Drug WarRant

It’s been somewhat good news that Senator Leahy blocked a favorable State Department report on Mexico’s human rights record.

Leahy’s action delays the release of $100 million in U.S. aid meant to help Mexico combat drug traffickers. The Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion, three-year package, requires Congress to withhold some of the funding unless the State Department reports that Mexico is not violating human rights while prosecuting the drug war, the Post reported.

But will it do any good? Unlikely.

But objections by Leahy and others may have limited impact. Because the law requires only that the report be submitted, the State Department could spend the conditional money even if lawmakers object to its findings.

The Bolivian government has successfully commenced the formal process for amending the UN’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) to eliminate the provision that would require all countries to prohibit coca leaf chewing within 25 years (for Bolivia, that was 2001).
Interesting amendment process. If no country objects within 18 months, then the amendment passes (a nice, if time consuming, way to do it – countries need not get on the record to approve it). Countries most likely to object: United States and Sweden. If that happens, then there’s a conference to consider it.
The proposal has a very nice argument as to why this provision should be removed from the Single Convention.

In a sane society, an increase in arrests would be seen as a sign of failure.
We treat it like scoring points in a basketball game and give out bonuses.

That’s Kevin Drum in Mother Jones: California’s Prison Disaster.
A nice little piece about the prison mess

A combination of dumb drug laws, dysfunctional parole policies, “three strikes” laws passed by initiative, an endless procession of tougher-than-thou politicians, and a famously thuggish and politically powerful prison guards union has gotten California into this mess.

But, while Kevin is friends with Mark Kleiman, he really needs to stop going to Mark every time he talks about drugs. Particularly now, with his new book coming out, Kleiman talks about nothing but Project HOPE when it comes to drug policy, even when it’s only of partial relevance. California is not going to solve its prison explosion by merely instituting a parole system with drug testing, position monitoring, and “swift but mild” prison sanctions. They’re going to have to imprison fewer people in the first place, and some of those they imprison will have to be for shorter sentences.

Where do they get these people?
Take the case of Bradley Schreiber. He “served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and is now president of Homeland Security Solutions.”
His company (which may be just him and Steven Grossman for all I know) issued a Press Release touting Schreiber’s drug war advice, particularly as it relates to Mexico. The following are not misquotes by press, but rather actual quotes written by him for his own press release…
1.

“Drug cartels are incredibly nimble creatures – you cut the head off one and another will just pop up.”

I do not think that word means what you think it means… Nimble? Not very nimble if you cut off their head. “Replaceable,” perhaps, or “ubiquitous.” Maybe even “regenerative,” depending on the context. But definitely not “nimble” in that tortured metaphor.
2.

Schreiber said that “the best way to stop them is to stop the flow of money. If we take away the cash, the drugs are worth nothing. The cartels become impudent.”

“If we take away the cash, the drugs are worth nothing.” No, the drugs are still valuable, you’ve just taken cash away from the cartels…. but then… Shreiber says that without cash the “cartels become impudent.” “Impudent”? “Impudent” is a cocky boldness — certainly not what you’d think Shreiber is trying to effect by taking away their cash. Perhaps he means “impotent,” kind of like his writing and ideas.
So, now that we’ve explored his inability to master the English language and the metaphor, what about Shreiber’s actual views on the drug war?
After all, in his press release he “contends that the current U.S. and Mexican approach to fighting the cartels will fail”
But Bradley’s got the answer. For that, we turn to Defeating the drug cartels: A broader approach by Bradley C. Schreiber in Homeland Security Today, where he supposedly “outlines steps that must be taken to ensure success.”
Wow. What are those steps that will ensure success where current efforts guarantee failure?

1. Stop cash smuggling. Gee, I wonder why nobody thought of that? We’ve already got cops in southern states only stopping southbound cars in the hopes of nabbing some cash (which is worth more to them than the drugs).
2. Increase interdiction efforts in Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific areas. Interdiction? Yeah, that works. If you want to get about 10% of what goes through and not hurt the cartels at all.
3. Increase interdiction and law enforcement to stop drugs traveling to Europe through Africa. Sure, because we have the resources to patrol every mile of border of every country in the entire world. Anywhere we put interdiction resources, the cartels merely go around.
4. Inspect more shipping containers. Isn’t this more interdiction? Isn’t supply side what we’ve been doing that doesn’t really accomplish anything?
5. Pass the Colombian Free Trade agreement with Colombia, so the farmers won’t grow coca any more.

Bradley Schreiber concludes:

These are just a few of the steps that are required to succeed in our fight against the drug cartels that threaten Mexican and US national security. We can win this war once and for all, but only if we think more broadly and act more widely.

The nimble and impudent cartels are laughing all the way to the bank.

I don’t watch Bill O’Reilly, for my own sanity, but Reddit had a link to this video from last night’s show — his Cultural Warriors segment. He was talking about Amsterdam.

Some Americans (secular progressives) want to turn the USA into a permissive culture like western Europe. That’s what’s driving the drug legalization deal, gay and plural marriage, light sentences for convicted criminals….

He went on to talk about the evils of Amsterdam and how the mayor recently talked about the problems of organized crime, the existence of which, in O’Reilly’s mind, was due to the legalization of marijuana and prostitution — which, of course, is patently absurd. Even the two Fox News contributors on the show weren’t buying it completely.
At one point, one of them asked:

Why have so many more people in the USA, where marijuana is illegal, tried it? 40% of people in the USA compared to 22.6%…
OREILLY (interrupting): The way they use statistics in the Netherlands is different, plus it’s a much smaller country.

I stand in awe of his reasoning skills.

[Guest post by Russ Belville]
Marijuana legalization is the hottest topic in the media these days.
MSNBC, CNBC,
CNN,
FOX,
NatGeo, and CBS News have presented special features on marijuana business, medical marijuana, and the marijuana legalization movement.
Google Trends is showing double the interest in searches and news
hits for the term “marijuana legalization”.
Showtime’s hit series Weeds, about a suburban mom turned pot dealer, is entering its fifth season. Everywhere
you look, corporate media are happy to profit from America’s most popular herb.
Unless you want to address marijuana’s illegality and the lives that are shattered by the effects of marijuana prohibition. In that case, the corporate media cannot have anything to do with you, even if you want to pay to broadcast the message of ending adult marijuana prohibition…

Recently I was reading an opinion piece by an academic who, after demolishing the government’s position on marijuana, felt the need to admonish drug policy reformers for not fulfilling our obligation to inform people that marijuana is not harmless.
First, that’s not our job. And to a large extent, it’s irrelevant. Marijuana could be deadly dangerous and legalization would still be the answer, if prohibition, like now, didn’t actually exert a positive effect on any drug dangers and additionally had massively destructive side-effects.
The old drug czar used to love to throw that “harmless” word around, as if, assuming he could find some evidence that it was not completely harmless, that destroyed the arguments of legalizers.
But let’s assume it matters. What does the word mean?

1. free from harm, liability, or loss
2. lacking capacity or intent to injure

Clearly, the word has no meaning when applied to … anything, unless referring to it in a particular context.
For example, you may think that water is harmless, and it is, if you’re drinking a glass. However, it is clearly possible to fatally overdose on water, and floods kill people all the time.
Marijuana, if used responsibly, is harmless. If you take a ton of it and drop it from a helicopter on someone’s head, it’s not.
So, if you’re going to talk about whether a substance as a whole is “harmless” (since none can be), you really can only logically be talking “harmless” as a relative term compared to other acceptable risk substances (hence the “marijuana is safer” campaigns).
So let’s take a look at some regularly accepted things in society (legal things) where marijuana is “more harmless” in comparison…
Easy ones…

• Tobacco
• Alcohol

…but there’s lots more:

• Eggs
• Milk
• Construction Work
• Taking a vacation
• Bridges
• Stairs

Contractor: So, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, I see here that you’re asking us to put stairs in between the first and second floor in your new house. Well, we can do that, of course, but I do feel obligated to warn you that stairs aren’t harmless.

• Buckets
• Electric Blankets
• Fishing
• Crossing the Street
• A cookie

Well, you get the idea.
When prohibitionists play the “harmless” game, they’re trying to distract people from the real argument — the harmfulness of prohibition.

“bullet” He just hasn’t been listening.

“No one has told us what alternative we have,” said [Mexican] Interior Minister Fernando G÷mez Mont, gently slapping his palm on a table during an interview. “We are committed to enduring this wave of violence. We are strengthening our ability to protect the innocent victims of this process, which is the most important thing. We will not look the other way.”

“bullet” Failure Squared: War on Drugs Meets the War on Terror

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke is congratulating himself for ending the Bush administration’s expensive and ineffective opium poppy eradication program. Trouble is, he’s decided to replace eradication with interdiction.

“bullet” Drugs are evil. We should legalise them now by Antonia Senior, Times Online.

By legalising, we would have a fighting chance of wresting the market from the hands of the drug barons: the ones who ruin lives and distort global politics and are untouched by our laughable efforts to police them. They are the only winners in the current futile war.

“bullet” Readers respond to debate over legalizing marijuana

BILL: Dave, our column last week on legalizing pot got us more e-mail response than any in the last two years.
DR. DAVE: Mostly for or against legalization?
BILL: Mostly for. What impressed me was the quality of the pro arguments.

“Dr. Dave” needs some educating…

DR.DAVE: [I] invite readers who disagree to send in their best arguments about why legalizing marijuana won‰t cause an even greater youth substance abuse epidemic than we Americans are suffering right now.

Sounds like a challenge.
“bullet” Someone else who needs educating: Harden: Legalizing marijuana would be a recipe for disaster

Legalization of marijuana could lead to increased hospitalizations, violence, crime and a drop in work force productivity with increased employee absenteeism and unemployment. It is a recipe for disaster fraught with a level of risk that is irresponsible.
[Harden is the interim police chief of Modesto.]

“bullet” 19 shot in drug war in Baltimore

When a 5 year old is shot in the middle afternoon by a stray bullet while playing in street where is the outrage from drug war critics? When 12 are shot, many of them innocent, who’s condemning the drug war for the violence?

Good question.
“bullet” Marijuana’s Impact on Brain Function “Minimal,” New Study Says and Marijuana Use Associated With a ‹Significantly Reduced RiskŠ of Head and Neck Cancers Ö Will The Mainstream Media Care?
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

This article by Matthew Engel in yesterday’s Financial Times is a must-read. Really great stuff all around.

For decades many academics and professionals have regarded the current blanket prohibition on recreational drugs (though not alcohol or tobacco) as absurd, counter-productive and destructive. But there has never been any political imperative for change, and a thousand reasons to do nothing. […]
But 2009 has seen a change: among the academics and professionals who study this issue, from Carlisle Racecourse to the think-tanks of Washington, there is growing sense that reform is possible and increasingly urgent. The argument is not that drug use is A Good Thing. It is that the collateral damage caused by the so-called war on drugs has now reached catastrophic proportions. And even some politicians have started to think this might be worth discussing.

It’s an extremely comprehensive article, addressing the failures in Mexico and elsewhere around the world, and noting that there is finally some potential for change in the United States – an important precursor for reform for the rest of the world, given historical U.S. international pressure.
The article also talks about the history of drug prohibition (and there’s a time-line, too), including this delightful bit of snark regarding the way British laws are established.

In Britain, there is something close to despair among academics about the political process. Drugs are classified A, B and C, allegedly according to the degree of harm. But the theory ignores the immutable constitutional provision that laws are subject to the approval of the editor of the Daily Mail.

He also gives a little dig at the pro-prohibitionists here:

It is hard to find coherent advocates on the other side of the argument. On the web, I came across Drug Watch International, based in Omaha, promising ‹current information á to counter drug advocacy propagandaŠ. The lead item on its site dates from 2002.

Engel really gets it. He talks about how UNODC’s Costa says that “drugs are, and must remain, controlledŠ and responds:

Of course drugs need to be controlled, just as alcohol, tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, food additives and indeed UN bureaucrats with massive budgets need to be controlled. But the whole point is that illicit drugs are not controlled. The international pretence of prohibition sees to that. […]
… the case for legalisation is not about allowing baby-boom couples to enjoy a joint after a dinner party without drawing the curtains or being obliged to visit a dodgy bloke called Dave. Decriminalisation or even legalising cannabis on its own would achieve little. Something more radical is required. The crucial issue concerns the supply chain: the way prohibition has enriched and empowered gangsters, corrupt officials and indeed wholly corrupt narco-states across the planet. It was a point made eloquently by the Russian economist Lev Timofeev, when interviewed by Misha Glenny for his book about global organised crime, McMafia. ‹Prohibiting a market does not mean destroying it,Š Timofeev said. What it means is placing a ‹dynamically developing market under the total control of criminal corporationsŠ. He called the present situation a threat to world civilisation, which international public opinion had failed to grasp.
Proper reform means legitimising production and supply, precisely so it can be controlled.

Outstanding article.