Drug WarRant

At Salon: A Tipping Point is Happening – an interview with filmmaker Eugene Jarecki

We became an enormous world power, and we’ve handled that power questionably, and ultimately, I would argue, to our own detriment. And certainly to the detriment of people who don’t benefit from the industrial system. And this [the drug war] might be one of the most pressing, and sort of inspiring, areas as a possibility for real reform. Whether we’re going to continue the kind of state-following and fear-mongering that we have had since the end of the Cold War, where we almost needed a new enemy, so into that pipeline we put the drug dealer and drug user.

Could we step back and say, there must be a better way for us to lead the world? Morally, spiritually and otherwise. We are now in many ways a laughing stock for the rest of the world due to the enormity of our prison population. We have outpaced every totalitarian country in the world. Not only proportionally, but in real numbers. China has five times the population, but it has a smaller prison population. So it seems to me that the moral bankruptcy of the war on drugs would be something that really should be a central topic of these upcoming elections.

Of course, it isn't a central topic of the upcoming elections.

Sure, it's done better than perhaps it ever has — particularly in the Republican debates — in terms of visibility, and we do have a number of state-wide votes of significance in the drug war, but it's still not anywhere near an “election topic.”

In particular, if you look at the partisan liberal and conservative websites and blogs, you find almost no mention of drug policy (it's all about attacking the other guy, and drug policy doesn't really fit since both sides are terrible).

This just makes it all the more important to find a way to get Gary Johnson into the debates.

One of my many involvements is as Artistic Director of The Living Canvas, and I've got a new show running in Chicago this summer at National Pastime Theater (941 W. Lawrence). It's “Living Canvas: Eureka!” and it runs Fridays and Saturdays at 10 pm through August 11.

Living Canvas is a very unique concept that utilizes projections as the only source of light on naked performers who are “clothed” with these powerful images. The show is powerful, funny, and moving. This is our 9th Living Canvas production in Chicago.

I can always count on the Chicago Reader for some snark in their reviews, but I got a kick out of it:

Living Canvas returns with a sumptuous set of nude pieces in which high-def projections are used to cast a surreal body-paint effect… This is popcorn-flick performance art, but take some drugs and see it anyway!”

This actually isn't the first time that reviewers have connected my show to a drug experience. From a previous review:

Stoners, Dali fans, sensualists of every stripe, this show's for you. Sober or otherwise, you'll find the visual pleasures of Guither's idiom considerable.

If you're in the Chicago area, please come and check it out. Tickets are $20 and available through Brown Paper Tickets. There's a Q and A after each performance, and even an opportunity for audience participation during the show.

There's also a possibility that we'll be taking the show on road to Rochester, New York in late August.

Continue reading →

A fascinating legal article is Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, Verse 2: A Close Reading with Fourth Amendment Guidance for Cops and Perps by Caleb Mason, Saint Louis University School of Law.

The author does a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of this hit rap song “from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor.” It’s a valuable and unusual exercise in brushing up on your Fourth Amendment rights as it relates to vehicle stops.

….

Somewhat related…

How America and hip-hop failed each other

The nation surely failed its black male citizens by targeting and imprisoning them when joblessness and the crack epidemic left them with few real options. They were conveniently villainized, arrested and warehoused to help politicians, judges, prosecutors and police win the public trust.

But hip-hop also failed black America, and failed itself. It’s unavoidable that hip-hop and the war on drugs would become intertwined. But the music could have been a tool of resistance, informing on the drug war’s hypocrisies instead of acquiescing to them. Hip-hop didn’t have to become complicit in spreading the message of the criminalblackman, but the money it made from doing so was the drug it just couldn’t stop getting high on.

I’ve got a copy of “Marijuana Legalization: What everyone Needs to Know” by Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken, Beau Kilmer, and Mark A.R. Kleiman and hope to find time to read it soon (although I’m not looking forward to it).

I’m sure I’ll be talking about it here.

However, an excerpt has been printed at Huffington Post: Important Facts About Marijuana Legalization

If alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, what’s the logical justification for one being legal and the other illegal?

If we were making laws for a planet whose population had never experienced either marijuana or alcohol, and we had to choose one of the two drugs to make available, there would be a strong case for choosing marijuana, which has lower organic toxicity, lower addictive risk, and a much weaker link with accidents and violence.

But that’s not the planet we inhabit. Here on this planet, alcohol has been an ingrained part of many cultures since the Neolithic revolution (which may have been driven in part by the discovery that grain could be brewed into beer). People have used cannabis plant products for thousands of years, but its widespread use as an intoxicant in the United States is a phenomenon of the last hundred years. Even today only about one in sixteen American adults used marijuana at all in the course of a typical year; for alcohol, that figure is more than half.

History matters. Custom matters. Practicality matters. Even if there were public support for it, going back to Prohibition wouldn’t work—without a truly ferocious degree of law enforcement—precisely because centuries of tradition and decades of marketing have left alcohol use a deeply ingrained feature of most social systems outside the Islamic world.

The technical term for this is “path dependence.” If alcohol had just been invented and no one was yet using it, it would go straight into Schedule I: high potential for abuse, and no accepted medical value. And that ban might make sense. But once there is an established user base, prohibition becomes impractical. Marijuana is not, or at least not yet, equally entrenched.

Really? Path dependence? That’s what you’ve got?

This sounds like the justification for deciding to go with VHS over Beta.

Yes, I know – it certainly is annoying since you have collected all those Beta tapes, but that’s the way it goes… VHS wins. Sorry.

The difference being, of course, that they’re not arresting people for having Betamax.

So this is what you tell the 800,000 people arrested each year for marijuana? Sorry, alcohol got there first?

It does, of course, allow one to neatly sidestep the historical racism, culture wars, and a whole lot of other factors.

It’s not a logical justification at all, nor is it an explanation. It’s a nonsensical and frankly offensive armchair statement made by an academic with no clue regarding the real world.

Justify:
1. to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right
2. to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded

I don’t think so.

For those of you who spend a lot of time researching and discussing drug policy, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of mostly talking to others who are knowledgable on the subject. This gives a warped perception regarding the overall level of knowledge/acceptance in the population. It’s important every now and then to talk to ordinary folks whose knowledge level is pretty much that some drugs are illegal and that some people use them anyway.

It’s not that they’re stupid. Just that they’re paying more attention to gay rights, or gun rights, or the cost of insurance, or whether Seventeen Magazine is using Photoshop. And that’s fine — everyone’s got their own interests and it’s impossible to be competently informed about every issue.

But it’s hard to get to know drug policy well when it’s only consumed as a side dish — particularly all the sordid details regarding the self-interest of prohibitionists. For years, this has been a major challenge for us. If people only pick up a smattering of info, they’re more likely to believe the government line (“They say marijuana causes cancer, so it probably does. What reason would they have to lie about that?”) And if you try to explain to them that the government is lying, you suddenly see the glazed look that says they’re imagining a tinfoil hat on your head.

We’ve done a great job of increasing the overall level of skepticism in the minds of the public. That’s a huge step. But we still shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that they’re fully informed.

Most of my friends know I write about drug policy reform (I certainly haven’t been secretive about it), and some even read Drug WarRant on occasion.

I always find it amusing when one of them comes up to me and, in a somewhat conspiratorial whisper, indicates that they also support legalization, or that they’ve read something recently that talks about legalization.

You can tell that they think they’re being some kind of counterculture rebel espousing a risky viewpoint. And I’m thinking “Uh, no. You’re actually mainstream and don’t realize it.” This isn’t like saying you support NAMBLA. The legalization and regulation of illicit drugs is a position supported by most of the top thinkers in the world, including many former and current heads of state, an entire organization of former law enforcement officers and judges, and two Presidential candidates.

But I forget that they’ve been conditioned to think that supporting legalization is the same as supporting drugs and drugs are bad, M’kay?

So get out there and talk to some people who don’t know what you know. It’ll be good for you and them at the same time.

From: https://www.facebook.com/events/428094160568681/

MEDIA ALERT!
For Immediate Release:
July 11, 2012 11 AM

Thousands of Patients Threatened to Lose Safe Access
U.S. Attorney & DEA Threaten
Harborside Health Center Landlords
Property Forfeiture Filed in District Court of San Francisco
***
Invitation to Attend Press Conference
Oakland, California – Thursday July 12th at 9 AM – Oakland City Hall
With Appearances and Statements by Patients, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, State Board of Equalization & City Officials, Union Officials, Arturo Sanchez, LEAP Officers, Rebecca Kaplan and Other Statewide Officials

July 12, 2012 – Oakland, California – The federal attack on safe access for medical cannabis patients continues. Yesterday morning, taped to the front doors of the nation’s model medical cannabis dispensary, Harborside Health Center in Oakland and San Jose, was an official ‘Complaint for Forfeiture of Property.’ The complaint is signed by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arvan Perteet, and DEA Agent David White, filed on July 6, 2012, in the District Court San Francisco Division and received by the court on Sunday, July 9. The complaint seeks forfeiture of real estate and improvements on the grounds that cannabis is being distributed on the premises, in violation of federal law.

This latest federal action to seize property flies in the face of promises made by Haag to exclusively target dispensaries less than 1000 feet from a school, and recent statements from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who stated that only those dispensaries out of compliance with state law would be subject to Federal enforcement actions. Harborside Health Center is neither close to a school, nor out of compliance with state law. The location at 1840 Embarcadero is more than 1000 feet from the closest school, and Harborside is widely recognized as the most legally compliant dispensary in the state, and renowned nationwide.

“Harborside has nothing to hide or be ashamed of,” said Steve DeAngelo, Executive Director of Harborside Health Center. “We will contest the DOJ action openly and in public, and through all legal means at our disposal. We look forward to our day in court, and are confident that justice is on our side.”

Harborside Health Center employs over 100 people, and is Oakland’s second largest retail tax payer. Last year, HHC paid combined taxes in excess of $3 million, over a million dollars of which went directly to the City of Oakland. Should Harborside be forced to close:

Our 100,000 patients will return to the illegal marketplace
Street drug sales and law enforcement costs will both rise
Over $3,000,000 in tax revenue will be destroyed
Our more than 100 current employees will become jobless

“This is a policy that hurts not only those who depend on cannabis for medicine. It will destroy tax revenue, endanger patients, increase unemployment, and empower criminals. Whoever thinks this is a good idea must be smoking something a lot more powerful than cannabis,” said DeAngelo.

——–

Some nice takes on the prohibitionists who contributed to the U.S. News Debate Club:

Dr. Kevin Sabet’s Kinder Gentler Drug War by Russ Belville

Reading the supporting pieces from Dr. Kevin Sabet and David Brooks makes me wonder if we’re talking about the same Drug War that has killed 60,000 Mexicans, arrested 850,000 American pot smokers, and done nothing to combat actual drug problems. […]

When he advocates all these Kinder Gentler Drug War axioms like “treatment” and “prevention”, always bring it back to the personal, casual pot smoker. Does a person who smokes a joint once a year at Willie Nelson’s Texas Jam need a mandatory 12-month drug treatment program? Should the government send SWAT teams into people’s homes in the middle of the night to prevent them from smoking a joint? He’ll try to play the “we don’t actually do that to casual users” card, which you can either follow up with concrete examples of people this has happened to (easy enough to Google) or by asking “Why not? Are you conceding that some people can be marijuana users without being abusers? And if so, why does the law treat them like abusers?”

A Comically Dishonest Defense of the Drug War by Scott Morgan

My favorite part is Kevin Sabet’s attempt to make the drug war sound about as wholesome as a hug from a nun, which he accomplishes by pretending no one ever gets arrested for doing drugs.

Seriously, just take for example this one item from Sabet’s list of things he likes about the drug war:

Intervention: If individuals do start to use drugs, we know that brief interventions (by doctors, coaches, parents, faith leaders, or others) do a pretty good job at stopping the progression of use from non-dependence to addiction.

Others!? Really, Kevin? By “others” did you by any chance mean “cops with machine guns, battering rams, drug sniffing dogs, and flash bang grenades? Cause if you wanna talk about intervention…well that’s who’s been intervening. When the government hears you might have MARIJUANA in your basement, they don’t send a “faith leader” to talk to you about it.

Governor Christie Calls ‘War on Drugs’ a Failure

He says the right thing about the war being a failure, and it’s good to see yet another major figure (who isn’t a “legalizer”) say so. He doesn’t, however, have the right solution — mandatory treatment for all first-time offenders.

Singapore scraps mandatory death penalty for drug couriers

Singapore is to change its law so that convicted drug couriers no longer receive a mandatory death sentence.

The deputy prime minister, Teo Chee Hean, told parliament on Monday the government will seek to give judges the discretion to instead award life sentences to drug couriers if they co-operate with authorities or have a mental disability.

Wow! What a wellspring of enlightenment! They’re looking to move up in their status to merely grossly uncivilized.

Mike Riggs on 3 Accounting Tricks the Obama Administration Uses to Hide the Cost of the Drug War

Interesting piece on just some of the deception used.

At U.S. News and World Report, there’s a Debate Club segment on Is it Time to Scale Back the War on Drugs? – featuring Aaron Houston (Yes), Neill Franklin (Yes), Paul Armentano (Yes), Kevin Sabet (No), and David G. Evans (No).

So far, in the debate club voting, the “Yes” arguments are clearly winning (no surprise, there).

The Internet was abuzz today with talk about a radical notion put forward by machinist George Taylor about the man who ate a face.

“Maybe he was, well, insane,” offered Mr. Taylor, who works for a living making things and doesn’t even have a blog.

“That’s just crazy talk,” said Noura Ibrahim, science blogger and cadaver enthusiast.

George responded, “Well, I don’t know, but it seems to me that sometimes people are just wired wrong — completely nuts, and it isn’t bath salts or Twinkies or anything specific that makes them do something crazy, but just the fact that they’re… crazy.”

This led to heated calls from media leaders for Mr. Taylor to stop this unsupported speculation and leave it to those who do unsupported speculation for a living.

“The notion of people doing things because they’re crazy, or, for that matter, because it’s who they are or what they want to do, is absolutely abhorrent,” said celebrity media spokesperson Grandy Nance. “If we don’t have “triggers” — things to demonize for every bad event that happens — then what do we talk about? It could mean the end of news reporting as we know it!”

“Science” blogger Noura Ibrahim (who is participating in cadaver dissection at Victor Valley College) brings us some first-class stupidity with Was Miami Face-Chewing Attack Caused by Cannabis-Induced Psychosis? at Huffington Post.

Of course, the question in the title of her piece is a likely giveaway that it’s completely unsupported sensationalism aimed at getting attention rather than actually sharing any real, you know, information. And, in fact, that’s all that’s there.

You can put just about anything in an article when you make it a question.

“Is Noura Ibrahim a flesh-eating zombie who is trying to divert attention from her species?” More research is needed for us to know for sure, but she is spending an awful lot of time with dead people…