Drug WarRant

Drug Czar in completely over his head in scary new expanding drug war

Director Gil Kerlikowske

Today, I was pleased to join my colleagues from throughout the Administration to announce the first U.S. strategy on transnational organized crime (TOC) in fifteen years. The Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime provides a comprehensive plan that will, in part, help us build on our progress to further reduce drug use […]

Thank you, Russell Brand

I never really followed Amy Winehouse, or knew that much about her, other than peripheral awareness of the tabloid stuff about her drug problems. However, I knew that her death would dredge up a lot of anti-drug fervor and some ignorant comments.

And it did. I saw friends on Facebook who essentially wondered why anyone […]

And more collateral damage

Via Grits for Breakfast: After all, how many Steven Rodriguez’s could there be?

The wrong Steven Rodriguez was arrested in front of his wife and four year old son for drug trafficking based on a warrant approved by a local Justice of the Peace. He was taken to jail and required to post bail (including […]

More drug war collateral damage

Dying patient wrongly assumed to be junkie

A very ill man, wrongly assumed to be a “junkie” craving strong drugs, died in agony hours after being discharged from a NSW hospital, a coroner has found. […]

“If, as now seems clear, Mr Sutherland’s bowel was ruptured or on the point of rupturing when he […]

Open Thread

I’ve just spent most of the past week as one of the judges of the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Palatine, Illinois. Awards were announced this afternoon and will probably be posted online soon. It was quite an amazing festival with incredible films in a wide variety of categories. It makes me feel good […]

This judge gets it

“Can’t sugarcoat this,” said Judge Robert Richter. “To take somebody and threaten their life in that fashion. . . Smoking marijuana doesn’t make you do that. Somebody in college studying criminal justice should know.”

This was from an article about a former college student who mugged Kal Penn at gunpoint and tried to explain his […]

So much for ending the War on Drugs

Drug Czar Kerlikowske has rather famously pronounced on numerous times that he ended the war on drugs (basically by disavowing the term). This is part of his effort to pretend that the current administration is more focused on treatment and prevention than the proven failures of supply-side drug control policy.

Yet the budget has shown […]

Drug Mules

A disturbing piece at Al Jazeera about the proliferation of drug mules in the Philippines as the trend is for poor women to be drawn into working as drug mules (sometimes without even knowing what they’re carrying), and ending up on death row in China.

And more are getting caught. Over 690 Filipinos are currently […]

Why isn’t Nancy Grace obsessing over this?

Via Radley Balko:

Mom sues Lawrence County over seizure of newborn

For the second time in a year, Lawrence County Children and Youth Services has been accused in a federal lawsuit of removing a child from a mother’s custody after a positive test for opiates allegedly triggered by poppy seeds.

Eileen Ann Bower, a […]

There must not be any drugs left!

Iran leads the world in drug seizures

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Yury Fedotov has said Iran ranks first in the world in illicit drug seizures, Mehr news agency reported.

Iran seizes 80 percent of the opium and 40 percent of the heroin and morphine seized in the world, Fedotov […]

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