Drug WarRant

For those interested, the production of “The Who’s Tommy” that I’m musical directing and performing in is going extraordinarily well, with crowds on their feet cheering at each performance. Here’s a portion of a review:

“Visually stunning and swiftly paced… beautifully costumed, expertly choreographed and technically superior, this production is a theatrical “trip” well worth taking… The live band led by music director Pete Guither rocks the house!”

– Pantagraph, October 9.

“bullet” Joshua Levy at techPresident has an interesting post on the rise of video lobbying, as demonstrated by the YouTube video collection of Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana. Certainly, that Romney video had to have hurt him.
“bullet” Howard Woolridge has a new blog entry up about his efforts on the Hill. Always enjoyable.
He’s also added his post from September 28, which includes this pointed reference to the Congressional Black Caucus:

Shake my head: On Friday I attended the annual seminars put on by the Congressional Black Caucus. The issue was gangs, violence and drugs. I listened for hours as 10 experts bemoaned the growth in gangs, their violence and the link to illegal drugs. No one had the courage to say the obvious, so I did:
The Drug War is the most immoral, dysfunctional policy since slavery. The black community was first butchered by slavery. Then, they were terrorized by Jim Crow. In the ë60s about the time Jim Crow ended, the country began the war on drugs, which took the place of Jim Crow. The growth of gangs and their violence is a direct result of drug prohibition. The policy gives a job option for 15 year olds to sell drugs on the sidewalk, which gets them killed. I hope one day soon the Congressional Black Caucus will pass a resolution calling for the end of the war on drugs. The policy should be: if you have a drug problem, see a doctor, not a prison.
The 80 people in the room gave me a nice applause. The experts and members of Congress did not applaud. Later an African-American came up and said mine were the most salient comments made during the entire seminar. At the wine and cheese reception thingy afterwards, another 6 or so said my ideas were spot on. As I rode the Metro back to my pickup truck, I kept racking my brain about how to get my message out so that the leaders and gatekeepers would actually take action. Any ideas?

“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

This is actually a story from some time ago, but it’s been sitting around nagging me to write something about it.
I’m really not that familiar with Amy Winhouse’s music, nor have I a clue about the tabloid music stories related to her, but I was struck when reading this.

Amy Winehouse’s in-laws have urged fans to stop buying her records. They say a boycott would send a message to the singer and husband Blake Fielder-Civil that they must tackle their drug problems. Fielder-Civil’s parents, Giles and Georgette, fear one or possibly both of them will die if they do not sort themselves out.
They said the couple were drug addicts in denial.
Mr and Mrs Fielder-Civil also said the singer should not be given any awards, to show the couple’s behaviour was not acceptable.
He believed they were taking crack, and there had been instances of heroin use.

How bizarre. I have no idea if the couple are addicted or abuse drugs, but if they are addicts, the notion that suddenly losing the support of their fans would help them in kicking the habit is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard. “Oh, dear,” Amy apparently would say, “our record sales are plummeting and nobody likes our music. Let’s stop using drugs.”
When I hear this kind of thinking, I wonder if it’s really possible that people don’t know anyone who smokes cigarettes. Cigarettes are one of the most addictive drug habits around, and if you ask anyone who smokes/smoked if there’s a time when it’s toughest to quit, or most likely to re-start, it’s invariably in times of stress or during other difficult patches in your life (lost love, financial woes, etc.).
And yet, as a society, we don’t seem to absorb this simple fact and apply it to the issue of other drug addictions.
So let’s say you have an everyday heroin addict. Because it’s illegal, she’ll have to go to some lengths to keep supplied, which probably means selling. She sells to an informant and gets busted on a trafficking charge. Her daughter is taken away. Her car (her only asset) is seized and sold. She’s facing jail and can’t afford a lawyer. Her friends shun her. And now she’s told to quit using drugs. Her entire life has fallen apart and now is the time to quit an addiction? Even if she gets treatment, the odds are stacked against her.
No wonder the recidivism rate is so high.
Let’s compare this to the Swiss model.

Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist, Martin Kilias, found that the users’ involvement in burglary, mugging and robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same strategy. All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier ( because clean heroin properly used is a benign drug ) and that they are more stable with clear improvements in housing, employment and relationships. [The Guardian]

So with a regulated clean drug source, an addict can be taken out of the criminal justice system and the stresses involved. They can get their lives in a good stable situation, complete with legal employment, so that when they’re ready to quit, it’s much easier, and more likely to last.
So when I hear people touting the value of drug courts, or pushing (as Kleiman does) coerced treatment as the answer to the drug war, I am extremely skeptical. These provide the wrong situations for a proper approach to quitting drugs. Scientists even have evidence that specific chemical actions in the brain add to the strength of the addiction during periods of stress.
Sure, I have no doubt that some people have responded to the “tough love” approach, but I wonder if that’s only because a more sane approach didn’t exist.
Once again, our slavish adherence to the drug war prevents us from actually considering options that might be more effective. And that’s just stupid.
And so I’ll repeat…

Some days it feels like I’m watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I’m standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I’m crazy.

There have been a number of recent discussions nationally regarding prison reform. It’s important to remember that these are not merely statistics.
This was brought starkly to my mind when I received a note from Isidro Aviles‘ mother. Today would have been his birthday.

I’ve put together a page about Congressional requirements that the ONDCP and the drug czar must lie to you

The SOS unit in Chicago covered dealt with drug and gang busts, and like so many of these “special” task forces, became a law unto themselves, not only violating the Constitutional rights of the citizens, but extending their lawbreaking into robbery, kidnapping, and even murder for hire.
Check out the Chicago Tribune video, where the SOS was caught on camera illegally raiding a bar and searching all the patrons without a warrant
There’s a certain inevitability of this kind of result from drug task forces due to both the nature of the enforcement tactics that a prohibition regime tends to demand, and the type of officer drawn to such enforcement tactics (and the good officers may not stay. That’s not to say that a drug task force can’t avoid corruption, but to do so it must actively work to counter its own nature.

“bullet” Stupid OpEd of the week in Human Events. Robert J. Caldwell fellates the Drug Czar in a piece that is both intentionally deceitful, and historically revisionist in terms of prohibition and “the historical examples of Turkey, Southeast Asia and Colombia.” Naturally, the Drug Czar got off on it.
“bullet” Another, much more sane conservative view can be found at the corner by Andrew Stuttaford.

The drug warriors are, it seems, continuing in their efforts to sabotage the war against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. […]
Of course it’s ‘crazy’, Matt, it’s the drug war.

“bullet” This is from last week, but in case you missed it… The Drug Czar actually tried to take on Milton Friedman regarding the drug war. (Friedman bitch-slapped him from the grave.)
“bullet” In the New Haven Independent, there’s a fascinating discussion about corruption in a narcotics unit and whether even the idea of a narcotics unit makes sense. Not all the players are up to speed on the big picture, but the fact that such a conversation is taking place, is positive.
“bullet” In an effort to separate drug users from the black market, The Czech Republic is considering decriminalizing the growing of marijuana for your own use. Via Transform.
“bullet” At Alternet: “New York City has the most marijuana arrests in the world (but don’t worry, white people, it won’t be you)” by Ezekiel Edwards
“bullet” From Alas, a blog: A Sentence to Prison Is A Sentence To Be Tortured
“bullet” In the Nation, Prison Reformers Finally Set Free

Is the nearly 40-year-old, bipartisan “let’s get tough on crime” mantra getting old– even for politicians?

I have often railed about the stupidity of our drug warriors when it comes to basic principles of economics. With the Drug Czar crowing about the temporary increase in the price of cocaine, Robert Guest of I Was the State provides a very concise lesson:

When supply is reduced and demand remains the same, prices rise. Rising prices signal new suppliers to enter the market. Demand creates supply.
The price of cocaine has risen to $118 per gram. Any product worth $50,000 a pound will find drug cartels lining up to supply it. Mass incarceration and “Just Say No” ads won’t change the simple law of supply and demand.
This drug war “victory” will be short lived. Drug cartels will find new ways to import the goods that Americans demand. We give the drug cartels a monopoly on the American cocaine market which in turn gives the cartels billions to import their wares.
We can only win the drug war by choosing new suppliers.

Of course, then the Drug Czar would be out of a job. Hmmm, maybe he does understand economics…

So on Thursday, Stephen Harper’s government announced plans for a dramatic increase in the war on drugs in Canada. Apparently, he’s jealous of all the drug war fun in the U.S. and wants some of it for himself. His ideas have not been greeted with universal warmth.
In the Guelph Mercury

VANCOUVER – Critics of the Conservative government’s new anti-drug plan are calling it everything from naive to politically opportunistic and a threat to the civil liberties of Canadians.
A coalition of Vancouver health and social groups says prison terms and attempts to scare users straight won’t solve Canada’s illegal drug problem.
“You just can’t incarcerate your way out of this,” former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, a member of the Beyond Prohibition Coalition, said yesterday. “The United States locks down 2.3 million people every night.”
Owen, an architect of Vancouver’s drug safe-injection site, told a news conference the Tory government’s adoption of policies similar to the failed war on drugs in the U.S. is “uninformed.”

An editorial in the Globe and Mail:

‘The party’s over,” federal Health Minister Tony Clement intoned this past weekend. Mr. Clement was talking about drug users, but it wasn’t entirely clear which ones. It might have been otherwise law-abiding citizens who occasionally smoke marijuana. Or perhaps it was all those partiers suffering from debilitating addictions to hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. Either way, Mr. Clement appears to have borrowed his rhetoric from the 1980s. To go with it, he appears set to borrow the disastrous “War on Drugs” strategy from south of the border. […]
This new strategy may play well with some members of the Conservatives’ base. But as evidenced by what has transpired in the United States, it will do absolutely nothing to reduce drug use. Its only effect will be to make the effects of substance abuse all the more painful.

The always excellent Dan Gardner writes in the Ottawa Citizen, What’s Harper smoking?

Stephen Harper’s announcement Thursday of a new national drug strategy served at least one valuable purpose: It conclusively demonstrated that the prime minister knows nothing about drugs or drug policy. […]
So what does Stephen Harper have to say about this? At the press conference, he complained about drug references in Beatles songs and the fact that drugs have been romanticized “since the 1960s.” So naturally he wants to put in place the same policies that failed to stop Lucy from floating into the sky with diamonds — a conclusion that seems perfectly reasonable, I assume, shortly after one drops acid. […]
Righteous ignorance does fog the mind.

And there’s this excellent piece by Jody Paterson in the Times Colonist

The problems of ideology-based governance clearly must be more obvious from afar. Otherwise, Canadians wouldn’t be able to bear the hypocrisy of railing against oppressive and backward regimes elsewhere in the world while committing ourselves anew to the folly of a war on drugs. […]
Here’s the thing: Health issues can’t be resolved through ideology. […]
So why do we continue to let our elected politicians ignore the science when it comes to drug issues? Why should anybody’s poorly informed position around drug use be the lens that we apply when trying to address complex health and social problems that are far too important to be left to political whim?
I respect the right of Stephen Harper and his MPs to believe that using illicit drugs is bad. It’s a free country and they’re welcome to their opinions, […]
But why would we want to base something as important as our national drug strategy on opinion and belief?
We’ve got six decades worth of scientific studies underlining the importance of an informed, health-based approach in reducing the harm and societal costs of drug use. Yet we’re still letting vital public policy be decided by people who would rather maintain their personal fictions than take steps to fix the problems. […]
So with all due respect, Mr. Harper, believe whatever you like in your personal life. But as prime minister, please run this country on facts and not fiction.

More coverage of Harper’s drug war at Blame the Drug War.

“bullet” David Guard has a recap of the Mass Incarceration Hearing yesterday
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”