Drug WarRant

Governor Tim Pawlenty

Bear in mind that the bill the governor says he‰ll veto is so drastically narrowed down that none of the purported concerns of law enforcement, whose direction he‰s supposedly been taking, have even a shred of validity. As passed, it would only have covered terminally ill patients, and even they wouldn‰t have been allowed to grow their own marijuana.

Tim Cavanaugh has the response to people who oppose legalization… for the kids.

Lust, introspection, carelessness, anger, booze, daydreaming, timidity, chronic recurring stupidity and other human beings have caused more misery in my life than weed has.
How can I keep all those away from my kids?
Or rather, how can I imprison hundreds of thousands of people and suspend at least half the bill of rights in a failed attempt to keep those away from my kids?

Ill. medical marijuana vote expected Tuesday

If the Senate votes on Haine‰s bill tomorrow, it will be the farthest a marijuana proposal has gotten in Illinois.

Last chance to call your Senator if you live in Illinois.

A major article in Foreign Policy by Editor in Chief Moisés Naím: Wasted
First, the recognition of the historical disconnect and the damage it causes…

This ‹it doesn‰t work, but don‰t change itŠ incongruity is not just a quirk of the U.S. public. It is a manifestation of how the prohibition on drugs has led to a prohibition on rational thought. ‹Most of my colleagues know that the war on drugs is bankrupt,Š a U.S. senator told me, ‹but for many of us, supporting any form of decriminalization of drugs has long been politically suicidal.Š
As a result of this utter failure to think, the United States today is both the world‰s largest importer of illicit drugs and the world‰s largest exporter of bad drug policy. The U.S. government expects, indeed demands, that its allies adopt its goals and methods and actively collaborate with U.S. drug-fighting agencies. This expectation is one of the few areas of rigorous continuity in U.S. foreign policy over the last three decades.
A second, and more damaging, effect comes from the U.S. emphasis on curtailing the supply abroad rather than lowering the demand at home. The consequence: a transfer of power from governments to criminals in a growing number of countries. In many places, narcotraffickers are the major source of jobs, economic opportunity, and money for elections.

Then, the tentative movement from that stupidity…

Fortunately, there are some signs that the blind support for prohibition is beginning to wane among key Washington elites. One surprising new convert? The Pentagon. Senior U.S. military officers know both that the war on drugs is bankrupt and that it is undermining their ability to succeed in other important missions, such as winning the war in Afghanistan. When Gen. James L. Jones, a former Marine Corps commandant and supreme allied commander in Europe, was asked last November why the United States was losing in Afghanistan, he answered: ‹The top of my list is the drugs and narcotics, which are, without question, the economic engine that fuels the resurgent Taliban, and the crime and corruption in the country. . . . We couldn‰t even talk about that in 2006 when I was there. That was not a topic that anybody wanted to talk about, including the U.S.Š

Moisés nails it with the conclusion…

The addiction to a failed policy has long been fueled by the self-interest of a relatively small prohibitionist community–and enabled by the distraction of the American public. But as the costs of the drug war spread from remote countries and U.S. inner cities to the rest of society, spending more to cure and prevent than to eradicate and incarcerate will become a much more obvious idea. Smarter thinking on drugs? That should be the real no-brainer.

Exactly.

Maybe now the San Diego county officials will stop throwing their ridiculous (and costly) temper tantrum against medical marijuana and follow the state law.
Link

The justices, without comment, denied a hearing to officials from San Diego and San Bernardino counties who challenged Proposition 215, an initiative approved by state voters in 1996 that became a model for laws in 12 other states. It allows patients to use marijuana for medical conditions with their doctor’s recommendation.

Good.
I really did not expect the Supreme Court to take this one, so it’s not that much of a surprise. It was a supremely stupid appeal and every court along the way had already rejected the counties’ case.

“The purpose of the (federal law) is to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practices,” the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego said in the July 31 decision. […]
“No longer will local officials be able to hide behind federal law and resist upholding California’s medical marijuana law,” said Joe Elford, lawyer for Americans for Safe Access, which also took part in the case. He said the decision would strengthen his organization’s case against the two counties and eight others that have refused to issue the identification cards.

The criticism is coming from a right-wing think tank who claims that the British government has been too lax.

It said the UK’s policy of spending most of its drug budget on treatment was less effective than spending more on prevention and enforcement. […]
The report’s author said the UK’s drug policy should bear down on the illicit use of all drugs and feature a tougher enforcement programme to reduce the supply of drugs.

Since that report is kind of bucking the trend, I thought I’d go see what the think tank was all about.

The Centre for Policy Studies believes in freedom and responsibility. One of Britain‰s best known and most respected think tanks, the Centre develops and promotes policies to limit the role of the state, to encourage enterprise and to enable the institutions of society š such as families and voluntary organizations – to flourish.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s amazing how often “freedom” and “limited government” appear to be code words for using the state to lock more people up.

Adriel Hampton is running for U.S. Congress in the 2009 special election for California’s 10th District.

I‰m asking for concerned citizens of every stripe to help me devise a strong anti-Drug War policy statement for my Congressional campaign. I‰ve given it a brief jumping off point over at MixedInk, a collaborative writing technology that I‰d like to see used more in government.

‹When elected to Congress, I will immediately move to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana. Tacit legalization through state-by-state decriminalization and ‹medical cannabisŠ (as tested in California since 1996) has proven a disastrous failure. Our prisons are dangerous and overcrowded, non-violent criminals who could easily be rehabilitated languish under harsh minimum sentences, and Mexican cartels and urban gangsters flourish. Prohibition of marijuana, like alcohol before it, has proved foolish and far too costly. Legalization would not only reduce drug-related violence, it would create funds for increased mental health funding and counseling for those who find themselves dependent on the drug.Š

Join me.

Sometimes reading these things just makes you feel better. Russell Yohn, an Illinois resident, writes a letter to the editor.

Before approving any federal legalization of marijuana, it might be well to consider such questions as the following:
Companies, how would you like to be compelled to employ drug users whose use of marijuana makes them less productive and more often sick?
Workers, how would you like to be compelled to work with drug users whose marijuana use makes them open to various mental disorders?
Landlords, how would you like to be compelled to rent to mentally ill and sometimes violent marijuana users, who often steal to pay for their drugs?
Renters, how would you like to be compelled to have marijuana-smoking neighbors, exposing your children to them and their intoxicating smoke?
Those who wouldn’t like to do this might consider that there can be no assurance that following any federal pot legalization, the quite justified discrimination against marijuana users in these situations would be outlawed. Compelled to employ unproductive workers, quality and profits would be seriously reduced, forcing many employers to curtail or end their operations, throwing even productive workers out of work.
The only way to be certain that such an unfair ban of needed discrimination never occurs is to defeat any federal legalization of marijuana (now being sponsored). State laws for medical or any other uses of marijuana are steps to federal legalization and, therefore, threats of such a possible development.

Gee, how can you argue with that?

Friday, I dropped this item into the Open Thread…

Santa Monica Mirror has a really stupid piece by Steve Stajich: Five Reasons We Won’t Be Legalizing Pot. This may be the five most moronic reasons I’ve heard to date.

“Hello, Governor? Please explain how legalizing marijuana will reduce teen pregnancy. (PAUSE) Our lines our open. (PAUSE) Governor, please call with that answer. (PAUSE) Again that phone number…” Apparently the Spliff-inator has looked at the stats regarding teen sexual behavior and teen pregnancy and concluded, “What’s needed here is more access to marijuana.” Will Bristol Palin bring her baby to Sacramento and explain how life might have been different if only she’d been too (legally) stoned to have sex?

Steve Stajich responds:

Pete… I was delighted to get into [Salon.com], even by way of your critique of last week’s column.
I guess I could accept that my Five Reasons would be “lame” or “soft” because I’ll readily agree that they don’t, any of them, justify a drug “war” or the resources invested in a drug war. And the waste of a drug war seems to be the drive of your page, so I understand your reaction or practical need to harvest content that buoys that angle. I certainly agree that drug war-mentality government efforts are troubling to say the least.
But I think it was inaccurate to call the points I made “stupid.” I don’t think they are empty-headed or so without merit that they meet that criteria. The headline did not suggest that these were the only five reasons or top reasons in any way… just five aspects of legalization that might be considered in the “debate” the governor was proposing. Perhaps you would consider adjusting your posting… although please continue to drive people to the Mirror’s online edition.
Yours, Steve Stajich

I really am grateful for the fact that Steve took the time to respond, and appreciate his acknowledgement that a government drug war mentality is troubling. It’s often surprising to hear from someone I have mentioned, particularly when I have done so in a somewhat unflattering way. It’s slightly disconcerting, because I have been raised to be polite to people, and now that I’ve heard from Steve, I feel like I, in some way, know him, and feel a tiny but guilty for denigrating his work in such an off-hand way.
So instead of the glib reaction I gave Friday, let’s take a moment to analyze Steve’s piece in greater detail.
First, I didn’t say that his points were stupid. I said that the article was stupid and the points were moronic….
…OK, that doesn’t really help.
Let’s try again. Steve admits that the points aren’t the only ones, and that they might be “lame” or “soft” because they don’t, by themselves justify a drug war. But the problem is much deeper.
In the context of having a debate about legalization, the only points brought up in his article are, in fact, false arguments based on dis-proven and exaggerated stereotypes (perhaps intended to be humorous, but falling flat) and other meaningless and incorrect ideas.
They’re really no different than…

• In a discussion about homosexual marriage, a columnist suggests that we’ll need to discuss the impact on health care from the cost of removing all those gerbils from peoples’ asses.
• In a discussion about ending segregation, a columnist suggests that we’ll need to assess the zoning impact of accommodating all of the watermelon patches.

In the example at top, I can’t really even tell from the sarcasm if Steve is calling up the stereotype that marijuana causes increased teen pregnancy or that marijuana causes the inability to have sex (thereby decreasing teen pregnancy), but either way, that has absolutely nothing to do with legalization.
As far as the rest…

While opening up access to intoxicants is not quite the same as realizing revenue gain from state gambling, information on gambling addiction and its destructive impacts is always neatly left out of ads for state lotteries and Native American casinos. Would we do the same with legalized pot? At a certain point, state governments and voters must own-up to the fact that realizing revenue gain on a legalized activity means the people‰s representative government is socializing and endorsing the behavior involved. We‰re already playing a hypocritical game of pretend with state sponsored gambling; now we‰re going to run “Hey Kids, Don‰t Get High at School!” spots on TV with money realized from marijuana sales!?

Don’t we get revenue from alcohol, tobacco, and a million other things that the government taxes, but doesn’t necessarily encourage? Isn’t, in fact, the whole notion of “sin” taxes a kind of recognition that government discourages it? The only way that government would be endorsing pot is if they gave it away for free in schools.

Theoretically, making it illegal for younger teens to have alcohol prevents any teen drinking problemsá right? Drunk driving and teen drinking statistics seems to show some holes in that. Does the governor wish to publicly address school teachers and say ‹Best of luck with more dope on the streets, you know, because now we‰re selling it at Walgreens.Š Go ahead with any ‹They‰ll get it anyhow if they want itŠ responses; one way they won‰t get it is by having their older brother or sister buy it from the responsible adults of California. Jeeze, Arnoldá we‰re having problems keeping diabetes-inflicting sugar and fat out of schools! Do you hang with school teachers at all?

Does this make any sense at all? Making alcohol illegal for teens didn’t stop teen drinking problems so making pot legal for adults will cause teen pot problems? Steve cancels out his own argument, showing that making pot illegal doesn’t keep it away from teens (which we already know). Sure, maybe we should have a discussion as to whether it’s better for teens to get pot from criminals who don’t card, or from their brother who skirts the law, but there’s certainly no evidence that selling it at Walgreens is going to make it easier for teens to get.

What‰s holding back American manufacturing and productivity? That‰s right: Our workers don‰t have any state-endorsed pot to smoke during lunch breaks. How different the stories of GM and Chrysler if only we‰d had the good sense to make it easier (and revenue producing!) for line workers to smoke a ‹fattyŠ with their morning coffee. Of course it would be against company rules and policy, just like drinking on the job, which has never been a problem.

“Smoke a ‘fatty’ with their morning coffee?” Really? And state-endorsed pot again? Steve’s got a pretty poor view of American workers if he thinks that just because marijuana is legal, all our workers are going to be constantly stoned on the job. Sure, there are some who get drunk or show up hungover or are stoned or tired regardless of the laws, and you know what? Good managers fire those people and hire people who work during work hours and enjoy themselves during other hours.

Destructive behaviors don‰t necessarily fluctuate by substance. A drunk driver or husband can bring the pain, whether it was beer or wine or bottle goods. My local hardware store locks up the spray paint so that kids can‰t just boost a can and go huff it somewhere. So let me say that it‰s not specifically about marijuana. Our nation‰s experiments with legalizing the drugs tobacco and alcohol have been less than successful. Drunk driving deaths and alcohol-fueled violence, disease and death from tobacco; the state realizes revenues from these substances yet no one is arguing we should widen access (for more state funds) to either of those. Sorry, Arnold. It‰s not really a ‹debate.Š It‰s more like, uh, you just talkingá again.

What does any of this have to do with marijuana? These are just nonsense and distractions from the debate. The last two sentences are apparently really about Steve, not the Governor.
Sorry Steve. Happy to send more readers to the Mirror’s online edition, though.

A must read at Huffington Post: My Return to Prison: Views on the Failed Drug War from Inside Sing Sing by Wayne Kramer

The Sing Sing show was a bonus. To say it was memorable would be a massive understatement. As would be understating the importance of reaching out to the people on the receiving end of the greatest failure of social policy in America’s domestic history. […]
Make no mistake, though, this situation is a crime against humanity. Government should be helping, but it’s not. Instead, it has created a self-fulfilling monster that eats humans whose judgment has been, at one time in their lives, critically flawed and then the monster shits out profit and political gain.
What I can do as an artist is the same thing you can do as a friend and neighbor — stand up. Speak out. Get involved.