Wage War on Club Drugs, Terror

The DEA kicked off a joint campaign against "club drugs," such as
MDMA (ecstasy) and the "narco-terror connection" with a little-
known but politically potent group of women legislators at a May
23 press conference in Washington, followed by similar press
conferences in states across the country. The "Shoulder to
Shoulder" campaign is touted as educating youth and parents about
the dangers of club drugs, but could have more serious political
ramifications. The campaign will peak in November with a national
conference where the DEA will assist the National Foundation for
Women Legislators (http://www.womenlegislators.org), a more than
six decades old group currently representing more than 3,000
female members of state legislatures, in drafting "model
legislation" on club drugs and possibly even narco-terrorism.

"We have joined forces at a unique time in our history -- when
Americans are focused on strengthening our country," said DEA head
Asa Hutchinson at the inaugural news conference. "After the
September 11th attacks, Americans came to understand as never
before the kind of destruction drug money funds. The consequences
of drug abuse are far greater than the individual or even the
family or community," he said.

"But our fight against drugs is more than a battle against
traffickers. It's a battle against misinformation -- the kind that
tells our youth that ecstasy and other club drugs are somehow
safe. It's the perception that so long as they drink enough water
or take small amounts of ecstasy, no harm will come," Hutchinson
continued.

"That can be a deadly distortion. Just two days ago, an 18-year-
old California girl died after taking ecstasy at her senior prom,"
Hutchinson said. "The girl had told her sister she planned to
take the drug. Her sister told her to be careful. And that's the
misperception with ecstasy -- that it's different, safer, better
than other illegal drugs. Today, we stand together so that no
teenager will ever stand alone when they face that kind of
misinformation."

For a more nuanced look at the dangers of MDMA, one can turn to
last week's report from the British parliamentary Home Affairs
Select Committee on drug policy, which recommended lessening
penalties for the popular drug and instituting harm reduction
measures. During its 10-month inquiry, the committee turned to
Professor John Henry, Professor of Accident and Emergency
Medicine, Imperial College School of Medicine at St. Mary's
Hospital in London:

"Quite clearly it causes about 20 something deaths per year [out
of an estimated 50-100 million doses consumed in Britain each
year], and that is very small in terms of the large number of
users. You could even use the word minimal for the short-term
risks of ecstasy when you compare them with those of cocaine and
heroin. Addictiveness is low. The other thing is that there is
emerging evidence that it causes damage to memory processes.
There are epidemiological comparisons of users versus non-users
and even more recently we have seen studies which have followed up
ecstasy users for a year and they have shown that aspects of
memory function deteriorate during that year. Long-term use might
lead to considerable impairment of memory," Professor Henry
testified.

The select committee also cited a March 2000 Police Foundation
inquiry, which relied on the Royal College of Psychiatrists'
Faculty of Substance Abuse to evaluate ecstasy's harmfulness. The
report observed that "population safety comparisons suggest that
Ecstasy may be several thousand times less dangerous than
heroin... there is little evidence of craving or withdrawal
compared with the opiates and cocaine." The report continued:
"Although deaths from ecstasy are highly publicised, it probably
kills fewer than 10 people each year which, though deeply
distressing for the surviving relatives and friends, is a small
percentage of the many thousands of people who use it each week.
Nor is it always clear whether the deaths are caused by ecstasy
itself... or the circumstances surrounding its use... in many
cases they are due to environmental aspects of the dance club
scene, particularly overcrowding, overheating, poor availability
of cool-out rooms and restrictions on or the high cost of
drinks.")

But rhetoric like Hutchinson's flowed across the country. "Our
youth are led to believe that 'club drugs' like ecstasy are
harmless," Illinois State Sen. Kathy Parker (R-North Brook) told a
Springfield press conference the same day. "The grim facts show
otherwise."

In New Jersey, meanwhile, Assemblywoman Clare Farragher (R-
Monmouth) told her local "Shoulder to Shoulder" press conference
she wanted to raise awareness of the link between drugs and
terrorism. "Long before September 11, New Jersey faced increasing
illegal drug problems, but in the past eight months the nation has
learned how drug habits often put money into the pockets of
terrorist organizations," she said.

In Washington, Robin Read, president and CEO of NFWL, lauded the
partnership with the DEA as "one of the most innovative programs
the NFWL has embarked upon in its 64 year history. It's an
important step towards correcting the growing misconceptions that
Ecstasy and other Club Drugs are harmless," said Read.

Drug prevention is one thing, but the alliance between NFWL and
the DEA could have a national impact with the model legislation
plan. The model would be available to state legislatures across
the country as a handy way to express their concern over club
drugs. While the NFWL says that it "does not take ideological
positions on any current issue," its alliance with the DEA -- a
highly invested protagonist with rigidly ideological positions in
the roiling debate over drug policy -- raises concerns that the
group has embraced the DEA's drug war without examining the many
alternative approaches embraced abroad, where law enforcement is
leavened with a significant harm reduction component. A
conversation with one of the NFWL's main movers in "Shoulder to
Shoulder" did little to lesson those concerns, but did leave the
impression that a tiny opening for differing viewpoints may exist.

DRCNet spoke with NFWL private sector co-chair Joy Westrum, who
heads Second Chance, a California drug treatment program.
According to Westrum, the effort will build a network, "a very,
very powerful union" between the DEA and women legislators
concerned with youth addiction rates. Together, they will craft a
two-pronged attack, said Westrum. "The first prong is to attack
the so-called club drugs and the second prong is to make the
public aware of the connection between narco-terrorism and drug
use," Westrum said. "When you do drugs, you are wittingly or not
supporting terrorist activities around the world."

The campaign will include public service ads about the dangers of
club drugs, said Westrum, but would also include a strong
legislative component. "We'll be looking for effective model
legislation and other drug-related legislation," she told DRCNet.
"We'll try to shut down some of these rave establishments that
house these horrible activities," she said.

The campaign will also look for effective drug treatment programs.
"We need to take a good hard look at programs that aren't working
-- like methadone maintenance programs," she said. "They are not
a solution. Instead we need religious-based programs, prison-
based programs that don't use alternative drugs."

When queried about alternatives to a law enforcement-heavy
approach to club drugs, Westrum scoffed. "We are not interested
in harm minimization," she said. "Harm reduction says we're not
clever enough to handle the problem. Clean needles aren't the
solution. Kids need to focus on education and the creative,
productive things in life," Westrum explained. "That doesn't
involve becoming addicted to any type of drug."

Besides, said Westrum, harm reduction is a front for legalizers.
"George Soros is behind the legalization of heroin around the
world," she told DRCNet. "People like that are trying to hide
their agenda, starting out on other gradients, but that's not the
direction the country wants to go," she said.

As for reports such as the Home Affairs Select Committee that
argue ecstasy is relatively harmless, Westrum responded, "That is
the fallacy we are fighting against. We have to educate on actual
physiological harm that is being done. It's not true that it's
not harmful."

But when asked about opening the November conference to outsiders
or otherwise hearing from the drug reform movement, Westrum
evinced a guarded willingness to listen. "If drug reformers want
to talk, communication is the way," she said.

Some drug reformers are already talking about talking to the NFWL.
If they want to do some real harm reduction, they need to get
moving.

The NFWL, the nonprofit educational arm of the National
Organization for Women Legislators, has a corporate partnership
program. According to the NFWL web site, among the corporations
with which NFWL has partnerships are ALZA Pharmaceuticals,
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Brown and Williamson Tobacco,
Corrections Corporation of America, Enron, Guinness Stout, Merck
Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Philip
Morris, SmithKline, Westrum's Second Chance drug treatment chain
and Wyeth Ayerst Laboratories.

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