Drug WarRant

Wow. Booker redirects his anger at the war on drugs
This is big.

He is an angrier man now. And the focus of that anger is a public policy that he believes is ruining his city and threatening his hopes to change it.
The problem, he says, is New Jersey’s tough tactics in the drug war. We are heavy on jail time and unforgiving even when prisoners finish their terms. At a time when even states like Texas are changing course, we are sticking with our failed strategy.
The result is to turn thousands of young men into economic cripples and to give the crime wave in Newark a flood of fresh recruits. Booker describes it as almost an economic genocide against African-American men in his city.
And if it doesn’t change, he says, he’s ready to go to jail in protest, in the tradition of the civil rights movement.
“I’m going to battle on this,” the mayor says. “We’re going to start doing it the gentlemanly way. And then we’re going to do the civil disobedience way. Because this is absurd.
“I’m talking about marches. I’m talking about sit-ins at the state capitol. I’m talking about whatever it takes.”

The mayor calling for civil disobedience AGAINST the drug war?

He wants to reserve prison cells for those who do violence and divert the nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs and halfway houses.

This guy really is angry.

“The drug war is causing crime,” Booker says. “It is just chewing up young black men. And it’s killing Newark.” […]
He knows it’ll be tough. But when he talks about it, the political smile disappears and he wears the expression of a man preparing to smash his head into a brick wall if that’s what it takes.
Lucky thing. Because that wall is sturdy. And it’s way past time that someone knocked it down.

You don’t hear a political official talk like this very often.

Tranform Drug Policy Foundation

NEWS RELEASE
On Tuesday June 26th the UN office of drugs and crime (UNODC) will celebrate annual World Anti-Drugs Day. Transform Drug Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading independent centre of expertise on drug policy and law reform, condemn the UNODC for once again attempting to dress up the striking failure of its anti-drugs strategy as success, and failing to speak out against mass executions of drug offenders in China.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation spokesperson Steve Rolles said:
‹In 1998 the UN drug agencies pledged to create a ëDrug Free World‰ within ten years. However, The UNODC‰s own annual world drug reports have chronicled the continued global rise in the production and use of drugs over the last decade, particularly of the most dangerous drugs, heroin and cocaine. By any measure the UNODC’s policy and ten year strategy has been an abject failure, with Afghanistan opium production breaking new records, and cocaine use in Europe rising dramatically.
‹But instead of reflecting on these failures and considering alternative strategies for controlling drug markets that do not involve wasting billions on futile eradication programmes and increasing militarization of the war on drugs, we just hear more tough talking and yet more announcements of new initiatives.
‹This year, as they launch another initiative with the motto ëdo drugs control your life‰, they should be asked why they have continually failed to condemn the practice in China of celebrating world anti-drugs day with mass executions of drug offenders. The UN Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions has called on China to end the use of the death penalty for drug trafficking, yet the UNODC, who organise world anti-drugs day has never seen fit to comment on China‰s barbaric practices.

I ran across this singularly bad (and ignorant) piece of political poetry, supposedly about the drug war, and it got me thinking that maybe we have some poets in our midst who would like to try their hand at some real drug war poetry.
I’m not really talking about Ode to the Joint I Smoked Last Night (although that would be fun to read as well), but rather challenging and interesting political poetry dealing with the failures of the drug war, the incarceration, the trampling on the Constitution and individual rights, the funding of criminals and politicians (but I repeat myself).
Submit your poems to me and I’ll publish and promote the best of them on a special page in the site (please be sure to include whether you’d like your real name or a pseudonym used).
Any form of poem is welcome — haiku, limerick, free verse, ballad, sonnet, triplet, cinquain.
Submit your poems in comments, or email them to me. Here’s a couple I’ve thrown together to get you started:

coca leaves glisten
the rain noisily departs
nourishment? poison.

and

A failing Drug Czar from D.C.
To cover his ass did decree:
“I’ll demonize pot,
And lock up the lot,
For daring to think they are free.”

“bullet”

The Drug Czar’s latest “report” on teens, drugs and violence is the usual mishmash of distorted statistics and implied conclusions not drawn from the data, all in an attempt to scare people.

Today ONDCP released a new Special Report showing that teens who use drugs are more likely to engage in violent and delinquent behavior and join gangs. Early use of marijuanaÖthe most commonly used drug among teensÖis a warning sign for later gang involvement.

Of course, when the Drug Czar brings out the big guns of the numbers to support his conclusions, it all sounds scary, unless you actually look at it. Now I haven’t even looked at any of the original data he’s drawing from, but check out this one that he promotes:

Nearly one in six teens (17%) who got into serious fights at school or work in the past year report using drugs;

However, if you look at the 2007 Monitoring the Future report, you see that the percentages of any teens who used drugs in the past year are: 8th grade (14.8%), 10th grade (28.7%), and 12th grade (36.5%). So to say that 17% of teens who got into serious fights report using drugs is not a particularly alarming thing. (In fact, it appears by these numbers that teens who use drugs are actually less likely to get into serious fights.)
But this is, of course, standard operating procedure for the Czar of Lying.
For more on how stupid this all is, see Scott Morgan’s excellent posts: Pete Gets off the Couch and Joins a Gang and Marijuana Doesn’t Cause Gang Membership, but the Drug War Does.

Radley Balko’s doing some great stuff.
Today, he’s testifying “as part of House Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott’s ‘Crime Summit.’ … topic is the militarization of domestic police departments.”
There’s nobody better to talk about that subject. And on July 19th he’s been invited to testify at hearings on the Kathryn Johnston raid.
It’s really wonderful to see the House even discussing these subjects (and that somebody had the brains to invite Radley).
Also check out his column on videotaping the policy.

“bullet” Brian Bennett challenges the drug policy reform establishment again with The Catch-22 of Drug Law Reform
“bullet” The so-called Drug Czar uses his so-called “blog” to brag Governor of Connecticut Vetoes So-Called “Medical” Marijuana Bill. He’s particularly good at being smug at taxpayer expense about the prospect of sick people suffering. It’s a talent.
“bullet” Scientists from the Pontificia Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador claim that our aerial spraying in Colombia is damaging the DNA of Ecuadorians living near the Colombian border (makes you wonder what it’s doing to the Colombians).
“bullet” William A. Collins in the East Texas Review: Some wars aren’t meant to be won

Never mind that none of this works. It‰s not meant to work. It‰s meant to promote heroic political figures, to protect wasteful prison jobs and contractors, and to keep poor people away from the dreaded voting booth. […] The ‹Drug War,Š like the ‹Terror War,Š has value in its own right. We can‰t simply end it. Jobs and votes are at stake. For many, winning the ‹warŠ would be a true calamity.

“bullet” I’m guessing Mark Kleiman has the right take on the Giuliani campaign chair being arrested for cocaine.
“bullet” Do rules hamper remedies for pain? by Kyung M. Song in the Seattle Times [from May, but worth reading]

Via Vote Hemp:

On June 18, 2007 the two North Dakota farmers granted state hemp farming licenses, Rep. David Monson and Wayne Hauge, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota in an effort to end the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) obstruction of commercial hemp farming in the United States.

For those who haven’t been following this case — basically, the state of North Dakota, after determining that hemp would be a good viable crop in the state, passed a law allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp, if they jumped through a bunch of state hoops and got permission from the DEA. So these two farmers went through the state process and put in their application with the DEA. The DEA said “Thanks for the application. We’ll sit on it for a dozen years or so just to to be jerks, and approve it when hell freezes over.” So the state of North Dakota said, “Forget that nonsense — you don’t need to get DEA approval anymore.”
This set up the confrontation that we’re seeing now. The lawsuit is to prevent the DEA from busting the farmers for following state law.
I’ve read the complaint (pdf) and it’s quite interesting. This is going to generate some more fireworks.
Now it may seem suicidal to base their argument on limited federal government reach under the Commerce Clause (particularly given recent Supreme Court rulings — ie, Raich). However, even in Raich, the government was able to find a convoluted way to say that the marijuana used by Raich had an affect on the overall national supply and movement of marijuana (as absurd as that idea is to rational people). But in this case, the parts of the plant that will be utilized are specifically exempted from the Controlled Substances Act (and that has been confirmed by the courts).
So I don’t know — maybe the Commerce Clause has a couple of crumbs of usefulness left. We’ll see.
In the complaint, they get a few nice digs in against the DEA:

On information and belief, DEA would in fact not act on the two Plaintiff
farmers‰ applications, ever. Even in the highly unlikely event that DEA ever made a
decision on those applications, the decision would be a foregone conclusion: DEA has
clearly indicated that it would treat Plaintiffs‰ non-drug state-licensed and regulated
industrial hemp cultivation as the manufacture of a substance controlled under Schedule I
of the CSA and would never authorize such production.

Update: Nice analysis of the history of hemp and the DEA by Jamison Colburn over at Findlaw today. [Thanks, Tom]

There’s a whole lot going on in the world, so bear with me as I list a bunch of really interesting and/or important links.
“bullet” Radley Balko has a compelling video interview with Regina Kelly, one of the 27 black residents of Hearne, Texas arrested in a horrible travesty of justice. Fortunately she survived the ordeal and is talking about what happened.
“bullet” Phillip Smith covers Creepy Science — an effort to develop tests to determine whether someone used drugs up to four months previous. And he rightly calls “bulls*it” on their claim that it’s to help identify potential drug addicts earlier.
“bullet” The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that a passenger in a car that has been pulled over is considered “seized” (as the Justices properly noted, he’s certainly not under the impression that he can walk away), so that if the original stop was potentially questionable, the passenger could challenge it under the Fourth Amendment. Yes, a Fourth Amendment drug case where the Supreme Court ruled to protect the Fourth Amendment! Wow!
“bullet” The Sixth Circuit Court ruled today that email has Constitutional privacy protection, similar to phone calls. The ruling may not stand, however, based on some of the talk around the legal blogs.
“bullet” The strange case of What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common over at Salon. This story will make you sick regarding the utterly corrupt way contracting is done in the federal government. (It also makes you realize how logic and common sense has very little impact in the political world.)
“bullet” John Ross’ The Annexation of Mexico is scary — the notion of our even attempting to turn Mexico into another Colombia is frightening. But that’s exactly what our government wants to do.
“bullet” A blast from the past: Short video of Ron Paul back in 1988 on the Morton Downey show responding to a drug war cheerleader audience member. Nails it.
“bullet” More stupidity in government. Canada telling doctors how much marijuana they can prescribe — limiting it to five grams a day. “We don’t need no stinking doctors to advise us on dosage. We’re the government.”
“bullet” The Bush administration is concerned that we don’t have enough people in jail for long enough in this country, so they’re pushing for more mandatory sentences as part of a Republican crime legislation package as a campaign issue for 2008. So expect a bunch of tough on drugs/crime rhetoric in the campaign, with the Republicans calling for more outrageous sentences and the Democrats whimpering “Me, too.”