Drug WarRant

A nice series. Could use some commenting.
“bullet” War on Drugs: The Collateral Damage Prohibition militarizes police, enriches our enemies, undermines our laws, and condemns our sick to suffering. By Radley Balko
The usual excellence from Radley.
“bullet” War on Drugs: The Price Tag: America can‰t afford marijuana prohibition š it‰s a matter of dollars and sense.
By Anita Bartholomew
Lots of good stuff about LEAP and the costs of prohibition.

Do we really want to keep spending insane amounts of our dwindling government funds on tracking down, arresting and imprisoning the hundreds of thousands of hapless Harolds and Kumars who then can no longer contribute to our faltering economy by overeating at White Castle?

“bullet” Keep Drugs Illegal!: Legalization won’t end the violence, but it will fry plenty of brains. By David Freddoso.
Really incoherent attempt to say that we won’t gain anything through legalization because the criminals will still move to other crime. Yes, he went there. (See Stupid Argument #3)

This editorial in the El Paso Times has been bugging me all day (ezrydn brought it up in comments as well). I’m not sure if it’s sad and pathetic, or sad with hidden code.
First, the editorial establishes that supply side prohibition doesn’t work

We’ve already committed to send Mexico more than $1 billion in money and technology to fight the drug cartels. Mexico has sent its army into battle against these military-style gangs that now control entire cities, including Juarez. The money and technology aren’t working and the army is not strong enough to take back control of cities. […]
Calderon has made fighting the cartels his chief initiative as president of Mexico. But his army has only pushed cartels around from one haven to another.

And the editorial shows that demand side prohibition efforts don’t work either.

On our side, we’ve been fighting to keep our children and adults off illegal drugs since President Nixon officially declared the “war on drugs” in the 1970s. “Just say no” is a common phrase we use to educate against illegal drug use.

So what is the editorial suggesting? If supply side and demand side don’t work, what alternatives are there? Where should we look? Apparently, we need to look to the father-figures — Obama and Calderon — who, between the two of them, can win the war through the sheer power of their offices.

What’s left to see, however, is just how far these two powerful heads of state are willing to go. […]
How much do the two presidents want to end illegal drugs, the existence of the powerful drug cartels and the multitude of gangland-style killings that have the good people of Mexico hiding in fear and many people in the U.S. empowering the cartels by using their products?
How much?
And how far are they willing to go to stop it?

What does this mean? Is the editorial staff that completely whipped and despondent that all they can do is call for some deus ex machina to appear in the sky and win the drug war?
Or is this some kind of code?
What is meant by the question “how far are they willing to go…”?

The resolution ultimately failed, but the discussion continues and the seed is planted.
Clarence Page:

O’Rourke pushed things further by adding 12 words: “supporting an honest, open, national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics.” The council passed it unanimously.
Yet even a bid to talk about drug legalization was too much for Mayor John Cook. He vetoed the bill, at least partly out of concern that Washington might not take the measure seriously with the drug legalization line in it.
Nevertheless, the controversy brought what has been rare American media attention to Mexico’s crisis by turning it into radio and cable TV talk fodder. That’s a start. [..]
When you step back and take a broad look at Mexico’s growing carnage, it’s easy to see why El Paso’s city leaders think legalization doesn’t look so bad. Mexico’s drug problem is not the drugs. It is the illegality of the drugs.
Legalization is not the perfect solution. But treating currently illegal drugs in the way we treat liquor and other legal addictive substances would provide regulation, tax revenue and funds for rehabilitation programs. Most satisfying, it would wipe a lot of smiles off the current drug lords’ faces.

This is why the prohibitionists don’t want even an open honest national dialogue about legalization. They’re afraid that when that happens, their precious drug war is doomed.
And it’s getting harder and harder to keep that discussion under lock and key. It’s escaping and will be heard.
We also saw Mayor Cook’s dismissal of legalizers as “potheads” fail miserably. The notion, promoted heavily for decades by prohibitionists, that those who advocate for drug policy reform are nothing but whacked out potheads wanting easy drugs simply won’t fly anymore.
The stereotype was that a prohibitionist would give a discussion about the dangers of drugs and a pothead would respond “Uh, I disagree, man. I mean, herb is, you know. 420.”
Our side is supposed to be lazy and incoherent, clearly not the case if you look at change.gov, or change.org or any internet political discussion that rubs up against drug policy.
Contrast the stereotype above, for example, with the recent actuality in the El Paso discussions. Our side was coherent, well prepared – armed with facts and studies in economics, foreign policy, health, crime, etc. – while the prohibitionists stuck to the same fully debunked nonsense. We had reason and they had the equivalent of “Oh yeah? Well, you’re a jew!”
That open honest national dialogue is going to happen one way or another, because the prohibitionists have nothing of value to stop it. Eventually, the politicians will get on board or get left behind.

Link

City Council did not override Mayor John Cook’s veto of a resolution that had asked for a federal debate on the legalization of narcotics.
Council voted 4-4 on the veto reversal. At least six of the eight city representatives needed to approve the item in order to override the veto.

Still… Kudos to Beto O’Rourke for attempting to generate a discussion (and thereby generating a discussion), despite the certain intense opposition from entrenched drug war interests.
Update: Thanks to LoLo in comments:
Detailed article at NewspaperTree:

The deciding factors, according to the city representatives, were the two letters received Monday.
The five Texas House members of the El Paso delegation and Reyes had sent letters to El Paso City Council claiming that the resolution would be used against the city’s efforts to secure funding. [View letters via links below the article]
“If we had voted yesterday I would have voted in favor (of overriding the veto),” Acosta said. “I will take a personal position on this, Rep. O’Rourke if you so want but I cannot jeopardize any funding El Paso might receive.”

That’s right – they were threatened that if they voted for a resolution calling for a “frank and honest discussion,” El Paso might lose funding.
How pathetic is that?
From the letter from Texas House of Representatives delegation:

We understand your stated goal is to bring attention to the problems that illegal drugs cause in our community and society. However, the position to ask the federal government to legalize narcotics does not bring the right attention to El Paso. It says “we give up and we don’t care.”

Reyes’ letter was actually less ignorant and offensive, though meaningless:

While this resolution is well-intentioned, I believe its passage would be counterproductive to our efforts to enact an ambitious legislative agenda at the federal level.

Link

A former Mountlake Terrace police sergeant whose views supporting the decriminalization of marijuana led to his dismissal in 2005 has won his job back and an $815,000 settlement from the city and Snohomish County.

White House Announcement:

The President intends to designate Patrick Ward, of Virginia, to be Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Here’s Patrick Ward’s bio.
Scott Morgan has some mild speculation, but I’m guessing that it’s just a matter of Walters leaving and the fact that the ONDCP head is seldom one of the early appointments in an administration, so a deputy director will be taking over for awhile. (Remember Edward Jurith, the acting Director from January 5 to December 6, 2001? Nobody does.)
My big question is… When? When will John Walters be walking out the door? (So I can conduct a proper celebration.)
Because it can’t be too soon. They’re still doing stuff there. Yes, the ONDCP has a new ad.
It doesn’t appear to play in all browsers, but that’s OK — they’ve got the script there as well:

COPY:
This spot is shot as proud and dramatic, with uplifting, anthemic music underneath.
We open on a kid in his little sister‰s room.
COUCH KID: I stole from my little sister!
Cut to a girl holding up a report card.
D+ GIRL: I got straight D‰s!
Cut to a guy on his bed.
CELL PHONE GUY: I left me ex-girlfriend 27 messages last night!
Cut to a girl with a woman who has been crying.
GIRL: I made my mother cry!
Cut to a kid who is being drawn on.
DRAWN ON KID: I let people draw on me!
Open on a guy sitting in his car in the drive way.
KID: I ditched my friends and let them find their own way home.
Cut back to shots of them looking at the camera and nodding with pride.
SUPER: What has weed done for you?
(LOGO & URL)

They just don’t get it. Who is going to respond to this message? Actually, the guy who’s getting drawn on looks like he’s having a good time. They all do. And the truth is that the majority of pot smokers are quite successful. Even the drug czar says that most of them are working.
One of my former students confided in me just after he graduated Magna Cum Laude from the university that he had smoked pot every day of his college career. In addition to his outstanding grades, he was President of two very successful student organizations.
What has weed done for you?

Here’s an interesting turn of events.

Monday, an e-mail from the mayor surfaced, urging those who are against the resolution to make sure they are heard, because “the pot heads” have sent their message.

You know, we’ve gotten used to opponents calling us “pot heads” because we dare to speak the truth about drug policy. But how often do you remember that being a political gaffe?
Well once the email got out, the Mayor was actually forced to backpedal, make up excuses, and even kind of apologize.

Cook told ABC-7 the e-mail was private and not meant to be forwarded to others. “Specifically, I was referring to one individual who happened to write an e-mail to me saying that he’s been smoking pot for over twenty years and he thinks we should legalize marijuana in the United States … So if calling that person a pot head is insulting to him, then I apologize.”

And Beto O’Rourke was given the opportunity to take the high ground again:

O’Rourke had this to say about Cook’s remarks in the e-mail: “I’m sure the mayor probably didn’t mean for everyone to read this, but I was concerned that anyone who might support having a national open discussion on our best options in the drug war would be described as a pothead.”

Boo-ya!
…
Also check out this OpEd by Sito Negron in Newspaper Tree El Paso.
I found this part particularly interesting:

— Anyone who thinks that people who support legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana are just using this as an excuse to push their agenda is right, sort of. Saying “it’s just an excuse” is a way of being dismissive. If we agree there is a crisis in Juarez and Mexico, and there is one group of people who have been arguing consistently that part of the problem is our drug policy, why on earth would those people not proffer their proposals when they are most relevant? It’s like saying people who think our flood control infrastructure in the city is inadequate are just using Storm 2006 as an excuse to promote flood control.

Bingo.
And an equally astute observation about opponents:

Opponents of this part of the resolution do a few things: They accuse proponents of being druggies, creating a credibility gap that has to be overcome — a pre-debate; they use “the children” as a weapon, as though anyone thinks children ought to have drugs; they use dishonest language, conflating “use” and “abuse,” as though someone cannot smoke marijuana or even snort cocaine without abusing those drugs (answer this — how rational would it sound if instead of the phrase “drink a beer” everyone said “abuse a beer”?); they use dishonest statistics, throwing out numbers for drug overdoses, for example, when discussing marijuana, for which there are no recorded overdoses.

El Paso – the epicenter of today’s drug policy discussion.

Bush appointee DEA Head Michele Leonhart flipped a going-away bird at science and the medical marijuana movement by rejecting the formal recommendation of DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Ellen Bittner, and refusing to end the government monopoly on marijuana research.
The decision was over 100 pages of dreck dressed up as legal opinion, mostly regurgitating government arguments that had been rejected out of hand by the Administrative Law Judge, and to some extent, casting negative aspersions on the applicant.
This is typical of the drug policy that we’ve come to expect over the past decade (or longer) from our government. Stall, stall, stall, send it through administrative hoops, stall some more, stall, stall, finally be rebuked by a judge, stall, stall, and then when you can stall no more, say “Fuck you. We don’t have to abide by the law. We make it.”
This, from Michele Leonhart, who once famously defended perjured super-snitch working for the DEA thusly:

“The only criticism (of Chambers) I’ve ever heard is what defense attorneys will characterize as perjury or a lie on the stand.”

That’s right – it doesn’t matter if informants lie to get a conviction. It doesn’t matter if the DEA ignores the rule of law and their own administrative judges.
Just keep the drug war going at all costs.
The one consolation – Michele Leonhart will likely be leaving soon, and when she does, just as now, when she puts her own name in Google, the first article she’ll see is mine.

So on Monday, President-elect Obama will be visiting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon. I don’t expect much of real value to come from this meeting.
But still, the lede in the AP story appearing in papers all over the country was depressingly, yet unsurprisingly, incoherent.

MEXICO CITY Ö With violence spilling over the Mexican border into the U.S., President Felipe Calderon should have little trouble securing support for his battle against drugs when he meets U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Monday.

Even ignoring the nonsensical “battle against drugs,” there’s quite a disconnect in this sentence. Note that AP writer Alexandra Olson didn’t say “Given Obama’s pro-prohibition statements, Calderon should have little trouble securing Obama’s support for his drug war.” That would be depressing, but factual and reasonable.
No, she says “With violence spilling over the Mexican border into the U.S. as if it was the fact of the violence that should, obviously, mean that Obama would support the drug war. and that makes no sense at all.
The structure of the sentence is as follows:

1. Violence in Mexico was at level x
2. Calderon instituted plan M.
3. Violence increased dramatically as a direct result of plan M to level z, spilling into the U.S.
4. Violence of this level is undesirable.
5. Therefore, Obama will support plan M.

Right.
In the meantime, just in case the violence “spills” into the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, known for supervising such tactical masterpieces as the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina, and the banning of shampoo on domestic flights, is prepared to provide a “surge” (whatever that means), which will include bringing in the military.
Yeah, that’ll end well.
You see, violence won’t simply “spill” over the border and manifest itself like British Redcoats marching to war where we can simply have our military take them down. No, the spillage will be the victims of violence. Those who commit the violence will find ways to enter undetected and commit violence from within (they’re not completely stupid). And that’s when having the military “surge” against the violence is going to mean putting a lot of innocent lives at risk for no gain.
…
Another great letter in the El Paso Times: U.S.-Mexico drug war: We’re clucking like chickens by Joe Muench. Very well done.
And, of course, the expected comments didn’t take long:
Comment #9: Legalizing drugs will just mean more business for the drug dealers. Period.
And some really, really bizarre:

Everybody knows you jews are faking those doctor
prescriptions and taking advantage of legalize mari j for medical use.That is the only reason you idiots are always pushing for legalization. […]
I guess you forgot what happened in Miami and Columbia during the 80Å´œs when we got tired of this s#$t. I am glad that these spineless elp politicians were not leading our country during WWII.

The good news is that the only pro-drug-war folks left on these threads are the ridiculous ones.

“bullet” You may have noticed a new thing on each post – the “share” button at the lower right. If you pass your mouse over it, it drops down to give a number of options for sharing the post with others. You can email it to a friend, post it on your Facebook profile, Digg it, etc. This is now also on most of the story pages.
“bullet” I’ve updated the Using this Site page — it’s available at the “Problem Commenting?” link at the top left of the home page. I’ve now included a full section about the problems some people encounter commenting here.

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As you know, people are always sending messages for via-gra, and po-ker, and cia-lis, etc. Well, the comment software once blocked the word “socialist” because it contained the word “cia-lis” in it! (that one got fixed).
It also sometimes doesn’t like links with a .info suffix, and will often block posts with links to URLs that are in the same domain as your listed Home Page (spammers usually link to their own site, that’s why).
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