Drug WarRant

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.

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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.

Candid police voices must be heard in drug debate, by Evan Wood.

Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war, and in many ways this is true of the war on drugs. There remain critical public health areas where the gap between scientific evidence and public policy persists.

But this disparity is most evident in the response to illicit drugs — in Victoria, in Canada and around the world.

For this reason, it is unfortunate that Victoria police Const. David Bratzer was recently ordered not to share his views at a city-sponsored forum on drug policy. As a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Bratzer is well-positioned to describe how the war on drugs has resulted in a number of severe, unintended consequences.

Cannabis and the Christian Science Monitor by Norm Stamper

While the Christian Science Monitor claims not to be an instrument of evangelizing, it does include a daily religious feature and it rejects drug advertising as well as images of smoking or drinking. It should come as no surprise then that in a March 12 editorial the Monitor showered praise on the nation’s drug czar for stepping up efforts in the administration’s holy war against cannabis legalization efforts. The paper’s editorial is heavy on moralizing, light on science.

Got your thinking caps on? — Danny Chapin, who did some guest posting here asking about marijuana addiction, now has a guest post at Morning Donut.

Check it out.

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Off-topic.

As always, should you or any of your IM force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Jim.

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Another open thread.

Militarization of Drug War a Failure, Mexico Rights Watchdog Says

More than three years of using the Mexican military against drug cartels has brought no improvement in public safety, the chairman of the independent National Human Rights Commission

Normalizing the Police State by Allison Kilkenny

Here we have the completion of the perfect police state. Citizens are monitored from cradle to grave. Any signs of anger or rebellion are swiftly squelched with medication or “peace officers.” The schools step in when the state cannot act to monitor and regulate every movement of students’ lives under the banner of “Zero Tolerance.” […]

Sinclair Lewis said, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Marijuana Decriminalization Advances Jacob Sullum at Hit and Run has a rundown.

If you missed it earlier this week, be sure to read the USA Today front-page story: Slowly, states are lessening limits on marijuana

“Politicians are finally catching up with the American public,” Gardinier says.

Most of the changes have come on the West Coast and Northeast, but lawmakers in a few Southern and Central states also are proposing bills, in part because they see marijuana as a potential money-maker, says Gutwillig of the Drug Policy Alliance.

A Generational Moment for Drug Policy Reformers by Stephen C. Webster

It all centers around a man named Henry Walter Wooten, a 54-year-old Texas resident who will likely be spending the rest of his life behind bars. That’s because a jury in Tyler sentenced him to 35 years in jail after he was caught in possession of just over a quarter pound of marijuana. […]

His sentence is so stunningly, terrifyingly unjust, if drug reform advocates do not fly into an uproar over this case, I may just give up all hope of seeing this drug war problem rectified in my lifetime.

Pentagon Shooter Pot Scandal Grows Cliff Kincaid is back to push this issue some more.

Facing a backlash over reports that Bedell was a psychotic pothead, the illegal-drug lobby is accusing anyone who brings up anything negative about “medical marijuana” of engaging in “reefer madness,” a term once given to chronic marijuana use of the kind that ultimately resulted in Bedell’s downward spiral and death in an exchange of gunfire at the Pentagon.

What’s sad is that the Christian Science Monitor went down to Kincaid’s level in this stunningly bad piece: Marijuana legalization? A White House rebuttal, finally

Money Can Grow on Trees — NORML gets its digital ad in Times Square.

Costa’s legacy: Human Rights and the UNODC — excellent piece at Transform on the two faces of UNODC’s Costa.

Instead of having a constructive dialogue with the NGOs representatives present, the Director prompted an audible gasp as he immediately lashed out, angrily accusing half of us of being ‘pro-drug’ (again) and not caring if we killed millions in poor countries. […] Costa is stepping down in May and hopefully a more positive relationship will be possible with his successor. […]

As he prepares to bow out he may well also look back at today’s publication by the UNODC of new a discussion document, ‘Drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice: a human rights perspective – Note by the Executive Director’ , as one legacy for which he can be justifiably proud. It contains a level of sophistication in its analysis that has long been absent from the high level drug policy UN discourse. It is an authoritative document and one of potentially huge importance in the longer term. UN drug control, and international drug policy more generally has been uniquely divorced from much of the mainstream human rights analysis that flows through the very core of the wider UN family. This new document goes some way to correcting this historical anomaly – at least on paper.

Fascinating stuff.

Ideas for Change in America Change.org will officially announce the top 10 ideas on Monday, but “Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana” was number 1 at the closing bell. Curious to see what kind of action comes of that.

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.

I have filed a Petition for Correction under the ONDCP Information Quality Guidelines.

American world indoor sprint favorite Ivory Williams has tested positive for marijuana and ruled ineligible for the world championships, costing the event one of its key match-ups, officials said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) said Williams had tested positive for a metabolite of marijuana at the U.S. indoor championships in February and had been disqualified from all results at the meeting, thus nullifying his chance to compete in the world championships. […]

The 24-year-old former world junior champion ran the fastest 60 meters in the world this season, 6.49 seconds, to win the American indoor title on February 28 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Good thing they caught him. No way you can run 60 meters in under 7 seconds if you’re not stoned. We need sports to be on an even playing field without the performance enhancement of pot. It’s not fair to the non-pot smokers who are stuck in 2nd gear and end up lagging embarrassingly behind.

So remember kids, while it’s true that smoking pot will make you a 14 times gold-medal swimmer, or a world record sprinter, or a gold-medalist snowboarder, if you want to compete professionally, do it without the performance enhancements.

Update:

I wrote to the US Anti-Doping Agency…

Dear Erin,

I write for DrugWarRant.com, an online news and analysis site, and I was wondering if you could help my readers understand the recent suspension of Ivory Williams. As far as I can tell, Mr. Williams is a world-class sprinter who tested positive for cannabinoids.

I think it’s fair to say that most of my readers support enforcing rules against the use of performance-enhancing drugs by professional athletes. Can you explain how cannabinoids function as performance enhancers? Do they make a sprinter go faster, or add to muscle development, or perhaps provide some kind of mental advantage?

Do cannabinoids provide a greater advantage than, say, tobacco or alcohol? And are tobacco or alcohol prohibited performance-enhancing drugs? (According to Globaldro, it appears they are not.)

I appreciate your response.

Pete Guither, editor
Drug WarRant.com

Her response:

Hi Pete,
Thanks for getting in touch. Marijuana is prohibited in-competition (during an actual event).

I will refer you to the criteria that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) sets out in this regard in the World Anti-Doping Code, to which the U.S. is a signatory. This is below. Should be helpful.

Thanks.

Erin

Criteria for Including Substances and Methods on the Prohibited List: WADA shall consider the following criteria in deciding whether to include a substance or method on the Prohibited List. A substance or method shall be considered for inclusion on the Prohibited List if WADA determines that the substance or method meets any two of the following three criteria:

• Medical or other scientific evidence, pharmacological effect or experience that the substance or method, alone or in combination with other substances or methods, has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance;
• Medical or other scientific evidence, pharmacological effect or experience that the Use of the substance or method represents an actual or potential health risk to the Athlete;
• WADA’s determination that the Use of the substance or method violates the spirit of sport described in the Introduction to the Code.

Hmmm… So it has to meet 2 of the 3 to be considered for the prohibited list. I guess it must be a performance enhancer!

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) traveling museum exhibit, Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause, is coming to the Big Easy

Hasn’t New Orleans suffered enough?

I’ve followed this pathetic exhibit since 2003 in Dallas, and then to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles…, and even had my own museum protest and counter website

Well, I guess they’ve pulled it out of mothballs and are touring it again.

Joe Cook (General Manager FOX 8 WVUE), Bill Alden (President, DEA Educational Foundation), Michele M. Leonhart (Acting Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration) Fran Harding (Director, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention), Dr Wilson Compton (Deputy Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse), Eileen Sweeney (Head of Motorola Foundation), Jim Mears (VP of Motorola), Jim Bernazzani (President, The Youth Rescue Initiative)

Wow. Sure took a lot a folks to cut a small ribbon on an old exhibit. I notice two of them are from Motorola. Now why does Motorola ring a bell? Oh, that’s right — they’re the ones who hired former DEA head Karen P. Tandy.