Drug WarRant

Link

Hundreds of Mexicans blocked roads and bridges into the United States on Tuesday in a protest of army operations against drug gangs that officials said was organized by drug traffickers.
About 300 protesters, some with handkerchiefs tied over their faces, carried signs saying “Army Get Out!” in front of the town hall in the northern city of Monterrey, 130 miles (209 km) from the Texas border. It was the largest in a series of anti-army protests this week.

Interestingly, Natividad Gonzalez, governor of Nuevo Leon state, claims that the Gulf cartel and The Zetas paid the people to protest. And Reuters claimed to find a woman who refused to be named who said her neighbor had been paid to come.

“Rising levels of unemployment in Mexico make it much easier for Mexican drug traffickers to recruit youths to engage in demonstrations like this, for relatively low pay,” U.S.-based security consultancy Stratfor said in a report.

Think about that. The drug traffickers can already buy or intimidate police and government officials. Now, they can hire the people (and not just to work in the drug trade). This is a cartel public works project! Yep. The Zetas are providing a jobs stimulus package!
What’s left for the government of Mexico? How much more drug war victory can they afford before they become irrelevant?
Meanwhile, Calderon remains stubbornly oblivious.

Calderon said on Monday the rampant violence shows the drug cartels are desperate

But I dare say the people are smarter than he is. And while it’s possible that some protesters are getting a paycheck, I’d bet that some of them were there because they’re tired of the violence and don’t see it as Calderon’s road to victory. They’ve been around long enough to know that there has always been drug trafficking, but it’s the drug war that fuels the drug war violence.

Link
This certainly isn’t the first time for Illinois, but it could be the best shot to date.
Now we still have Limey Nargelenas, deputy director of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police irresponsibly shooting off his mouth about gateways and children..

Nargelenas said the problem is that individuals who just want to get high — and who aren‰t seriously ill — could abuse a medical marijuana law like the one Haine envisions.
Further, characterizing marijuana as medicine ‹sends a real bad message to the kids,Š he said.
‹We just see so many kids today that when they do try marijuana, they start experimenting with other drugs too,Š Nargelenas said. ‹We believe (medical marijuana) should be very restricted, just like any other kind of medication.Š

…but note that last comment: “just like any other kind of medication.” Ah, Limey, so you’re admitting that it is medicine.
There’s a step.
Here are the positive things that Illinois has going for it this time around:

1. John Walters won’t be flying in with his entourage to browbeat the state legislature into defeating it
2. There could be a less negative feeling about how the state law will interact with the federal law now.
3. This year’s bill sponsor, William Haine, is a former State’s Attorney. That could ease things with law enforcement.
4. The previous sponsor, John Cullerton, is now Senate president.
5. Michigan passed it last year, so the midwest is in play.

Tune into NPR today to hear Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s interview with Michelle Martin on her Program “Tell Me More.”
Cheye will be discussing the botched SWAT team raid on his home last July; the international response to the incident; and pending legislation in Maryland to require more transparency and accountability for police departments who use SWAT teams.

Kevin A. Sabet, who I saw debate Kris Krane at the recent International SSDP Conference (Krane won handily, but at least Sabet’s a good sport) has come up with recommendations for the new drug czar.
It really is silly how the prohibitionists (and their apologists) have to avoid at all costs actually addressing alternatives to prohibition and instead clutch at ridiculous straws to “save” prohibition, such as:

The next drug czar must not be afraid to flex his muscle.

Really? That’s why prohibition has been such a failure? If he just flexes his muscle more, the economic laws of supply and demand will cower before his blinding manhood?
So how does he address alternatives?

Drug policy is rarely a bone of contention among Democrats and Republicans. Everyone believes in prevention, law enforcement and treatment. And legalization remains (rightfully) the stuff of dreams (nightmares, really, when you take into account the heavy social costs that would result from a free, commercial market for illegal drugs).

No proof. No justification. No acknowledgement of the fact that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support such claims, and no acknowledgement of the extreme social costs of prohibition. Note also the unexplained assumption that legalization necessarily means “free commercial market” when most legalization advocates call for regulation.
It’s dishonest, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from the prohibition enablers.
[Hat tip to Mark Kleiman for the (favorable?) link to Sabet’s piece.]

From a news conference minutes ago…

During a news conference, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said there is not enough evidence to prosecute anyone involved in the Michael Phelps marijuana case.
Monday’s news conference puts an end to speculation if Phelps would be charged with smoking marijuana in Richland County.

It’s always entertaining reading LEAP’s Howard Wooldridge’s reports of his activities on the Hill.
Recently, he discussed an interesting exchange at a seminar:

George Mason University‰s Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy sponsored ten (10) distinguished professors of criminology brought from all over the country to share their expertise with 150 attendees. For two hours each explained how this or that strategy would reduce crime, gang violence or both.
I was able to ask the first question: As a Michigan police detective a solid 70% of my felony case load touched crimes related to modern prohibition/war on drugs. Have any of you ever done any research or know of any research that shows how much felony crime would be reduced, if we repealed modern prohibition and these illegal drugs were sold like alcohol and cigarettes?
For a solid 5 seconds no one said anything! Finally, a brave professor from Temple University and former London, England police officer rose and said no, no studies have ever been done. […]
As I was leaving the Russell Senate Office Building, the Brit commented how he liked my jacket (THIS COP SAYS STOP THE DRUG WAR). He and the last speaker and I enjoyed a robust discussion on the 5 minute walk to the Metro. It was mentioned that the feds fund most of the professors‰ research and one must be careful.
Can you spell uncomfortable? As a bonus to the seminar, another attendee asked the moderator from George Mason University: Since GMU has the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy, why don‰t you do the research that the detective asked about earlier? Isn‰t that your job? The University official mumbled something that I on the first row could not hear. LOL

I’ll be giving my Elevator Arguments presentation/workshop at the 2009 Missouri NORML/SSDP Conference on Friday, February 20 at 6 pm in the Arts and Sciences Building on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, MO.
The conference sounds excellent, and I’m excited to be part of it. It’ll be continuing through Saturday, and I look forward to seeing some of you there. Congrats to Evan Groll, Sean Randall and Scott Lauher for putting it together.

Via Nobody’s Business:

If you ever become a person of interest in a police investigation, or are ever arrested, or are merely pulled over for a traffic violation Ö the only sane thing to do is to shut your mouth. Take the fifth. Even if you are wholly innocent. Even if you were Ö honest officer! Ö going to tell nothing but the truth. Watch this entertaining (and scary) lecture by ace law professor James Duane of Regent University School of Law.

James Duane:

Officer George Bruch, Virginia Beach Police Department responds, saying “Everything he said is true.”

Pretty poor timing for our dead-son exploiting* Steve Steiner.
On February 10, I noted that Gil Kerlikowske had been selected as the new drug czar nominee. This was confirmed by the next day.
On February 13, Steve Steiner puts out a media advisory:

Media Advisory: Guest for Discussion on National Drug Czar Position

Father who lost his son to drug overdose ready to speak up on National Drug Czar position.

No, he wasn’t making himself available to discuss Gil Kerlikowske. He had apparently missed the news. The media advisory was to promote someone else:

Mr. Steiner feels passionate about the current issue and has someone in mind for the position — Mr. Ronald Brooks

So who is Ronald Brooks? I’ve written about him before He’s a hard-core opportunistic drug warrior, who also happens to be a first-class illiterate idiot. About the only worse choices would be Calvina Fay, Mark Souder, or the Semblers.
The good news about this silliness is that if people like Steiner and Brooks are what the opposition have to offer, the drug war is doomed.
*for those who don’t know about Steiner and think I’m being insensitive, note that his son overdosed from crushing and snorting OcyContin, and Steiner now accepts money from Purdue Pharmaceuticals (makers of OxyContin) to campaign against medical marijuana.

“bullet” Kathleen Parker is on fire again at the Washington Post with Snap, Crackle, Pot – an excellent OpEd about Phelps, Lott, and the drug war, and she speaks with Howard Wooldridge of LEAP.
“bullet” Speaking of Phelps, the attorneys of two of the young men that Sheriff Lott went after have spoken up, and (no surprise) the only thing Lott was after was for them to incriminate Phelps.

The lawyers did not release the names of their clients, but Harpootlian said that his client didn’t even see Phelps smoke marijuana at the party. McCulloch said his client was out of town, and only lived at the home when the party happened. Both men have since moved.
“After they arrested him, they didn’t ask him where did you get the marijuana or who sold it to you. Almost all the questions they asked him were about Michael Phelps,” Harpootlian said. He added: “It was like they were busting the biggest heroin distributor in the country.”
The investigators appear to be trying to build a case against Phelps from others – a tactic normally used to bring down drug dealers with a large amounts of cocaine or methamphetamine, not someone who smoked marijuana five months ago, said Chip Price, a Greenville attorney who has dealt with drug cases for 33 years.
“Never have I seen anything like this on a simple marijuana case,” Price said.

“bullet” Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle of Higher Education also sees clearly the stupidiy of the statement in the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. government claims, however, that increasing violence is an indication that the drug war is working. One of them is quoted as asserting that “There is violence ‘because these guys are flailing. We‰re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”
Apart from the juvenile expressions, we may be sure that if the violence were going down, the same officials would claim credit for that, too. “See? We’re taking these guys down. They can‰t even fight back any more . . .:”

“bullet” Mark Kleiman and Harold Pollack give advice for the new drug czar at the American Prospect. Most of it’s pretty good. They do get into pushing a couple of pet ideas (like in #8/9), but that’s OK. And, of course, Kleiman has to find a way to get in his pathetic juvenile strawman dig with:

Tell libertarians, and some liberals, that the drug problem isn’t just some statist or reactionary myth: Drug abuse, and not just the drug war, causes great harms.

This is just some fantasy. I don’t know a single libertarian or liberal who claims that drug abuse isn’t harmful. What many do claim is that prohibition isn’t the tool for dealing with it. And some even claim that we can’t properly address drug abuse until prohibition is out of the way. And some libertarians claim that government isn’t the way to deal with drug abuse at all. But they don’t claim that the problems of drug abuse don’t exist.
“bullet” This is disturbing.

Many doctors may lose their ability to prescribe 24 popular narcotics as part of a new effort to reduce the deaths and injuries that result from these medicines‰ inappropriate use, federal drug officials announced Monday.
A new control program will result in further restrictions on the prescribing, dispensing and distribution of extended-release opioids like OxyContin, fentanyl patches, methadone tablets and some morphine tablets.

We don’t need to make it harder for doctors to help patients in pain. We’re already making people suffer more than we should.
“bullet” Being drug free when you’re on probation doesn’t even help you when you live in San Antonio.

In San Antonio, between 2/3 and 3/4 of positive urine tests from the Bexar probation department resulted in false accusations of drug use, Greg Harman at the SA Current reports

If you’re going to be thrown back in jail for drug use when you didn’t use the drugs, it’s not much incentive to stay clean, is it?
“bullet” “drcnet”