Drug WarRant

Whenever I report on some propaganda that’s so outrageously stupid that no sentient being could possibly credit it, there’s one sure place that it’ll turn up next…
…the Drug Czar’s “blog”:

Marijuana: Harmless?

“CRIMINAL gangs are trafficking hundreds of children into Britain and forcing them to work in cannabis factories,

Could it be that the ONDCP staff is reading Drug WarRant?

“bullet” TChris at TalkLeft on a much needed victory for the Fourth Amendment: Patriot Act Provision Declared Unconstitutional
“bullet” And more Fourth Amendment good news….

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a Michigan law that requires pedestrians under 21 to submit to a breath test without a search warrant.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued on behalf of four college students, said the law is the only one of its kind in the country. U.S. District Judge David Lawson in Detroit ruled that it was unconstitutional to force non-drivers to submit to preliminary breath tests without a warrant.

“bullet” Scott Morgan has another exceptional post: Why Do Police Really Oppose Marijuana Legalization?

Why is it drug warriors in Britain seem to lose all capability of reason when it comes to cannabis?
Here’s the latest in sensationalist reporting on cannabis (also reported here)

Child-trafficking gangs force kids to work in cannabis factories
CRIMINAL gangs are trafficking hundreds of children into Britain and forcing them to work in cannabis factories, with at least one child per week being found by police, a report said today.
Campaign group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) said there had been a five-fold increase in the practice in the last year alone.

Now, from what little I can find about ECPAT and their “reports” from their website, this is likely a total nonsensical interpretation of an unscientifically propagandized report.
But it sure sounds scary, doesn’t it?
No. it just sounds stupid. The notion of gangs smuggling in children to farm cannabis is just too absurd. Why would they do this? What would they have these kids do?

“There is evidence that particular south-east Asian villages are targeted for specific trades, with Vietnam now known to specialise in boys for cannabis factories,” he said.

I repeat. What would they have these kids do? What is this specialized training that boys in certain south-east Asian villages are so noted for? Watering?
I’m guessing that some Vietnamese gang who is smuggling children for sexual purposes is also growing pot and that the operations are kept at the same location. (Of course, legalization would end the value of cannabis to them.) But that’s all it takes for an unscrupulous organization and an empty-headed (or perhaps agenda-driven), sensationalistic press to whip up a frenzy.
But it gets worse. Check out the fuzzy thinking here.

Police believe the problem has emerged after organised crime gangs, many of them Vietnamese, moved to dominate the British cannabis market after the narcotic was downgraded from a Class B to Class C drug in 2004.
Declassification increased the potential rewards of growing and selling cannabis but decreased the risk of punishment. One police officer was quoted as saying cannabis was the “cash machine of organised crime”.

Yes, cannabis is the cash machine. But actually I can’t imagine how decreasing the risk would have any connection to the use of children. And, in fact, declassification would make it harder to dominate the market as more players would get involved with less risk.
Here’s the topper:

“If you remove the risk, people exploit it. If you put the risk back into enforcement, they will adapt and go into another type of business,” [Simon Byrne, an assistant chief constable of Merseyside Police in north-west England and the Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman on cannabis] was quoted as saying.

???
Let’s see if I can follow his thinking. If you increase the penalties for marijuana, then the Vietnamese child-sex slave kidnapping gang that also grows marijuana, will be deterred from growing marijuana and forced to do something else.

Some time ago, I wrote about a compelling bit of criminal justice reporting by Scott Christianson related to crime clearance rates — the percentages of violent crimes and property crimes that are solved through arrest or other means.
Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast applies Christianson’s analysis to current dismal clearance rates and the recent news related to the increase in marijuana arrests, and comes to some powerful conclusions (that are certainly of no surprise to us) — that the popularity of the drug war is harming police effectiveness.

“bullet” Canada Backs Call to Step Up Fight Against Afghan Drugs — Some sane voices in this article. Unfortunately, not the ones making the decisions.
“bullet” Obama is So Bad on Drug Policy, He Got Endorsed By Prison Guards – Scott Morgan
“bullet” The Federal War on Medical Marijuana Becomes a War on Children

But that wasn’t the worst of it. County child protective services came along on the raid and took Naulls’ three daughters, aged 1 to 5, and charged him and his wife with child endangerment. They weren’t even accused of breaking any state laws.

Via NORML…

Marijuana Arrests For Year 2006 š 829,625 Tops Record High…Nearly 15
Percent Increase Over 2005
September 24, 2007 – Washington, DC, USA
Washington, DC: Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana
violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total
number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests
now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.
“These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor
marijuana offenders,” said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who
noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds
in America. “This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources
that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and
violent crime, including the war on terrorism.”
Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent some
738,915 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,710
individuals were charged with “sale/manufacture,” a category that includes
all cultivation offenses even those where the marijuana was being grown for
personal or medical use. In past years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested
were age 19 or younger.

Via PoliBlog, comes this unbelievable quote in the Miami Herald:

”Our belief is that if we could eradicate all coca, we could eradicate all cocaine, because it is the basic ingredient for cocaine,” said Christy McCampbell, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement.

That’s your “belief?” No. That’s a fact. It’s also completely meaningless. The eradication of all coca is not even theoretically possible today, nor is it being seriously contemplated by anyone, except Christy McCampbell, apparently.
It’s extremely annoying to consider that we’re actually paying this moron’s salary. (Not to mention the fact that it’s very likely that a deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law makes more than I do, even without the use of a brain.)

tonight — I expect that this will be a bit of a hit piece on how the California med-mar distribution has evolved. I’m interested to see how balanced it is (and how much recreational marijuana is demonized by both sides). I’ll be in rehearsal, so if you see it, let us know in comments.

Link

It’s bad enough when government agencies are all lobbying for a chunk of drug war cash. But when you get private companies into the act as well, then the entire power structure has a financial stake in continuing and escalating the destruction.
Lucrative private players have been heavily in the mix for years, from drug testing companies to privately owned prisons — all lobbying for harsher drug laws.
A couple of other instances have been in the news lately.
“bullet” Link

The Defense Department has picked five companies, four of them from the Washington area, for a contract to support the Pentagon’s counter-narcoterrorism activities. The government may spend as much as $15 billion through the five-year contract.
The local companies are Arinc of Annapolis, Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Raytheon Technical Services of Reston and Northrop Grumman Information Technology of McLean. The fifth company is Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C.

Yes, we’re talking about that Blackwater:

Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA’s alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. […]
In the United States, Blackwater is facing a possible federal investigation over allegations that it illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that later might have been sold on the black market.

And we’re also paying them to help fight the drug war. A war that isn’t really a war, but has all the casualties and corruption of war.
“bullet” Closer to home…
Via The Agitator…
A private firm (Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation), has been stopping motorists and asking them to submit to tests of their breath, blood and saliva — assisted by sherrif’s deputies.
Declan McCullagh analyzes this fishy enterprise, learning that it receives over $35 million in taxpayer dollars (its only source of revenue appearing to be government grants and contracts.

PIRE seems to specialize in devising new and intrusive ways of
government meddling in personal lives.

And apparently, this kind of work pays well.

Robert Carpenter, PIRE’s CEO, was paid $221,785 in 2005
Ted Langevin, a VP/CFO, was paid $200,760
Joel Grube, a PIRE research director, was paid $237,075
Ted Miller, a PIRE research director, was paid $192,444
Jan van der Eijk, IS director, was paid $194,532
Paul Gruenwald, a science director, was paid $212,437
Robert Saltz, an associate director, was paid $191,527
Genevive Ames, a staff director, was paid $183,770

Isn’t it nice to know that you’re paying for all this?