Drug WarRant

The Huffington Post has given some of it space to an infomercial by DEA flack Mary Irene Cooper, who gushes about Al Roker’s new DEA unreality series on Spike TV: Inside The Real Drug War
Cooper who makes her living propagandizing the drug war and getting excited about the DEA Museum, is practically wetting her pants over the sheer adrenaline rush from the anticipated violence.

Never before has DEA let cameras this deep into the drug trade. Viewers live the DEA creed to expect the unexpected. As much as we prepare, plan, and train, we can’t control everything on a drug raid or undercover deal. All the planning could change the minute the reality of the street hits. You never know what’s on the other side of the door until you go through it, and as we say, anytime dope and money come together, there’s a good chance of violence.
Viewers will go undercover with us. You’ll feel your heart beating faster as we approach the darkened car on a dimly lit street. You’ll feel on edge as we set up undercover operations with unpredictable, violent drug dealers. You’ll feel the adrenaline rush as we crash through the door of stash houses occupied by armed felons.

Ooh, that does sound exciting! Gee, you think we’ll get to see a DEA agent waste a 14-year-old girl? Wouldn’t that be great!!!!!
I suddenly have a metallic taste in my mouth.
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10
OK. Let’s tell it like it is. This show is bad drug war porn, and Mary Irene Cooper is a whore — selling her drug war to the masses — using the “car-wreck” reflex to suck people in and take advantage of their baser instincts — all in order to spackle the image of what may be the most destructive agency in the history of the United States.
My apologies to whores.

“bullet” Reports that a recent military raid by Colombia into Ecuador may have been assisted by the United States Manta air base in Ecuador that is only supposed to be used for counter drug operations.
“bullet” Are federal agents intimidating patients in order to go after the Pain Relief Network?
“bullet” Via Crooks and Liars, Arthur Silber says: The United States: Now A Private and Exclusive Country Club, Run by Monsters
“bullet” Barney Frank plans to file a bill to legalize small amounts of marijuana. This is interesting, not in itself, but in what the action represents, as Frank himself says, that it’s “time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public.”
“bullet” A good reminder: For the thousandth time, you don’t need to consent to searches nor be interviewed by the cops.
“bullet” If you’re thinking of going to Dubai, don’t. There are a number of places way down at the bottom of my list for vacation destinations, including Dubai, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, and Leroy, Illinois (it’s just not that interesting). Higher on my list are Amsterdam, Alaska, and the Czech Republic (again).

Peru sees cocaine making a comeback

at Alternet

Earlier this month, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse announced plans to spend $4 million to establish the nation’s first-ever “Center on Cannabis Addiction,” which will be based in La Jolla, Calif. The goal of the center, according to NIDA’s press release, is to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”
Not familiar with the notion of “marijuana addiction”? You’re not alone. In fact, aside from the handful of researchers who have discovered that there are gobs of federal grant money to be had hunting for the government’s latest pot boogeyman, there’s little consensus that such a syndrome is clinically relevant — if it even exists at all. […]
Of those in treatment, some 36 percent had not even used marijuana in the 30 days prior to their admission. These are the “addicts”?

I’m going to my Dad’s for Easter, so probably no more posts until Monday. Here are a few other things to check out if you haven’t already…
“bullet” Travel Pro Steves to Challenge Futile U.S. Drug War by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. More here
“bullet” A 10-year-old girl with brain cancer would like to see her father before she dies. Her father is in prison with one more year left on a drug charge and has been denied a request for a 30-day supervised release.
“bullet” State Marijuana law in Supreme Court’s hands. This will be an important case — Alaska has long had a state Supreme Court decision (Ravin) that said small amounts of marijuana in your own home was legal under your privacy rights in the Alaskan constitution. But a new law passed two years ago attempted to change that and make all possession illegal, claiming that marijuana is more dangerous now.
“bullet” Thailand leader pretentiousness

Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said during his visit to Washington DC earlier this week that Thailand’s image had improved with an elected government and that it was now being recognised as “handsome without acne”, a far cry from its image under former prime minister Surayud Chulanont.
He said US leaders had welcomed him and congratulated him on Thailand’s return to the democratic process. During his visit, many leading personalities, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a former secretary of state were eager to “koh-phob” (meet him), he said.

Will the U.S. government consider Thailand’s drug war handsome without acne?
“bullet” Civil injustice strikes Ohio — Civil forfeiture gone seriously bad. Via Radley
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly

The Drug War Chronicle’s lead story this week is an important one:
Drug Overdoses Deaths Are Going Through the Roof — Is Anybody Watching?

According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).
What’s more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.

Now let’s consider a couple of other relevant bits of information.

• Criminal laws and enforcement related to drug offenses have continued to increase, and there has been an explosion in prisoners doing time for drugs.
• The government tells us that there has been a strong decline in use of illicit drugs

Curious.
If you took these facts and presented them to an intelligent friend who somehow had no knowledge of the drug war:

1. Fewer users
More arrested
2. More dying from overdoses

… then your friend would probably say: “Your drug war sucks!”
But, of course, we know that.
Everything about our drug war makes drugs more dangerous. We crack down on marijuana and cocaine and push people to other drugs that are more dangerous. We deny harm reduction techniques and people die. We make people afraid to get help and they die. We deny them critical information and they die. We use coerced treatment or incarceration to make people quit and when they’re released their bodies have an altered tolerance and they die.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Jacob Sullum has a must-read article over at Reason in which he discusses “High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It,” by Joseph A. Califano Jr, and “The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World‰s Most Troubled Drug Culture,” by Richard DeGrandpre.
Califano and his organization CASA has been discussed here numerous times (without much good to say). Jacob also rips him apart…

Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano‰s meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed […] That claim, like many Califano makes, is unverifiable, and it does not seem very plausible. […] Already I have put more thought into the alleged connection between faithlessness and drug use than Califano did. And so it is with the rest of the book. A proper debunking would require more than the 186 pages of text […] Although CASA brags about its affiliation with Columbia University, the school has less cause to be proud of that relationship, given the center‰s sloppy research and hyperbolic rhetoric.

You get the idea.
Here’s one of the key pieces:

What Califano fails to understand is that every drug, regardless of its current legal status, is potentially an angel or a demon. DeGrandpre builds upon the insights of the alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil, who first made his name with books about drugs and altered states of consciousness. ‹Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad its reputation, and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is,Š Weil wrote in his 1983 book From Chocolate to Morphine (co-authored by Winifred Rosen). ‹There are no good or bad drugs; there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.Š

It’s a good article throughout, but I also got sidetracked at one point when Sullum called Califano a “leading exemplar” of “moralistic pseudoscience.”
Moralistic pseudoscience — what a beautiful phrase. And very apropos. I’m a bit of a word-lover, so I enjoy these things. And it got me thinking about a new word we discussed here at Drug WarRant some time ago when talking about Califano. The word was “shocktoid.”
And sure enough, it is now an accepted word in the Urban Dictionary (although Brian Bennett should be getting credit for the word instead of me).
And it really does fit Califano. Shocktoids indeed.
By the way, we have another word accepted by the Urban Dictionary: Sadomoralist.
But back to Sullum’s article. Let’s end with this incredibly bizarre behavior (yet oddly normal for Califano).

Other Califano claims are absurd on their face. In his lexicon, if a single teenager reports seeing a fellow student buy, use, or possess alcohol or other drugs at his school, that is enough to render the school ‹drug-infested.Š In a 1999 report CASA said ‹teens who smoke marijuana are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette,Š an activity in which there is a one-in-six chance of instant death on each turn. Three years later it likened underage drinking to ‹a deadly round of Russian roulette.Š
In High Society, Califano trots out the metaphor for another purpose. ‹Russian roulette is not a game anyone should play,Š he informs readers, just in case they were considering it as an alternative to checkers. ‹Legalizing drugs not only is playing Russian roulette with children; it is also slipping a couple of extra bullets into the chamber.Š Meaning that if drug prohibition were repealed, half of America‰s children would die?

Remember, there are no bad drugs. There are merely good and bad relationships with drugs. There are, however, idiots. And that’s where Califano comes in.

– photo by Bruce Chambers, Orange County Register –

See Drug Law Blog: Drug Raid at Orange County Hotel Fails to Locate Drugs

Remember that mild marijuana decrim bill in New Hampshire that I mentioned yesterday? Well, apparently it’s strong enough to cause Mayoral insanity.

Mayor Frank Guinta has asked state Rep. David Scannell to resign as spokesman for the Manchester school district after Scannell voted Tuesday to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Scannell insisted he will not resign, saying his vote is a form of political speech protected by the U.S. Constitution. He also raised the possibility he would take legal action against the mayor or anyone who tries to strip away his job.
In a letter signed yesterday, Guinta said Scannell’s vote on the bill, which passed the House but is unlikely to become law, “permanently and irrevocably harms” Scannell’s ability to serve Manchester’s schools. The mayor argued Scannell’s resignation is necessary to “help restore the integrity” of district anti-drug policies.
“He’s the face of the district,” Guinta said yesterday. “He interacts with kids on a daily basis, and he is taking a position to decriminalize marijuana. That is counter to logic, in my view.”

The notion of calling for the resignation of someone from a public position for their vote as a representative in the State House is extraordinarily absurd, particularly when coming from a public official invoking logic while demonstrating a complete lack of it.
But it’s also a very telling moment as it relates to drug policy. Sure, Guinta’s a moron. But how did he arrive at such a low point of humanity?
I’m convinced that there is a small core segment of the population that has so thoroughly drunk the kool-aid of prohibition that they firmly believe two propositions to be as true as the law of gravity:

1. Marijuana is very, very bad. Always.
2. An effective way, and the only way, to deal with marijuana is through strict prohibition

Despite being completely wrong, these two points are so ingrained that these people will not/cannot comprehend/listen to any rational arguments, so they assume that no rational opposing viewpoint exists. Thus, anyone who has an opposing viewpoint must want bad things to happen and should therefore certainly not be put in any connection with young people.
Prohibition propaganda overrides parts of the brain that actually allow rational thought. This makes our job much harder.
I’m not sure I’m as pessimistic as Dr. Tom O’Connell, but he makes some interesting points…

I found that I hadn‰t been prepared for just how truly mistaken and destructive the policy really is; not only was is it far worse than I‰d imagined, the reasons that drug prohibition and similar punitive policies have always found favor with a significant fraction of humans probably has a lot to do with our physical evolution; but not necessarily as imagined. In other words, a profoundly mistaken policy has now been based on erroneous assumptions for nearly a century. […]
fixing the mess we‰ve created may actually be impossible in the time left to pull it off. On the other hand, Earth is the only planet we‰ve got; so long as there‰s even a remote chance of saving it as our habitat, we‰d be foolish not to make the effort.

More on the New Hampshire zaniness from Paul Armentano at NORMLblog: Pot Makes You Lose Your Mind.

“bullet” Aren’t statistics interesting? Especially the ones not mentioned. For example, in Report urges LAPD to change SWAT unit we have:

Intensely proud and tightly knit, the unit is used largely to serve warrants on dangerous suspects and handle standoffs involving barricaded people.
Its record is impressive. In its 3,371 operations between 1972 and 2005, 83% ended without “untoward incident” and with the suspect in custody, the panel found. Of the 174 incidents involving hostages, several were killed by suspects, but only one died accidentally at the hands of SWAT officers.

So, that means that 573 operations ended with “untoward incident” and 3,197 (94%) of SWAT’s operations were undertaken despite the fact that there were no hostages.
“bullet” Alex at DrugLawBlog gives us reason with Rational Actors, or Why “Generation Rx” Uses Cough Syrup for Fun

Rational young people will do exactly what kids are in fact doing: switch to different drugs. They’ll use drugs that produce many of the same psychoactive effects that illegal drugs produce but which are sold by big pharma corporations and so are regulated in a much less draconian fashion.
Is that good or is it bad? Whatever one thinks about it, we should at least acknowledge that it is happening.

“bullet” Drug War Goes Crazy, Cyclist Forced to Provide Sample at Son’s Cremation

Van Impe’s fellow cyclists have protested, delaying the start of races over the weekend and reading a statement saying, “We’ll say yes a thousand times to a determined and responsible fight against doping, but today and even in an even stronger manner in the future, we say no a thousand times against the violation of our rights, the rights of every human being.”

“bullet” Some video fun…