Drug WarRant

I didn’t watch this round of debates – Democratic candidates dealing with minority issues: U.S. Senator Joe Biden, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, former U.S. Senator John Edwards, former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Senator Barack Obama and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
But from the brief recaps I’ve seen around the web, the drug war got some play, with Gravel and Kucinich, of course, but also with Biden, Dodd, Richardson, and Clinton at least, giving some mention to things such as eliminating mandatory minimums and crack/powder disparities, and making needle exchange available to reduce HIV.
This is a refreshing change from the notion of appealing to African-Americans by offering increased enforcement in their communities.

The United States has 5% of the world’s population…

… but 25% of the world’s prison population.

We lead the entire world in incarceration rates.

We even lead the world in actual numbers of those imprisoned

So…, and I’m just asking here…, with all these people in jail, how did we manage to miss this one?

“bullet” Transform Drug Policy Foundation has a wonderful chart showing the differences between (in general) the drug policy Status Quo position and the Reform position. Here are a few samples:

There are a lot more at Transform

“bullet” This is something we mentioned in passing earlier this year, but Maia Szalavitz has a strong article in Reason about Mitt Romney and his connection to child torturer Mel Sembler (founder of Straight, Inc.): Romney, Torture, and Teens

“bullet” Via Drug Policy Alliance:

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) made history last weekend by passing a resolution calling for a public health approach to the problems of substance use and abuse (PDF). The resolution was sponsored by Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City.
The resolution proclaims the war on drugs a failure, and calls for ‹a New Bottom Line in U.S. drug policy, a public health approach that concentrates more fully on reducing the negative consequences associated with drug abuse, while ensuring that our policies do not exacerbate these problems or create new social problems of their own.Š

Time Magazine reports A Cease-Fire in Mexico’s Drug War?
But not really.

U.S. and Mexican officials confirm that Mexico’s major rival drug-trafficking organizations, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, “may be trying to negotiate a truce” and come to some agreement over control of territory, says a knowledgeable U.S. official.

That’s a little different. I read “cease fire in Mexico’s drug war” and figured that the government and the cartels had come to an agreement. But no, this is a cease-fire in the turf war, not the drug war. Big difference.

The two mafias could be coming to the table for two key reasons. First, “the violence has drawn too much attention and has really begun to hurt [their drug-trafficking] business,” says Steven Robertson, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

It’s actually probably hurt the actual players more than the business, but yes, it makes sense that while turf violence protects black market interests, once it reaches a certain level, it’s no longer productive (of course, in legalized business, violence wouldn’t be productive at all).

And second, Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s popular but oft-questioned strategy of throwing the military at the cartels Ö some 25,000 soldiers have been deployed to violence-ravaged states like Michoacan this year Ö “is starting to pay dividends,” insists a high-ranking Mexican official.

Rolling on the floor, laughing. Love the way they throw that in to try to get some credit, but particularly love the fact that it is attributed to a “high-ranking Mexican official.” That’s right — announcing that a massive government program is having any effect can only be done anonymously (perhaps because they’re afraid of being killed? — which kind of ruins the effect of declaring victory)
Of course, the government efforts have been abysmal, adding to the violence and the human rights violations, and potentially the corruption (and then swelling the ranks of militaristic cartel members).

But both countries, rightly, remain as skeptical as they are optimistic. That’s because Mexico’s narco-terror isn’t just about the Sinaloa-Gulf feud. It’s also a struggle between opposing mind-sets in each cartel: the more pragmatic businessmen, who are worried that all the blood has begun to hamper the efficiency of their cocaine distribution “plazas” in Mexico and along the U.S. border; and the more violent enforcers, who tend to see trafficking competition as a zero-sum game. The latter have enjoyed the upper hand ever since Mexico’s traditional cartel structures began to disintegrate about five years ago and gangs like the Zetas Ö former army special forces soldiers who today are the Gulf cartel’s dominant faction Ö filled the vacuum. As a result, the success or failure of any cartel negotiation is likely to rest on which priority prevails Ö commerce or conquest.

That’s an interesting analysis. Keep in mind that the U.S. spent most of its energies trying to break up the “pragmatic businessmen,” while actually helping to train some of the “violent enforcers.” That’s right, the U.S. Army trained a lot of the members of Los Zetas at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia to combat the cartels. They then ended up going into business for themselves.

And even if the cartels do come to an agreement that might reduce the violence, it won’t reduce the trafficking. That’s because the U.S. still has not done enough to reduce its voracious demand for cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines, and because Mexico has yet to really confront one of the main causes of the country’s narco-chaos: underpaid and under-trained cops who are easily bought by the cartels and, in many states and cities, have simply become part of the cartel fabric (and as a result are often the victims of cartel assassinations).

The U.S. or Mexico have also not had any luck repealing the law of gravity.
The main cause of narco-chaos is that drugs are in the black market. Period.

In the meantime, Mexicans hope the cease-fire reports hold true Ö as does Washington, which stands to see border headaches like illegal immigration worsen if the violence continues to spiral.

Yeah, that’s good policy. Just hope that the drug traffickers can get along. Because the U.S. and Mexico don’t have anything else they’re doing that’ll work any better.

Jon Stewart, showing the banner Joseph Frederick held up on that snowy day at the Olympic torch relay, along with video of the large Olympic torch…

“If Jesus had a bong, that is totally the lighter that He’d use.”

Imagine having an employee who was completely incompetent. Everything this person did on the job was a disaster. He failed to do the proper research or listen to his co-workers who had. He pushed through his own agenda despite all market research clearly saying it wouldn’t work. And he put a huge chunk of the company’s funds into this boondoggle, which promptly tanked.
Now imagine that they he was required to write a self-evaluation to justify his continued paycheck. The employee, realizing his own incompetence, still hopes to delude his bosses.
What he wrote would look something like this:
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report:

This year’s edition reports signs of long-term containment of the world problem. The overall trend masks however contrasted regional situations, which the report examines in detail. For instance, while an impressive multi-year reduction in opium poppy cultivation continued in South East Asia, Afghanistan recorded a large increase in 2006. Growing interceptions of cocaine and heroin shipments across the world have played an important part in stabilizing the market. However, as we witness successes in some areas, challenges appear in others. Although drug abuse levels are stabilizing globally, countries along major and new trafficking routes, such as those now going through Africa, may face increasing levels of drug consumption.

Congratulations, Joseph Frederick!
At age 18, Frederick was fed up with his lack of rights as a student and decided to shake things up a bit. Take a provocative nonsense slogan from a surfboard, put it on a banner, and see if maybe the TV cameras will pick it up. It succeeded beyond his wildest dreams — the predictable over-reaction by authority, the subsequent firestorm of publicity, Ken Starr, the Supreme Court, finally ending up with the Justices of the Supreme Court debating the meaning of the phrase, and the entire country having a discussion about the rights of students. Not bad. (Current Google count: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” 935,000; “Chief Justice John Roberts” 273,000)
The majority on the Supreme Court looked pretty silly on this one. The bizarre way in which they determined to make “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” be specific advocacy for illegal behavior is surreal.

At least two interpretations of the words on the banner demonstrate that the sign advocated the use of illegal drugs. First, the phrase could beinterpreted as an imperative: ‹[Take] bong hits . . .ŠÖa message equivalent, as Morse explained in her declaration, to ‹smoke marijuanaŠ or ‹use an illegal drug.Š Alternatively, the phrase could be viewed as celebrating drug useÖ‹bong hits [are a good thing],Š or ‹[we take] bong hitsŠÖand we discern no meaningful distinction between celebrating illegal drug use in the midst of fellow students and outright advocacy or promotion.
The pro-drug interpretation of the banner gains further plausibility given the paucity of alternative meanings the banner might bear. The best Frederick can come up with is that the banner is ‹meaningless and funny.Š The dissent similarly refers to the sign‰s message as ‹curious,Š ‹ambiguous,Š ‹nonsense,Š ‹ridiculous,Š ‹obscure,Š ‹silly,Š ‹quixotic,Š and ‹stupid,Š Gibberish is surely a possible interpretation of the words on the banner, but it is not the only one, and dismissing the banner as meaningless ignores its undeniable reference to illegal drugs.

There’s almost a… petulance on the part of the Justices. Just like a school principal who feels “out of it,” there’s a fear of kids pulling one over on them. “Oh, no, you can’t fool me. I know what it means!” And so they, too, walk right into the trap set for them by Fredericks, and give the phrase a whole lot more power than it had.
The dissent really gets it right when they say:

When First Amendment rights are at stake, a rule that ‹sweep[s] in a great variety of conduct under a general and indefinite characterizationŠ may not leave ‹too wide a discretion in its application.Š Therefore, just as we insisted in Tinker that the school establish some likely connection between thearmbands and their feared consequences, so too JDHS must show that Frederick‰s supposed advocacy stands a meaningful chance of making otherwise-abstemious students try marijuana.
But instead of demanding that the school make such a showing, the Court punts. Figuring out just how it puntsis tricky; ‹[t]he mode of analysis [it] employ[s] is not en-tirely clear,Š On occasion, the Court suggests it is deferring to the principal‰s ‹reasonableŠ judgment that Frederick‰s sign qualified as drug advocacy. At other times, the Court seems to say that it thinks the banner‰s message constitutes express advocacy. Either way, its approach is indefensible.

The majority screwed up.
But the good news is that the results of the screw-up are likely to be limited. There’s been no ruling that allows schools to censor anything that interferes with their message. There’s been no ruling allowing schools to censor political advocacy speech regarding drugs. What we’ve got is a confusing blip about a particular phrase in a particular location that will create some argument in future situations over whether a different nonsense phrase constitutes political speech or the advocacy of illegal drugs, and some more of those cases will come back to the Court.
Ultimately, this case may well be remembered for words that were not in the main opinion. These are words that may resonate for years to come, in cases beyond the unfurling of a banner at a school-released event.

I join the opinion of the Court on the understanding that… it provides no support for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue, including speech on issues such as ‘the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.’

– Justice Samuel Alito

Surely our national experience with alcohol should make us wary of dampening speech suggesting–however inarticulately–that it would be better to tax and regulate marijuana than to persevere in a futile effort to ban its use entirely.

– Justice John Paul Stevens

Nice going, Joseph!
[More interesting reading on the case by Eugene Volokh and Scott Morgan and, of course, if you’re needing to catch up on the background, visit my comprehensive Bong Hits 4 Jesus page.]

Could be any day now for the decision in this Supreme Court case. Will it be a victory for free speech and the rights of students to have a life that isn’t controlled by the schools? Will it be the beginning of a drug war exception to the first amendment and establish the right of schools to censor anything that doesn’t fit what they determine to be the correct message? Or will it be something else entirely?
Note: For those who would like a quick refresher in constitutional law, read this funny piece by Walter Dellinger, wherein he is, sadly, able to boil down Supreme Court jurisprudence to its bare essence.
Update: Bong Hits case opinion not released today. They’re taking their time with it.
Further update: I was wrong (ScotusBlog was wrong for a moment as well, which is where I got my mistake). It’s decided, and it’s not great (but it’s not really that bad, either).
Justices ruled that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” was advocating illegal drug use, the unfurling of the banner was related to a school activity, and that the principal was in her rights to censor speech that advocated or “celebrated” illegal drug use. However, the decision was narrow…
Via ScotusBlog:

Morse is a very limited holding — essentially limited to the drug context. The Alito concurrence, joined by Kennedy, is controlling. He writes:

I join the opinion of the Court on the understanding that (a) it goes no further than hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use and (b) it provides no support for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue, including speech on issues such as ‘the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.’Š
The opinion of the Court does not endorse the broad argument advanced by petitioners and the United States that the First Amendment permits public school officials to censor any student speech that interferes with a school‰s ‹educational mission.Š See Brief for Petitioners 21; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 6. This argument can easily be manipulated in dangerous ways, and I would reject it before such abuse occurs.
Speech advocating illegal drug use poses a threat to student safety that is just as serious, if not always as immediately obvious. As we have recognized in the past and as the opinion of the Court today details, illegal drug use presents a grave and in many ways unique threat to the physical safety of students. I therefore conclude that the public schools may ban speech advocating illegal drug use. But I regard such regulation as standing at the far reaches of what the First Amendment permits. I join the opinion of the Court with the understanding that the opinion does not endorse any further extension.

…. The Chief Justice’s opinion, too, indicates that the case would have come out differently if the banner had “convey[ed] any sort of political or religious message,” such as that involved in “political debate over the criminalization of drug use or possession,” rather than (in the Court’s view) mere “student speech celebrating illegal drug use.”
Debate, political and religious messages — protected. “Celebration” of illegal activity (drug use, anyway) — no go. That’s the upshot.

The fact that the court specifically said that it does not support restriction of speech “on issues such as ‘the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.'” is an important victory. That protects the creation of SSDP chapters, etc.
The really odd thing about this case is that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has now apparently ruled that a bunch of guys in robes knows what the phrase “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” means, and that it specifically advocates illegal drug use.
Update: Justice Thomas’ concurrence is odd and rather frightening. He doesn’t believe that students have any free speech rights at all.
Breyer in his dissent in part, concurrence in part says that the Court should have ruled that the Principal wasn’t liable for damages since she was acting in good faith, but that the Court shouldn’t have ruled at all on the First Amendment issue.
Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg dissented:

I am willing to assume that the Court is correct that the pressing need to deter drug use supports JDHS‰s rule prohibit-ing willful conduct that expressly ‹advocates the use of substances that are illegal to minors.Š App. to Pet. forCert. 53a. But it is a gross non sequitur to draw from these two unremarkable propositions the remarkable conclusion that the school may suppress student speech that was never meant to persuade anyone to do anything.
In my judgment, the First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students. This nonsense banner does neither, and the Court does serious violence to the First Amend-ment in upholdingÖindeed, laudingÖa school‰s decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with which it disagreed. […]
it is one thing to restrict speech that advocates drug use. It is another thing entirely to prohibit an obscure message with a drug theme that a third party subjectivelyÖand not very reasonablyÖthinks is tantamount to express advocacy. […]
To the extent the Court independently finds that‹BONG HiTS 4 JESUSŠ objectively amounts to the advocacy of illegal drug useÖin other words, that it can most reasonably be interpreted as suchÖthat conclusion practically refutes itself. This is a nonsense message, not advocacy. The Court‰s feeble effort to divine its hidden meaning is strong evidence of that. […]
Admittedly, some high school students (including those who use drugs) are dumb. Most students, however, do not shed their brains at the schoolhouse gate, and most students know dumb advocacy when they see it. The notion that the message on this banner would actually persuade either the average student or even the dumbest one to change his or her behavior is most implausible.

And check out this amazing passage in the dissent:

Reaching back still further, the current dominant opinion supporting the war on drugs in general, and our anti-marijuana laws in particular, is reminiscent of the opinion that supported the nationwide ban on alcohol consumption when I was a student. While alcoholic beverages are now regarded as ordinary articles of commerce, their use was then condemned with the same moral fervor that now supports the war on drugs. The ensuing change in public opinion occurred much more slowly than the relatively rapid shift in Americans‰ views on the Vietnam War, and progressed on a state-by-state basis over a period of many years. But just as prohibition in the 1920‰s and early 1930‰s was secretly questioned by thousands of otherwise law-abiding patrons of bootleggers and speakeasies, today the actions of literally millions of otherwise law-abiding users of marijuana,9 and of the majority of voters in each of the several States that tolerate medicinal uses of the product,10 lead me to wonder whether the fear of disapproval by those in the majority is silencing opponents of the war on drugs. Surely our national experience with alcohol should make us wary of dampening speech suggestingÖhowever inarticulatelyÖthat it would be better to tax and regulate marijuana than to persevere in a futile effort to ban its use entirely.

Wow!

Link. Mark R. Trouville, chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office:

“This ain’t your grandfather’s or your father’s marijuana,” Trouville said. “This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you.”

Perhaps Trouville would care to tell us just how many people have been killed by marijuana, and then how many have been killed by DEA agents. The residents in Florida are in much greater danger from the DEA than from the most potent marijuana.