Drug WarRant

Reported at Politico

A coalition of advocacy and nonprofit organizations, including the National Black Police Association, sent a letter today to President-elect Barack Obama preemptively pushing back against the nomination of Rep. James Ramstad (R-Minn.) to be head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or “Drug Czar.”
Ramstad has not been nominated for the position, but his name has been mentioned in Democratic circles and he has expressed gratification at the prospect of his consideration.
“While we applaud Representative Ramstad for his courageous and steady support for expanding drug treatment access and improving addiction awareness, and honor his own personal and very public triumph over addiction, we have strong reservations about his candidacy for the drug czar position,” reads the letter.
The coalition, which includes civic and drug-policy reform organizations, cites his past opposition to medical marijuana, needle exchange and sentencing reform as reasons for concern.

The list of signers is impressive, as is the letter:

While we applaud Representative Ramstad for his courageous and steady support for expanding drug treatment access and improving addiction awareness, and honor his own personal and very public triumph over addiction, we have strong reservations about his candidacy for the drug czar position. In his twenty-eight years in the U.S. House, Representative Ramstad has consistently opposed policies that seek to reduce drug-related harm and create common ground on polarizing issues. […]

We urge you to nominate for drug czar someone with a public health background, who is committed to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases, open to systematic drug policy reform, and able to show strong leadership on the issues you believe in.

Matthew DeLong, at the Washington Independent also picked up on it:

Admittedly, I know almost nothing about Ramstad. If the letter accurately states his positions, he‰s probably a poor choice to direct the new administration‰s drug control policy.
However, if Obama is determined to put a bipartisan face on his anti-drug efforts, reformers may have several reasons to remain optimistic. […]
Finally, and most important, there is this comment Obama made Monday at a press conference in which he named his foreign policy team:

“I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made. As Harry Truman said, ‹The buck will stop with me.Š

Presumably, this will apply to all aspects of the new administration‰s domestic and foreign policy, including drug control.

Related to this, the SSDP petition to President-elect Obama (making a similar request) is up to around 9,000 signatures already.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition held a press conference yesterday to tie the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of prohibition (Friday) to today’s equally damaging prohibition, and to show how legalizing drugs could boost the economy.
They’re also rolling out the website: WeCanDoItAgain.com. Check it out and get involved.
It’s early to tell if they get a lot of press from it, but they already got one outstanding OpEd from Reuters’ Bernd Debusmann: Einstein, insanity and the war on drugs

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. His definition fits America‰s war on drugs, a multi-billion dollar, four-decade exercise in futility.
The war on drugs has helped turn the United States into the country with the world‰s largest prison population. (Noteworthy statistic: The U.S. has 5 percent of the world‰s population and around 25 percent of the world‰s prisoners). Keen demand for illicit drugs in America, the world‰s biggest market, helped spawn global criminal enterprises that use extreme violence in the pursuit of equally extreme profits.
Over the years, the war on drugs has spurred repeated calls from social scientists and economists (including three Nobel prize winners) to seriously rethink a strategy that ignores the laws of supply and demand.

And the connection between Capone and today’s prohibition is an obvious one:

‹In the 20s and 30s, we had Al Capone and his gangsters getting rich and shooting up our streets,Š said Nelson, who spent a 32-year government career fighting drugs in the U.S. and Latin America. ‹Today we have criminal gangs, cartels, Taliban and al-Qaeda profiting from the prohibition of drug sales and wreaking havoc all over the world. The correlation is obvious.Š
The before-and-after sequence is so obvious that the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in September noting that the 1933 repeal of alcohol prohibition had replaced a ‹dramatic increaseŠ in organized crime with ‹a transparent and accountable system of distribution and salesŠ that generated billions of dollars in tax revenues and boosted the sick economy.
That‰s where advocates of drug legalization want to go now, and some of them hope that the similarities between today‰s deep economic crisis and the Great Depression will result in a more receptive audience for their pro-legalization arguments among lawmakers and government leaders.

It’s a great article — go join in the comments.

Ben Kubic, a junior government and politics and operations management major at the University of Maryland, attempt to apply his studies to drug policy (as a response to the recent SSDP conference hosted at U of MD) and fails miserably.

Ms. Alexander argues marijuana is absolutely harmless, a ploy by the government to hold down minorities. Overwhelming evidence suggests otherwise. In Canada, crime syndicates sell marijuana and use the proceeds to support “weapons … trafficking, cocaine smuggling and stock market fraud,” according to Interpol. Both the Spanish and French governments have found that the proceeds from cannabis sales have gone directly into the pockets of groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. The group responsible for the March 2004 bombings in Madrid that killed 191 innocent civilians bought their explosives using money from marijuana sales. Another such group used the drug money to fund two bombings in Algiers that killed 30 people and injured 200.
Other drugs are even more closely linked with death. Every day in Afghanistan, our soldiers face rocket launchers, roadside bombs and AK-47s that were purchased with proceeds from opium poppy sales. In Colombia, drug lords kill farmers who fail to produce enough. […]
Environmentalists should also be concerned with marijuana use. To avoid border-crossing issues, many drug cartels grow marijuana in U.S. national parks. To meet demand, these cartels use weed and bug sprays that have been banned in the United States because of how they devastate the surrounding environment; ABC News reports that the areas of national parks where the marijuana is being grown are “the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America.”

Of course, all of you loyal readers could refute this in your sleep by now.
And boy did Benjamin get schooled in the comments. The readers commenting were pretty much unanimous (with the exception of Jeff, the racist) in their intelligent smackdowns.

The Georgetown chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy is hosting a debate between Marijuana Policy Project assistant director of communications Dan Bernath and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy chief counsel Ed Jurith at 6:30 p.m. tonight – Wednesday, December 3. The debate will take place at The Georgetown University Law Center in McDonough Hall. The topic of the debate will be medical marijuana.
Attendance is free and open to the public. Attendees must bring a valid photo ID. After the debate, there will be a question and answer session with the audience.
(I’m assuming the ID requirement is to get into Georgetown Law Center, not because of the topic of the debate.)
More details

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favourite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished. – H.L. Mencken

– from Radley Balko’s article at FOXNews: Repeal Day Serves as Reminder of the Folly of Our Drug Laws
There will be a number of activities this week celebrating the 75th anniversary of the repeal of the first prohibition. I’ll be reporting more as the week goes on.

Channelling Jacob Sullum, J.D> Tuccille in the Civil Liberties Examiner says “No.”

But, as many of us who have not just experimented with, but enthusiastically consumed various intoxicants know (Whoops! I bet I just blew my next job interview), the road to perdition is not usually lined with dried vegetation, white powder, pills or crystals. In fact, many a party, evening or weekend afternoon has been made more pleasant by “cocktail hours” that featured refreshments that would make John Walters weep. Some of us dabbled, a few of us indulged and there were occasional bingers, too. The vast majority of us, whether we still smoke or snort or not, suffered little or no harm — in fact, we downright enjoyed our experiences, improved our moods and released a lot of tension in the process. And then we went about our responsibilities just a little more relaxed than we might have been.

Your tax money paid for this.

NORML Stash has the story.

Tonight on the National Geographic Channel: Marijuana Nation

Scientists who study this plant consider it among the most complex in the plant kingdom with 400 active chemicals and compounds. And in California alone, the marijuana trade out paces the entire wine industry, placing it among the largest cash crops in the United States. Intertwined with culture, economics, law enforcement and perhaps medical miracles, this plant holds both peril and promise. Join National Geographics EXPLORER as we investigate the state of marijuana.

Preview here.
Showing is tonight at 10 pm Eastern/Pacific (9 pm Central), and on Saturday at 7 Eastern/6 Central.

So voters in Switzerland voted overwhelmingly today to formalize their excellent heroin prescription program, where they really lead the world in reducing crime and the ravages of addiction through implementing actual… ideas.
But, unfortunately, the cannabis decriminalization initiative failed. And it seems pretty clear why: cannabis tourism.

While the Swiss Government backed the heroin initiative, it opposed the call for marijuana legalisation because it feared that it could cause drugs tourism to Switzerland of the kind that is causing public disorder problems in border towns in the Netherlands. Oswald Sigg, a government spokesman, said: ‹This could lead to a situation where you have some sort of cannabis tourism in Switzerland because something that is illegal in the EU would be legal in Switzerland.Š

This is a real problem that will plague legitimate marijuana legalization opportunities in states and countries that are surrounded by repressive governments. The fear is that everyone will flock there, not to ski, or visit museums, or buy horribly overpriced trinkets, but to smoke pot. Now, personally, I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing, but tourism boards hate it (except, perhaps, in the Republic of Cheetos®).
So here’s my suggestion for the next initiative in Switzerland. Make it legal only for residents. You already have national id cards, so it would be easy. (I’m not a fan of national id cards, but if you already have it, why not have it be good for something… useful?) Then you could easily dispel the pot tourism concerns — after all, it’s illegal for foreigners. Then, if the government wanted to be really sneaky, they could simply turn a blind eye to non-native tokers, except when they wanted to get rid of some obnoxious foreigner.
Now, apparently, the cannabis organizers in Switzerland are already thinking about using id cards…

The cannabis supporters lost out but immediately came up with another suggestion – special microchipped identity cards for cannabis smokers, rationing their intake, cutting out criminal dealers.

… but they’re not thinking big enough — stop pot tourism! (and make everyone else so jealous that they have to pass their own cannabis decriminalization plans)

Students for Sensible Drug Policy have established a petition on Facebook that they wish to deliver to President-Elect Obama
The petition request is reasonable (and certainly not overly ambitious):

When you called the War on Drugs an “utter failure” in 2004, you were right. A 2008 Zogby poll found that 3 out of 4 of Americans agree with you.
When appointing the head of your Office of National Drug Control Policy, please select someone with health, science, or education credentials rather than a military general, law enforcement official, or “tough on drugs” politician. The next “Drug Czar” should base policy on proven methodology rather than counterproductive ideology. At a minimum, he or she should support these measures:
*Ending the racially unjust disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine.
*Ending the practice of prosecuting patients in states with medical marijuana laws.
*Eliminating the federal law that denies financial aid to students with drug convictions.
We all know that the War on Drugs is failing because handcuffs don’t cure addictions — doctors do. You have the opportunity to bring us the change we need. Will you?

They’re working on getting 10,000 signatures. Give them a hand.
Update: If you’re not on Facebook, then by all means skip the petition (you apparently have to have an account to sign the petition). There are other ways to put forth your views (such as through change.gov). I’ve also added a new area on the messageboard for readers’ messages to the President-elect. [thanks, jackl]