Drug WarRant

Some people have wondered at why I’m using up political capital in the “losing” issue of countering the government’s drugged driving campaign. “You’re never going to be able to convince the public that stoned driving is safe, so you should drop it.”

Even though I’m not trying to convince the public that stoned driving is safe — merely not the level of danger being touted by the feds in context — I understand the argument (people often don’t deal well with nuance). However…

Here’s one reason why I never will drop it.

An Aurora woman who was reaching for her sunglasses when she set off a chain reaction crash that killed a St. Charles couple riding a motorcycle pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated DUI.

Alia Bernard, 27, admitted having marijuana in her system on May 29, 2009, when she rear-ended a stopped car on Illinois Route 47 in Kane County between Sugar Grove and Elburn.

The car Bernard struck hit another car waiting to make a left turn as a line of motorcyclists came by in the oncoming lane. The force of the collision pushed the lead car into the path of motorcyclists Wade and Denise Thomas, of St. Charles, who struck the car and were killed, authorities said.

Although tests showed Bernard had marijuana in her system, she hadn’t used the drug in the three or four days before the crash and wasn’t impaired, said her lawyer, Bruce Brandwein.

“It was sunny and the sun was bouncing off the chrome of the motorcycles and she went to get her sunglasses and when she looked up, there was a car stopped in the road,” he said.

Illinois has a per se law for marijuana and driving (what the Drug Czar is pushing for the entire country). This means that any amount in the blood counts as driving impaired for enhanced sentencing.

She could get as much as 28 years.

Now this was a tragedy. It was also an accident. If you want to charge people with an aggravated felony for reaching for sunglasses without being properly stopped, then do so, but don’t charge someone for something they did days before and pretend that you care about highway safety.

Nobody would add a charge in a fatal accident because the driver had been seen drinking in a bar two days before.

This isn’t at all about highway safety or reducing traffic deaths.

This law is about not liking the kind of people who use marijuana, and finding another way to punish them for being that kind of people. Period.

It’s an ugly law and an affront to justice. It’s also based on unscientific demagoguery by the Drug Czar and his minions like Kevin Sabet.

Federal Interference In State Medical Marijuana Laws Is A Low Priority, Attorney General Affirms

Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated his absolute, one-hundred-percent, firm commitment to the administration’s vague support of law-abiding medical marijuana operations in states with medical marijuana laws, firmly promising not to assign any specific priority to medical marijuana arrests, thereby showing the compassionate approach of an administration which isn’t interested in getting sidetracked by minor details of any actual raids that may or may not be occurring.

Cannabis seeds in foods may interfere with drug tests

Interesting article to read in that Australia is just now grappling with the notion of allowing hemp foods (something that has been allowed in the United States in terms of selling and consumption, despite DEA efforts).

Reading the concerns and seeing how silly they are brings home the similar silliness of issues here and the over-reaction by authorities to them.

I love this line:

The federal Health Department is already fighting the plan, on the grounds it could “promote a public perception that cannabis is an acceptable and safe product to consume”.

Yes, it could promote that, because it’s absolutely true! And extremely nutritious and tasty as well.

I wonder if the federal Health Department fought the plan to legalize broccoli on the grounds it could promote a public perception that broccoli is an acceptable and safe product to consume.

Jesus Saves: The Fight to Legalize Marijuana Has an Unlikely New Ally: African American Clergy

One night last week, at a forum in Columbia City to discuss the war on drugs and its impacts on communities of color, something unprecedented happened—an African American pastor spoke about the perniciousness of prohibition and his support for Initiative 502, which would regulate and tax marijuana in Washington State.

“I’m not promoting marijuana use—no, no,” said Pastor Carl Livingston of the Kingdom Christian Center. “Scripture says the body is a temple… but we need to do more to relax the drug laws that get our people caught up in the net.” The crowd, almost exclusively African American, applauded enthusiastically. […]

A few days after the forum, Neill Franklin—a former Baltimore police commander who is now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)—told me he was pleasantly surprised to hear from Dr. Livingston. “One year ago, ministers were not where they are today on this issue,” Franklin says. “Especially not ministers of the black church.” […]

Dr. Livingston says he’s talking to other pastors about drug prohibition from a scriptural basis, and cites Amos 5:24. “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream,” he says. “And when you look at the context, you see powerful people using the laws in ways that help powerful people and hurt less-powerful people.”

Preach on.

In the Guardian:

This is an open thread.

Grits for Breakfast brings us a fascinating piece in the Houston Chronicle which pits the police unions against Harris County DA Pat Lykos over a recent policy change reducing the charge for crack pipe residue.

Grits notes that the climate has shifted enough away from uncritical all-out drug war that the police unions are getting push-back from judges, DAs and the public in their choice to attack this policy.

Crack policy puts Harris DA at odds with police”

A man is stopped by a Houston police officer for riding his bicycle in the middle of the night without a headlight. He is patted down, and the officer finds a grungy glass pipe with the sooty residue of crack cocaine. The bicyclist does not have any other drugs and is not implicated in any other crimes.

Before Jan. 1, 2010, the tiny amount of crack in the pipe, comparable to a half grain of rice, meant the officer could charge the man with felony drug possession and lock him up.

After that day, the officer could only give him a misdemeanor ticket for drug paraphernalia and send him on his way – an administrative change at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office that infuriates Houston police.

The policy change, of course, makes a whole lot of sense – why waste a whole lot of court resources on such a low-level offense? The fact that the police are infuriated also, unfortunately is not a surprise. The absurdity of the police union position got even more blatant:

“These residue cases are instrumental in putting people behind bars – people who commit burglary of a motor vehicle, burglary of a habitation, aggravated robberies, strong arm robberies and they steal your cars,” said Eric Batton, vice president of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization. “These individuals do that to subsidize their drug addiction, so why wouldn’t you put them behind bars with trace cases?”

Wow.

Um, let’s see if I can explain this. You’re the police. If someone steals a car, you arrest them and charge them with stealing a car. That may require some investigative work. You don’t just stick everybody that uses crack in jail for a few days and hope that stops car theft.

“The police aren’t really interested in arresting these people because they are in possession of residue, they’re interested in arresting them to achieve a different purpose,” said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law. “But the DA has an obligation to prosecute crime, not people. You don’t target people, you target crime.” He said the argument by police is understandable, but it disregards the presumption of innocence.

“It’s problematic to endorse a concept that is, effectively, preventive arrest,” Corn said.

It’s the same idea behind police unions wanting to keep marijuana illegal. In addition to how lucrative it is for them, of course, it gives police an excuse to search people and arrest people they don’t like or that they think are probably criminals, using the law to target people, rather than solving crime.

I get an email:

Subject: I’m writing an essay on marijuana.

Text: I need you background to say your not a nut. Please reply. Thank you.

Probably not the best approach, Phillip, when asking a professional for information, but fortunately, I’m a laid-back kind of guy and don’t mind the potential “nut” reference.

However, I’m also a teacher, and I’m afraid I can’t let your spelling and grammar go uncorrected. I’m hoping you’ll do much better in your paper about marijuana. We’ve developed a bit of a reputation in recent years of being the smart ones out there, and if you go and spoil it for the rest of us by looking like you were too stoned to pay attention in English class, then us nuts are going to be quite unhappy and come after you.

“I need you background…”

OK. “I need you” is what you tell your girlfriend (I need you, Suzie), not what you tell a background. I’m going to assume you mean that you need my background. In that case you should say “I need your background.” “Your” is the possessive form of the pronoun “you” (“my blog,” “your paper”).

“… to say your not a nut.”

Remember our previous lesson? “Your” is the possessive form of “you.” This seems to imply that I possess a “not,” but I don’t think that’s what you had in mind. You probably mean “… to say you are not a nut” and then intended on shortening the “you are.” You can do that. But when you shorten “you are” it ends up as “you’re” (with the apostrophe taking the place of the missing space and “a”).

Thus the entire sentence should read:

“I need your background to say you’re not a nut.”

It’s a bit spare and could use some amplification (such as “I would like to get some details of your background to add as bibliography when I cite your writing, so I can show you are a qualified resource and not just a nut.”). However, that’s not really essential, and your revised statement (perhaps with the addition of “in order to”) would do a better job of passing minimal grammatical scrutiny.

“Please reply. Thank you.”

Again, a bit brusque, but at least it had the very nice “Thank you.” (which is why I’m providing what you ask).

At the top of every page of DrugWarRant.com, near the left, you’ll see links for “Home,” “About,” and “Articles”. If you click on the “About” link, you’ll find out things about the site and about me. If you’re ambitious enough to continue to follow links from there, you’ll also get to my regular work resume.

Good luck with the paper.

When I first read this story about the DEA laundering drug cartel money, I thought, “Of course. That’s what they do, so why is this a story?”

Then I remembered that the DEA is supposed to be on the other side from the cartels, so it is a scandalous story.

Then I tried to answer “The other side of what?” but couldn’t come up with a good answer to that one.

Let’s see… one runs drugs, guns and money and profits from the drug war, while the other one… nope, no real distinction there.

I’m at a loss.

I’ll just have to keep thinking of the DEA as another rival cartel and realize that the other side is we the people. And one day we the people will win the drug war with the stroke of a pen, undercutting the support for the DEA and other cartels.

Why is the west funding Iran’s deadly war on drugs? by Fazel Hawramy in the Guardian

Representatives of more that 50 countries will meet in Vienna shortly to determine the level of international support that Iran receives for its continuing war on drugs.

This comes amid concern about the increasing number of executions for drug-related offences in Iran. Six more people were recently hanged in the city of Kermanshah – executions that a senior figure in the judiciary described as “one of the triumphs of Iran”.

As part of the counter-narcotics programme, Iran receives a constant flow of technical support from the UK, the US and other western governments, either directly or through the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The UNODC’s Yuri Fedetov has consistently praised Iran’s drug war efforts, yet has said nothing about its human rights abuses, despite the fact that all other UN programs are supposed to be subservient to the Human Rights charter.

If the west is serious about supporting reform in Iran, it must rethink whether it’s right for taxpayers to continue funding a programme that leads to the execution of hundreds of people every year.

The message that we’ve consistently given to the entire world is that if you violate human rights in the war on drugs, we not only won’t call you on it, we’ll support you with money.