Drug WarRant

Sheriff Lee Baca, co-chair of the Prop 19 opposition has certainly been outspoken.

The Los Angeles County sheriff has escalated his war of words against California medical marijuana dispensaries, saying as many as 97 percent operate as criminal enterprises.

Some of the pot shops get marijuana from Mexican drug cartels, and most dole out pot to people with no medical need for it, Sheriff Lee Baca said.

“Millions of dollars are being made for profit, and it’s all illegal,” the sheriff said this week.

Baca presented no evidence to support his claim. His comments coincided with a recent announcement that he would lead efforts against a November ballot measure to legalize marijuana for personal use in California. […]

…two workers at different dispensaries have been killed during robberies in recent weeks.

“It is no surprise that people are going to get killed … drugs and violence go together,” Baca said.

He is, however, no match for the good folks at the Just Say Now campaign.

Jane Hamsher came out with a scathing exposé of Baca today: “No on 19″ Says “Yes” to Scientology

She starts by shooting down his unsupported claims:

Los Angeles Police Chief Charles Beck has disputed Baca’s claim. “Banks are more likely to get robbed than medical marijuana dispensaries,” he told the Daily News in January.

Beck’s department looked into the assertion made by Baca and others that dispensaries attract criminal activity to neighborhoods. The LAPD subsequently issued a report saying that just wasn’t the case. “I have tried to verify that because that, of course, is the mantra,” said Beck. “It doesn’t really bear out.”

And then she goes on to expose Sheriff Baca’s connections to Scientology and the entire Narconon treatment industry.

Check out Sheriff Baca’s own statement to the Scientology Church (video at the link):

You have been consistently reliable in helping me to achieve my goal for a safer Los Angeles County. In particular, your drug education means everything to the safety of our schools and neighborhoods. That is why we trained a corps of our own deputies in the use of your unbeatable program. This joint venture to educate youth at risk is one of the most important initiatives I could undertake as Sheriff of Los Angeles County.

Narconon has been demonstrated to have no scientific credibility, yet it continues to rake in the dough from criminal justice referrals, a cozy arrangement that now shows Sheriff Baca in bed with them.

Hamsher concludes:

By choosing Lee Baca as co-chair of “No on 19″ and offering him a platform to advance the theories of L. Ron Hubbard on their behalf, the campaign has associated itself with claims of dubious legitimacy that serve the interests of a revenue-generating enterprise. Any medical treatment organization that demands the criminalization of is patients in order to guarantee participation in their program should be instantly suspect, as should those like No on 19 Co-Chair Lee Baca who proselytize on their behalf.

….

But wait — That was just the first salvo today.

Norm Stamper:

Sheriff Baca says ‘there are predators armed and seeking easy dollars in sales of marijuana.’ He’s right. There is altogether too much marijuana-related violence in California. It’s been going on for years and, unless the marijuana prohibition is lifted — and replaced with a taxed, regulated, and controlled system — it will continue unabated. It’s that simple. The sheriff needs to ask himself, Would the three recent murders in West Hollywood have happened if marijuana were legal, its commerce controlled like alcohol? He knows the answer to that question, and so does Senator Feinstein. Marijuana prohibition is the cause of violence, not the cure.

And Doug Bandow, former Special Assistant to President Reagan:

Since banks, jewelry stores, and wealthy homeowners attract thieves and robbers, presumably Sheriff Baca will next campaign for financial, jewelry, and wealth prohibition. After all, there wouldn’t be any bank robberies if there were no banks.

In fact, as has long been evident, it is drug prohibition that generates untold violent and destructive crime. The sheriff is entitled to his opinion as co-chair of the anti-marijuana legalization campaign, but he shouldn’t distort his official duties to promote his political pursuits. The only way to end drug-related violence is to stop arresting users and turning production and sales over to criminals.”

…

No, that’s not all.

Eric Sterling: No on 19 Co-Chair Lee Baca “Intoxicated by the Money and Hysteria Against Marijuana”

In the early 1980s, heroin and other opiate addicts were robbing pharmacies around the country because of they were a source for pure narcotics of certain dosage. U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde introduced legislation to make robbery of pharmacies a federal crime. I was the attorney who handled that legislation for the House Judiciary Committee, and we developed a bill that passed, P.L. 98-305 (May 31, 1984), 18 U.S.C. 2118.

No one blamed the pharmacies or their customers! No one said, “Pharmacies are a magnet for crime!” Robbers look for opportunities where there is money or valuable property — banks, jewelry stores, fast food restaurants, liquor stores, etc. Criminologists and intelligent observers of crime don’t blame the victims.

Unfortunately because medical marijuana dispensaries are not fully legal — due to federal law — they have trouble contracting with private security services or getting business insurance as other businesses do routinely.

If Sheriff Baca weren’t intoxicated by the money and hysteria against marijuana, he would not be making this kind of rookie mistaken analysis.

Good job by Jane Hamsher and the board of Just Say Now to expose the true nature of the Prop 19 opposition.

Someone sent me a link to a blog. Now, it’s pretty rare that I mention a blog that has only one post so far, but it’s a pretty big post. The blog is Prop 19 Questions and the first post has… 850 questions. (I’m taking their word for it, I haven’t counted them myself.)

There are some good questions, and I actually started answering them, but after about 35, I got bored.

There are a bunch that can easily be answered “No” or “Yes” just through plain reading of the text of the proposed law. There’s also a large number that would be answered “depending on local regulations,” and a few where the answer would be “Yeah, lawyers are going to make some money on that one.”

But there’s also a considerable number where the answer is “Nobody knows. Just as with any new law or policy, we’ll have to see what happens and adapt to situations as they arise.”

After reading all the questions, I realized that there are some questions that have been left out!

So here are my additions to the 850 questions about Prop 19…

1. If a major earthquake causes California to fall into the Pacific Ocean, will people be allowed to grow marijuana in domed undersea gardens as long as they’re 25 square feet or less?
2. If I put a tesseract on my 5′ by 5′ plot, can I then grow 25 square feet of marijuana in all four dimensions?
3. If the earth is hit by a meteor and speeds up its orbit so that it goes around the sun in half the time, will the minimum age of 21 for using marijuana still be in effect, but allow young people to get there sooner?
4. If you liquify your marijuana, is your one ounce allowance based on weight or by volume? What if it’s pre-vaporized and has almost no weight?
5. If a medical marijuana patient has fun consuming their medical marijuana, do they fall under medical marijuana laws or recreational marijuana laws?

Lima

President Alan Garcia said he is willing to accept U.S. military aid to combat drug traffickers, provided that this help is in the logistical and training areas, a Peruvian newspaper reported Sunday, citing an interview the head of state recently gave.

“On all matters that are humane and universal, I don’t have any disagreement over sovereignty and patriotism. That is, if the Americans would like to put training troops (here), as they have helicopters, as they have satellite trainers here, it’s just at the right time,” Garcia said.

…

Garcia then went on to point out that other countries receiving drug war aid from the U.S. — Mexico, Afghanistan, Colombia — are much more exciting than his, with massacres, shoot-outs in the streets, colorful and unpredictable police and military forces. Garcia hopes for a little more of that action, and thinks that U.S. military aid may be just the ticket.

The Guardian has consistently been one of the media leaders in talking openly about the drug war — all aspects. This weekend was no exception…

What Britain could learn from Portugal’s drugs policy by Peter Beaumont

In the midst of the recently resurgent debate in Britain about whether our drug laws are working – or require a major overhaul – the experience of Portugal has become a crucial piece of evidence in favour of a radical approach that has confounded the expectations of even its conservative critics, so much so that in the last month British officials have asked their Portuguese counterparts for advice, with the only caveat being that they avoid mentioning the word “decriminalise”.

It’s an interesting look into the success of Portugal’s experiment.

Britain’s drug policy will not improve until we are bold enough to experiment by Alex Stevens

The potential benefits and costs of drug policy innovations will remain incalculable as long as governments refuse to implement and research them.

A lesson that’s also true for us (and we have the perfect laboratory to test innovations — the states!)

Legalise drugs and a worldwide epidemic of addiction will follow by Antonio Maria Costa (former head of the UNODC).

The debate between those who dream of a world free of drugs and those who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years.

It’s a cute phrase and he’s been using it for years, but it has nothing to add to the discussion. The whole piece is a muddle, with quite a number of references to the problems of prohibition, but a complete failure to recognize that legalization, not prohibition, is the source of real control.

…

A shout-out to my mom, who is 88 and is an occasional reader of this blog. She just had a stroke and has been diagnosed with Wernicke’s Aphasia — a problem with the language center of the brain. I just spent the last two days with her at the hospital in Des Moines, and her long-term prognosis looks good (although it’s unlikely that she’ll be able to read blogs for awhile).

…

This is an open thread.

Via Allen St. Pierre comes this fascinating OpEd from John McKay, the prosecutor who indicted Marc Emery (and a former law enforcement official). Marijuana’s true potency and why the law should change

I DON’T smoke pot. And I pretty much think people who do are idiots.

This certainly includes Marc Emery, the self-styled “Prince of Pot” from Canada whom I indicted in 2005 […]

As Emery’s prosecutor and a former federal law-enforcement official, however, I’m not afraid to say out loud what most of my former colleagues know is true: Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong and should be changed through the legislative process to better protect the public safety. […]

• First, we need to honestly and courageously examine the true public-safety danger posed by criminalizing a drug used by millions and millions of Americans who ignore the law. Marijuana prohibition has failed — it’s time for a new policy crafted by informed policymakers with the help of those in law enforcement who have risked their lives battling pot-purveying drug cartels and gangs.

• Second, let’s talk about marijuana policy responsibly and with an eye toward sound science, not myth. We can start by acknowledging that our 1930s-era marijuana prohibition was overkill from the beginning and should be decoupled from any debate about “legalizing drugs.” We should study and disclose the findings of the real health risks of prolonged use, including its influence and effect on juveniles.

• Third, we should give serious consideration to heavy regulation and taxation of the marijuana industry (an industry that is very real and dangerously underground). We should limit pot’s content of the active ingredient THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), regulate its sale to adults who are dumb enough to want it and maintain criminal penalties for sales, possession or use by minors, drivers and boaters.

Pretty strong legalization words for someone who despises marijuana as much as he does.

…

Speaking of Marc Emery, Eric Sterling found something interesting: The Sentencing Memorandum filed by the U.S. Justice Department (Jenny A. Durkan and Todd Greenberg) on August 31, which included this rather unusual statement:

The government’s case was investigated and prosecuted without regard for Emery’s personal politics, his political agenda, or the ways in which he chose to spend the proceeds of his drug crimes.

Yeah, right.

A little defensive sounding. And pretty dramatically at odds with the public statement made by then head of the DEA Karen P. Tandy:

Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group — is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General’s most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery’s illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

Washington Post: California’s Prop 19, on legalizing marijuana, could end Mexico’s drug war by Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge G. Castañeda

Perspective from Mexico that packs a wallop.

Proposition 19 changes this calculation. For Mexico, California is almost the whole enchilada: Our overall trade with the largest state of the union is huge, an immense number of Californians are of Mexican origin, and an enormous proportion of American visitors to Mexico come from California. Passage of Prop 19 would therefore flip the terms of the debate about drug policy: If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?

The prospect of California legalizing marijuana coincides with an increasingly animated debate about legalization in Mexico. […]

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans’ real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico’s current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country’s crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime. […]

Our president will be able to say to yours: “We have paid an enormous price for a war that a majority of the citizens of your most populous and trend-setting state reject. Why don’t we work together, producer and consumer nations alike, to draw a road map leading us away from the equivalent of Prohibition, before we all regret our short-sightedness?”

Copies of this article’s headline with excerpts should probably be heavily distributed in California.

Chief justice nominee blocks school drug tests

In a ruling by California’s chief justice nominee, a state appeals court has barred a school district from drug testing all students in extracurricular activities such as choir, the school band and Future Farmers of America. […]

the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said Thursday that the California Constitution’s guarantee of privacy is more protective of individual rights than the U.S. Constitution and may prohibit the drug screening. […]

“The district has not shown a specialized need to target students participating in (the activities) for drug and alcohol testing,” Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in the 3-0 ruling.

She said there was no evidence of a drug problem among students in programs like choir and Future Farmers of America, and little or no evidence that testing them would serve any useful purpose.

Nice to see a little sanity out there.

Governor Jan Brewer — this is the woman who said that most illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs, and who opposed medical marijuana because it’s a gateway drug.

These were her opening remarks. She wasn’t even responding to anything.

Almost painful to watch.

Edit: Removed gratuitous and inappropriate remark on my part about what she did or did not ingest prior to the debate.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein To Chair No On Prop 19

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic former mayor of San Francisco, will co-chair the campaign to defeat Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot in November, according to a press release today.

Her co-chair will be L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca.

Mexican Cartel leaders wouldn’t comment on the record, but privately expressed gratitude for her efforts, and noted how much they get a kick out of being on the same team as the California sheriffs.

“In less than two hours, liquor will be declared illegal by decree of the distinguished gentlemen of our nation’s Congress. [raises glass] To those beautiful ignorant bastards!” (“hear, hear!”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KfUNiFlo4c

Via Radley, and yes, I may need to fire up my DVR as well.

(I am constantly amazed by the fact that some people seem to have a hard time relating drug prohibition with the earlier one in terms of its destruction and corruption… It’s so incredibly obvious! )