Drug WarRant

Transform reports on an interesting development in Vietnam:

Vietnam’s National Assembly is considering decriminalizing drug use, downgrading the personal use of illegal narcotics from a criminal offense to an administrative violation, a Vietnamese legislator said Friday. […]
“Being addicted to or using drugs should be considered a disease, and should only be subject to administrative fines,” Mai said. “We cannot jail hundreds of thousands of [drug users], can we?” […]
“I think it makes sense to drop the article,” Loan said. “Few countries in the world sentence drug addicts to prison terms.”

But don’t book your flight for Hanoi just yet.

Vietnam addresses drug addiction through mandatory drug detoxification centres, in which drug users are confined for periods of two years or, in the case of a few centers, up to five years. Local government authorities maintain lists of drug addicts in their districts and send cases to the detoxification centers at their discretion.
In practice, Mai said, the legal change would have little effect, since almost no drug users are prosecuted under Article 199. Instead, they are generally sent to the detoxification camps…

And how does that work?

some 90 per cent of those released from the detoxification camps eventually return to drug use.
Critics of the camp system say there are few opportunities for those released from the camps to find jobs, reintegrate into society, or get support in staying off drugs, and that they usually gravitate back towards their old social circles and habits.

What about selling drugs?

Dealing drugs would remain a serious criminal offense, punishable in some cases by death. […]
A total of 85 people were sentenced to death for drug crimes in 2007, and nine more have received death sentences so far this year.

Now our drug warriors like to point to harsh drug laws as a deterrent. It’s hard to get any harsher than death. So how has that worked?

“Many people have been sentenced to death for trafficking heroin, but heroin trafficking is still rampant,” Mai said. “The traffickers know that the laws are strict but they are still trafficking narcotics.”

The drug war. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious failure that is nonetheless glorified worldwide.

You claim that it’s drugs that cause violence, not the drug war, so…
Now that you’ve had decades to show results, with billions of dollars spent, can you show me some proof that there has been any reduction in violence and corruption as a result of making drugs illegal?
… in the United States?
… in Colombia?
… in Mexico?
… in Afghanistan?

Mike S. Adams recently had a baffling column over at TownHall.com: University Awards Criminal Justice Degree to Cocaine Dealer
In a nutshell, one of his students at University of North Carolina-Wilmington was arrested for selling cocaine, spent several months in jail and had to drop out of school for a semester, but was re-admitted while continuing to serve time on weekends and was able to finish his degree, graduating with a BA in Criminal Justice on May 10th.
Now I don’t want to even get into the discussion of whether his sentence was appropriate. I have no idea what the particulars of this case were (and I doubt that Adams knows all the details either — although you can certainly get an idea of Adams’ leanings when he says “states should have the right to pass laws allowing for the execution of drug dealers”).
I also don’t particularly find the fact that he got a degree in Criminal Justice alarming or wrong — there are certainly careers in which a Criminal Justice degree would be useful and a felony conviction would not necessarily be a barrier. Sure, it’s mildly humorous, but that’s about it.
What I find bizarre about the column is:

there has been an obvious failure of leadership within the ranks of our university administration. It could be argued that a student should eventually be readmitted to UNCW even after a felony conviction for cocaine dealing. But the notion of a) only having the student sit out one semester and b) readmitting him before he even finished serving his sentence for cocaine trafficking is preposterous.
How can we make a judgment about whether the student is rehabilitated if he has not yet finished his sentence? Is there some reason why we have so much confidence in him? Or are we simply holding him to a lower standard because he is a minority? Do we just expect our Hispanic students to traffic in cocaine? Are we motivated by a racism that is almost too subtle to detect?

Since when is the university supposed to be a secondary Justice system? Should the university have some kind of parole board to consider whether someone who has been complying with all the requirements of the courts should have some additional sanctions imposed by the faculty? I wonder if Adams would be happy if the student was first required to be paddled by all of his teachers before being allowed to pay tuition and study.
My reaction to hearing a story like this is to applaud the student. And, quite frankly, to applaud the courts and the university for arranging the possibility for him to finish his degree that way. I have been somewhat appalled at my own university’s policy of mandatory expulsion for felony drug distribution charges, regardless of circumstance or students’ potential (although they do have a difficult, but possible, re-admittance procedure.)
If a student is getting good grades, earning a degree that will help them in their life, and paying their tuition… isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t that be encouraged? Even in those who have broken the law?
The university is in the business of providing an education. It’s not in the business of making moral judgments of people, or acting as an extrajudicial punishment organization.
I wonder if Adams would hold other businesses to the same standard. Complaining that a local grocery store, for example, agreed to sell groceries to a former drug dealer. Perhaps the store even allowed this criminal to buy filet mignon.

How can we make a judgment about whether the shopper is rehabilitated?

In the memory of Rachel Hoffman, her parents have established the Rachel Morningstar Foundation, the goal of which is to pass a law requiring legal advice to be sought before a civilian can consent to undercover work. They will also work to decriminalize marijuana in Florida.
Go Rachel.

Apparently people are having complicated and heated discussions regarding how much marijuana a medical marijuana patient should be allowed to possess.
I find it difficult to get very interested in that debate, although I understand that it’s important for the patients.
Here’s what I do think, however.

1. Law enforcement does not have a dog in this race. The patient can have a valid opinion. So can the doctor. But not the cop.
2. It seems to me that the amount that a patient is allowed to have should be at least the amount that the patient needs. Since that varies for each patient, there should be no set limit.
3. If you really have to set a limit, then I’d decide it based on safety and place it just under the amount that would cause a fatal overdose*. That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone getting hurt.

Art Hanger is a Member of Canadian Parliament and chairman of the House of Commons Justice Committee and he has written one of the most moronic OpEds I’ve read in some time. He’s complaining about the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision saying that suspicion-less sniffing of backpacks by dogs is a violation of the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.
His OpEd: Basic Logic Escapes Six Justices In Two Drug Dog Cases, which is, of course, funny, because the one really lacking logic is the one who wrote this dreck.

…a police-trained drug dog, sniffing the back-pack of someone under suspicion hardly violates this elusive clause that says everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
This very basic logic somehow escaped six of nine members of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Everyone to be afforded the protection of this clause includes a fellow by the name of Gurmakh Kang-Brown, who was caught with 17 ounces of cocaine in his luggage during a random search at the Calgary Greyhound Bus depot. Everyone includes a high school student in Sarnia, Ont., caught with 10 bags of marijuana and 10 magic mushrooms during a search on school property.
Yet the Supreme Court, in what ranks high on the asinine decision list, recently rushed to protect their rights and privacy by ruling that police violated the charter by allowing their dogs to sniff search because they didn’t have enough reason to suspect drugs were present.
Didn’t they? And so what. Both culprits were caught with sizable amounts of illegal drugs – enough to generate a lot of misery and crimes committed by users needing cash to buy these drugs. Trained dogs led police to drugs that in no way could be mistaken as stashes for personal consumption. The last time I looked, our schools, including elementary, and transportation ports are constantly being used by drug pushers to apply their trade; hence, the sniffer dogs are employed to curtail the drug pusher’s activity.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who chooses to deal in illegal drugs forsakes their rights and I believe that most people in this country feel the same way.

This guy is chair of a Justice Committee.
Let’s try to understand his reasoning. The search was OK, because it turned out that those searched were guilty. So this means that you can search anyone, because if they’re guilty, then it’s OK, and if they’re not, well then… oops.
Now maybe it would be all right for the government to simply shoot Art Hanger on sight, because if it turned out that he was a mass murderer then it would be OK, and if not, well then… oops.
Art continues his intellectual exuberance to the end, by suggesting how the Justices could improve themselves…

You know, police have another tool the justices might be wise to explore. It is called Drug Abuse Resistance Education ( DARE ), a basic program designed to educate children on the ravages of illegal drugs.

My Deep Thoughts page got picked up by StumbleUpon and then Reddit, drawing a large number of new visitors to the site. There’s a fairly good discussion in the Reddits comments.
Welcome to any new folks who found their way to the front page!
Update: Penamientos sobre la guerra contra las drogas. Someone’s translated some of them (and there’s discussion).

He’s got an interesting idea. Every time some young person dies in a tragic situation, lawmakers seem to rush to make a law named after that youth that increases penalties or outlaws more things.
Irv Hoffman, however, wants “Rachel’s Law” to bar police from enlisting young people in their drug war.

Gov. Charlie Crist said he was open to hearing Hoffman’s suggestions.
”Anything he would have to say, we would take very seriously,” Crist said.

The interesting part is when law enforcement will have to step forward and argue that they can’t fight the drug war without putting civilians at risk.

The ACLU has launched a new group blog: ACLU Blog of Rights. It appears to have some real potential, with a range of contributing writers that includes Glenn Greenwald, and with categories that includes drug law reform, among other anti-authoritarian issues.
I’ll keep an eye on it and let you know if there’s anything interesting.

“bullet” Radley Balko has more information on the Chesapeake raid. It’s not real pretty.
“bullet” Department of the obvious. Authorities: Traffickers using highways to transport drugs
“bullet” I wonder if this was the same highway… Truck Spills Tons of Oreos on Highway… Mmmm…
“bullet” See Scott Morgan’s Drug Czars Say the Darndest Things and Dick Morris Tells John McCain to Propose Harsher Cocaine Laws.