Drug WarRant

It’s the 5th of November — the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Treason and Plot day. That particular story has very little personal interest to me except as an historical oddity.

On the other hand, the date came alive again to me recently as I re-watched the really outstanding movie V for Vendetta

The film focuses on V, a shadowy hero/freedom fighter/terrorist, who uses the memory of Guy Fawkes Day as one of the tools to foment a revolution against a totalitarian government.

When a government, or aspect of government, moves toward totalitarianism, seeing no limits to its authority nor any reason to defer to science or facts, and when that government attempts to control the population through misinformation, it is the responsibility of the population to revolt.

The first step is waking them up.

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

Unlike with Guy Fawkes, waking up the population doesn’t mean you need to blow up parliament. I’m a firm believer in finding non-violent means of provoking change. It can seem to take longer, but it also may, in fact, be the only way to actually accomplish the task.

Once the population wakes, a totalitarian-shaped government function may ironically actually help the revolution succeed.

What I found particularly interesting in “V for Vendetta” were the actions of the totalitarian leader Adam Sutler, portrayed compellingly by John Hurt. Once threatened by the awakening of the masses, Sutler reacted (step by step precisely as predicted by V), cracking down more forcefully, leading to incidents that further angered the population, until his demise ultimately came as a byproduct of his own tyranny.

In a way, a similar kind of effect is seen today with the DEA crackdowns on medical marijuana and other similar actions. And it is, perhaps, inevitable. Oddly, once the public objects to totalitarianism, often the only way totalitarians know how to respond is to crank it up even more out of fear of losing power.

When it comes to the drug war, we’ve seen the public begin to wake (slowly, but inexorably). This has caused the drug warriors to double down in an attempt to maintain their power. This leads to incidents and outrages that we can use to help grab the attention of more people who may have only peripherally cared about drug policy. And so on.

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times, mostly notable for the fact that I have rarely seen, in a mainstream publication, the mention of marijuana as a connoisseur item (at least, other than in Oakland).

“It’s like a fine glass of wine where you twirl it, swish it in your mouth. You savor it,” Kate said. “Some kinds are evergreen-smelling. Some are orangey, sticky. We like to try different strains and compare.”

At the international reform conference yesterday, Gary Johnson talked about removing marijuana from Schedule 1 and pardoning non-violent marijuana offenders.
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Wrong.

Meet Real ID, as described by the ACLU in The Slow, Quiet Death of Real ID

The Real ID Act of 2005 is a federal law, and, as a federal law, supersedes state law.

If fully implemented, the law would facilitate tracking of data on individuals and bring government into the very center of every citizen’s life. As happened with Social Security numbers decades ago, use of such ID cards would then quickly spread and be used for other purposes — from work to voting to gun ownership. Other groups opposed Real ID because of its high cost (more than $23 billion by initial government estimates), cumbersome bureaucracy and impact on religious minorities.

Because of all these problems instead of compliance, Real ID faced widespread opposition. States rebelled. They had already taken steps to strengthen licenses after 9/11 and Real ID would undo that in favor of an expensive one-size-fits-all federal solution. So instead 25 states, either through a statute or legislative resolution, rejected Real ID. In fact, in 15 states it is actually illegal for state officials to comply with the federal law.

Wait. States actually passed legislation saying not to follow federal law? Yes.

So the feds cracked down, right?

No. It would be too unpopular and expensive to do so.

So instead DHS has chosen to postpone implementation over and over again. The final implementation date has been moved from May 2008 to December 31, 2009, then May 11, 2011 and is now January 2013. DHS itself acknowledges the moribund state of the law. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has said as much and the department also has only four full time employees working on Real ID

Naturally, it’s harder to derail something as entrenched as federal drug policy, but it does go to show that the will of the people and the states still have power even against a powerful federal government that unreasonably wishes to push a misguided legislative agenda.

Link

KMPH News has learned that the state sent out notices to 1,200 drug agents, dozens of them in the Central Valley: get ready to get out.

Reality sinking in?

Senior Special Agent Ben Buford says the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement is losing 20 out of 23 local drug agents. Statewide, 180 received warning notices. […]

“The worst case scenario is actually happening…I’m angry…it makes no sense…it was surgical in nature. Why? I can’t answer that question,” he said.

Well maybe with the rest of the economy in the crapper, there isn’t an unlimited amount of money to spend on a war that doesn’t do anything but make things worse.

Faced with a $71 million cut to the Department of Justice, [Attorney General Kamala] Harris said she wasn’t able to restore funding to drug and gang task forces.

This might actually require them to… prioritize.

I’ve been doing a bit of tweeting this week as part of our Drug Facts Week response. It’s been quite wonderful, with dozens of people out there re-tweeting, reaching hundreds, if not thousands.

All the tweets are linked to the #drugfacts2011 hashtag so that all who are following NIDA’s drug facts week tweets are seeing ours as well.

There’s even a few who were there to support NIDA’s efforts who are retweeting some of ours, which is pretty cool. (Note: If you’re not used to twitter and find all this talk of tweeting a little odd, it’s still pretty new to me, and I do as well.)

Here are my tweets so far:

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Prince George’s County (yes, that one).

Students learn irony by wearing hats to science class Oct. 26 during Hats Off to Being Drug-Free Day

Students at Concord Elementary School in District Heights created a human chain and released balloons Wednesday afternoon as part of a Red Ribbon Week celebration. […]

At Concord Elementary, the balloon release was “a way of cementing [students’] pledge to stay drug-free,” said Principal Carolyn Y. George-Remy. […]

Everyone from kindergarteners to eighth-grade students at Beltsville Academy donned hats, college T-shirts, and goofy socks with loud prints last week in response to themes such as “hats off to being drug-free” or “sock it to drugs.”

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Columbus, Georgia

Students “too cool” for cocaine and other addictive drugs wore sunglasses to school Wednesday to “shade out” narcotics. […]

Fifth-graders at Fox Elementary School competed in a contest this week in which they wrote a rap song about being drug free

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Students Form Giant Red Ribbon

Tuesday: “Sock it to Drugs” day when students wore “wacky socks.”

Wednesday: “Living Drug Free is no Sweat” day when they wore sweat pants.

Thursday: “Team Up Against Drugs” day when the kids were encouraged to wear gear from their favorite high school, college or pro sports team.

Hair’s to a Drug-Free Life

Cleburne Firefighters Robert Willingham, Scott Lail and Eric Halvorson chose to join in with Gerard students for Thursday’s “Hair’s to a Drug-Free Life” Red Ribbon Week event, in creating crazy hairstyles to match those of the students.

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Harlan, Iowa

Monday – “Be all you can be-Be Drug Free” Camouflage Day

Tuesday – “Say Peace OUT to Drugs” Tie Dye/Hippie Day

Wednesday – “Having good character is Jean’ius” Wear Jeans and your favorite Character Color

Thursday — Make good choices and your dreams will come true” Pajama day

If you’re in L.A., Thursday has some great stuff in store…

1) California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and California NAACP director Alice Huffman will headline the opening plenary session at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference on Thursday, November 3 at 9:30 a.m.

2) NO MORE DRUG WAR: A Rally & Concert to End the War on Drugs at MacArthur Park on Thursday, November 3 at 6 p.m.

Sometimes I find myself speechless at the bizarre lengths some can go in the stupidity that they attempt to disseminate.

The latest is from some site called Full Disclosure, which has a press release and video story called “The Dark Side of Legalizing Marijuana”

What caught my attention is this reference in their blurb to Los Angeles Sherriff’s Sgt. Richard Valdemar:

Valdemar predicts that eventual legalization of marijuana will corrupt California worse than what happened in Chicago in the days of Al Capone and prohibition.

What?

My head hurts.

So… he’s saying that ending marijuana prohibition will be like the problems of having alcohol prohibition? Surely, they must have gotten that wrong.

Well, they did. Kind of.

It appears that Sgt. Voldemort Valdemar is actually saying that legalizing marijuana will be like the rise of Al Capone after the repeal of alcohol prohibition.

Valdemar in the video, actually claims that ending alcohol prohibition didn’t hurt Capone at all, and that ending marijuana prohibition will just mean a bigger industry for the cartels to control.

Now the lady doing the interview is such a ditz that I wouldn’t be surprised that she’d believe such nonsense. But anyone with brain cells?