Drug WarRant

It’s this week

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Mexico City, Mexico for the Merida U.S.-Mexico High Level Consultative Group meeting on March 23, 2010. The Secretary will be joined by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet A. Napolitano; Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair; Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael G. Mullen; Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security John Morton; Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler; Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Director Adam Szubin; Office of National Drug Control Policy Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Supply Reduction Patrick Ward; and Drug Enforcement Administration Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart.

Now that’s an all-star lineup. They’ll be partying hard, I imagine.

Of course, they’re not really going to Mexico for spring break. They’re going to talk about the drug war. And they know their actions will be scrutinized even more now that U.S. Embassy personnel have been killed.

Secretary Clinton and Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa will chair an interagency discussion on the evolution of the Merida Initiative that focuses on enhanced engagement in support of our shared goals of breaking the power of drug trafficking organizations; strengthening the rule of law, democratic institutions and respect for human rights; creating a 21st century border; and building strong and resilient communities.

Don’t you love it? The less actual idea they have of what the hell they’re doing, the more poetic the description of it becomes: “enhanced engagement in support of our shared goals” Ah, beautiful. Meaningless, but beautiful.

The reality is that they have no idea how to stop the cartels. As long as the drug war is ratcheted up, human rights and the rule of law are out the window. The attempt at a 21st century border has already failed. Strong communities? They may as well look to the cartels for help, there.

What will certainly not be discussed is any solution that would actually make a difference. The translators won’t have to know the English word for “legalización.”

Besides… Clinton, Gates, Napolitano, Leonhart? These aren’t people who can actually do anything. These are politicians.

In Mile High City, Weed Sparks Up a Counterculture Clash

Attorney Warren Edson would like to throttle the anonymous marijuana breeder who named a potent strain of weed “Green Crack.”

He’s not too fond, either, of those breeders who have given strains names like “Jack the Ripper,” “White Widow,” “AK-47” and “Trainwreck.”

“How can I find them and strangle them?” Mr. Edson asks.

His beef: Mr. Edson is in the vanguard of an aggressive movement to make pot respectable —but decades of stoner culture keep dragging him down.

It’s an interesting and rather amusing conflict — and it’s kind of nice that we’ve reached a position where that even matters.

Lee at Horses’s Ass notes how the marijuana question always gets to the top (youtube, change.org, etc.) and gives a good explanation.

This isn’t happening because George Soros is paying large sums of money to skew these surveys or because hackers are rigging the vote. But on the other hand, it’s also not happening because marijuana prohibition is the most pressing issue in the world right now (although it has far more impact on the world around us than many of us realize). It’s happening because the issue of marijuana prohibition is the topic where the general public most readily recognizes that the words and actions of our government are thoroughly detached from reality.

Don’t Let the DEA Ban Recommending Medical Marijuana for Veterans

The DEA is preventing doctors at veteran’s hospitals from recommending medical marijuana to patients — even in the 14 states where medical marijuana is legal.

The Veterans Administration is taking advice from the DEA based on the federal government’s assertion that marijuana has no medicinal value. This especially tragic because of the widespread evidence that marijuana is a safe and effective treatment for post traumatic stress disorder which is all too common among our veterans.

“Hey, Boss! You sure you ordered the right parts? These crates seem a little off.”

Va. company gets unexpected delivery

Workers at a Virginia company that manufactures blades and cutting tools were surprised to receive a shipment of 1,840 pounds of marijuana […]

The Augusta County Sheriff’s office said deputies found 80 boxes, each containing 23 pounds of marijuana, inside a tractor trailer making a delivery Tuesday to American Safety Razor in Verona, north of Staunton.

Employees became suspicious when the bar codes on the boxes didn’t match the equipment orders.

One question. Why did the Sheriff’s office say that deputies found 80 boxes? Seems to me the employees found them. Do they just want more credit?

Loud Sex Enough for Cops to Search Your Home, Court Rules

It didn’t help that the homeowner voluntarily let the police in.

Half of Cheech and Chong beats a Dartmouth grad and a Yale grad in Celebrity Jeopardy

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was on Celebrity Jeopardy last night, and in keeping with the success level of cable news hosts recently on the program, he finished with zero dollars.

What happened? Here’s a look at how it all went wrong – and how the guy who smokes weed with Tommy Chong became the champ.

More coverage

“That’s right, I lost to Cheech Marin,” Cooper told his 360 viewers last night.

“Cheech of ‘Cheech and Chong’ fame, pot-smoking star of blunt-burning films like ‘Up in Smoke,’ ‘Next Smoke’ and ‘Still Smoking,'” the CNN host continued.

“He not only beat me; he crushed me”

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

This is an Open Thread.

Grits for Breakfast reports on another case of police corruption (covered by the Dallas News): Dallas DA reviewing cases from ‘quarterback’ of Garland drug cops

An undercover informant opened the motel room door, letting four police officers rush in for the drug bust. They quickly arrested a man who had already spent 10 years in prison for dealing dope and burglary.

It was just one of many scores for star Garland narcotics detective Dennis Morrow. But what followed the July raid was unusual: Two of the officers told their boss that Morrow’s written report about the raid misrepresented what happened – and last week, in court testimony, they swore that the inaccuracies were part of a pattern.

The District Attorney’s office is now reviewing all cases that involved Morrow’s testimony.

Unfortunately, in most cases, this kind of corruption doesn’t come to light. For many corrupt drug cops, all suspects are scum and therefore doing whatever it takes to put them away is OK, regardless of their oath, or the Constitution, or the integrity of the force. And who’s going to turn them in? The scum?

When good cops come forward, they’re not betraying a confidence, they’re being loyal to the police force, to the people they serve, and to the integrity of the rule of law. That is far more heroic than breaking down a door and busting a bad guy.

….

Scott also has a solution for saving money for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice: The shortest distance to cutting 5% at TDCJ: Reduce drug penalties

I can’t help myself. These pieces are comedy gold. And now Cliff has turned out his third in a relatively short time on drug policy, and this one is amazing.

This time, he’s gleefully reacting to the recent Christian Science Monitor piece that strangely lauds Drug Czar Kerlikowske for his speech to a Police Chiefs Association.

Here’s what’s hilarious. Because the Drug Czar, when talking to Police Chiefs, said he opposed legalization, this is somehow a bold and courageous step by Kerlikowske, putting him “on a collision course with Holder and perhaps Obama himself” and providing “a tremendous setback” to us drug policy reformers.

This has to be perceived as a tremendous setback for Nadelmann and the rich liberals, led by George Soros and Peter Lewis, who have financed the drug legalization and “medical marijuana” movements. The Kerlikowske speech constitutes belated recognition that the drug wars south of the border are inexorably linked to the growing use of marijuana in California, where some of the same Mexican drug gangs are planting and harvesting their crop.

Um… Any argument that the drug wars south of the border are linked to marijuana sales in the States is a clear argument for legalization.

Oh, wait, I think he’s going to call us rich again.

Despite the wake-up call from Obama’s own Drug Czar, the well-financed movement to legalize dope continues on many fronts. On Thursday, March 18, Joyce Nalepka, former President of Nancy Reagan’s favorite charity, the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, will testify in hearings before the Maryland State Legislature in Annapolis. She says that Maryland Senate Bill SB 627 would allow use of marijuana under the guise of “medicine.”

It’s a medical marijuana bill. It would allow the use of marijuana as medicine, which it is.

Thursday will mark the ninth time Nalepka has testified on this issue in Maryland. “There is nothing new to say, except the marijuana that kids are using today is so much more potent, they refer to it as ‘Skunk.’ Eighteen nations, including the U.S., now link ‘Skunk’ marijuana to depression, psychosis and schizophrenia,” she says.

Who calls it skunk here? I thought that was a British thing.

Now here’s where Kincaid’s prose becomes a thing of beauty. Note the heightened drama, the detachment from reality.

On the national level, supported by Soros and Lewis, then-candidate Barack Obama adopted the soft-on-drugs approach. As President, his Attorney General Eric Holder decided to withhold federal resources from the war on drugs in California, at least as they apply to the growing “medical marijuana” program. But that was before a psychotic pothead named John Patrick Bedell came all the way from California with a “medical marijuana” card and opened fire on the entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two guards before getting killed himself.

Ironically, on the same day that Bedell was preparing his assault, Kerlikowske was getting ready to speak to the California Police Chiefs Association Conference in San Jose, California. His topic: “Why Marijuana Legalization Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety.” The speech was so powerful, in terms of the facts he presented about the problems associated with marijuana, including “medical marijuana,” that it is somewhat shocking to consider that he has a job in the Obama Administration.

Shocking, I tell you! Of course, in fact, Kerlikowske’s speech was nothing special — the re-hash of the same stuff that’s been said a million times before, and is mostly wrong or irrelevant.

Predictably, Kerlikowske is being attacked by the illegal drug lobby. The Peter Lewis-funded Marijuana Policy Project called his speech “supremely uneducated.”

Like John Patrick Bedell, the potheads won’t rest until society recognizes their right to smoke, grow and even worship pot. Do they have an ally in President Obama? “Yes we Cannabis!” they say.

But the public, concerned about a generation literally going to pot under a President who inhaled and liked it, may have something to say about that.

With all the criticism of Obama’s various “Czars,” at least one of them, Gil Kerlikowske, has taken a bold stand that is out of step with what Obama’s “progressive” base has been demanding. It will be interesting to see how long he lasts.

Wow.

Do you really need to take that marijuana grinder with you on the plane? Did it seem like a good idea at the time? Do you know what airport security screening is like?

AP

To the security screeners at the Yakima Air Terminal, the device in the belongings of a departing passenger looked like a grenade. That prompted the brief evacuation of about a dozen people from the terminal Tuesday evening.

Military bomb technicians from the Army’s Yakima Training Center were called.

Yakima police Sgt. Tim Bardwell says the item carried by a 23-year-old California man was actually a commercially purchased marijuana grinder.

The man was arrested for investigation of drug possession.

It’s a story that simply overflows with stupid, from all directions.

Via the ACLU:

WASHINGTON – The Senate this evening voted by unanimous consent to pass a bill that would make crucial changes to current cocaine sentencing laws. The bill, the Fair Sentencing Act, was originally introduced by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) to eliminate the discriminatory 100-1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing under federal law. During the bill’s markup last week, however, a compromise was reached with Republican Judiciary Committee members that reduces the disparity to a 18-1 ratio. A bill addressing the disparity in the House, the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act, was passed by the House Judiciary Committee last year and currently awaits a vote by the full chamber.

More than two decades ago, based on assumptions about crack which are now known to be false, heightened penalties for crack cocaine offenses were adopted. Sentences for crack are currently equivalent to the sentences for 100 times the amount of powder cocaine, and the impact falls disproportionately on African Americans. In recent years, a consensus has formed across the political and ideological spectrum on the crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity issue with both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama urging reform.

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the Fair Sentencing Act is a step toward a fairer system but falls short of adequately fixing the existing unjust sentencing gap.

The following can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“The Fair Sentencing Act is an encouraging step toward eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine but still allows for a needlessly unfair sentencing framework. The unanimous passage of this bill speaks to the understanding across the political spectrum that this disparity is unjust and in need of reform. Years of research has yielded no evidence of any appreciable difference between crack and powder cocaine and yet we continue to inflict this disparity on Americans.

“For over two decades, this sentencing disparity has been a stain on our justice system. Though this bill’s passage is long overdue, it does not go far enough. Without a simple and fair 1-1 sentencing ratio for crack and powder cocaine, we cannot say that these sentencing laws meet constitutional muster.”

For those who don’t know how this sentencing disparity works, it’s not that crack sentences were 100 times as long as powder. It had to do with the amount of drug necessary to trigger a particular minimum.

Under the old method, 5 grams of crack would trigger a 5 year mandatory federal minimum, while it would take 500 grams of powder to trigger the same minimum. Durbin’s proposal had been to eliminate the difference entirely, so that crack would move to the same formula as powder.

The watered down version means that it’ll take about 28 grams of crack (instead of 5) to trigger the 5 year minimum, and the separate mandatory minimum for mere possession of crack is eliminated.

I wouldn’t call it a victory, but certainly a step in the right direction. And thanks to Dick Durbin for pushing for this. More could happen when this is reconciled with the House Bill, which passed with full elimination in committee, but has not been acted on by the full House.

So, like President Obama, Prime Minister Harper did the YouTube interview and they gave him the marijuana question.

Harper dismissed the idea of legalizing the drug during the interview, which was moderated by Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer.

“I don’t meet many people who’ve led a drug-free life that regret it. And I’ve met a lot that haven’t, and regretted it.”

He must get around. I haven’t met anyone who led a drug-free life. I’ve met a lot that have tried marijuana and very few regretted it. And none of that has anything to do with legalization.

Buying marijuana, he added, means supporting “international cartels that are involved in unimaginable violence, intimidation, social disaster and catastrophe all across the world.”

Finally. A politician giving a good reason for legalizing marijuana.

Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition, didn’t do any better.

O’Donel High School, Mt. Pearl, Nfld.:

“If I had to tell you as a parent or as someone who has spent his whole life working with young people, the last darn thing I want you to be doing is smoking marijuana,” the federal Liberal leader said.

“I want you to be out there digging a well, digging a ditch, getting a job, raising a family … doing stuff, instead of parking your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette.”

I can’t wait to see the new Canadian version of our anti-drug TV ads based on that one… Gee, instead of smoking pot with my friends, I could have been digging a ditch!

In today’s Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph.

Legalize pot; help budget, not criminals

Our legislators continually shirk their responsibility by failing to regulate drugs like marijuana. Too many kids are smoking pot, but instead of taking charge and setting an age limit, our legislators have turned it over to the criminals who sell to any age. You don’t even need a fake ID.

While alcohol sales are restricted to licensed locations at specific times, pot is sold on every street corner day or night, because we’ve put criminals in charge.

Hopelessly dependent on drug war funding, some public employees claim the drug war helps, but the reality is different.

Under prohibition, arresting a drug dealer is like advertising a lucrative job opening. Now you have two criminals, while we pay court costs, room and board for the first one.

It’s not like the drug war reduces drug use — countries with decriminalization have lower rates of use than we do, and we had much less use and less drug war violence when pot was legal.

What the drug war gives us, in addition to no results at great cost, is a jobs program for criminals, prison guards and law enforcement, plus drug war violence leading all the way to the deaths of thousands in Mexico.

It’s time for legislators to stop giving in to the criminals and lobbyists at the drug war trough and begin the legal regulation of cannabis so we can take back control and de-fund the criminals. As a side benefit, we could also dramatically help the budget.

Pete Guither, Bloomington

I have finally gotten around to adding Rev. Jonathan Ayers to the Drug War Victims page — he definitely needed to be there.

A potentially interesting new development

New developments in the shooting death of Pastor Jonathon Ayers … the officer that delivered the fatal shot did not have arrest powers.

According to Channel Two Action news, it all stems from the shooting death of pastor Johnathon Ayers during a botched drug raid in North Georgia last year. A lawsuit filed by the pastor’s widow claims the officer who shot the pastor, Billy Shane Harrison, was not acting legally because of a lack of mandated firearm training.

In the lawsuit, it alleges the grand jury who investigated the shooting did not have all the facts and Harrison should now be held criminally liable.

The GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] has confirmed that Harrison did not have authority to make an arrest.

A lot more in this video

So they had an officer, who had not completed mandated firearm training and who did not have an authority to make an arrest, armed and working undercover on a drug case?

And this makes the grand jury investigation that let the cops off the hook look pretty bad.

…

Side note: Does anyone know how old Jonathan was?

It is unconscionable in this day that there are still masses of the American public who think that “legalization” is something you whisper about with a knowing grin that it’s merely a ploy for hippies to have the opportunity to smoke pot and watch a Cheech and Chong movie.

The discussions that we have regarding drug policy are literally matters of life and death and they need to be engaged by the public with that sense of urgency.

People need to read about the Drug War Victims and the rest of the violence that is part and parcel of prohibition.

Read Philip Smith’s piece at Stop the Drug War: Law Enforcement: Drug Cops Kill Two in Two Days in Drug Raids in Florida and Tennessee. Real tragedies.

Oh, the police investigations will say that the police acted properly in self-defense, and to an extent, they’ll be right. But the situation leading to death should never have been set up in the beginning. It was prohibition, and then the tactics of prohibition enforcement, that led to those people dying.

And now, after tens of thousands of Mexicans dying senselessly in our drug war down there, we have a “real” tragedy.

Suspected drug cartel hit men have gunned down three people who worked at the U.S. consulate in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.

A consulate employee and her husband, both U.S. citizens, were shot dead in their car and the husband of a Mexican employee at the consulate was also killed in a drive-by shooting. […]

President Barack Obama said he was ‘deeply saddened and outraged’ by the killings.

Outraged, I tell you!

As well he should be. But what will be the outcome of such outrage? Probably more violence.

In The New Drug War We’ve Already Met, Blake Hounshell asks

So what is Obama going to do about it? His administration has asked for $450 million from Congress to bolster Mexico’s security and counter-narcotics forces with new equipment, including helicopters and surveillance aircraft, as an extension of George W. Bush’s Merida Initiative. That’s on top of the $700 million Congress allocated for 2008 and 2009. Central America has gotten another couple hundred million. Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Venezuela outlined a number of other related initiatives during his recent congressional testimony.

If you ask me, it all seems like doubling down on a failed strategy — a typical example of trying to solve a social and political problem through military and technical means. […]

So are the Obamans smart enough to know better, but trapped by politics and afraid to try a bold new approach? Or do they really believe in the drug war?

You have to be completely oblivious to the world around you to think that the drug war is going to stop the violence. And the same is true about the drug war’s ability to stop the drugs. While Mexico is distracting us from Afghanistan and Colombia, it’s important to note that after decades of fighting, we’re still seeing Why the war on drugs in Colombia may never be won, and eradication efforts in Afghanistan seem almost laughably absurd given the fact that it has produced in recent years significantly more heroin than the entire world demand, so that estimates are that several years worth may be stockpiled.

But here’s the part that really gets me. Prohibitionists will often say that they are motivated by life. There’s was a statement made by Costa, the UN drug czar, last year that really stuck with me.

Some even say that the costs of prohibition far outweigh the benefits (although there is no body count of people who haven’t died thanks to drug control versus those who have been killed in the crossfire).

And there you have it. That’s the people we’re supposed to protect. Not the scared person in their home with men in black busting down the door. Not the embassy personnel, or the teenagers at their birthday party gunned down by cartels. Not any of the folks on the drug war victims page.

No, we’re supposed to protect the unknown people who would have died from drugs if we hadn’t been killing all these other people.

We must assume, despite all evidence, that without the drug war, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people would rush out and die from drugs, who otherwise wouldn’t have. This is absurd on its face. And all evidence that we have points to the fact that expectation of such an outcome is ridiculous.

In fact, there is as much evidence that we would be able to reduce the number who die from drugs if we actually put drugs under a system of real control, instead of the faux control of prohibition. Certainly, we could dramatically cut the number of drug overdoses in currently illicit drugs if dosage and purity were controlled. Better fact-based education and providing help without fear of arrest will save even more lives. An we’ll save some lives in the substitution of marijuana over alcohol.

Let’s save some lives, people.