Drug WarRant

Norfolk, Virginia

Two Norview High School teachers were placed on paid administrative leave this week after a parent complained that they distributed classroom materials that gave advice on how to deal with police if stopped.

What material did they show these High School Seniors in government class? The movie Busted from flexyourrights.org.

Let’s see now. Senior year in High School. Government class. Nope, that’s not the time to teach them about their Constitutional rights as American citizens. We need to wait until… never?

The really disturbing part for me was reading the comments to the article (and I did not read all of them). Fortunately, there were a number of good commenters about the situation (and more joining in all the time), but a disturbing number of early commenters seemed to feel that teaching this material was completely inappropriate.

Now, I’ll say that the teachers probably should have found a slightly better vehicle, given their geographic location and the volatility with which people deal with controversy in the public school system (I would have recommended flex your rights’ new film, which is more professional in appearance than “Busted” and less likely to be able to be described as a video that “teaches kids how to avoid getting caught for pot” (it isn’t, I know, but it’s going to be described that way).

I would never teach anywhere but in College, because I don’t want to put up with the bullshit of oversensitivity (or zero tolerance policies, for that matter).

Still, this is teaching the Bill of Rights in a government class!

I grew up believing that the Bill of Rights was the default position — that everybody (except a few weirdos) at least believed in that… it was so… basic, so true, so logical, so critical to freedom.

Yet it’s been said that the Bill of Rights wouldn’t pass if brought up for a vote today, and after years of political reading and writing, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Sad, scared, and depressed, yes. Surprised, no.

It’s why we can’t depend on simply telling people that the drug war is a violation of their rights and expect them to come running to our side. We have to find the buttons to push to get them involved (whether it’s the environment, medical marijuana, harm reduction, prison reform, violence in Mexico, etc., etc.), and then, once they realize that everything they’ve been taught about the drug war is wrong, we can teach them more (like how rights are not given by the government, and how rights make us safer, and how rights are for the innocent, and how rights are essential to freedom).

It is also another reason why our battle is so important, because the drug war is one of the prime mechanisms for dismantling the Bill of Rights. If we allow the drug war to win, our rights are in further trouble. If we can stop the drug war, then we have a chance of at least partially reversing the damage to the Constitution over time.

And it’s why we should be supportive of others who keep an eye out for authoritarian over-reach in a wide variety of areas (why Glenn Greenwald is often a must-read, for example).

Keep an eye on Flex Your Rights for more details on this story as it develops.

The AP has a piece out about fences on the Mexican border: Fence isn’t a cure-all for America’s porous border

The best known TV spot features Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain kicking along a dusty road in this hilly border city, fuming to his companion, the Pinal County sheriff, about drugs and immigrant smugglers and kidnappings. Wearing his Navy baseball cap and squinting into the sun, McCain could be rounding the corner to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

“Complete the danged fence,” he spits, his jaw drawing into a knot.
The government has spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to build the fence as it presently stands. And the prevailing political sentiment would appear to be, build it faster and higher.

But what McCain and other politicians often fail to point out is there’s no shortage of ways to get past the fence. Immigrants scale it with ladders. Smugglers use blowtorches and hacksaws to penetrate it. They use trucks with retractable vehicle ramps to roll pickups full of marijuana over the fence. They knock down vehicles barriers and erect lookalikes that are made out of cardboard and easy to move.

There are two reasons people clamor for fences along the Mexican border: immigration and drugs. Since this is a drug war blog, I’ll address the second.

1. Beginning economics lesson: when there is demand, supply will follow. It’s a law of nature. No matter how you try to build the fence, they will go under, over, around, or through it.

2. There are 1,969 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico, and if you somehow covered all that, there are 5,525 miles of border between the U.S. and Canada to worry about, plus 12,479 miles of U.S. coastline.

3. Even if you could fence it all and somehow make it impenetrable, the drugs would come in through the legal entry points — the amount of international trade needed to keep this country going requires too much quantity each day to inspect it all.

4. For those who think a fence will keep drugs out, just remember that we have been unable to keep drugs out of prisons.

There’s an excellent post by washunate at the progressive blog FireDogLake: The 2010 Drug Control Strategy is still Anti-Science

The article picks apart the new drug control strategy and also takes a look at the media coverage (and government spin) around it.

The perspective I want to bring tonight is the specific assault on science enshrined in the drug war. We Democrats like to condescendingly snub our noses at those ignorant backwater redneck moran hillbillies – aka Republicans – who are so gosh darn awful for their scientific silliness of [insert view here]. We reference studies like the one conducted recently by the Pew Center which found that only 6% of scientists openly identify as Republican.

But the trouble is, that comes off as pretty elitist, and ridiculous, when we have such blind spots ourselves on certain policy areas when it comes to science. And the drug war is particularly interesting for this kind of perspective because it involves absurdities in both the ‘hard sciences’ and the ’social sciences’.

It’s heartening to see this kind of self-awareness building within pockets of the progressive community (particularly at FDL). Democrats have had a history of being portrayed as more progressive on drug laws, when in fact their actions have generally been little different than Republicans. For decades, liberals have been demonized by social conservatives as being soft on drugs, yet they’ve been afraid to speak out about drug policy lest the social conservatives demonize them for being soft on drugs. If you can’t win the perception battle anyway, then perhaps it’s time to just support good policy based on science.

The “Oh yeah? Well, we’re as tough on drugs as the Republicans.” approach hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked politically and it’s been disastrous in terms of policy.

Anyway, this post at FDL is definitely worth reading. Some very nice work.

Drug-sniffing dogs show students they’re ‘ruff’ and ready

The drill was part of the school system’s proactive approach to keeping the school drug-free, police and school officials said. […] There was no specific incident that prompted the new policy, school officials said […] The district has a zero-tolerance drug policy. […] Nothing was found, Lt. Paul Satkowski said.

Good training for students. Help them get used to the idea of suspicion-less government searches at any time. This way they’ll grow up to be good little subjects, ready to defer to authority as a way of life.

We haven’t heard a whole lot from John Negroponte in a while, but he surfaces in this AP story

Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico who has been working on drug control for 35 years, urged legislators to not be discouraged by the increased violence or drug availability.

“Problems with narcotrafficking remain with us today notwithstanding the enormous blood and treasure that has been expending up and down the length of the hemisphere to deal with these issues,” he said. “So we just all agree that this is a long-term issue to which there are no quick fixes.”

Doesn’t anybody out there actually read this stuff with comprehension? Re-read it. He is saying that we shouldn’t be surprised that all the lives and money spent would result in greater violence and drug availability. And that somehow proves that we should unanimously agree to keep doing it, without considering any other options.

What a loser.

In the Irish Examiner today:

US ends ‘war on drugs’
By Cormac O’Keeffe

THE United States has “ended its war on drugs” and is now moving its focus to prevention and treatment, the US drugs chief has told top Irish drug officials.

The former police chief said the US had formally ended its much heralded – and hugely expensive – “war on drugs”.

“We’ve talked about a ‘war on drugs’ for 40 years, since President Nixon. I ended the war,” said Mr Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

Someone needs to tell the Irish, or at least Cormac O’Keeffe, that the Drug Czar doesn’t actually say, you know, true things.

It’s one of the things that’s slipped by on this blog, but there’s quite a drug war situation in Jamaica right now.

Nina, from Drugs, Law and Conflict was there recently and has a good report on the situation: State of emergency in Jamaica: new place, same story

Basically, what you have is a big shot named Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who could very well be a drug trafficker, but also certainly is much more:

Dudus is a well-known businessman with a consulting firm that receives numerous state contracts. West Kingston residents are rising up (some allegedly under pressure) to defend the man who goes by “President” and provides services for locals, including food, money for school and dispute resolution.

Now the U.S. wants to step in and extradite Dudus. The Jamaican justice and police system is known to be corrupt and could not possibly handle putting someone like Dudus on trial, yet the idea of the U.S. stepping in with its drug war and taking away one of their own doesn’t sit well with Jamaicans. And the government of Jamaica is torn between it’s love of U.S. money and its connections to Dudas.

An explosive situation.

Peter Moskos at Cop in the Hood has also been following the story, and notes that when government breaks down and is unable to provide basic services for poor people, or protect them from basics like being raped, the drug lord becomes their government, providing handouts… and rules.

As one of the women behind the dons says (see if you can at least get the gist of what she’s saying through the Jamaican dialect):

Inna this area we feel safe, because man from outside and even dem whey live ya cyaan come in and rape we…. If any rape a gwaan, a when we go out a road and man try a thing. Up ya so nuh come een like a place like over Seaview [Gardens] where them don’t have no don in charge and everybody do as them like. Up ya so we have a one man who run things and when anybody bruk the rules, we report him and the boss deal wid him.

Well, the Prime Minister finally issued a warrant for Mr. Coke’s arrest last week, and now the violence comes.

At least 26 people were said to be dead after a third day of violence in Kingston, Jamaica, as security forces assaulted the slum stronghold of armed groups believed to be defending accused Jamaican drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke. […]

Shooting, looting and attacks on Jamaican police soon followed. On Sunday, the government declared a state of emergency. […]

“Security forces are under extreme pressure now,” said Mark Shields, the island’s former deputy police commissioner, who now runs a private security firm. “We have urban war going on.” A spokesman for Jamaica’s police department declined to comment on Tuesday’s events.

Later reports have casualties up to 60 or higher.

His heavily armed henchmen outgunned the cops and turned the capital city into a war zone, with terrified civilians trapped in their homes and the innocent falling in crossfire. […]

Even Kingston Public Hospital “has come under tremendous fire,” with patients forced to lie on the floor under their beds for safety, said Health Minister Rudyard Spencer. […]

Kingston students taking important regional exams had to do it with bullets whizzing by outside, because education officials refused to excuse them.

“We are doing the best we can to reassure the students. We have provided them with lunch,” said Education Minister Andrew Holness.

The drug war. Everything it touches…

Some really good reading:

President Obama’s war on his own ‘youthful irresponsibility’ by Gene Healy in the Washington Examiner

Unthinkable? Repeal drugs laws — a very strong editorial by The Guardian.

ONDCP on the defensive as drug war exposed to mainstream media critique — an excellent point-by-point takedown by Danny Kushlick at Transform

Pot laws just put criminals in charge by SSDP’s Amber Langston in the Columbia Daily Tribune

The new numbers are out from SAMHSA, so expect a variety of efforts to get the press to report that marijuana is so dangerous that more and more people are being admitted to treatment for marijuana addiction.

Which, of course, is a complete misreading of the facts (or lie, if you prefer).

Some preliminary reporting is now coming out:

Marijuana admissions rose from 13 percent of total admissions in 1998 to 17 percent in 2008…

But as Paul Armentano notes:

In 2008, 57 percent of persons referred to treatment for marijuana as their ‘primary substance of abuse,’ were referred by the criminal justice system. For adolescents, nearly half (48 percent) were referred via the criminal justice system.

By contrast, criminal justice referrals accounted for just 37 percent of the overall total of drug treatment admissions in 2008.

“Primary marijuana admissions were less likely than all admissions combined to be self-referred to treatment,” the study found.

Of course, this is not news to us. But I’ve gone through and re-analyzed the data, using the new 2008 figures, cross-referencing primary substance with principal source of referral. Here are the results.

Look at the chart on that page and you’ll immediately see that for marijuana, not only were 57% of those admitted referred by criminal justice, but only 15% were self-referred (including individual, family, friends). And that 15% also includes people who voluntarily signed up for treatment so it would look better to the judge.

For comparison (just showing the two referral categories for a select set of drugs):

So when the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy spends an entire chapter talking about the need for more treatment opportunities and better treatment opportunities for those in trouble, the drug czar’s office should be taking the blame for policies that lead to wasting a significant portion of the treatment resources that currently exist.

Remember that

According to federal figures compiled by SAMHSA in 2009, some 37 percent of the estimated 288,000 thousand people who entered drug treatment for cannabis in 2007 had not reported using it in the 30 days previous to their admission. Another 16 percent of those admitted said that they’d used marijuana three times or fewer in the month prior to their admission.

If any treatment professionals are reading this post, I’d love to hear your reactions to this data. I would also like it if you could answer a question I’ve been wanting to ask:

If you accept criminal justice referrals, how many of them (where payment was no problem) have you refused because they didn’t actually need treatment, but were there simply to avoid punishment?