Drug WarRant

This is already been pretty well picked up elsewhere while I was busy converting the blog: see How New York’s Finest Get the Weed Out at Reason and Scott Morgan’s Police Will Do Anything to Arrest People for Marijuana, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned it.

I’m talking about Harry G. Levine’s article: The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City in Alternet.

You see, in New York, having a small amount of marijuana in your pocket is not an arrest-able offense. However, having it out in the open is.

According to U.S. Supreme Court decisions, police are allowed to thoroughly pat down the outside of someone’s clothing looking for a gun, which is bulky and easy to detect. But police cannot legally search inside a person’s pockets and belongings without permission or probable cause.

However, police officers can legally make false statements to people they stop, and officers can trick people into revealing things. So in a stern, authoritative voice, NYPD officers will say to the young people they stop:

“We’re going to have to search you. If you have anything illegal you should show it to us now. If we find something when we search you, you’ll have to spend the night in jail. But if you show us what you have now, maybe we can just give you a ticket. And if it’s nothing but a little weed, maybe we can let you go. So if you’ve got anything you’re not supposed to have, take it out and show it now.”

When police say this, the young people usually take out their small amount of marijuana and hand it over. Their marijuana is now “open to public view.” And that – having a bit of pot out and open to be seen – technically makes it a crime, a fingerprintable offense. And for cooperating with the police, the young people are handcuffed and jailed.

People really need to know about this kind of stuff. Serve and protect is a thing of the past. Deceive and destroy are the mottos of today.

Consider this story. A school teacher who liked to smoke pot on his own time in his own home was robbed. He told the police that it was money that was stolen, not pot (he would have been stupid to say that his pot was stolen). The robber was caught and made up a bunch of stories about the teacher having child porn, hosting drug parties for underage children, etc. So the police released those un-investigated allegations (which turned out to be false) to the media, destroying the teacher’s life, and jailed the teacher for pot and obstruction of justice (failing to say that it was pot that was stolen from him). The thief wasn’t charged.

Or, read this story To Catch a Stoner in Oregon. Tigard police have been on Craigs List trolling for lonely men.

“Tuesday is my last day at work this week and I wanna party on Tues night!! I’m a hot blonde who has all the right moves.” The ad promised to trade those moves to anyone who could offer some “420,” or marijuana.

And the lonely guys who responded?

Walsh had 3.5 grams of weed in his pocket—normally enough to earn him nothing more than a ticket. But because he’d agreed to trade drugs for sex, the cops charged Walsh with misdemeanor prostitution and delivery of drugs, a felony, and booked him into Washington County Jail.

Fortunately, the DA’s office is refusing to prosecute some of the cases, realizing that it’s classic entrapment. (Read the whole article, it’s quite interesting.)

I would like to see the day where the public could feel comfortable with trusting the police. Right now, that trust just isn’t there in most cases (that doesn’t mean that there aren’t individual officers that I trust and admire — there are — just that the occupation as a whole is tarnished, largely by the drug war).

It’s important to remember that the police are allowed to lie to you. Some take quite a bit of pride in that fact. When they say that they’re your friend and that it’s in your best interest to cooperate fully with their requests, it isn’t true. And finally, there is never a good reason to voluntarily consent to a search. Ever.

Link

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.

---

* 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