Sylvia Longmire is a retired Air Force Captain and former Special Agent in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

She has worked as an intelligence analyst for the state’s Emergency Management Agency, focusing on drug trafficking and border violence.

Three out of every four California voters support reducing the criminal penalty for possession of a small amount of illegal drugs for personal use, according to a new poll from Lake Research Partners.

A new story at Truthout, which I co-authored with Jason Leopold, takes up the investigation of the story into the mass drugging of Guantanamo detainees with the controversial drug mefloquine, aka Lariam, which we originally reported earlier this month. In an interview with the former commander of the Guantanamo Naval Hospital, who signed off on the mefloquine use, Captain Albert Shimkus said “There were certain issues we were advised not to talk about.”

There’s as much to like about this book as there is to despise about the drug war, which makes This is Your Country on Drugs a fascinating read for anyone endeavoring to better understand the origins of the drug policy predicament that continues to captivate and confound American culture. Ryan Grim takes the reader on a fast-paced journey through the history of our nation’s love-hate relationship with drugs, exploring the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of both drug use and the enormous war that seeks to shield us from its consequences.

A story at Truthout reports that a Department of Defense Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations of drugging of detainees, completed almost exactly a year ago, was nevertheless hidden from public knowledge for months. Its results remain hidden, labeled classified. This is especially strange as this document was publicly requested by no less than now-Vice President (then Senator) Joe Biden, along with Senators Carl Levin and Chuck Hagel, after a couple of articles — one by Jeff Stein and one by Joby Warrick at the Washington Post — blew the whistle on dozens of reports of alleged drugging of detainees.

On Friday, May 14th, we sat down with Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and a 32-year law enforcement veteran, to discuss President Obama’s drug policy, the CA ballot initiative, and the general state of the war on drugs.

I was pretty surprised when the GOP threatened to pull Ron Paul’s committee appointments. They’re basically calling the Tea Parties a bunch of f&%king r#&!rds who can go Cheney themselves. The tea parties were formed around Paul’s anti-tax mantra and he is their spiritual godfather, though many who tout themselves as “leaders” don’t seem to know it. And he’s extraordinarily popular with their base right now — Paul won 31% of the presidential straw poll at CPAC, to Sarah Palin’s 9% and Mitt Romney’s 22%.

FTC Compliance Disclaimer: Other than a complementary copy of the movie Orgasm, Inc. for purposes of this review and tonight’s online chat, no compensation was given to me. No one provided any personal pleasure devices, erotic videos, medical samples, tubes of lubes with the little vibrating fingertip thingy, or large sums of cash in small unmarked bills. No one made any contributions to my reelection campaign, and I don’t have a “leadership PAC” like most members of Congress do, so no one made any contributions to it to help me get around campaign spending laws (see Chambliss, Saxby). Also, no one offered to hire any of my relatives or my ex-lovers (see Ensign, Mark) in exchange for this chat tonight.

Necessity is the mother of invention, or at least innovation. And for decades drug cartels have been innovating, trying to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. Low flying planes, airdrops, speed boats all had their moment, and now the Colombian drug dealers have turned to semi-submersible boats to haul tons of cocaine into Mexico for sale there and importation into the United States.

Ryan Grim’s new book, This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, is a smart and sophisticated telling of the complex interaction between two opposed forces: Americans trying to alter their moods and mental states with chemicals and Americans trying to stop them.

It is a book that tries, and largely succeeds, in making sense of the apparently senseless mix of prohibition, regulation, and permissiveness