Drug WarRant

The ACLU is presenting this week at the Beyond 2008 Forum in Vienna, as part of the input toward the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 10 year evaluation of world drug policy.
Remember, 10 years ago, the UN proclaimed “A Drug Free World – We Can Do It” and they set goals of “eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008.”
Obviously, that failed spectacularly, not that any of the players will be rushing to admit it — in fact, attempts to re-write history are already happening.
Fortunately, there are some mechanisms in place to at least provide some public response. I think that the ACLU’s presentation does a good job of tying in with the rest of the global drug policy reform efforts to shift UN drug policy. They realize that UN drug policy is not going to go away at this point and that the most likely areas to affect change is focusing on harm reduction and human rights. The human rights approach is particularly useful, since there is precedent in the U.N. indicating that, theoretically, U.N. drug policy must take a back seat to U.N. human rights policy.

A human rights-based approach to global drug policy would principally

1. prioritize prevention and treatment of negative health consequences of drug misuse over criminal justice responses and supply-side reduction measures, and
2. require that U.N. bodies measure effectiveness by assessing indicators of drug-related harm, rather than relying solely on drug use and interdiction statistics. Drug-related ‹harmŠ includes overdose rates, disease transmission rates, negative drug enforcement consequences as well as individual and communal criminal justice system-related consequences.

There is a huge global movement for reform that is being expressed through these forum opportunities. And it will be hard for the U.N. to ignore these voices entirely, especially while having to simultaneously ignore the documented abject failure of U.N. drug polcy (although they will try). It’s possible that some reform language will make it through into the next 10 year plan, but without (as the ACLU notes) reform of the International Narcotics Control Board — a particularly odious, corrupt, and unaccountable entity — it will still be an uphill battle for individual countries to adopt workable drug policies.
Update: ACLU’s Graham Boyd comments on the process.

“bullet” The New York Times editorial that I mentioned last week has generated some Letters to the Editor. Califano’s letter is so… Califano — he just can’t stop himself from making up bizarre statistics.
“bullet” Clarence Page phones in a column about the drug war Don’t forget the war next door. Come on, Clarence — what a waste of prime newspaper real estate! You could be a voice on the drug war, if you’d only grow a pair.
“bullet” On the other hand, Josh Strawn hits one out of the park with War on Drugs vs. War on Terror at Pajamas Media, explaining to conservatives why our drug policy doesn’t work.

Drug policy has been sculpted by notions of public morality, out of the supposed desire to maintain order and to preserve quality of life instead of letting it deteriorate. But the evidence proves that those objectives are not only failing to be met, the inverse is being accomplished. Drug policies Ö in particular those defined by eradication of crops and draw-down of demand Ö create more chaos than order, and destroy more lives than they save. This argument needs now to extend beyond the crack alleys of America and into rural Afghanistan, where farmers and their families Ö our potential allies in the quest for peace and stability in Afghanistan Ö are suffering because of our own stale ineffectual anti-drug policy.

Must-see TV:
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez – an award-winning documentary on PBS’s P.O.V., directed by Kieran Fitzgerald and narrated by Tommy Lee Jones.
Check your local listings for exact time and date, but it will be running beginning tomorrow night at 10 pm nationwide.
For those who don’t know, Esequiel was an innocent American citizen, shot to death by U.S. Marines on United States soil, in the name of the drug war.

Driver arrested with $5 million in pot
104 pounds of pot, which police estimated to have a street value of $4.7 million.
According to my rough math, that’s over $45,000 a pound or $2,824.52 per ounce. That makes it about three times as valuable as gold.
Hmm…. When I was in college, the good stuff cost about $50 an ounce.
Assuming, of course, that Naperville police aren’t just making stuff up. They wouldn’t do that, would they?…

Correction: The arrest was in Ohio — it appears that the bizarre math came from Ohio state troopers, not Naperville police.

A must read in the Los Angeles Times today, by David W. Fleming and James P. Gray

Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.
The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year — tax free.
The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs.
Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work.
Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking tough — not smart, just tough — about drugs and crime. But the tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited resources to fund the criminal justice system.
The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California today, and its ranks continue to grow.
And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally financed by the sale of illegal drugs.

“bullet” The U.S. Government is so sure that there’s no such thing as medical marijuana, they decided to patent it.
“bullet” Drug Czar’s Office Admits that Drug Enforcement Can’t Be Proven to Work from Scott Morgan.
“bullet” Idiot of the week — William Janes, Florida’s drug czar. He claims that addiction is misunderstood, but then says that the way to fix it is faith based involvement and Drug Free Workplace initiatives. Here’s the really bizarre comment:

‹People don‰t use drugs accidentally. They use them for self medication and for coping with life,Š he said. ‹I don‰t see a lot of recreational marijuana users any longer.Š

Apparently Janes doesn’t get out much.

Regular readers know that I try my best to be civil, to be patient, to be reasoned. Yet there are times when such… patience seems no longer viable.
What I have to share with you now is dangerous. There are those who will consider me to be… treasonous for passing on such words. There may be those in power who feel that I can no longer be allowed to spread this sedition.
These aren’t my words, but they’re important words.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Ö That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, Ö That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Happy Independence Day.
Join me in being independent.

“Drugs is a big, big problem in America.” – John McCain

Ah yes, finally, some clear, decisive, rational thoughts about drug policy. I guess I can hang up my blogging cap now — with astute leaders like that, we no longer need my discussions on the issues.
…
You see, I used to think that the qualifications for being President actually involved, uh, knowing some stuff. But then I tuned into cable news and discovered that the qualification for being President is actually getting shot down in a plane. I must have missed that Constitutional amendment (and I’m not sure when George W. got shot down – must have been during those National Guard hours that they forgot to record).
So now we’re looking at a potential President of the United States in 2009 who doesn’t know how to use a computer, and who is able to manage drug policy statements like:

“Drugs is a big, big problem in America.”

But at least he’s been shot down in a plane. That makes me feel so much better about his capacity to understand complex policies.
Including this one, obviously fed to him by staff at the encouragement of John Walters:

McCain praised Plan Colombia, a program the U.S. government launched 10 years ago to reduce cocaine production in the country. Because of Plan Colombia and other efforts, the price of an ounce of cocaine on U.S. streets had risen substantially, McCain said.

Ah, yes, the ubiquitous street ounce of cocaine, which, of course, has actually dropped substantially in price in the last 10 years (both in real dollars and inflation adjusted dollars (source– page 260) despite the recent problems with the U.S. dollar and huge interdiction and eradication efforts).
Obligatory troll note: I respect Senator McCain’s service to his country, and nothing I have said could possibly be interpreted as denigrating his service, except by people with the I.Q. of a toaster with the pop-up feature not working. It’s just that the simple fact of being in a plane when it is shot down does not make you Presidential and more than you’re likely to hear people say “Hey, Bob got hit in the face last week. We should put him in charge of our company.”
On the other hand, saying things like “Drugs is a big, big problem in America” when discussing our global drug policies with the leader of a foreign country — that is a pretty obvious disqualification for being President.
Update: More drug policy expertise from the man with the kindergarten-level understanding:

“There is clearly a continued threat of drugs pouring into the United States of America, which can harm us and our young people very badly.” – John McCain

The New York Times editorial today: Not Winning the War on Drugs

John Walters, the White House drug czar, declared earlier this year that ‹courageous and effectiveŠ counternarcotics efforts in Colombia and Mexico ‹are disrupting the production and flow of cocaine.Š
This enthusiasm rests on a very selective reading of the data. Another look suggests that despite the billions of dollars the United States has spent battling the cartels, it has hardly made a dent in the cocaine trade.

It’s a pretty good editorial for the New York Times — certainly not as outright anti-prohibition as we’d like, but a strong statement against supply side efforts and pushing for emphasis on treatment instead of enforcement.

All this suggests serious problems with a strategy that focuses overwhelmingly on disrupting the supply of drugs while doing far too little to curb domestic demand. […]
Above all, the next administration must put much more effort into curbing demand Ö spending more on treating drug addicts and less on putting them in jail. Drug courts, which sentence users to treatment, still deal only with a small minority of drug cases and should be vastly expanded. Drug-treatment programs for imprisoned drug abusers, especially juvenile offenders, must also be expanded.
Over all, drug abuse must be seen more as a public health concern and not primarily a law enforcement problem. Until demand is curbed at home, there is no chance of winning the war on drugs.

Of course, they had to add that little end tag ‘winning the war on drugs’ like they’re still dreaming that it can be done without ending it.
And there was the one strange concession to drug war victory:

The counternarcotics effort has produced some successes. Marijuana use in the United States has declined since 2002, the earliest year for which the government has comparable data.

Ah, yes. The reduction of non-problematic use of marijuana. Success. That’s worth all the dollars spent and lives lost, right?
In the Huffington Post, Robert Creamer writes that Americans Can’t Allow McCain to Continue Bush’s Failed Policies in the “War on Drugs”

Though the failures of the “War on Drugs” are more silent and insidious than his dramatic failures in the Middle East, the two have much in common. Both have involved an over-reliance on, and often reckless use of, military force to solve problems for which military power is not appropriate. And both result in massive diversions of attention and energy from the real source of a problem into “crusades” that actually made matters worse.

He also talks about the counterproductive efforts in Colombia

The stupidity of the fumigation policy became clear when we met with hundreds of local people who had assembled in a community center in Putumayo. We heard story after story of legitimate crops being killed by indiscriminate aerial fumigation. We talked to dozens of farmers who said they grew coca because it was the only way to make any money. We talked to many local people who told us that if the crops were fumigated, they would simply move further into the jungle and tear down more rainforest.

… and the mess of our reliance on incarceration…

The price of these policies to our broader society has been breathtaking. The entire correctional system had about 550,000 inmates in 1985. Today, it has 2.6 million– mostly because of mandatory minimums and major limitations on the use of parole at both the state and federal level.
The cost of the system has gone from $9 billion a year in 1985 to $60 billion a year today.
The prison system doesn’t focus on rehabilitation or education, either. It basically warehouses inmates and in many cases makes them more inclined to commit real crimes. Today the recidivism rate is 67%. Two-thirds of inmates will return to prison after being released.

These are both good pieces. They both suggest a shifting of prohibition from supply-side focus to demand-side focus, with an emphasis on treatment.
Of course, personally, I believe that the correct approach is an elimination of prohibition (and its problems) and a separate, but important, effort to deal with problem drug use, involving education and treatment.
But I also understand that the notion of shifting, rather than eliminating, can be more palatable to some, and it’s better than nothing.

DEA Marks 35th Anniversary

The Drug Enforcement Administration was created 35 years ago on this date by President Richard Nixon, who through an Executive Order established a single unified command to combat “an all-out global war on the drug menace.” At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents, a budget of less than $75 million, and a presence in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.4 billion and 87 foreign offices in 63 countries.

I was about to become a Sophomore in college in July 1973.
Since then, we have experienced 35 years of increasing lawlessness, corruption, global criminal drug enterprises, and drug-war-related terror, along with decreased individual rights.
Thanks, DEA, for making this world a more miserable place.