Drug WarRant

Lots of good reading today
“bullet” Marijuana’s Manhattan Project — fascinating five-page article about a couple of medical marijuana entrepreneurs who, at some risk, are developing lab testing protocols for medical marijuana to improve growing safety and to provide better information to patients about the pot they’re purchasing.
“bullet” Tranform’s Danny Kushlick really lays into the UNODC and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs:

Every state that signs up to the Political Declaration at this Commission recommits the UN to complicity in fighting a catastrophic war on drugs. It is a tragic irony that the UN, so often renowned for peacekeeping, is being used to fight a war that brings untold misery to some of the most marginalised people on earth. 8000 deaths in Mexico in recent years, the destabilisation of Colombia and Afghanistan, continued corruption and instability in the Caribbean and West Africa are testament to the catastrophic impact of a drug control system based upon global prohibition.
It is no surprise that the Declaration is unlikely even to mention harm reduction, as it runs counter to the primary impact of the prevailing drug control system which, as the past ten years demonstrate, increases harm.

“bullet” Great rant in a student newspaper. All The Cool Kids Forfeit Their 4th Amendment Rights…. and why you shouldn’t

Always refuse searches.æ You have nothing to gain and everything to lose when you allow an officer to search your belongings.æ Why people routinely waive their fourth amendment rights is completely beyond me.æ I don’t know what kind of marijuana students at KSU smoke, but I’m guessing it must be pretty strong to make them forget a 222-year-old document that they learned about in third grade.

“bullet” I have a message for John Walters. We had to listen to you for 8 years, now shut the fuck up. You have nothing valid to add to any conversation. Note: Jacob Sullum actually goes to the effort to fisk this nonsense. He’s a more patient man than I.
“bullet” Via Kaptinemo in comments comes this heartbreaking story:

In July 2007, Teresa Ortega stood solemnly in a field of wilting corn and pineapple crops as tears streamed down her cheeks. She had taken it upon herself to start a farm with 100 widows – women who lost their husbands and children to Colombia’s war and were fighting against poverty. Together they had purchased this small farm and worked it on the weekends to make ends meet. Now – after a plane sprayed chemicals over their farm – all was lost.
To bureaucrats in Washington, Teresa and her friends are simply additional collateral damage at ground zero of Washington’s drug war in South America.

“bullet” Libby Brooks in the Guardian: Never mind the evidence – a drug-free world is nigh

The harm caused by prohibition is staggering, yet still politicians cling to the blinkered ambition of a global ‘war on drugs’

“bullet” LEAP’s Howard Wooldridge visits the Conservative Policital Action Conference and finds people agreeing with him.
“bullet” Via Grits for Breakfast: Texas legislators are impressed by “compelling” evidence of the need to outlaw salvia: a YouTube video about driving while on Salvia. They missed, however, that this was a comedy video made by a guy who also made videos called “Gardening on Salvia and Writing A Letter To Congress on Salvia.
“bullet” Point-Counterpoint: DUST-UP
Medical marijuana in California: a history Have the state’s efforts to legalize and regulate medical marijuana been successful? Scott Imler and Stephen Gutwillig debate.
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

The Economist has come out with another series of powerhouse features on the drug war
“bullet” Dealing with Drugs: On the trail of the traffickers

This article is mostly a detailed review of the situation in Mexico, complete with the usual quotes from Mexican officials that the violence is proof that the war is working. The Economist doesn’t take a strong obvious position here, but notes that there’s no evidence that the cartels are in danger, concluding “And the drug business, ever supple, will adapt and survive.”
This chart was a particularly interesting addition to the article, showing that nothing we do to attempt to eradicate coca can possibly work. Certainly in the last 20 years, we have been funding and actively participating in immense eradication efforts. The effect? Absolutely zero. In fact, production went up.
“bullet” Levels of prohibition: A toker’s guide
This article gives a brief overview of enforcement differences around the world, noting tha, while the UNODC would like to hold Sweden up as an example of oppressive drug policy that works, the real story doesn’t support that as a world-wide model:

A survey last year by the World Health Organisation examined drug-taking in 17 countries and found no link between the strictness of prohibition and the amount of drug consumption. (The lenient Netherlands, interestingly, has one of the lowest rates of ‹problemŠ drug use in Europe.) ‹Countries with more stringent policies did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies,Š the researchers concluded. For every strict regime like Sweden, there is another such as Britain or America where a tough approach co-exists with widespread drug use.

“bullet” The cocaine business: Sniffy customers
This article focuses mostly on the smuggling of cocaine to England, noting that “as one route closes, another opens up” but noting that many of the criminals lack market sophistication making the job a bit easier for the police at the current time.
“bullet” Drug education: In America, lessons learned
This is an overview of drug education efforts here (complete with a paragraph on DARE), with this fine conclusion:

It may seem odd that the campaign against tobacco, a legal drug, has displayed so much more Úlan than the war on illegal drugs. Yet this is natural. Making a drug illegal may discourage some people from taking it, but it also discourages frank conversation and clear thinking. It is much easier to attack something if it is brought into the light.

“bullet” But the best piece in the entire issue was the lead story:
Failed states and failed policies: How to stop the drug wars (with the subhead: “Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution“)
The article starts out talking about the failures of the drug war, even using the phrase “Al Capone, but on a global scale.” And then they get to their recommendation:

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That’s why we, in the consumer countries, need to fight harder to convince people. And then the article made another critical point:

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

And we do generally assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise, even though there is, in fact, no hard evidence even of that. But the point is that’s OK, because then we can focus our efforts on reducing the harm of the abusive drug taking and not worry about the responsible drug taking.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state‰s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

Exactly. The fact is that we can never, in a prohibition regime, effectively deal with those who have problems with drugs.
The final conclusion:

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

I sure do love listening to people who understand economics talk about the drug war.

So this is how we spread democracy…

Mrs. Mary Carlin Yates, a former United States Ambassador to Ghana, has asked journalists to assist traditional chiefs, fishermen and the security agencies to fight the illicit drug trade, […]
Mrs Yates said though challenges confronting the media were enormous, ‹you should not give up because you give a voice to your own people who cannot speak for themselves.Š
‹If you allow drug cartels to take over your country, it will take a long time to rid the society off the effects of the menace, adding, already Ghana is an example in democratic principles in Africa and the world, and she must, therefore, take control of its territorial security to safeguard the interests of the citizenry.
Mrs Yates noted that the media‰s role in the fight of the drug war was crucial and would go a long way to complement the efforts of the military and other international partners.

Apparently, telling people the truth missed her list of media roles.

“bullet” Illinois: Illinois Medical Marijuana Bill Passes House Committee for the First Time Ever, 4-3
“bullet” Minnesota: Senate Committee Passes Medical Marijuana, 4-3

Wallace Gilby Craig writes in the North Shore News (Vancouver): Drug Legalization Lobby Lacks Business Plan
I don’t know who this guy is, but the depth of his stupidity is truly astonishing.

But according to our local drug-legalization crowd, led by marijuana’s false prophets, those feds just don’t understand the way we choose to live in la-la-land. This clutch of deceitful addicts and their myopic supporters propose legalization of cannabis and other illicit drugs, and the introduction of a bureaucratic system of drug regulation and distribution.
Their dream-world fantasy is based on a misty notion that illicit drugs could be produced and distributed like alcohol; that by the stroke of a pen the multi-billion dollar gangland drug manufacturing/importing/exporting business would be transformed into a legal, manageable and taxable government monopoly. Yet to be explained by marijuana’s false prophets: How a pussycat government monopoly hopes to persuade gangsters to trade in their guns for bongs, become choir boys, and refrain from continuing to sell drugs in an inevitable black market.
Fat chance, I say.
Marijuana’s false prophets send a steady stream of misinformation about a supposed similarity between the brief period when alcohol was prohibited and our hundred years of criminalization of illicit drugs, always ending with the same catchphrase: Let’s take control of marijuana — tax it, standardize and regulate it. […]
It is a false message. Gang violence and murder will not end with fairy-tale legalization. International crime syndicates, coupled with source countries around the world profiting in the production of narcotics, will continue to target Canada and the United States. Legalization would cause them to increase their activity to accommodate an increase in the numbers of addicts in Canada.

Forget all the other stupidity in those paragraphs. How does a sentient being come up with a thought process wherein criminal syndicates continue to sell illegal drugs at high profit when they’re available legally? Is Wallace unable to imagine a human who buys drugs? Does he think that the average drug purchaser would say “Well, I could purchase this legally at the corner and it would be safe and inexpensive. No, I think I’ll go get it from a criminal instead.” ? Does he not know that the black market cannot exist unless goods are illegal or over-regulated?
It gets worse. Wallace Gilby found the writings of Anthony Daniels, writing under the pseudnym of Theodore Dalrymple (probably because he had an inkling that he was writing complete crap). He shares some quotes with us, including:

“Analogies with the Prohibition era, often drawn by those who would legalize drugs, are false and inexact: it is one thing to attempt to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by at least nine-tenths of the adult population, and quite another to retain a ban on substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure that they never do become customary. Surely we have already slid down enough slippery slopes in the last 30 years without looking for more such slopes to slide down.”

What nonsense. Prohibition of substances is prohibition of substances. Period. And regardless of historical use, the laws of economics control. If there is demand, there will be supply, and prohibition won’t work.
Wallace Gilby Craig is a wanker, no doubt. But I’ve got to admit he can turn a colorful phrase, even if it is meaningless:

Dalrymple’s observations are apropos to today’s campaign of drug legalizers, including marijuana’s false prophets, to destroy the moral and ethical integrity of our precious individual liberty by including in it an absolute and unfettered right to dally with marijuana, chemical drugs and narcotics.
Wake up Canada! Dedicated narcissistic marijuana users and psychosocial hard drug abusers are parasitical citizens, engaged solely in their own interests and pleasures.
Their creed: I care for nothing but myself.

I particularly love that our push for legalization will destroy our precious individual liberty.

False Positive Drug Tests Exposed – National Press Club

Drug arrest goes haywire
Drug bust in a Wal-Mart parking lot at 1:30 in the afternoon with shots fired, cop cars ramming cop cars and overall chaos and mayhem.
Can you count the number of things that went wrong here?

A couple of days ago, I gently chided Mary O’Grady for not being as direct with her conclusions about the need to end prohibition as she seemed to want to be in her recent Wall Street Journal column. While I wished she would push harder to get the Journal to come out more for a sane approach (and perhaps they’re not ready to go there), I noted that she clearly understands the most important parts — the part that economics plays in prohibition, that supply-side drug wars are doomed to failure, and that ending prohibition is the only way to stop the black market profits.
I thought that maybe the Wall Street Journal was ready — after all, they also ran an OpEd by former Latin American Presidents Fernanco Henrique Cardoso, CÚsar Gaviria, and Ernesto Zedillo The War on Drugs is a Failure.
But today, we have deep levels of stupidity. Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens writes In Praise of Mexico’s War on Drugs

…the plain political fact is that drug legalization in the U.S. is not going to happen as long as a powerful moral and social consensus opposes it. To make the case for it now while Mexico bleeds is an exercise in fecklessness. […]
Mexico’s achievements have not been negligible. The government has managed to spark power struggles within and among cartels, and the vast majority of Mexico’s murder victims are themselves involved in the drug trade. More important, Mr. Calder÷n has sent the signal that his government will not repeat the patterns of complacency and collusion that typified Mexico for decades. Whatever else might be said about his government, it’s a serious one.
This does not mean Mr. Calder÷n will win this war. But for those of us who know Mexico well, it is an astonishing turn, deserving neither of pity nor sagacious snickering, but of respect.

Shorter Bret Stephens: Legalization is not going to happen, so there’s no point talking about it. But doing nothing is not an option, either. We need to be serious, and lots of violence and death means we’re serious, even if it doesn’t actually work. So we should respect Mexico for achieving pointless death.
What a putz.

“bullet” Tom Ammiano (who sponsored the bill to legalize marijuana in California) in the SFGate:

What if California could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to preserve vital state services without any tax increase? And what if at the same time, we could, without any new expense, help protect our endangered wilderness areas while making it harder for our kids to get drugs? […]
There may be disagreements about what direction to take, but it is clear to everyone involved that our current approach is not working. Regulation allows common-sense controls and takes the marijuana industry out of the hands of unregulated criminals.
As a member of the state Assembly, I believe we must acknowledge reality and bring innovative solutions to the issue of marijuana, not simply wait for the federal government. This is how change happens. Californians lead rather than follow, and we can set an example for the nation as we did on medical marijuana by passing AB390.

“bullet” And he’s interviewed in Salon:

Do you think legalizing it endorses its use?
Its use is there anyway. People do it everywhere. It’s better if you have a situation, like with booze, when you regulate it. If you’re smoking the legal product, you’re an adult, and it’s not full of pesticides, additives or other crap. The environment would benefit because a lot of these rogue plantations pollute the water source and deplete the soil. The growers pull up and walk away without any kind of remediation. You have to admit to reality here. I think everyone has been on this big denial trip.

“bullet” Californians inspire others, too. Steve Huntley in today’s Chicago Sun Times writes Legalizing marijuana makes sense, cents

The day may not be far off when Americans conclude, as they did with Prohibition in the 1930s, that violence associated with the marijuana ban is worse than the drug’s social ills. Some will raise the slippery slope argument that legalization opens the way to decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. Maybe we would have that discussion if legal marijuana works out, but saying yeah to one doesn’t mean saying yes to the other.
Marijuana prohibition no longer makes sense, if it ever did. For the record, my recreational chemical of choice is alcohol. After the sun sets, I like to enjoy a glass of wine or scotch. Why shouldn’t my neighbor, if so inclined, be able to relax with a joint?

“bullet” Good news from California’s DMV. While they claim not to be changing policy, there had been indications that they were yanking driver’s licenses of medical marijuana patients simply because of their status. Now they’ve clarified that medical marijuana is treated “exactly the same as any other prescription drug.”
“bullet” The Appeal Democrat (Maysville, CA) editorial suggests that the next step needs to be re-scheduling marijuana.

The criteria for Schedule I are as follows: “A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse, B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”
Marijuana does not meet any of these criteria. In 1988 the then-chief administrative law judge of the DEA, Francis Young, stated as much in an extensive advisory opinion based on several years of hearings. This view was reaffirmed by an extensive 1999 report in book form by the government’s Institute of Medicine, which summarized all the most recent research documenting marijuana’s medicinal uses and potential.
As the law is written, then, marijuana does not belong on Schedule I. If anything it belongs on Schedule V, the least-restrictive schedule. But even putting it on Schedule II (along with cocaine, morphine, amphetamines, PCP and opium) would allow physicians and their patients to use it appropriately. It would still not allow “recreational” use.
We understand that the Obama administration has a lot on its plate. But correcting this ongoing mistake, thereby alleviating a great deal of pain and suffering nationwide, is worth consideration.

“bullet” Then there are those in California who lead… the wrong way.
San Diego County is nothing if not determined (or perhaps pigheaded). They really don’t like the state’s medical marijuana law and are doing everything they can to avoid implementing it (at great taxpayer expense) despite being shot down by every court so far.

San Diego County attorneys say they are pressing ahead with a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to resolve conflicting state and federal medical marijuana laws. That‰s in spite of comments from U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, suggesting federal enforcement of marijuana laws may change.

I really don’t believe the Supreme Court will take this one. They’ve been pretty clear all along that while federal law supersedes state law, it doesn’t negate it.

The Sheriff of Essex County, Massachusetts writes of his discussions with young people about marijuana and decriminalization.
He says

We should never have reduced the criminal penalties associated with the possession of marijuana.

And so what are the reasons for this?

But the reality is if you use marijuana, and are arrested for the infraction, the charge stays on your permanent record. And such a charge may hinder your chances for employment, particularly if you ever had aspirations of working in law enforcement at the local, state or federal level.
A marijuana charge also negatively affects the way you are perceived when you apply for other jobs. You may, for example, lose your ability to apply for a commercial driver’s license if you garner a marijuana charge. You may also lose the chance to work for a particular company if that corporation requires regular drug tests and perceives you to be a habitual user of marijuana.
The list of problems associated with marijuana use is endless.

Um. Huh? Thats a list of problems associated with prohibition. The Sheriff appears to be saying that they should never have decriminalized marijuana because there are still major penalties that users could face.
What other reasons does the Sheriff offer?

I also reminded the students that when you become a regular marijuana user in high school, you are looked down upon by those who do not partake in the practice.

Ah, yes. Marijuana should be illegal because people will think less of you if you smoke it… Yeah, that makes sense.
It continues to amaze me that some law enforcement in Massachusetts is completely incapable of understanding…. the law.