Drug WarRant

“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.

Workshop: Beyond Prohibition: Describing a Drug War Exit Strategy

(l-r)
Alex Wodak, Australia
Fredrick Polak, Netherlands Drug Policy Foundation
Steve Rolles, Transform, UK
Moderator: Roger Goodman, Seattle
Maria Lucia Karam, retired Judge, Brazil
Eugene Oscapella, Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy
Cliff Thornton, Efficacy
Note: This is a very abbreviated post, just listing some points that were made, without full details.
Questions:

1. What does “regulation” mean?
2. How do we get there?

Alex Wodak: Reduce and minimize the costs
Six principals of effective drug policy

1. Must be evidence-based
2. Treat drug problems as social and health problem
3. Respect Human Rights
4. Must hear the voice of those who use drugs
5. Respect the international treaties (including human rights conventions)
6. Preventing further social marginalization

Polak: Drug policy should also protect children. Today’s does not.
Goodman: Five principles

1. Protecting families and children
2. Make wise use of scarce public resources
3. Reduce public disorder and Crime
4. Promote personal and public health.
5. Civil Rights

Maria Karam:
– Additional principle: FREEDOM
– We’re exchanging freedom for security. And when we do that, we exchange democracy for totalitarianism and we lose our freedom, but do not gain security.
– There must be respect for all people, including drug users and drug dealers.
– We must bring back this notion of liberty.
Eugene Oscapella:
– We’re trying to prevent death
– We’re trying to reduce social disfunction
Wodak
– We need the objective of reducing police and government corruption
Regulation
Goodman: We don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We have tons of regulation models in place that can be used (alcohol, explosives, pharmaceuticals, and on, and on). First step is get rid of Schedule 1, which is nonsensical — perhaps the other schedules would still be workable.
Rolles: Definition of regulation: Important to note that: Some activities would remain prohibited (ie, sales to minors). Different regimes would be in place for different drugs in different environments. Implementation would be phased over a number of years. You’d probably start with stricter models of regulation. Don’t dictate — lay out a series of options and let local areas choose their approach.
Goodman: Why can’t we just give doctors information about heroin and let them prescribe it?
Eugene: We need to help people understand the difference between drug use under prohibition and drug use under legalization.
Commercialization
Eugene: To what extent do we allow commercialization? Advertising?
Goodman: Suppose Cannabis growers were licensed by the state, sell it to the state, but not allowed to advertise.
Wodak:
Another principle: Legal supply has got to go a long way to meeting strong demand. (not necessarily all the way, but most of the way)
– Sensible approach for marijuana is to tax and regulate like alcohol and tobacco.
– Advertising ban would be good, but problem in the U.S. because of first amendment.
Goodman: The future world of drugs beyond prohibition, reduces the harm by reducing the toxicity of drugs.
Maria: Criminal justice control system sells the false notion that everything will be OK if you arrest people, and this is not true. Eliminate the false control of criminal justice, the social control will come more easily than now. We are not prepared to think about all the forms of control that will certainly appear when prohibition ends.

Drug Policy Conference – Saturday noon
Workshop: To Snitch or Not to Snitch? Diverse Viewpoints on the Role of Informants in American Drug Law Enforcement

(l-r)
Matthew Fogg, LEAP (not part of the panel) (Bigots with Badges website)
Troy Buckner-Nkrumah, National Hip Hop Political Convention
Ethan Brown, Author of Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice
Marc Lamont Hill, Temple University
Moderator Davey D. Berkeley
Marc Hill
– An anthropologist who is on the streets every day, balancing stopping deaths on the street, yet also analyzing it.
– “Stop Snitching” is too often viewed as a two-dimensional sign of a morally bankrupt hip-hop movement.
– As people of color, the relationship to the state is complicated, and the notion that contacting the police means that the right person will be sought, caught, and jailed just isn’t reality.
– There is a distinction between snitching and witnessing. Stop snitching doesn’t mean that people stand by while grandma is hit over the head and her loaf of bread is stolen.
– There is a conflict in different anti-snitching positions.
Troy Buckner-Nkrumah
– Corporate media is helping to define the Stop Snitching movement, and is keeping it skewed to the morally bankrupt approach
– Historical effects related to views of snitching in the African American community — think back to the house negro and the field negro pitted against each other on the plantation (with the house negro snitching on the field negro).
– Stop Snitching is not about ignoring problems — it’s about not depending on the police to solve the problem. “It makes no sense for us to call upon them to protect us.”
Ethan Brown
– Traces the stop snitching movement to the sentencing guidelines in the 80’s, which established extraordinarily harsh prison sentences for small amounts. Section 5k1.1 of the law provides that the only way to get a downward reduction in sentencing is to cooperate with the government against someone else. This has established a cottage industry in snitching, which leads to a blowback against this kind of government intrusion.
– The media has interpreted the Stop Snitching as being about an existing code of silence. The Stop Snitching movement is coming about because everyone is snitching.
– Rule 404b Evidence related to uncharged acts can be introduced into the courtroom. Power has been shifted to the prosecutor into a he-said, she-said enforcement.
– All these laws were passed without a second of thought, reflection, or study.
– Since the guidelines were passed, efforts have been made to change these unfair guidelines, yet nothing changes. In the 2006 sentencing hearing, the Justice Department essential said that they don’t care if the sentences are unfair. They need them to be harsh in order to get cooperation.
Troy
– I’m more of a conspiracy theorist. I think they did think about those laws and saw it as a though-out plan to go after unrest in the country.
Matthew (LEAP) (a former U.S. Marshall who worked with the DEA)
– He brought up, to colleagues, the fact that there was a disparate emphasis on locking up black people for drugs. And they said: ‘We’re making money. Why are you bringing this up? If we start locking these [white] people up, there will be a phone call and they’ll shut us down. And there goes the overtime.’
Ethan
– Often the most dangerous people out there are the cooperators. They get out for cooperating and go on killing people. Prosectors and police are only looking at numbers, not at dangers.
…There was then some discussion regarding Madisonville, Texas with an organizer from that area. A beautiful black woman snitch named Dawn was used to seduce black men and then frame them for drug sales. Since there was no evidence, the feds needed more, so they went into the town and threatened people to cooperate against these defendants. ‘Give up some information or we might come after you.’ Then someone in government leaked transcripts of these informant testimony and now the whole town is now at war against each other.
– The whole informant process is a government action to destabilize the community.
Regina Kelly talked about her situation getting arrested for drugs from an informant who lied about everyone. The informant – a drug-using mentally challenged man who was told to get a specific 15 people and that anyone extra that he identified would be extra money for him.
Regina was identified as someone named Jennifer (she’s never been called Jennifer), and arrested. She spent three weeks in jail and took two years to get her record expunged. She is a single mother of four.
Marc Hill
– The Bill Cosby nonsense about ‘sentencing guidelines aren’t an issue if you don’t do drugs’ ignores the fact that: If you have a ghetto snitch industry, then even if people don’t do something wrong, they can still end up in jail or having their lives ruined.
Ethan
– A disturbing development is, related to the terrorism war, the notion of pre-emptive indictments, which say that we will indict based on intentions, not actions. Informants have been given huge incentives to find people this way.
Audience comment: – The primary reason for having snitches is to keep freedom in check. We know damn well why this is happening. This is a racial justice problem.

Workshop: Europe and Drug Policy Reform: Stepping Forward or Falling Back?
Moderator: Craig Reinarman, UC-Santa Cruz,

(l-r)
Michael Jourdan, Centre of Alcohol and Drug Research, Copenhagen
Sebastian Saville, Release, London
Peter Sarosi, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
Joep Oomen, ENCOD, Antwerp, Belgium
Sophie Pinkham, Open Society Institute
Paul Thewissen, Royal Netherlands Embassy
Sebastian Saville: UK
– There are now quite a number of reports are showing that UK drug policy is a mess. However, evidence has little affect on political action.
– There is, perhaps, an opportunity to further discuss the difference between use and abuse.
– Treatment is more openly accepted, but more of it is focused through the criminal justice system.
– Cannabis remains high on the press agenda. Lots of propaganda from the Daily Mail and the Independent.
– Celebrity obsession – Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, George Michael
Peter Sarosi: Hungary (website)
– Hungary’s civil liberties union is based on the ACLU model
– The Freedom of Information Act is used heavily to help drug policy reform in Hungary.
– Civil Obedience Movement [this is pretty interesting]
In 2005, a whole bunch of activists turned themselves in to police to confess having used illicit substances in the past, with HCLU there to represent them. Lots of press attention. There were some controversial police decisions — young drug users were prosecuted but police rejected the confession of a 64 year old grandmother. The HCLU represented one man who went to trial in a very interesting case. In Hungarian law you have to prove that a crime harms society, and the young man showed up in court with his own cannabis plant – to prove that nobody else had been involved in his drug use, so society had not been harmed. Lots of press attention again. The HCLU fully expected that the man would be arrested when he left the court with his cannabis plant, but the guards forgot to arrest him (which the press really enjoyed).
Sophi Pinkham: Russia, Georgia and the Ukraine
– Large scale HIV epidemic connected to injected drug use.
– Lot of the same policies in the former Soviet Union as in the United States.
– Drug use is seen as something that makes women ineligible for motherhood. Doctors will lie to women drug users (claiming that medically speaking, their child will certainly be deformed) to encourage abortion, even late term. Those who refuse to follow the advice end up not getting medical assistance in their pregnancy.
– Harm reduction is difficult to implement because of hyper-criminal laws. Police may choose to prosecute needle-exchange workers for the residue in the used syringes.
– Police extort very large bribes from drug users.
Paul Thewissen: Netherlands
– Asked how many of the audience had been to a coffee shop in Amsterdam (lots of hands raised)
– Use of cannabis is lower in the Netherlands than the U.S.
– In the Netherlands, health is the leading focus in drug policy. Department of health is responsible for drug policy.
– Any use of drugs is not a punishable offense. Selling, manufacturing can be, but there should be no barriers for users to find help, so no punishment.
– Cannabis is considered a soft drug
– Easier to do research in the Netherlands because drug policy is more open, so they can actually do detailed research on THC levels, etc.
– Coffee shops are fine if they sell less than 5 grams to a person, no hard drugs, and no cannabis to minors.
Michael Jourdan: Denmark
– Closer to the Dutch model than the United States, but still far from the Dutch model.
– Lots of stepping forward and falling back in Denmark.
Falling back…
– Narcotics Advisory Council provided advice to the government for years, but the recent government abolished it.
– Zero tolerance has become “political tender.” It has been imported. Young people are being prosecuted for the minutest amounts of drugs.
– Ketamine has been criminalized.
– Christiana in Copenhagen (open cannabis market) for 30 years, has now seen a severe crackdown. So now we’re getting more crime involved in the drug market, etc.
On the other hand…
– Government provides large amount of free treatment for drug users.
– Habitual users will no longer be prosecuted for small quantities.
– Move to re-classify heroin into the pharmacopaedia, so it can be prescribed.
What causes this strange dichotomy?
– Drug policy is subject to a constant dove/hawk conflict, leaving many laws strangely ambiguous, or else two different laws completely inconsistent with each other will be passed.
Other interesting point
– Swedem has tried to influence Denmark, with its hard core prohibitionist views, but in fact, the reverse is happening.
Joep Oomen: Much of Europe
– In the north of Europe (protestant tradition), you find the more rational-based policies and more transparent policy making
– In the south (catholic tradition), you find more moral-based policy making.
– Two tendencies in the Eurpoean union. 1. And increasing cooperation between drug agencies, exchanges of information, etc. and therefore an improvement by learning (that harm reduction policies are effective, for example.
– Regarding harm reduction, most countries have decriminalisation, maintenance-based treatment and needle exchange. A few have pilltesting, user rooms and controlled heroin distribution. The best overall in his harm-reduction chart are Germany, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. The worst overall are Greece and Sweden.

[Note that this is only in western Europe — Peter Sorosi indicated that the meeting of demand for needle exchange and treatment is far behind.