Drug WarRant

Associated Press today.

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would bring a new approach to drug crimes in response to a questioner who noted “if you were arrested when you were a teenager, then you never would be a candidate for the presidency.”
Obama didn’t comment on the reference to his teenage use of marijuana and cocaine, which he disclosed in his autobiography and which some of rival Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters have raised recently. Instead, he said the government is not handling the drug problem “in an intelligent way.”
“I’m not interested in legalizing drugs,” Obama said, adding that he prefers an approach that puts more emphasis on a public health approach to drugs and less emphasis on incarceration.
He said there should be more programs to keep young people from using drugs. And he said first-time offenders should be given help to overcome their drug use instead of being locked up at massive taxpayer expense from which they emerge as unemployable ex-convicts.
“All we do is give them a master’s degree in criminology,” Obama said.

It’s a start.

The difference between drunk drivers and stoned drivers:

• The drunk driver will speed through the stop sign without noticing it.
• The stoned driver will stop and patiently wait for it to turn green.

The invoked boogeyman of reefer-crazed drivers on the road has been one of the convenient tools of the prohibitionist. The experienced marijuana smoker knows better — they know from experience that they avoid driving, and when they do drive, they drive more cautiously/less recklessly, more paranoid and alert even than when they’re sober, due to the marijuana-induced self-awareness of their impediment. But they also know that any attempt to explain that to the propaganda-fed general public will sound like the deluded braggadocio of the drunk who claims to be OK to drive.
So we’re very careful to say: “Well, certainly driving while stoned would still be illegal,” and without realizing it cede to the prohibitionists the fearmonger’s tool. The public, certain that legalization will mean an increase in use, logically imagine a future multitude of stoned drivers mowing down their children.
This is why I’ve been so vocal about the relative safety of stoned drivers — not to say that it’s OK to drive stoned, but rather to say that, of the many dangers we face daily, stoned drivers will always be one of the lowest.
We now have another resource — NORML’s Paul Armentano has put together a comprehensive review of the science: Cannabis and Driving: A Scientific and Rational Review. I think that it could well serve as a useful tool in providing sane alternatives to prohibitionist posturing. And there are a lot of excellent points, well referenced.
Personally, I find the report to share characteristics with its subject matter — it’s overly cautious, although I understand the desire for an organization like NORML to appear that way in order to gain mainstream credibility. I’m assuming the audience for this is not the general public, but rather the researcher and the media — it’s way too… dry for viral propagation. I may need to take on a project of creating a page similar to Why is Marijuana Illegal? related to cannabis and driving for distribution on messageboards and social networks. If so, I will certainly draw upon Armentano’s work, for which I am grateful.
I do question the strength of one of his assumptions:

Drivers should also be advised that engaging in the simultaneous use of both cannabis and alcohol can significantly increase their risk of accident compared to the consumption of either substance alone. 32–33

I’ve not been able to read the complete studies referenced, but I’d certainly want to verify that they conclusively show that the combination of cannabis and alcohol is more dangerous in actual crash likelihood than alcohol alone (although they certainly do show that alcohol and cannabis are more dangerous than cannabis alone), and I’d also like to verify that they address the mitigating caution factor. Based on other studies I’ve read, I’m skeptical.
Additionally in this regard, I think the Transport study’s speculations are worth mentioning:

But the study also found that drivers on cannabis tended to be aware of their intoxicated state, and drove more cautiously to compensate. Indeed, doped-up volunteers often rated themselves as being more impaired than police surgeons brought in to evaluate their sobriety.
Surprisingly, drinking alcohol didn’t offset this cautious behaviour, opening up the unproven possibility that a driver who is moderately drunk might be better off under some conditions if they had also smoked.

Paul Armentano concludes with a call for the development of better cannabis-specific impairment testing. That’s something I also support, (although I’d push harder for it to actually be impairment-based and avoid phrases like “identify intoxicated drivers” (which I fear will lead to some cannabis equivalent of a 0.01 BAC)).

The development of such technology would also increase public support for the taxation and regulation of cannabis by helping to assuage concerns that liberalizing marijuana policies could potentially lead to an increase in incidences of drugged driving.42 Such concerns are a significant impediment to the enactment of marijuana law reform, and must be sufficiently addressed before a majority of the public will embrace any public policy that proposes regulating adult cannabis use like alcohol.

There’s where I disagree. Better testing will not, in my opinion, assuage the public. They know that testing doesn’t prevent drunk drivers from killing people. All that the implementation of better cannabis impairment testing will do is falsely tell them that cannabis driving is very dangerous — something that they already believe — and so, certain that legalization will mean an increase in use, they logically will imagine a future multitude of stoned drivers mowing down their children.
No, the way to assuage the public regarding legalization is to show them that driving while stoned is about as dangerous as driving with a cellphone. Something to be discouraged, maybe even outlawed. Certainly less dangerous than driving while fatigued. And not even in the same universe as driving while drunk.
The real reason to develop impairment based testing for cannabis drivers is two-fold:

1. To prevent the prohibitionist claims that, since there is no reliable impairment test, we simply must outlaw driving with any metabolites in the body (the zero tolerance movement), thereby providing a sneaky way to prosecute people for smoking marijuana even if it was days before they drove.
2. Let me tell you a true story…

Last Thursday, 17-year-old Courtney Anna Marie Kuenzi Kessenich of Spring Green, Wisconsin, was killed in a car crash. Courtney had been dating John Harrison (also 17) of Madison for about a year. There were planning to get engaged June 8 (her 18th birthday). She didn’t want to drive home from work in the snow Thursday night, so John offered to drive. On the way home, he lost control of the car, which went sideways and it was hit broadside. She died and he is in the hospital recovering from serious injuries.
It’s the tragic tale of so many young people on the roads. An accident. Two devastated families.
But it gets worse.
Police believe that they found some marijuana in the car and so they questioned Harrison while he was sedated and he admitted smoking a little pot earlier in the day.
So they arrested him “on suspicion of homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle and causing injury by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle.”
The charges are tentative and may still be dropped, but it’s completely outrageous that such charges can even be contemplated without any evidence of impairment.
There’s one other person who is devastated, and who is not going to take it — the girl’s father.

“It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault,” Kessenich said. “The road conditions were terrible and he lost control of the car and my daughter died. It was an accident. Why do I want to live with bitterness? I ‘m supporting him and his family.”
He said he wants Harrison to attend Courtney’s funeral today in Spring Green.
“John was like a son to me,” Kessenich said. “I’ve been agonizing over this. It ‘s going to be my mission to straighten it out. I don’t want her going down as a statistic from a drunk driver.”

The thing is… in the real world — not the fantasyland of the prohibitionists — people instinctively know that it’s extremely unlikely that pot caused Courtney’s death. In fact, some may even argue that if John had been stoned, he might have driven more slowly, or even convinced her not to make the trip home at all.
We know that there’s no justification in claiming Courtney died because of pot. But without a way to actually test for impairment, you can practically see the Dane County regulars salivating at the chance to point to a Death By Marihuana!
Even if it means ruining more innocent lives.

Drive careful out there. OK?

I’m keeping an eye on the Drug Czar’s “blog” ’cause I just want to see how he handles this one:

MIAMI — U.S.-directed seizures and disruptions of cocaine shipments from Latin America dropped sharply in 2007 from the year before, reflecting in part a successful shift in tactics by drug traffickers to avoid detection at sea, senior American officials disclosed Monday in releasing new figures.

Conventional wisdom says that he’ll take the “everything proves I’m right” road. You know, if seizures are up, that proves the war is working and we need to press our advantage by more funding; if seizures are down that proves the war is working, but we need to invest more to keep up with the bad guys.
Second possibility: he’s put so much face into his recent push about how well the Colombian and Mexican interdiction is working that he may just pretend this news doesn’t exist. That means he has to avoid the press as well.
Third possibility: a convoluted mix of explanations that say everything is exactly the way he expected it. The war is working in Colombia and Mexico, prices are still up and supply is still down and the lower level of interdiction is a sign that the traffickers have run out of drugs.
Place your bets.
Update: So far, Option 2 appears to be winning, though it’s still too early to call it.

LInk

Marc Emery, Vancouver’s self-styled Prince of Pot, has tentatively agreed to a five-year prison term in a plea bargain over U.S. money laundering and marijuana seed-selling charges.
Facing an extradition hearing Jan. 21 and the all-but-certain prospect of delivery to American authorities, Emery has cut a deal with U.S. prosecutors to serve his sentence in Canada.
He also hopes it will save his two co-accused — Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, who were his lieutenants for so much of the past decade. […]
If accepted by the courts in both countries, Emery said he will serve the full term and not be eligible for Canada’s lenient get-out-of-jail-early rules.
“I’m going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders,” he complained. “There isn’t a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, ‘I was hurt by Marc Emery.’ No one.”

Ian Mulgrew, the author of the article, goes on to editorialize pretty strongly that the Canadian government should step in…

It’s time for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to step in and say, sorry, Uncle Sam, not today — not ever.

Update: This report tells a slightly different story:

Emery says his lawyers told him there was no hope to refute the U.S. allegations and the American offer also includes no jail time for his co-accused Greg Williams and Michelle Rainey.
He says the American’s have demanded a 10-year prison term, where he serves at least five years in custody, most of it in Canada. […]
Emery, who’s been a vocal advocate for decriminalizing pot, says if the federal government agrees to the plea deal he could be going to serve time in a U.S. prison within the next 60 days.

Still 5 years actually served, but with the idea of some of it in the U.S.
Interesting, if this is true. Probably having a little bit of time served in the U.S. is a way for the U.S. prosecutors to save face? — be able to say that they actually successfully extradited him, without taking the chance of Canada balking?
Hope the lawyers are doing their job well with the negotiations (dotting i’s, making sure there are witnesses to the terms, etc.). Call me cynical, but I can’t help imagining some additional charges magically surfacing once Emery’s in the U.S.
Of course, remember that these are still preliminary reports.

This is a good ruling — or at least a step in the right direction.

In overturning a Pacifica man’s conviction, the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco said officers may enter someone’s home to preserve evidence of a crime – but only if the crime is punishable by jail or prison.
Under a 1975 California law, the court noted, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of as much as $100, with no jail time even for a repeat offense. That means police who see someone smoking can enter only if they have the resident’s permission or a warrant from a judge, the court said.

Note that this only affects California, and that the police could still get a warrant, but it’s a positive ruling to prevent police from entering houses just because they saw someone smoking a joint through the window.
Police could still enter if they saw enough marijuana to reach a jail sentence, but they can’t infer it.

In defense of the search, prosecutors argued that police had reason to believe there was more than an ounce of marijuana elsewhere in the apartment – enough to subject Hua to a possible one-year jail sentence – and that Hua or others might be committing felonies by handing marijuana cigarettes to each other.
The court said the first argument was based on “mere conjecture” and the second was a misinterpretation of the law, which prescribes the same maximum $100 fine for giving away a marijuana cigarette as for smoking it. Justice Mark Simons wrote the 3-0 ruling.

There’s another good point by the Justice — I’ve always found that whole notion of passing a joint being considered the same as trafficking to be one of the most offensive aspects of marijuana criminal law (not that all of it isn’t, of course).
Naturally, some people aren’t happy with this ruling, notably Deputy Attorney Ronald Niver who says he’ll recommend appealing and had this bizarre statement:

“It’s difficult to accept the proposition that if you see marijuana in one room, you cannot draw the inference that there’s marijuana in another room,” he said. “It’s like saying that if you see the streets are wet, you can’t infer that it’s raining.”

???

Tarika Wilson, the Lima, Ohio mother of six who was shot to death by police in a drug raid was buried on Friday.
On Saturday, protesters marched through the streets of Lima once again.

Ms. Johnson, march organizer, said marchers will demonstrate every Saturday until they find out why Police Sgt. Joe Chavalia shot the 26-year-old woman on Jan. 4.

Two strong articles have appeared in the Lima News, which leads me to some hope that the important things are at least being discussed.
First, this OpEd by Ronald Lederman, Jr.: A War We Should Call Off

Two recent reports from groups advocating reform of the justice system show that, no matter what happened in that house on Third Street, all parties involved stood to be the victims of a war that has gone on for too long with no overall success. This most recent battle in our War on Drugs has claimed at least three lives directly, many more indirectly, all to take one alleged dealer out of circulation. The lives involved include a 26-year mother of six and a 31-year veteran officer.
But, truth be told, we can go to many corners of this region to find some manner of drugs, and that’s without counting alcohol as the drug it is. If Terry is everything prosecutors accuse him of being, is his being off the streets doing anything other than shifting traffic just a little?
But, lawmakers, who want to appear to be keeping us safe, pass increasingly tougher laws. They can claim credit for tougher laws, but we don’t hold them accountable enough for their role in what happened on Third Street. Police agencies that want to show they’re cleaning up the streets keep making busts without cutting very much into the overall supply. We end up locking many more people away, which means we’re spending billions of extra tax dollars, but the rate at which people use drugs isn’t declining. […]
Society would have much more money and much more prison space if we limited our police actions against drug users and dealers to those who actually present a serious risk.

And then there’s another one by Thomas J. Lucente, Jr.: The Ill-Conceived War on Drugs Destroying America

America’s ill-conceived War on Drugs cost another life this month when a police officer in Lima accidentally shot and killed a woman and injured her baby during a drug raid. They were looking for her boyfriend.
The accidental shooting of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson was just the latest in more than a quarter-century of bloodshed.

Read that whole piece by Lucente — it’s a very powerful rant.
It concludes:

This “us against them” attitude makes it increasingly easier for them to bust down doors on unsuspecting residents based on often-spurious tips from shady characters. They conduct pre-dawn raids with very little intelligence on what they will find in the house. Then, when an officer kills someone, they put up a wall of silence and claim the whole operation was “by the book.”
Well, whatever book they are using has no place in a free society where police should be protecting the liberties and freedoms of citizens — even if that freedom includes the recreational use of drugs.
The Constitution has become nothing but a doormat for government agents to trample on as they bust down another door to another American home looking for drugs that may or may not be there.

“bullet” Action Alert — Take action to top the deadly SWAT raids
“bullet” The FBI will assist in the investigation of the shooting death of Tarika Wilson.
“bullet” Extreme Ecstasy! — a Drudge-worthy concoction of the Drug Czar has been getting some play. Scott Morgan says Ecstasy Laced With Meth is Bad, But it’s Not My Fault, Rob says “show me some bodies,” Jonathan Perri compares it to Extreme Doritos, Jacob Sullum says Hey, Kids! Try This at Home! and
the New York Times’ coverage earns Jack Shafer’s Stupidest Drug Story of the Week award.
“bullet” More from Governor Manchin. The actual “Plan for a Drug-Free West Virginia“! [Thanks, Chip]
“bullet” “drcnet”

You’d think they’d learn.
First we had the 1986 crime bill that set into law the “fact” that the country would be drug free by 1995. Newt Gingrich then said we’d be drug free by 2001. The world was supposed to be drug free by 2008.
What next? West Virginia!
That’s right. The latest idiot to mortgage his citizens’ future for an empty promise is Governor Manchin, in his State of the State address:

And for the future health of all of our citizens, we must continue our war on illegal drugs in West Virginia. In the past, we have committed extra money to this effort, but this year, due to the hard work of our State Police as part of an investigation led by federal prosecutors, we will be receiving over $44 million to help combat our state’s drug problem – and I believe that within the spending guidelines and requirements given to us by the federal government, we can make tremendous strides toward winning our drug war once and for all.
As I said in this chamber two years ago, I want our drug criminals to continue to know that wherever you are and wherever you may be hiding or hiding your illegal drugs, our troopers will find you.
Therefore, I am proposing that we use these new funds to institute my strategic spending plan for a drug-free West Virginia. [emphasis added]

That’s right. He’s going to win the drug war and create a drug-free West Virginia. It’s magic!
Now, there are some other issues in West Virginia. Forbes has rated West Virginia 49th (beating only Louisiana) in ranking of best states for business, and experts have said that the work force is dangerously under-educated.
But Governor Manchin is ready to deal with that… after fighting the drug war.

So next to tackling our drug problems, the best thing we can do to improve our work force is to target our higher education and work force development investments toward meeting the needs of the state’s growing and emerging industries.

Uh huh. Education and development are second to the drug war in improving the work force.
I suppose that might be true if you’re only working on developing your prison workforce.

I’m feeling a little dirty right now after reading a good portion of this thread at LimaOhio.com about the shooting of Tarika Wilson.
It didn’t take long for a bunch of idiots to start looking into Wilson’s past to find out if she had prior arrests, and to speculate about how she was going to afford going to college with 6 kids, etc. A lot of offensive inference that she was probably just another criminal black drug dealer.

[from multiple posters] what about her daughter endangering her kids on a daily basis by placing them in that environment? […] DRUG TEST THE KIDS, ya never know what small kids can get into when they live in a dope house. […] The Pace officer or LPD didnt kill the young girl , her lifestyle choices didnt give her or her children any kind of chance. 26, 6 children, no daddys, living off my tax money, a very sorry situation but lets put the blame on those responsible, the drug dealing deadbeats she hung out with. […] The girl was no saint as the Black community wants you to believe. She has been to prison because of selling drugs in Putnam County as had her boyfriend. […] she was just as responsible as the man she was hiding. Unfortunately the Black Community doesn’t want to take any responsibility and admit they are wrong about what happened, they want to make it a race issue where there is none […] I never understand why the “black community” picks felons and drug dealers to rally around. How about finding a real victim, someone without a rap sheet, someone that contributes to society in a positive way. […] We just need LPD to continue to conduct hundreds (or thousands) of raids and try to get the ‘druggies’ away from the innocent women and children […] It is time to place the blame where it belongs, with the mother who placed herself and her children in a dangerous and illegal situation. It is only the black community who pulls the race card every time one of their own is shot, imprisoned or in any way held responsible for their own violent and unlawful actions. […] Don’t do the crime and you won’t have to worry about doing the time. No one else placed the woman and her six children in a crack house with two pitbulls, weapons (?), and other illicit drugs—the mother did. No one else forced the woman to have six children by the age of 26 with no daddies. When are these people going to start taking responsibility for their own lives, for gods sakes? […] NOT TO BE RUDE BUT IF SHE IS ALLOWING A DRUG DEALER IN HER HOME THE KIDS ARE BETTER OFF WITH OUT HER. […] PEOPLE HAVE COMPLETELY OVER LOOKED THE FACT THAT THERE IS ONE LESS DRUG SLINGER ON OUR STREETS KUDOS TO THE DEPT. […] Momma wants justice? Where was her righteous indignation when her daughter’s choices were hurting her grandchildren? When the drugs being sold were hurting other people and their children? When the the profits made by the producers of the drugs funded terrorism? Please God, don’t let this woman or her family get custody of those poor children! […]

You get the idea.
There were a few asking why this should result in a death sentence, but nobody seemed to be asking the most important question: Why was that particular tactic necessary?
There were actually some relatively intelligent posters (only a couple, unfortunately) who felt that the shooting was wrong, but accidental, but wondered what choice the police had given the mandate to do something about the drug problem. It’s those people (not the racist morons) who need to be educated about why the tactic used by the Lima, Ohio police was so wrong.
And I don’t even need to know any more of the specific facts of the case to know that they were wrong.
Regardless of what the investigation reveals went on inside that house, the mistake was made prior to entering the house. The mistake was in determining that SWAT is an appropriate method for enforcing drug laws.
There are moments of great tension in our cities and towns. There was one today in my own town of Bloomington, Illinois. There was a police standoff with someone who had barricaded himself in his mobile home. The standoff lasted four hours. You know what the police did?

‹As long as he keeps talking, we won‰t storm the place,Š [police spokesman Dave] White said about an hour before the man came out. ‹We‰ll wait him out.Š

So they did, and he came out, and nobody got hurt. No doors were broken down. No dogs were shot. No mothers were killed. No babies maimed.
It’s a tried and true police tactic. You de-fuse the situation. Make it calm. Protect and serve.
The police in Lima, Ohio who killed Tarika Wilson didn’t de-fuse the situation. They fused it. Big time.
If they had evidence that the boyfriend was selling drugs, they could have arrested him. Not by sending in SWAT. Don’t the police in Lima, Ohio (and elsewhere around this country) have enough brains to come up with a smarter way of arresting people?