Drug WarRant

Apparently, if you don’t actually put your name on every one of your possessions, police are entitled to take them for their own personal use.

More unsurprising bombshells in Colombia. Today in the Washington Post

BOGOTA, Colombia — An investigation by the Colombian Defense Ministry has found that drug traffickers and rebels from the country’s largest guerrilla group infiltrated the U.S.-backed military here, paying high-ranking officers for classified information to help elude capture and continue smuggling cocaine.

It is part of a set of immutable laws of economics (informally stated):

• When a product in high demand, supply will find a way to meet demand.
• Prohibition of a demand product causes high black-market profits, as supply is forced to operate outside of legal commerce.
• High black-market profits are always protected, inevitably through non-legal means, including violence and corruption.
• Government pay cannot compete with what the black market can offer.

IAt TalkLeft:

An appeals court in Tennessee has ruled the state’s tax on illegal drugs unconstitutional calling it “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”

I’ve mentioned the Tennessee Tax before and I’ve talked about the whole notion of state illegal drug taxes several times.
In case this is new to you, the idea is that the state requires you to purchase a stamp for your illegal drugs (sort of like the state stamp on cigarette packages, but an actual stamp). You’re supposed to affix this to your illegal drugs to show that you’ve paid your tax. Of course, the real intent of the law is nothing of the kind. What they do is after they’ve arrested you for drug possession, they weigh the drugs, figure out how much tax you should have paid and then seize that amount of money/possessions/house from you and then still prosecute you for drug possession. It’s really just another way to have the government rob people, and part of the despicable drug war tactics of “piling on.”
About the only ones who actually purchase drug stamps are stamp collectors or those looking at them as novelty items. I have Tennessee (unauthorized substances), North Carolina (marijuana), Utah (marijuana), Texas (marijuana), and Massachusetts (marijuana) stamps, and would love to add to my collection….
Wisconsin’s drug tax law was rendered unconstitutional several years ago by a federal appeals court saying it amounting to double jeopardy.
In the Tennessee case, Judge Sharon G. Lee wrote:

“Because it seeks to levy a tax on the privilege to engage in an activity that the Legislature has previously declared to be a crime, not a privilege, we must necessarily conclude that the drug tax is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable, and therefore, invalid under the constitution of this state,”

This is good news, and I hope that the drug tax will be challenged elsewhere.
Of course, there’s one way that the drug tax stamp would get my support.
As Ben Masel famously said:

No taxation without legalization.

Update: SayUncle isn’t holding his breath regarding any actual changes as a result of the ruling.

“bullet” Excellent article by Juan Forero: New gangs challenge Colombia’s drug war — demonstrates the absolute destructive futility of our drug war in Colombia (although that doesn’t stop Walters from spouting inane claims of victory).
“bullet” The Trouble with Plan Mexico from the Guardian
“bullet” From the left: The War on Drugs’ Bloody Face by Joseph Grosso
“bullet” Senator Durbin supports medical marijuana
“bullet” In case you missed it… The Ethan Nadelmann article in Foreign Policy was not fully available when I blogged about it — here is the full text.
“bullet” Drug forfeiture funds used to purchase tasers — turning recreational drugs into weapons. [Via]
“bullet” Why are doctors such opiate prudes?by Brianna Hersey [Thanks, Ben]
“bullet” Breaking taboos: – it’s time we recognised that illegal drugs are fun by Michael Duffy [Thanks, Richard and Allan]
“bullet” “drcnet”

This is a major downer. We had a really good thing going — John Singleton directing Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in the movie about the drug war travesty in Tulia, Texas.
Now reports are that the project has been scrapped because Halle is pregnant.

It‰s been reported that after she‰s had her child the movie might be picked up again and put into development once again but at this point Tulia won‰t be made.

Scott at Grits for Breakfast has this piece about a former police officer who talks in a new book about his steroid addiction as a cop, and his dealing in steroids and paraphernalia to cops and firefighters around the country.
Here’s the part that blew my mind:

‹The public is clueless about how many policemen and firefighters are on steroids,Š Johnson said, adding that he believes the drugs should be legal.

‹Steroid laws are a waste of taxpayer money,Š he said. ‹I can understand why psychoactive drugs are illegal — they get you high. But steroids help you with recovery from personal injuries.Š [emphasis added]

Talk about rationalization.

Look — I don’t care if he wants to use steroids. But to simultaneously defend laws against recreational drug use is rank hypocrisy.

And what’s this irrational objection against getting high?

Very often I hear that recreational drugs should be illegal because the only purpose they serve is to get “high.” They’re incorrect, of course — many of them serve other purposes as well — but what’s wrong with getting high?

One of the most outrageous examples of this rationalizing hypocri-speak is in this famous tape of Richard Nixon and Art Linkletter:

Linkletter: “Another big difference between marijuana and alcohol is that when people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable. You don’t see people –”

Nixon: “That’s right, that’s right.”

Linkletter: “They sit down with a marijuana cigarette to get high –”

Nixon: “A person does not drink to get drunk.”

Linkletter: “That’s right.”

Nixon: “A person drinks to have fun.”

Linkletter: “I’d say smoke marijuana, you smoke marijuana to get high.”

Nixon: “Smoke marijuana, er, uh, you want to get a charge of some sort, and float, and this, that and the other thing.”

Well, first of all, that exchange is simply bizarre, in a very creepy way. And the attempted claim that alcohol has nothing to do with getting high is laughable.

But what’s wrong with getting high? It’s an important, even essential, part of life.

We all spend much of our time trying to get high. The rush when you have a particularly rich piece of chocolate — you’re getting high. That perfect coffee drink in the morning. Three-inch thick filet mignon that’s charred on the outside and still red in the middle. Sex.

(And I’m not just speaking metaphorically here. All these activities actually cause the body to produce chemicals that make you high.)

Jogging does it for some people (not me, but bike-riding can get me high). Tiramisu with Sambuca and double espresso at Ferrara’s. A sunset. The smell of fresh air. The smell of fresh baked bread.

Solving a puzzle, winning a game, taking a bow at the end of a great performance in a packed theatre with hundreds of people on their feet.

A photograph. A poem. Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Getting an “A”. Getting a raise. Being employee of the month.

Helping someone out.

Getting high is not only part of life — life without it is no life at all.

And these highs are not always consequence-free. Try eating all the chocolate you want.

Then there’s the drug that gives you the most intense highs and crashing lows — the most dangerous addiction of all…

Love gives you wings. It makes you fly. I don’t even call it love. I call it Geronimo. When you’re in love, you’ll jump right from the top of the Empire State and you won’t care, screaming “Geronimo” the whole way down. I love her so bad, I just… whoa, she wrecks me. I’d die for her.

Getting high isn’t always good for you. But don’t you dare tell me that it’s wrong.

With opium production again at new record levels, the Afghan drug effort is regularly being called a failure in the press these days, so naturally officials are calling for stepped up efforts (rather than smarter ones).
But it’s getting harder for them to get away with the usual. More and more these days (stimulated by Misha Glenny’s earlier article in the Post), we’re starting to hear the statement (as in this excellent OpEd by Neal Peirce) that The drug war is directly feeding international terrorism. Not drugs. The Drug War.
And even the public is catching on — in a recent poll (conducted by Senlis), almost half of Britons opposed destroying the poppy fields, 74 percent opposed spraying, and 80 percent said they would support “Poppy for Medicine” programs.
Jacob Sullum has more in America’s Taliban-Support Program:
With luck, Afghanistan could become the Colombia of the Middle East

I really enjoyed this piece by David Borden and Paul Armentano (recently posted in the Huffington Post): Why Do People the Government Says Don’t Exist Keep Writing Us?

Speaking last month to the Associated Press, Tom Riley — spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy — launched into an all too common ad hominem attack against medical marijuana and those who advocate for its regulation. “There is a charade going on here,” he charged. “[P]eople who are interested in drug legalization using genuinely sick people as pawns to get sympathy to get their agenda through.”
This critique bemuses us. After all, we actually know medical marijuana patients — yes, real live medical marijuana patients. We interact with them at conferences. We help them organize protests. Some of us lobby with them in Congress or the state houses. Others help coordinate their legal defenses when they’ve been arrested. Many of them are our friends and colleagues too. Sure, we also want legalization, not just for medical use. But while the drug war continues to rage, we desire to have the sick and dying taken off the battlefield. Who wouldn’t?

And that last point is important. Prohibitionists (and sometimes their academic enablers) have often tried to argue that since people like us want marijuana legalized for recreational purposes, then we can’t be believed when we argue for medical marijuana legalization — that we’re only taking advantage of the sick by using them for our purposes. How absurd!
First, it is certainly possible (and quite likely) for people to sincerely hold both the opinion that patients should be allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes and that people in general should be allowed to use marijuana for recreational purposes.
Second, how are you taking advantage of sick people by wanting them to have the right to choose medicine that helps them and is recommended by their doctor?
Third, the only ones cruelly taking advantage of the sick are the people like Tom Riley, who would deny patients the medicine that helps them, who would tell patients that they can’t follow the recommendations of their doctor, who would have people suffer in order to prop up marijuana prohibition.

As the silly season of Presidential campaigning kicks off in high gear, it was good to have Lewis Black remind me of how it works (yes, it was an old rerun of his comedy special, but it still connected).

You see, in our two-party system, the Democrats are the party of no ideas and the Republicans are the party of bad ideas. It usually goes something like this. A Republican will stand up in Congress and say, “I’ve got a really bad idea.” And a Democrat will immediately jump to his feet and declare, “And I can make it sh*ttier!”

Certainly fits the drug war.

Alex Koppelman has a pretty good piece in Salon detailing: How the anti-immigration right — and Lou Dobbs — turned two rogue Border Patrol agents into heroes and got Congress on their side.
The Ramos/Compean saga has always been primarily an immigration tabloid story — a bent tool for drumming up outrage. Where it has been relevant to drug policy is in the publicly voiced assumption that shooting an unarmed drug suspect is somehow uncontroversial (an assumption bizarrely even held by Senator Feinstein). People are so used to drug war exceptions to every Constitutional right, that they are amazed that shooting an unarmed marijuana smuggler in the back is still illegal in this country.