Drug WarRant

So the U.S. is finally dismissing cocaine charges against Ricardo Palmera.
If you may recall, this was the Colombian FARC member extradited to the U.S. who had already been sentenced for a hostage-taking conspiracy charge. But his extradition was supposed to be a big score for the drug war, so they spent over a million dollars prosecuting him on cocaine charges even though that wouldn’t add a single day to his sentence.
They tried twice, and couldn’t get a jury to convict, so now they’ve given up.
They spent our money on a prosecution just to prove to us that they were spending our other money well on the drug war.
And we lost. In a whole lot of ways.

New York Times:

More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.

This isn’t news to any regulars here. We’ve talked at length about the racist drug war.
A small point to make here. When we say that the war on drugs is racist, that doesn’t mean that everyone conducting the war is racist in their nature (although some are). The point is made that many who conduct the war are following the law “properly.” That, however, doesn’t change the fact that the implemented policy is inherently racist. If a policy has an effect of being overwhelmingly detrimental to one race over another for no good reason, then it is racist, and good-faith attempts to be “fair” in conducting it cannot save it.
(Of course, the drug war has the added bonus of being both facially wrong and racist.)
The real question is, at what point does the common knowledge that a policy is racist reach a level where simply supporting that policy’s continuance is proof that an individual (or politician) is racist?

Matthew Yglesias, like so many others, sees the nasty over-incarceration problem we have in this country.
But then he take a turn into an alternative dimension

On the other hand, it’s also true that the crime rate in the United States remains at what I’d consider an unacceptably high level and there are some indications that it’s on the rise again.
Much better than simply letting people out of jail to save money would be a more focused effort to switch our anti-crime priorities away from such a heavy reliance on incarceration and toward more cost-effective methods. Drug treatment programs that work are great, but not just anything called a drug treatment program actually works. Coerced abstinence (PDF) seems promising, as does simply hiring more police officers.

Fortunately, his readers have a better idea…

On the other hand, it’s also true that the crime rate in the United States remains at what I’d consider an unacceptably high level and there are some indications that it’s on the rise again.
Surely this is a nonsequitur.
You could release every single nonviolent drug offender in the country and have zero effect whatsoever on the ‘crime rate’ (as defined in any meaningful way) and still save a tremendous amount of money.
Posted by moron

Coerced abstinence? This is tired old (alternative prohibition) nonsense that still imagines drug use as a problem that somehow must be corrected by force, rather than identifying actual problems (crimes of violence or property) and dealing with solutions tailored to those problems.

This is an enjoyable article. An intrepid reporter braves the clouds of pot smoke

This soccer mom admits she was out of her league at a marijuana smokefest. But she left with a better understanding. And the munchies…
Organizers were handing out festival maps at Queen’s Park yesterday, but the kids ahead of me just laughed them off.
“Who the hell needs a map?” chuckled one freedom toker to the other. “Just follow the smell.”
You sure couldn’t miss it. My editor told me not to inhale, but I’m not sure what he was smoking when he offered that impossible advice.

But apparently this is an activity that is worthy of putting people in prison, kicking them out of college, and ruining their chances of working in certain jobs.
Did you notice the other thing missing in this situation (and any mass marijuana smoking situation) in comparison to any mass alcohol drinking situation?

I’ve been out of circulation for a few days, but finals week is finally here. Still a bit to do, but things are easing up. Tonight I played piano for a musical theatre class final — this weekend I put together two digital slide presentations and an awards presentation, and last week I had four photo calls, in addition to regular work.
So… what did I miss?

It’s the very end of the school year and I’m falling down on the job, here, but my loyal readers are coming through with links for you.
“bullet” Timothy Garon died yesterday. He was a patient who was denied a liver transplant because of his legal use of medical marijuana. More here (thanks to Tim and Paul).
“bullet” Will Pot Ever Be Legal in this Schizoid Country?
“bullet” Via Paul Armentano, comes this Reuters story: Low-dose pot eases pain while keeping mind clear.
“bullet” Mike passes on a couple of links to grow-house raids in Florida, here and here (the video is interesting).
“bullet” Scot at Grits for Breakfast has a post: Redefining drug war success — where he notes that the drug war has truly become desperate when people switching from meth to crack is considered a drug war victory.
“bullet” Jim sends a link to this hilarious Tim Meadows pot scene from “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”

“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

“bullet” Fascinating story of Dr. Stephen Richards. An ex-felon who spent 9 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute several tons of marijuana, but got his college degree and eventually his PhD and now teaches criminal justice at UW-Oshkosh (although as an ex-felon, he can’t drive a cab or work at McDonald’s).
“bullet” If you haven’t yet, you really should read this important piece in the NY Times by Jim Dwyer: On Arrests, Demographics, and Marijuana. In NYC between 1988 and 1997, police arrested 45,300 people for having a small amount of pot. However, between 1998 and 2007, they arrested 374,900!
Guess what most of them looked like.
And Scott Morgan points out one of the side notes in the article: Don’t Give Your Marijuana to the Police. Yes, they are allowed to trick you.
“bullet” Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug‰s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity‰s oneness with nature.

It is undoubtably his repeated use of the drug that ruined his health and caused him to die at such a young age.
“bullet” Simon Jenkins in the Guardian has a blunt message in response to Gordon Brown’s expected move to re-classify cannabis back up to Class B in the UK: The only message being sent is of cowardice and stupidity
“bullet” David Guard has an update on the medical marijuana bill in Illinois. Good faith attempts are being made to get law enforcement on board, with a real dialogue and some changes to the bill. That contrasts with Minnesota, where some of the law enforcement rhetoric has been so outrageous, that Minnesotans for Compassionate Care put out an excellent point by point rebuttal.
“bullet” Does anybody get it yet? When you see stories like this: Tijuana Hospital Locked Down as Doctors Treat Drug Traffickers Hurt in Shootouts, is there any doubt that we should be looking for some solution other than a drug war?

There are so many ways to lie, and the drug czar knows them all. But it’s a game of sorts — his office likes to pretend they’re not really lying, that they’re… technically telling the truth.
Usually they use the sleight of hand lie — unrelated or irrelevant statements intended to mislead

• “Evidence now tells us that the higher-than-ever potency of today’s marijuana translates into serious health consequences for teens. Among teens who are receiving treatment for drug abuse or dependence, more than 60% report marijuana as their primary drug of abuse.”
• Marijuana contains hundreds of carcinogens.

Two prime examples of the sleight of hand lie. The first one simply ignores the fact that most people in for marijuana treatment are there not because of any dependence, but because they were referred there by the criminal justice system. So the statistics have absolutely nothing to do with higher THC or addictive qualities of marijuana. The second is intended to imply that marijuana causes cancer (Since the largest study in the world — funded by the U.S. government — proved that there is no risk of lung cancer from smoking marijuana, Walters cannot come out and say that marijuana causes cancer, but he can use the sleight of hand lie.
And then there’s another kind of lie. Simply find someone so utterly and incredibly low that they don’t mind giving the obvious lies, and approvingly link to them.

Someone approached me with a question:

We already have two legal meats in this country, beef and pork. And these have caused all sorts of problems with cholesterol, heart attacks and obesity. People like them too much, so we’ll probably never be able to get rid of them, but why should we add another dangerous meat, by legalizing chicken?

And so I answered:

1. This is a free country and you don’t get to decide that people in power like pork so it’s OK, but I can’t be allowed to like chicken. You can (and should) inform me of the real dangers involved in any of the meats and encourage me to consume them responsibly, but you can’t sit there swallowing sausage and send me to jail for my chicken breast.
2. Chicken is actually better for you than beef and pork in many ways. Legal chicken could mean that some people will occasionally eat chicken instead of beef. And that’s a good thing. Imagine if, when you went to Wendy’s, instead of just having hamburgers, you could instead get a grilled chicken sandwich or chicken nuggets. How is that a bad thing?
3. Chicken has a whole range of nutritional and health benefits.
4. Making chicken illegal has not stopped people from eating meat (or even eating chicken). And it’s caused a host of other problems.
5. You’re a moron.