Drug WarRant

The tortured analogy is a device used by the ignorant (or those preaching to the ignorant) usually in an attempt to make something sound bad by fabricating a non-existent comparability to something horrific.

Example:

“Serving on that committee is like watching the extermination of the Jews in concentration camps.”

No, it’s not.

In political terms, the tortured analogy is often used because the ignorant (or the one preaching to the ignorant) would rather not addresss the actual facts of the issue and so tries to make the issue itself seem ridiculous to short-circuit real discussion.

We see this in drug policy a lot.

“If you want to legalize drugs, why don’t you just go ahead and legalize rape while you’re at it?”

It’s a classic tortured analogy misdirection. Of course, my favorite response to that is a rather facetious “If you don’t know the difference between drugs and rape, you’re not going to get invited to the good parties.”

All of us know why that’s a tortured analogy. It’s an attempt to avoid any real discussion of the issues. Drug transactions are consensual, rape is not. Drugs are demand commodities; rape is not. If you arrest a drug dealer, it creates an immediate job opening caused by demand, so the net effect of the arrest is an increase in drug dealers, whereas if you arrest a rapist, you get the rapist off the street, and it doesn’t result in a demand for new rapists. The illegality of drugs makes them so valuable that corruption in law enforcement and other areas inevitably ensues; the illegality of rape doesn’t make rape valuable.

These things are completely incomparable.

So here, my friends, for your amusement, is the Tortured Analogy of the Day!

This comes from the Katz Litterbox at the Pacovilla Corrections blog. Howie Katz is a former law enforcement officer and retired professor of criminal justice.

Law Enforcement For Pedophilia

A prominent group of former law enforcement officials announced the formation of Law Enforcement for Pedophilia (LEP), an organization whose goal is to repeal the laws against pedophilia.

“I was a police officer for 34 years, the last six as chief of police in Grossville,” retired law enforcement veteran Norm Stoner told the press conference held to announce the formation of LEP. “At one point in my career, I had an epiphany. I came to the appreciation that police officers could be doing better things with their time and that we were causing more harm than good by arresting pedophiles. My position is that we need to end the prohibition against pedophilia. We need to replace our Victorian laws by following the lead of Thailand and other enlightened countries that allow sexual relations between adults and children.”

The formation of LEP is ridiculous, isn’t it? Well, it’s not much more ridiculous than Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a tiny group of former law enforcement officials urging an end to the war on drugs and advocating the decriminalization of recreational drug use.

Actually, to compose Norm Stoner’s absurd LEP statement, I paraphrased a statement about the war on drugs made by LEAP member Norm Stamper, former police chief of Seattle.

Congratulations, Howie! You have the ability to paraphrase.

Taking a criminal justice class from you must have been like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

I think I’ll sit back with a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and let my readers take your silliness apart.

If you don’t already follow/support Americans for Forfeiture Reform, you should. Our asset forfeiture systems in this country are a total disgrace, full of corruption, and essentially a “legalized” system of highway robbery, allowing government entities to take cash and property and use it themselves, often with no evidence of criminal activity.

Grasping at Straws gives an update on the Camp Zoe situation…

The federal government has finally brought charges against Jimmy Tebeau, the musician who owns Camp Zoe, which the government is currently attempting to take through civil forfeiture. The case looks like thin gruel. Saint Louis’ River Front Times reports:

The 44-year-old Cape Girardeau resident faces a single felony count of “operating premises for the facilitation of illegal drug use,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

On its face, that appears to be a highly unusual charge for a land owner/music promoter. It neither alleges that Tebeau himself sold illegal drugs nor used them personally — and appears to discount the festivals’ music and entertainment value almost entirely. […]

That is completely absurd. Tebeau is a musician who bought that land to use as his primary venue. He played scores of shows at Camp Zoe and hosted dozens more with musical acts ranging from George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic to Los Lobos, the Roots, and the Marshall Tucker Band. During the summer it was one of the larger venues for live music in the state of Missouri. Like any music venue with thousands of attendees, drug use occurred there, but to say that Tebeau held all these events purely to allow drugs use to take place is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and considering that the U.S. attorney is not charging Tebeau with the possession or sale of any drugs, I doubt the government has it.

Instead, I think the government may be using this charge to force Tebeau to acquiesce in the fight to keep Camp Zoe.

Fortunately, in many areas, people are starting to wake up to the atrocities of forfeiture abuse, particularly when corruption in the spending of the proceeds comes to light. But we need even more attention in this area.

Gilbert Police Storm Home, Seize Two Ounces of Marijuana From Card-Holding Medical Pot Patient. Really.

Twenty Gilbert police officers, some in masks and riot gear, stormed a home last week after receiving a tip that the owner was in possession of an ounce of marijuana.

The homeowner, Ross Taylor, is a card-carrying patient under Arizona’s new medical-marijuana law, which allows people to qualify to possess up to 2 1/2 ounces of pot legally.

A satellite TV installer saw the cannabis in a closet and informed the police. Within hours, without investigation, the police put together a military-style home invasion for an ounce of pot.

Why is it that some police are so pathetically eager to save the world from a couple ounces of marijuana that they’re willing to completely ignore the law to do so?

More on the story here.

Indian Court overturns mandatory death penalty for drug offences

16 June 2011, Mumbai: In an unprecedented decision, the Bombay High Court struck down the mandatory death penalty for drug offences, becoming the first Court in the world to do so. Announcing the order via video conferencing, a division bench of Justices A.M Khanwilkar and A.P Bhangale declared Section 31A of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) that imposes a mandatory death sentence for a subsequent conviction for drug trafficking ‘unconstitutional’. […]

The High Court’s verdict came in response to a petition filed by the Indian Harm Reduction Network (IHRN), a consortium of NGOs working for humane drug policies, who assailed mandatory capital punishment as arbitrary, excessive and disproportionate to the crime of dealing in drugs. […]

Across the world, 32 countries impose capital punishment for offences involving narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. Of these, 13 countries (including India until today) prescribe mandatory death sentences for drug crimes.

I just finished spending a year organizing events related to the 40th Anniversary of an organization that’s important to me. The fact that it was the 40th was really a random milestone, but it was an excuse to celebrate, to remember, to connect with people, and to bring attention to the wonderful work that is being done today.

In a similar manner, the events revolving around today’s “40th Anniversary” of the war on drugs have very little to do with the significance of 40 years. After all, it’s really the 40th anniversary of one speech in the war on drugs. The drug war can’t really be contained in one set of dates.

The event of the 40th, however, has given us an opportunity — the opportunity to remember the atrocities, to gather together those who have suffered, to call attention to the failures and the societal destruction, to lead a charge toward a more sane future.

It’s been so wonderful to see the plethora of articles and voices, all calling for an end to the war on drugs in some way.

Let’s enjoy the moment and let it give us fresh strength for the job ahead.

Here’s come coverage round-up.

The ACLU has a good series of graphics on our incarceration nation.

Here are a couple of them:

As someone who works in higher education and has seen the reductions in tax support while prisons keep opening, this graphic has a huge impact (our particular university used to get around 70% of it’s budget from the state; now it’s closer to 24%).

I see the potential of these students and know that an investment in education is far more valuable to us (which is why I also personally contribute to a scholarship fund) than an investment in more incarceration.

This one’s just ridiculous. How can anyone think that this is healthy?

A powerful song and video via Reason TV:

The excellent Peter Moskos points out the absurdity of our criminal justice system by suggesting we bring back the whip.

Suggest adding the whipping post to America’s system of criminal justice and most people recoil in horror. But offer a choice between five years in prison or 10 lashes and almost everybody picks the lash. What does that say about prison?

America has a prison problem. Never in the history of the world has a country locked up so many of its people. We have more prisons than China, and it has a billion more people than we do. Forty years ago America had 338,000 people behind bars. Today 2.3 million are incarcerated. We have more prisoners than soldiers. Something has gone terribly wrong.

The problem — mostly due to longer and mandatory sentences combined with an idiotic war on drugs — is so abysmal that the Supreme Court recently ordered 33,000 prisoners in California to be housed elsewhere or released.

He points out that, except in the cases of the truly dangerous, incarceration makes things worse, not better.

Incarceration not only fails to deter crime but in many ways can increase it. For crime driven by economic demand, such as drug dealing, arresting one seller creates a job opening for others, who might fight over the vacant position.

Incarceration destroys families and jobs, exactly what people need to have in order to stay away from crime. Incarcerated criminals are more likely to reoffend than similar people given alternative sentences. To break the cycle of crime, people need help. And they would need less help if they were never incarcerated in the first place.

It really says something about the depth of the abject failure of our incarceration nation when flogging actually sounds like a welcome and smart alternative.

It’s not been a good week for the drug warriors, with the Global Commission and LEAP making all the news, and lots of media sources following up.

Yesterday, Leonard Pitts, Jr. hit hard on Obama’s role in not doing something about the drug war..

Dear President Obama:
Right after your election, somebody asked if I thought having a black president meant black people’s concerns would now receive attention at the executive level. I told them I expected the opposite. […]

And the limitations of your presidency where African Americans are concerned have never been more obvious than they are this week.

And he mentions LEAP and the Global Commission.

Frankly, Mr. President, you should take this one personally. As you must know, the War on Drugs has been, in effect, a war on black men. Though whites are the nation’s biggest users and dealers of illicit drugs, blacks are the ones most likely to be jailed for drug crimes and to suffer the disruption of families and communities that comes with it.

You have done little to address these and other racial inequities of the criminal injustice system. […]

Here’s the thing, Mr. Obama: Our last three presidents are known — or in George W. Bush’s case, strongly believed — to have used illicit drugs when they were young. None of you were caught.

But what if you had been? They might have been given a second chance by some judge who saw merit or potential in them. They might still have gone on to become productive men.

Mr. President, what do you think would most likely have happened to you?

You know the answer as well as I do. And what you know should compel you to do something about it. No, that might not be politic, but it would definitely be right.

Very strong words.

Stamper delivers critical drug report to Kerlikowske’s office

They are two former Seattle police chiefs on opposing sides of the debate on legalizing drugs. And on Tuesday, Norm Stamper walked to the office of the nation’s “drug czar” Gil Kerlikowske in Washington, D.C., to deliver a critical report on the Obama administration’s failure to pull the plug on war on drugs.

Stamper appeared at the National Press Club at a news conference of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a national group that favors regulating sales of all illicit drugs, including marijuana, heroin and cocaine. Kerlikowske, who succeeded Stamper as Seattle’s top cop in 2000, opposes legalization.

LEAP members walked four blocks from the Press Club to Kerlikowske’s office at the Office of National Drug Control Policy near the White House. Kerlikowske sent a staffer downstairs to fetch the report.

Couldn’t go downstairs yourself?

Couldn’t meet with a fellow former police chief?

Are you that afraid of us?

Stamper said he was “personally disappointed” that Kerlikowske hasn’t matched his rhetoric two years ago to treat drug abuse less as a matter of law enforcement than as a public health problem. Stamper also said Kerlikowske was wrong to doubt the medical benefits of marijuana.

According to a spokesman for the drug control policy office, the fiscal 2011 federal budget includes more money for drug prevention and treatment ($10.4 billion) than on domestic law enforcement ($10.4 billion).

Here’s the full report from LEAP: Ending the Drug War: a Dream Deferred

President Richard Nixon officially declared a war on drugs on June 17, 1971. Thirty-eight years later, on May 14, 2009, the Obama administration’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, matter-of-factly declared during a newspaper interview that he was ending the analogy of the “war on drugs”. But this wording change and the Obama administration’s many subsequent changes in verbiage have had no corresponding significant change in policy from that of the Bush administration.This report details the ongoing carnage resulting from our failed prohibition policy while the administration has simultaneously tried to score political points by adopting the rhetoric of an evidence-based policy.

It’s a pretty damning report of the Obama administration as a continuing culpable force in drug war destruction, while pointing out that every administration has been at fault.