Drug WarRant

The leaked cables, which various journalism organizations such as WikiLeaks and the New York Times have been publishing, have been interesting historically, but have produced very little in terms of startling or radically new information that had previously been hidden.

The New York Times covers Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments.

Yes, some details may be new, but anyone who has been paying close attention to drug policy and the way our government deals with drug policy is already aware of the shady international position of the DEA and the blatant fact that drug policy agencies are being used for many other political purposes, including spying.

In fact, the real danger of the leaked cables is the likely assumption by some that these cables are somehow showing the worst of what is happening out there.

These are State Department communiques — far from the kind of place where anyone would discuss the real underbelly of DEA operations. For that you’d need to see some files buried deep inside 600 Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia.

What we’re seeing now reported by the New York Times is the visible part of the iceberg.

Still, it’s good to see this, at least, aired publicly.

The Portugal experiment in drug policy has been a critical and important laboratory demonstrating two huge points in the drug policy debate:

1. tough enforcement (with all its destruction) isn’t somehow magically preventing an even larger drug problem than we have today (this is the completely unsupported argument that prohibitionists use to oppose trying anything other than strict prohibition)
2. smarter approaches to drug policy can actually work to reduce harm, save lives, save money, and more.

The story was broken in a huge way by Glenn Greenwald, in his outstanding white paper for the Cato Institute: Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies (downloadable for free) in April, 2009. The report, while given a lot of play on the internet, was fairly thoroughly ignored in most of the mainstream media.

This week that changed, with a large piece by Barry Hatton and Martha Mendoza with the Associated Press: Portugal’s drug policy pays off; US eyes lessons. It’s a pretty good piece, with accompanying video, about the Portugal experiment, plus other innovative approaches around the world, including the Switzerland heroin maintenance program, the harm maintenance programs in Canada, and drug courts in the U.S. Inexcusably, however (yet typically for mainstream media), they fail to even mention Greenwald’s white paper.

Regardless, it’s good to see this getting some good coverage.

One of the things the piece mentioned was that Drug Czar Kerlikowske went to Portugal in September to see it for himself. They also mentioned that Kerlikowske was publicly trying to distance himself from the “drug war” language.

Well, this was just a little too close to an endorsement of something other than prohibition for the czar, so we quickly found this correction from the AP in the Washington Post:

In a Dec. 26 story, The Associated Press reported that the United States is studying drug reforms in Portugal, and that White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske visited Portugal to learn about its experience with decriminalizing drugs. The story should have made clear that Kerlikowske does not think Portugal’s approach is right for the United States.

Running away from good lessons. We don’t even dare talk about it unless someone gets the idea that something other than strict prohibition can be a possibility.

It’s also interesting that if we point out an outright provable lie that the drug czar has gotten the press to print, there’s no interest in printing a correction, but let the Drug Czar think that something in an article might lead people to believe that he’d be open-minded and a correction is posted within hours.

Quotable from Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings: No matter how bad it seems, it’s worse

It seems that no matter how cynical you are on the drug war, if you search hard enough you can find some piece of evil that still exceeds your worst projections.

So much money. So many profiteers.

Bill Conroy at The Narcosphere covers the story of the $100 Million Drug-War Garrison Approved for U.S.-Mexican Border

A small county board in southern California has just ushered in the era of the paramilitarization of the U.S. border by approving plans for a private, $100 million, 1,000-acre military and law enforcement training camp spearheaded by a former Navy Seal sniper who also has done work for the U.S. intelligence community.

The Imperial County Board of Supervisors earlier this week approved the project, to be developed near the small rural border town of Ocotillo, Calif., by a company called Wind Zero Group Inc. The supervisors, at a meeting held Tuesday, Dec. 21, voted 4-1 in favor of allowing the border garrison project to proceed toward construction, despite stiff community opposition, according to news reports.

$100 million facility. That’s a lot of money to spend on a training facility unless they expect to get a whole lot of government contracts for training… and other activities.

Conroy points out the interesting connection with RAND.

among the backers of the Wind Zero project is former Navy Captain and RAND Senior Management Systems Analyst John Birkler, who serves as a director of Wind Zero, according to SEC filings.

RAND bills itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, but, in reality, it has a long history of close ties to the military and private-sector warfare complex.

RAND media spokesman Warren Robak told Narco News previously that “John Birkler and his involvement with Wind Zero is a private matter — it has nothing to do with RAND.”

But Birkler has at least one thing in common with Wind Zero beyond the Navy background he shares with the company’s founder, the former Navy SEAL sniper, U.S. intelligence agency operative and author Brandon Webb. Birkler, Webb and Wind Zero have expertise in the emerging arena of drone warfare.
At RAND, Birkler, among other responsibilities, oversees research for the U.S. Navy as well as the U.S. Special Operations Command — under which is the Navy SEAL program. And, according to Rand’s Web site, among Birkler’s specific areas of expertise is “unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Doesn’t pass the smell test. RAND does lots of government work, has a Senior Manager who specializes in drones and is a backer of a big border project to provide drug war training facilities for an organization that has experience working with drones, and it’s just “a private matter.”

Wind Zero is, at best, a Blackwater/Xe wanna-be, connected with RAND, and poised to conduct private drug war operations within the United States as a taxpayer-funded mercenary operation.

Feel safer now?

More training facilities to escalate the drug war even further. And we know how well that can work out… Event the Los Zetas, probably the most dangerous group of drug trafficking criminals out there, apparently received training at the School of the Americas at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where they would have trained in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.

Apparently what we need is more private military training facilities on the border.

… because you need one.

I’ll be back posting tonight or tomorrow – a number of things of interest happening out there.

I’m on the road right now, headed to my Dad’s for Christmas. I’ll be there for a few days without any wifi, so, while I’ll be able to read comments and emails on my iPhone, it’s unlikely that I’ll be posting much.

Then home for a bit before heading out to Iowa to begin a road trip with my Mom, January 1-8. My Mom is 88 and was really hoping sometime to see her brother who is 94 and living in Sun City, Arizona. Neither can travel on their own so I’m going to drive her out to see him.

I’m hoping to also enjoy a little sight-seeing along the way with her, and maybe check out the Phoenix area a bit, while she’s visiting with her brother.

I’d love to have any of your suggestions regarding planned routes, tips of things to see or do, etc.

Mom lives in the Des Moines, Iowa area and it’s possible that we’ll need to take the southern route toward Arizona, which would likely include US-54 cutting through the corners of Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas, I-40 through New Mexico and eastern Arizona, and I-17 north of Phoenix.

If weather forecasts are favorable, we may try using the northern route on one of the trips: I-80 through Nebraska, I-70 through Colorado, US-191 through Utah.

It seems to me that the northern route may have more interesting scenery (with the exception of Nebraska) including areas of Utah and northern Arizona that I haven’t seen since I was a boy, although I’m sure there are some good things to see going through New Mexico into Arizona (Petrified Forest?, etc.) We won’t have a lot of time to stop and explore, but we’ll be looking for quick stops, passing scenery and maybe even a short detour or two.

Is there anything we shouldn’t miss?

What are your holiday plans?

This is an open thread.

This is great. The more people who read about jurors exercising their absolute right to question the law, the better. There are still too many people out there who don’t know that it’s OK for a juror to wonder whether it’s appropriate to waste taxpayer resources going after marijuana.

Marijuana fans are calling it the Mutiny in Montana.

Well, actually no. It was the deputy district attorney who called it a mutiny. Marijuana fans were calling it the proper job of jurors. However, I’ve got to admit that “The Mutiny in Montana” has a nice ring to it.

Mr. Cornell did plead guilty to the felony, but by Wednesday, what appeared to be a case of juror revolt, which was first reported by The Missoulian, was being trumpeted by pro-marijuana Web sites as yet another sign of the nation’s increasingly liberal attitude toward the drug.

Again, no. Not a sign of increasing “liberal” attitude toward the drug. A sign of increasing knowledge about the drug, the drug war, and the problems with our criminal justice system.

Link

The Senate unanimously confirmed Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart as the agency’s top agent Wednesday. Leonhart has been the DEA’s acting chief since November 2007.

She has proven her leadership to be anti-science, pro-lying, pro-death and destruction, and devoid of competence, so the Senate decided she was perfect for this job.

Leonhart said in a statement: “I am dedicated to meeting the challenges that DEA faces, from disrupting and dismantling extremely violent Mexican based drug cartels; to defeating narco-terrorists operating in Afghanistan and around the world; and doing all we can to reduce prescription drug abuse, our nation’s fastest growing drug threat.”

Yes, that Pat Robertson. Check the video proof.

“We’re locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana and the next thing you know they’ve got ten years – they’ve got mandatory sentences and these judges, they throw up their hand and say ‘What can we do, it’s mandatory sentences.’ We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes, and that’s one of them. I mean, I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of just a few ounces of pot, and that kind of thing, I mean it’s costing us a fortune, and it’s ruining young people. The young people go into prisons, they go in as youths, and they come out as hardened criminals.”

I’ve actually been using the parental control on my cable to block the “700 club” so I don’t accidentally tune in to it (I do the same thing with a couple of those 24 hour “news” channels), but am I going to have to re-think this?

This is actually true conservative thinking. I thought that was dead.

Related: Radley Balko has a column at Reason discussing a new public policy website called Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation aimed at changing the way conservatives think about criminal justice.

“While the growth of incarceration took many dangerous offenders off the streets,” says an introduction to the website, “research suggested that it reached a point of diminishing returns, as recidivism rates increased and more than one million nonviolent offenders filled the nation’s prisons. In most states, prisons came to absorb more than 85 percent of the corrections budget, leaving limited resources for community supervision alternatives such as probation and parole, which cost less and could have better reduced recidivism among non-violent offenders.”

I’d really like to see this take hold. With Democratic politicians, for the most part, too afraid (and too beholden to special interests) to actually follow the wishes of their voters, it would be fantastic to have a strong conservative faction looking for policy that is fiscally responsible, results accountable, liberty based, and limits big government waste.

It could mean a powerful coalition of Democratic voters, principled conservatives, libertarians… and Teapot Partiers. Not bad.

Update:

– I completely agree with what Ilya Somin said:

Moreover, he cites several good reasons for this stance, including the high cost of prohibition, and the fact that imprisonment of small-time drug dealers and users is “ruining young people.” I suspect that Robertson has begun to realize that the War on Drugs is bad for family values. […]

…the opposition of social conservatives is one of the biggest political obstacles to curtailing drug prohibition. Hopefully, more conservatives will come to the same realization as Robertson and, before him, the far more intellectually respectable William F. Buckley.

— David Boaz misses the point at Cato@Liberty.

But I do have this question for Republican members of Congress: Do you really want to be to the right of Pat Robertson on the issue of marijuana prohibition?

The actual point is clearly that marijuana prohibition has never been a right or left issue. Sure, it’s sometimes gotten more of a boost from one side or the other, but in its core, it defies right-left labels. This is why we see ordinary politicians on both sides overwhelmingly favoring prohibition, and why we can see smart people throughout the political spectrum (Walter Cronkite, Barney Franks, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, William F. Buckley, etc.) in favor of legalization.

(To be fair to David, he probably was using the “right of Pat Robertson” meme as a clever goad, rather than an analysis of the political position of marijuana policy.)

This disturbing video from the always excellent Hungarian Civil Liberties Union documents some of the abuses in China and Southeast Asia regarding drug users.

The governments of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand received millions of dollars from Western governments to build camps to treat drug addicts. Tax payers in donor countries had no idea what is happening in these camps before Human Rights Watch documented the widespread human rights abuses.

Some people enter voluntarily in the hope of kicking their drug habit, others are sent there by their families who pay for their “treatment”; but in some cities, it often happens that the military police just collect street children, drug users, sex workers and other groups on the street considered “deviant” by the authorities and detains them in a camp for years, without any due process or right of appeal. It’s easy to get in – but it’s hard to get out. Detainees are often forced to work for free, starved, beaten, tortured and raped – but they don’t get any treatment or rehabilitation.

Some of these abuses have stopped and a couple of camps have been closed down, but that hasn’t been because of any proactive efforts by western governments or the UNODC (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime); rather, it’s only happened because human rights and harm reduction advocacy groups have convinced entities like UNICEF to stop funding these abominations.

In fact, Cambodia appears poised to actually increase the problems, based on new laws that the UNODC actually helped draft.

Among the concerns are provisions defining a drug addict as any person who “consumes drugs and is under the influence of drugs” (Article 4). The draft also contains no provisions exempting needle exchanges and other harm reduction organisations from prosecution under six articles relating to the “facilitation” of drug use. […]

Of greatest concern, however, are sections of the draft dealing with the involuntary treatment of drug users.

In January, Human Rights Watch reported on the conditions in seven Cambodian drug-detention centres, documenting the “widespread beatings, whippings, and electric shock[s]” of detainees. Under Article 109 of the draft, drug users can be forced into involuntary treatment for up to two years.

“In its current form, the draft law is worse,” said Joe Amon, director of HRW’s health and human rights division. “Drug users will be detained longer and there are inadequate guarantees that they’ll get appropriate treatment for drug dependency.”

While Article 101 of the draft claims treatment and rehabilitation can only take place with the consent of drug users, it says treatment can be compelled in “special cases”, for the “benefit of the drug addict” or for the “common interest”. Naly Pilorge said that considering the government’s track record in arbitrary detention, such vague terms were “bound to be abused”.

Gee, I wonder what kind of treatment people will be getting at these centers?

This month, the Council of Ministers approved plans for the country’s largest drug rehabilitation centre. Moek Dara, Secretary General of the National Authority for Combating Drugs, said the facility would be built on 20 hectares of land in Preah Sihanouk province donated by tycoon Mong Reththy, and would have a capacity of 2,000.

“We’re not forcing them to be bad, we’re forcing them to be good,” he said at the time. Mong Reththy added that internees would be invited to work on plantations that he owns nearby.

Invited. Ah.

So this was a set of laws that the UNODC actually helped draft? Was it one of their interns? Or, more likely, were they just there as a point of show… part of a larger interest that they have in Cambodia. In an internal document, the UNODC implied they had an entire legal team working on it…

The same document, however, also pointed out that the agency had not been able to ensure “that the penalty threshold for drug offences was lowered, that human rights were protected and that the law was consistent with harm reduction principles”. Despite these concerns, it only recommended that the law be reviewed three years after its passage.

“UNODC has made public statements that Cambodia’s centres should be closed, while simultaneously working up a law to increase periods of compulsory ‘treatment’ in the centres,” HRW’s Amon said.

“Despite what they’ve said in public, the real behind-the-scenes technical assistance to the Cambodian government follows an old-fashioned ‘war on drugs’ mentality in which human rights concerns are an afterthought.”

The UNODC has always (and especially in recent years because of the pressure of human rights and harm reduction groups) given lip service to the notion and importance of human rights yet they never seem to make that a priority compared to their interest in pushing for enforcement.

In this way, they’re very much like the ONDCP — they talk about good things, but put their money and time into the same old failed prohibitionist strategies.

Obviously, we’re in much better shape here in terms of the nature of our treatment facilities (although we’ve certainly had some very bad experiences historically.

Yet this troubling notion of compulsory treatment tied to an enforcement arm is prevalent here as well, often disconnected from any real individualized assessment of actual treatment need. In fact, we have well-respected academics who will put up with all the damage and abuse of prohibition just so the government can maintain the power to force people into coerced treatment for no greater crime than being a drug user.

There are some outstanding international harm reduction organizations that can help us develop effective needs-based treatment without coercion that will be more cost-effective and also provide better benefit to the individual and society.

We need to dismantle our prohibition machine and implement something that’s effective without the destruction. Then we need to be an example and take that out to the rest of the world, instead of exporting a drug war that causes death and abuse.