Drug WarRant

Glenn Greenwald continues to be one of the most important political writers we have, shining a glaring light on the corruption, abuses, and overreach of government. Today he talks about the Aaron Swartz case, but even more importantly, the overall stench that runs throughout our Justice system when it comes to prosecutorial abuse.

Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann: accountability for prosecutorial abuse

To begin with, there has been a serious injustice in the Swartz case, and that alone compels accountability. Prosecutors are vested with the extraordinary power to investigate, prosecute, bankrupt, and use the power of the state to imprison people for decades. They have the corresponding obligation to exercise judgment and restraint in how that power is used. When they fail to do so, lives are ruined – or ended.

The US has become a society in which political and financial elites systematically evade accountability for their bad acts, no matter how destructive. Those who torture, illegally eavesdrop, commit systemic financial fraud, even launder money for designated terrorists and drug dealers are all protected from criminal liability, while those who are powerless – or especially, as in Swartz’s case, those who challenge power – are mercilessly punished for trivial transgressions. All one has to do to see that this is true is to contrast the incredible leniency given by Ortiz’s office to large companies and executives accused of serious crimes with the indescribably excessive pursuit of Swartz.

This immunity for people with power needs to stop. The power of prosecutors is particularly potent, and abuse of that power is consequently devastating. Prosecutorial abuse is widespread in the US, and it’s vital that a strong message be sent that it is not acceptable. Swartz’s family strongly believes – with convincing rationale – that the abuse of this power by Ortiz and Heymann played a key role in the death of their 26-year-old son. It would be unconscionable to decide that this should be simply forgotten.

The issue permeates every aspect of our society.

All the statistics are well known at this point. The US imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in the world, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. Despite having only roughly 5% of the world’s population, the US has close to 25% of the world’s prisoners in its cages. This is the result of decades of a warped, now-bipartisan obsession with proving “law and order” bona fides by advocating for ever harsher and less forgiving prison terms even for victimless “crimes”.

The “drug war” is the leading but by no means only culprit. The result of this punishment-obsessed justice approach is not only that millions of Americans are branded as felons and locked away, but that the nation’s racial minorities are disproportionately harmed. As the conservative writer Michael Moynihan detailed this morning in the Daily Beast, there is growing bipartisan recognition “the American criminal justice system, in its relentlessness and inflexibility, its unduly harsh sentencing guidelines, requires serious reexamination.” As he documents, prosecutors have virtually unchallengeable power at this point to convict anyone they want.

Ricardo Cortés discusses The condemned coca leaf and the two standards that have existed: One for a major soft drink, another for the native people of South America.

You see, the Single Convention was adopted after years of negotiations led in great part by Harry J. Anslinger, long-time commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Best known today for his fervent campaign against marijuana, Anslinger had a strange relationship with the coca plant: spearheading its prohibition while simultaneously ensuring access to the leaf for a single, powerful consumer, The Coca-Cola Company.

For decades leading up to the signing of the Single Convention, Anslinger worked closely with Coca-Cola to procure a decocainized coca extract for the “secret formula” of the beverage. Cooperating with The Coca-Cola Company and Maywood executives, Anslinger was also their central ally in negotiations leading to the completion of the Single Convention agreement.

Indeed, as it was finally adopted, in addition to banning traditional use of coca leaves, the treaty contains a provision that allows use of the plant for the special purposes of The Coca-Cola Company.

Cortés is the author of “A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola”

Molly Davies: A Letter to the President: My Husband Is Not the “Bigger Fish to Fry” in Your Drug War

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to you as a wife and mother of two young daughters, whose 34-year old husband, Matthew Davies, faces 10 years or more in federal prison for providing medical marijuana to sick people in California, even though he complied with state law concerning medicinal cannabis. My questions to you are simple:

What has my husband done that would justify the federal government forcing my young daughters to grow up without a father?
How can your Administration ignore the will of the California people and prosecute this good, law-abiding man for doing exactly what state law permits?

Mr. President, my husband is not a criminal and shouldn’t be treated like one. Matt is not a drug dealer or trafficker. He’s not driving around in a fancy car and living in some plush mansion–trust me. My husband is a regular guy, and we’re a regular, middle-class family. Yet even though Matt took great pains to follow state and local law, he is currently facing a severe prison sentence. This all seems so surreal. […]

Nothing is worth Matt’s liberty. And I cannot even bear to think of our daughters growing up without their father. This is a nightmare.

Mr. President, I ask you, I beg of you, to convey the position you took on national television last month to your local law enforcement agents. Or, even better, come to Stockton, California and see for yourself. Sit down with Matt and hear our story. My husband is not the “bigger fish to fry.” Please drop this case and put an end to our family’s nightmare.

Update: Mark Kleiman gives his view of the story.

Don’t think I’ve heard this one before…

Miss America Contestant Opposes All Marijuana Use That Isn’t Recreational or Medicinal

… OK. Interesting wording choice.

Or as the gawker article wryly notes:

Finally, someone willing to stand up to the hemp-rope-industrial-complex.

So much talk and so many articles out there about the Project SAM nonsense. It seems that most people are somewhat skeptical about the ridiculous supposed “new direction” of no incarceration and yet no legalization. All it is, of course, is a weak variation on decrim that still focuses on law enforcement harrassing those who are causing no problems, and doesn’t address the black market at all.

It’s not serious policy — it’s merely sound bites in an attempt to give people a way to oppose legalization if they’re not actually, you know, thinking.

Fun with Twitter

Beau Kilmer: Can we please get some more research on THC:CBD ratios? http://t.co/5fyj70ba #marijuana #mjRAND

Kevin Sabet: @BeauKilmer Indeed! I just used the word “CBD” on national TV today. Wonder if it was a first!? We need much more discussion of it though.

Drug WarRant: @BeauKilmer Agreed. Would like to see much more research. Some is being done in the MedMar community, but overall, Schedule 1 status hurts.

Beau Kilmer: Wow @DrugWarRant and @KevinSabet agree on something : )

Fun with Twitter, part 2

Same Facts: Legalizing drugs tempts people into drug abuse. Banning them tempts people with drug dealing.

Drug WarRant: .@SameFacts @MarkARKleiman “Hey, now it’s legal. I have a sudden urge to abuse it.” Really?

Mark A.R. Kleiman: @DrugWarRant @SameFacts Yes, Pete, you can take a serious argument and make it sound stupid by misstating it. Good for you!

Lee Rosenberg: @MarkARKleiman @DrugWarRant How did he misstate it? He precisely re-stated the logical outcome of your thought.

I was, of course, immediately hit with that first statement: “Legalizing drugs tempts people into drug abuse.” How absurd. There’s no evidence that legalization even leads to increased drug abuse, let alone the bizarre notion that legalization itself somehow tempts people into drug abuse.

Although Mark didn’t note it until after this exchange, he was apparently referring to this post, which still didn’t in any way support that statement, even if it was hyperbolic.

Fun with Twitter, part 3

Mark A.R. Kleiman “Cannabis kills no one”? How about “Tobacco kills no one?” Same logic. http://t.co/TQwQBIgo

Drug WarRant “@MarkARKleiman: ‘Cannabis kills no one’? How about ‘Tobacco kills no one?’ Same logic. http://t.co/m8Faz67z” // Texting kills.

I think this particular exchange (and the referenced post) goes a long way toward understanding the thinking of Kleiman and others like him.

Mark was coming down on Andrew Sullivan for saying that marijuana has killed nobody.

My point in comments was an attempt to understand the different way of looking at things that comes from the paternalist.

Pete Guither says: “I think there is a legitimate difference in how people approach culpability.

If you smoke cigarettes for a long period of time, there’s a certain chance that that the chemicals in the cigarettes will cause your death. Drinking too much alcohol over a long period of time can damage your liver, and lead to death. As Mark said, there is no firm evidence of similar proximate causation when talking about marijuana.

Drinking alcohol does not cause traffic fatalities. Drinking alcohol AND THEN doing something really stupid leads to traffic fatalities. The difference between what Andrew Sullivan is saying and what Mark Kleiman is saying is that Andrew blames the doing something stupid. Mark blames the alcohol.”

In which I thank Mark Kleiman…

In the linked post above, Mark is nice enough to give a shout out to our group here. It’s appreciated!

There are plenty of places for anti-drug-warriors to vent in peace; Pete Guither runs one.

I might not have chosen the term “anti-drug-warriors” due to the potential referential vagueness, but we know what he means.

Yeah, you heard that right.

The United States lost a drug war battle in the UNODC.

Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org

Bolivia will rejoin the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs after its bid to rejoin with a reservation that it does not accept the treaty’s requirement that “coca leaf chewing must be banned” was successful Friday. Opponents needed one-third of the 184 signatory countries to object, but fell far, far short despite objections by the US and the International Narcotics Control Board. […]

“The objecting countries’ emphasis on procedural arguments is hypocritical. In the end this is not about the legitimacy of the procedure Bolivia has used, it is not even really about coca chewing,” according to Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Transnational Institute’s Drugs and Democracy program. “What this really is about is the fear to acknowledge that the current treaty framework is inconsistent, out-of-date, and needs reform.”

The Institute noted that Bolivia’s success can be an example for other regional countries where traditional use of the coca leaf is permitted, including Argentina, Colombia, and Peru, to challenge the Single Convention on coca. It also called for the World Health Organization to undertake a review of coca’s classification as a Schedule I drug under the Convention.

“Those who would desperately try to safeguard the global drug control system by making it immune to any type of modernization are fighting a losing battle,” according to John Walsh, director of the Washington Office on Latin America drug policy program. “Far from undermining the system, Bolivia has given the world a promising example that it is possible to correct historic errors and to adapt old drug control dogmas to today’s new realities.”

I can’t stress enough how big this is. Once again, the United States snapped its fingers and told the rest of the world to get in line and oppose Bolivia’s move. But this time, while the UK joined them, most of the rest of the world just said “no, thanks.”

Conor Friedersdorf has a delightful retort to David Frum’s nonsensical article that we discussed here.

Would Legalizing Marijuana Be Too Hard on Simpletons?”

Conor takes apart Frum’s seeming need for simple social rules like “Just Say No,” and points out that the Project SAM approach isn’t about simplicity at all.

There are several problems with his argument.

1) Most obviously, under every proposal for legalizing marijuana it would remain illegal for minors, and perhaps for adults up to age 21. Parents won’t be deprived of the ability to say, “Marijuana is illegal, stay away,” until their adolescents are in college or living in an apartment and working.

2) Legalization advocates actually favor the simpler policy apparatus: everyone understands that you can vote at 18 and that you can drink at 21. Making marijuana legal for all adults, or all people 21 or older, is about as simple as it gets, and its laughable to compare a standard age rule to zero-down-adjustable-rate mortgages or the complexity of an open sexual relationship.

3) Using illegality as a heuristic for “most dangerous” is itself going to turn out badly for some people who aren’t very smart. Marijuana abuse isn’t anything to take lightly, but the substance is less dangerous than alcohol in many ways, less dangerous than huffing paint, less dangerous than lots of prescription drugs, and less dangerous than hang gliding.

We’ve made fun in the past of Cliff Kinkaide, a rabid, foaming at the mouth conservative prohibitionist writing at the ironically-named “Accuracy in Media.”

Unfortunately, Cliff has been relatively silent about drug policy for some time (I subscribe to his RSS feed), but the new Patrick Kennedy nonsense and Project SAM has brought Cliff out again: A Kennedy Shocks the Pro-Dope Liberal Media

Yeah, that’s the way he writes.

The major media do not want to cover the issue of marijuana causing mental illness. But because a prominent Democrat, Patrick Kennedy, has raised it, the media have nowhere left to hide. […]

The paper said Kennedy wants “to shift the debate from legalization to prevention and treatment—despite what appears to be a growing social acceptance of the drug.”

That “growing social acceptance” is being driven by the drug-friendly media, the pro-drug entertainment industry, and a dope lobby led by the Drug Policy Alliance that is mostly funded by billionaires such as George Soros. […]

However, the pro-marijuana movement is on the move, with the state of Oregon sinking so low as to authorize the use of “medical marijuana” for a 7-year-old child with leukemia. The child’s father, who is divorced from the girl’s mother, reported the marijuana use to child welfare officials and said that he found the little girl “stoned out of her mind.” […]

The dope lobby never expected a certified liberal—and the son of a liberal icon—to lead a new charge against them.

It’s fun to read his spewings again. Somehow, oddly, it just makes me feel that all’s right with the world.

It’s sort of like when you see one of those unkempt radical preachers on the quad of the campus raving about satan, and you look around him and see smart young people walking past on their way to learning and doing great things, the sight of the lunatic reminds you just how far outside reality he truly exists.

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske responds to the latest petitions regarding legalizing marijuana.

Thank you for participating in We the People and speaking out on the legalization of marijuana. Coming out of the recent election, it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana.

We’ve been in a serious national conversation for some time, and your boss was laughing at us. Now, he’s not laughing so much.

Tom Angell, of Marijuana Majority writes:

“I guess it makes a difference when marijuana legalization gets more votes than your boss does in an important swing state, as happened in Colorado this last election. From ‘legalization is not in my vocabulary and it’s not in the president’s,’ as Gil Kerlikowske often used to say, to ‘it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana’ is a pretty stark shift. Of course, what really matters is to what extent the administration actually shifts enforcement priorities and budgets, but I sure do like hearing the US drug czar acknowledge the fact that marijuana legalization is a mainstream discussion that is happening whether he likes it or not.”

It’s clear that we have forced a shift in the tenor of the national conversation, and that’s pretty sweet.

…

Note: Some have previously pointed out this page at Huffington Post, that shows Obama getting more votes than marijuana in Colorado in the final count, but the official results from the Colorado Secretary of State show that marijuana came out on top.

….

Side note:

Some reactions to the various legalization articles out over at The Reality Based Community. Mark Kleiman uses his usual “pox on both your houses” approach, convinced that his opinion is the one and only factual approach. He’s right, of course, to ridicule Patrick Kennedy’s ideas, but for the wrong reason. It’s not that Kennedy’s approach is lacking in facts, but rather that it’s wrong. Simply stating more facts (or more uncertainties) doesn’t necessarily make your argument correct.

Keith Humphreys, on the other hand, gives a glowing review of the Kennedy nonsense. Keith is dumb enough to agree with Kennedy, but smart enough to realize that he’d be skewered in comments, so naturally, for that post, comments are closed (Update: comments now open).

By the way, the Project SAM website is now live: LearnAboutSAM.com

This is basic economics that we’ve been aware of, well, forever, but it’s rarely discussed in mainstream media regarding the drug war.

The economic case for decriminalizing heroin

Here’s the kicker: if drugs sold for that price after taxes in an environment where drugs are legalized, they’d still be cheaper than drugs sold on the black market. So the legal market would drive illegal producers out of business, there wouldn’t be any of the enforcement costs — including huge social costs like mass incarceration — that come with drug prohibition, the government would gain considerable new tax revenue, and because the price is the same, consumption of drugs wouldn’t be any different than under prohibition. In short, the best form of prohibition is still worse than legalize-and-tax.

The wording needs some minor tweaks, but the principle is absolutely on track.

Nice to see something like this in the Washington Post.