Drug WarRant

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.

Thanks to Tom for sending me this extraordinary piece…
From the SFGate: Law enforcement team raids projects to net alleged drug dealers by John Koopman (a reporter who is embedded with the police)
Now I’m not sure about Koopman — he’s either an opportunistic hack with a flair for over-the-top clichÚd imagery, or he’s a brilliantly subtle writer who is pleasing his ride-along companions while exposing them as buffoons simultaneously. Because anybody with a brain reading this puff piece about a drug sting has got to come away convinced by its utter futility and stupidity.

The sun peeks over the hill at Candlestick Point to the east, casting Ingleside in a warm glow.
“Somebody’s going to jail today,” predicts Lt. Ernie Ferrando, head of the Gang Task Force.

Yeah. The whole article is like that.

Violence has spiked recently in the Ingleside area. The Police Department wants to send a message, and it will be delivered by cops with guns and battering rams.

Because nothing sends a message about spiking violence than adding more violence. But of course, this is different. This is violence that will make the other violence stop. Why?

“I suppose it’s a little like being a dad,” Ferrando says. “The kids have been bad. It’s time for Dad to step in and settle things down.”

I’m sure that’s how the drug dealers see it.
Go ahead and read the whole thing. It’s a marvel of writing — the use of the word “thwack” for the battering ram. And breathless moments like this one:

But what, or who, is inside? The first cop in will find out, one way or another.
The cops rush in, one right behind the other, like a big blue clump.

So how did this violent confrontation end? Did they get all the bad guys?

The cops are coming out of the two apartments. At one unit, the person named in the warrant is not home. The police find nothing inside. No guns. No drugs. They do find gang graffiti, though. Some of it links a young man the cops know to a local gang. With the city attorney’s office turning more and more to civil injunctions to help break up gangs, this is considered a good haul for the morning. […]
At the home with the now-broken door, three people are led out in handcuffs. They sit on the front stoop while the officers search the house. No guns are found, but the cops do find a small amount of drugs.

Did the thwack of the battering ram make the streets safer? Will the clump of blue find another door to attack? Tune in next week to the long-running soap opera: The Dumb and the Clueless.

by Amy Lorentzen, Associated Press Writer
Link

GLADBROOK, Iowa – Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Sunday said the United States should step up it’s war on drugs as part of efforts to secure the country’s borders.

Yes, it’s a twofer. McCain for being a moron. Lorentzen for not knowing how to spell “its.”
Later on in the article, another stupidity twofer as McCain talks about building walls and fences on the borders…

“I don’t think you’ll every [sic] prevent anybody [sic] from coming across, but I think we can do a whole lot more.”

Some days, I can’t tell the difference between real life and Idiocracy.

Document the well-intentioned cluelessness of the following two authors:
“bullet” Willy E. Gutman in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal: Drugs: The War No One Wants to Win
“bullet” Philosophy professor Firmin DeBrabander in CounterPunch: Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore

I’ll be on the road this weekend, but will be checking in from time to time.
“bullet” Humboldt County (CA) Board of Supervisors sent legislators and President Bush a letter urging legalization of marijuana

“Local governments are in need of identifying stable revenue sources and could benefit greatly from the legalization and taxation of marijuana”

“bullet” Sex, Drugs, and a Federal Prosecution – Radley Balko’s latest column at FOX news.
“bullet” Action Alert: Take action now to roll back the crack/powder sentencing disparities.
“bullet” Action Alert: Take action now on the medical marijuana implementation in New Mexico.
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly