Drug WarRant

Good article by Mike Krause, regarding Colorado Senate Bill 250 A Net Reduction in Drug War Stupidity. He details both the good and the bad in the bill.

It’s a shame that’s the best we can hope for from our leaders – a net decrease in stupidity – but that’s better than we’ve had for so many years, where the political impulse has been to double down.

Mike Krause also points out some of the important aspects of the drug war often neglected in political discussion:

Longer sentences for certain classes of crime are fine as a tool of incarceration and separation. But placing drug offenses, including sale and manufacture, in the same sentencing scheme as violent and property crimes is counter-productive, since incarceration does not affect the use or availability of drugs outside of prison. For example, imprison one serial burglar and there is one less burglar committing burglaries. There is not another burglar waiting to take over the newly vacant burglary territory. The same holds true for other predatory criminals. But the imprisonment of one drug dealer (or even an entire drug network) only temporarily disrupts the flow of illegal drugs. As soon as one supplier is gone, another quickly moves in to take his place.

It also consumes the criminal justice system’s most valuable resource; prison beds, distracting prisons from their primary mission of incapacitating violent and predatory criminals.

Ending “extraordinary risk” sentencing enhancements for drug offenses: One of the most irrational theories propping up the failed war on drugs is that illegal drug sales and use are inherently violent and constitute a threat to public safety, this despite the fact that the DOC lists all drug offenses as “non-violent.” Under current law, most manufacturing and sales drug offenses in Colorado are labeled as “extraordinary risk of harm to society” crimes, which automatically increase sentences in Colorado’s presumptive sentencing scheme. But in reality, much of the violence related to illegal drugs is due mostly to drug laws themselves. Violence from disputes between dealers (turf wars) is engendered by prohibition, just as alcohol prohibition caused violence in another era. Robberies and other crimes committed by drug users to support a drug habit are caused in part by the “risk premium” charged by drug dealers as part of their risk of going to prison.

The people are ready for reform. The politicians are cautiously dipping their toes into the waters of slightly less stupid.

Busy time here with the last week of school and finals.

Had an interesting and somewhat frustrating set of discussions dealing with people who seemed to think that attempting to prohibit substance use for college students during their final weekend of school was a practical (or even possible) idea. Clearly, however, harm reduction, reducing binge drinking, and providing safe and supportive environments is the far smarter approach if you really care about the well-being of the students.

I wish marijuana was legal so substitution could be actively encouraged.

It’s not only a police state, it’s an incompetent police state.

So in August, 2011, a member of the Missouri Highway Patrol spots Bob Harte doing something suspicious. He was leaving a store with a small bag of merchandise that he bought from that store. It happened to be a hydroponics store.

Bob Harte didn’t think he was doing anything suspicious. He thought he was doing a father-son project to grow tomatoes and squash.

Seven months later, the Missouri Highway Patrol passes on that “tip” to the Johnson County Sherriff’s Office, which then puts together an investigation spanning several weeks involving early-morning searches of the Harte’s trash, but apparantly not involving any actual… investigation.

Using notoriously unreliable field testing kits and a complete lack of intelligence, they determine that plant matter in the trash is marijuana, and get a warrant to serve a SWAT-style search of the home, terrifying the family.

They found… tomatoes and squash.

Here’s the story

There are several things to take away from this story. One is, of course, the incredible amount of incompetence displayed by law enforcement.

Another is the disconnect involved in expending this much effort on a chance of arresting somebody for something that most Americans think should be legal. Is there no other crime to combat?

Update: President Obama articulates his plan for Mexico and the drug war! (ie, he spends 3 minutes saying absolutely nothing).

—- Original Post —-

President Obama has another challenging trip ahead of him.

U.S. role at a crossroads in Mexico’s intelligence war on the cartels

The December inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto brought the nationalistic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power after 13 years, and with it a whiff of resentment over the deep U.S. involvement in Mexico’s fight against narco-traffickers. […]

U.S. officials got their first inkling that the relationship might change just two weeks after Peña Nieto assumed office Dec. 1. At the U.S. ambassador’s request, the new president sent his top five security officials to an unusual meeting at the U.S. Embassy here. In a crowded conference room, the new attorney general and interior minister sat in silence, not knowing what to expect, next to the new leaders of the army, navy and Mexican intelligence agency. […]

In front of them at the Dec. 15 meeting were representatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other U.S. agencies tasked with helping Mexico destroy the drug cartels that had besieged the country for the past decade.

The Mexicans remained stone-faced as they learned for the first time just how entwined the two countries had become during the battle against narco-traffickers, and how, in the process, the United States had been given near-complete entree to Mexico’s territory and the secrets of its citizens, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. […]

Also unremarked upon was the mounting criticism that success against the cartels’ leadership had helped incite more violence than anyone had predicted, more than 60,000 deaths and 25,000 disappearances in the past seven years alone.

Meanwhile, the drug flow into the United States continued unabated. Mexico remains the U.S. market’s largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine and the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine.

Mexico Is Ready to End Failed Drug-War Policies—Why Isn’t the U.S.? — Conor Friedersdorf comments on the article:

Yet the fact that it completely failed plays basically no role in the rest of the article, in large part because everyone in the United States government apparently wants to preserve the failed status quo. American officials are very upset that Mexico’s new leader has decided to go his own way.

Look at the very next sentences:

No one had come up with a quick, realistic alternative to Calderon’s novel use of the Mexican military with U.S. support. But stopping the cartel violence had become Peña Nieto’s top priority during the campaign. The U.S. administration didn’t know what that meant. Some feared a scaling back of the bilateral efforts and a willingness to trade the relentless drive against cartel leaders for calmer streets.

Does anyone else think that “a willingness to trade the relentless drive against cartel leaders for calmer streets” just might be “a quick, realistic alternative to Calderon’s novel use of the Mexican military with U.S. support”? At the very least, it surely it doesn’t make sense to presume, as the article seems to, that the obviously failed status quo is the most “realistic” way forward.

Meanwhile…

Obama urged to address drug war related human rights violations during visit to Mexico

In a letter to Obama, Human Rights Watch said the country’s public security strategy pursued by Calderon during the so-called war on drugs failed to address the corruption of police forces and “virtually zero accountability” for those who commit crimes. […]

In a letter to Obama, Human Rights Watch said the country’s public security strategy pursued by Calderon during the so-called war on drugs failed to address the corruption of police forces and “virtually zero accountability” for those who commit crimes.

“Unfortunately, while the Pena Nieto government has taken the first step of recognizing the crisis at hand and the need to change strategies, your administration has been noticeably silent,” said the letter signed by Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the group’s Americas division.

Maybe the President can convince some of the Secret Service and DEA folks to get caught up in a prostitution scandal again to distract the media from paying attention to the issues.

Kevin Sabet is particularly good at one thing: getting the media to quote him. He obviously works hard at this and has been quite successful at positioning himself as a go-to person for any kind of quote related to marijuana legalization.

After the Colorado and Washington votes, the press was frustrated by the lack of comment in the administration, so they turned to Kevin, who was happy to oblige with completely pulled-from-the-ass speculation as to how the federal government would react which, of course, turned out to be entirely wrong.

It didn’t matter that there was no reason to think he had any real knowledge, since obviously even the drug czar was being told to stay quiet.

In the L.A. Times, Richard Simon has this article: California conservative defends state’s pot law in Congress about Dana Rohrabacher’s long-term efforts to get the feds out of interfering with states on medical marijuana.

Then, out of the blue, there’s this:

Kevin Sabet, a former advisor to Kerlikowske, said Rohrabacher’s latest attempt would “likely suffer the same fate as his several previous failed attempts have over the past decade.”

So Kevin is now the expert to whom Richard Simon turns to find out how Congress will vote. Fascinating.

Stephen Duke of Yale has put together a very nice little paper: The Future of Marijuana in the United States

He covers a lot of ground in the discussion, with brief, well-researched, sections on each. It’s not anything ground-breaking to us, but a good addition to the literature.

Professor Kleiman is not impressed.

Alas, Duke’s performance is typical, rather than unusual, for the academic “anti-prohibitionists.” Reverse the sign of the bias and you have a typical drug war handout.

Because Duke failed to show sufficient reverence for Kleiman’s unprovable uncertainties, he is painted with the same brush as prohibitionist lies.

Obama Drug Control Policy: Gets Called Out For Not Meeting Its Own Standards

Excellent article by Mayura Iyer at PolicyMic discusses the recent GAO report that found that the government has made no progress towards its drug policy goals, and also talks about the disconnect in the newest strategy.

Despite hailing his plan as a “Drug Policy for the 21st Century,” Kerlikowske’s reforms are incomplete, as it completely neglects the issues surrounding marijuana use. The administration has yet to take a stance on medicinal and recreational use of marijuana, arguably its most complex drug issue to tackle within the problem. The report doesn’t even mention marijuana once, despite the fact that the number of states that have legalized marijuana is approaching 40%. Additionally, while the approach the White House has taken claims to be “science-based,” the amount of bureaucratic red tape scientists must go through to perform research on the medicinal qualities of marijuana prevents any effective research from being performed, an issue the report also failed to address.

Moreover, the National Drug Control Budget for 2014 released by the White House seems to value drug punishment over treatment for addiction, as 58% of the resources allocated for its drug policies are used for punishment and interdiction, while 42% is allocated for treatment and prevention. While this is a slight improvement from the ratio presented in the 2013 budget (62% to 38%), it’s nowhere near enough for the nation’s drug control policy to be headed towards substantial improvement.

The drug czar is fooling a number of people in the media with his latest PR blitz claiming to be leading a huge shift in policy (which is nothing more than talking about treatment while keeping the same old prohibition), but it’s good to see that it’s not swallowed whole by everyone.

Poor Cliff Kinkaid. He’s such an incredible tool. Check out his latest: How Pothead Terrorists Almost Outsmarted the Police

You can tell he’s just salivating at the notion of a story that indicts marijuana use, terrorism and the Obama administration all at once, and he’s so pathetically, desperately, trying to make the pieces fit together to match his desires. He can’t even see how nonsensical it all is.

Here’s a prime example:

The dope aspect of the plot helps explain why they seemed to have no getaway plan, although we now learn they wanted to get to New York City to kill more people. Perhaps their minds were too scrambled to get to New York City. On the other hand, despite the reassuring claims from the media that authorities have found no evidence of foreign help, it is apparent that they did somehow master the art of making somewhat sophisticated bombs requiring timing devices. Perhaps other accomplices remain on the loose. We have no way to tell for sure, since the Obama Administration has read the captured brother his rights, making it less likely he will spill all the beans.

Jacob Sullum does a nice job with Obama Ends the War on Drugs… Again

Shepard, for example, considers this quote from Kerlikowske to be evidence of a real breakthrough: “Drug policy should be rooted in neuroscience, not political science.” […]

By describing drug use as a disease—as something that happens to people against their will, rather than something they choose to do—Obama and his underlings seek to persuade us that using violence to stop people from consuming certain substances does not interfere with liberty at all. To the contrary, such coercion promotes true liberty by freeing people from the slavery of their addictions. Seems pretty fucking political to me.

If Obama were as concerned about the racially disproportionate impact of draconian drug sentences as Shepard claims, wouldn’t he have managed by now, more than four years into his presidency, to have commuted more than one?

Link

Tamerlan Tsarnaev delved deeply into religion in recent years at the urging of his mother, who feared he was slipping into a life of marijuana, girls and alcohol.

So… how did that work out?