Drug WarRant

Andrew Sullivan gets readers talking about the marijuana closet — the awkward place so many users reside that prevents them from talking openly. This convinces more to come out of the closet.
Jason Kuznicki Positive Liberty comments on this development and hopes for more.
I agree.

Could it be that the mindless anything-goes-as-long-as-you’re-tough-on-drugs philosophy is showing cracks?
“bullet” Editorial: Incarceration Lobby Deserves Tough Questions

Here’s a question to those who gathered in Sparta last week to criticize Gov. Jim Doyle’s public safety budget:
Why does the United States, with just 5 percent of the world’s population, house 25 percent of the world’s prisoners?
Led by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, several public officials blasted Doyle’s budget, which calls for the early release of non-violent prisoners and cutting back on supervision and parole. They levelled the criticism despite a huge state budget deficit and a corrections budget already grown at a staggering pace. Consider that:
*In 1996, Wisconsin spent $360 million on corrections. It was $1 billion in 2008.
*In 1982, one out of every 437 Wisconsin residents was in jail or prison. In 2007, it was one out of 109. […]
It’s time to ask some very tough questions about our criminal justice system, including: […]
* Are too many things against the law? Is there any reason, for example, for anyone to serve a day of jail time for selling marijuana?
If stuffing people into prison guaranteed safety, then America would be the safest country in the world. We aren’t, and it’s the incarceration lobby, not the governor, that deserves the political hot seat.

Can you believe we have a paper taking on the “incarceration lobby”? And calling it that?
“bullet” In Maryland Cheye Calvo’s efforts to bring accountability to SWAT are paying off

Delegates adopted a bill, on a 126 to 9 vote, that would require law enforcement agencies to report every six months on their use of SWAT teams, including what kinds of warrants the teams serve and whether any animals are killed during raids.

The first steps to reform in this area are transparency and accountability, so this is critical. The mere fact that officers are going to have to go to the state house twice a year and tell them how many dogs they shot…
“bullet” Ryan Grim at Huffington Post: Webb Crime Bill Gets Unlikely Support

Jim Webb stepped firmly on a political third rail last week when he introduced a bill to examine sweeping reforms to the criminal justice system. Yet he emerged unscathed, a sign to a political world frightened by crime and drug issues that the bar might not be electrified any more. […]
Webb told the Huffington Post. “I heard from Justice Kennedy of the Supreme Court, from prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, former offenders, people in prison, and police on the street. All of them have told me that our system needs to be fixed, and that we need a holistic plan of how to solve it.”
Webb’s reform is backed by a coalition of liberals, conservatives and libertarians that couldn’t have existed even a few years ago. […]
The bill was cosponsored by the entire Senate Democratic leadership and enthusiastically welcomed by prominent liberal bloggers. The blogosphere, dominated by younger activists, has been particularly open to calls for drug and criminal justice policy reform.
Support for the proposal has come in from the right, too. The Lynchburg News and Advance a conservative paper that publishes in the hometown of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, weighed in favorably. […]
Conservative blogger Erick Erickson of RedState.com tells the Huffington Post he’s open to Webb’s bill. […]
Over the weekend, the family-friendly Parade magazine featured a cover story by Webb titled “Why We Must Fix Our Prisons.”

This, despite the fact that Webb does not even shy away from the legalization question…

“It’s a very real question. It’s a very legitimate question,” he told one caller, noting that the past three presidents and more than half of Americans have used illegal drugs at some point in their lifetimes.
“At some level, most people do enjoy their beer or whatever it is,” Webb said. “On the other end of the rail, there is tremendous danger, particularly among young people, when you get to drugs, that we have to have some protections and some sort of education. There you have the question. It’s a legitimate question. And the best way to deal with this is to put it in front of people who are going to look at all the ramifications of this and come up with something.”

We have known for some time that the political third rail that scares politicians when it comes to criminal justice/drug policy reform has lost its inherent power. The only way it has power is when the politician gives it power by being afraid of it. Even the attack ad from opponents can be defanged easily if the politician is willing to stand up for what they believe.
Of course, we need to support Jim Webb in his efforts and continue to push the public to support reform — we’ve got a long way to go. But when tough-on-drugs and tough-on-crime are no longer automatic trump cards, we’re in the game.

I can’t even keep up with all the press and attention that has been given to marijuana legalization in the past few days.
It’s resulted in a huge boost for this site with over 70,000 visits in the past two days (compared to the daily average of around 2,000). The Marijuana is illegal because, uh, uh… post was picked up on Digg, Raw Story and other sites. Interestingly, Digg also gave the Irv Rosenfeld piece I wrote several years ago a huge boost as more of the population are learning things we’ve known for some time.
“bullet” Kathleen Parker explains what Obama should have said:

‹Look, I‰m not ready to legalize marijuana tomorrow, but I do think it‰s time to take a fresh look at the effectiveness of some of our criminal justice policies. And I support Sen. James Webb‰s current efforts to do just that.
‹I also don‰t mean to make light of this issue because I know that a lot of kids wind up in jail who shouldn‰t. And I know from personal experience that smoking marijuana is not a career-ender. But I do want to study this issue carefully before I suggest any broad changes in policy. Thank you for your question.Š
Everyone would have gone home reasonably satisfied, if not quite ready to celebrate. Instead, Obama enjoyed a brief flashback and insulted his merrier minions.
As pot smokers blanket the White House with letters of protest, Obama may want to rethink his position. He not only has ticked off a portion of his grass-roots, so to speak, but, when the Chinese come to collect interest on those trillions, he may find it preferable that more, rather than fewer, Americans be mellow.

“bullet” Glenn Greenwald explores the Mysteries of logical reasoning

(1) Anyone who favors marijuana legalization just wants to get high without being hassled, and anyone who favors drug decriminalization generally is or wants to be a drug user.
[…]
Why is most everyone capable of understanding the egregious, illogical stupidity of propositions (2)-(8) — based on the bleedingly obvious premise that one can advocate the freedom to do X for reasons other than a desire to do X — while so many people embrace the equally illogical and stupid reasoning of proposition (1) as though it is so self-evidently true that it requires no discussion?

Update: See also…
“bullet” Mark Milian at the L.A. Times: Web lights up with protests over Obama’s dismissal of marijuana legalization

And on the social news website Digg, a story about marijuana benefits, decriminalization or reactions to Obama’s weedy treatment of the pot question has been voted to the home page every day since the town hall — and in many cases, multiple times a day.
So what does that say about the online audience? Considering that many political analysts attribute a major part of Obama’s election to his popularity on social networks, maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss something they clearly feel strongly about.

“bullet” This may not be at all connected to Obama’s statement, but it certainly adds to the sense that it’s becoming more possible to have the discussions…
Jack Cafferty, of CNN’s Situation Room: Commentary: War on drugs is insane

So how’s this war on drugs going?
Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That’s a perfect description of the war on drugs. […]
What do you suppose the total price tag is for this failed war on drugs? One senior Harvard economist estimates we spend $44 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. He says if they were legal, governments would realize about $33 billion a year in tax revenue. Net swing of $77 billion. Could we use that money today for something else? You bet your ass we could. Plus the cartels would be out of business. Instantly. Goodbye crime and violence.
If drugs were legalized, we could empty out a lot of our prison cells. People will use this stuff whether it’s legal or not. Just like they do booze. And you could make the argument that in some cases alcohol is just as dangerous as some drugs. I know.
Like I said … something to think about. It’s time.

In the discussion about legalizing medical marijuana in Illinois,

Illinois State Police Capt. Mark Henry specifically cited a provision that would allow patients to grow as many as seven marijuana plants at a time. Henry said seven plants would produce more than 3,500 joints per year Ö meaning a patient would have to smoke about nine joints a day to use all the marijuana grown. He said police worry that the surplus would end up on the street.

Regardless of what you may think about the notion of getting 500 joints per plant (seems to me he’s expecting sick people to have amazing green thumbs), what should be the standard of how many joints per year is appropriate?
Let’s turn to the experts – the only completely legal distributor of medical marijuana in the United States: the Federal Government.
For their medical marijuana patients that they’ve been supplying for over 25 years, the Federal Government provides a tin of 300 joints to last 25 days. That’s 4,380 joints a year.
Sounds like proposed Illinois levels are considerably low by federal standards, even given Illinois State Police Capt. Mark Henry’s optimistic yield projections.

The New York Times has an article about the drug war activities in Mexico: In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself
They mention Hillary Clinton’s well-publicized statements:

At the same time, American drug users are fueling demand for the drugs, and American guns are supplying the firepower wielded with such ferocity by Mexico‰s cartels Ö a reality acknowledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on her trip to Mexico last week.

Calderon has also complained about the American guns, and a lot of people (including politicians) have been talking about the need to stop the smuggling of guns across the Mexican border – guns easily bought at gun shows and retail stores in the United States.
This has led to more calls to militarize the border and stop smuggling both ways (people who say we can just stop smuggling by doing a better job of border control don’t quite understand the amount of legal traffic and trade across that border. Truly effective interdiction efforts would hurt the economy of both countries.)
And yet, let’s take a closer look at those guns…

On night patrol in Reynosa in November, soldiers came upon some suspicious men, who led them to a house that was packed with armaments for the drug cartels Ö 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of dynamite. […]
The war analogy is not a stretch for parts of Mexico. Soldiers, more than 40,000 of them, are confronting heavily armed paramilitary groups on city streets. The military-grade weapons being used, antitank rockets and armor-piercing munitions, for example, are the same ones found on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Are these being bought at gun shows in the U.S.? Unlikely.
Anybody who has followed the drug war in Mexico knows that there is another factor that is heavily involved here…

The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers Ö so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.

If you can own politicians and police forces, do you really need to smuggle individual handguns in from another country?
Bill Conroy at NarcoNews has done excellent reporting on the drug war and gets to the bottom of this in Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates’ Rising Firepower

The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF‰s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.

But in reality, while the main weapons are getting to the cartels from the U.S., they’re not being smuggled into Mexico, and so no interdiction efforts will help.

The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities Ö grenade launchers, explosives and ‹assaultŠ weapons Öare then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.

That’s right, the ultimate source of the guns used by the cartels in Mexico? The U.S. government.
Hey, why should we be surprised? After all, one of the most dangerous groups in Mexico — the mercenary army for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel — is Los Zetas, which we helped train at Fort Benning in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, and counter-surveillance techniques. So why shouldn’t we be supplying them the weapons as well?
Conroy follows the trail of the shipments of legal guns to Mexico, noting that while these weapons could be traced…

But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:

Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country‰s single largest stash of cartel weapons Ö nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.
But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.

[…]
A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like ‹shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.Š

Conroy also notes that the State Department’s Blue Lantern program, which monitors the end-use of commercially exported defense articles had 634 cases in FY’ 2007, of which 143 were deemed “unfavorable.”
So we’re fighting an escalating drug war where both sides are funded and supplied by… us.
Over and over again in the drug war, we find the same kind of thing. The more we fight the drug war, the more damage we cause — more corruption, more violence, more criminal activity.

A strange game.

The only winning move is not to play.

How about a nice game of chess?

The student newspaper at Illinois State University did an article about legalization, and may do a series.
Marijuana legalization to help economy
Some of the quotes were accurate. The regulars could probably tell what I did say and what I didn’t. There’s some things I just wouldn’t say, but the overall sense was OK.
Here’s what I didn’t say: “biggest cash crop” (I think I said “one of the biggest”); “litigation” (I said “prosecution”); “any other negative health effects”; and “not had any issues.”
That’s always the danger when being interviewed. But better to have the article than not.

White House Spokesperson responds to follow-up questions by the press…

Robert Gibbs spent several minutes further ridiculing the marijuana questions, sometimes with the press laughing as well, while trying to indicate that Obama was just trying to give a nod to the fact that the question had been voted very high, even though it was ridiculous.
One member of the press corps, however, brought up the fact that marijuana legalization is a serious subject to many people, particularly with Mexico right now, and when Gibbs didn’t really respond, the reporter asked him to explain “Why?” “Why he feels that way about legalizing marijuana?”
Here was Gibbs’ response:

“Uh, he, he does not think that, uh, uh, that that is uh, uh, [pause] he opposes it, he doesn’t think that that’s the, the right plan for America.”

Apparently that is the new U.S. Government position on why marijuana should be illegal.
Wow.
It’s fascinating that he couldn’t come up with anything other than the equivalent of… “because.”
If we can’t have an Administration that can have an honest dialogue about marijuana legalization, I guess the next best thing is to have one that can’t talk about it at all.
Update: Keep in mind that we don’t need President Obama’s assistance in this area. We were never going to get any kind of legalization effort from him (we knew that from the start).
We could get some very important things from him in terms of harm reduction support and sentencing reform — and we need to continue to push in those areas as well. We may also benefit from some benign neglect in certain areas (such as a reduction in the level of propaganda emanating from the White House compared to the John Walters era.)
As much as we would like for the President to at least say “Let’s have an open, honest national dialogue” (and his unwillingness to say that is a strong sign of weakness), you can bet every one of his advisors saw what happened to the El Paso City Council when they called for that, and they probably told him to joke about potheads (I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that apparently ad-libbed moment of Obama’s was scripted).
But we have reached a kind of critical mass, so it doesn’t even matter that much. We have been getting more serious discussions in serious places about marijuana legalization in recent days than… well, ever — even his mocking derision got more people talking seriously. And that helps us gets the discussion out to the people, who own the possibility of change in this particular arena.
Further update: Oh, and be sure to go read Allan Erickson’s article at the Salem-News.com. President Used Marijuana but Mocks & Dismisses Legalization. Nice job, Allan! For those here from that article, here is the link to the Peter McWilliams story.

Jim Webb’s courage v. the “pragmatism” excuse for politicians
Seriously. Just go over there and read the whole thing.
But here’s a couple of paragraphs for you anyway.

What’s most notable about Webb’s decision to champion this cause is how honest his advocacy is. He isn’t just attempting to chip away at the safe edges of America’s oppressive prison state. His critique of what we’re doing is fundamental, not incremental. And, most important of all, Webb is addressing head-on one of the principal causes of our insane imprisonment fixation: our aberrational insistence on criminalizing and imprisoning non-violent drug offenders (when we’re not doing worse to them). That is an issue most politicians are petrified to get anywhere near, as evidenced just this week by Barack Obama’s adolescent, condescending snickering when asked about marijuana legalization, in response to which Obama gave a dismissive answer that Andrew Sullivan accurately deemed “pathetic.” […]
Our political class has trained so many citizens not only to tolerate, but to endorse, cowardly behavior on the part of their political leaders. When politicians take bad positions, ones that are opposed by large numbers of their supporters, it is not only the politicians, but also huge numbers of their supporters, who step forward to offer excuses and justifications: well, they have to take that position because it’s too politically risky not to; they have no choice and it’s the smart thing to do. […]
But the fact that cowardly actions from political leaders are inevitable is no reason to excuse or, worse, justify and even advocate that cowardice. In fact, the more citizens are willing to excuse and even urge political cowardice in the name of “realism” or “pragmatism” (“he was smart to take this bad, unjust position because Americans are too stupid or primitive for him to do otherwise and he needs to be re-elected”), the more common that behavior will be.

Here’s the transcript of last night’s show (scroll down near the bottom).
Here are a couple of excerpts from Baldwin…

SMILEY: What about that distinction between legalizing and decriminalizing? What about the latter?
BALDWIN: I disagree with the latter as well. You’re talking to a guy 20 years sober, Tavis, off of drugs and alcohol. I know the affects of marijuana firsthand. I can tell you right now, if this starts to become something that is more readily available to our youth, the ramifications and repercussions of that in the next 30 years will be beyond our comprehension.
SMILEY: Do you buy the argument that marijuana leads to harder stuff?
BALDWIN: That’s a fact. […]
BALDWIN: Last time I was on the show with Ron Paul, you wouldn’t believe the e-mails I got, people are going to kill me, shoot me, all kinds of stuff. America wants it’s marijuana, man, I get it. But I am just worried — I am more concerned for the future and the youth of America. And this drug, which is a very dangerous drug — it’s not a casual thing. It’s very dangerous — is negatively effecting our youth.

In addition to being completely wrong, Baldwin has an extremely inflated opinion of his own importance. I don’t know of any marijuana legalization advocates who would care enough about Stephen Baldwin to lift a finger.
Fact is, we’re quite delighted to have him as the face of prohibition, and would be happy for him to keep showing up on talk shows. He makes our job easier.

“bullet” Holbrooke is already making waves in Afghanistan

Holbrooke, who was appointed by President Obama as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, stated that efforts to eliminate opium poppy crops had failed to hinder the Taliban insurgents‰ ability to raise money from the drug trade. ‹It is the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years,Š he said. Holbrooke believes much of the money should instead be used to help Afghanistan‰s expanding agricultural sector, which would in turn create many jobs.

“bullet” New York State Lawmakers Reach Historic Agreement to Reform Rockefeller Drug Laws. This is good news, but also note NYCLU Applauds Pledge to Reform Rock Drug Laws, but Cautions to Wait for Details

The New York Civil Liberties Union applauded the pledge made today by the governor, senate and assembly to reform the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws, but cautioned that the essential details of the agreement have yet to be revealed. What has been outlined so far reflects a significant shift in policy and an important agreement in principle, but significant details have yet to be worked out. […]
The agreement appears to embrace š for the first time and in a meaningful way š two important principles of reform: It includes a reduction of mandatory minimum sentences, and it includes a restoration of judges‰ authority to send many drug offenders to treatment programs instead of jail.

“bullet” Sen. Webb: Prisons a ‘national disgrace,’ must be reformed

Even as President Barack Obama slapped down the hopes of American marijuana consumers as to his position on legalization, Senator Jim Webb (D-Va) was quietly preparing to introduce major legislation which has the potential to dramatically alter US drug laws.
Calling the US criminal justice system “a national disgrace,” two US senators called for a top-to-bottom review with an eye on reforms aimed at reducing America’s vast prison population.
Senator Webb, backed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, introduced legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel that would conduct an 18-month assessment and offer concrete recommendations for reform.

“bullet” Bernd Debusmann at Reuters: Drug wars and the balloon effect

Why have billions of dollars and thousands of anti-narcotics agents around the world failed to throttle the global traffic in cocaine, heroin and marijuana? Blame wrong-headed policies, largely driven by the United States, and what experts call the balloon effect.

“bullet” John Aloysius Farrell in US News and World: Marijuana: Tax It, Regulate It, But Legalize It
“bullet” I don’t know what the Director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia Univeristy in the City of New York does for a living, but apparently it doesn’t involve much actual thinking. Aldo Civico really looks pretty silly with Legalization of drugs? An imperfect solution.
His thesis? Legalization would not get rid of all crime, so it’s not worth pursuing. Of course, he then fails to come up with a single idea that would be better.
“bullet” Marijuana legalization too hot for CNN

The final “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News” was taped at CNN’s New York studios this afternoon. And it appears CNN higher-ups forced an edit on producers. A TVNewser tipster tells us, “a large section of a segment about marijuana legalization” was edited out of the final broadcast.

“bullet” OpEd in Alabama: War on Drugs as Effective as Prohibition

There are lessons to be learned from the failure of Prohibition — across the country in general, and in Mobile in particular.

“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”