A kinder, gentler prohibition

One of the “reforms” touted by the ONDCP and their apologists has been drug courts as an alternative to prison for drug offenders. Yet drug courts have severe issues because of the fact that they are part and parcel with the criminal justice system… and using the criminal justice system to deal with addiction is like using a baseball bat to house-train a dog.

Worth reading: Reevaluating Drug Courts: No Mother Should Have to Go Through What I Did

Here’s something I didn’t know…

Participants are placed on probation while going through the Drug Treatment Court process and do not have the same rights as others when it comes to getting emergency care for drugs or alcohol. New York’s 911 Good Samaritan Law, designed to save lives by encouraging people to call 911 during an overdose, doesn’t offer those on probation and in drug courts the same protection as others — even though drug courts say that drug abuse can be a chronic and relapsing occurrence. My son could not overcome this dilemma and died as a result.

So much destruction.

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27 Responses to A kinder, gentler prohibition

  1. divadab says:

    Kind to the beneficiaries – which is paid employees of the prison-industrial complex. Jobs for the Boys – a sad case of the tail wagging the dog.

    So much of the “war on drugs” is a sham and a lie – including fake drug courts designed to continue the oppression under another guise. Utterly shameful. Symptomatic of a sick society. Unjust dominion and falsehood as legitimized normal behavior by those in authority – textbook police state authoritarianism.

  2. darkcycle says:

    From the “Oh, he did NOT just say that…” file: “Kleiman, a UCLA professor, said the state will have to spend money — on enforcement — to make money.

    “The strictly illicit business and the medical business are a paper tiger,” Kleiman said, “but a paper tiger doesn’t fall over until you push it, and at the moment I don’t see the impetus to push.”

    With pot legal, it’s hard to make a case on public safety grounds for cracking down on illegal sellers, Marr noted.

    Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/07/30/2646485/pot-revenue-hinges-on-black-market.html#storylink=cpy
    A paper tiger that seventy years of dedicated enforcement couldn’t even curb???? He’s hallucinating.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
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      One of the more frustrating parts of this process is having to endure descriptions of the black market by people who have never participated in a black market, and who learned all that they know about the black market from other self proclaimed experts who have also never participated in a black market.

      They come up with some of the looniest ideas. I recall one fellow talking about the prohibitionist generated definition of the alleged “black market” for smoking tobacco cigarettes. His fantasy included people going onto tribal land in order to avoid paying the excise tax.

      For those who wouldn’t know a black market if one jumped up and bit them on the ass…if at any point in the distribution process a cash register receipt documenting the transaction is produced, you’re not in a black market.

    • claygooding says:

      How does one qualify as a marketing expert on marijuana if you have never bought a joint?

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
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        As far as I can tell the so called “experts” are self anointed and become certifiable if accepted into the inner circle by the other jerks. It’s not something that can be explained rationally because there’s no logic whatever involved.

    • Servetus says:

      Given all the people with crystal balls who currently predict doom and gloom emerging from within the marijuana free market, it’s surprising their crystal balls failed to predict the end of marijuana prohibition.

    • kaptinemo says:

      Reading that article is an exercise in ‘suffering fools gladly’.

      ““I-502 stores may not compete well on price with medical access points if they have similar production processes but face higher taxes,” consultants with BOTEC Analysis Corp. wrote. “The medical market could be hobbled by legislative intervention, but another and perhaps even greater concern is competition from the black market.”

      Gee, yuh, think so, huh? Heavily tax anything and you drive the market sub-surface. And WA State has paid money to be told this? Given the precedent has been established, maybe I can interest them in a high-priced consulting gig on how to boil water.

      A proven paradigm (beer and liquor sales) already existed and worked fine for decades; all that has to happen is graft that onto the new market. These artificial, hyperventilating conundrums regarding the re-legalized cannabis distribution and sales (and enforcement) mechanisms are nothing more or less than a modern version of a Rube Goldberg machine.

      But some fool is always willing to sell one, and bigger fools are willing to buy them, with the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars. a pity I have scruples against taking advantage of the ‘developmentally challenged’; I could make a killing off of the State government, there.

  3. claygooding says:

    The laments against the drug courts still avoid mentioning the percentages of people arrested that do not qualify for drug court,,and of that percentage how many are black?

    If I read the drug court requirements right you must have a hired attorney,,court appointed attorneys don’t cut it. Which means every poor person that needs a public defender goes through The judicial/prison system just like now. Nothing changes but the deck chairs are now worn down to being stools.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      He sure isn’t a cheap date.

      • cthulu advocate says:

        Have you read what he went through? I think he should have gotten enough to cripple the DEA’s operating budget–the way he was treated would have been inexcusable if he had actually committed a serious crime, which he didn’t. He was very nearly killed just for being at the wrong party.

  4. Servetus says:

    There is something about drug prohibition that contaminates and corrupts everything it touches. The drug court idea might have sounded like a good idea at first, but the fact that it ultimately supports some of the most heinous and corrupting laws ever to reside within U.S. legal codes cannot but guarantee its failure, regardless of good intentions and optimism.

    One might as well ask how much sugar sprinkled over a steaming pile of manure is necessary to make it palatable. There is no bandage that can fix prohibition. No SWAT raid on grade-school students is going to make little American citizens love their illegitimate government. Neither Joe Biden’s Rave Act, nor an eight-ton armored anti-neighborhood vehicle like Lenco Industries’ Bearcat breaking down their doors will change people’s attitudes about drugs. Such cruelty only changes attitudes toward government. Treated like criminals, forcibly deprived of long established human rights, people will embrace the imposed criminal archetype of us-versus-them, and act accordingly.

    • kaptinemo says:

      What really gets me is that the prohibs seem to be stuck in a time warp, circa 1980’s.

      The people they locked up then are now coming out of their mandatory minimum 20 year sentences and facing even bleaker potential for employment than when they were first incarcerated. The results will be wholly predictable. Recidivism out the whazoo…by hardened criminals with no stake in maintaining society, and every reason to want to see it torn down.

      But the prohibs still act as if they can’t hear this loudly ticking time bomb, and argue for even more Draconian punishments. We shall reap what they had sown, so long ago. And it’s not a harvest anyone in their right minds wants.

      • Servetus says:

        I and the public know
        What all schoolchildren learn,
        Those to whom evil is done
        Do evil in return.

        W. H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’, Another Time (1940)

  5. kaptinemo says:

    With regards to drug courts, they were largely a ‘response’ to the growing sense of frustration the public began to have in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with the professional prohib’s rhetoric not matching reality. Another exercise in appearing to ‘do something’…the key word, of course, being ‘appearing’.

    Thus was attached yet another pulley and bank of flashing lights to a ponderously complex machine (drug prohibition) that could never, ever perform as advertised. More rattling, clanging, whistling, beeping and horn-blatting from a vehicle that still can’t get into first gear and out of the starting gate by itself.

    And we’re all paying for the upkeep of this life-destroying clunker. We’ve got better things to do with that money.

  6. Incarceration and Probation do not exist for the welfare of the convicted individual. They are there to protect the public from the harm capable of being inflicted by the guilty. Sounds good on the surface. This is the base framework within which drug courts exist.

    When applied to victimless crimes, it becomes State sanction repression nothing short of murder (if you ask me) as is the case with the article cited by Pete.

    The drug war kills.

  7. lombar says:

    Stick this in your pipe and smoke it Kerli!

    Recent FMRC Study Shows THC Is Beneficial For Heart Health

    http://www.medicaljane.com/2013/07/22/thc-is-beneficial-for-brain-heart-health/

    Some countries are actually doing research on cannabis that does not have the pre-ordained conclusion that drugs are bad mmkay…

  8. claygooding says:

    I was looking at a picture of a large group of congressmen this am and thought if we could prove marijuana cures baldness we could get it legalized overnight.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .

      Dammit clay, that one is mine!

      /snip/
      Right now I’m trying to line up some cue balls because I’m certain that a cannabinoid infused topical salve will cure pattern baldness but goddamn if it isn’t a bitch trying to find bald potheads. BTW I’m in my 50s and do know quite a few in their 50s and 60s. Don’t worry, I realize my sample is small enough that it doesn’t even rise to the level of supporting evidence to even infer that cannabis might help people with pattern baldness.

      The fact of the matter is that the scalp is just lousy with CB-2 receptors. CB-2s don’t get people high so the canard that “these so called patients just want to get high, not better” is struck down before it gets out of the mouth of the first prohibitionist to have that knee jerk reaction.

      Curing cancer is all well and good but it’s really getting us nowhere because it’s such an academic exercise. There just aren’t that many people (yet) that are familiar with people suffering from cancer and then it’s a smaller subset of those who know someone using cannabis. Even less are using cannabis for other than palliation of associated symptoms and FDA approved side effects from various FDA approved potions and powders.

      Now if we could cure cue ball syndrome it would be game, set, match, CYA later prohibitionists. Are you aware of just how many bald men would give their left nut for a full head of hair?
      /snip/
      http://www.drugwarrant.com/2011/11/odds-and-ends-55/comment-page-1/#comment-98753

      Just kidding old man. Great minds run on the same track and I do know how to share. Oh, and I still do want to work on developing the topical salve.

      • claygooding says:

        It all came together for me when the ad following the story with the legislators was for the hair club,,it sorta snapped like that light bulb beside the coyote’s ear just before he breaks out his latest Acme self maiming device.

  9. Duncan20903 says:

    .
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    From time to time lots of cannabis law reform advocates will suggest that if cannabis is re-legalized that the police will have more time available to investigate “real” crime. This one makes the prohibitionists squeal like stuck pigs.

    By happenstance I’ve found the proof that cannabis law violations are not “real” crime. The FBI does not include cannabis law violations when they calculate the crime rate. If the FBI doesn’t think that cannabis law violations are “real” crimes then why should we?

    http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/index.html

  10. DdC says:

    The High Road:
    Marijuana Drug Testing and Driving in the US
    By Ellen Komp, Cannabis Culture – Tuesday, July 30 2013

    Manipulating Marijuana:
    Monsanto and Syngenta Invest In RNA Interference Technology
    By Tracy Giesz-Ramsay, Cannabis Culture – Tuesday, July 30 2013
    Having been cultivated and used ceremonially, recreationally and medicinally for thousands of years, cannabis – despite prohibitive laws surrounding the non-medicinal use of the plant – is undoubtedly on the radar of big agribusiness.

    Monsanto Sucks, I approve this message…

    • Windy says:

      “The High Road: Marijuana Drug Testing and Driving in the US” — when I followed the link I got a “not found 404” error, so I pasted the title in the search bar and no article with that title was listed nor anything for that date. The most recent article by that author listed in search was 5/23/12. Darn, I really wanted to read that article. Wonder why it disappeared.

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    • Citizen Teus says:

      Not a good article. You can be anti-GMO if you want, but that article was obviously written by someone who knows little about science. It may be propaganda that you agree with, but it is still propaganda. THEY use PROPAGANDA, all WE need is TRUTH.

      • primus says:

        I respectfully disagree. Some people are motivated by the truth, others are not. Fear is a far greater motivator than greed, and will usually trump logic and reason. Just as the relegalisation movement is composed of disparate people with different motivations all coming together to make a greater impact on the system, so must all approaches be used to persuade the public of the need for change. Some will be motivated by compassion for the ill, some by logic, some by fear, some by greed, plus a plethora of other motivations. We must use all the arrows in our quiver, just as the prohibitionists have been doing for decades; they have a whole list of lies, half-lies and statistical manipulations which appeal to the public on different bases–we must do the same.

        • claygooding says:

          “”We must use all the arrows in our quiver, just as the prohibitionists have been doing for decades; they have a whole list of lies, half-lies and statistical manipulations which appeal to the public on different bases–we must do the same.”” add ‘with truth and science’
          If you misquote any part of your argument the prohibs will attack that point and act as if your entire argument is hinged on that one false or half false fact.
          What irritates me is that they have nothing but lies and skewed statistics and when you start attacking them you have so many to choose from.

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