Drug WarRant

Illinois residents – call your State Representative now (as in this morning).
After the Illinois Senate narrowly passed SB 1381, the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act, the House Human Services Committee voted in favor and immediately sent it out on the floor, so a House vote is likely to happen in the next day or two.

After 7+ years of John Walters, it’s been interesting to see what difference would come (in rhetoric, if nothing else) with a new drug czar. Kerlikowske hasn’t been on board that long, but some sense of the changes in emphasis are starting to show up.
1. Marijuana just isn’t part of the discussion. Not only is legalization not part of Kerlikowske’s vocabulary, marijuana itself appears to be something he’d rather not talk about, medical or otherwise. I’ve got to admit that it’s a nice change from the reefer madness reign of Walters. Maybe Kerlikowske is following my mother’s age-old advice… If you can’t say something nice (and he can’t by law), then don’t say anything at all.
2. Prescription drugs are the new crack. We’re seeing a lot of emphasis on the dangers of kids getting prescription drugs and statistics about how more people die from prescription drug overdoses than from gunshots. At first glance, this seems positive — educate people on not mixing the wrong drugs, and that prescription drugs can be very dangerous when used improperly. Saving some lives here would be a good thing.
But what worries me is the other ways this emphasis will be used…
a. “With so many people dying from legal drugs, the last thing we need to do now is legalize another drug.” This statement is so nonsensical that it makes my skin crawl, and yet I’ve seen versions of it numerous times.
b. The prescription drug “epidemic” will be an excuse to further crack down on diversion, which will end up continuing the focus on pain doctors who prescribe large amounts of pain medication, with DEA agents deciding they know more than doctors. The result will be even more people suffering, unable to get the pain medication that actually makes life possible for thousands of people.
3. Crime and drugs go hand in hand. This USA Today article (and the drug czar’s “blog“) give an idea of what we can expect (and the new drug czar lie).

Half of the men arrested in 10 U.S. cities test positive for some type of illegal drug, a federal study found.
Not only do the findings show “a clear link between drugs and crime,” they also highlight the need to provide drug treatment, says Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which will make the data public Thursday.

This will be used to promote Kerlikowske’s interest in focusing on treatment, which, of itself, doesn’t necessarily bother me, but the use of the lie does. You caught the lie?
We’re used to the whole category of drug czar lies, so it gets easy to identify them. Walters would state some fact and use it to imply something completely false. Kerlikowske does it here in his own way with the “clear link between drugs and crime.” The unspoken, yet clearly implied message is that drugs cause crime, and that’s proven by the large number of criminals who test positive for drugs.
Of course, that’s nonsense. There’s a lot of reasons that people who have been arrested would tend to test positive for illicit drug use than the general population. People who commit crimes may be even less likely to be deterred by drug laws (and more likely to know criminal drug dealers). A very large percentage of arrests are for drug crimes, which naturally skews the population. Then there are socio-economic factors and a lot more.
But implying that drugs cause crime is a lie. And that’s what drug czars do.

Senate approves medical marijuana bill, sends it to House

A measure legalizing medical marijuana finally made it through the state Senate on Wednesday, but a major hurdle remains before it can become Illinois law.
The Senate voted 30-28 for Senate Bill 1381, giving the measure right at the 30 ‘yes’ votes needed to pass. The measure would allow doctors to prescribe cannabis to patients with diseases like AIDS and glaucoma. […]
The measure now heads to the House. At a statehouse press conference earlier in the year, Rep. Lou Lang said he was unsure how far any medical marijuana measure would get in the House.

Nice quote in the debate from Sen. Mike Jacobs (D-East Moline)

“Do you find it at all interesting that people view drugs made by man as better than drugs made by God?” Jacobs said during debate. “This is something that someone can drop in their backyard and find relief from, and there’s some of us in this chamber that would prefer Oxycontin, morphine; would prefer mommy’s little helper, uppers, downers, all-arounders.”

Elsewhere in the news, John Binny, commander of the State Line Area Narcotics
Team, a law enforcement organization serving Stephenson, Jo Daviess
and other counties in northwest Illinois and southwest Wisconsin, lectures readers about medical issues, scientific research, the proper way to conduct agricultural activities, and, apparently, logic. Logic Eliminates Medical Marijuana
With such a range of expertise, it’s hard to know how he found time to learn how to be a policeman.

Full report at Raw Story

The Democratic Party Committee Abroad, otherwise known as Democrats Abroad, passed a resolution on April 25 recommending the legalization of marijuana in all 50 states.
The news appears to have gone completely unnoticed by all mainstream outlets.
The Democrats Abroad are considered a state party by the Democratic National Committee, which affords them eight elected, voting members. They help U.S. citizens who are traveling and living outside the United States cast ballots in national elections.

So yes, this is a legitimate state party within the Democratic National Committee, now on record for the legalization of marijuana. Here’s the resolution.

WHEREAS,
The Obama Administration has wisely stopped Federal prosecution of marijuana sold for medical purposes in a manner compliant with state regulation, thus alleviating the suffering of cancer patients and others who would benefit from medical marijuana.
Only thirteen states regulate the sale of marijuana for medical purposes.
Criminalization of non-medical uses of marijuana continues to contribute needlessly to organized crime at home and abroad, illicit drug trade, overburdening of the criminal justice system, and diverts valuable criminal justice resources away from more serious crimes.
The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy heavily criticized U.S. drug policy and called on the U.S. to decriminalize marijuana in a report coinciding with increased drug-trade violence in Mexico;
The dominant argument against liberalized marijuana regulation, the gateway theory, has been consistently disproven, most recently by a RAND Corporation study commissioned by the British Parliament;
According to a World Health Organization survey conducted in 2008, the United States of America has the highest rates of marijuana use in the world.
In the Netherlands, where adult possession and purchase of small amounts of marijuana are allowed under a regulated system, the rate of marijuana use by both teenagers and adults is lower than in the U.S.
55% of Americans believe possession of small amounts of marijuana should not be a criminal offense, according to a 2005 Gallup poll.
In the U.S., almost 90% of more than 9.5 million marijuana-related arrests since 1995 were for simple possession š not manufacture or distribution.
BE IT RESOLVED THAT
We praise the Obama administration for its bold step to make marijuana available for medical purposes,
We call upon states that do not yet provide the reasonable regulation of medical marijuana to do so as soon as possible, to alleviate suffering wherever possible.
We recommend replacing the current policy of marijuana prohibition with a taxed and regulated system modeled on how alcohol is treated in the U.S.

There are a number of versions of this AP article by David Crary article in the papers today around the country, but all of them seem to have the same defect.
They talk about American appetites for drugs, Mexican cartels profiting, and even about supply and demand, but never once mention prohibition as a factor.

The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: Across the border to the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness.
Homeless heroin addicts in big cities, ”meth heads” in Midwest trailer parks, pop culture and sports stars, teens smoking marijuana with their baby boomer parents in Vermont Ö in all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in the often destructive national pastime of illicit drug use.
This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.
”The damage done by our insatiable demand for drugs is truly astounding,” said Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan researcher who oversees annual drug-use surveys.

Colorful writing with strong statements that lead… nowhere. And again, all of the pieces of the puzzle are there, they just fail to put it together.
For example:

”It’s a drug dealer’s dream Ö sell it in a place where he can make the most money for the risk taken,” said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. […]
”When the U.S. government turns up the pressure a lot, then is when you see a return to the old formula of saying [to Americans], ‘You also have corruption, you consume the drugs, you’re the biggest drug consumer in the world,’ ” said Jose Luis Pineyro, a sociologist at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University. […]
”People say, ‘It’s easier for me to get pot than to buy a beer,’ ” said Barbara Cimaglio, deputy commissioner of the state Health Department’s Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs.

Hello??? Every part of this article points to prohibition, and yet prohibition is never mentioned, let alone what might happen if prohibition were changed or eliminated.
This is irresponsible reporting. Even worse, it’s stupid reporting.
Imagine a sports reporter covering a baseball game, say between the Cubs and the Cardinals, that ended up with the Cubs winning 35-2. He goes on about how each of the Cubs had at least 3 hits (including the pitcher) and how incredibly great they all are at hitting. But he never once mentions the Cardinals’ pitching (or the fact that none of the regular pitchers were even at the ball park having all come down with the flu). He’d probably lose his job as a sports reporter.
And yet, the major newswires do this all the time when it comes to reporting the drug war.

ABUELHAWA v. UNITED STATES
In this case, the defendant purchased a misdemeanor amount of drugs and was arrested. But then the prosecutors decided to pile on — since he had used a cell phone to contact the seller, they charged him with facilitating the sale (a felony). That’s right, they charged him with facilitating his own purchase.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw that as just plain silly.
Departing Justice Souter noted:

Where a transaction like a sale necessarily presupposes two parties with specific roles, it would be odd to speak of one party as facilitating the conduct of the other. A buyer does not just make a sale easier; he makes the sale possible. No buyer, no sale; the buyer‰s part is already implied by the term ‹sale,Š and the word ‹facilitateŠ adds nothing. We would not say that the borrower facilitates the bank loan.

Thanks to The Criminal Lawyer, which does a nice job of discussing the decision and has more on it, including this scathing indictment of the prosecutors:

Judgment. It‰s something we require of our prosecutors. They have people‰s lives, liberty and reputations at stake. They have victims who need justice. They work within a system that relies on them to do the right thing. So it is imperative that they have the uncommon sense to do, not what is technically allowable, but what is actually appropriate.
Not every prosecutor lives up to the challenge, of course. But lately the feds have been showing a remarkable lack of judgment. This case is just one of many in recent years where federal prosecutors have committed forehead-smacking acts of WTF.
So we have to aská WTF? Seriously. Federal prosecutors have a well-deserved reputation for being bright, dedicated, hard-working and sensible. But in case after case lately, federal prosecutors have made colossal boners of bad judgment. What‰s going on? Did we change how we hire people? Did the pool of applicants change? Did the internal culture change? We‰d like to know.

Sonia Sotomayor is to be nominated to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.
As far as I can tell, she seems to be a very capable choice. She is intelligent, worked hard to achieve what she has, and she has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge.
I do not, however, have any real idea how she would lean on drug war-related issues, including the 4th Amendment. I’ve glanced through ScotusBlog’s analysis of her decisions, but it hasn’t shed any particular light so far.
Thoughts?

Like any independent country should have to fight for that right…
Time Magazine has a pretty good article about the battle between the INCB/UN/US and the Andean nations who have used a natural and healthful plant for thousands of years — coca.

The latest affront, they say, is a recommendation this month from the UN’s drug enforcement watchdog, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), that Bolivia and Peru criminalize the practice of chewing coca and drinking its tea. The move has provoked widespread anger and street protests in the two countries, especially among the majority indigenous populations. For them, coca has been a cultural cornerstone for 3,000 years, as much a part of daily life as coffee in the U.S.

This is not bad for Time. While it gives more credulity to the INCB and the U.S. than they deserve, the article does point out the shortcomings in their arguments, and shows Peru and Bolivia as the reasonable ones in this debate.

Link

The Dutch Justice Ministry reports it was forced to close down eight prisons, which will result in some 1,200 penal system staff members being laid off.
During the 1990s, the Netherlands was faced with a lack of prison capacities, but now it has virtually no prisoners.
Some 12,000 prisoners are serving their sentence at Dutch prisons, while there is room for 14,000, which is why deputy Justice Minister Nebahat Albayrak announced the closure of eight correctional institutions, saying that everyone who will lose their job because of this move would be taken care of.
The Ministry assessed that the crime rates would continue to drop in the Netherlands and it is negotiating with Belgium regarding taking on a part of its criminals as it recorded an increase of crime rates.

Those poor prison workers.
Fortunately, here in the U.S., we have over 2 million prisoners, and lots of taxpayer supported prison jobs.

For years there has been a national push to get schools to implement suspicion-less random drug testing for those in extra-curricular activities, supported by grants from the federal government, and promoted heavily by the Drug Czar’s office.
This is not only wrong, but it’s a stupid policy — one that is likely to be counter-productive.
Basically the view of the schools has been: We must institute a policy that is expensive, demeans students, infringes on their rights, has been empirically proven not to work, and makes no sense… and we’ll do it for the children.
Fortunately, not all schools are falling for it.
Here’s a school that’s attempting to implement testing, but at least has come to part of their senses.

Initially, the committee had focused on developing a random drug testing policy for students involved in extracurricular activities, such as athletics, band and school clubs.
Of late, though, the committee has suspended that angle.
“Essentially, we felt that policy would not bring the ends that we were looking for,” said Brown.
Pursuing that form of a policy would only allow a limited number of students to be tested, he said.
And the students most in danger of falling victim to drug abuse are often those uninvolved in extracurricular activities, thus exempting them from drug testing, he said.
“We’re not getting help to those most desperately in need,” he said.
As an alternative, Brown said, the committee is exploring a more focused, “suspicion-based” testing program.
The focus will now be on “fringe” students perceived to be in danger.
Brown said that assessment would be backed up by certain statutory criteria, such as attendance and discipline records.

While it’s still likely to end up too broad, at least this is a step in the right direction – clear documented suspicion-based criteria that doesn’t penalize the average student for being involved (and importantly, doesn’t inculcate in students the notion that submitting to suspicion-less humiliation is a normal part of citizenship).
I’d like to think that the Caldwell County school district has heard some of the critiques given by drug policy reformers about suspicion-less drug testing.