Drug WarRant

So Governor Quinn has decided to release 1,000 nonviolent prisoners in the State of Illinois.

The Chicago Sun-Times, in an editorial, slammed him… but not for releasing the prisoners.

Quinn was right to take the first long-overdue step in Illinois to reduce the state’s massive prison population. Thousands of inmates are no more than drug addicts who could be better rehabilitated in their communities, saving the state millions of dollars.

But he was wrong to slip his announcement into the bottom of a press release late on a Friday afternoon, as the sun was setting and reporters were calling it a day — that twilight time in the weekly news cycle when politicians try to bury their worst potential headlines.

On the contrary, Quinn’s decision to begin releasing some nonviolent offenders is nothing he needs to soft-peddle…

Refreshing.

I’m not even sure what I think of this.

MADD announces an exclusive license agreement with Hill Street Marketing Inc. to produce a line of alcohol-free beverages, MADD Virgin Drinks, which will provide American consumers with a delicious and socially responsible alternative to alcoholic beverages.

Part of me celebrates the option (I’m all for choice), assuming that MADD isn’t about eliminating choice. And they say…

MADD is not against responsible drinking by those 21 and older.

… although that doesn’t really match up with much of MADD’s normal rhetoric.

Hey, at least with the word MADD printed huge on each bottle, there’s little chance of picking the wrong one by accident.

LEAP member and active drug policy reformer James P. Gray (a Superior Court Judge and author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed: A Judicial Indictment Of War On Drugs), has an interesting OpEd.

He’s trying to put together a list of common goals that prohibitionists and reformers should have to show that prohibition is not the solution to achieving these goals. I think they’re pretty good, although I might quibble about the wording here and there (my comments are italicized in brackets).

So, with the understanding that we are all on the same side of this issue, namely we all want to reduce drug abuse and all of the harm and misery that accompanies it, I have made a list of the top 10 goals that I think we are trying to accomplish in this area, in order of importance. See if you agree. They are:

1. Reduce the exposure of drugs to and usage of drugs by children; [Ah, but it does depend on how you define “children” and “exposure of drugs.” Also, I would think that part of it would be reducing exposure of children to illicit business.]
2. Stop or materially reduce the violence that accompanies the manufacture and distribution of drugs, especially to police officers and innocent by-standers;
3. Stop or materially reduce the corruption of public officials, individual people and companies, and especially children that accompanies the manufacture and distribution of drugs;
4. Stop or materially reduce crime both by people trying to get money to purchase drugs and by those under the influence of drugs;
5. Stop or materially reduce the flow of drugs into our country; [ I would add the word “illicit” because we always need to legally import drugs]
6. Reduce health risks to people who use drugs;
7. Maintain and reaffirm our civil liberties;
8. Reduce the number of people we must put into our jails and prisons; [perhaps expand that to include all those caught within the prison industry, including those on probation/parole.]
9. Stop or materially reduce the flow of guns out of our country and into countries south of our border; [I think this is a separate, and distracting issue.]
10. Increase respect for our laws and institutions.

You might want to replace one of these goals with another, or readjust the order, but I anticipate that most people would basically agree with those top 10 goals. Please give it some thought.

Definitely worth thinking about.

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.