Drug WarRant

Apparently there has been a big problem all over the internet in the past day with anyone using Internet Explorer trying to access blogs or sites that have Sitemeter for tracking visits.
I’m hoping that’s a quickly resolved problem that won’t require me to uninstall Sitemeter.
Obviously, the other easy fix is for everyone to switch to a decent browser, but you may not even be able to read this to know you need to switch.
So what’s the scoop? Anyone out there with IE able to read this? Has the problem been fixed?
Update: Apparently the problem has been fixed.

Note: I’m taking a few days off to do some biking and exploring in Chicago with a friend, and don’t know how much wireless access I’ll have, but I’ll be stopping by when I can.
“bullet” Prohibition ups gang violence – nice article about LEAP’s efforts in Canada.

“Prohibition is not a failure, it’s a self-perpetuating policy disaster”

“bullet” Interesting post at Addiction Inbox on Drug abuse vs. drug dependence talks about 10 drug myths (drawn from a longer list by Dr. Carlton Erickson.
“bullet” From a couple of weeks ago — Bloggingheads: Just Say Yes to Drugs Ta-Nehisi Coates and Megan McArdle discuss drug legalization — a bit disjointed (McArdle seems to have a better handle on it). Interesting to see Ta-Nehisi try to struggle with the problem of wanting enforcement of violence in poor communities, yet knowing that drug enforcement isn’t the answer.
“bullet” Dan Gardner: Statistics only count when they prove your point Hmmm….
“bullet” Here’s another one that I didn’t get around to mentioning before, but has been in my mind (and I’ll probably talk about it more later). Study sees racial bias in traffic-stop searches. Not a surprise, of course, just more evidence.
Steve Chapman gives a great response in Consenting to be abused

Stopped on a lonesome stretch of highway, at the mercy of an armed man who has the power to arrest, very few citizens feel free to refuse. The Illinois State Police report that 94 percent of white motorists and 96 percent of minority ones “consent” to such searches.
Is that because they have nowhere else they’d rather be? Is it because they get a kick from watching a cop take apart their cars in an effort to put them behind bars? Or could it be because they suspect that refusing a cop is far too dangerous? […]
As the ACLU argues, abolition is the only solution. In Illinois, the burden of these searches falls disproportionately on racial minorities, but achieving perfect racial equity would not alter their oppressive nature.
In a nation founded on respect for the rights of every person, these searches give all priority to the power and convenience of the government, while mocking the liberties we are supposed to have. Why would we consent to that?

“bullet” Sometimes I get too tired to report these…. Drug Raid: Police Shoot Man, Find Nothing But Codeine Syrup and Marijuana Laws Killed Two People This Week [Thanks for doing it, Scott]
“bullet” Steve Young has an oddly amusing article: Prohibition: Empowering Gangs in Chicago for 90 Years
“bullet” Be sure to read David Borden’s nicely done editorial in the current Drug War Chronicle
“bullet” “drcnet”

“bullet” Reason TV on the travesty in the Charlie Lynch trial. Owen Beck is silenced in the courtroom. More detail.
“bullet” CNN video — Barney Frank talks about his pot decrim bill.
“bullet” Trial of Sgt. Joseph Chavalia for shooting Tarika Wilson:

A woman shot and killed by a police officer during a drug raid was likely on her knees and complying with a SWAT team’s orders to get down when she was hit in the neck and chest, two experts testified Wednesday at the officer’s trial.

Nick Juliano at Raw Story has great coverage of today’s press conference with Rep. Barney Frank, who is introducing a marijuana federal decriminalization bill (not expected to pass, but intended to open a dialogue).
The ONDCP apparently sent their big guns to immediately try to rebut, well, something else entirely.

ONDCP’s Dr. David Murray’s impassioned arguments that seemed more appropriate in Reefer Madness were greeted with plenty of puzzled glances.
Why did the White House feel it necessary to send at least three staffers to Capitol Hill to place in every reporter’s hand a copy of its 20-page, color-copied “2008 Marijuana Sourcebook?” RAW STORY posed this question to Murray.
“It is our responsibility to be aware of policy developments,” said Murray, who clarified that he had a PhD and was not a medical doctor.

Ah, so that is why the ONDCP rushed this bizarre 2008 Marijuana Sourcebook (pdf) to press (subtitled: Marijuana: The Greatest Cause of Illegal Drug Abuse).
The ONDCP is close to becoming its own worst enemy.
Here’s some footage from the actual press conference.

The BBC reports:

The UK Drug Policy Commission said despite the large sums of money spent tackling the problem, traditional police tactics were not working.

Uh, yep.

Tim McSweeney, one of the report’s authors, said: “We were struck by just how little evidence there is to show that the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on UK enforcement each year has made a sustainable impact.”
Former police chief constable David Blakey, of the UK Drug Policy Commission, said enforcement agencies tended to be judged by the amount they had managed to capture.
“This is a pity as it is very difficult to show that increasing drug seizures actually leads to less drug-related harm,” he added. […]
Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told Today part of the problem was the performance targets set for police forces.
“There is no incentive at the moment for chief constables to tackle drug crime. All the performance indicators against which police forces are measured are based on reduction of acquisitive crime.”

This is actually pretty impressive to hear in major media outlet. And the Drug Policy Commission report has some useful data.
Of course, we already know this. It’s been obvious as the hand in front of your face (although the drug warriors won’t acknowledge it).
It’s very nice to hear them talk about the fact that police are using the wrong benchmarks for determining effectiveness. Number of arrests and number of seizures really means nothing. That’s something we need to be better at doing — pressuring for a different kind of accountability (although it won’t be easy).
The UK study went even further:

It went so far as to warn that police operations could have a negative effect on the problem.
They could threaten public safety and health by “altering the drug users’ behaviour and potentiallyá setting up violent drug gang conflicts as police move dealers from one area to another”, said our correspondent.

Exactly.
So how does the government respond to that?

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The government agrees that enforcement in isolation is not effective.”

Translation: We’ll keep doing it anyway, but by claiming (as we have been all along) that we’re doing it in conjunction with other efforts, it’ll magically make it all better, without us having to actually do anything about our failure.
(We here the same kind of thing from the ONDCP sometimes — usually they say that they’re working on a “balanced” program of enforcement and other methods.)
Wait. Wait. Yes, here it is, later in the article…

The Home Office said seizures were only part of the government’s approach, with intervention programmes getting 1,000 offenders into drug treatment each week.
“Many of the report’s recommendations are already being implemented,” the spokesperson added.
“Our drugs strategy encompasses enforcement, prevention, education and treatment.”

Ah, I feel so much better. They’re not just spending millions of pounds on a dangerous policy that doesn’t work and has negative consequences, but they’re doing other things as well. That makes it all good.

“bullet” Today is the beginning of the trial of Sgt. Joseph Chevalia for shooting and killing 26-year-old Tarika Wilson in a botched drug raid. An all-white jury will consider the misdemeanor charges.
I hope he gets a fair trial.
Unfortunately, there are others who should be on trial as well — who are perhaps even more culpable. Those who made the decisions to use this kind of tactic in the drug war. They are as much responsible for Tarika’s death, but walk around free to make the same tragic decision over and over again.
Unfortunately, it’s more likely that the culpability will be deflected.

“bullet” A grand jury is hearing evidence this week regarding the killers of Rachel Hoffman. The judge has sealed pre-trial evidence, and there is some concern that he may be gagging Rachel’s parents from agitating about the botched police procedures.
I’m sure you recall, but Rachel is the 23-year-old girl who sold some pot to friends (caught with a quarter ounce pound and 6 pills) and was coerced (without her attorney’s knowledge) into acting as an informant in a horribly conceived police operation where she was to buy cocaine, 1,500 ecstasy pills, and a gun. The criminals smelled the obvious set-up and killed her.
ABC’s 20/20 did a feature on Rachel — her tragic story is getting a lot of national coverage, and will do a lot to shed light on this despicable drug-war tactic.
“bullet” The trial of Charles Lynch is underway in Los Angeles federal court.
Lynch was a major drug dealer, who sold millions of dollars of drugs to thousands of people — many of them under the age of 21. Yes, this is a dangerous criminal. At least, that’s what the jury will hear.

But in fact, Lynch was welcomed with open arms by the Chamber of Commerce when he opened his state-authorized medical marijuana facility called Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers. And he sold medical marijuana to patients with doctor’s recommendations, including selling it to special young people like 17-year-old Owen Beck — an athlete who had his leg amputated because of bone cancer and who used marijuana to control the phantom pain at the urging of his parents and his doctor. Sometimes Charles Lynch gave it to Beck for free because he cared. (If you haven’t seen Drew Carey’s video on this, you really should.)
But you see, this trial is taking place in a federal court, and Congress has defined marijuana as not having medical use (and the DEA, for very selfish reasons, won’t change it either). Therefore, the mere fact that marijuana can be used for medical purposes cannot be brought up in a federal trial. Period. Which makes Charles Lynch’s ability to defend himself extremely difficult, and creates the bizarre situation where all sorts of hoops are created to keep the jury from learning the truth (is that the American way, or what?)
I think it may be hard to keep the cat in the bag in this trial, and it could get contentious. I wonder what the jury will think and if they’ll figure it out on their own, even without the spoken defense (of course, all those potential jurors sympathetic to medical marijuana and jury nullification were undoubtably removed).
As an interesting side note, Carl Olsen, of Iowans for Medical Marijuana, who has filed a new petition to re-schedule marijuana out of Schedule 1, has filed a motion to appear as amicus curiae in the Lynch trial under the claim that the DEA is “in violation of federal law for failing to perform its duty to administer the schedules of controlled substances.”
…
Three trials. Three different reasons to be outraged. One clear verdict.
Drug War: Guilty

I started Drug WarRant on Sunday, July 27, 2003 with a post about the Hinchey Amendment. I thought maybe I’d post once a week or so — mostly for myself, but if anyone happened to stop by… I discovered there was way too much to talk about, and people eager to read. In five years, there have been over 2900 posts and 2.6 million page views on this blog.
Boy, have I learned a lot! There’s no way to conscientiously write a single-issue blog for five years without coming away with an incredible amount of information about the subject. Through newsreaders, I track hundreds of articles and posts from around the world. I read Supreme Court decisions and scientific studies. Readers send me tips and newsmakers and policy leaders often engage me personally in support or dispute.
My own views have evolved somewhat over time because of that increased knowledge. When I started, I knew that the drug war had serious problems and that marijuana should be legalized, but I had not yet learned that criminal drug prohibition of any kind, as a concept, was provably unsalvageable.
I also had to learn the extent to which I had been lied to by the government and the media — some intentional, some unwitting. It takes time to sort through the clutter of propaganda to find the truth.
It’s been an exciting and frustrating five years. I sometimes forget what I had to go through to learn what I know, and I’m frustrated that so much of the general public can’t immediately shrug off decades of accumulated propaganda in order to embrace reform. I find myself wondering why simply telling them the truth in a clear, reasoned, and factually supported way isn’t enough. But then I remember that deprogramming is a process.
Certainly, I wish we had made more progress over the years. It is depressing to realize that the 6th Hinchey Amendment is in the works and very little progress has been made in Congress.
And yet, we have done remarkable things. The drug warriors are getting desperate, and are lashing out wildly, making their own situation worse, as the public begins to see their deficiencies and lies. The ONDCP and DEA have even gone so far as to respond to their opponents, and the head of the UNODC attended an international drug policy reform convention, We can no longer be dismissed as druggie hippies. Attention must be paid.
The wonderful addition of LEAP to the movement and the ascendancy of SSDP also had powerful impact, and drug policy reform is being seen everywhere. While much of the media, including the news services, are still willing to pass on the government line, they now often add an opposing voice. OpEds and editorials all over the place are daring to speak our “L” word and the drug warriors are getting bashed right and left.
In the last five years, the U.S. government has shown signs that it may be losing its power to impose its drug war on the rest of the globe, and more countries are daring to resist.
We absolutely own the internet.
The few pathetic attempts on the part of prohibitionists to create an internet presence have been met almost uniformly with ridicule, and to this day, I know of no pro-drug-war site that allows publicly displayed comments. But we’re everywhere — and not just drug policy reform sites and their blogs, but also libertarian, liberal and conservative sites, criminal justice sites, and more.
And it’s not just the sites, but all the residents of our online communities who write letters to the editor, comment on online fora, and even comment here at Drug WarRant. I know I couldn’t do what I do without you — not only because of the tips, corrections and feedback I get, but because the comments you leave on my blog provides much of the motivational fuel to keep it going.
So a huge thanks to all my readers, and especially those who stop by in the comments. It means a lot.
There have been a few notable accomplishments here at Drug WarRant in this half-decade. I took down Andrea Barthwell (not once, but twice) and took on the DEA’s Museum exhibits (also see articles in the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune) and their Vigil for Lost Promise. I provided useful resource pages for the Raich and Bong Hits 4 Jesus Supreme Court cases. The most popular page on my site continues to be Why is Marijuana Illegal (which is used as a resource for tons of High School and College papers), followed by Drug War Victims. Recent pages that have generated a lot of interest include Deep Thoughts About the Drug War and The Drug Czar is Required by Law to Lie.
The current head of the DEA, Michele Leonhart, can’t enter her own name in Google without getting my article about her (same thing is true with former DEA head Karen P Tandy).
Five years. Navel gazing time. Is five years enough? It’s a really long time to blog. Should I hang it up?
Uh. Nope. The simple fact is that I cannot at this time stop knowing what I know and getting upset about the fact that the drug war still rages.
So I’ll continue finding time late at night and in between my job and all my other passions to have a conversation with you about drug policy reform.
Obviously, I don’t do this for the money. I do it because I must. Fortunately, the Google ads cover my out-of-pocket expenses for the blog itself. And I don’t need to get paid for my writing/reporting. However, I do like stuff. So while I certainly don’t want a cent from anyone who is on a tight budget, if you feel like you’ve found Drug WarRant valuable to you and desire to express your appreciation in more than words (which are always welcome), you can drop by my wish list or help me buy me some coffee.
Thanks for a great five years. Who knows — someday we may just be able to make this blog obsolete.
Update: Thanks for all the wonderful comments! You made my day.

There’s a fascinating interview with deputy drug czar Burns in The Arcata Eye. I believe the interview was conducted by Kevin Hoover.
The Arcata Eye is certainly not known for is support of the drug war, yet Burns agreed to a 25 minute interview in conjunction with some publicity-seeking busts. Hoover did a masterful job for the most part, starting off the interview as a standard media interview, but then gradually increasing the stakes. Burns was forced to scramble to keep up, thereby leaving some rather gaping holes in his answers.
Bruce Mirken at MPP blog has identified a couple of blatant lies by Burns in the interview, but those are by no means the only ones.
Some low-lights:

Eye: Do we know that? Is there enough research to indicate that it has no medical efficacy? I can bring you chemotherapy patients who would tell you that it is the only thing that suppresses their nausea and gives them an appetite. So is there nothing to what they‰re saying and feeling?
Burns: I‰m saying that maybe that, the… Anybody can say something makes me feel better anecdotally. And I hear that a lot. ‹Marijuana is the only thing that makes me feel good.Š I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well. This is not about making people feel better, it‰s about as a country and the effects it will have on all of us, all 305 million of us. Because someone tells me that ‹smoking crack cocaine releases my nausea and allows me to have healthier appetite,Š does that mean that we legalize it nationwide, and that its available to kids in a greater number? We have to make those kind of policy decisions. And we ought not make them on people who say, ‹Me personally, it makes me feel better.Š

At one point the Eye mentions the argument that there hasn’t been enough formal study of marijuana as medicine, and Burns replies that there’s no need to study it — the fact that it’s smoked rules it out as serious medicine.
Later, the Eye asks about the Compassionate IND program, where the federal government supplies marijuana to grandfathered patients. Burns thinks he has a chance to score:

Burns: That goes back to the people that said, ‹You know what, we really oughta study that more.Š So we do, and we set up a program, and we give a small number of people marijuana, and I know most of them by name because they show up in every hearing that I go to and say, ‹I‰ve been smoking marijuana for years and the federal government gives me this marijuana.Š Well, that was an attempt to do what the critics said. Why don‰t we study it more?

Except, of course, that the federal government has refused to actually study those patients, because they already know what they’d find out and don’t want that public.
True colors:

Eye: Philosophically… you‰re a Constitutional law teacher, I believe?
Burns: A little bit.
Eye: …and the whole premise of America‰s freedom and self determination. How can we reconcile that with the government telling us what we can ingest and what we can‰t?
Burns: Well, I think, first of all we settled it Appomattox, the fact that we‰re gonna have this thing for the Supremacy Clause, and when push comes to shove we‰ll decide on certain issues who will prevail, the federal government or the state. And on many issues it‰s the states, and for the most part, I think most Americans would agree that it should be that way. But on some issues that affect all of us for the good of the order we have to come to some consensus. And not everybody‰s happy, are they? And every time we don‰t get to do what we want, I know there are states where they really really like to marry young girls, 12, 11, or 10 and they would argue to you, ‹How dare the federal government preclude us from engaging in certain activities?Š Well, in some instances we just say your, quote, ‹constitutional rightsŠ and your freedom to do certain things gets trumped by the rest of us who say, ‹You know that‰s just not a good idea.Š

Nothing like putting scare quotes around “constitutional rights” to make it clear what kind of American you are.

Article by Ray Stern
Did you know that 90% of drugs comes from south of the border? Neither did the DEA.
So where did Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas get his “facts”?
Robert Caldwell, who has a history of uninformed nonsense.