Drug WarRant

The DEA is at it again. Tonight, they are sponsoring the Chicago Vigil for Lost Promise at Navy Pier (with information at chicagovigil.org). Naturally, I am countering with Chicago Vigil for Lost Promise (with info at chicagovigil.com).
What we have here (and with the original Vigil for Lost Promise, and with the DEA Museum exhibits, etc.) is a blatant effort on the part of the DEA to help their own image through using the tragedy of people who have died. What makes it worse is that the DEA itself is, directly or indirectly, a cause of those deaths.
It is the drug war, and the enforcement tactics used by the DEA, that increases violence and the dangers of drugs, that keeps young people from seeking help — that shortens the promise of all those lives. I understand the pain of those who have lost loved ones. But for them to turn to the agency that contributed to their deaths for some kind of macabre celebration of the lethal drug war… is a sickness born of ignorance and despair.
The fact that this vigil in Chicago tonight will be held at the obscene DEA-glorifying exhibit Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause at Navy Pier, just makes it worse.
Of course, left out of this vigil will be the true victims. There will be no discussion of the lost promise of 14-year-old Ashley Villareal, who was killed by the DEA. Or those who have committed suicide since the DEA took away the medication they needed to live. Or all the broken families brought about from imprisoning non-violent drug offenders.
The vigil is a sham. A publicity stunt for the DEA, dancing on the bodies of the dead.
And, of course, all the usual suspects will be dancing — including NBC5/Telemundo and the Chicago Sun-Times, Motorola; McDonald’s; the Cebrin Goodman Center; the Richard Driehaus Charitable Lead Trust; Bensinger & DuPont Associates, Inc.; Families Changing America; TASC (Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communites); Prevention First; and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, each of which will receive an “award” for dancing on dead people.
“A Vigil for Lost Promise” is open to the public and will take place on Monday, June 18th at 6:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier.
By the way, if you type “Vigil for Lost Promise” into google, the first site you get is mine. Hopefully, some will arrive there by accident and learn something.

One of the things that is the most frustrating about being a drug policy reformer is fighting through the assumption by the uneducated (drug war uneducated, I mean), that the only reason to be in favor of drug policy reform is so people can do drugs.
And, of course, if they said that, the easy response would be: “You stupid twit. People can do drugs now. They do drugs now.” But, of course, they don’t give you that option. Most times, they don’t actually say it. They just look at you with that expression that says “what a strange reason for him to invest all this time and energy.”
Of course, the reasons for supporting drug policy reform are too numerous to count, including: taking the profit out of the black market and de-funding violent criminal enterprises; reducing corruption in police and public officials; reducing overdoses and dangers from tainted drugs; doing a better job of keeping dangerous drugs from kids; restoring our constitutional rights; injecting some sanity into foreign policy; stopping the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars; increasing business productivity through reforming human resource policies; teaching children how to be responsible free citizens; restoring sanity to medical practice; and a whole lot more.
Science has long been one of the victims of the drug war — ever since Anslinger distorted science to fit his drug war fantasies.
This article at Memepunks: America’s War on Science, provides a chilling picture of the future of science education (and the encouragement of young scientists).
Whether it’s concern over homemade fireworks, methamphetamines, or homeland security, it is now almost impossible to get useful chemistry kits for kids to learn and experiment.

In an attempt to curb the production of crystal meth, more than 30 states have now outlawed or require registration for common lab equipment. In Texas, you need to register the purchase of Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers. The same state where I do not have to register a handgun, forces me to register a glass beaker.

Mr. Wizard (who died last week), is probably spinning in his grave.

For example, when a current company tried re releasing a kit based on the one marketed by Mr. Wizard himself back in the 1950s, they found that they could only include five of the original chemicals in the set. The rest of the items were replaced with inane things like super balls and balloons.

So no, drug policy reform isn’t just about letting people smoke pot legally. It’s about saving the country from a host of serious ills related to prohibition.
Some people get stupid when they do drugs, but that’s usually for only a few hours. The drug war reduces the intelligence of the entire country’s future.

“bullet” Richmond, Virginia prosecutors and police plan to start seizing houses where they find drug activity and selling them off, even if the owner wasn’t directly involved. But there’s a catch.

But officials said seizing a house under the forfeiture law, a civil proceeding, can be a time-consuming and complex process.

Oh, gee, you mean you have to go through, like, procedures and stuff before you can take someone’s home?
“bullet” Dan Gardner has a good column in the Ottawa Citizen: We Can Score One For The Naysayers. He reminds the U.N. of their specific plans for a drug free world by 2008.

In 1998, Pino Arlacchi said the naysayers were wrong. Give it 10 more years, he said.
We did. The naysayers were right. And it’s well past time those who make a living pursuing this mad policy were held to account.

“bullet” The Washington Post has a really bad OpEd by long-time drug warriors J. Michael Walsh and Robert L. DuPont (yes, that one): The Drugged Driving Epidemic. It is a hopeless piece of dreck, using bad science, anecdote, and irrelevant data to proclaim an epidemic that doesn’t exist, all to support their drug testing and related businesses. (Interestingly, Walsh’s group lists both the ONDCP and the Washington post as their clients.)
“bullet” The anti-pot pill turns out to be a pretty stupid idea. (We could have told you that.)
Apparently, blocking the natural cannabinoid receptors in your body leads to depression, nausea, vomiting, and suicidal tendencies, among others side effects (possibly including central nervous system damage). And why were they creating this pill? For weight loss.

Ultimately, in the eyes of the FDA, a healthy body needs all the “pot” it can get.

(That last line in the story is got to be stinging the FDA right now.)

Remember Avi Green — the comics guy who was so upset that Kirsten Dunst admitted to being pro-pot?
Well, now he’s written an… exposÚ about… me (and Radley Balko and a few others tossed in for fun).

A few days later, three or four other sites, including a ludicrous, pro-drug site called Drug War Rant, run by a strange man named Peter Guither, whose name sounds German, took a swipe at the post, […] For example, get a load of just how loathsome little Mr. Guither looks in the picture on the side in this profile page. Oh, and if Guither is reading this, just to let you know, you won’t be doing yourself a favor by dressing up like that! Even some junkies might admit that it’s even more frightening that any hallucinations illegal drugs themselves might cause!

Note how much difficulty he has in identifying the obvious sarcasm in the quote about Buckley.

The cover article in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is huge. Very powerful piece by Tina Rosenberg about the issue of pain management and how the drug war has interfered with proper medical procedures. If you have access to the Sunday paper, pick one up this week to reward them for running it. Or write them a letter.
You can read it now online: Doctor or Drug Pusher

This is just… so…

The Mexican border city of Tijuana, mired in drug violence, hopes to recall brighter days this summer by tossing three tonnes of Caesar salad, the dish invented in the town’s U.S. prohibition-era glory days.
The salad was born in 1932 in the kitchen of chef Cesar Cardini, according to the current owners of Caesar’s Hotel in Tijuana, a city that flourished as U.S. tipplers flooded its bars and casinos in search of legal alcohol.
While still drawing hordes of U.S. party-goers too young to drink across the border, Tijuana has been plagued by dozens of killings in recent years in a drug cartel war — an image locals hope a record-breaking side dish will help shake off.

I’ve really got to do something about all those head-shaped holes in my walls.

It seems like a constant stream of these events now.

Law-enforcement officers raided the wrong house and forced a 77-year-old La Plata County woman on oxygen to the ground last week in search of methamphetamine.
The raid occurred about 11 a.m. June 8, as Virginia Herrick was settling in to watch “The Price is Right.” She heard a rustling outside her mobile home in Durango West I and looked out to see several men with gas masks and bulletproof vests, she said.
Herrick went to the back door to have a look.
“I thought there was a gas leak or something,” she said.
But before reaching the door, La Plata County Sheriff’s deputies shouted “search warrant, search warrant” and barged in with guns drawn, she said. They ordered Herrick to the ground and began searching the home.
“They didn’t give me a chance to ask for a search warrant or see a search warrant or anything,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “I’m not about to argue with those big old guys, especially when they’ve got guns and those big old sledgehammers.” […]
Deputies asked Herrick if she knew a certain man, and she said no. Then they asked what address they were at, and she told them 74 Hidden Lane.
Deputies intended to raid 82 Hidden Lane – the house next door.
While Herrick was on the ground, deputies began placing handcuffs on her. They cuffed one wrist and were preparing to cuff the other.
“I had gotten really angry, and I was shaking from the whole incident,” she said.

And she should be angry. But it’s this part that really makes me steamed:

Raiding the wrong house was a mistake, but it’s one the task force has been learning from, [Southwest Drug Task Force Director Lt. Rick] Brown said. The mistake could have compromised the investigation and deputy safety.

Yeah, right. Forget the public. Who cares about real people in our homes? The real problem is that this mistake might have messed up their drug war or their own safety. Virginia was lucky, I guess. She survived.
Oh, and by the way, the drug task force had supposedly been investigating drug activity at 82 Hidden Lane for a month. Maybe somebody in the task force should get access to Google and look up the addresses. Or better yet, do some police work.
When I go to visit somebody for the first time, I’m paranoid about checking the number to be sure I’ve got the right place before I knock on the door (and the worst that my mistake could do is make someone answer the door unnecessarily). Would that not be even more true if you’re about to destroy somebody’s life and maybe take it?
The fact that these events happen so often not only is a factor of simple percentages (given the extraordinary number of home invasions authorized in the name of the drug war). It also seems that drug warriors have stopped thinking about the public as citizens meriting concern for their safety, but rather as part of an enemy populace.

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