Drug WarRant

In drug war, the beginning of the end? by Bernd Debusmann of Reuters. Excellent OpEd.

Between 1971, when Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, and 2008, the latest year for which official figures are available, American law enforcement officials made more than 40 million drug arrests. That number roughly equals the population of California, or of the 33 biggest U.S. cities. […]

“Taking all this together, there is reason to believe that we are at the beginning of the end of the drug war as we know it,” says Aaron Houston, a veteran Washington lobbyist for marijuana policy reform.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But how many people in the late 1920s, at the height of the government’s fight against the likes of Al Capone, would have foreseen that alcohol prohibition would end in just a few years? Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 and is now considered a failed experiment in social engineering.

Alcohol and marijuana prohibition have much in common: both in effect handed production, sales and distribution of a commodity in high demand to criminal organizations, both filled the prisons (America’s population behind bars is now the world’s largest), both diverted the resources of law enforcement, and both created millions of scoff-laws.

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Reconsidering addiction: a film about Bruce Alexander’s remarkable ‘rat park’ experiment. An interesting discussion, and one that makes clear that the simplistic view that “drugs,” in and of themslves, are “addictive” is not only wrong, but it’s dangerous.

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This war was lost long ago by Michelle Teheux in the Pekin Daily Times. A surprisingly good OpEd by an editor of a local paper just down the road from where I live.

Many people living in pleasant neighborhoods like those in Pekin, Morton, East Peoria and Washington like to feel they are insulated from the drug trade, but that’s rot. Pay attention to arrest records and you’ll notice it’s not uncommon for a person living in a nice neighborhood in Tazewell County to travel to the south side of Peoria to buy drugs. This is not just a south side of Peoria issue. It affects all of us.

Drug users who go home to their nice safe neighborhoods to do the drugs they just picked up on the south side ought to know their patronage helps fuel the drug and gang war, both in Peoria and in Mexico.

As drug customers, they have the blood of thousands on their hands.

So the solution would seem to be to impose severe penalties for drug use and to throw billions of dollars at law enforcement to just stamp out this drug problem once and for all. Right?

Well, we tried that, and it worked even less well than Prohibition worked against alcohol use.

It’s time to try something new.

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Apparently the notion of “legal Acapulco Gold” is just too much for some people. The headline of this article was “Legal Acapulco Gold Gets Calderon’s Consideration as Drug Killings Climb” but it’s been changed to “Legal Pot Gets Calderon Consideration as Deaths Mount.”

I liked the first headline better.

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Thomas D. Elias: Voters lying about legal pot? is an incoherent OpEd that wanders all over the place without quite lighting on anything.

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Keith Humphrey’s discovers the notion that legal marijuana in California might lead to “drug tourism.” Duh. Anyone driving into Missouri and seeing all the Fireworks stores right by the border could have told you that. Yep, “at least some California communities would endure the externalities of drug tourism that the people of Maastricht are facing now.” A small price to pay, compared to all the death and destruction of prohibition.

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Jeralyn and TalkLeft has some interesting reading about the Latest on Obama Administration and Medical Marijuana

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It’s Stupid Press Release time!

From Nip It In The Bud: No on Prop. 19 – Opponent Questions Prop. 19 Flag-Bearer Richard Lee’s Silence: Is Richard Lee a Political Puppet for Marijuana Legalization in California?

Datig says, “I find it curious that Richard Lee, the proponent of Proposition 19 has not made public statements regarding his own measure. Instead we are seeing speakers-for-hire from the Drug Policy Alliance, members from L.E.A.P. such as Judge Gray, talking about issues that frequently do not relate to the measure. We are also hearing from Gary Johnson, the former Governor of New Mexico, who was unsuccessful in his own state with the legalization of marijuana and who now wants to meddle in California’s business. We are hearing legal opinions from former government officials, appointees and retired police officers who are no longer on the front lines, yet they support Prop. 19 while they seem to be completely out of touch with reality. They argue about history, about inflated, overblown and partial statistics, about industrialization and the so-called advantage Californians would have over the Mexican drug cartels if marijuana were legalized. Yet no one seems to be getting into what is in front of the voters except for those of us who oppose Proposition 19.”

Oh, yes. And then she lies. (no surprise, there)

Actually, I’ve never even heard of Alexandra Datig before, and all those cops and governors and judges seem to be pretty good spokespeople for voting yes on Proposition 19.

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Oh, wait, here’s someone else speaking up FOR Proposition 19. Longshore Workers

The longshore workers have jumped aboard the pro-marijuana legalization bandwagon, as the 25,000-member Northern California District Council of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union say they are pro-Prop 19.

And why would that be?

“The ILWU NCDC supports Prop 19 for good reason,” sez the union’s official statement. “The continued prohibition of marijuana costs society too much. Billions of our tax dollars are wasted annually on the prosecution and incarceration of many, whose only crime is using, growing and selling marijuana.

“Peoples’ lives are ruined for a lifetime because of criminal records incurred from using a drug that is used recreationally by people from all walks of life. Those criminal records fall disproportionately on the backs of workers, poor people, and people of color,” says the ILWU NCDC.

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Raid Victim Family May Hit Vegas Police with RICO Suit

Andre Lagomarsino, the attorney representing the estate of Trevon Cole and his fiancé, Sequoia Pearce, said today he is considering a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit against the Las Vegas Police Metropolitan Department in the shooting death of Cole in a June drug raid at the apartment shared by Cole and Pearce. In addition to a possible RICO claim, the lawsuit would assert wrongful death, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It would also assert civil rights violations.

Coroner’s Inquest was held today. Verdict may come later this weekend, but only one police officer has been found criminally negligent in about 200 inquiries.

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Wow. An actual bit of justice, here.

DA indicted over handouts from asset forfeiture fund

Grits for Breakfast notes:

“while the indictment says he misused more than $200,000, an audit done by his successor found that [Joe Frank] Garza had paid $1.2 million in drug seizure forfeitures to his three staff members and another $81,000 to himself between January of 2002 through the end of 2008.” That’s pretty darn brazen.

No kidding.

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Rolling Stone is on the Just Say Now bandwagon.

Speaking of Just Say Now… If you haven’t already, get over to the Just Say Now campaign sponsored by Firedoglake and Students for Sensible Drug Policy and sign up.

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This is an open thread

New York Times

A national group of African-American law enforcement officers has endorsed Proposition 19, a ballot measure that would tax and regulate marijuana in California. The National Black Police Association, which has more than two dozen chapters across the country, announced the endorsement in Sacramento, where the organization is holding a national conference. In a statement, Neill Franklin, the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which supports Proposition 19, said that “prohibition takes a toll on people of color across the country.” He added: “Californians finally have an opportunity to do something about it.”

The Daily Caller reports that recent efforts to get Obama to reconsider his choice of keeping Michele Leonhart as the head of the DEA have failed.

But according to a senior White House official, not even the combined grassroot powers of FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher, a leading voice in the progressive community and a supporter of the single-payer health care plan abandoned by congressional Democrats earlier this year, and the 10th Amendment Center, which has provided guidelines to states that wish to repeal Obamacare, can derail Leonhart’s nomination.

Obama is confident that Leonhart is the right choice, the White House staffer said, and that as of Friday the president wasn’t considering anyone else for the position. In other words, the response from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a chorus of concerns boils down to: Leonhart or bust.

Michele is, of course, the bad girl of the DEA that thought lying on the stand was no big deal (it’s got to be a little bit annoying for her to put her name into Google and get my article from so many years ago still second on the list).

Of course, she’s horrible for the job. I think Eric Sterling nails it

The bigger issue is that Leonhart has demonstrated that she is unable and unwilling to take on the major job of the next DEA Administrator, which is to work with the states in developing medical marijuana laws that make sense.

But Eric also may have hit upon the reason for Obama’s decision…

I suspect that what compelled Obama to pick Leonhart is that he could not find anyone competent who was willing to take the lead in reforming an antiquated agency staffed with zealots committed to a hopeless mission. The rumor in D.C. is that everyone they asked turned down the offer.

The Drug Czar’s “blog” continues its orgy of back-to-school “advice,” this time from Assistant Deputy Secretary Kevin Jennings.

It may be obvious but, as students across the country head back to school and colleges this fall, it bears repeating: young people who use alcohol and other drugs are much more likely to fail at school than those who don’t. Tragically, many are addicted to failure.

I’m hardly going to win a Nobel Prize for making that statement, but some cold hard facts from the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey paint a very stark picture:

• Young people who are getting D’s and F’s are about twice as likely to be current alcohol users than those who get A’s are (62% versus 32%, respectively)

• Young people who are getting D’s and F’s are about five times as likely to be current marijuana users than those who get A’s are (48% versus 10% respectively)

• Young people who are getting D’s and F’s are a stunning 13 times as likely to be current cocaine users than those who get A’s are (13% versus 1% respectively)

No, you’re not going to win a Nobel Prize. Nobel prize winners have to be achievers in science, which means that they have to at least be basically literate in it.

Notice how the data he presents very specifically does not support his thesis.

He starts by implying that the use of drugs necessarily leads to failure in school, and then for his data shows not that those who use drugs are more likely to get bad grades, but rather that those who get bad grades are more likely to use drugs (an entirely different proposition).

Of course, lots of things could explain the data. The notion that A students might be less likely to admit drug use in a survey. The fact that students who are uninterested in applying themselves to school (cutting classes, not participating in extra-curricular activities) will have more access to and time for drugs.

Also note that while Jennings mentions “school and colleges” and ambiguously implies that the data applies to “young people,” it appears that the data he references only applies to middle and high school students.

Here’s where it gets good…

Jennings knows he isn’t supposed to use the data this way.

Now the researchers will say we cannot infer causation from these data associations.

Yep, he knows it and even flaunts it, but it doesn’t bother him because he works for the ONDCP and… Scientists? We don’t need no stinkin’ scientists!

You see, he’s got something better than science. He’s got… common sense!

And here’s how it works:

…but common sense tell us it’s hard to study effectively if you are drunk or high.

Brilliant. And hard to refute.

Hey, I was a student once, and I admit that it could be hard to study effectively if you were heavily impaired by a drug.

But let’s take this common sense thing a step further…

It’s also hard to study effectively when you’re attending church services. I’ve tried it, but the minister looks at you funny, and if you’ve got your eyes closed during the prayer like you’re supposed to, it’s almost impossible to show your work on the math problems.

Maybe Kevin Jennings is suggesting that young people shouldn’t go to church.

You know what else common sense tells you? It’s hard to study effectively while you’re taking a crap. Trying to balance your textbooks on the edge of the tub… writing legibly about food groups while grunting…

Hey, I’ve got an idea. What if a young person didn’t spend all their time in church services or on the crapper? What if… there were other hours of the day when they could focus on studying effectively? What a novel idea that apparently completely slipped by “common sense boy.”

No, I don’t recommend that young people use drugs that impair them. But if they do, I recommend that they use them with caution and moderation. And whether they use drugs or not, I highly recommend that they carve aside some quality time to study effectively in order to not end up as mind-bogglingly stupid as Assistant Deputy Secretary Kevin Jennings.

California is a state in financial crisis. California also has the largest prison population in the country, after unprecedented growth in the past two decades. And California’s cost per inmate is $45,045 compared to the national average of $28,689. This makes California’s correctional system one of the biggest drains on the state budget.

Now, why is the correctional cost so high in California? Well, one fairly significant reason is the fact that California’s state correctional officers make a whole lot of money.

Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wages survey shows California is the highest-paying state for correctional officers, employing 40,260 of them in 2008 at an annual mean wage of $63,230, which works out to about $5,270 per month or $30.40 per hour. The national mean salary for correctional officers is $41,340, or $19.88 per hour.

There was a really good opportunity recently to cut back on California’s prison costs through Prop 5, which would have reduced the numbers of specifically non-violent drug offenders in prison. This was defeated following a vicious and mendacious campaign funded by $1.8 million from… the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.

That’s right. They not only make the most money in the country by a long shot (38% higher than their highest paid counterparts), they have a union that insures they continue to get it, and that the prisons remain crammed full.

Now, even the union understands that the state has to cut costs, so they’re trying to show that they’re willing to do their part (as long as it doesn’t involve cutting salaries, reducing prison population, or laying off officers).

So they have detailed some cost cutting ideas directly from their members on the California Correctional Peace Officers Association Blog

COST SAVINGS

An officer at High Desert wrote, asking why “tax payers have to be responsible for 100 % of the outrageous medical bills of inmates! We as law abiding citizens have to pay a percentage of our hard earned money toward our medical bills. Why can’t they be held accountable for a percentage of their medical care through some kind of restitution? “

An officer at Folsom tells us that “. . . every morning there is a coach to show a couple of her hand selected inmates how to toss around a ball. You have got to be kidding me!!! I have to pay $250 for my son to play each sport in high school and the state is paying for a coach to show grown men how to play catch, this is crazy. Something is really wrong here.”

Another officer said:
“CDCR contracts out to a private company to provide the packages that inmates receive. But the taxpayers must still pay the institutional staffing costs associated with receiving and distributing those inmate packages. I believe those costs should be picked up by those who choose to invoke or participate in the privilege, not the taxpayers. The contracted vender should have a ‘Handling Charge’ associated with every inmate package processed. The “Handling Charge’ should go back to the State to off-set the costs associated with the staffing required to carry out the privilege. Inmate packages are not a right, they are a privilege. So why should taxpayers be forced to fully fund this privilege?

Thanks for the suggestions and as always, if you have any cost savings ideas, please send your comments to ryan.sherman@ccpoa.org

And these are the people in charge of rehabilitation! Completely clueless about what their job is, unable to see the irony of complaining about costs to taxpayers, and focused solely on what they can get themselves.

At the Drug Czar’s “blog,” the ONDCP’s Ben Tucker gives advice to students heading off to college.

Much of the advice is fine and appropriate: “Get to class on time, get to know your professors, be respectful of your peers and professors, read your course syllabus, know what is expected of you, complete assignments in a timely fashion, study for exams and show up to take exams as scheduled, make time to exercise…”

But you know that’s not why he’s writing this. And sure enough, he gets to it. And blows it.

And while many students adjust and learn to navigate the higher education terrain quite well, without the help of drugs or alcohol–and that’s as it should be– there are many who do not fare as well. And while this message is a cautionary tale for all students, it is the students in the latter category to whom I now speak.

Do not assume that the solution to your stress lies in the abuse of drugs and alcohol. The inherent dangers of drug abuse and underage drinking are real. At best they can derail your education and force you to squander your dreams, at worse they can…? Think about It!

Notice the existence of only two categories.

1. Those who never use drugs or alcohol.
2. Those who abuse drugs and alcohol, squandering their dreams or worse.

Pretty pathetic advice.

I work at a university, and while there are some students who will abstain from most drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), most students will experiment at the very least. Despite the lack of useful information given to them, many of these will go on to have productive educational careers. The abstinence-or-loser advice from the ONDCP is the absolute worst possible advice you can give to these students.

If you have a youngster heading to High School or College and want to communicate in a realistic way that respects them while emphasizing safety and offering your help, then I urge you to read a letter written in 1998 by Marsha Rosenbaum to her son Johnny, then entering High School.

Amazingly, we also have an unsolicited letter to her from her son, written 8 years later.

These have been around for awhile, but even if you read them years ago, I think they’re worth reading again: Mother and Son.

It’s been just a little over a year now since we made the move from SalonBlogs to our own server. Other than the challenges in getting good ads served by Google since the move, it’s been very smooth.

Discussions have been active and excellent, with 10,091 comments since the move (the spammers have also been active, with 97,704 spam comments stopped).

This summer has been a busy one for me, and I completely missed mentioning the anniversary of this blog on July 26, when it turned seven years old. Wow. Seven years. 4,128 posts.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

US cops: armed and dangerous? by Jennifer Abel in the Guardian

Hero-cop TV dramas show brave officers risking their lives to rescue hostages or stop carjackers. There’s some like that in real life, too. But in most cases of egregious police overreaction, especially Swat raids in which innocent people are killed, cops aren’t going after dangerous hostage-takers, but looking for drugs or serving warrants for other, non-violent crimes.

Bizarre quote regarding Oregon medical marijuana laws.

“You can’t have a Vicodin tree in your backyard,” he said, referring to a prescription pain medication. “This (1998) law was one of the biggest mistakes the state has ever made.”

Narco-censorship

Leading doctor urges decriminalisation of drugs

One of the UK’s leading doctors said today the government should consider decriminalising drugs because the blanket ban has failed to cut crime or improve health.

“I’m not saying we should make heroin available to everyone, but we should be treating it as a health issue rather than criminalising people,” said Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians.

Gilmore put his position on the record publicly today after telling fellows and members of the college last month in a statement that he felt like “finishing my presidency on a controversial note”.

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This is an open thread.

The city of Atlanta is paying $4.9 million to the family of drug war victim Kathryn Johnston.

The money is important. But even more important is whether anyone learned a lesson. Perhaps a little…

“The resolution of this case is an important step in the healing process for the city and its residents,” [Mayor Kasim] Reed said in the statement. “As a result of the incident, several police officers were indicted in federal and state court on charges and were later convicted and sentenced for their actions. In addition, the narcotics unit of the Atlanta Police Department was completely reorganized, which included changes in policy and personnel.”

We’ll see.

Over at the Reality Based Community, Mark Kleiman makes his case for his own version of legalized cannabis: Against commercial cannabis

In the cannabis front, my plea is for a “grow-your-own” policy: consumers would be allowed to cultivate pot for their own use, to give it away, or to join small consumer-owned co-ops to produce the stuff for them. No commercial sales.

“Why not?” demanded several outraged commenters. Why allow use but not sale?

Two words provide the gist of the answer: marketing and lobbying. A legal cannabis industry, like the legal beer industry, the legal tobacco industry, the legal fast-food and junk-food industries, and the legal gambling industry, would do everything in its power to expand its sales, including taking political action to weaken whatever regulations and minimize whatever taxes were imposed.

Well, again, why not? What’s wrong with persuading someone to engage in what would be a perfectly lawful behavior?

Nothing, if the behavior is harmless as well as lawful. Everything, if the behavior predictably inflicts harm on the person being persuaded.

But cannabis use (like drinking, eating, and gambling) is harmless to most of the people who engage in it. Is it wrong to suggest that someone start a potentially benign activity simply because it might turn into a bad habit?

Might. “Aye, there’s the rub.” To the consumer, developing a bad habit is bad news. To the marketing executive, it’s the whole point of the exercise.

The commenters there have addressed this argument somewhat, but there are some important points that I believe need to be made.

The whole concept behind this paternalistic and nanny-statist argument is that, because some individuals might not be able to handle a free market system, everyone should be kept from participating in a free market system.

It is an argument that says that we should decide things based on what is often erroneously referred to as the “least common denominator” (when what people really mean is the greatest common divisor). In other words, the idea is that policy for everyone should be based on that which is best for the least capable.

It’s a philosophy that says that fast food places should not be allowed to serve bacon, because some people can’t control their appetites and may end up with heart disease. Sure, you can have bacon at home as long as you’re not an abuser, but no more bacon cheeseburgers at Wendy’s for any of us, even if we’re in good health and eat them responsibly. (In fact, it sounds above like Mark Kleiman might support such a move.)

It’s the belief that the internet should only contain material that isn’t “harmful to minors.” (Fortunately, our First Amendment has prevented that kind of odious suppression of speech.)

We are not a Greatest Common Divisor country. It really goes against everything about us. We are a country of diverse ideas, diverse options, diverse freedoms. And that means that we need responsibility, not uniformity.

Mark Kleiman notes that only a small portion of marijuana users have a problem with over-use and even then, it’s for a relatively short time, yet the idea of a free market system with marketing, he says “fills me with fear.”

Fine. Get over it. If you’re worried about the portion of those who cannot handle the seductive marketing and will fall victim to pot advertising, then let’s use our resources and ingenuity to help those individuals who abuse. But we don’t dramatically restrict the options of everyone else in some kind of desperate attempt to prevent a few from making mistakes. That, in fact, is what prohibition is all about.

We are the country that proudly proclaimed

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Not “Some of you may just be here to make anchor babies, so we’re not going to count your children born here.”

We are not a Greatest Common Divisor country.

But wait, you may say — what’s wrong with a grow-your-own policy? You can still have pot legally.

Lagavulin 16 neat. Tanqueray and Tonic. Cu-Avana, Robusto. Kalamata olives.

In a brew-your-own world, I could probably make a beer of some kind (or find a neighbor who could). But where would I get a quality single-malt aged scotch that had been influenced by the peat in Islay? In a grow-your-own world, I might be able to achieve a usable tobacco for a cigarette, but the mildness of a Dominican cigar made by experts for generations? Unlikely. In a grow-your-own produce world, I might be able to come up with some green beans and tomatoes, but Kalamata olives? No way.

In a legal Cannabis regime, I should be able to get the Cannabis version of Lagavulin 16, not just Schlitz. That requires a market. And I shouldn’t be prevented from doing that because Mark fears that some people will succumb to the advertising and get stoned on Pete’s couch.

There’s one additional challenge to this fear of the free market that I’d like to mention.

We don’t know that it really would produce the results that Kleiman fears. First of all, it is possible to regulate commercial advertising. Second, those who are likely to have problems with abusing drugs are likely to find them regardless of the marketing. Third, any advertising that promotes marijuana is likely to end up getting some people to consume pot rather than some more harmful drug.

For sure, what we don’t want is to dumb down this country to the level of those least able to participate responsibly. Nor to give that power to paternalists.

Tim Condon, Ph.D., a Science Policy Advisor at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, guest posts at the ONDCP’s “blog.”

With so much misinformation about drugs floating around the blogosphere, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) re-launches its annual NIDA Goes Back to School Initiative (NGBS). This initiative focuses on science-based drug education materials for teachers, parents, and students at all grade levels. […]

Although we can’t be looking over our kids shoulders all day at school, we can help ensure that when confronted with decision about drugs that the facts they get in front of them about drugs are credible, accurate and science-based. [emphasis original]

Well, as one of the premiere drug policy bloggers out there, I’ll be happy to take that “blogosphere” crack personally. The ironic part, of course, is that Condon is posting at a so-called “blog” that is at the nexus of scientific misinformation on drugs in the whole world.

The government drug policy apparatus in general, and ONDCP in particular, have treated science as though it were silly putty — molding it and shaping it to fit pre-determined policy decisions, and hoping the public won’t see that everything is printed backward.

After all, it is the owner of this blog that has forced the owner of the ONDCP blog to retract a misuse of scientific data.

It’s also mildly interesting that Timothy Condon apparently moved from NIDA to the ONDCP last month to be their science policy advisor. Interesting that this bit of information was left out of the post, and that Condon, supposedly promoting science-based information is now working for the top propaganda agency around. If Timothy Condon would be willing to stop by, I’d love to hear just exactly what a “science policy advisor” does when he’s working for a propaganda generator.