Drug WarRant

It’s often been noted here that calling the drug war a failure is only true depending on what you consider to be the true goals of the drug war.

Kevin Carson does a nice riff on that with Fifteen Benefits of the War on Drugs

1. It has surrounded the Fourth Amendment’s “search and seizure” restrictions, and similar provisions in state constitutions, with so many “good faith,” “reasonable suspicion” and “reasonable expectation of privacy” loopholes as to turn them into toilet paper for all intents and purposes. […]

5. As a result of the way DARE interacts with other things like Zero Tolerance policies and warrantless inspections by drug-sniffing dogs, the Drug War has conditioned children to believe “the policeman is their friend,” and to view snitching as admirable behavior, and to instinctively look for an authority figure to report to the second they see anything the least bit eccentric or anomalous.

6. Via civil forfeiture, it has enabled the state to create a lucrative racket in property stolen from citizens never charged, let alone convicted, of a crime. Best of all, even possessing large amounts of cash, while technically not a crime, can be treated as evidence of intent to commit a crime — saving the state the trouble of having to convert all that stolen tangible property into liquid form.

7. It has enabled local police forces to undergo military training, create paramilitary SWAT teams that operate just like the U.S. military in an occupied enemy country, get billions of dollars worth of surplus military weaponry, and wear really cool black uniforms just like the SS. […]

A very powerful OpEd in the New York Times by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former President of Brazil) and Ruth Dreifuss (former President of Switzerland): An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment” centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement. […]

The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board has refused to condemn torture or “any atrocity” carried out in the name of drug control, claiming it was not its mandate to do so. This is both shocking and contradictory: oversight of international drug control treaties is the control board’s very mission.

Late last year, despite the evidence before it, the U.N. Committee against Torture failed to condemn the widespread abuse of people who use drugs in the Russian Federation. […]

You can’t have a drug war without human rights abuses, and the harder you prosecute it, the greater those abuses. This is a painful truth often carefully ignored by those who have chosen the drug war as their path.

Good to see this getting more visibility.

I don’t expect much from the upcoming CND sessions – the same posturing from U.S., Sweden, Russia, etc. – but it’s getting harder for them to pretend that they represent the will of the world (or what’s best for it).

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Just hours ago, the sessions began with ONDCP’s Yuri Fedotov calling Iran “UN’s number one partner in the war on drugs.”

I’m heading out early Saturday morning for New York with a group of students for a week-long theatre trip. We’ll be seeing Matilda, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Kinky Boots, and Caveman.

I’ll check in when I can, and bring back some cheesecake from Junior’s (and maybe some pastrami from Carnegie Deli).

I’m not always aware of the various state-based or local-based reform groups, and sometimes forget that there are dedicated people working hard on changing state and local laws all the time whose efforts may not get national attention.

I just learned of Missouri’s Show-Me Cannabis Regulation group even though it looks like they’ve been around for a couple of years and I know some of the people involved.

What caught my attention was this news release:

On Thursday, Show-Me Cannabis Regulation announced that it has contracted with Gary Wiegert to lobby for the reform of Missouri’s marijuana laws in Jefferson City. Wiegert is a sergeant with the Saint Louis Police Department and has served on the city’s police force for over 32 years. He also represented his fellow officers as president of the Saint Louis Police Officer’s Association from 1999 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2009.

In his political life, Wiegert has long advocated for a more limited government. He hosted WGNU radio shows Bad Boys from 1999 to 2006 and Constitutionally Correct in 2012. Most recently, Wiegert has put his conservative principles into action as a lobbyist for the Saint Louis Tea Party.

“Our marijuana policies are the perfect example of a wasteful, big government program,” Wiegert said. “Arresting people for marijuana is a waste of my time as a police officer, a waste of taxpayer dollars, and has done nothing to reduce the use of marijuana.”

“We are very excited to have Gary on the team,” said Show-Me Cannabis Regulation Executive Director John Payne. “He can speak firsthand to the failure of cannabis prohibition, demonstrates the strong bipartisan appeal of the issue, and will be taken seriously by the legislature.”

Fascinating. An active-duty police officer and tea-party enthusiast as a paid lobbyist for marijuana legelizationn. I like it.

So today, Attorney General Holder is supposed to be grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee (going on right now). There’s a general sense that he will address the administration’s “response” to marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado.

There’s also a general sense that the timing of a couple of other things were not coincidental.

1. A ridiculous letter from a bunch of former DEA heads, Drug Czars and other drug warriors, released through an organization with a history of torturing children.
2. The release of a report from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) — a completely unaccountable organization through the United Nations that supports the killing and torturing of innocents through encouraging the ratcheting up of the drug war internationally.

Both of these destructive groups want to save the United States and the world from someone eating a pot brownie in Denver, and are hoping the Senate will push Holder into kicking some heads in.

Jacob Sullum does a great job of covering this so I don’t really have to: Totally Disinterested Drug Warriors Demand That Holder Stop Marijuana Legalization Before It’s Too Late

However, I thought some of you might be interested in reading the section of the intro from INCB president Raymond Yans:

We note with concern, however, that in this debate, some declarations and initiatives have included proposals for the legalization of the possession of drugs for non-medical and non-scientific use, that is, for “recreational” use, that would allow the cultivation and consumption of cannabis for non-medical purposes. Any such initiatives, if implemented, would violate the international drug control conventions and could undermine the noble objectives of the entire drug control system, which are to ensure the availability of drugs for medical purposes while preventing their abuse. Proponents of such initiatives ignore the commitment that all Governments have made to promote the health and well-being of their communities, and such initiatives run counter to the growing body of scientific evidence documenting the harm associated with drug abuse, including occasional
use, particularly among young people during their formative years.

Furthermore, such initiatives would create a false sense of security and would send a false message to the public, in particular children, regarding the health impact of abuse of drugs. Some have argued that these proposals would eliminate the illicit markets and organized crime associated with drugs of abuse. Yet, even if such initiatives were implemented, organized criminal groups would get even more deeply involved, for instance by creating a black market for the illicit supply of newly legalized drugs to young people.

I really love the phrase “undermine the noble objectives of the entire drug control system.” Wow. That takes some chutzpah.

And the notion that legalization would create a black market for the illicit supply of drugs to young people… Isn’t that what we have now?

I’m really kind of surprised that Forbes Magazine is giving space to an absolutely ignorant nut-job like Paul Johnson.

The War On Drugs: A Defining Moment

Johnson attempts to explain some of the terrible things that might happen if we legalize drugs…

Another possibility to consider is that a rogue state, such as North Korea, will enter the burgeoning drug market. North Korea’s evil regime survives by performing tasks no other government is able or willing to contemplate. For instance, it has supplied nuclear technology to other rogue states in contravention of all international law. Both Syria and Iran have paid North Korea in gold for its aid in their nuclear efforts. There is no way to stop these transactions as long as China refuses to take punitive steps against its former military and ideological ally.

Recreational drugs are comparatively easy for a ruthless and determined government to grow and/or manufacture. Supplying these drugs to Americans is precisely the kind of prospect that would appeal to the North Korean leadership. They’ve always claimed that capitalist democracies are essentially corrupt and decadent. This would enable them to “prove” it, especially if the release of vast quantities of cheap soft drugs into Western cities were followed by an increase in the supply and use of hard drugs, as many experts believe would be inevitable.

China, which has a drug problem of its own, might be prepared to act against North Korea in this context. But it would extract a high price from the West, which might result in the balance of power in the Pacific tilting in China’s favor.

I’ve been discussing possibilities. But in the world of highly dangerous drugs, it’s safer to treat possible outcomes as probabilities. If we allow this drug use to become legal, we’ll be embarking on a voyage into horror with our eyes open.

This has got to be the stupidest reason for not legalizing that I’ve heard yet. It doesn’t even make enough false sense to debunk. If marijuana is legal, why in the world would we buy it from North Korea?

Somebody at Forbes has got to have some egg on their face.

“Follow the money.” Always good advice when considering the motivations of prohibitionists. Certainly it’s true with the true drug warriors, including DEA, police unions, etc.

And, while the treatment industry is comprised of both the truly caring and the avariciously opportunistic, the general sense has been that most of their vocal opposition to legalization has come from those who see legalization as a threat to their revenue.

Well, Kevin Sabet has been pushing back against that with his own notion that legalization will actually result in an increase in profits for the treatment industry (and even for the enforcement industry).

Kevin Sabet tweet:

Repeating this for the uninformed: if drugs were legal, I, and the treatment and enforcement sectors, would be MUCH richer. > use = > need

He seems very sure of himself, but I’d advise you not to take any financial advice from him, ’cause assuming he actually believes what he says, his analytical skills are crap.

The notion that enforcement would profit from legalization is so laughable it’s not worth my time to address, but let’s look at treatment.

if drugs were legal…

– Which drugs, how regulated?

> use = > need

– Unspoken assumption that legalization leads to greater use, which may not be true in all situations.

– Conflation of use and abuse.

– What about all those referred to treatment by criminal justice and others, including many for cannabis who don’t need treatment?

– What about the fact that addictive illegal drugs have more uncertain dosages/purity causing serious problems for addicts? How would that differ with regulated drugs with controlled purity?

– What about substitution? Legal pure amphetimines would cause less treatment problems than homemade meth.

– No thought is given to the notion that those who wouldn’t use while a drug is illegal, but would when it is legal, are less likely to become addicted.

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Now personally, I don’t think that Kevin is in this racket for the money. My sense is that he’s hitched his career wagon to the anti-legalization movement and likes being a “leader” in it, regardless of whether he benefits financially (although he wouldn’t mind getting both).

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For more on Kevin Sabet and SAM, see Where now for opponents of cannabis law reform? at Transform.

… he does.

Remember the tragedy that I posted about a little while ago? A young man had been caught with a tiny amount of marijuana, and, aggravated by a police mistake, was in jeopardy of losing his career plans, so he committed suicide.

Well, Peter Hitchens responds with: If the law had been strongly enforced over the last 40 years, schoolboys like Edward Thornber wouldn’t risk toying with cannabis

Yeah, that’s right. Hitchens says that the problem is that the drug war wasn’t enforced enough.

If the law had been strongly and consistently applied during the past 40 years, schoolboys would never take the terrible risk of toying with this dangerous, mind-bending substance, increasingly correlated with severe and irreversible mental illness.

And many lives, not just that of Edward Thornber and his family, would have been spared tragedies of many different kinds.

Weakness is not the same thing as compassion.

A very powerful and fascinating read in Spiegel Online: Failing Drug War: When Cops Become Criminals

When you follow the story of Martinez and his journey from fresh DEA agent to prison convict, what’s really fascinating is his own perception of right and wrong…

In prison, Martinez developed his own opinion of his actions. Today, he says that he was innocent. What he did wasn’t right, but it also wasn’t wrong, he says. He was simply applying the methods he had learned.

It really points out how little difference there is between the hard liners on both sides of the drug war. The drug war corrupts them both, making them believe that what they’re doing, while maybe not right, isn’t really wrong.

And we keep pouring fresh meat into that grinder.

Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones: Marijuana Legalization May Be Unstoppable

On Tuesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder told America to expect a decision “soon” on how he’ll respond to the recent legalization of pot by Colorado and Washington state. To which the rest of the country has basically said, “Whatever, dude.”

Exactly.

It takes continued work on our part, but as the people we have the potential power to make any decision by functionaries in the federal government irrelevant.