Drug WarRant

A blast from the past — can’t remember where I saw it recently. Enjoy.
Undercover Cop Never Knew Selling Drugs Was Such Hard Work

Rick Bastone, 31, an officer with Philadelphia’s 23rd Precinct, has gained newfound respect for America’s hard-working drug dealers ever since going undercover to sell narcotics.
“I had no idea how tough this was,” said Bastone, standing on a dilapidated corner in 20-degree weather while awaiting a cocaine drop-off Monday. “I guess I imagined it being like in the movies: drinking champagne, hot-tubbing with honeys, and cruising in customized Escalades while watching the cash roll in. But here I am, freezing my ass off. I’ve got to say, these drug-dealing scumbags really earn their pay.”

Pat Rogers (who has a new blog) writes me to say that the temporary appointment of Ed Jurith as Acting Director of the ONDCP should be more concerning than Scott Morgan and I have indicated. He notes that Jurith has a history of being a drug warrior, and…

…many in the drug policy reform community like to think that the raid on a medical marijuana facility in California just after the inauguration was a last vestige of the Bush administration, but Jurith had already been appointed acting director of the ONDCP on the 20th of January so there is every reason to believe that the raid was actually sanctioned by the Obama administration.

Pat may be right — I certainly have no inside ear to know who’s been talking about what or making which decisions. I’m just speculating.
But my take doesn’t change. Is Ed Jurith a drug warrior? Of course — he’s been with the ONDCP forever. Is he a Drug Czar? No way.
A drug czar (in the sense that Walters has been a drug czar and McCaffrey was before him) is not so much a developer of policy (as a member of the White House Office, the Director of the ONDCP serves at the pleasure of the President). The Drug Czar is, instead, a public figurehead — a propaganda promoter, a policy apologist, a cunning liar whose job it is to convince the public that the government interest is theirs.
Take a look at the last time Jurith was Acting Drug Czar — the extended period of time between McCaffrey and Walters. He was invisible. Hardly any public appearances except a couple of small-time required appearances before Congress. He was put there as an administrator to keep the office functioning while decisions were made about the office. In fact, prior to Walters’ appointment, while Jurith was Acting Drug Czar, Bush was getting significant grief from Republican Congressmen (if I recall, Souder was one of them) about the fact that Bush had not yet appointed a drug czar!
I really expect Jurith to do the same job again. Be as invisible as possible.
Regarding the South Tahoe raid: it seems much less likely to me that Jurith somehow managed to get the ear of the President the day after inauguration, get an OK for the raid, bypass the not-yet-confirmed Attorney General to go to the DEA and have them do a raid the next day….
It seems infinitely more likely that Bush’s DEA head Michele Leonhart had a raid already planned for South Tahoe, saw that there was a temporary void in the AG’s office (due to the last minute hold put on Holder’s nomination) and no directions were coming from above to prevent her from continuing as she always had in going after medical marijuana dispensaries.

On January 9, 1998, when U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi announced in a press conference that the government would take action against California medical marijuana clubs (arguably the start of the DEA’s current war against the sick), Leonhart was standing at his side.

It’s true that Obama has had nothing to say on the subject. As Pat notes:

Obama has not repudiated Mr. Jurith. Nor has the president used the raid as an opportunity to get up on a soap box in opposition to future raids.

In his first week, while attempting to pass a stimulus package, the President is going to publicly admonish his staff in order to support potheads (how it would be reported). Right. If he did anything right now, it would be a hand slap in a back room.
There was already a public explosion over Congress’ inclusion of condoms in the stimulus package. Public action directly taken by the President about medical marijuana would be a public relations nightmare.
Anyway that’s my take. Who knows?
Sure would be nice to be a fly on the wall, though.

I’ve been busy with some other projects.
“bullet” The Epidemic That Wasn’t The New York Times demonstrates that the media’s hysteria about the latest drug scare (this time it was crack babies in the 80s and 90s) is usually a bunch of hot air.
“bullet” Texas editorial: Drugs are bad, but they’re good enough
“bullet” Obama appoints temporary drug czar. Jurith is a good placeholder — better than having a Bush holdover in the Acting position.

Long-time Drug WarRant friend Lee Rosenberg has put together an extraordinary 6-part series called “Joe Biden’s War.” at HA Seattle. It’s a history of the American Drug War and Vice President Joe Biden’s involvement.

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: South America
• Part 3: Mexico

Update:

• Part 4: Afghanistan

When we got a miniscule amount of sentencing reform regarding crack cocaine, the prohibitionists were all proclaiming doom and gloom, panic in the streets, and the end of the world.
Here’s one example from one year ago:

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it is seeking $200 million to help cities fight violent crime, citing as one of its reasons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s decision to give convicted crack cocaine offenders a chance for an earlier release.

Speaking before the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that “a sudden influx of criminals from federal prison into your communities could lead to a surge in new victims as a tragic, but predictable, result.”

So it’s been a year. Have you seen a surge of new victims as a result of sentencing reform? No. You never see a surge of new victims as a result of sentencing reform. You only see a surge of new victims when you ratchet up the drug war (as in Mexico).
Douglas Berman, at Sentencing Law and Policy has been following this issue closely. Here’s one example of how smooth it’s going.

For the most part, the process has gone smoothly in the two federal courthouses that serve the Quad-Cities, officials said. Prosecutors and defense attorneys worked with probation officers to sift through applications to determine who was eligible and who was not. People with mandatory sentences and career offender status were out. A few people convicted of other types of crime attempted to ask for reductions, too.
In the Central District of Illinois, of which the Illinois Quad-Cities is a part, 307 cases were considered as of the beginning of December, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Of those 139 were granted, and 168 were denied. The average decrease was 28 months.

This is typical of the news (or lack thereof) related to this reform, despite attempts to paint all such drug offenders as scary and dangerous to the community if they’re released after 16 years of prison instead of 20 years.
See also Alex at Drug Law Blog

This is pretty strange. According to the UN’s “drug czar,” we can thank the liquidity of black market drug trade money for saving some banks and maybe even some countries’ economic systems.

VIENNA, Jan 25 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday. […]
“In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that “interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities,” Costa was quoted as saying. There were “signs that some banks were rescued in that way.”

Well maybe we’ve finally found a bizarre and dysfunctional reason for keeping drugs illegal — the banks need the unregulated cash flow.
Of course, if we weren’t wasting all our money on an unproductive war on drugs and converted the black market to economic productivity, we wouldn’t need the liquidity of black-market cash.

Check out this news from Canada: Hemp Refiner Expected To Provide New Income For 200 Farmers

Stonehedge is now set to establish a bioprocessing facility in Eastern Ontario to serve North American markets. Some of the products and co-products are aimed at the automotive, energy, agriculture, construction material, and pulp and paper markets. This fibre separation facility ( decortication plant ) is expected to provide new farm income for about 200 farmers, putting more than 12,000 acres into cultivation, said John Baker, president and founder of Stonehedge.

So why are we denying our farmers the opportunity to compete in the global market? Why is the U.S. giving a government monopoly on hemp industry jobs to Canada?

“bullet” Sito Negron does a wrap-up on El Paso coverage:

In the end, the debate was both greatly inspiring and gravely disappointing.
It was inspiring because with very little notice the City Council was able to air in public so many issues that need to be debated at the highest levels, and it was disappointing because the state and federal leadership failed to uphold what ought to be their first priority, the honest search for the best policy.
They bowed to fear.

The El Paso Times wraps up as well:

We are at the point where we have to do something. Frustration in El Paso and Ju½rez has reached such levels that taboo subjects are actually being given consideration by people who would not have thought of discussing them before.

“bullet” Johann Hari: The Contradictions Facing a Black President of the American Empire. Interesting article about the real reasons for much of the conflict between the U.S. and Bolivia’s Morales, and the resulting paradoxes facing Obama.
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

It used to be that this kind of conversation wasn’t allowed…

John Pike, founder of the military monitoring group GlobalSecurity.org in Washington, said the Afghan opium issue is “the stinking 800-pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about.”
Pike agreed that with 70 percent of the Afghan population tied to agriculture, simply eradicating a crop that has been produced for centuries and is steeped in tradition isn’t the answer.
Instead, he said in all seriousness, the West should simply buy it, convert it to medicinal morphine rather than illicit heroin, and give it away.
“This is business,” he said. “Everything you thought you knew about counter-insurgency and winning hearts and minds is irrelevant if you take away people’s livelihood.
“The only solution I see is, we ought to outbid the drug lords and do our own refining, and then donate it as medicine to Third World countries.”
That should be a strategy given serious consideration as the Marine Corps and the Obama administration make plans to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, Pike said.
“We are preparing to pour a pretty good-sized amount of new blood and treasure into Afghanistan with no other describable theory of victory today apart from sending more troops,” he said. “Before we get too far down that road, if outbidding the drug kings is a wrong-headed idea, I would like to see someone prove that to me.”

Of course, the Senlis solution won’t dry up the opium supplies — there’s enough stockpiled to last quite some time, and more will be produced for the black market somewhere as long as it’s illegal.
But if even a large portion of the farmers in Afghanistan are happy selling it to us, then the Taliban have a much harder time being popular as “protectors” from us. There will be less money available to fight us, and less available to corrupt the Afghanistan government.
And that’s being smart.

This is a really excellent video put together by SSDP, featuring SSDP member Nubia Legarda, who testified before the El Paso city council.