Drug WarRant

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! )

DEA announces “historic victory” in the war on drugs

And what exactly is this historic victory?

The San Antonio Police Department has “hit the jackpot.” Today, the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Antonio handed over the largest ever drug forfeiture checks to local law enforcement.

Wednesday, DEA Special Agent Mauricio Fernandez awarded nearly $800 thousand dollars to the San Antonio Police Department. […]

The DEA also wrote a check for more than $3 million dollars to the McMullen County Sheriff’s Office.

See, that’s one of the great things about war. Sure, there’s the killing of the children, and the raping of the women, and the burning of the village, which is all fine, but then… you get to do the looting.

And this is some really good looting… $800,000.00 — $3,000,000.00

The other great thing about loot is that it helps cement the loyalty of the troops. After being rewarded so handsomely, they’ll be the first to volunteer to attack villagers the next time. They’re not going to be swayed by local politicians, or referenda, or public opinion, or… laws.

Their first and only allegiance will be to the provider of all that loot — their benefactor, the DEA.

They’ll be a lot like the Trashcan Man in Steven King’s The Stand…

My life for you! … bumpity bumpity bump…

Via TalkLeft comes a list of the “Top 100 Women in Weed” (compiled by Skunk magazine and listed at CelebStoner) Pleased to see that Jeralyn made the list.

The list is a combination of activists and celebrities who have publicly come out in support of cannabis and/or cannabis law reform.

I’m not a big fan of the word “weed,” but I understand that for a very large portion of the cannabis aficionado crowd, it’s the bee’s knees, it’s hep, and it’s where it’s at.

The original list came in at 114, and then CelebStoner noted an additional critical group that should have been on the list, and I can still see some important omissions (including some very amazing women in the U.S. SSDP ranks).

So I guess the point can be made that this is another area where we have made great strides. To have problems narrowing down the list of public and powerful female activists to 100 in a reform field that has often been dominated by males says something about how that reform field has grown.

…

Speaking of changes in the look of the reform field, it’s worth reading Ethan Nadelmann’s piece in The Nation: The Next Frontier Of Drug Policy Reform

The [sentencing disparity] victory also showed that traditional civil rights leaders are finally beginning to prioritize criminal justice reform. Black support for the late-’80s drug war helped legitimize the policies that led to the incarceration of millions of young African-Americans. The dawning realization of what they had wrought led the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Representative Charlie Rangel and then–SCLC president Joseph Lowery to start calling for reform of the crack/powder disparity in the early 1990s — but it never became a priority for them, the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights or the CBC. […]

Change is clearly afoot. Black legislators are often at the forefront of sentencing and other drug policy reform efforts in state capitals. Michelle Alexander’s powerful new book, The New Jim Crow, in which she calls out civil rights organizations for failing to grasp that the drug war is accomplishing what Jim Crow once did, is stirring up much-needed debate. And the endorsement of California’s marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19, by both Alice Huffman, the influential head of the California NAACP, and the National Black Police Association proves that courageous leadership is possible.

This is an extraordinarily positive, and probably necessary, development.

Shepard Smith: “Are you kidding me? Compared to Oxycontin and Percocet, the side effects of marijuana are serious?”

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

Study shows cannabis relieves nerve pain. Gee. Yet another piece of science that will be ignored by our government.

An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal slams the federal government for its efforts to shut down Insite in downtown Vancouver, Canada’s only safe injection site for drug addicts. […]

“We’ve concluded after reviewing the evidence that Insite is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and furthermore that we’re very concerned that the federal government has misled on the science,” said Dr. Michael Rachlis, a professor of health policy at the University of Toronto.

Surprise, surprise. Another case where the activists have pushed for research and trials and the science has been rejected by a government.

I’ll bet a beer that most of you would have no problem finding a gin and tonic, if booze was illegal today.

Guys like Al Capone would see to that. Big Al, they say, was knocking down $60 million per year in the late 1920s from alcohol alone, during a period when our government brain trust decided the best way to get people to sober up was to pass an 18th Amendment banning the sale, transportation and manufacturing of alcohol in America.

Big Al wasn’t that smart, but he was smart enough to know a sucker when he saw one and Uncle Sam was the biggest sucker of all.

Unfortunately, Uncle Sam doesn’t learn from his mistakes…

My trusty MacBook Pro, which some of you helped me purchase, and which has been doing a wonderful job serving as my blogging platform for the last four years, has come down with a fatal hard drive failure. I’ve got it in to the shop in the hopes that I can keep it alive a while longer with a replacement hard drive. I still have access to other computers, but blogging is going to be a little less convenient than usual for a bit.

This is an open thread.

Says Calvina Fay:

Legalization would also create an influx in drugged-driving fatalities, more deteriorated neighborhoods, more divorce, more domestic violence, more child abuse, and more addiction!

And yes, she is referring to cannabis.

While she’s quite the tool now, once cannabis is legal I think I might employ her as a gardener. She claims to be able to produce 240,000 joints from a 5′ by 5′ piece of dirt.

Cutbacks force police to curtail calls for some crimes

Budget cuts are forcing police around the country to stop responding to fraud, burglary and theft calls as officers focus limited resources on violent crime.

Notice the glaring omission in that sentence?