Drug WarRant

An interesting article about college students going to Amsterdam to study drug policy. Logical, right?
But I was struck by this fascinating passage in the article:

Marijuana isn’t legal in Amsterdam. Rather, it’s decriminalized. It’s similar to Americans going into a bar to drink. In Amsterdam, they go into coffee shops to smoke.
“You’d think that the availability of it would make it out of control,” Lutt said. “It was a lot more of a social thing.”
No craziness. No crime. Nobody walking around stoned or drunk. At least not Amsterdam natives.
“I saw Americans out of control,” Lilleholm said.
Which leads her to believe that such policies probably wouldn’t work here. Make marijuana as easy to obtain as alcohol, and people are going to overindulge.

The dysfunctional mental process there is breathtaking. First of all, the idea that making marijuana as easy to obtain as alcohol would lead to overindulging is directly contradicted by the previous observed facts.
And while there certainly are national and cultural differences in the popular reaction of different populations to certain drugs, there’s an obvious apples-and-oranges problem when comparing the natives or Amsterdam and the tourists of America in their dealings with decriminalized marijuana.
Of course the tourists would seem more out-of-control than the natives. It’s a function of tourism.
The characteristics of drug tourism are the result of prohibition in the visitor’s home country, not an indicator that sane policy wouldn’t work.
If chocolate was outlawed in the U.S., you’d probably see American tourists a little out of control with their cocoa consumption in Switzerland compared to the natives.

You’ve probably heard about how more and more prescription drugs are being found in the water supply. The government made some noises about how people need to be more careful about disposing of prescription drugs.
However, it turns out that the DEA (and their continued desire to make medicine a law enforcement issue) could be largely to blame.

North Memorial Medical Center pours 50 gallons of controlled substances into its drains annually rather than pay $25,000 to handle and haul it away for safer disposal, says regulated waste coordinator Jerry Fink.
Part of the cost is due to federal rules that state anyone who handles controlled substances, other than a user, must be certified as a police officer or registered with the DEA. That goes for pharmacists, distributors, even waste handlers.

YouTube has bowed to pressure to remove certain categories of videos, based on demands by Joe Lieberman in his efforts to protect us from the terrorists. I’m not sure how it was supposed to work for the terrorists — maybe they were using funny YouTube videos to distract us at work in order to bring down America’s productivity — but obviously Deputy Droopy Dog is out there watching out for us…

Among the other changes handed down was a prohibition of videos containing “drug abuse”–a phrase that, like other parts of YouTube’s rule set, comes with no context, elucidation, examples, or anything else that would help users figure out what “abuse” might actually mean in practice. […]
Not until drug videos do begin disappearing will we be able to tell if there’s any rhyme or reason to the application of the rule. But as far as a drug purge goes, count me as a skeptic. I doubt if YouTube tries to smoke out every last pot, Salvia, and alcohol video from its giant database. It’d be too much work, and with all that stuff already in its system, I doubt YouTube would have the motivation anyway.

Banning videos of “drug abuse” will have no more affect on reducing drug abuse (or terrorism) than banning videos of Joe Lieberman would have on reducing the number of cowardly un-American politicians.

Oh, yeah.

The debate over legalization really is dull. That‰s because it‰s over with. The prohibitionists have lost in all important respects, and I suspect they know it.

I love to travel. However, Indonesia will never make my list.

109. Mr. Zulfiqaraw, aged 40, from Lahore, Pakistan, was arrested at Jakarta Airport in November 2004 on allegations of drug related offences. While he was abroad the police raided his apartment in Jakarta which he shared with a friend who possessed drugs. Despite the friend‰s confession and assurances that Mr. Zulfiqaraw was not involved in any drug related matter, the police took Mr. Zulfiqaraw from the airport to a private house, where he was tortured for three days. He was frequently punched, kicked and threatened with being shot unless he would confess. Nobody knew his whereabouts. After three days his health deteriorated so much that he had to be taken to the police hospital, where he was treated for 17 days.
Subsequently, he was transferred to Polda Jakarta where he spent two and a half months in official police custody. The prosecutor in charge, Mr. Hutagaol, offered to drop any charges for a payment of 400 million IDR (about 42,700 $US).
Mr. Zulfiqaraw perceived his ensuing trial as strikingly unfair and biased against him since he is a foreigner. No convincing evidence was presented; during the trial session his judge fell asleep. He did not receive any legal aid although he was not able to finance a lawyer; his embassy was wrongly informed and failed to support him. He was sentenced to death.

More here

Over at Cato Unbound, in the discussion of the Erowid article Towards a Culture of Responsible Drug Use, Jonathan Caulkins was the first respondent with Is Responsible Drug Use Possible? — a thoroughly out-to-lunch response (which I discussed here –be sure to read the comments as well). It was embarrassing in its display of logical fallacies and falsehoods.
Now Jacob Sullum has provided his resonse to Caulkin’s mess with True Temperance

To say that ‹modern humans must learn how to relate to psychoactives responsibly,Š as Earth and Fire Erowid do, is not the same as ‹denying or denigrating an individual‰s right to choose temperance,Š as Jonathan Caulkins suggests. First of all, what the Erowids are preaching is temperance. Aristotle defined that virtue this way:

The temperate man holds a mean position with regard to pleasures. . . . Such pleasures as conduce to health and bodily fitness he will try to secure in moderation and in the right way; and also all other pleasures that are not incompatible with these, or dishonorable, or beyond his means. . . . The temperate man desires the right things in the right way and at the right time.[1]

Sullum does a nice polite job of debunking Caulkins (and from what reactions I’ve found so far, it seems to be unanimous that Caulkins really screwed the pooch on this one). Sullum also takes a moment to differentiate two distinct political philosophies…

I see the drug laws as unjust because they go beyond the proper function of government by punishing people for actions that violate no one‰s rights. By likening drug use to speeding and to driving while intoxicated, Caulkins obscures the distinction between self-harming behavior and behavior that endangers others. Still, he clearly believes it‰s appropriate to forcibly protect people from risks they voluntarily assume, whether by using drugs, ‹riding a motorcycle without a helmet, driving without a seatbelt, or swimming when there is no lifeguardŠ (even in your own swimming pool?). I see ‹laws designed to protect people from their own poor choicesŠ as unethical impositions and dangerous precedents, based on an open-ended rationale for government intervention that logically leads to totalitarianism.

I’m glad that Cato has provided this opportunity and look forward to the next installment (Kleiman) as well as the open discussion that I believe is scheduled to begin next week.

“bullet” An uplifting PostSecret card:

To the border patrol agent who ignored the pot in my car in NY in 1973 – I did become a math teacher, I did get married and have a family, and so much more. Thank you so much for letting me live my life.

“bullet” Ever wonder why, if Venezuela is doing so badly in the war on drugs, the U.S. hasn’t decertified them (supposedly that’s what we do with non-cooperative countries). Well…

“If they were to decertify Venezuela, the Senate of the United States would have to suspend its financial assistance provided to the opposition NGO’s for its alleged fight against drug trafficking. Therefore, over the past three years they just say that we do not cooperate with US anti-drug authorities,” said Reverol.

Yep, it’s so the U.S. can, under the guise of drug enforcement, fund groups in opposition to Chavez.
But of course, John Walters claims that DEA spying and other such activities are out of the question

“The DEA does not engage in any activity but counternarcotics. … A country’s sovereignty is always observed by DEA “

Right.
“bullet” Getting High for your Health — in Popular Science.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Raw Story: Whistleblower breaks 15-year silence to allege McCain hid wife’s drug abuse
Open Left: Did McCain Tamper with the Drug Enforcement Agency to Protect His Career?
There’s video of the whistle-blower, some revelations, and some conjecture. There’s also some potential controversy in the fact that apparently the Washington Post had a story on this and pulled it.
Now the fact that Cindy McCain had a drug problem should be of no concern to me or anyone else but her family and her doctor. Nor should the drug use of anyone else.
However, if Senator McCain interfered with the DEA, or called in a favor, then that’s a potential concern (or if political persuasion was used in other aspects of the case).
On one side, don’t forget… this is the political silly season. Anything can and will happen, and it’s reasonable (and smart) to be suspicious of any controversy that surfaces now.
On the other hand, the idea of a politician using political connections to give his/her own family better drug war treatment than the rest of us is so common as to be almost unremarkable.

Update: Full Washington Post story now up.

Regardless of what you may think about Venezuela and Chavez, you can’t fault him for wanting his country to not be under the thumb of the U.S., nor is his claim far-fetched that the DEA agents that he kicked out were spying for the U.S.
But this is what happens when you try to prevent the U.S. from pushing its drug war down everyone’s throat:

White House drug czar John Walters said Tuesday that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’ policies toward the cocaine trade represents a “global threat” that puts Europe, especially, at risk.

That’s right, he’s claiming that Chavez is a danger to Europe because he isn’t doing a good enough job preventing cocaine from Colombia from getting through.
Cocaine from Colombia, that the U.S. has been spending billions of dollars spraying, eradicating, interdicting and preventing from leaving Columbia in our supposedly “successful” war against drugs there, is pouring out of the country in such massive quantities that the amount making its way via Venezuela is a threat to Europe. And that’s Chavez’s fault. And, of course, the only way to solve that is to let the U.S. drug war apparatus, that couldn’t stop the cocaine from leaving Colombia to begin with, run things for Chavez in Venezuela.
Right.

“bullet” At the Cato Institute today, at 4:00 pm (Eastern)

Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine? (POLICY FORUM)
Featuring Cheye Calvo, Mayor, Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Radley Balko, Senior Writer, Reason and author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Peter Christ, Co-founder, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.
Watch the Event Live in RealVideo
Listen to the Event in RealAudio (Audio Only)

“bullet” Radley Balko took questions at Art of the Possible last night. The discussion is in the comments of the post.
“bullet” The Last King of Potland. An interesting article. Canadian accused of major shipments of pot is caught when the U.S. convinces Mexico to turn back his plane with a stop in Texas, where he can be arrested. Now he can’t hire a lawyer, nor can his parents on his behalf, because the U.S. will seize the lawyer’s fee, so he has to apply for a public defender.
“bullet” Marijuana Could Be a Gusher of Cash If We Treated It Like a Crop, Not a Crime by Steven Wishnia
“bullet” I may talk about this more later — An article at MSN titled What if we legalized all drugs? at least brings up the question in a mainstream media article. And it poses some of the reasons why it might be worth considering. So it’s a step forward. At the same time, it is woefully incomplete as to the costs of prohibition, and the academics interviewed in the article (Peter Reuters and Mark Kleiman) as usual fail to engage the primary discussion and instead get trapped in one of their favorite side loops — one that is only partially relevant.