Drug WarRant

New Hampshire residents could possess one-quarter ounce or less of marijuana without facing jail under a bill headed to the state Senate.
The House voted 193-141 Tuesday to decriminalize the small amount of the drug, making possessing it a violation subject to a $200 fine. Under current law, possessing that amount could mean spending a year in jail and paying a $2,000 fine.

OK, that’s something. Legalization is better, but $200 beats $2,000 plus jail. And here’s the interesting part…

Supporters argued current law costs youths who experiment with the drug all chances at receiving financial aid to attend college. They said it wasn’t fair to penalize them for life for a youthful mistake.
Windham Republican Jason Bedrick said he doesn’t advocate using marijuana, but that wasn’t the issue.
“The question is whether a teenager making a stupid decision should face a year in prison and loss of all funding for college,” said Bedrick.

As Scott Morgan points out, the unconscionable harshness of the financial aid penalty promoted by Mark Souder may have actually led to this bill passing the NH House.

Congrats to friend Grits for Breakfast for reaching some blogging milestones. In the mandatory blogself-reflection that such milestones bring, he makes these observations:

With the exception of occasional investigative articles or self-styled “analyses,” modern journalism too often reverts to a formula where “fairness” and “balance” – to use the famous buzz words – prevail over “honesty” or “truth.” […]
Reporters inevitably feel obligated to print “the other side,” even when they know they’re being misled. (A New York Times reporter famously said he was glad to quit covering Congress because he was tired of sitting around all day on marble slabs waiting for politicians to lie to him.) […]
To me, it’s unethical for a reporter to promote arguments or fact propositions to their readers if they don’t personally believe they’re true, even if they quote “the other side,” for “balance.” A lie ain’t a side of the story, it’s just a lie.
When reporters print a quote and don’t tell readers they think it’s misleading or obfuscatory, which happens ALL the time, IMO they do their readers a serious disservice. And journalists, don’t tell me you “let the facts speak for themselves” – you’re the writer, so you’re speaking. Period. It’s not just “the facts” but the facts you choose to present. Plus you’re the one who researched the story – your readers presumably don’t know as much as you do. […]
Newspapers frequently attribute their circulation decline to the rise of new technology, but IMO their greatest failing hasn’t been a reliance on dead trees, but their insistence on clinging to an outdated and counterproductive approach to newsgathering and storytelling. People read blogs not to get information, for the most part, but to help decipher what news stories mean, a niche that’s only available because of the shortcomings of hundred-year old journalistic canons and customs.
So do not expect what you read here to be “fair” or “balanced” (though I try to be “honest” and “truthful,” and admit mistakes when I make them).

It’s a good point, and one we run up against quite often in drug policy reform. It is what allows the drug czar to continue time and time again to widely distribute propaganda. The press will, for the most part, not fact check the claims or report that the data doesn’t support the conclusions, but rather, at best, add a quote from a drug policy reform organization leader to show a difference of opinion. This point alone makes quality blogs a better place to read about drug policy than most of the other media.
Now, to be sure, bloggers also often have a bit of advantage over other journalists in that they can specialize. I know more about drug policy that any journalist because that’s pretty much all I write about. But that doesn’t excuse the lack of integrity involved in standard media practice of knowingly putting forth misinformation.
So no, you won’t get balance here, either. But you’ll get a lot of truth. (And if I’m wrong, someone will correct me).

Lima, Ohio

An Allen County grand jury today indicted a Lima police sergeant on two misdemeanors for shooting 26-year-old Tarika Wilson to death and injuring her 14-month-old son during a Jan. 4 drug raid at her home.

The charges are negligent homicide (for Tarika’s death) and negligent assault (for her son’s injury).
Reactions:

Wilson’s family and Lima’s NAACP office said the misdemeanor charges against Chavalia should have been more severe.
“When you take aim and shoot someone with your gun, I don’t see how it’s negligent,” said Ivory Austin II, brother of Tarika Wilson

One interesting bit about Tarika’s boyfriend, who was the target of the raid…

Terry, 31, was later indicted for three counts of trafficking in crack cocaine, six counts of permitting drug abuse, and four counts of trafficking in marijuana for incidents occurring between September 2007 and Jan. 4, the day of the raid.

Permitting drug abuse? I hadn’t heard of that before. Sounds positively… crimethink.
Ah, but here it is.
Note how in the law, any criminal drug offense is considered, by definition, a drug abuse offense. Remember, in Newspeak “use” = “abuse.”
Also, killing a mother holding her baby is a misdemeanor. Selling or growing marijuana is a felony.

I was at the small group Q & A when Costa was asked that same question and avoided it.
Update: This really is a telling video. Kudos to Frederick Polak, who respectfully, yet firmly and persistently, tried to get an answer to a very basic question: “If prohibition is the only way to contain the drug problem, how do you explain that the prevalence of cannabis use is lower or similar in the Netherlands than in many neighboring countries?”
Peter Sarosi reports that

Some NGO representatives on the other end gave a standing ovation to Mr. Costa when he left the hall (you can see the same people applauding his anti-coffee shop statements in our video). The celebration was initiated by the lapdogs of the U.S. and Swedish governments of course, like the European Cities Against Drugs, an international organization funded by the Swedish government to promote its drug policy, praising ‹treatmentŠ services in Russia notorious for chaining and humiliating drug users, or SUNDIAL, an ‹NGOŠ led by the former speechwriter of the American drug czar. Among them we found the representative of the Partnership for a Drug Free America as well, who advocates the idea that we can solve drug problems by forcing schoolchildren to piss to a flask, despite the growing evidence that school drug testing doesn‰t work at all.

Pretty amazing when you watch the video and hear these people applauding Costa’s obvious avoidance tactic. I mean, if you understand even the basics of English, it’s obvious that Costa was purposely not answering the question and refusing to allow it to be considered. And for that they applauded?
It’s almost as though they were sitting there thinking “Uh, oh, that druggie guy got nailed us good on that one — how will Costa respond? … Oh, excellent technique! You simply dodged it! Bravo!”

A busy day for me — I’ll have more later.
“bullet” It’s not just a war…

Ahmadu Giade has assured Nigerians that the agency will continue its onslaught on illicit drug dealers.

“bullet” Idiot. We’re going to have a little lesson on logic later today.
“bullet” Court Ruling Limits Employment Drug Testing – a rare moment of clarity.
“bullet” The LAPD conducts so many wrong-address raids that they’ve got a special unit just to fix all the doors.
“bullet” In Alabama, pregnant drug users getting jail, not help.
“bullet” Doggy Style – Border Patrol Checkpoints Near Yuma Nab Hordes of Pot Users Headed Back From the Beach — a good, extended article about how border concerns have turned into a complete loss of Constitutional rights for many residents.

This is the day that Saint Urho drove the grasshoppers out of Finland, thus saving the grape and (some say) marijuana crops.
Enjoy.

There’s a must-read article by Marc Caputo in the Miami Herald today:
Crist wants to maintain drug penalties
Check out the well-constructed lede:

Though he has admitted to smoking marijuana, Gov. Charlie Crist said he still favors Florida’s tough drug laws and doesn’t support legislative plans to review whether to lessen penalties for some crimes such as non-violent drug possession.

There’s an incredible amount of meat in that one sentence — the hypocrisy of Gov. Crist, the fact that Florida’s drug laws are tough, the fact that the legislature is actually considering reform, and that many locked up for drug possession are non-violent offenders. This is a real breath of fresh air in a news piece.
It continues:

The state’s prison population is expected to swell at year’s end to a record 100,000, about 20 percent of whom are non-violent drug offenders convicted of crimes such as trafficking and simple possession.
And some legislators have wondered aloud and in private how the state can afford to pay for it now that Florida’s economy is sagging and crime is rising. It costs more than $19,000 a year to lock up an inmate, not counting the millions it will cost to build two prisons per year through 2013 to keep up with prison-population growth.

Two prisons per year. Wow. See, this is the kind of reporting that can really make people sit up and take notice. And it’s an article where the “smart on drugs” crowd really look like they’ve got it together much more than the “tough on drugs” Governor.
Of course, the two questions that I wish had been asked…
First, the Governor said:

”And what I support about the law is the deterrent effect”

So why didn’t the law deter him?
Second, the standard question to hypocrite politicians: If you had been caught, it’s likely your life would have been ruined and you probably wouldn’t have become Governor. So why is it OK for you to do that to others?

Chicago Alderman Freddrenna Lyle (6th) in opposing the ban on little plastic bags:

“But we’ve got enough laws we can’t enforce. We don’t want to make any more or criminalize legal conduct.”

“bullet” Bartonville, Illinois (just down the road from me) running “drug enforcement zones.” It sounds Constitutionally questionable, but unfortunately, the press coverage is extremely vague, so I’m not quite sure exactly what they’ll be doing.
“bullet” Clarence Page: A ‘wire’ war vs. the drug war

The war on drugs too often has become a war against poor people.

“bullet” The Second Chance Act has been passed by Congress to provide prisoner re-entry services
“bullet” The drug czar’s budget has not been getting a free ride in the press this year. Here’s the Washington Post.
“bullet” Paul Armentano: Outrageous Anti-Pot Lies: Media Uses Disgraceful Cancer Scare Tactics
“bullet” Rockford Register Star editorial: No Good Reasons To Continue Ban On Medical Marijuana

Illness knows no party lines or political ideology. Patients should be able to get marijuana with their doctors’ approval without being treated like criminals.

The Register star also notes that 68% of Illinois voters back medical marijuana.
“bullet” A couple of stories from Narco News indicating disturbing (but not surprising) evidence that drug war rhetoric against Venezuela and Bolivia are covering more sinister efforts.

• U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooking Latin America – Trail of Evidence Points to Major Covert Operation Targeting Venezuela
  

  The covert program, law enforcement sources contend, likely involves the CIA and components of Defense Department intelligence agencies, and is focused, in part, on penetrating, or even propping up, narco-trafficking groups in Venezuela. That country‰s outspoken leader, Hugo Ch½vez, is regularly demonized by U.S. policymakers for, among other things, supposedly allowing his country to become a haven for narco-traffickers.
  The operation also appears to prioritize intelligence objectives over law enforcement goals, which means tons of cocaine might well be getting a free pass into the United States.

• Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps Washington‰s blunder in Bolivia strains relations with the Morales government.

“bullet” “drcnet”

If you read fantasy stories about demons, you’ll often find the notion that the demon is powerless unless it is invited in, and then it feeds on fears to gain power and wreak destruction.
That’s how freedom is lost. One little bit at at time with our own consent, taken by demons feeding on our fears.
D.C. and several other cities are implementing a new program of voluntary house searches to find guns with amnesty for any guns and drugs found (although guns will be tested to see if they were involved in crimes, in which case the amnesty is off). Police will be going door to door in certain neighborhoods and asking people to sign a consent form allowing the police to search their house.
The fact that this is even being considered shows how low we’ve sunk in valuing and protecting the most basic citizen rights. Sure, it’s still with consent, but what is a resident supposed to think about her future relationship with the police if she refuses?
Fortunately, the notion still shocks some:

Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, questioned the Washington effort. As a lifelong D.C. resident and a former police officer, he said, he would not consent to his house being searched.
“They haven’t earned that level of access or respect from the community,” Hampton said. “I just can’t believe they’re trying to do that. I’ve never heard of anything like that in my life.”

Whatever the stated goal of the program, the ultimate goal is to bit by bit get people accustomed to the notion of suspicion-less, warrant-less house searches.
We get people used to these things in so many ways… bit by bit…
Back in the 1980’s, the notion of general workplace drug testing (outside of specific safety-sensitive jobs like airline piot) was considered “idiotic” and yet today, people blithely piss in a cup for the privilege of saying “Welcome to WalMart.”
And with the millions of dollars being spent to convince schools to implement random drug testing (regardless of its efficacy), the demon preys upon fears to gain further footholds

“The most striking thing I hear in talking to students is that the kids feel safer,” said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

And they know they’re doing well when they can convince the students to ask for their rights to be violated.
And, of course, it’s never really about helping people as this story shows — parents find their son with a joint, so they contact the school to let them know that there may be drug dealing going on at school. The school responds by suspending the kid for 9 weeks.
The government also keeps you safe by looking closely at all your financial transactions. Many people were surprised in the Spitzer case with the fact that he was found out because he… spent his own money. And yet, that has been part of the drug war for some time. What the Spitzer case emphasized was that even expenditures of less than 10,000 can be scrutinized by the government (many had though that scrutiny was reserved for 10,000 or more deposited).
Of course, we’ve given up so many of our constitutional rights, and your car is getting very close to being completely exempt from any 4th Amendment protection. Jon Katz today talks about a case (Hamel v. State) in Maryland where incident to a driver’s arrest the state is claiming the right to search a locked glove box. There’s almost no distance from that to a locked trunk. And he reminds us that original justification for such searches was for the officer’s protection, but that expanded “to give police the green light to search areas within an arrestee’s lunge and grasp even after the arrestee is handcuffed and unable to lunge and grasp.”
Now it’s being reported that the NSA has silently re-established the dismantled Total Information Awareness program, which is a massive government database collecting information on your emails, internet searches, phone calls, financial information and travel information. The ACLU has moved its surveillance clock one minute closer to midnight.
Tell me I’m just being paranoid. Go ahead. Tell me.