Drug WarRant

“bullet” John Conyers demands answers from DEA acting head Michele Leonhart

1. Is the use of civil asset forfeiture, which has typically been reserved for the worst drug traffickers and kingpins, an appropriate tactic to employ against individuals who suffer from severe or chronic illness and are authorized to use medical marijuana under California law? […]
2. Given the increased level of trafficking and violence associated with the international drug cartels across Mexico, South America and elsewhere, do you think the DEA’s limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally under California law?
3. Have you considered that DEA activities against qualified individuals is negatively impacting the ability of state and local officials across California to collect tax revenue, which they are entitled to under California law?
4. … Please explain what role, if any, emerging scientific data plays in your decision-making process to conduct enforcement raids on individuals authorized to use or provide medical cannabis under state law. […]
Finally, attached with this letter is a list of approximately 60 raids that the DEA conducted between June 2005 and November 2007. Please provide an accounting of the costs, dollars and resources, used to conduct law enforcement raids on the attached list of individuals. […]

“bullet” California taxpayers to file lawsuit — they want to stop the state from borrowing more money to build additional prisons.

We already have 170,000 prisoners in California. We don’t need more prison beds — we need sentencing reform and better support in the community for recovering drug addicts, people with mental illness, and parolees.

“bullet” SSDP President Randy Hencken at San Diego State University talks to the press about Operation Sudden Fall.

Before me are 77 chairs and 77 diplomas, each representing a young
person who was recently a student here at SDSU, but who is no longer
with us. 2 of them were recently lost to tragic, yet preventable drug
overdoses. And 75 of them were arrested as part of yesterday’s
reactionary drug sting.
77 students are gone from campus, but we must ask ourselves, has drug
abuse left the campus as a result? Are students any safer from dying of
an entirely preventable drug overdose? Sadly, the answer to both
questions is “No.”

Related: Stanton Peele says Go Ahead — Write My Blog

I’m sorry to do this to you, but you must go read Radley Balko’s report about Tracy Ingle.
F#ck.

Via NORML It‰s Official: Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith Have Lost Their Minds
Yep, despite all the evidence and the science, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is calling for cannabis to be re-classified back up to “B” from “C.”

“skunk…” “powerful form of cannabis”…. “binge smoke to achieve maximum possible intoxication”

Possibly 1,000 veterans a month are attempting to commit suicide, and actual suicides may exceed battlefield deaths.
How would that number change if the U.S. government regularly prescribed marijuana for PTSD?

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”