Drug WarRant

President Uribe says the drug war isn’t working because we haven’t gone after the consumer enough.

We believe that instead of advocating for the legalization of drugs, we must reflect on the need to make consumption illegal. There is no coherence between the severity facing production and trafficking and the permissiveness of consumption. This has lead to murderous micro-trafficking in cities, to encouraging consumption by adolescents and youth and to involving children in the criminal enterprise. We are advancing in the constitutional process to make consumption illegal

Yeah, that’ll work. Um, President Uribe? It’s prohibition that causes all those problems. [Via Eric Sterling]

Hey, look! Marijuana Policy Project is offering a $10,000 challenge. No way in hell you’ll be able to collect, though. You’d have to prove that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana.

Oops.

In a Sept. 20 story about drug trafficking in Puerto Rico, The Associated Press… reported erroneously that 1,430 metric tons of cocaine reached the island last year… only 5.5 metric tons of cocaine were documented moving into Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.

Only off by a factor of 260.

Coverage of the Drug Policy Conference in El Paso this past week:

• UTEP drug conference: New cartel methods widen drug war’s toll by Diana Washington Valdez, El Paso Times
• Forum panelists critical of status quo in Drug War by Elizabeth Ruiz, Newspaper Tree
• Reporting the Drug War by Sito Negron, Newspaper Tree (9/21)
• Juarez forum provides hope in ‘war on drugs’ by Angela Kocherga, KVUE
• Are drugs “intrinsically evil”? Panelists debate the cost and consequence of exporting the Drug Warby Elizabeth Ruiz, Newspaper Tree
• War on Drugs conference: Legalize marijuana, participants say by Ramon Bracamontes, El Paso Times
• Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz: U.S. drug policies need to change by Ramon Bracamontes, El Paso Times
• Debate over Legalizing Drugs by Maggie Lineback, Fox News
• An Open and Honest Debate About Drug Policy in El Paso by Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Cato @ Liberty.
• Corruption, ‘cartel’ violence rampant in Mexico as drug policy debated in El Paso by Scott Henson, Grits for Breakfast

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.

Here’s another milestone of sorts.

Stiletto Stoners by Yael Kohen:

They’ve got killer careers and enviable social lives. They’re also major potheads. Why are so many smart, successful women lighting up in their off-hours?

And it’s in… Marie Claire magazine.

As a friend wrote me today

I’ve been reading Glamour, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Vogue and every other fashion magazine for like 10 years and I’ve never seen an article like this – it blew my mind! It’s about how successful career women like to relax with a joint instead of drinking sometimes. No hysteria, no lies, and even the obligatory prohibitionist comment at the end was made fair through parentheticals. Totally unexpected to see in the type of magazines where the most political commentary is usually on Michelle Obama’s arms. I think if we’ve reached the fashion magazine crowd, we’ve reached just about everyone…

Yep. It’s a different world.

Those of us involved in drug policy knew this all along. I talked about it back in 2003 just after I started blogging.

I, and others in the drug policy reform movement, noted that the government has used the drug war as an excuse to increase police powers beyond what would otherwise have been considered Constitutionally acceptable.

After 911, the government capitalized on that event to claim that it needed to expand its power even further to go after terrorists (explaining that it was just a logical next step from what they already had available to go after drug traffickers, so we shouldn’t worry our frightened little heads over it).

We knew that these powers would be turned right back on our own citizens to ratchet up the war on drugs in a continuing attempted cycle of increased police powers.

That’s why this report by Ryan Grim of today’s hearings on the PATRIOT Act, conducted by Senator Russ Feingold, come as little surprise.

In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people’s homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn’t be tipped off that they’re under investigation.

Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 “sneak-and-peek” requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

If you’ve got time, this is just under 5 minutes and worth watching. Feingold does an excellent job. And the DOJ official simply admits that the PATRIOT Act provisions are being used primarily for the drug war.

Update: Al Franken reads the 4th Amendment to Justice Department Official. Good for him.

Boy, the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Department has reached a new milestone when it comes to marijuana busts. They shut down hydroponic marijuana operations, hitting two houses and charging three men with engaging in organized criminal activity.

Their haul? One plant. Yep, that’s it in the picture.

Ah, but this is no ordinary plant.

The dried leaves produce a high dollar drug. “Street value would be around $6,000 an ounce,” explained [Sheriff Thomas] Kerss, who also invited in the DEA and Texas Rangers into the investigation.

$6,000 an ounce for dried leaves! Man, that’s some plant. That’s over $200 a gram. No wonder there was only one plant.

That Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office sure is on top of things, aren’t they?

Via ReasonTV

This one really set off my B.S. meter: State officials hoping to shut off drug pipeline by putting in cameras.
Huh?

Illinois officials are hoping to shut off the drug pipeline between Chicago and Mexico with a few snapshots.

Illinois State Police officials, on behalf of 13 states to the south and west of Illinois, are asking for federal stimulus money to buy hundreds of special cameras that would be placed on interstates known as frequent routes for drug-runners.

The projected cost is listed at $9.9 million.

I don’t get it.

The cameras, 242 in all, would be able to record license plate numbers. That information would then be shared with other states involved in the proposal.

Most of the cameras would be mounted, but some would be placed on mobile vehicles traveling up and down interstates 55 and 80 in Illinois, as well as a handful of other cross-country routes between Illinois and Texas.

And what’s the point?

Chicago is at the heart of the proposal because it is a top destination for drugs flowing into the nation from Mexico, said Kurt Schmid, who leads the Chicago office of White House Office of Drug Control Policy, specializing in drug trafficking.

“Chicago is a major major transit point,” said Schmid.

Similarly, the same couriers who bring drugs to Chicago often return along the same routes with large sums of money or guns, Schmid said. The cameras could be used in those instances, too.

Um, OK, let me get this straight. You have a whole bunch of cameras capturing thousands of license plates traveling on a heavily used set of expressways. And you’re going to catch drug trafficking… how?

During the summer, I travel to Chicago on I-55 every week, so I suppose the cameras might find that interesting, along with hundreds of salespeople, or admissions counselors, or customer service representatives, or students going home for the weekend, or…

How is the information from these cameras going to be stored and analyzed?

How is this anything but a massive attempt at comprehensive data collection on the movement of American citizens (under the completely unexplained guise of shutting down drug trafficking)?

I have a pretty rich fantasy life, and some of my daydreams involve finding ways to fix the drug war. One of the simplest, and yet intellectually rewarding, is imagining having the opportunity to sit down and have an extended conversation with someone about the drug war, over dinner.

If you could do that, who would be your dinner partner? Remember, in this fantasy, it could be anyone. They’d agree to have dinner and discussion with you, but they wouldn’t be required to stay, so if you’re interested in just abusing them, it’s unlikely the evening will last long.

In comments, let us know what approach you’d take in talking with them about drug policy.

[polldaddy poll=2023235]

Update: Remember, this is a fantasy, not real life. You don’t necessarily need to change the world with this dinner. It may just be a chance to match wits, get something off your chest, or to see what makes them tick.

It’s one of the more pathetic efforts I’ve seen by UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa. In today’s Guardian (The Observer), check out this headline and opening paragraph:

How many lives would have been lost if we didn’t have controls on drugs?

There is a growing chorus, not least in the pages of the Observer, calling for an end to drug control. The arguments are by now well known: too many people are going to jail and not to treatment. Eradicating the supply of illicit drugs is meaningless without reducing demand. Drug control has spawned a massive criminal black market. 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).

He knows our extremely legitimate and powerful argument (that prohibition is actually an absence of control) and is trying to turn it on its head by claiming that we’ve been controlling drugs all along, and that legalization is calling for “an end to drug control.” He also claims that whatever we’ve been doing all along has been saving lives (lots of them), but offers no evidence at all to support that.

His attempts to own the word “control” go to ridiculous lengths.

Drugs are controlled (not prohibited) because they are dangerous.

I beg your pardon? Drugs aren’t prohibited? Since when? Where? You can’t just waive a magic wand and say that since you don’t like the word “prohibited” you declare it to mean something else.

“Drugs… are dangerous.” Which ones? Compared to what?

“…because they are dangerous.” Right. That’s fine if you want to ignore, like, history and stuff.

Here was another good one in his attempt to counter legalizers:

First, drugs should be regarded as a health issue.

Addiction is an illness, not a lifestyle, and should be treated as such.

Um, no. Drug abuse should be regarded as a health issue, not “drugs.” Calling “drugs” a health issue is like calling “shoes” a health issue.

All in all, a particularly ridiculous OpEd.

There’s an amazing conference going on in El Paso, Texas this week, evaluating 40 years of the drug war, with an impressive list of speakers.

However, two of the speakers pulled out at the last minute: Drug Czar Kerlikowske and Border Czar Alan Bersin.

UTEP Assistant Professor Tony Payan, an authority on the two-year conflict between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels, said the absence of Obama’s two top advisors suggests that the young administration is still uncertain about its own stand on the nation’s decades-old drug policy.

El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles offered this scathing assessment:

“I don’t know why you’re all so surprised about the federal government’s unwillingness to address this because, quite frankly, they’ve ignored the problem for years, and that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now.

“As a matter of fact, the only reason that we’ve got national attention is because it’s on the backs of the dead people in Juarez.”

A big thanks to Tom and Tom (you know who you are), two wonderful people who probably don’t know each other, but who are always on the lookout for interesting and/or informative drug war news and send it my way.

The Day the SWAT Team Came Crashing Through My Door by Cheye M. Calvo.

…the wagons have circled in Upper Marlboro. The response is textbook: Law enforcement stands its ground and concedes no wrongdoing — and elected officials burrow their heads in the sand.

Just go and read it.

Ending the ‘War on Drugs’ by Misha Glenny in the New York Times

I have spoken to countless politicians who agree in private that, as one of them put it, “in 100 years we may look back and ask what on earth were we doing by prohibiting narcotics?” But they remain hesitant to articulate this in public for fear of the opprobrium it will bring.

Supporters of legalization have all but won the moral and intellectual debate, but they now face the most difficult argument of all — the political one. That is unlikely to be won in Washington, where prohibition continues to enjoy powerful support. But we are seeing an erosion of the drug-war consensus in countries like Argentina, Mexico, Portugal and Switzerland — where drugs either have been decriminalized or de facto legalized.

Not high on my must-see-TV list… Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) is airing a special TV program on September 24 (webcast or C-band) titled Countering the Drug Culture. Hmm, should I watch that, or Weeds?

Venezuela considers shooting down drug planes

President Hugo Chavez said Thursday he’s mulling the possibility of allowing Venezuela’s air force to shoot down suspected drug planes, but he is not convinced it’s a good idea.

“We are studying it. This is something tough. There are countries that have it: authorization to shoot down planes,” Chavez said. “I don’t like the idea, but I’m thinking about it.”

Never forget: Veronica and Charity Bowers

Drug legalisation is no solution – it’s a disaster waiting to happen by Neil McKeganey in The Guardian.

This is a particularly stupid OpEd by a “professor of drug misuse research at the University of Glasgow.” As several commenters noted, this is trash that is expected in the Daily Mail, not the Guardian.

No Matter How Bad You Think the Drug War Is, It’s Worse by Scott Morgan

Just imagine what would happen if the average American actually came to grasp the full breadth of abject unfairness that characterizes the application of our drug laws in every conceivable circumstance. The totality of injustice in the war on drugs is its own galaxy. Even as someone who actively tries to keep track of it, I’m routinely stunned by the magnitude of systemic corruption, callousness and incompetence that festers in every corner of the massive drug war juggernaut.

As advocates for change, we must accept that we can never teach everyone among us to truly understand and appreciate the full spectrum of cruelty and perversion that defines the war on drugs. Fortunately we don’t have to….

Odd moment in news gathering… I was browsing through my news reader earlier this week and was struck by this headline: “University Allows Freshman Pot Patients to Live.”

Turns out the title had been truncated and the word “Off-Campus” had been left off the end. Much different meaning.

This ABCnews article has a nice quote from Tom Angell in it. But I was also taken with the stock image they used to illustrate the article.

Does anybody else find it odd? First of all, drugs (marijuana?) these days in a quart size zip-lock baggie? Second, shouldn’t the guy with his face on the car hood be young and black? Third, the officer’s expression is very… Joe Friday.

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.