Drug WarRant

There’s a particularly odd post over at the Drug Czar’s place: Analysis: Setting the Record Straight on Cocaine Data.
It’s odd, because it doesn’t follow the usual drug czar post of standard propaganda and self-congratulatory pap. This post notes specific claims that have been made refuting the drug czar, and then attempts to counter them.

Those facts, however, were not enough to stop the advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) from attacking the Director‰s statement, seeking to dismiss this positive news in drug policy. WOLA argues that the cocaine shortage is a meaningless blip and one more exercise in drug policy futility, which is their traditional policy stance virtually no matter which way the evidence cuts.

Yes, this is startling. They didn’t just ignore the criticism. They didn’t just ridicule it as being nonsense from “legalizers.” They actually engaged the criticism, complete with naming the opposition, linking to it, and demanding a public analysis of the difference in opinion.
This says to me that the ONDCP is scared. They’re increasingly being seen as nothing more than the lying propaganda machine that they are. The press is no longer simply regurgitating their claims. Even Congress may be getting skeptical of their truthiness.
Now, who’s right on the specific cocaine availability trend numbers between ONDCP and WOLA? I don’t know. I haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing this, nor can I. My understanding is that the city specific numbers ONDCP was using were based on internal data and that the methodology and raw data to verify it had not been made available to the public, so it couldn’t be independently verified. WOLA probably used a different set of numbers, and probably none of the numbers can very accurately reflect the price or availability of cocaine. Additionally, as others have eloquently explained, even if true, massive cocaine shortages are not a sign of victory, but merely signal a demand for more supply (which will step in to meet the demand), and a short-term increase in violence and drug substitution.
What I can comment on, however, is the notion that this is a reason to claim that the war on cocaine in Colombia is working, and deserves further funding. And to do so, I need go no further than the U.S. Department of Justice and their new National Drug Threat Assessment 2008 (pdf). On Page 1:

Large cocaine seizures and strong cocaine interdiction operations appear to have disrupted the ability of some foreign DTOs to supply cocaine to the United States and have caused many U.S. cities, primarily cities in the eastern United States, to experience decreased availability of cocaine during the first half of 2007. In certain cities, these shortages have continued through October 2007. However, Mexican DTOs will most likely undertake concerted efforts to reestablish their supply chain, and because cocaine
production in South America appears to be stable or increasing, cocaine availability could
return to normal levels during late 2007 and early 2008. […]
Potential South American cocaine production increased in 2006 as Colombian coca growers adapted their growing practices to counter intensified coca eradication. Despite increasingly aggressive coca eradication efforts, U.S. Government estimates of coca cultivation in South America indicate that cocaine producers potentially produced 970 metric tons (MT) of pure cocaine in 2006 (see Table 1 on page 2), a 7 percent increase from 910 MT in 2005 and the highest level since 2002. Coca growers, primarily in Colombia, have sustained and seemingly increased overall cultivation in South America by
expanding growing operations to areas where large-scale coca cultivation had not been reported previously. The U.S. State Department reports that 2006 was the sixth consecutive year of record aerial spraying in Colombia, surpassing the previous
year‰s record by 24 percent. Intelligence community reporting indicates that many of the
fields in the new growing areas were most likely planted away from traditional cultivation areas where eradication has intensified. Intelligence reporting also indicates that Colombian coca growers have responded to eradication efforts by the radical pruning (drastically cutting back the bush, often down to the ground, to protect the plant from the herbicide) and vigorous replanting of sprayed coca bushes. These practices allow for more rapid regeneration or replacement of sprayed fields.

Yeah, the Drug Czar isn’t looking too good right now.

Update: Alex has an alternate theory on this ONDCP post: Tabitha Temperance

What a horrendous story —
You know how it goes… confidential informant looking to cut a deal points a finger. Cops do a no-knock raid and “find” what they expect to find — a meth lab. Arrests made, etc., etc. Except it wasn’t a meth lab and the tests come back with no drugs at all. No meth. No ephedrine. Not even any drug use. In the meantime the victims of the raid have lost just about everything, including their business and the trust of their small town community.
How do they get their lives back? Who will turn back the clock for them?

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Two students at Waynesburg Central High School have been suspended for 10 days because of the way they depicted an activity they were trying to discourage.
John DiBuono and his classmate made a public service announcement for a TV workshop. They used crushed Smarties candies. In the video, his friend pretended to snort cocaine. It was supposed to be a message against using drugs.
In a statement, the Jerome Bartley, superintendent of the Central Greene School District, said: “Although the individuals involved were not using illicit drugs, the district’s policy prohibits look-a-like drugs, substances, liquids or devices.”

DiBuono is also being required to attend drug counseling.

What a bizarre editorial.
Translation:

DARE probably doesn’t work, but might not cause any actual damage, and if it does, its probably small. Plus, it’s cheap, so we might as well fund it.

So I come across this OpEd by Denny Freidenrich with the headline How To Ensure Teen Drivers Are Drug-Free. Now that’s a bold and amazing promise, so I eagerly read on to see how this magic could occur.
It starts out nostalgic:

Before 1967, ubiquitous teen drug use hardly existed. But after the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Doors released their seminal albums later that year, the pharmaceutical floodgates opened wide. For the past 40 years, parents coast to coast have struggled with their sons and daughters smoking pot, popping pills, snorting coke and more.

Ah, yes, it’s all the fault of the hippie music, apparently causing young people to lose the ability to differentiate between substances. And of course, prior to 1967, teens didn’t use drugs — they stuck to alcohol and cigarettes, which are… food?
The OpEd continues on an interesting note…

Since the war on drugs officially began in 1970, tens of thousands of teens have been busted for using drugs. For those unlucky enough to have been caught while in high school, most were expelled in the early days of the drug war. If that wasn’t bad enough, hundreds of teenagers every year for decades have been shipped off to juvenile hall or sentenced to prison for drug possession.
Despite wearing their DARE tee-shirts to elementary school, and knowing virtually everything there is to know about drug use, today’s teens still are hell-bent on getting high.

Hmmm… that’s a pretty good condemnation of the drug war. Clearly it’s been destructive and hasn’t worked.
So what’s this magic solution to ensure drug-free teen drivers?

I believe there should be a federal law governing teen drivers who test positive for drugs.
To their credit, a few forward-thinking state lawmakers have floated similar ideas. However, this problem is national in scope. That’s why Congress needs to enact a law that prohibits teenagers from getting their learner’s permit or qualifying for a driver’s license if they fail a drug test. If that happens, the offending teen must wait another six months before reapplying. If drugs are detected the second time around, the teen must wait a year before reapplying.
Like drivers who are required to have their cars smog-checked, teens would be required to submit a urine sample at designated, secure locations near their homes. Tamper-free, computerized results would then be sent to their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles ( DMV ) database several weeks before the scheduled permit or license exam is to take place. If a teen tests positive for drugs, then he or she would be denied an application and told to reapply in six months.
Why add a heap of test results on a state’s DMV? Because the right of passage from pre-teen to responsible young adult lies right behind the wheel of a car. Driving is an earned privilege, not a constitutional right. One of the best ways a teenager can “earn” the right to drive is to be drug-free.

That’s it? You’re kidding, right? This will ensure drug-free teen drivers? The writer claims to have teens, so apparently what he’s missing is a brain.
If a teenager wants to use drugs and get a driver’s license, all they’d have to do is pass the idiot test: Stop using prior to the urine screening (or switch from pot to harder drugs that clear the system more quickly). Then, urine successfully passed, they could be stoned on the day they take their driver’s test and every day after.
This would do absolutely nothing other than add another federal bureaucracy, add costs and annoyance for parents, subject kids to yet another humiliating instance of being sub-citizen property, and further drive those teens who use drugs into hiding it, particularly from their parents.
Are we running out of drug laws to pass? There are so many idiots out there who seem determined to gain some kind of cred or importance by proposing a drug law. But we’ve passed so many already, and then doubled them and piled them on, and on and on… So now people come up with the most bizarre, idiotic ideas for laws, just to have something new, with the inevitable promise that, while those millions of other drug laws have failed, this one will do the trick.
But there’s another possibility in this case as well, on which I can only speculate. Denny Freidenrich is a bad parent.
He says he subjected his own son to a drug test.

We tested our 15-year-old son for the first time about two months ago. Tearfully, he told us he is one of a handful of teen-agers we know – out of more than 30 we have watched grow up over the years – who never has tried drugs.

Unable to establish a relationship of trust, and on no other suspicion than that other kids use drugs, he had his son tested, and the tearful implied accusation of that lack of trust had to have hurt. So why not have the federal government do the bad parenting for him? That might ease his guilt.
If only we passed another law…

Can you guess which American spoke these stirring words last night?

When the Founders drafted the Constitution, they had a clear understanding of tyranny. They also had a clear idea about how to prevent it from ever taking root in America. Their solution was to separate the government’s powers into three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Each of these branches plays a vital role in our free society. Each serves as a check on the others. And to preserve our liberty, each must meet its responsibilities — and resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the Constitution accords to others.

Was it:

1. Christopher Dodd
2. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
3. Ron Paul
4. George W. Bush
5. Dennis Kucinich
6. Hillary Clinton

Go ahead and guess. And then check to see if you’re right.

“bullet” “drcnet”

There’s a conversation going on around the blogs about the sometimes controversial term “states’ rights.” See Grits for Breakfast’s response to a Bob Herbert article touted by Big Tent Democrat and responses by Jeralyn Merritt and then Alex.
I’ll add my quick two cents.
First cent: At a time when federal authoritarianism is ascendant, I’ll take the pitfalls of states’ rights any day. It’s much easier to move to another state for justice than another country.
Second cent:

‹It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.Š

– Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Via Hit and Run
John McCain on medical marijuana on a conference call

A questioner named Jonathan… asked “Should federal law supersede the will of the people in a given state when it comes to medical marijuana?”
McCain started chuckling. “The will of the people, my friend, is that medical marijuana is not something that the quote ‘people’ want,” he responded. “Certain people feel strongly about this issue, and they show up at most town hall meetings, obviously feel very strongly about it. There is no convincing evidenceáthere’s evidence, but no convincing evidence to me that medical marijuana relief of pain and suffering cannot be accomplished by prescriptions from doctorsá So, when you’re talking about the will of the people, you’re going to have to show me the will of the people besides the will of a small number of people who feel very strongly about the issue, as obviously you do.”
The questioner mentioned that voters approved of medical marijuana in a California referendum.
“There may be times when the will of the people, for example Iraq, the will of the people, unfortunately is that we withdraw from Iraq immediately or very very soon,” McCain shot back. “I don’t share that view of the will of the people.”

The will of the people isn’t the will of the people, except when it is the will of the people, in which case my will is really the will of the people, whether they know it or not.
Authoritarians.

On Wednesday, potential hemp growers take on the DEA in court with oral arguments in… Bismark, North Dakota. It’s likely to be an interesting time — I wish I could be there.
Here’s what makes it interesting. From any logical perspective and any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution, it’s a no-brainer — the DEA doesn’t have a leg to stand on. However, given the pathetic tendency of our courts to bend over for the government whenever the drug war is mentioned, even peripherally (Raich, Caballes, et al), it seems perfectly likely that the DEA will win.
I’m waiting for some kind of signal from the courts that there are limitations to government power. And we certainly can’t seem to turn to Congress for help.