal drug trade becoming an increasingly prominent and apparent aspect of my situation the UK has responded by really throwing the kitchen sink at the problem. The main part of this has involved using its links to the international trade in illegal drugs to set up two British teenagers - Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum - to be arrested in Peru for cocaine smuggling.

The fact that Ms Reid is from Scotland while Ms McCollum is from Northern Ireland brings in about 400 years of political history between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. Following the British invasion of Ireland the UK intentionally shipped Protestants from Scotland and northern England to Ireland in order to change the demographic makeup of the Catholic nation. During the Irish potato famine a lot of Catholics fled in the opposite direction settling in Scotland and the north of England. As a result there are still strong links between Northern Ireland and Scotland and the north of England. During the Northern Irish troubles these links became the basis for a lot of drug and gun running with the UK intelligence services supporting the Protestant/Loyalist smugglers. That is a very murky period of UK history which you would think would be difficult for South American governments to unpick. Beyond that the women's claim that they were acting under duress could be a reference to any number of people involved in my case and the fact the women have been arrested allows the UK to exert pressure over UK nationals who are being held for similar offences in not particularly pleasant prisons across South America.

Then there is some just weird stuff. For example this drug smuggling plot seems to have been hatched on the Spanish island of Ibiza before moving onto Morocco. Rihanna and her marijuana habit of course recently performed in Morocco and the UK has been trying to get Rihanna to go on holiday to Ibiza with her friend Cara Delevinge so they can study her more closely. Today the Royal Navy intercepted a speed boat smuggling cocaine off the coast of Puerto Rico where Rihanna is scheduled to perform during the next portion of her tour. Also today a US Airlines flight from the UK to the US was diverted to the Republic of Ireland due to smoke in the cockpit because I don't think I was meant to have worked all this out quite so quickly especially when I was stoned.

16:55 on 14/8/13