Drug WarRant

Ben Wallace-Wells’ extensive article in Rolling Stone chronicles a litany of failures in the modern age of the war on drugs — failures of politics, judgement, and personality.
While I’m not sure I agree with all of Wallace-Wells’ assumptions (such as whether, if smarter decisions had been made, significant “victories” in the war on drugs would have been possible), the article is an essential primer for understanding this war.

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It’s the same old story, but still a very telling article in Indiana: Drug task force faces audit critical.

The Muncie-Delaware County Drug Task Force is playing a game of keep away that uses money instead of a ball, and the state of Indiana is the monkey in the middle.
Going back to at least 1999, the DTF has ignored a state law requiring cash and proceeds from the sale of other property seized from drug dealers to be deposited in the general fund of the governmental unit employing the DTF officers, according to the State Board of Accounts.

In a nutshell, the state law, set up to avoid the abuse of drug task forces prioritizing law enforcement based on potential seizures, provides that any seizure money must be deposited in the general fund of the city or the county, etc. and then just the specific expenses incurred in the bust being reimbursed to the law enforcement agency, with the remainder used by the city/county/state.
But what the task force does is have the courts direct the deposit into the task force account. Then they expense every officer’s time and every other cost they possibly can relate to the bust in order to keep the money, including paying the deputy prosecutors who aggressively pursue the forfeiture a percentage of the take. In the rare cases that anything is still left, they kick it back to the feds, who keep 20% and give the law enforcement unit 80%, bypassing the city/county/state education fund.
The DTF is downright arrogant about their forfeiture approach, hardly seeming to even realize or care that they have become a mercenary force whose decision-making is driven not be protecting and serving, but by the booty they can grab.

“The DTF can’t survive without dope dealers’ money,” [head of the DTF, Muncie police Sgt. Jess] Neal said. […]
“We’ve had to make adjustments, be more aggressive with asset forfeitures, more aggressive targeting bank accounts, vehicles, tangible property, things we can sell in auctions,” Neal said. […]
Neal can’t recall a time that the DTF ever forfeited surplus funds to the state treasurer for deposit in the common school fund. […]
“Their workout room is out of this world,” [city Controller Mary Ann] Kratochvil said. “It’s a very nice facility.”
Neal said of the workout room in the basement of city hall: “For its size, it’s one of the best in the state. It was purchased by our local dope dealers. We use their money to get in shape so we can chase them around.”

Quite a deal they’ve got going there.
And note that they do everything they can to prevent the money from getting in the education fund, but then they use if to give donations to local youth groups, which acts as positive PR for the task force.
I’ve said it before — drug task forces, as a concept, are a cancer on our society, working to continue the drug war for their own benefit. And even worse are those funded through forfeiture. When law enforcement is motivated by greed, corruption, mismanagement, poor priorities, and even tragedy are likely (see the case of Donald P. Scott).

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Two North Dakota farmers, who filed a federal lawsuit in June to end the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) ban on commercial hemp farming in the United States, had their case dismissed by federal Judge Daniel Hovland yesterday. In a 22-page decision, Judge Hovland wrote that the problem facing state-licensed hemp farmers David Monson and Wayne Hauge needs to be addressed by Congress if they hope to ever grow the versatile crop which is used in everything from food and soap to clothing and auto parts.

They’re considering an appeal.

I’m really looking forward to the conference next week. Starting to plan out the workshops I want to attend and blog about (a couple of them, unfortunately, are at the same time as the one I’m co-presenting with David Guard). Lots of interesting ones, and lots of people I’m looking forward to seeing again, or meeting in person for the first time.
I didn’t realize until today that next Thursday’s keynote session features Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He’s a diehard prohibitionist and propagandist (here’s an example of his writing). Having him at an international drug policy reform conference should be… interesting, to say the least. He is balanced by Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Director of the International Harm Reduction Development program at the Open Society Institute (OSI).
I’ll be sure to pass on all the fireworks to you.

Yesterday, Allan noted that a letter of his had been commented on by Drug Watch International.
That threw me. The name Drug Watch International had a slightly familiar ring, but I couldn’t place it and knew nothing about it. That in itself was startling. An international prohibitionist group that has gone unmentioned in my blog in the four years I’ve been writing? How is that possible?
So I looked them up. Not much there there. Most of the pages haven’t been updated in years, and it seems that all they really do is release a newsletter one to four times a year. Their principles include such things as:

• Support strong laws and meaningful legal penalties that hold users and dealers accountable for their actions.
• Support efforts to prevent availability and use of drugs, and oppose policies and programs that accept drug use based erroneously on reduction or minimization of harm.
• Support International Treaties and Agreements, including international sanctions and penalties against drug trafficking, and oppose attempts to weaken international drug policies and laws.
• Support efforts to halt the legalization/decriminalization of drugs.

Yep. They’re hard core.
They had one newsletter this year (the only one I looked at). Most of it was regurgitating propaganda from other sources, but they seemed to start with a couple of feature articles.
First was a special article about the presentation of the Drug Watch… FREEDOM award!
On March 18, 2007, they presented this special Freedom plaque (there’s a picture of it) to Dr. Gabriel Nahas for a book he wrote in 1986 about the hazards of marijuana called “Keep Off the Grass.” Nahas’ wife was also there…

Marilyn Nahas read several congratulatory cards and letters from people who recalled important milestones in her husband’s life and his crusade against drug abuse. She reminded everyone that “Gabby” often was fiercely and ruthlessly attacked for his views by those seeking to legalize drugs, especially marihuana, and that in the early years he often stood alone, backed only by parents and early activists in what we call today the preventionists’ movement.

Freedom award!
Then there was the Hemp Report from the chair of Drug Watch International’s Hemp Committee with a host of catchy slogans:

• “It’s the stalks, stupid!”
• Hemp: Where there’s rope, there’s dope.
• NO state or country in the world has scientifically established the safety of food products made from hemp.
• North Dakota officials have been convinced to jeopardize what they hold most dear — the safety of their children, families, communities, and even their country.
• …safeguards can’t be put on fatty human cell walls to protect them from toxic, fat-loving THC found in food, cosmetic, and other products made of Cannabis hemp/marijuana.
• Potential harm to children from chemicals in hemp/marijuana is reported in national and international official government documents, which say that the toxic, bioactive cannabinoids in hemp/marijuana can affect and/or delay the growth and development of children.

Wow. These folks are really ’round the bend.

Rob at To the People notes that the Drug Czar’s blog is really stretching for material with this post touting that “Next week’s Time magazine highlights the latest evidence of marijuana’s harm as part of their “Year in Medicine” news coverage…” when in fact Time’s “highlight” was a single sentence in part of a larger story.
Rob’s right — the Czar is really reaching on this one. Particularly since the ONDCP blog already covered the non-story back in July
So what is this startling and damaging information about marijuana that’s worth all this fuss? According to Time Magazine: “A single marijuana cigarette has the same effect on the lungs as smoking up to five cigarettes in succession.” According to the drug czar blog: “Time Magazine: One Joint=5 Cigarettes” According to the drug czar blog in July: “Smoking just one marijuana joint is the same as smoking five cigarettes in terms of the damage it does to your lungs, a new study found.” And back in July, the Reuters article had an alarmist headline: “One cannabis joint as bad as five cigarettes”
So, what’s up? The Medical Research Institute of New Zealand discovered that the chronic lung disease emphysema was found in 18.9 percent of cigarette smokers, but only 1.3 percent of marijuana smokers. It also found that both tobacco and marijuana cigarettes had an effect on blocking lung airflow, with one joint causing as much difficulty as 2.5 to 5 cigarettes. (And we already know, separately, that marijuana doesn’t cause lung cancer.)
So one marijuana joint is equivalent in airflow issues to 2.5 to 5 cigarettes. Let’s say a normal smoker tends to smoke about 25 cigarettes a day. If a marijuana smoker is going solo on 5-10 joints a day, they need to get some better pot. Or use a vaporizer.
So what have we learned? Marijuana is far, far better for you than cigarettes because of the reduced likelihood of lung cancer and emphysema. And to protect your lungs even more, be sure to stick to avoid ditch weed and if you have any issues with breathing, use a vaporizer.

For a number of Presidential campaign cycles, the drug war got about as much coverage as philately. Other than the Granite Staters’ tireless work questioning candidates about medical marijuana and the obligatory “Did you ever smoke pot” debate question with all the candidates lying about whether they did/whether they did successfully/whether they enjoyed it, the drug war was absent.
These days, however, the topic is even more popular among the candidates than numismatics.
Now we’ve got John Edwards criticizing the war on drugs.

America needs to reconsider its punitive approach to “the so-called war on drugs,” presidential candidate John Edwards said here today.
“We’re not going to build enough prisons to solve this problem,” he told a crowd of about 800 at Grinnell College.

And Hillary Clinton even traveled an almost perceptible distance away from the extremes of wishy-washy-ness.

She also supports using U.S. funding to support proven harm reduction efforts – including needle exchange – to help hard-to-reach populations, and will continue to support new evidence-based prevention methods as additional scientific research helps us understand how to best address this epidemic.

It’s almost as though some politicians are starting to get the idea that supporting the drug war as it currently exists doesn’t really help them.

Thailand. This is beyond tragic.

At a brainstorming session, the representative from the Office of Narcotics Control Board yesterday disclosed that some 1,400 people were killed and labelled as drug suspects though they had no link to drugs.
“The government’s drug policy was unclear. Operation staff hence did everything to achieve the goal of reducing the number of drug traffickers,” the representative said. “The death toll was highest in February when the policy was first implemented. The number of deaths came down in the next two months.”