Drug WarRant

“bullet” His Last War — by Jeff Prince. “David Noblett — and dozens of other patients — just wanted their doctor back.” A powerful must-read.
“bullet” Scott Morgan’s tearing it up. Read The Amazing Gigantic Missing Heroin Stash and The World‰s Smallest Bag of Marijuana.
“bullet” From the MPP blog: Global Cannabis Commission: ‹No Justification For Incarcerating an Individual For Cannabis PossessionŠ, I found a unicorn, and The Drug Czar‰s Legacy of Failure, by the Numbers
“bullet” Side note: Has it sunk in yet that in 104 days or less, John Walters will no longer be the drug czar?
“bullet” Speaking of the drug czar… His latest drug enemy? YouTube.
“bullet” DEA Lays An Egg In Washington State: 5-Day Copter Patrols Net 20 Pot Plants. Also from NORML Blog: NBA and NORML Joining Forces To Achieve Mutual Goals? Not As Far Fetched As It Sounds

Shannon Kari in the National Post: Candidates Still Believe Crime Pays

It has become a Canadian election campaign staple that politicians will tell the public the justice system is broken and changes are needed to crack down on crime, even when the crime rate is falling.
This year is no different.
The Liberals want to make it harder for young offenders to be granted bail, the NDP is calling for hiring more police and classifying auto theft as a violent offence. The Green party wants a crackdown on white collar criminals and the Bloc Quebecois says changes are needed to make it more difficult for convicted criminals to be granted parole.

That’s been true in the states for years, of course, although I’m actually feeling like I’m seeing a little less of it this cycle.
Criminologist Jane Sprott has the politicians’ number:

There is a “hostility to evidence” as the public is repeatedly told the justice system is too lenient and that crime is a major societal problem without the data to back up these claims, suggested Ms. Sprott.

Exactly.

Nick Bala, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston who specializes in youth justice issues, said he is not surprised the strategy of Mr. Harper has been successful.
“Playing on people’s fears gets you elected,” especially with respect to young offenders, said Mr. Bala. “Youth crime gets a disproportionate amount of media space because it is more sensational,” he said.
The most extreme cases are presented as the norm, when they are the exception, said Mr. Bala.
Promising longer prison terms is easier than telling the public that youth crime is a complex issue that involves more than the justice system. “It is not a quick fix. But you don’t get elected saying that,” Mr. Bala said.

Smart on crime. That’s what we need.
How do we get the people to ask their Representatives for proof that their tough new laws will actually help anyone?

Cincinnati is trying to figure out why their homicide rate is up this year.

Police say cutting the supply of illegal drugs may be the cause locally.
The national cocaine supply out of Latin America is dwindling due to tighter border control and stricter laws, police say.
“Our intelligence says there is quite a shortage on crack cocaine right now, and that has the buyers frantic to buy based on their addiction and the sellers know their livelihood is threatened based on supply and demand,” said Lt. Col. James Whalen, Cincinnati’s patrol bureau commander. “When you get involved with buying and selling drugs, unfortunately you run into violence.”

I’m not so sure how much I buy the shortage argument. I think the supply is reduced somewhat (although that’s probably more a result of the tanking of the dollar than laws and border controls, and I suppose there could be some localized pockets that are experiencing a shortage.
If that’s so, then I’m betting it’s not the shortage of one drug per se, but rather the change of status quo in the black market that’s causing a re-organization (which, unlike shifting markets for Pepsi and Coca-Cola, are resolved through guns rather than lawyers and TV ads).
Lt. Col. Whalen is at least right in noting that supply and demand are a factor in drug war violence (and a pleasant surprise it is to hear that). He’s on the right track, but the analysis is incomplete.
Of course, some people are not too happy with Whalen’s notion.

“The way it usually works is the more dope on the street, the more fellas on the street, the more competition for corners on the street, the more gun violence,” said Michael Levine, a former 25-year DEA agent and a police expert on drugs, currently located in High Falls, N.Y.
“So what are we supposed to believe, that we should import crack to Cincinnati to stop violence? We’ll have the Red Cross do a peace mission of crack cocaine drops,” he said.

Funny. But no, Michael. What you do is to legalize and regulate the drug trade to get it out of the hands of the black market’s business model.
But Michael is also right. If there is a glut of drugs on the market, then you have too many people selling them, and there are fights over territory.
Basically, drug war violence can come from any imbalance in the supply and demand chain (or even in a balanced market, from a power play attempt to control the market).
In my neighborhood was a chicken restaurant called “Atlanta’s Wings and a Prayer.” It was open for a very short time and then recently closed. Why? Maybe it was the economy. Maybe people preferred Popeye’s Chicken. Maybe people didn’t like going to that location to get chicken. Maybe their chicken wasn’t that good. But there’s a shift in the market.
Stores open, stores close. Starbucks takes over the world, and then scales back, and Mom and Pop coffee shops open near Starbucks to take advantage of the new interest in quality coffee. Pepsi and Coke shift their emphasis to bottled water while continuing their war against each other.
Sure, people are hurt in the legal market. Business owners lose their fortunes. Some people have to drive further to get chicken. But there are generally no shoot-outs over territory. You don’t have the manager of Starbucks bustin’ a cap at the barista of the Coffee House Bakery over the Cinnamon Dolce Latte market (which is, quite frankly, a lot like crack).
In a legal market, shifts are constantly happening, and some people succeed while others fail, and the lawyers haggle over the complex issues. But it’s largely done without violence.
In the black market, however, violence is the way disputes are handled, regardless of whether there is a shortage or a glut.
The only way to stop that is through legalization and regulation.

Via Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy comes Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic with The McCain Comeback Plan: Taxes, Crime, Associations And Real Reform where he suggests that one of the McCain tactics will be:

2. Obama’s record on crime. “Far outside the mainstream.” Crime record — far outside the mainstram…issues like gang violence and crack/powder retroactivity (which even the Bush admin supports but is not popular)… Are they skating close to the race line here? The McCain camp turns it around: since when is a black candidate given a free pass on these issues?

Doug Berman notes that McCain has an updated page on Fighting Crime, so I checked it out.
Wow! What a content-free page. For example:

John McCain Will Appoint Judges Who Follow The Constitution Rather Than Those Who Engage In Judicial Activism. In doing so, John McCain will provide law enforcement with the certainty and confidence required to make critical decisions knowing that their actions will be judged fairly by the courts in the context of recognized precedent and accepted principles of law.

???
…or this:

John McCain Recognizes That The Men And Women Of Our Law Enforcement Community Serve On The Front Lines Of America’s Struggle Against Crime. The federal government has the responsibility to support state and local law enforcement by handling those responsibilities that federal law enforcement is uniquely qualified to address, by providing the tools and technology that law enforcement need to be effective in the 21st century, and through consistency in the law by appointing federal judges who will follow the Constitution.

Somehow, I don’t see anything on this page that would indicate that McCain is even willing to talk about crime policy, let alone go up against Obama directly on it.
Hey, I’d love to see the discussion, and I hope it happens. But I think I agree with Grits for Breakfast in comments at the Sentencing Law and Policy post:

If all McCain has to attack Obama with are the votes in the linked item, stick a fork in the GOP nominee, he’s done. Crime is declining and that’s just not what the public cares about right now. We’re in “it’s the economy, stupid,” mode. I do think the blogger correctly outlines McCain’s likely attacks, I just don’t think they’ll resonate.

Exactly right. It’s the economy, stupid. If a McCain crime policy attack surfaces, it’ll be merely a passing jab in a series of flailing efforts to change the subject. And it won’t show up in the debate unless the question is asked directly (and even then all we would see is dancing).
…
Note: One bizarre bit in the old piece from The Hill was this reaction by law enforcement to Obama’s votes:

State law enforcement officials who worked with the senator at the time were hesitant to criticize Obama, saying only that while he sometimes voted for ‹individual rightsŠ rather than for facilitating law enforcement, in other areas he was very supportive and was ‹alwaysŠ open to discussion.

Yeah, what a disappointment when a politician goes out and occasionally votes for… individual rights.

Every time I think I’ve heard every low-down, stupid, mean, insane, or evil story that could possibly come out of the drug war, I get another surprise.
I’ve known Mona online for awhile. She’s been a vocal opponent of the drug war — I collaborated with her for Prison & the War on Drugs: Just Say No at Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory a couple of years ago.
Mona’s gone through some very tough times. In a calmer state of mind, and knowing what she already knows intellectually about the drug war, she probably would have taken a different road than I Inanely Took on the Drug War Ö And Lost.
But, my God, aren’t the cops supposed to work… for us? What kind of sick dysfunctional system allows this?

Margret Kopala, The Ottawa Citizen, with her article: How to win the drug war

There has been little mention in this election campaign of the most pernicious evil of our time. Yet recent reports from a UN agency leave little doubt that the war against drugs is being won and that, with full engagement, victory is if not possible, then very nearly possible.

…little doubt that the war against drugs is being won? Now that’s first-class delusion.

The World Drug Report 2008 launched in June by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reveals how opium and cocoa cultivation, whose heroin and cocaine extractions are the scourge of Canada’s inner cities, are now largely confined to rebel-held areas in Aghanistan and Colombia. It also reveals how worldwide deaths from illicit drugs at around 200,000 a year pale in comparison to deaths from legal substances such as cigarettes (five million a year), and alcohol (2.5 million). “The drug problem was dramatically reduced over the past century,” says UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa, “and has stabilized over the past 10 years.”
In other words, prohibition works.

Well actually, the reason that most of the heroin and cocaine comes from Afghanistan and Colombia is that we’ve made it very profitable for the black market to operate out of those two locations and that they are able to supply most of the demand in the world despite all the drug war efforts. If we actually cut down the supply enough in one of those areas, it would pop up somewhere else.
And it’s pretty bizarre to assert that the fact that less people die from illegal drugs than legal ones is a result of prohibition.
Then Margret gets real ominous:

We’ve come a long way since then but signs are surfacing that new kinds of vested interests are seizing the drug control agenda. Blogging on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Enquirer, for instance, reveals the menacing ascendance of the medical industrial complex. Serviced by numerous medical organizations, it works in tandem with a burgeoning poverty industry that residents call the “povertariat.”

Translation: there are horrible people out there who think that drug addiction is a health issue that is exacerbated by poverty.

Daily drug busts demonstrate that Canadian police forces are doing their part to control supply. Their efforts, however, are being undermined by harm reduction initiatives which merely serve the vested interests of the Taliban, drug dealers and Canada’s burgeoning medical industrial complex while addicts remain victimized — first by their habit and then by those exploiting them.

Classic Up-is-Downism.

The Big Question: Is it time the world forgot about cannabis in its war against drugs?
Very interesting article by Michael McCarthy.
It asks most of the right questions and actually talks about the costs of prohibition!
Now, my goal is the legalization and regulation of the entire drug market to put the majority of the black market out of business. But certainly taking cannabis out of prohibition would be a great first step.
Of course, the prohibitionists would fight it tooth and nail, partly because they would see it as a first step, but also because cannabis is the biggest part of their business. They see themselves losing a lot of power and budget if cannabis is legal and regulated.
And as the article says:

So what are the chances that cannabis will cease to be internationally outlawed?
With the US running the show? Don’t hold your breath.

This Fall in Canada, the Supreme Court will decide whether trash is private.
In the United States we gave up our trash privacy 20 years ago in California v. Greenwood, one of many instances where the Supreme Court found a drug war exception to the Bill of Rights.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Canada follows suit.
This particular case caught my attention because Thursday night my garbage was stolen.
Yep.
It’s an odd feeling. I put the garbage bag on the curb around 10:30 p.m. (pickup is Friday morning) and at 1:00 a.m. I happened to look out the window and it was gone. Neighbors’ trash was still there.
There are all sorts of possible explanations more likely than government snooping — an attempt at identity theft, or someone hoping I had thrown away valuable items, but as usual, there was nothing in there but food garbage (I recycle all my mail/paper a different way, so an identity thief would find nothing.)
Sure hope someone enjoyed learning about my eclectic, and rather smelly, interests in food.

Lots going on in the world. Here’s some catch-up from this week.
“bullet” Cannabis less harmful than drinking, smoking: report. Sure, we know that. But it’s always nice to have studies confirm tell us anyway.

The Beckley Foundation, a charity which numbers senior experts and other academics among its advisors, said banning cannabis has no impact on supply and turns users into criminals.
“Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,” says the report by the Foundation’s Global Cannabis Commission. […]
“Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment,” it said.
“It is only through a regulated market that we can better protect young people from the ever more potent forms of dope,” it added.

“bullet” If Texas were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world

At least one law enforcement official, Bexar County Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg, has already said he expects to ignore the new law, with arrests continuing as usual. That would be a mistake, Kampia said.
“Federal government statistics show no difference in marijuana use rates between states that arrest people for marijuana possession and those that don’t,” Kampia said. “Ignoring this sensible law will waste tax dollars for no good reason.”

“bullet” Just what we need, another czar. A copyright czar? Really? You think this whole czar concept is working? I think we could do with fewer.
“bullet” Schwarzenegger to U.S.: State may need $7-billion loan. Great. Bail out California too? No. The marijuana industry in California has offered the Governator the money he needs. If he won’t take it, that’s his problem.
“bullet” Speaking of Governors, NORML says:Want To Know Why Pot Is Still Illegal? Ask Your Governor
“bullet” Mexican President Proposes Decriminalizing Small Amounts of Drugs
“bullet” House of Death Radley Balko interviews DEA whistleblower Sandy Gonzalez.
“bullet” A DEA Agent and His Rogue Informant To Cost Taxpayers $356k from TalkLeft
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

Zogby poll

Three in four likely voters (76%) believe the U.S. war on drugs is failing, a sentiment that cuts across the political spectrum — including the vast majority of Democrats (86%), political independents (81%), and most Republicans (61%). There is also a strong belief that the anti-drug effort is failing among those who intend to vote for Barack Obama (89%) for president, as well as most supporters of John McCain (61%).
When asked what they believe is the single best way to combat international drug trafficking and illicit use,

• 27% of likely voters said legalizing some drugs would be the best approach — 34% of Obama supporters and 20% of McCain backers agreed.
• One in four likely voters (25%) believe stopping the drugs at the border is the best tactic to battle drugs — 39% of McCain supporters, but just 12% of Obama backers agree.
• Overall, 19% of likely voters said reducing demand through treatment and education should be the top focus of the war on drugs.
• 13% believe that the best way to fight the war on drugs is to prevent production of narcotics in the country of origin.

Interesting numbers.
First, the 76% number for those who think the drug war is failing is huge. That’s even more than think President Bush is doing a bad job.
27% for legalization (at least in part) is pretty good as well. Sure, we’d like more, but considering what we’re up against in years of propaganda, that’s not bad.
What makes that even more interesting is that, despite the built-in hesitancy to consider legalization, they seem unable to come up with any other ideas that they like better (and they sure don’t like the status quo).
Finally, with numbers like these, how can the academics continue to claim that legalization is not a practical option for discussion?