Drug WarRant

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Narcotics officers in a two-county drug force in North Carolina were serving a warrant on a suspected marijuana dealer. After a hot, tiring day searching the house — and while waiting for the truck to load up the seized growing equipment and the misdemeanor amount of pot — they got some pizza… and beer.
It was very nice of County Sheriff Joe Shook to provide the beer, particularly since he had to drive across state lines to Georgia to get it (the county they were in was a dry county).

Drug Sweeps At Schools Applauded As Deterrent

Before police officers with drug-sniffing dogs scoured the halls at Mount Vernon High School on Tuesday, students were given a five-minute warning to come clean.
A few handed over prescription and over-the-counter medications hidden in their backpacks or lockers.
The hourlong building sweep that followed netted no illegal drugs, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success, said detective Cpl. Matt Dailey of the Mount Vernon Police Department, who helped organize the search. “We want them to know that we’re out there; we’re watching.” […]
“I think the bang for the buck is very good on the return,” said Bob Cornwell, director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association. […]
School officials say that random, unannounced drug sweeps help them measure a school’s safety and security. The exercise also is designed to make students think twice, said Mount Vernon Superintendent Steve Short.

Yep, that’s a deterrent all right.
You know what else would be a good deterrent? Selecting students at random and making them strip naked in front of everyone while guards go through their clothes and bags. That’d be a good deterrent.
Or how about this? Gather all the students in an assembly and pick one and execute him in front of a firing squad right there in the gym. Tell the other students that’ll happen to anyone who uses drugs. That would be a good deterrent.
A little extreme? Sure.
But you see, this is the mentality that has infected our schools. Anything goes as long as it’s seen as a deterrent to drug use (even if it isn’t). And so our young people are raised believing that they have no rights and become perfect fodder for authoritarians.

I have been heartened by the incredible work and growth of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. It gives me hope for the future in the development of a base of young drug policy reform activists.
And then I see an editorial like this in the school newspaper of a major university (University of Arizona) and I smile.

But this policy could not be more relevant to our current condition, as the UA sinks into a financial mire of budget shortfalls, desperate reorganization schemes and forced cutbacks. What better time to ask whether pursuing and penalizing student drug-users is really the wisest use of our time and money?
Of course, the UA didn’t write this policy, and it might be argued that even a united university community would be hard-pressed to change a federal law. But difficult is not the same as impossible, and it’s not impossible to imagine changed policy resulting from a nation of colleges raging against a policy that demands that they treat campus pot-smokers the same way they would treat, say, an outbreak of campus heroin addiction.
Our student government leaders, so eager to leap on anything that smacks of the downtrodden, should make this issue their own. At the very least, they would make it clear that this issue is an issue, and one that affects us all. After all, even those of us who don’t partake still wind up paying when those who do get busted – we pay through the teeth for the service, in fact, every April.

A nation of colleges raging against a policy. That’s something to dream about.

An open letter to the President: Obama, you’re no stranger to the bong.

Is there not a point in this endless drug war where the absurdity reaches a level of critical mass?

A man was been arrested after police said he used counterfeit money to purchase fake OxyContin pills from an undercover officer.

One of the crimes they charged him with was “criminal simulation.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady has, in the past, demonstrated an understanding of the economics of the drug war — usually, unfortunately, without taking that final step in proposing the solution (she dances around it).
Today’s OpEd is a very bizarre piece. Tell me what you think, but it appears to me that she’s trying to find a way to push the Journal’s required anti-Obama venom, while sneaking in a message about legalization.
Here’s how it starts (complete with a picture of captured Mexican gang members in front of a helicopter with a display of seized weapons):

Just when you thought the effects of U.S. drug policy couldn’t get more pernicious, guess what? That’s where we’re headed.
Mexico’s young democracy is already paying a high price for the lethal combination of prohibition and strong gringo demand for mind-altering substances. Drug violence has escalated as Mexican suppliers intent on satisfying appetites across the border have tangled with each other and law enforcement. Now the U.S. is getting ready to raise the incentives for gangsters.

Whoa — what did that Obama do?

At a press conference last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder indicated that President Obama would keep a campaign promise by ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.

Huh?

This means that the weed will remain illegal to transport and sell — and thus highly profitable for criminals — but there will be fewer repercussions for those who use it in states with liberal marijuana laws.

OK, that’s stretching a point a bit. Yes, it’s true that the big problem with any decrim-only effort is that it doesn’t remove the black market, and it’s also true that a certain amount of Mexican marijuana may get diverted into the medical marijuana market despite the state laws allowing caregivers to grow their own. But to say that eliminating federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries is going to enrich Mexican gangs is reaching – we’re not talking about eliminating laws here – merely allowing the states to enforce their own in this one area.
So now, wade through six or seven paragraphs about the violence in Mexico (including the now obligatory “violence means we’re winning” meme, this time by Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora), and you get the real point that O’Grady appears to want to make — hidden at the very end.

To really change things for the better, Latin American countries need the Americans to cut funding to the bad guys. Mr. Medina Mora estimates that drug consumers north of the Rio Grande put some $10 billion into the pockets of the cartels annually. This is how they either buy, intimidate or annihilate many of those who get in their way.
More interesting is Mexico’s estimates that half of all cartel revenue comes from the marijuana business. That means, by my calculation, that if you lift the prohibition on trafficking pot alone, it would cut mob income by half. It also means that if the U.S. adopts a wink-wink policy of tolerating marijuana use but keeps it officially illegal, the thugs are going to get richer.
It is considered politically risky in the U.S. to argue for lifting the ban on marijuana. But that’s no excuse for Mr. Obama’s policy, which will harm Mexico further. The country has already paid enough for American hypocrisy on drug use.

Interesting how she used “lift the prohibition on trafficking” and “lifting the ban” as tortured euphemisms for “legalize.”
Come on, Mary. Don’t hold back. Come out and say it. You know you want to!
Talk to your co-editors and get the Wall Street Journal behind legalization — not buried in the article, but in the headline and the lede. It’s the right thing to do.

This is a great time for drug policy reformers. There’s a lot of buzz out there, and there are a ton of drug policy issues being discussed. We need to take advantage of the opportunity and keep the discussion going.
Write a letter to the editor. Strike up a conversation with friends or co-workers about a story in the news. Or even simply comment on news stories in the comments section of your local paper.
In addition to commenting on the drug policy stories out there (Mexico, California legalization, New Jersey Medical Marijuana, etc.), another trick is to show people how so many different stories come back to drug policy reform. Your paper reports on the 15-year-old girl who was beaten by a cop? Forget that it wasn’t about drugs – point out that the drug war has created a dynamic where many cops look at citizens as the enemy.
A story on the economy? (There are lots of those these days.) Point out the massive amounts we’re spending on the drug war while making things worse. The drug war is a stimulus plan for criminal job creation.
A story about a pot bust? Throw them a curve. Compliment the officers on doing their job, but point out that in an hour the pot dealer will be replaced by another one and the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for enforcement, prosecution and jail.
Use facts and reason. Take the high road. Don’t ramble or get angry, and avoid phrases like “Free the Weed!”
If you want help in writing Letters to the Editor, go to MAPinc – the main resource for getting published.

“bullet” Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project discussed marijuana legalization on Glenn Beck’s show. Crooks and Liars covered it (and has the video):

One person in this conversation was calm, reasonable, had an abundance of facts at hand, and actually made pretty good sense. The other person was incoherent, meandering, silly, made a lot of irrelevant observations from outer space, and relied on dumb stereotypes and non-facts.
And Glenn Beck was not the former. On top of that, his nonstop sneering at Kampia made him look like a real sphincter.
In fact, this entire clip generally makes a convincing argument in favor of the marijuana advocates. If the best the opposition can come up with is this kind of gaping stupidity …

“bullet” Report: Bush’s drug office lacked broader focus

The nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration says the $1.2 million study, which it planned to release Thursday, found that the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush relied on selected data to show progress in combating illegal drug use by youth.
The office did not highlight less positive results among adults or pursue a comprehensive anti-drug strategy across age and demographic groups, the report found.

Well, duh!
“bullet” Just a couple of days ago, Caldron said that he vows to win the drug war. Now it turns how that “Calderon vows to win Mexico’s drug ‘cancer’ fight”

“It’s as though the patient told the doctor ‘my stomach hurts badly’ … And when he is operated on to remove what was thought to be an appendicitis, an already widespread cancer is found instead,” Calderon told Milenio TV.

Hmmm… doesn’t sound like a very good doctor.
“bullet” 10 years ago, the UN was proclaiming “A Drug Free World – We Can Do It.” Their new slogan seems to be “Hey, after 100 years, the drug problem has been contained, so we’re winning.” Apparently “contained” is a flexible term (Yup – we’ve got that problem contained, all right. It’s no bigger than it is.) and the damage caused by these “containment” efforts isn’t something to worry our pretty little heads over.
“bullet” If you haven’t already, please check out our own Allan Erickson’s OpEd “Legalize It,” published in the Eugene Weekly. Very nicely done – even though he did kind of ruin the punch line surprise of my stop sign joke by reversing it. 🙂
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

U.S. to yield marijuana jurisdiction to states
The headline itself is a generous interpretation of AG Holder’s comments, but it’s a great thing to see in “print,” because it establishes, as a sort of reality, the truth of how the U.S. can extricate itself from this whole marijuana mess — merely yield marijuana jurisdiction to the states, and let them try their own different approaches in the laboratories of federalism.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Calderon and his top prosecutor said the violence that killed 6,290 people last year — and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of 2009 — is a sign that the cartels are under pressure from military and police operations nationwide, as well as turf wars among themselves.

Runner up: Random testing would win drug war

Oh sure, there were the Crusades, the Inquisition, the destruction of science (Galileo), silence during the Holocaust, coverup of pedophiles, and the direct responsibility for millions of deaths to AIDS due to opposing safe sex practices (particularly in third world countries).
But NO, that’s not nearly enough for the Vatican. Surely there’s more evil that they can promote, more people they can kill in the name of God the Pope.
Oh yes, how about drug users. Let’s kill some of them, too.
You see, the United States finally, finally, finally, came to its senses and the Obama administration sent a new message through its representatives to the United Nations — that needle exchange as a harm reduction approach would be acceptable. While that was not even close to addressing all the harm reduction approaches that are needed, it was at least an opening, and even the most rabid global drug warriors agreed that needle exchange was now probably a sure thing to be included in the new global drug policy.
But then, guess who intercedes?

The Vatican has been accused of putting the lives of thousands at risk by attempting to influence UN drugs policy on the eve of a major international declaration.
The Vatican’s objection to “harm reduction” strategies, such as needle exchange schemes, has ignited a fierce debate between the US and the EU over how drugs should be tackled.
A new UN declaration of intent is due to be signed in Vienna on 11 March. However, there are major disagreements between member countries over whether a commitment to “harm reduction” should be included in the document, which is published every 10 years.
Now the Vatican has issued a statement that claims that using drugs is “anti-life” and “so-called harm reduction leads to liberalisation of the use of drugs”. The Vatican’s last-minute intervention appears to have led to Italy withdrawing from the EU consensus on the issue and thrown the talks over the declaration into confusion. [Guardian, UK]

Now, just to be clear, is there any doubt as to the actual truth about Needle Exchange Programs? No.

Seven federally funded studies during the 1990s, conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences among others, all reached similar conclusions that NEPs work in reducing HIV’s spread among IV drug users, their partners and children, and that they do not encourage increased drug use. Furthermore, a more recent study by the World Health Organization compiled the results of over 200 such reports from around the world and came to the same conclusions. [emphasis added]

The Vatican knows this, and yet they oppose needle exchange. Dr. William Martin, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Public Policy at Rice University says:

When the science is clear, when we know that something will help save lives and choose not to do it that is not only pigheaded, it is immoral.

There is no doubt that the Vatican is immoral.
I am no stranger to spirituality. I was raised in church (my father is a minister). But religion does not own, beget, nor bestow morality. And some of the most moral people I’ve known are atheists.
In fact, when a group of people claim to be the holders of religious truth and use that ill-gotten power for destruction rather than for the good of the people, then they are terrorists, whether they reside in caves in Pakistan, or high in the Holy See.