Drug WarRant

Jonathan Hari has a powerful OpEd in The Independent, the latest of the publications to do a series on the drug war and legalization.

Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation

To many people, the “war on drugs” sounds like a metaphor, like the “war on poverty”. It is not. It is being fought with tanks and sub-machine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican President alone. The death toll in Tijuana – one of the front lines of this war – is now higher than in Baghdad. Yesterday, another pile of 72 mutilated corpses was found near San Fernando – an event that no longer shocks the country. […]

Like Capone, the drug gangs love the policy of prohibition. Michael Levine, who had a 30-year career as one of America’s most distinguished federal narcotics agents, penetrated to the very top of the Mafia Cruenza, one of the biggest drug-dealing gangs in the world in the 1980s.

Its leaders told him “that not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they actually counted on it… On one undercover tape-recorded conversation, a top cartel chief, Jorge Roman, expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it ‘a sham put on the American tax-payer’ that was ‘actually good for business’.”

Strong stuff that we need to spread far and wide.

And it’s happening.

This article gets mentioned in a tweet by Glenn Greenwald and catches the attention of Peter Dao, who seems to have had little interest in legalization, but is now perhaps encouraged to look at it in a new light…

My objection to drug use is this: of the various ways we can trigger a transcendent state, imbibing or injecting a substance is more addictive and less durable than trance-inducing music, meditation, dance, nature, and physical activity.

This is a roundabout way of approaching that-which-cannot-be-discussed, namely, drug legalization. I raise it because of the unmitigated carnage in Mexico, where dumping severed heads on the side of a road or finding seventy bodies in a mine shaft is now seen as commonplace. It strikes me as an inevitable question: what would happen in Mexico if drugs were legal?

The legalization debate takes place largely out of the spotlight, since few politicians want to broach it. But there are thoughtful arguments on both sides and this one, linked to by Glenn Greenwald, is worth reading:

And so change happens.

Kaptinemo once wrote in comments:

…as a character from a favorite TV of mine show put it, “When the avalanche begins, it’s too late for the pebbles to vote.” An ‘avalanche’ of drug law reform has just started, and is picking up speed.

Nice analogy. And I believe it’s true. This Independent OpEd is just one tiny part of a whole lot of avalanche that’s happening. No, we probably won’t be able to track any kind of specific success to this article. That’s not how it works.

There is rarely one event that causes a significant change in direction (especially when the drug war has had such momentum). It’s more like the butterfly effect — this OpEd will combine with other articles, which will combine with the Just Say Now campaign, and my Why Is Marijuana Illegal and Drug War Victims articles, and Malcolm Kyle’s tireless comments at online articles everywhere, and Kirk Muse’s letters in newspapers, and a speech made by a LEAP member at a Kiwanis Club, and a host of other things.

And at a dinner table somewhere, someone speaks up and says “You know, I was talking to someone at work today and he mentioned an article about the drug war that made a lot of sense. I hadn’t really thought about it that way before.”

And that’s how we win.

Mexico: bleeding to death in the war on drugs

Another 72 corpses found in a new mass grave. Feuding cartels blamed for displays of mutilated bodies. Death toll in four-year crackdown passes 28,000 […] a total of 72 contorted bodies had been laid out in rows beneath the summer sunshine. The 54 men and 18 women had all been recently murdered. […]

They had been taken hostage by the Zetas, a gang of drug-runners […]

Mass graves are becoming an increasingly common by-product of the wave of drug-related violence sweeping the country. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from abandoned mine near Taxco, just south of Mexico City. Last month, 51 more were unearthed from a field next to a rubbish tip near the northern city of Monterrey.

Mexico Drug War Update

Total Body Count for the Week: 301

Total Body Count for the Year: 7,331

Six Drug Czars:

“8% of nighttime weekend drivers tested positive for marijuana”

The LA times has an OpEd: Why California should just say no to Prop. 19 by Gil Kerlikowske, John Walters, Barry McCaffrey, Lee Brown, Bob Martinez and William Bennett.

I’d be happy to take it apart, but Jacob Sullum already has: Six Drug Czars, and Between Them They Can’t Muster a Decent Argument for Marijuana Prohibition

“Our opposition to legalizing marijuana is grounded not in ideology but in facts and experience,” say drug czar Gil Kerlikowske and his five predecessors in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece that urges Californians to vote against Proposition 19. They argue that voters should listen to them because they are “experts in the field of drug policy, policing, prevention, education and treatment.” If this is the best case the experts can make against marijuana legalization, they had better call in the amateurs.

In a short piece about a Republican primary, Progressive political activist left-of-center blogger/journalist/commentator Josh Marshall decides to be cute for no reason, and out of the blue…

Later Update: McCollum’s campaign is saying there’s no clear winner and we’ll have to wait for the morning — which may be a coded way of saying he’s coming out for marijuana legalization, or perhaps just that all the folks in his campaign are smoking some right now.

Even Later Update: AP says put away the bong guys, calls it for Rick Scott.

Considering that marijuana legalization is a serious issue being debated in this country, and particularly considering that McCollum has been criticized for pushing for tougher marijuana laws (something Marshall probably didn’t even care to discover), this is amazingly tone deaf.

Josh Marshall simply took marijuana and marijuana legalization and used it as a cheap shot to negatively and irrelevantly slam someone he doesn’t like.

It’s childish and completely out of touch.

We’re going to run into similar stupidity throughout the election season, as hyper-partisan activists use whatever club they can find to attack an opponent.

Another example happened recently with the case of Rand Paul. Now, unlike his father Ron (who is an outstanding drug policy reformer), Rand Paul is complete disaster when it comes to drug policy — he’s all over the place, and completely incomprehensible.

He should probably be dismissed or ignored, but Tanya Somanader at Think Progress recently delivered a steaming pile of crap just to be contrary.

Since Rand Paul is opposed to big government, she decided that it was best to automatically be for big government in drug policy, without even a Fourth Grade level of thought.

While Paul touts the magical remedies provided by the rich, it is the poor Appalachian residents in eastern Kentucky that are facing a tough reality where a “higher proportion of people abuse prescription pain killers that in the rest of the nation.” In fact, while trafficking in pain killers is the “largest drug problem” facing the region, Kentucky is also a prominent hotbed for marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine, according to the latest DEA study. This year, local officials reported 114 overdose deaths in the region within the first two months alone.

And, rather than failing, government-run programs are producing unprecedented success. Conway’s inter-governmental task force to cut prescription pill trafficking busted over 500 people in an interstate drug pipeline and was part of the “largest prescription pill bust in Kentucky history.” Kentucky law enforcement recognize the need for similar federal programs. State Fraternal Order of Police President Michael “Spike” Jones said he “would not be able to keep up with drug crime” without federal assistance to “pay overtime logged by tracking down drug dealers.” “It would be impossible to stop” drug traffickers “without federal assistance, because of the dire straits” state economies are in, said another Appalachian drug enforcement official.

If you think that federal drug enforcement is there to help the poor people of Eastern Kentucky, then you probably also believe that crack sentencing disparities exist to help black people. And if you believe that 500 people busted were “traffickers,” then I’ve got some bridges for you.

Drug Policy is a real issue — one that’s being discussed by mature and well-informed activists in a variety of fields. It’s no longer some kind of sandbox for clueless partisans to play in.

The results of the inquest into the fatal shooting of Trevon Cole in Las Vegas were unsurprising.

A Clark County coroner’s inquest jury took 90 minutes Saturday to rule the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man justified, capping two days of pointed questioning and contradictory evidence in one of the more controversial officer-involved shootings in recent history.

Remember, this was the case where a warrant based on details of the wrong Trevon Cole, to search for a small amount of marijuana, ending up with Cole being shot to death while unarmed on his knees in the bathroom. The officer, Yant, has been involved in other controversial shootings. And all the evidence clearly pointed to a non-resisting suspect.

Yet, an inquest in these cases rarely finds wrong-doing by the officer. Most outside observers saw this process as a farce that needed to be completed so that the lawsuit could go forward.

Detective Yant on shooting Cole…

“Unfortunately he made an aggressive act toward me. He made me do my job,” Yant testified.

Ah, so that’s a police officer’s job.

You may notice a couple of minor changes today.

1. Drug WarRant is now published by the Prohibition Isn’t Free Foundation — a new umbrella organization that will help us do a better job with advocacy. I’m the Executive Director, and I’ve got a pretty impressive advisory council (more may be added). This won’t change anything at all with Drug WarRant itself, but will allow me to expand in some work with media contacts. The name of the Foundation is the name of a book that I intend to write (I’ve got the outline and am working on it very slowly…)

2. The “Just Say Now” campaign is working with Drug WarRant, and you’ll see their ads on our pages over the next month. They’re starting with a campaign responding to Facebook censorship of a drawing of a leaf, which has been reported at Huffington Post

Here’s the release from Just Say Now:

Organizers from the new national campaign, Just Say Now (JSN), which launched this month to mobilize millions of young voters nationwide to end marijuana prohibition, have just learned that Facebook is censoring the campaign’s official logo in advertisements after initially serving 38 million impressions. Political blogs from across the spectrum that will begin running the ads today instead.

The social networking site backtracked on its initial approval on August 7 of ads that use the campaign’s official logo, which features a marijuana leaf. Despite the ads’ clear intent as political speech, Facebook pulled them and informed the group no ads with marijuana leaves would be approved any more.

“It’s tantamount to banning a candidate’s face during a political campaign,” said Michael Whitney, one of the key Just Say Now organizers. “It’s a mystery to me why Facebook would do such a sudden about-face. After 38 million impressions were served, Facebook suddenly decided to that our campaign logo should be re-classified like tobacco. But their guidelines are for companies trying to sell tobacco as a product. This is political speech.”

The ads can be viewed at www.JustSayNow.com.

Earlier this month on August 3, Mexican President Felipe Calderon called on President Obama to enter into a discussion about legalizing marijuana as a way to defund the powerful drug cartels that have killed 28,000 people since 2006. The following week, former President Vincente Fox called for outright legalization. Two Mexican cardinals and Archbishop Jose Luis Chavez Botello have also endorsed Calderon’s request.

Obama Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske rebuffed their entreaties on August 11, however, repeating his contention that “drug legalization is a ‘non-starter’ in the Obama administration.”

Jordan Marks, member of the Just Say Now advisory committee, says the decision will not sit well with young people. “Our generation made Facebook successful because it was a community where we could be free and discuss issues like sensible drug policy” says Marks, who also serves as Executive Director of Young Americans for Freedom, the nation’s oldest conservative youth activist organization. “If Facebook censorship policies continue to reflect those of our our government by suppressing freedom of speech then they won’t have to wait until Election Day to be voted obsolete.”

Just Say Now brings together a transpartisan alliance devoted to ending marijuana prohibition that includes former Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan Bruce Fein, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, President of The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation Eric Sterling, Former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, in addition to representatives from traditional anti-prohibition advocacy organizations like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the Drug Policy Alliance and NORML.

Following Facebook’s decision to censor the Just Say Now ads, Jeff Cosgrove of Common Sense Media placed the ads on blogs from across the political spectrum. “Blogs from both the right and the left were delighted to accept the ads” says Cosgrove. The ads will begin running today on sites including: Reason, The Nation, The New Republic, Human Events, MyDD, Red State, Antiwar, Drug War Rant, The Young Turks, Pam’s House Blend, Stop The Drug War, The Daily Paul, Lew Rockwell, Think Progress and AmericaBlog.

Rolling Stone Magazine dedicated a full-length feature article in its latest edition to the legalizing effort in California. Ending marijuana prohibition has the support of potential 2012 presidential hopefuls Ron Paul and former New Mexico Republican Governor Gary Johnson.

“Facebook’s business will suffer if they don’t reverse this decision” says Aaron Houston, Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, whose organization has over 150 chapters on campuses across the country. “We’re way beyond reefer madness and censorship. Facebook should get with the times.“

An important piece by John Geddes in MacLeans: RCMP and the truth about safe injection sites

It would have been quite a news conference, and it very nearly happened. Last fall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, after months of intense, private talks, agreed to face the media together to declare their agreement that research shows the “benefits” and “positive impacts” of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users. […]

“I can confirm we are good to go from our end,” said Chief Superintendent Bob Harriman, a top RCMP drug enforcement officer in Vancouver, in an email he sent on Oct. 28, 2009, to Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. centre. Harriman’s email included “proposed messaging for [a] joint media release” of the RCMP and the research centre. The RCMP would acknowledge “an extensive body of Canadian and international peer-reviewed research reporting the benefits of supervised injection sites and no objective peer-reviewed studies demonstrating harms.” As well, Harriman said the RCMP would admit that “reviews” commissioned by the force, which contested the centre’s research, “did not meet conventional academic standards.”

The proposed joint media release was never issued. Nor did the RCMP officers and the centre’s doctors appear together for their planned news conference. According to Montaner, two days before the scheduled event last December—after a venue had been booked at the University of British Columbia and “the banners were ready”—he received a telephone call from Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass, the most senior RCMP officer in British Columbia. “He said, ‘Julio, can’t do it,’ ” Montaner recalls. “I said, ‘What do you mean, Gary?’ He said, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve been ordered not to go ahead with the news conference.’ ”

Despite over 30 peer-reviewed studies showing that Insite works, the sadomoralists in the conservative government in Canada have been desperately trying to shut it down.

The WSJ is known for having some really outstanding reporting and OpEds on drug policy. And there’s plenty more good stories they could report.

Which is why this article: Sobering Report on Street Drugs by Kyle Stock is so pathetic. Were the editors asleep?

The credit crisis has sobered up Wall Street in more ways than one.

This Kyle Stock proclaims in the evidence of drug testing statistics from a company that drug tests mostly new hires (who know that they’ll be tested) in finance shops, showing lower rates of “drug use” in the financial industry.

But then he goes on to say:

Abuse hasn’t slackened among existing employees, psychologists and counselors say. It may even be peaking, exacerbated by the credit crisis…

Which is it, Kyle?

Then he quotes a treatment professional who says:

“We’re in crisis mode,” he says. “Many of these drugs are so accessible to the average person, let alone the person who is well-spoken and professional.”

What does that mean? Do drug dealers really demand that clients wear a necktie and not use slang?

“Excuse me, sir. As you can plainly see, I am a gentleman wearing a Brooks Brothers suit. May I purchase 5 grams of Cannabis Sativa, please?

I’m having fun with him here, but really, the entire article is a pile of mush — just a bunch of random stuff strung together in a way that makes it even more nonsensical.

The Wall Street Journal can do a lot better.

Over at BigThink, they’re having a month of thinking dangerously. Idea #10 is Legalize All Drugs, and they have the fabulous economics professor Jeffrey Miron as guest.

“In a free society we should allow people to consume whatever they want, no matter how dangerous, no matter how much it might be bad for them because that’s what freedom means,” he says.

It’s a refreshing piece and Miron does a very nice job in the accompanying video.

Speak Ebonics? The DEA Wants You

Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations.

Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Michael Sanders said the agency recently sent memos asking companies that provide it translation services to help it find nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics.

Update: More perspective here.