Drug WarRant

From Ethan Baron in the Winnipeg Free Press, this is certainly a … graphic way of getting the point across.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.

It really points out the legislators like to pass laws with no sense of proportionality of sentencing or proper reasoning. It’s just a constant stream of “let’s get tough” as they pull new sentencing structures out of thin air (or someplace worse).

The problem with this OpEd is that it’s likely to have little impact on those passing the laws. They’ll just decide they need to increase the sentencing for child rape.

As a follow-up to the story of the New York Police Commissioner asking cops to obey the law, the New York Times has a powerful editorial: Trouble With Marijuana Arrests

Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department came forth with too little, too late when he issued a memo directing officers not to arrest people caught with small amounts of marijuana unless the drug is in plain public view. A 1977 law decriminalized minor possession, yet tens of thousands are arrested every year. […]

While the memo, reported by WNYC last week, is an important step, it does not by itself end the problem. The United States Justice Department and New York lawmakers should investigate the legality of practices that led to the arrests of hundreds of thousands of people since the mid-1990s. […]

This policing practice has damaged young lives and deserves deeper scrutiny by federal and state monitors.

I saw a production of The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman last night. It’s an important piece of theatre, but it has always been a supremely unenjoyable experience for me seeing it performed. I just end up getting pissed off at the close-minded moralists who end up destroying the lives of good people, and the sheep who go along with them allowing it to happen. The same is true for me with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible – an extraordinary play and I hate watching it.

Unfortunately, while those two plays are fictional, the characters in The Children’s Hour and The Crucible are real, and live today, manifesting themselves in people like Rick Santorum.

[in reference to states’ rights issues of gay marriage and marijuana legalization, his spokesman writes] “Senator Santorum is certainly an advocate for states’ rights, but he believes as Abraham Lincoln – that states do not have the right to legalize moral wrongs.”

And thus the destruction of peoples’ lives through denying marriage and jailing plant users becomes a moral imperative akin (in their small minds) to freeing the slaves.

Yes, it’s one more play that I find extremely unenjoyable to watch, but this one isn’t in the theatre.

Of course, to us, the war on drugs is far from an ignored war — we’re dealing with it every day.

And yet, José Fernandez López in the Huffington Post points out that it is ignored in some of the most important places.

In one of his widely read columns, journalist Andrés Oppenheimer complained last week that President Barack Obama, in his speech to the United Nations, didn’t mention Mexico at any time and the impact that the war on drugs is generating in the country. “President Obama talked at length about Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Cote D’Ivori — about almost every major conflict, except the one right next to the United States,” wrote Oppenheimer. […]

Oppenheimer stressed that the war on drugs “is a bloody conflict that, in addition to leaving a huge death toll, is becoming the biggest obstacle to economic growth in the region by draining government resources away from education and health, scaring away investments, and killing tourism.” Nothing is truer than this. But in my opinion, this is not the only reason why it is inexcusable that the American presidents — the current and the previous — take the ostrich position and decide to ignore the problem on stages as big and important as the United Nations meetings.

And it’s not just on the international stage that this war is ignored.

Check out President Obama’s remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner on Saturday.

He talked about the “hard-hit black community” and addresssed unemployment, and poverty, and education, and housing, and health care, but not a word about the drug war. He talked about marching against injustice even when they’re turning the hoses on you and in the face o troopers and teargas, but never mentioned the troops that occupy those communities today.

Yes, in the halls of power, it’s often The Ignored War. Because they don’t like our answer, and they don’t have one of their own.

For those who haven’t heard, there was some pretty huge news on Friday in New York:

Police Commissioner Calls on NYPD to Stop Improper Marijuana Arrests

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued an internal order to the New York City Police Department commanding officers to stop arresting people for small amounts of marijuana possession, if the marijuana was never in public view. The directive comes at a time when the NYPD is taking increasing heat about alleged improper marijuana arrests.

Kelly’s Operations Order landed on the desk of police supervisors this week, and a copy of it was provided to WNYC.

The order says:

Questions have been raised about the processing of certain marihuana arrests. At issue is whether the circumstances under which uniformed members of the service recover small amounts of marihuana (less than 25 grams) from subjects in a public place support the charge of Criminal Possession of Marihuana in the Fifth Degree[…]

The specific circumstances in question include occasions when the officers recover marihuana pursuant to a search of the subject’s person or upon direction of the subject to surrender the contents of his/her pockets or other closed container. A crime will not be charged to an individual who is requested or compelled to engage in the behavior that results in the public display of marihuana.

Given how many arrests there have been in New York, and how much it appears that this stop-and-frisk technique has been used on a regular basis to trick subjects into becoming “arrest-able,” this is a huge victory.

And it’s happening because of the work that so many reformers have done in terms of bringing these outrageous practices to light.

And yet…

It’s a bittersweet victory.

It seems oddly pathetic to get excited about a police commissioner suggesting to the police that they obey the law and stop violating the rights of individuals.

The laws on the books are ones we want to eliminate and yet we’re having to work to get the police to only enforce those laws and not create new ones themselves.

And yes, we should be happy about what has been accomplished and the number of people who may now benefit (although it doesn’t help all those who have been arrested in the past, nor does it stop an officer from doing it anyway and claiming they didn’t).

So, I’m very excited about this victory…

but still…

Terror and Drugs! Good and Evil! Eternal War!

Yes, it’s Paul Chabot. Back in April, I mentioned the upcoming release of this former drug czar advisor’s book “Eternal Battle Against Evil”

Now it’s out. And just in case you’re not frightened enough to buy this book and join the fight against evil, check out this video promo.

http://youtu.be/T2UqG8hi5Ps

The cover now proclaims “Caution: Details may be disturbing to some readers.” The book is available at Amazon.com, where the reviews are currenly 100% 5-star raves – all from people who have not ever reviewed anything else, and have not bought the book on Amazon (I’m not suggesting anyone do that in reverse – I’m not a fan of using reviews to make a point – but you can always down-vote reviews that are nothing more than sycophantic promotion.)

I’m pretty sure I wrote them back in April with this offer, but it still stands… if they send me a review copy, I’ll be happy to review it here on Drug WarRant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK7hZ9CxCfU

Absolutely brilliant. Lampoons so many cultural phenomena with a bizarrely off-beat humor. I think I’ve just become a Fiber One fan.

Check out the entire over-the-top page of this viral marketing campaign: Cheech and Chong’s Magic Brownie Adventure

… but now he’s getting Arne Duncan, the Secretary of the Department of Education, to do it as well.

Deputy Director David K. Mineta announced at the ONDCP “blog” that Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and Secretary Duncan were reaching out to college and university leaders to prevent “illegal drug use” and “high risk drinking.”

Notice that the request is not about “high risk drug and alcohol use.” That would certainly be an appropriate goal. No, it’s really about high risk alcohol use and any marijuana use.

Why? Certainly yes, the government would want universities to not allow illegal drug use. But to specifically target, beyond it’s illegality, extra efforts to stop use in one area and abuse in another?

The answer is in Mineta’s post. The 2011 National Drug Control Strategy includes a goal of “reducing illegal drug use by ten percent within five years.” Not drug abuse. Not problem drug use. Simply drug use. And the only way to get that kind of numbers it to try to go after the non-problematic casual recreational use by young people, particularly if you can get college administrators to help you with enforcement.

So this effort is not a high-minded effort to help college students with real problems, but rather to a large extent a self-serving method of playing with numbers.

So let’s take a look at the letter sent out today by Gil Kerlikowske and Arne Duncan.

A lot of re-stating the key terms…

Illegal drug use and high-risk (binge, heavy, and underage) drinking affect every aspect of society vital to winning the future, including educating our youth and developing a competitive workforce for the new economy. […]

Together with our interagency partners, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Education are working collaboratively to prevent illegal drug use and high-risk drinking in our Nation’s college and university communities.

Then there was some discussion of academic consequences of drinking, followed by this note regarding marijuana:

Additionally, a study found that college students who used marijuana were more likely to put themselves in physical danger when under the influence, experience concentration problems, and miss class.(3)

That interested me, because I hadn’t heard this one before – that college students who got high on marijuana would put themselves in physical danger. What did that mean? It made sense for alcohol use, but marijuana?

So I went through my university library and found the referenced study: (3) Sullivan, M., & Risler, E. (2002). Understanding college alcohol abuse and academic performance: Selecting appropriate intervention strategies. Journal of College Counseling, 5 (2), 114-124.

Not a single mention of marijuana in the entire study. Nothing about stoned students in physical danger or missing classes. The whole thing was about alcohol.

Now, if a student of mine turns in a paper with a falsified citation, it’s not going to help their grade very much.

So how will university presidents grade the Drug Czar and the Secretary of Education for doing it?

…..

Update: Interestingly, there’s a petition at the White House dealing with Drug Czar lies…

Eliminate or Reform Departments whose Officers are Required by Law to Lie to the American People.

In a time of astronomical deficits, departments that are required by law to LIE to the American public should be reformed or eliminated.

The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), aka “The Drug Czar,” is one such position. […]

Some commenters have been less than thrilled with my admiration for Calderon’s use of the term “market alternatives” as a code for legalization. Sure, in an ideal world, nobody would speak in code, and everybody would understand the full meaning of the word “legalization” and not just its political coloring. And in an ideal world there would be no drug war.

Certainly, I’m no fan of Calderon, and he’s been no friend to drug policy reform. His escalation of the violent war on drugs in Mexico has resulted in thousands of deaths and ensured that the problems that exist will be much harder to solve in the future.

Lots of former heads of state have come out in favor of legalization or some form of decriminalization. Almost none have done it while in office. Yet three times in the last week, President Calderon has suggested that the drug consuming world, if it’s going to keep consuming, needs to look at market alternatives.

There’s no doubt that “market alternatives” in this sense means legalization. When you’re talking about finding an alternative to the black market while not eliminating demand, by definition that is legalization.

I’ve been getting quite a kick out of a number of the mainstream media folks trying to deal with Calderon’s statement without their heads exploding. Some have reported his statement, along with the fact that he failed to actually define “market alternatives,” and then indicating that some analysts have said Calderon may be referring to legalization. At that point in the article you can practically see the hamster running in circles in the reporter’s head as they try to come up with some other possible meaning for “market alternatives” to balance the statement… and realize that there is none.

At this point, I believe that the term “market alternatives” has the capability of forcing an epiphany among some people. I know there are a lot of people out there who have rather lazily just gotten in their head that the entire meaning of “legalization” is something akin to “allowing potheads to smoke dope.” They just haven’t spent as much time thinking about it as we have. These are the same people who don’t realize that regulated legality isn’t an oxymoron.

Calderon’s statement makes them actually come to grips with other, importantly relevant definitions.

The more that these discussions occur, the better. Here’s a nice understanding of the term from Jesse Kline at the National Post

Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.

The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.

Exactly. Market alternatives.

Personally, I’m fighting for legalization. However, I’m happy to talk with people about market alternatives to our current disastrous market policies.

I loved this one:

I’m impressed by your writing. Are you a professional or just very konwledegable?

Thanks for asking, Jenelle. I find konwledeg to be very important, and the research I do helps me to konw lots of things that I can share with you.

…

A question for the tech-savvy… This spam comment, as have many recently, merely had their URL listed as http://www.bing.com. What value do spammers get out of that? I’ve seen the same thing with Google urls. I’m pretty good at catching the ones that slip past the Akismet filter (we get about 2,000 spams a day here), but I really don’t understand this one.

I also get a lot of requests from people who want to pay me for text links, but I know that scam and never accept their money. That’s a clear effort to drive up google rankings. But what do commenters gain from linking to Bing or Google?

Oh, and regarding konwledegable… I’d like to believe that it’s someone who really messed up that word that bad, but the truth is that it’s probably part of an automatic function that sends out millions of spam comments and slightly misspells one of the words in multiple ways to escape notice from spam filters.