Drug WarRant

A good article today in the New York Times: South America Sees Drug Path to Legalization by Damien Cave.

Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

Doing so would make Uruguay the world’s first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal, which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to marijuana is simply outdated.

“In 1961, television was just black and white,” said Julio Calzada, secretary general of Uruguay’s National Committee on Drugs. “Now we have the Internet.”

Of course, the devil is in the details, as there is opposition from all sorts of groups including marijuana users regarding how the new policy might be implemented. So, it could take a while yet.

Still, this is such a positive effort. In particular, those who claim to care about the facts and science of drug policy, and go out of their way to repeatedly say that we can’t know what the results of legalization would be (since it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world), should be encouraging this effort by Uruguay with all their might.

After all, we might learn something.

How to the actions of the DEA in this story differ from those of criminal thugs?

Truck owner wants DEA to pay up after botched sting

So the owner of a trucking company with two trucks discovers after the fact that the DEA decided to use one of his trucks and drivers (without the owner’s permission) for a sting operation.

Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty’s knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.

At least 17 hours before that early morning phone call, Chapa was shot dead in front of more than a dozen law enforcement officers – all of them taken by surprise by hijackers trying to steal the red Kenworth T600 truck and its load of pot.

In the confusion of the attack in northwest Harris County, compounded by officers in the operation not all knowing each other, a Houston policeman shot and wounded a Harris County sheriff’s deputy.

But eight months later, Patty still can’t get recompense from the U.S. government’s decision to use his truck and employee without his permission.

Insurance wouldn’t pay for it. He had to hire a company to clean the driver’s blood out of the cab and then have all the bullet holes in his truck fixed. He’s almost bankrupt, and…

Perhaps most unnerving, Patty says, is that drug mobsters now likely know his name, and certainly know his truck.

Panic at the Patty home these days can be triggered by something as simple as a deer scampering through the wooded yard or a car pulling into the driveway.

In Mexico, the drug trafficking organizations act in completely lawless ways that result in deaths without fear of any real repercussions from the law. They consider themselves to be the law. The same is true of terrorist organizations around the globe. And the same is true of the DEA.

Via Radley Balko: Dog shooting prompts police to change policies

Balko’s been in the forefront of getting the public aware of the outrageous amount of puppycide that takes place with law enforcement (and many of these killings are part of routine drug warrant enforcement).

Here’s a rare example where public reaction has resulted in real policy change.

Assistant Police Chief David Carter said a new policy that will go into effect July 1 addresses the options officers have when compelled to use force against dogs.

One of the most significant changes to the policy, Carter said, is that it is more specific on what constitutes a dangerous animal and when an officer can use deadly force against one.

The new policy clarifies that lethal force is authorized if officers decide there is “imminent danger of bodily harm” to themselves or another human, not when a dog is simply acting aggressively, Carter said. It requires a higher level of discretion; the old policy was less specific and said lethal force can be used if an animal is a threat to safety.

The new policy also explains alternatives to deadly force, including yelling at a dog, firing a Taser or using pepper spray.

There are other revisions as well, Carter said. The new policy raises the level of scrutiny on fatal dog shootings. If an officer does use deadly force against a dog, he or she must explain why lesser force was not used, and the incident will be reviewed by the entire chain of command — not just an officer’s sergeant, as is current policy, he said.

“It raises the stature” of dog shootings, Carter said. “We need to be as accountable for the shooting of a dog as any other force.”

They’re also going to institute trainging for cadets on how to handle aggressive dogs without lethal force.

Good news. It would be nice if it was more than just one police department…

Still immersed in the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival (I’m a judge) through this weekend.

It’s pretty sad that Kevin Sabet can’t handle comments and has to have them disabled when he writes at Huffington Post

Should the FDA regulate recreational drugs? – a new article at Time by Maia Szalavitz.

Regulation is the answer. Not sure that the FDA is.

Pot Legalization is Coming in Rolling Stone

Melinda Haag’s US Department of Pre-Crime by Russ Belville

Is the CIA a drug cartel? Mexican official blames CIA for drug war

A Mexican government official has told reporters that the CIA and other international security forces are not fighting drug traffickers, but rather they are managing the trade. This is the latest astounding claim about violence that has lasted more than six years and claimed more than 55,000 lives.

JUAREZ, MEXICO (Catholic Online) – Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico, made the claim which has people in Washington upset. While Villanueva is not the first person to make such claims, he is the highest-ranking official to do so thus far.
 
Villanueva told a reporter for Al Jazeera, “It’s like pest control companies, they only control, if you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

Good article at Philly.com: Law enforcement likes getting realliy high off drug busts

IT HAPPENS before the news conference, before the plastic-wrapped bricks of dope are arranged on the table for the TV cameras and before headlines are made.

Cops calculate the “street value.” It’s a branch of mathematics in which economies of scale meet public relations.

By envisioning thousands of transactions that will never occur — and sometimes padding the numbers on top of that — law-enforcement agencies can wind up doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling, sextupling or even septupling what the confiscated drugs are worth to the bulk-level dealers who got popped.

In the hands of a narcotics cop with a calculator, $2 million of heroin can become $9 million, $500,000 worth of meth can become $2.5 million, coke worth less than $1 million can become several million.

We’ve often noted the inflated values given by law enforcement and this article gives numerous examples.

Of course, the real problem is that the entire public relations game of showing off seizures is nothing more than blatant self-promotion. It has nothing to do with public safety. When a large shipment is seized, it doesn’t matter if you call it $1 million or $10 million — it’s merely a minor and temporary inconvenience to the economics of the black market and has no real impact on supply.

I’m taking a couple days off with a friend in Chicago, and then I’ll be a judge for the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival this week.

The Drug War Has Now Spread to Africa. Here’s Why – a good piece by Ryan Grim. The U.S.’s DEA is now going to Africa to go after Latin American drug traffickers who are transporting drugs to Europe, with the full knowledge that anything they do will only move the route, not stop it.

Sounds like an agency that’s looking to justify its own existence.

At Salon: Obama's Pot Problem

After holding the party convention in Denver and handily carrying this traditionally Republican state in 2008, Obama could be jeopardizing his reelection bid with a dismissive and even hostile approach to marijuana reform, a top issue for tens of thousands of local residents, including many of the activists who powered his last campaign.

Even if President Obama wins the election, if he loses Colorado and it appears to be because of his position on marijuana, then the entire political world will sit up and take notice.

You can already see the faint beginnings of the mad scamper away from prohibition by politicians…

See also: If Chris Christie is soft on drugs… by Rich Lowry.

If Chris Christie, arguably the toughest Republican in the country, is open to new approaches, there’s hope for everyone else.

Why we shouldn’t legalize marijuana by Charles Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

Once again, the Heritage Foundation demonstrates that it wants nothing to do with the truth.

Marijuana is an addictive, gateway drug. It significantly impairs bodily and mental functions, and its use is related to increased violence. These are facts.

I love that “these are facts” link. Does it link to a source of facts? No, just to another hilariously misguided article by Charles Cully Stimson back in 2010. That particular article was soundly thrashed back then by me (Charles Cully Stimson lies with the authority and confidence of a career fabricator) and others (More people have fun with Charles ‘Cully’ Stimson).

Here’s another great line in Stimson’s new article:

Lacking curative or preventive powers, marijuana — unlike alcohol — is usually consumed to the point of intoxication.

Ah yes, the old Richard Nixon/Linkletter argument again.

Have fun.

Nice story: Pot-smoking moms tired of being judged by wine drinkers

“Being judged for doing something nontoxic and totally organic, enjoying a god-given plant, by moms who suck back two bottles of Chardonnay like sports drinks feels like s—,” complains Margaret. “Any hypocrisy is hard to swallow.” […]

“If I wanted to, I could sit with a glass of wine in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, with a cigarette pressed between my lips, under the influence of prescription narcotics — all the while holding my child in my lap,” says Serra Frank, founding director of Moms for Marijuana and mother of two, ages 9 and 12.

Not having been a parent, I can't fully understand what it's like. However, I've watched a lot of parents and have seen how incredibly stressful it can be. I can certainly imagine that something like a little pot to take the edge off now and then would be amazingly useful.

I've always liked Morgan Freeman. Here's another reason…

Morgan Freeman On Marijuana: Criminalization Of Weed Is 'Stupidest Law Possible'

Marijuana! Heavens, oh yeah. It’s just the stupidest law possible, given history. You don’t stop people from doing what they want to do, so forget about making it unlawful. You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s stupid.