Drug WarRant

Politicians have the answer — the magic demand-side solution to creating a drug-free world. It’s a simple concept called deterrence.
If there’s an activity with which you disapprove, all you have to do is find the right penalty, and people will stop doing it. Deterrence!
So the politicians came up with jail terms for possessing certain drugs, but people still used them. Hmm… must need more deterrence. OK, so you’re not just arrested with possession of an illicit drug, anymore. Now they add on trafficking and manufacturing, and paraphernalia possession, and money laundering, and conspiracy, and intent, and bad thoughts. But that didn’t quite do it, so they added additional penalties for being near a school or someone who ever went to school, and yet that didn’t work, so they added mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines and three strikes…
Just need to find that right level of deterrence and people will stop using these drugs…

Singapore is Asia’s second-richest country, with a 2006 GDP per capita of $29,000, on a par with Italy and Spain. The booming economy, driven by manufacturing and financial services, has made the city-state a playground for the rich.
And with money to throw around, some of these rich Singaporeans are spending it on drugs smuggled from neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
They are taking a big risk.
In Singapore, anyone caught carrying more than 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 500 grams of cannabis or 250 grams of methamphetamines faces a mandatory death sentence by hanging.
“There are definitely a lot of people doing drugs in the party scene, but it doesn’t get reported,” said Ling, who would only give her first name.
With its borders closely monitored, it is not clear how drugs enter Singapore. But former gang members say some drugs are brought in on boats from Indonesian islands, or smuggled from Malaysia.
According to Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau ( CNB ) figures, 1,127 drug users were arrested in 2006 compared to 793 in 2005. Amnesty International says about 400 people have been sentenced to death in Singapore since 1991, most for drug trafficking.

… I guess they just need tougher drug laws.

In the course of my wandering across the net searching for interesting things to share with you, I occasionally come upon some minor thing that strikes me, maybe in comments somewhere. That happened with this post at a site I had not visited before. It was a nice post about legalization and the incredible LEAP video that I’ve mentioned here several times.
What struck me was the first comment from reader Vic DeMize:

Wow, this is one of those topics about which I’m really ambivalent. On the one hand, as a child of the late 60’s/early 70s I was outraged that The Man was so intent on depriving me of the recreation of my choice. I wasn’t hurting anyone and th effects made me a more mellow individual as opposed to the aggressive behavior brought on by alcohol (which, incidentally, no one was bothered by). Furthermore, I found the cost of drug enforcement in terms of both tax dollars wasted and lives destroyed (either by a prison sentence or a bullet) appalling.

So far, so good. All true. All important. But then…

On the other hand, being older and (hopefully) wiser now I see the cost of addiction to the likes of crack and meth not only to the addict but in terms of the collateral damage suffered by the victims of that addict’s pursuit of pleasure. And anyone who would compare giving up smoking to giving up horse is just an idiot. Quitting smoking isn’t even in the same league as the DTs.

See how it veers off into this other field — and it’s a bizarre, but common, disconnect. The only model this person knows firsthand is prohibition, and it’s within this model that he has seen the ravages of addiction. Yet that somehow does not make it easier for him to even consider a different model — it makes it harder. The propaganda has been so strong for so long, beating people over the head with the mantra that drug problems are solved with prohibition. Even when that is an obvious lie — when it is obvious that prohibition has failed to achieve any value in reducing the problems of drug use while adding enormous costs — even intelligent people have a hard time blocking out the propaganda.
He goes on…

Even a proposition such as decriminalization of marijuana doesn’t have the same appeal as it did when I was younger. Although I feel the current penalties for possession are way too harsh, I can’t help wondering where I personally might be today if I, as a young man, had invested as much time and effort into my studies / career path / future as I did into pursuing my next buzz.

See it happen again? He intellectually knows that the penalties are too harsh. He still knows that criminalization is wrong, yet… Despite the fact that harsh penalties do not deter marijuana use, and even harsher penalties when he was younger would not have done so, he has this propaganda-driven romanticized notion that somehow if penalties were harsher he wouldn’t have smoked pot and then would have become something more than a communications installer.
I don’t mean to pick on Vic. I don’t know him and I apologize is he’s upset by this post. This isn’t about Vic. This is about thousands more like him out there.
These are the people we need to reach. Smart, average citizens who have had years of propaganda about the drug war shoved down their throat until it’s become part of their cell structure. They see that prohibition is bad, and yet, somehow know that it must be kept going. And it always comes back to the same thing — the damage done by drug users to themselves and those around them. It dominates their vision and prevents them from seeing…

1. That prohibition doesn’t solve that problem.
2. That prohibition causes other problems.

Propaganda has a strong and long-lasting subconscious impact. That’s why the government likes to use it.
An example: I was fascinated by this recent comment from a teacher (and I’ve heard others like it):

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11.
The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

And that’s from only a few years of propaganda. When it comes to the drug war, we’re faced with generations of propaganda.
We’ve got the facts, and the majority of the people are intellectually ready to agree with us to a large extent regarding drug policy reform. But we’ll have to help them let go of that comfortable railing of prohibition propaganda before they can take the next step.
…
Sometimes helping people release the propaganda is a tough job. I tried to explain to someone about the economics of the black market and got this response:

There aren’t any “economic principles dealing with black markets” if there were principles, they wouldn’t be black markets.

Sigh.

There was an interesting little to-do yesterday, with reports that a Clinton staffer had suggested that Obama’s connection with drugs was a liability.

Shaheen said Obama’s candor on the subject would “open the door” to further questions. “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'” Shaheen said. “There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome.”

There was also speculation that this was an opening salvo, and that Clinton’s positioning against outright support of retroactivity on the sentencing commission was going to lead to accusing Obama of being soft on drugs (though clearly her position was a political faux pas given the sentencing commission’s ultimate unanimous decision for retroactivity and the Supreme Court’s ruling for judicial departure from sentencing).
But low and behold — there was a lot of disgust with the tactic and the Clinton campaign was quickly put into damage control mode.

Clinton spokesman, Phil Singer, said, ‹These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.Š
….In a statement later, Mr. Shaheen said, ‹I deeply regret the comments I made today, and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way.Š

Good.

“bullet” Scott Morgan on crack (sending them back to you, Scott!) sentencing victories.

The sentencing disparity that punishes offenders 100 times worse for crack than for powder cocaine has taken a double hit this week. First the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that judges may depart from unreasonable federal sentencing guidelines. Then, today, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to make the recently revised sentencing guidelines retroactive, meaning that incarcerated offenders may request early release.

The retroactivity means that over 19,000 inmates could apply for an early release (this would be scattered over 30 years).
This is not a fix or a solution. It does not eliminate the crack-cocaine disparity It is, in fact, a reduction of an unfair pile-on on top of the disparity, which is itself an unjust penalty within the context of an unjust war. However, as Scott says, it’s a good and important step for those individuals and their families.
“bullet” There’s an discussion worth checking out all this week at TPM cafe bookclub on Ethan Brown’s book “Snitch” (which, by its nature, deals heavily with the drug war). Ethan was impressive at the Drug Policy Reform Conference on the Snitching panel — I intend to pick up and read his book at my earliest opportunity. Some good posts are up at TPM — unfortunately, Mark Kleiman is also stinking up the joint between misreading what Ethan has to say and falling back on his old tricks of counting only the costs of drugs and not the costs of the drug war.
“bullet” It’s not enough to make marijuana illegal. These prohibitionists are always looking for ways to pile on charges. A new Marion, Illinois law passed Monday includes: “all equipment, products, and materials of any kind which are intended to be used unlawfully in planting, propagating, cultivating, growing, harvesting, manufacturing, compounding, converting, producing, processing, preparing, testing, analyzing, packaging, repackaging, storing, containing, concealing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into the human body cannabis or a controlled substance in violation of the law.”
According to the Marion Daily Republican, this new ordinance means that the “Marion Police Department will be better equipped to control the marijuana trade and use in Marion.”
“bullet” Drug WarRant exceeded the 2 million all time page views mark this week. Drug WarRant also got a big boost this week from reddit and digg, with over 25,000 people visiting the Why is Marijuana Illegal page yesterday. These numbers are pocket change to the big blogs, but quite respectable for a single-issue drug policy blog.

Near the end of the question and answer period with Antonio Maria Consta, when he was starting to get testy and short with his answers, he said that if we wanted to solve a particular problem, that was easy — just stop buying drugs.
I was reminded of that today in a post discussing the adjustments in the crack-powder sentencing disparity, when I saw a commenter that essentially said: “It wouldn’t be an issue if people didn’t use crack.”
It’s a common argument. It’s true — and it’s completely moronic and fatuous, because it’s meaningless.

• There would be no drug problems or drug war problems if people didn’t use drugs.
• There would be no teen pregnancies or STDs or abortions if people didn’t have sex.
• There would be no obesity if people didn’t eat fattening foods.
• There would be no religious wars if people didn’t turn to religion for answers.

All true… but meaningless.
Because, you see, people are… human.
People will use drugs. That’s a certainty, not an option. Any discussion of policy must start with that basic fact.
Suggesting “if only people didn’t use drugs,” isn’t an argument. It’s the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “Nya, Nya, Nya, I can’t hear you!”

Here are a few photos from the conference and my subsequent trip to the end of the world.

I’ll have lots more to say later about the trip when I get caught up. But I spent yesterday driving through Mississippi, so it was very interesting this morning to read that Radley Balko just came back from another visit there to see Cory Maye’s family.
Go read it.

You have one man taken from his family, in the prime of his life. You have another man, also taken from his family, now losing the prime of his life. You have a son taken from his mother and father. And you have a loving father being taken from his son and daughter.
Thank this war. The goddamned drug war. It is so incredibly senseless and stupid. And it‰ll continue to claim and ruin lives, because too few politicians have the backbone to stand up and say after 30 years, $500 billion, a horrifyingly high prison population, and countless dead innocents, cops, kids, nonviolent offenders, decimated neighborhoods, wasted lives, corrupted cops, and eviscerations of the core freedoms this country was allegedly founded upon, the shit isn‰t working. It‰ll never work. It never has. It‰s a testament to the facade of truth that is politics that no leaders from the two majors parties have in thirty years been able to say this. That maybe, just maybe, we‰re doing it wrong. Maybe, just maybe, kicking down doors in the middle of the night and storming in with guns in order to stop people from getting highá.isn‰t such a good idea. Maybe, just maybe, the idea getting tips from racist, illiterate, drug-addicted informants about which doors, if you kick them down, will lead to drugs? Well maybe that isn‰t such a sound policy, either.

Link

Judges Given Leeway in Crack Sentencing
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) Ö The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal judges have broad leeway to impose shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes, bringing sentences closer to those for powder cocaine crimes Ö a decision with a strong racial dimension because the vast majority of crack offenders are black. [incorrect: the majority of offenders are white; the majority of those arrested, convicted, and imprisoned are black]
The court, by 7-2 votes in the crack case and one other involving drugs, upheld more lenient sentences imposed by judges who rejected federal sentencing guidelines as too harsh.
The decision was announced ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets the guidelines, that could cut prison time for as many as 19,500 federal inmates convicted of crack crimes.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority in the crack case, said a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
“In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines’ treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses,” Ginsburg said.
Kimbrough, a veteran of the first Gulf War, is black, as are more than 80 percent of federal defendants sentenced in crack cases. By contrast, just over a quarter of those convicted of powder cocaine crimes last year were black.

It’s a start.

I’m taking a couple of days to drive the Mississippi river (I’ll actually be driving near it, not on it, but you get the idea) on my way home.
Later this week, I’ll try to work on synthesizing more of a overall post on the whole conference as I let it percolate. It’s certainly been a worthwhile and invigorating/depressing/hopeful time.
Consider this an open thread.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan – conservative mayor publicly supporting drug policy reform. He is a quadriplegic (from a skiing accident).

“I consider this the most important social issue of our time”

– Vancouver had the first methadone program in the world.
– Vancouver has the only supervised injection site on the continent.
– One of two cities in North America that has heroin assisted treatment.
He brought up the analogy between physical disability and drug addiction.
Physical disability used to be considered a moral issue. People burned at the stake, ostracized, blamed, etc. Because somebody said “I am not sick. I’m disabled,” Sam is now able to be mayor.
So he then talked about someone named Robert who used drugs.
Both Mayor Sam, who was skiing, and Robert, who was doing drugs, were engaging in risky behavior. Sam benefitted from the medical system. Robert went to jail.
That’s wrong.
– If we can provide drug maintenance to the addicts in Vancouver, we’ll take $50 million out of the pockets of organized crime.
[When he finished his speech, he got a standing ovation.]
A number of other speakers, all inspiring in different ways. This was an active effort to challenge and invigorate the audience to go out and make a difference.
Maria Lucia Karam (retired judge from Brazil)

“My visit has reinforced my belief that the United States is not just its government. We can count on the people of the United States to help us in our struggle to put an end to the war on drugs. I believe this war on drugs will surely come to an end.
I believe one day the entire criminal justice system will be abolished.
The national laws on drugs are a way to totalitarianism.”

Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis
– This is a war. I am so sick of their wars.
– Harm reduction is great. But is not enough. Maybe it’s time for harm re-direction. Test our mettle. We need to think – what would I have done in World War II if I lived in Germany?
– We need to put our bodies on the line and win this thing, because there is so much other stuff we need to do.
– We’re going to win this one.
– Another freedom summer is necessary. This is slavery.
The session ended with a New Orleans band leading the group out onto Bourbon Street for a Drug Policy Reform parade. Unfortunately, they got ahead of me and I didn’t get pictures. But here’s a picture of me in front of the hotel, taken by Michael Jourdan.