The War on Drugs has failed. According to all available indices, it is no longer defendable. Vast expenditure on drug law enforcement has resulted in increasing levels of overall drug-use and lowered drug prices. 2011 is the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Convention, which lies at the root of the criminalizing approach to drug control. Now is the perfect time to re-evaluate our approach.

Of all regions in the world, Latin America has perhaps been the most affected by the unintended consequences of global prohibition. Huge criminal markets have at times turned countries such as Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico into nigh-on war zones. Drug enforcement and eradication in one Andean country has displaced production into neighboring countries and back in turn, in an ongoing cycle. The criminalization of drug control has seen the numbers of those incarcerated for drug offenses (even the possession of minor amounts for personal consumption) rise to levels that overwhelm judicial systems. Currently there are over 10 million people in prison worldwide.

However, Latin America, as the region that has suffered the most, is now leading the way to an open and frank discussion of drugs. Recent declarations from certain politicians show a much greater understanding of the problems than those coming from some of their Western counterparts. In Peru, former President and current presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo declared himself open to full decriminalization. Whilst he nuanced his argument a few days later, the declaration itself shows that Latin American governments are becoming increasingly progressive in their nature. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, led by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, has declared its outright opposition to a “misguided and counter-productive war.”

The most significant declaration of all, however, may well be that of current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Santos is head of a country traditionally felt to be one of the US’ major allies in the War on Drugs. However, President Santos has declared himself open to a discussion on alternative approaches that may reduce both the risks and harms associated with illegal drugs. A recipient of major US aid, Colombia cannot turn away directly from Plan Colombia, but Santos’ comments show that Colombian drug policy may be slowly turning against the whirlpool of US foreign policy.

A fellow Andean country, Bolivia, has recently seen more and more countries support its proposals to reform the international prohibition of chewing the coca leaf. Flexibility and cultural sensitivity are vital within approaches to drug conventions. Drug control regimes should be respectful of human rights and take account of different cultural norms in societies around the world. There must be the freedom for individual countries to work out what is best for them. The one-fit-all model has shown itself to be highly destructive.

Various countries such as Portugal have shown how successful a change in policy can be. They have demonstrated that the decriminalization of use and a commitment to provide health and rehabilitation programs as alternatives to incarceration, together with a sustained educational program, can diminish the harms associated with drug-use. Both Hungary and the Czech Republic criminalized use in 1999. However, studies showed that this policy had been a disaster and brought more social costs than benefits. Consequently, both countries reversed this policy (in 2003 and 2010 respectively). We cannot let such lessons go unheeded. We must learn from these examples.

It is time for a new approach. The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, with its zero-tolerance approach, was written in a very different context to today, both socially and politically. A rewriting of the UN Convention would enable us to move forward from the present impasse. Individual countries should have more freedom to be able to decriminalize the personal use of drugs and, should the country so wish, to legally regulate certain substances, such as cannabis, thereby being able to control and label their content, and tax them. This would have the advantage of saving vast sums on the continuation of the coercive approach, as well as raising substantial tax to implement an educational and treatment approach to drug-use. It would also solve the problem of hundreds of billions of dollars going into the hands of criminals each year.

The Beckley Foundation Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform 2011-2012 is proposing such a model.

2011 is the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Convention, the 40th anniversary of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act and the 10th anniversary of the Portuguese drug decriminalisation. There has never been a more appropriate time for change.

The “war on drugs” has failed and should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem, according to prominent public figures including former heads of MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service.

From the Daily Telegraph

However initial alarm wore off when officers realised the 10 or so bears did not behave aggressively and were in fact docile and tame.

Police believe dog food was used to attract the animals onto the farm in British Columbia.

But they say the bears may have to be put down if they have become accustomed to living around humans.

Two people were arrested in the raid.

The five police who went to the farm near Christina Lake, close to the US border, to dismantle the marijuana plantation were amazed when the bears loped into view.

“They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

In Canada, feeding bears is illegal as it leads to bears associating food with humans and increases the likelihood of bears coming into towns and cities to look for food.

Conservation officers are deciding the fate of the bears

In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl alcohol and the opiates has been stronger, in these millions, than the love of God, of home, of children; even of life. Their cry was not for liberty or death; it was for death preceded by enslavement. There is a paradox here, and a mystery. Why should such multitudes of men and women be so ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause so utterly hopeless and in ways so painful and so profoundly humiliating?

To this riddle there is, of course, no simple or single answer. Human beings are immensely complicated creatures, living simultaneously in a half dozen different worlds. Each individual is unique and, in a number of respects, unlike all the other members of the species. None of our motives is unmixed, none of our actions can be traced back to a single source and, in any group we care to study, behavior patterns that are observably similar may be the result of many constellations of dissimilar causes.

Thus, there are some alcoholics who seem to have been biochemically predestined to alcoholism (Among rats, as Prof. Roger Williams, of the University of Texas, has shown, some are born drunkards; some are born teetotalers and will never touch the stuff.) Other alcoholics have been foredoomed not by some inherited defect in their biochemical make-up, but by their neurotic reactions to distressing events in their childhood or adolescence. Again, others embark upon their course of slow suicide as a result of mere imitation and good fellowship because they have made such an “excellent adjustment to their group” – a process which, if the group happens to be criminal, idiotic or merely ignorant, can bring only disaster to the well-adjusted individual. Nor must we forget that large class of addicts who have taken to drugs or drink in order to escape from physical pain. Aspirin, let us remember, is a very recent invention. Until late in the Victorian era, “poppy and mandragora,” along with henbane and ethyl alcohol, were the only pain relievers available to civilized man. Toothache, arthritis and neuralgia could, and frequently did, drive men and women to become opium addicts.

De Quincey, for example, first resorted to opium in order to relieve “excruciating rheumatic pains of the head.” He swallowed his poppy and, an hour later, “What a resurrection from the lowest depths of the inner spirit! What an apocalypse!” And it was not merely that he felt no more pain. “This negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened up before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed…. Here was the secret of happiness. about which the philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered.”

“Resurrection. apocalypse, divine enjoyment. happiness. . . .” De Quincey’s words lead us to the very heart of our paradoxical mystery. The problem of drug addiction and excessive drinking is not merely a matter of chemistry and psychopathology, of relief from pain and conformity with a bad society. It is also a problem in metaphysics – a problem, one might almost say, in theology. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James has touched on these metaphysical aspects of addiction:

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties in human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and says no. Drunkenness expands, unites and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things into the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only through the fleeting earlier phases of what, in its totality, is so degrading a poison. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in Our opinion of that larger whole.

William James was not the first to detect a likeness between drunkenness and the mystical and premystical states. On the day of Pentecost there were people who explained the strange behavior of the disciples by saying, “These men are full of new wine.

Peter soon undeceived them: “These are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.”

And it is not only by “the dry critics of the sober hour” that the state of God-intoxication has been likened to drunkenness. In their efforts to express the inexpressible, the great mystics themselves have done the same. Thus, St. Theresa of Avila tells us that she “regards the centre of our soul as a cellar, into which God admits us as and when it pleases Him, so as to intoxicate us with the delicious wine of His grace.”

Every fully developed religion exists simultaneously on several different levels. It exists as a set of abstract concepts about the world and its governance. It exists as a set of rites and sacraments, as a traditional method for manipulating the symbols, by means of which beliefs about the cosmic order are expressed. It exists as the feelings of love, fear and devotion evoked by this manipulation of symbols.

And finally it exists as a special kind of feeling or intuition – a sense of the oneness of all things in their divine principle, a realization (to use the language of Hindu theology) that “thou art That,” a mystical experience of what seems self-evidently to be union with God.

The ordinary waking consciousness is a very useful and, on most occasions, an indispensable state of mind; but it is by no means the only form of consciousness, nor in all circumstances the best. Insofar as he transcends his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness, the mystic is able to enlarge his vision, to look more deeply into the unfathomable miracle of existence.

The mystical experience is doubly valuable, it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life.

In hell, a great religious poet has written, the punishment of the lost is to be “their sweating selves, but worse.” On earth we are not worse than we are: we are merely our sweating selves, period.

Alas, that is quite bad enough. We love ourselves to the point of idolatry, but we also intensely dislike ourselves – we find ourselves unutterably boring. Correlated with this distaste for the idolatrously worshiped self, there is in all of us a desire, sometimes latent, sometimes conscious and passionately expressed, to escape from the prison of our individuality, an urge to self-transcendence. It is to this urge that we owe mystical theology, spiritual exercises and yoga – to this, too, that we owe alcoholism and drug addiction.

Modern pharmacology has given us a host of new synthetics, but in the field of the naturally occurring mind changers it has made psychological methods of self-control preferable from every point of view to complacency imposed from without by the methods of chemical control.

And now let us consider the case – not, alas, a hypothetical case – of two societies competing with each other. In Society A, tranquilizers are available by prescription and at a rather stiff price which means, in practice, that their use is confined to that rich and influential minority which provides the society with its leadership. This minority of leading citizens consumes several billions of the complacency – producing pills every year. In Society B, on the other hand, the tranquilizers are not so freely available, and the members of the influential minority do not resort, on the slightest provocation, to the chemical control of what may be necessary and productive tension. Which of these two competing societies is likely to win the race? A society whose leaders make an excessive use of soothing syrups is in danger of failing behind a society whose leaders are not over-tranquilized.

Now let us consider another kind of drug – still undiscovered, but probably just around the corner – a drug capable of making people feel happy in situations where they would normally feel miserable. Such a drug would be a blessing, but a blessing fraught with grave political dangers. By making harmless chemical euphoria freely available, a dictator could reconcile an entire population to a state of affairs to which self-respecting human beings ought not to be reconciled. Despots have always found it necessary to supplement force by political or religious propaganda. In this sense the pen is mightier than the sword. But mightier than either the pen or the sword is the pill. In mental hospitals it has been found that chemical restraint is far more effective than strait jackets or psychiatry. The dictatorships of tomorrow will deprive men of their freedom, but will give them in exchange a happiness none the less real, as a subjective experience, for being chemically induced. The pursuit of happiness is one of the traditional rights of man; unfortunately, the achievement of happiness may turn out to be incompatible with another of man’s rights – liberty.

It is quite possible, however, that pharmacology will restore with one hand what it takes away with the other. Chemically induced euphoria could easily become a threat to individual liberty:, but chemically induced vigor and chemically heightened intelligence could easily be liberty’s strongest bulwark. Most of us function at about 15 per cent of capacity. How can we step up our lamentably low efficiency?

Two methods are available – the educational and the biochemical. We can take adults and children as they are and give them a much better training than we are giving them now. Or, by appropriate biochemical methods, we can transform them into superior individuals. If these superior individuals are given a superior education, the results will be revolutionary. They will be startling even if we continue to subject them to the rather poor educational methods at present in vogue.

Will it in fact be possible to produce superior individuals by biochemical means? The Russians certainly believe it. They are now halfway through a Five Year Plan to produce “pharmacological substances that normalize higher nervous activity and heighten human capacity for work.” Precursors of these future mind improvers are already being experimented with. It has been found, for example, that when given in massive doses some of the vitamins – nicotinic acid and ascorbic acid for example – sometimes produce a certain heightening of psychic energy. A combination of two enzymes – ethylene disulphonate and adenosine triphosphate, which, when injected together, improve carbohydrate metabolism in nervous tissue – may also turn out to be effective.

Meanwhile good results are being claimed for various new synthetic, nearly harmless stimulants. There is iproniazid, which, according to some authorities, “appears to increase the total amount of psychic energy.” Unfortunately, iproniazid in large doses has side effects which in some cases may be extremely serious! Another psychic energizer is an amino alcohol which is thought to increase the body’s production of acetylcholine, a substance of prime importance in the functioning of the nervous system. In view of what has already been achieved, it seems quite possible that, within a few years, we may be able to lift ourselves up by our own biochemical bootstraps.

in the meantime let us all fervently wish the Russians every success in their current pharmacological venture. The discovery of a drug capable of increasing the average individual’s psychic energy, and its wide distribution throughout the U.S.S.R., would probably mean the end of Russia’s present form of government. Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy. Even in the democratic West we could do with a bit of psychic energizing. Between them, education and pharmacology may do something to offset the effects of that deterioration of our biological material to which geneticists have frequently called attention.

From these political and ethical considerations let us now pass to the strictly religious problems that will be posed by some of the new mind changers. We can foresee the nature of these future problems by studying the effects of a natural mind changer, which has been used for centuries past in religious worship; I refer to the peyote cactus of Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Peyote contains mescaline – which can now be produced synthetically – and mescaline in William James’ phrase, “stimulates the mystical faculties in human nature” far more powerfully and in a far more enlightening way than alcohol and, what is more, it does so at a physiological and social cost that is negligibly low. Peyote produces self-transcendence in two ways – it introduces the taker into the Other World of visionary experience, and it gives him a sense of solidarity with his fellow worshipers, with human beings at large and with the divine nature of things.

The effects of peyote can be duplicated by synthetic mescaline and by LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a derivative of ergot. Effective in incredibly small doses, LSD is now being used experimentally by psychotherapists in Europe, in South America, in Canada and the United States. It lowers the barrier between conscious and subconscious and permits the patient to look more deeply and understandingly into the recesses of his own mind. The deepening of self-knowledge takes place against a background of visionary and even mystical experience.

When administered in the right kind of psychological environment, these chemical mind changers make possible a genuine religious experience. Thus a person who takes LSD or mescaline may suddenly understand not only intellectually but organically, experientially the meaning of such tremendous religious affirmations as “God is love,” or “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

It goes without saying that this kind of temporary self-transcendence is no guarantee of permanent enlightenment or a lasting improvement of conduct. It is a “gratuitous grace,” which is neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation, but which if properly used, can be enormously helpful to those who have received it. And this is true of all such experiences, whether occurring spontaneously, or as the result of swallowing the right kind of chemical mind changer, or after undertaking a course of “spiritual exercises” or bodily mortification.

Those who are offended by the idea that the swallowing of a pill may contribute to a genuinely religious experience should remember that all the standard mortifications – fasting, voluntary sleeplessness and self-torture – inflicted upon themselves by the ascetics of every religion for the purpose of acquiring merit, are also, like the mind-changing drugs, powerful devices for altering the chemistry of the body in general and the nervous system in particular. Or consider the procedures generally known as spiritual exercises. The breathing techniques taught by the yogi of India result in prolonged suspensions of respiration. These in turn result in an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood; and the psychological consequence of this is a change in the quality of consciousness. Again, meditations involving long, intense concentration upon it single idea or image may also result – for neurological reasons which I do not profess to understand – in a slowing down of respiration and even in prolonged suspensions of breathing.

Many ascetics and mystics have practiced their chemistry-changing mortifications and spiritual exercises while living, for longer or shorter periods, as hermits. Now, the life of a hermit, such as Saint Anthony, is a life in which there are very few external stimuli. But as Hebb, John Lilly and other experimental psychologists have recently shown in the laboratory, a person in a limited environment, which provides very few external stimuli, soon undergoes a change in the quality of his consciousness and may transcend his normal self to the point of hearing voices or seeing visions, often extremely unpleasant, like so many of Saint Anthony’s visions, but sometimes beatific.

That men and women can, by physical and chemical means, transcend themselves in a genuinely spiritual way is something which, to the squeamish idealist, seems rather shocking. But, after all, the drug or the physical exercise is not the cause of the spiritual experience; it is only its occasion.

Writing of William James’ experiments with nitrous oxide, Bergson has summed up the whole matter in a few lucid sentences. “The psychic disposition was there, potentially, only waiting a signal to express itself in action. It might have been evoked spiritually by an effort made on its own spiritual level. But it could just as well be brought about materially, by an inhibition of what inhibited it, by the removing of an obstacle; and this effect was the wholly negative one produced by the drug.” Where, for any reason, physical or moral, the psychological dispositions are unsatisfactory, the removal of obstacles by a drug or by ascetic practices will result in a negative rather than a positive spiritual experience. Such an infernal experience is extremely distressing, but may also be extremely salutary. There are plenty of people to whom a few hours in hell – the hell that they themselves have done so much to create – could do a world of good.

Physiologically costless, or nearly costless, stimulators of the mystical faculties are now making their appearance, and many kinds of them will soon be on the market. We can be quite sure that, as and when they become available, they will be extensively used. The urge to self-transcendence is so strong and so general that it cannot be otherwise. In the past, very few people have had spontaneous experiences of a premystical or fully mystical nature; still fewer have been willing to undergo the psychophysical disciplines which prepare an insulated individual for this kind of self-transcendence. The powerful but nearly costless mind changers of the future will change all this completely. Instead of being rare, premystical and mystical experiences will become common. What was once the spiritual privilege of the few will be made available to the many. For the ministers of the world’s organized religions, this will raise a number of unprecedented problems. For most people, religion has always been a matter of traditional symbols and of their own emotional, intellectual and ethical response to those symbols. To men and women who have had direct experience of self-trascendence into the mind’s Other World of vision and union with the nature of things, a religion of mere symbols is not likely to be very staisfying. The perusal of a page from even the most beautifully written cookbook is no substitute for the eating of dinner. We are exhorted to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

In one way or another, the world’s ecclesiastical authorities will have to come to terms with the new mind changers. They may come to terms with them negatively, by refusing to have anything to do with them. In that case, a psychological phenomenon, potentially of great spiritual value, will manifest itself outside the pale of organized religion. On the other hand, they may choose to come to terms with the mind changers in some positive way – exactly how, I am not prepared to guess.

My own belief is that, though they may start by being something of an embarrassment, these new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life of the communities in which they are available. That famous “revival of religion,” about which so many people have been talking for so long, will not come about as the result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television appearances of photogenic clergymen. It will come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. And this revival of religion will be at the same time a revolution. From being an activity mainly concerned with symbols, religion will be transformed into an activity concerned mainly with experience and intuition – an everyday mysticism underlying and giving significance to everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties, everyday human relationships.

Inside City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Jim Wilcox explained his plan for a commercial marijuana farm. “My idea was a Silicon Valley of cannabis,” he told the city council recently. “An office park for pot.” The council has approved the creation, licensing and taxing of four such medical marijuana farms inside Oakland city limits.

Four hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles, it’s a completely different story. After four years running the Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center, Yami Bolanos fears her medical marijuana dispensary will be shut down. “The patients are the ones that are getting screwed royally by the city council.”

Los Angeles is cracking down hard on the number of “collectives”, which have grown like weeds in the last few years. By some estimates, there were 700 medical marijuana dispensaries a few months ago, more pot outlets than Starbucks in LA. A new law will reduce that number to 182. “The sale of marijuana has never been approved by voters,” says Los Angeles Assistant Attorney Asha Greenberg. “Cities have the ability to restrict the numbers of collectives.”

This tale of two cities reflects a divergence of opinion in California over the future of what may be its largest cash crop. Voters will decide in November whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.

The State Board of Equalization estimates that pot in California is worth $15 billion a year. Taxing it could bring in $1.5 billion in much-needed revenues. But that’s based on current prices. A Rand study suggests that if the November ballot measure passes, prices could drop 90 percent to $38 an ounce, while consumption could increase as much as 100 percent.

Jane Wells
CNBC Reporter

The November initiative, called Proposition 19, would allow California residents 21 years or older to grow marijuana at home for personal use, in an area no larger than 25 square feet. It would also allow adults 21 and older to possess and transport up to an ounce. Finally, it would allow local governments to license, regulate, and tax commercial growers and sellers. Like alcohol, sales to anyone under 21 would be banned.

“Look at all the people that are being killed in Mexico every day, as well as the home invasion robberies and other things that come from the inflated price that’s caused by prohibition,” says Richard Lee, who authored Prop 19. Lee runs Oaksterdam University in Oakland, a school which teaches people how to grow medical marijuana and run a dispensary.

Lee says the benefits of legalization go beyond sales tax revenues, and include “ancillary benefits such a tourism, jobs, and hotel rooms and transportation and food that would go along with the cannabis industry.”

“They will probably two, three, four to one outraise us financially,” says Covina police chief Kim Raney, leading the No on Prop 19 campaign, “but I think our message will be clear. I think our message will be the truth, and I think the voters in the state will understand that.”

What is clear is that Prop 19 will again put California’s marijuana laws in direct opposition to the feds. Because of that, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office says it’s impossible to know how much money the state might bring in.

The LAO says savings to correctional facilities “could reach several tens of millions of dollars annually,” and a new jobs-creating industry could let the state “eventually collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually in additional revenues.” But with the federal government poised at any moment to snuff out any legalized pot business, “the revenue and expenditure impacts of this measure are subject to significant uncertainty.”

Public opinion polls have delivered conflicting results on the initiative’s chances for success. “I think in November, (voters) will realize the consequences and devastation that this act will have on their communities, and I think the voters will turn it down,” says Chief Raney.

Richard Lee’s pro-Prop 19 group has hired an Internet fundraising company used during the Obama campaign, and its Facebook page has well over 130,000 fans. The political battle will be fierce, and opposition may come from unexpected sources. “Two groups that have come out against (Prop 19) are growers who don’t want to pay taxes,” he says, “and the cops who want to keep getting the forfeiture money and seizure money, and job security from it.”

MINDSET
I was born in Washington State on the edge of Western exploration in the New World in
the summer of 1971. I came of age in and around the communal rooms of AA, NA, ACA,
Alanon and Alateen throughout the Pacific and Mountain West. My father is 33 years
sober. His father died 14 years sober in 1982.

I too wrestled my psychospiritual demons through alcohol and Cannabis which gratefully
led me to the rooms of AA and NA where, at the age of 14, I declared myself an
alcoholic and an addict. I delved headlong into the 12 Steps and promptly saw that I had
wrapped myself in a shame-bound identity (‘ism’ – internalised shame manifested). Upon
recognising this, I had the promised spiritual awakening of the twelfth step. I then sought,
via being of service to other addicts and alcoholics, to maintain this awareness.

Eventually, I came to a point where I just didn’t feel I belonged in AA. I felt that what I
had come to learn had been learned. I was no longer afraid to be alive nor was I willing to
hide. I had recovered from my shame-bound self. In short, I got tired of pretending that
there was something wrong with me, I had become a spiritualized being living a
predominantly joyous and fulfilling life.

So, on October 31st 1993, on the eve of my 8th AA birthday, I ended my inflexible ‘once
and always’ identification with alcoholism and drug addiction. This came about in an
“All Hallows Eve” ritual which had a ‘spiced wine’ component. I had requested of my
partner that my wine be heated to remove the alcohol. This was done.

As we journeyed through the ritual, I pondered the rigid way in which I had insisted on
having the alcohol removed from my ‘sacrament’. I had recalled seeing a heart-rate
monitor flat-line. Life had pulse, it had cycles, and a flat-line meant only one thing:
death.

In a flash, I realized the most important insight: Life is transformation. Life is a cycle of
death and rebirth, renewing itself each day. Upon recognising this, I declared to my
companions in a choked up teary-eyed expression, “I am recovered.” My future
uncertain, my world of illusion shattered, I ventured forth into unfamiliar territory. The
ritual had worked.

2
About three weeks later, a friend of mine, John, was coming to visit me in Idaho. He and
I had met in Yosemite Valley, California, at an AA meeting. We had been sober and
travelled together for six years; he had ended his tour of AA with much the same
realization as I had. We chose to celebrate his arrival by drinking our first beer together.
Absolutely nothing happened, we didn’t foam at the mouth or go into fits of obsessive
compulsive behaviour, nothing.

Another three weeks passed and John and I rented the video, The Making of ‘A Brief
History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking (Hawking, 1992). As it started John said, “Oh hey,
did I mention to you all, I have some Liquid LSD that ‘the Lorax’ made.” I knew ‘the
Lorax’ was a mad, old-school chemist and I trusted and respected him. I had also heard a
few stories of peoples’ spiritual adventures with LSD, peyote cacti and ‘magic’
mushrooms; not least of which were told by many ‘Deadheads’ I had known whilst being
a ‘clean and sober Wharf Rat’ on Grateful Dead tour. I also knew that Bill Wilson, the
co-founder of AA, had consumed LSD with spiritual intent (Wilson, 1984). With all this,
I was curious.

SETTING
On a cold night in December of 1993, I ingested approximately 250 micrograms of LSD.
Although, I was borne into a global ‘War on (some people who use some) Drugs’, I was
unaware that I had just ingested the forbidden fruit, or at least the modern-day variant.

I ‘tuned in’ somewhere in the midst with Stephen Hawking philosophizing about the
origins of the universe. About an hour or so in, I wanted to go outside. After discovering
that I could still don my foul weather gear, tie my shoelaces and otherwise perform with
dexterous ease, I stepped out for a snowy night-time walk through the woods to the
lakeshore; damn, the world was breathlessly bright and I awoke into a childlike wonder!

INSIGHT
Several hours later, whilst it lightly snowed on my face where I lay buried in the pea-
gravel of the lakeshore, I recognised ‘I’ was still and yet my experience was vast:
complete absorption; self had vanished. This was my first glimpse of a possible ‘Land
without Evil’.

Two hundred years earlier William Blake wrote, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(1793), “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses
discover’d the infinite in everything”. Transformed by my ineffable LSD experience, I
knew what he meant; there was no going back.

In less than eight hours I had been shown a rare glimpse of the power of the human mind
to shape reality. I saw that my limited neurotypical consciousness was only one plane,
level or aspect and that there were infinite new things to discover. I found new
perspectives on birth, death, and the nature of mind and consciousness as the field of
creation. The experience of the oneness of all things replaced the myth of separation.
Perennial wisdom dawned and my heart burst forth in praise, gratitude and love, rooted in
a mindset of compassion for self and other.
3
INTEGRATION
In absorptive reverie, I began to integrate these insights whilst a deep desire welled up
within me to study consciousness and its intersection with mysticism, the creation of
religious belief systems and man’s place in this great biosphere. Some hours later, I was
roused by the bells ringing out at the local community college a mile across the water; I
had never noticed them before. It was time to go to school!

Later that morning, still reeling from the profound transformations of the previous 13
hours, innocent, humbled and hungry for wisdom, I went down to the local community
college and, in tears, I begged them to let me in. I was 22, I had not graduated high
school and I was determined to do what ever it took to understand what had just
happened to me, to validate my experience and to find others who had tasted these
forbidden fruits.

At school I refused to hide. I boldly declared to anyone who would listen that I was intent
on studying psychedelics, psychoactivity, consciousness and its interconnection with
religious belief systems. Several professors, friends and family attempted to steer me
from my path concerned that I would end up in prison. They were right but I was willing
to pay the piper if the monkey showed up with the cup; indeed, Martin Luther King Jr.
had said (King, 1963):

“[A]n individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly
accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community
over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

Here, those in power had drawn a line in the sand on the shores of a Rubicon which I had
already crossed; so, I knew and accepted my possible futures and pasts. Hell, after
promising certain death, all God could think to do was throw Adam and Eve out of the
Garden for eating the forbidden fruit. If that is the worse that can happen, so be it.

In school I learned that not only has mankind been intentionally consuming psychoactive
substances to alter mental functioning for a proverbial eon or two, we also consume
plants rich in alkaloids as an important source of nutrition and energy for survival,
particularly in stressful environmental conditions. This suggests an evolutionary purpose
for ‘drug’ taking and illustrates our symbiotic relationship with plants evident in our
shared chemical communicants.

I also learned that in the last twelve thousand years or so there has evolved a priest-class
hell-bent on maintaining control of these substances as a way of enforcing the artificial
divide between orthodox and heretical experience (Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).

I recognised this artificial divide as the crux of the ‘War on (some) Drugs’ that continued
an ancient ‘pharmacratic inquisition’ which had begun sixteen hundred years earlier
when Alaric’s Goths sacked the sanctuary at Eleusis ending a two thousand year old
Mystery religion which centred on the ingestion of a sacred potion, the kykeon; where
individuals permitted to imbibe saw ‘ta hiera’, ‘the holy’ (Ott 1993, 1995). It has been
4
suggested that the kykeon is derived from the Ergot fungus, Claviceps, which grows on
many cereal grains, synthesises the biochemical precursor of Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide, LSD, and, is the source of Ergotism also known as ‘St. Anthony’s Fire’
(Ruck, Wasson & Hofmann, 1978; Schultes, Hofmann & Rätsch, 1979, 2001).

COMMITMENT
On learning this, I made a commitment to myself that I would synthesise Albert
Hofmann’s ‘Problem Child’, LSD (Hofmann, 1979). I had completed the requisite
undergraduate chemistry courses, so, I knew I was capable of synthesising most
psychedelic-type drugs, but I was not yet ready; I was experiencing the adage “when the
student is ready the master will appear”. So, after some pedagogical meandering and
whilst continuing to experiment with various psychedelic compounds, I fixed on
biochemistry and medical anthropology as the paradigmatic backdrop upon which I
would unite my conscious studies and psychospiritual development.

ACTION
Central to therapeutic efficacy, as described by an interdisciplinary Medical
Anthropology, is the power of declaration either made by the sufferer or the healer that is
listened by the sufferer with credibility or faith (Csordas & Kleinman, 1996); this
especially holds in the magico-religious context outside of Western Biomedicine and
married nicely to my insights from AA’s 12 Steps, the use of psychedelics, meditation
and the personal empowerment paradigm I had engaged in as a participant of Landmark
Education. Crucially, I was able to apply this to myself.

As I matured and my insights began to consistently manifest in new ways of being which
produced measurable results, I engaged in lively philosophical transactions within the
scholastic community and followed my intellectual curiosity until, after 11 semesters, the
public funding ran out.

Conveniently, during my last school semester, I managed to talk the Anthropology
department Head into giving me a grant and credit to attend the spring 2000
Entheobotany Seminar in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. All I had to do was present a slide
show, talk and a paper when I got back.

Entheobotany is the study of plant entheogens. The neologism entheogen derives from an
obsolete Greek word meaning “realizing the divine within” – the term used by the ancient
Greeks to describe states of poetic or prophetic inspiration – and now used to describe the
entheogenic state which can be induced by sacred plant-drugs. (Ott, 1993, 1995)

In Palenque, I was in an indefatigably good mood as I had found validation of my path
and true community with which to resonate. I was no longer a lone psychonaut. I had
arrived and just in the nick of time. Suddenly, I was immersed in a diverse community of
those who were on the path of the entheogenically inclined. I was ecstatic to say the least.
I took notes and photographed the main speakers for my slideshow. I tried to absorb as
much of the proceedings as I could whilst I sampled a veritable variety of other
entheogenic entities, i.e. psychedelic-type drugs. In so doing, I noticed a number of
5
individual conference participants had subjectively bioassayed 2C-T-7, an entheogenic
phenethylamine substantially similar to the mescaline found naturally in peyote cacti
(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991).

Recognizing this as an opportunity to further the understanding of 2C-T-7 through
anecdotal experiential accounts and to lend credibility to the scientific methodology of
the subjective bioassay, I transformed insight into action, prepared and administered a
written survey and, with gratuitous grace, the Multidisciplinary Association of
Psychedelic Studies agreed to publish the results in their forthcoming summer 2000
Bulletin, 10 (2).

Upon returning to the States, I knew my life was never going to be the same. I presented
my slideshow to about 50 people from the University, about half of whom where
professors. I received the credit, a serious cheer, and respect. What a confirmation of my
path.

OPENINGS
I wrote up the 2C-T-7 article whilst under the influence of 2C-T-7 and to this day no one
has noticed that I classically forgot to count myself and ‘K-dog’ in the 48 bioassays.
Shortly thereafter an individual who had just renewed his subscription to the MAPS
Bulletin, which had lapsed for some years, got his first new issue.

I received a cryptic letter from him. He told me he had studied for 20+ years the
phenethylamine and tryptamine families of psychedelic-type drugs until the 1986 US
Controlled Substances Analogue Act came into force. He said he had seen my article in
the MAPS Bulletin and thought I might want to communicate; mysteriously, I ignored his
letter.

Later that fall he wrote again. This time more direct and to the point. He was serious. He
wanted to give me his lab and years of research notes. He wanted someone to pick up his
torch. Was the student ready? Had the master appeared? Knowing from direct experience
the profound impact of these molecules to facilitate healing and shatter epistemological
paradigms, I wanted to be of service and thus I was more than willing. So in spring 2001
I picked up his torch and began the slow process of assembling the materials for a
sufficient laboratory.

I recognised my bench practice was limited but I had worked in the biology and
chemistry labs throughout university. I cold-called Sigma Aldrich Chemical Co., danced
through their questions, ordered the chemicals and purchased, via the Web, more used
glassware.

I began by making mistake after mistake until I succeeded finally in making a viable,
purified molecule: 2C-D, another psychedelic phenethylamine. I chose 2C-D because I
had a fantastic recipe and the precursors and reagents to start four steps back thereby
improving my skill and avoiding detection. 2C-D has a very gentle dose-response curve
6
with a fantastically large range. 2C-D is what some have called a ‘pharmacological tofu’
(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991).

Imbibing my first home-made entheogen was a serious triumph. Even better was sharing
the gift with my friends and family. The results were immediate and over the years many
people have expressed their appreciation of my facilitations of their psychospiritual
transformations. I would thank them for ingesting, remind them that they had done the
work and ask that if they could do but one thing, they could integrate their insights and
transform them into concrete actions which make a difference for humanity.

Unexpectedly, whilst at play in the fields of the Lords, opportunities abounded and my
services were in high demand. I was travelling the world from one conference to another,
stopping off in foreign lands to learn of their people’s drugs of choice; and I saw
intimately how today’s diversion of immense resources away from the everyday needs of
humanity to combat a ‘War on (some) Drugs’ leaves people thirsty, hungry and destitute,
and so they turn with evolutionary predictability to the very drugs the West is purportedly
seeking to suppress.

In December 2001 I attended the ‘Ibogaine Conference’ in London on the eboga plant,
Tabernanthe iboga and its alkaloids. Eboga is an African rainforest shrub of the Gabon
region traditionally used by indigenous peoples of western Africa in low doses to combat
fatigue, hunger and thirst, and in higher doses as a sacrament in spiritual initiation
ceremonies.

Ibogaine is a naturally-occurring psychoactive indole derived from the roots of
Tabernanthe iboga whose pharmacological properties have been researched for over 100
years. In fact, ibogaine was marketed in France until 1970 as Lambarene to promote a
sense of well being. In 1962, Howard Lotsof discovered the efficacy of ibogaine for
treatment of drug dependence and, in 1985, “he was awarded a series of use patents
related to ibogaine’s apparent ability to ‘interrupt’ a wide range of substance abuse
disorders, including those associated with opiates (heroin), opioids (methadone),
stimulants (cocaine & amphetamine), as well as alcohol, nicotine and poly-substance
abuse” (Anonymous, 2003).

At the conference in London I was offered the opportunity and funding to set up and run
a sub-pilot Tabernanthe extraction laboratory in order to isolate ibogaine. I accepted the
offer and immediately began acquiring the necessary materials to conduct laboratory
work. By June 2002 my lab was up and running and I was fulfilling my obligations with a
traditional organic laboratory, including all necessary reagents, enabling me to follow
almost any common organic synthesis or phytochemical research and development path I
so chose. As capital and experience was reinvested, my capabilities and competencies
expanded.

I chose to synthesise the phenethylamine 2C-B for my own psychospiritual explorations.
2C-B had been invented in 1974 by Alexander Shulgin. He introduced it to
psychotherapists around the world, many of whom found it of value in creating a warm,
7
empathetic bond between patient and healer, as its pharmacological action helps dissolve
one’s ego-defences, enabling an individual to contact suppressed emotions and repressed
memories, helping to resolve psychospiritual trauma (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991; Stolaroff,
1994). In time, my efforts went towards facilitating a reliable pure source of 2C-B for
psychotherapists.

FULFILMENT
Late 2002, I was approached with the express intent of synthesising LSD for a group. It
was my first chance at LSD synthesis and I took the opportunity though in my heart I had
no desire to continue working with this group after completion of the agreement. I was
successful.

Then, in early 2003, I created the opportunity to research the ergot fungus, Claviceps,
first hand. Ergot is possibly the single most important medicinal genus on the planet, as
evidenced by the volume of literature on ergot as well as the current use of over 400
prescription compounds (Kr!n & Cvak, 1999). In fact, it was medicinal ergot research
which facilitated the 1943 discovery of LSD and other lysergamides by Albert Hofmann,
a chemist working for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland whilst looking for a
blood stimulant. Prior to it being controlled by international agreement in the 1971 UN
Convention on Psychotropic Substances, LSD underwent thousands of hours of clinical,
laboratory and psychotherapeutic research with many promising results (Erowid, 2005).

Notably, LSD is substantially similar to the psychoactive Lysergic Acid Amide found in
the sacred Convolvulaceae Morning Glory, Ololiuqui, which, until 1955, Mazatec
curanderas of the Oaxaca highlands of Mexico utilized undisturbed for more than three
millennia alongside teonánacatl, the ‘sacred mushroom’ of the Aztecs, Psilocybe
mexicana and Psilocybe cubensis, in healing and divination ritual (Wasson, 1957;
Hofmann, 1971).

I began my research into ergot by learning saprophytic culture techniques for the fungus
but culturing was slow and deliberate work and by May 2003, whilst attempting to
extract the alkaloids from the culture broth, I failed knowing I had neither adequate
facilities nor knowledge for the sterile growth and extraction of ergot; I experienced once
again the adage ‘when the student is ready the master will appear’. I trusted the
‘mutterkorn’ alkaloid.

Having kept the faith, in late 2003 another opportunity to work with Ergot alkaloids
arose. I was given a mass of dark resinous material purported to be ergotamine tartrate
(ET) which had undergone a botched conversion to lysergic acid (LA) an intermediate in
the production of ergot alkaloids as well as other lysergamides. I was entrusted with the
goal of sorting out what had gone wrong and hopefully recovering enough LA to cover
the costs of the original starting materials.

I struggled for several months trying to unwind what was possibly a futile effort. I
utilized all spare monies I had and even began borrowing capital to help the project
possibly bear fruit. I was confounded by not having adequate qualitative analytical
8
equipment and reference standards for the LA and ET as they are available only with a
Home Office licence or purchased from the black market. I had neither connection.

Eventually, I was able to confirm that the original material indeed had ET in it but I was
unsure if it had been adulterated as the individual who handed me the black resin had
acquired the original material without a certificate of analysis. So, using every extraction
technique I could dream up, my only way of knowing if I had actually extracted LA was
to attempt to synthesise LSD with it and then test the final product via the usual method
of the subjective bioassay.

I failed repeatedly in my attempts at extraction and synthesis and had to find a method
that was not extremely sensitive to water, light or other resinous materials. By January
2004, I felt that I had synthetic process enabling me to proceed. Eventually, the first week
of February 2004, I succeeded. In ordinary circumstances, I might have been awarded a
novel synthesis patent; instead, I was-awarded a twenty-year prison sentence.

CLOSURE
So, why did I do it? There is no single pat answer. The simplest: my love of learning. The
veiled: for my ego, for the attention, to feel special, to be loved, etc. The flippant:
because I could. With hindsight: civil disobedience, academic and religious freedom in
the study of the mind, and an expression of equal rights. The most accurate: my desire to
share entheogenesis with others, to wake humanity up from the penumbral dream-world
of materialist delusion, to help end the blatant injustice and rape of human dignity that
occurs within the context of a “War on (some) Drugs”, to seize the world stage and help
create a forum for the cooperative and conscious stewardship of Mother Earth and all her
relations.

REFERENCES
Anonymous (2003) Ibogaine: Treatment Outcomes and Observations. Bulletin of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 13 (2), 16-21. www.maps.org

Boire R G (1999) On Cognitive Liberty, Journal of Cognitive Liberties, 1(1), 7-13.
Davis, CA: Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. www.cognitiveliberty.org

Council on Spiritual Practices (1997) Entheogens and the Future of Religion. R Forte
(Ed.). SF, CA: Council on Spiritual Practices. www.csp.org

Csordas T J & Kleinman A (1996) The Therapeutic Process. In: Medical Anthropology:
Contemporary Theory and Method, Rev. Ed. C F Sargent & T M Johnson (Eds.).
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.

Erowid (2005) LSD Timeline.
Available at www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_timeline.php

9
Hardison C (2000) An Amateur Qualitative Study of 48 2C-T-7 Subjective Bioassays.
Bulletin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 10 (2), 11-13.
www.maps.org

Hawking S (1992) The Making of ‘A Brief History of Time’. Paramount Home
Entertainment.

Hofmann A (1971) Teonanacatl and Ololiuqui, two ancient magic drugs of Mexico.
Bulletin on Narcotics, Issue 1, 1971: 3-14.
See: www.unodc.org/unodc/en/bulletin/bulletin_1971-01-01_1_page003.html

Hofmann A (1979) LSD My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism,
and Science. Publisher: J.P. Tarcher, Inc.

King Jr M L (1963) Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963. Open Source.

Kr!n V & Cvak L (1999) Ergot: the Genus Claviceps. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publishers.

Ott J (1993, 1996) Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic drugs, their plant sources, and history.
Occidental, CA: Natural Products Co.

Ott J (1995) The Age of Entheogens & The Angel’s Dictionary. Occidental, CA: Natural
Products Co.

Ruck C A P, Wasson R G & Hofmann A (1978, 1998) The Road to Eleusis. William
Daly
Rare Books.

Schultes R E, Hofmann A & Rätsch C (1979, 2001) Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred,
Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. Vermont: Inner Traditions Publishing.

Shulgin A & Shulgin A (1991) PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley: Transform
Press.

Stolaroff M J (1994) Thanatos to Eros: 35 years of Psychedelic Exploration. Berlin:
GAM-Media GmBH.

Wasson R G (1957) Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Life, 42 (19), 100 et seq.

Wilson B (1984) ‘Pass it on’: the story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message
reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc.

The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions of offenders, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), a non-governmental organisation that advocates less punitive approaches to drugs policy globally, says it has gathered evidence revealing “strong links” between executions for drugs offences and the funding of specific drug enforcement operations by international agencies.

It says programmes aimed at shoring up local efforts to combat drug trafficking and other offences are being run “without appropriate safeguards” that could prevent serious human rights violations in countries that retain the death penalty.

The report concludes that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( “are all actively involved in funding and/or delivering technical assistance, legislative support and financial aid intended to strengthen domestic drug enforcement activities in states that retain the death penalty for drug offences.

“Such funding, training and capacity-building activities – if successful – result in increased convictions of persons on drug charges, and the potential for increased death sentences and executions”.

The report claims there is evidence of “complicity in acts that violate international human rights law”, undermining the Council of Europe’s commitment to abolish the death penalty, the United Nations Charter and UNODC’s stated opposition to the penalty for drugs offences.

The 33-page report lists a series of case studies it says illustrate how efforts to garner convictions for drugs offences across borders have resulted further down the line in executions. International law does not prohibit the death penalty but does limit its use to the “most serious crimes”. The meaning of “serious” is challenged by some states with the death penalty.

Rick Lines, deputy director of the IHRA and co-author of the report, said: “Many people around the world would be shocked to know that their governments are funding programmes that are leading people indirectly to death by hanging and firing squads.” He said agencies and countries were not intentionally funding programmes that led to people facing the death penalty but that it was “a fact” that executions were happening.

The report comes soon after the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah, America, that once again highlights human rights concerns about capital punishment. However IHRA’s focus on the persistence of capital punishment in other “retentionist” countries for drugs crimes is likely to resonate this week. Saturday is UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, organised to highlight that some states, including China, have always executed drugs offenders to make a public example of them.

An IHRA report published last month revealed that of the 58 states that retain the death penalty, 32 permit it for drug-related crimes. Some use it more readily than others. The estimated overall number of executions including those for drugs-related offences in 2009 was 714, according to Amnesty International, although this does not account for potentially thousands more executions that are not disclosed by China.

Commenting on the IHRA report, Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that while UNODC in particular has recently “taken steps in the right direction” to account for the human rights implications of its programmes, its drug enforcement activities, and those of other organisations and countries, continue to “put them at risk of supporting increased death sentences and executions in some countries”.

Sebastian Saville, director of Release, a British drugs and human rights charity, said there was an urgent need for political leaders in Britain and the US to rethink their “disastrous ‘war on drugs’ policy and tacit support for regimes that continue executing people for relatively minor offences”.

A UNODC spokesman welcomed the report for drawing attention to capital punishment, saying it raised “legitimate concerns” about how actions designed to deal with drugs crimes “may indirectly result in increased convictions and the possible application of the death penalty”. He said UNODC had taken “concrete steps” to implement human rights assessments as part of “all drug enforcement activities”. The IHRA report makes a number of recommendations including that European governments, the European Commission and UNODC urgently leverage their influence with countries that retain the death penalty “to restrict or abolish the death penalty for drug offences.”

More at http://www.ihra.net/news

From The Times Online by James Bone

As the manhunt for Christopher “Dudus” Coke entered its third week, police said that Mr Coke, wanted in the United States as the alleged head of the Shower Posse drug gang, monitored the entrances to his bastion at Tivoli Gardens in Kingston with a network of CCTV cameras before slipping away shortly after the army stormed the area.

Soldiers searching the slum that is pockmarked with bullets found a warren of tunnels and sewers leading all the way to Kingston harbour thus providing a possible escape route from the country — although the chief of Jamaican police insisted their “best intelligence” indicated that Mr Coke remained on the island.

The violence has claimed 73 lives so far, but police say that some of the casualties were not what they seemed.

“There were two women among the civilians killed. The rest are all males and some were dressed like females at the time they were killed,” Owen Ellington, the police commissioner, told reporters.

Mr Coke, 42, Jamaica’s most powerful “don”, remained in hiding yesterday while talks were said to be continuing between his lawyers and US officials over terms for a possible surrender.

Police believe that he left Tivoli Gardens as early as 4pm local time last Monday — hours after hundreds of soldiers stormed his barricaded redoubt to arrest him for extradition to the United States.

“We will catch him, we will execute that warrant, and he will face justice,” said Mr Ellington.

The reputed crime boss is believed to have shaved his head and beard to change his appearance.

A former senior police officer urged the security forces to search the homes of politicians and other high-profile people for the fugitive — despite a botched army raid on a home in the high-class neighbourhood of Kirkland Heights in the early hours of Thursday that killed the brother of a former government minister.

Reneto Adamas, the retired senior police superintendent, told a meeting of the Rotary Club on Thursday: “[He may be hiding] at the house of the politicians, the house of certain people in society and there is a particular house that I have great respect for that I will not mention, but a word to the wise is sufficient.”

Police said that after the Government’s decision on May 17 to extradite Mr Coke, he paid to import up to 400 gunmen from outside Tivoli Gardens to defend the area barricaded by his supporters. It was reported that the hired gunmen received up to J$100,000 (£780) a day. According to The Gleaner newspaper, police believe that defences were masterminded by an explosives expert formerly of the Jamaican security services.

Photographs made public by the authorities showed improvised bombs similar to those seen in Afghanistan, with explosives packed next to scrap metal and cooking gas canisters, wired to be detonated by remote control from homes or rooftops.

Police recovered caches of petrol bombs after it was reported that hundreds of gallons of fuel were purchased to bolster the defences.

With snipers defending the barricades, it took soldiers almost 12 hours to break into Tivoli Gardens.

“It took our troops three hours to get from Beckford Street to the MPM [Metropolitan Parks and Markets] building. This is a mere 200 metres, a three-minute walk for the average Jamaican,” said Major Ricardo Blackwood, an army spokesman.

“This speaks to the kind of armed resistance that was faced. The gunfire was consistent and sustained and it was evident that the gunmen used the vantage of high-rise buildings to fire on the security forces; these high-rise buildings were also used as sniper positions.”

When troops seized Mr Coke’s headquarters at Tivoli Gardens they discovered a CCTV system that enabled him to monitor all the entrances. They also found large amounts of local and foreign currency and copies of the extradition documents filed by the US Government, which Mr Coke appeared to have obtained illicitly.

Searches have recovered 28 firearms, including 14 rifles, and almost 9,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as nine grenades, dynamite and eight bulletproof vests.

Police continued to hunt for arms, however, saying that many weapons were concealed in black plastic bags in heaps of rubbish and manholes.

About 980 people were rounded up for questioning, including 67 youths and four women. Many were being held in the National Arena. Police said that at least 400 men were from outside the Tivoli Gardens area. Most have since been released.

From The Guardian by Maxine Williams

Since August 2009, the extradition request for one man has spiralled Jamaica into a nightmare which has claimed dozens of lives, injured just as many, severely damaged businesses and tourism, provoked a limited state of emergency, discredited the government and traumatised the population.

Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a Jamaican citizen, was charged by a grand jury in the southern district of New York with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine and to traffic in firearms during a period between 1994 to 2007. The acts described in the indictment violate the laws of the United States. Pursuant to an extradition treaty between the two countries, the US issued Diplomatic Note No 296 on 25 August 2009 requesting Coke’s extradition.

The charges in the US indictment against Coke rest on the evidence of cooperating witnesses and on alleged conversations between Coke and his co-conspirators during the relevant period. The way the US authorities came into possession of this evidence is the central legal ground on which the Jamaican government based its prolonged refusal to comply with the extradition request.

It claims that the extradition order was unlawful because the four warrants issued by the Jamaican supreme court to “tap” Coke’s phones authorised the disclosure of intercepted communication only to the commissioner of police, the assistant commissioner, the head of military intelligence and the superintendent of police and not to any US bodies.

Popular opinion is that this legal objection was simply a means of refusing a legitimate request, amid deeply held fear that bringing down this one man could cause the death – literally and politically – of the government and many of its supporters. The Tivoli Gardens community from which Coke hails is associated with the ruling Jamaica Labour party (JLP) and is in fact the prime minister’s constituency.

The practice of political parties hiring gangs of young men and arming them with guns in order for them to exercise political pressure on community members goes back to the 1970s. These gangs have long since diversified their goals and activities leading Jamaica to be in the unenviable position as one of the top five murder capitals of the world.

What we are now witnessing in Jamaica – since 18 May when the government caved under local and international pressure and sent its security forces to apprehend Coke – is the convergence of thorny local and international law issues. Evidence is generally admissible in criminal proceedings in Jamaica even if obtained by improper or unfair means, making arguments not to arrest Coke unsustainable.

The diplomatic and political fall-outs for the Jamaican government if they did not act were severe. The US issued its Narcotics Control Strategy Report of March 2010 stating that the ruling party’s well-known ties with Coke highlighted the “potential depth of corruption in the government”.

The most favourable interpretation of these events is either that the government was following the rule of law in refusing to act on an illegitimate extradition request or it was deliberately thwarting a lawful request on the moral ground that in so doing, it was preventing the anticipated deaths of many citizens. After all, if the command to apprehend Coke had not been given, more than 70 people who have so far been killed in the search and seizure operation would be alive today.

There is a less favourable possibility. This is that, with little regard for whether the request was valid or not, the government sought to maintain a status quo in which a reputed drug king pin controls a massive swath of territory through terror while providing political support to those in power. When the prime minister, Bruce Golding, finally gave instructions to proceed on the extradition request, he insisted that he was acting on the basis of the concepts of fairness and justice by defending Coke’s constitutional rights as a citizen of Jamaica.

The reality is that this “don” provides the services that the state cannot provide: welfare, employment, and most of all protection. Tivoli Gardens, his domain, is the safest part of Kingston where residents walk openly on the street at night.

There is a power vacuum in Jamaica where certain geographical areas fall under the jurisdiction of the Jamaican state in name only. Once successive regimes have allowed, or at least ignored the vacuum, it becomes extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for the state to step back in to fill that space when it is called upon to do so.

The prime minister has now declared that “the time for equivocation is over” and that the state will be reclaiming control of Tivoli and the other “garrison communities“. This is a welcome statement if it leads to the dissolution of these alternative regimes run by dons and their associates, albeit at the cost of many more lives in the immediate future. The utilitarian principle of the right acts or policies being those that bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people may yet be accomplished with the ruling JLP being rewarded for its tardy courage.

Maxine Williams is a lawyer with international and human rights experience