Drug WarRant

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The United States and Mexico are “winning” an often brutal war against drug cartels that operate across the border separating the two countries, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.

“We are not only fighting this fight, but we are winning it,” Napolitano, a former border state governor, said in prepared remarks to the Southwest Border Task Force gathered in the border city of El Paso, Texas. […]

Warning that further violence was likely, she offered support for the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon despite allegations of military human rights abuses.

“The fighting has resulted in more than 12,000 deaths in Mexico, and there will, no doubt be more,” Napolitano warned.

Although 75 minutes is way too short for this panel at the progressive netroots on Friday, it definitely looks interesting. Ryan Brim, Radley Balko, Mark Kleiman, and LEAP’s David Bratzer. I’d love to get a report on it from anyone attending.

This is really a follow-up to the previous post, and I already added the link as an update there, but I can’t resist commenting on these points, reported quite well from El Paso by Sito Negron at Newspaper Tree.

Talk about pathetic…

When asked whether there was a difference between hard drugs like cocaine and marijuana he said it was a question for the attorney general, and when pressed on the question he said “I’d wait and ask the attorney, I’ve had only one meeting with the attorney general so far and I’m pretty new in my tenure so I think I’d just defer until we go further down the road.”

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. Wow.

Then, about medical marijuana (remember, this is the guy who very recently said “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.” Now:

As for medical marijuana, he said: “I think the medical marijuana, we’re reserving that question for the medical community. The decision on whether marijuana actually has a medicinal benefit within its chemical compound is a question we’re going to let science answer.”

Uh huh.

Finally, and here’s a real kicker, he’s asked about alcohol prohibition.

Finally, he was asked about whether the end of Prohibition reduced violence in Chicago, and whether that was a possible model for legalizing marijuana.

“I’m not sure I’d liken what we’re talking about to Prohibition, but I don’t think anybody thought after Prohibition was lifted crime ended as a result,” Kerlikowske said.

Classic nirvana fallacy. Of course, crime didn’t end. But it was dramatically reduced, and the structures for organized crime related to the black market of alcohol were weakened fatally. That’s the exact same situation that we face with prohibition of drugs.

OK, Kerlikowske is a tool, and he’s making the office look silly. But there’s something else happening. Everywhere he goes, he’s being asked the legalization question. And now he’s being asked the Chicago prohibition question. The press is waking up, or becoming emboldened, or something.

Additionally, note in Negron’s article…

But Kerlikowske, who by the rules governing his office cannot say anything else — “The statute says we have to absolutely resist (legalization” — said that the administration is working on a “different approach” to the Drug War.

More and more, the Drug Czar’s statements are prefaced with the disclaimer that what he has to say does not include all the options. (And by the way, I take full credit for that. It’s taken a couple of years to catch on, but my article is having an effect.)

This is fabulous stuff. People are commenting on what the Drug Czar has to say, but no longer accepting it. Kaptinemo in comments may have it right:

I keep thinking that I’m witnessing the ‘end of days’ when it comes to the ONDCP. And Mr. Kerlikowske has been chosen (and probably knows that he has) to preside over its’ dissolution.

In the Christian Science Monitor former Colombian Senator and Defense Minister Rafael Pardo and Professor Juan Gabriel Tokatlian (from Argentina) call for a timeout.

Before Washington ramps up yet another losing war on drugs, it should take a clear-eyed look at how its current strategies are affecting the supply and demand of drugs. Congressman Eliot Engel (D) of New York has introduced a bill to do just that.

Washington would be wise to back Congressman Engel’s initiative because there has not been a thorough, frank evaluation of the fight against drugs in decades. The drug czar office’s annual report is not enough. Recommendations by an independent commission, however, could generate the consensus and strategy we sorely need.

A commission. What a great idea. If only Nixon had asked for a commission to study the issue before ramping up the war on drugs way back then… Oh, right.

It’s a good recommendation, even though Engel doesn’t have the guts to let the commission form honestly.

Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has not been introduced to support the legalization of illegal drugs. That is not something that I would like to see, nor is it my intent to have the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission come to that conclusion.

In El Paso

“Some think legalization will reduce the violence,” Kerlikowske said. “It will not. If drugs were to become legal, I doubt very seriously that (the criminals) would take up jobs at Microsoft or Intel. Criminals are not going to change.”

Such a bizarrely ignorant world-view. It requires:

1. A finite and unchanging number of “criminals” world-wide – that everybody is specifically either a criminal or non-criminal for life and that can’t change, and that no enticements could turn a non-criminal into a criminal.
2. That criminals would have the same power to bribe officials (and entire countries), and buy guns if all their money supply was cut off, and
3. That they would still want to kill people on the border even if they had nothing to smuggle across.

This guy got a Master’s Degree? Somebody better talk to the Board of Trustees at University of South Florida.

Update: Lots more from Kerlikowske here. Some really amazing stuff.

The North American Leaders Summit concluded today. Naturally, it would seem that the drug war in Mexico would be a major item of discussion.

If it was, solutions were not part of the conversation. Obama’s remarks were remarkably lacking in substance — keep sending the money, keep up the “police action,” oh, and say bad things about the cartels to deflect concerns about human rights abuses.

Regarding the U.S.-Mexico agenda, Obama stressed his support for the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative – aimed at bolstering the battle against drugs in Mexico and Central America – and for Calderon’s efforts on that score, even though human rights groups have criticized the Mexican president’s militarized approach to the problem.

“I have great confidence in President Calderon’s administration applying the law enforcement techniques that are necessary to curb the power of the cartels, but doing so in a way that’s consistent with human rights,” Obama said in response to a reporter’s question.

“The biggest, by far, violators of human rights right now are the cartels themselves that are kidnapping people and extorting people and encouraging corruption in these regions,” he added.

Really? That’s what you’ve got? First of all, who needs to be told that the cartels are bad people?* I don’t really think that there’s a cartel fan club in town.

The point isn’t the dastardly nature of the cartels. The point is coming up with policy that actually improves things rather than making things worse.

And it’s clear that nothing resembling good policy showed up at the summit.

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* When I first read the linked article about Los Zetas, I thought they had mistakenly put a picture of a Star Wars convention with the article. Then I blew up the picture and looked closer and it scared the crap out of me.

Mark Kleiman and Jon Caulkins get it — that any of the solutions the U.S. comes up with regarding the business of poppies in Afghanistan are doomed to failure.

See

• Careful what you wish for, and
• Targeting the Taliban’s Drug Dealers

As usual, it’s a good analysis of what won’t work, and why, but fails to note the really big picture, and ignores the one option that lacks the failure characteristics of all the others.

The really big picture is that the combination of demand and the black market guarantees there will be massive illicit profits going to somebody. The option left out, as usual, is regulation (legalization) in some form.

Yes, I know that legalization is not a politically feasible option currently, but it’s leaving it out of the discussion that I find intellectually objectionable. It simply insures that the only option that has a chance of success will never get discussed.

I haven’t talked much, if any, about Michael Jackson’s death. Now they’re reporting that he died of an overdose of Propofol. That’s a drug that’s used for general anesthesia, and is rarely abused recreationally — the DEA hasn’t even bothered to schedule it.

And yet our drug czar has been salivating over the opportunity to make Michael Jackson the poster child for prescription drug abuse (calling his death a wake-up call).

First of all, the notion that Michael Jackson, in life or death, ever was a representative sample of anything, is absurd.

And of course, the results of such overzealous campaigning are likely to be two-fold.

1. Emboldening the DEA to continue to act as if they have medical training and the right to determine what doctors prescribe (and arrest them if they believe differently).
2. Making doctors afraid to prescribe the required medicine to really help the sick.

If there is prescription drug abuse, then fine, let’s deal with it. But just looking for opportunities to propagandize regardless of relevance — that’s just irresponsible.

Feel free to keep playing in comments on the new site to get used to them. I’ve updated the “About” page (see far upper left of this page) to include what html is allowed in comments and how to use it. If you want an avatar, you can go to gravatars and upload the image you’d like and associate it with the email address you use to log in here.

I love the commenting features (and especially the fact that the dreaded 403 Forbidden screen of death is gone!)

Bear with the Google ads. It’ll take a while before they settle down in the new location and figure what we’re about (and that most of us are not looking for a stay at the Betty Ford clinic).

Be sure to note the two items on the top right of the page – Posts and Comments. These are rss feeds, and allow you to subscribe to all Drug WarRant posts or all Comments to Drug WarRant posts in your newsreader.

U.S. Plan Raises Ire in Latin America in the Washington Post. The development of military air bases in Colombia (for the drug war, of course) is just not good foreign policy. Regardless of what you think of Chavez, it’s natural for him to suspect such a move, and for the people of Venezuela to support him and turn against us at the mere thought of such bases.

It’s nice to see that the fact that the Drug Czar is required by law to oppose us is gaining wider traction. More people (and media) understanding this fact dramatically reduces the power of the Drug Czar’s office to disseminate propaganda.

The Senate Friday confirmed University of Pennsylvania psychologist A. Thomas McLellan as deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

More proof that life as a politician kills brain cells: Legalized pot a tough sell in governor’s race

“If the whole society starts getting stoned, we’re going to be even less competitive,” Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown […] said on a recent radio show.

“Like electing Jerry Brown as governor, the idea of legalizing drugs is one more bad idea from a bygone era,” said Jarrod Agen, spokesman for Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner

DrugSense Weekly

Drug War Chronicle

If you’re reading this, you’re at the new location of Drug WarRant.com.

Our home for the past 6 years was at blogs.salon.com using radio userland software. Radio hasn’t been upgraded in ages, and they’ve announced that the blog hosting will go away in December of this year. This is a big change (and a difficult transition).

I have moved the blog to a server at DreamHost and adapted a WordPress theme to be close to the old look of Drug WarRant. All 3,500 radio posts were exported to MT and then imported into WordPress relatively intact (with some formatting errors). Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do with the old comments — they can’t be retrieved from the Salon server (except manually — over 20,000 of them).

Good news is that I’ll have full control over the future of this blog and all of its content and comments. It also means that we’ll be able to try commenting software that works best for the readers (right now we’ll start with WordPress’ built-in comment software, but we may also try Disqus or IntenseDebate). There will be other features that may be useful that I’ll add on as well.

To begin with, comments may require moderation for your first comment, but should be automatic after that.

I’ve got a lot to learn about WordPress and I’m doing this by myself, so bear with me. Please let me know about problems and give any suggestions. There still needs to be some tweaking in appearance and features, but I wanted to get the transition accomplished.

The old site will continue to exist (complete with comments, etc) until December. I’ll be adding forwarding information to specific pages over there in order to make the transition better.

Thanks for your patience. I depend so much on the readers of this site — you really make it possible for me!

Consider this an open thread and an opportunity to experiment with comments. Note: You can use most standard html tags including links, bold, italic, blockquote, etc. (no images).