Drug WarRant

Interesting news:

Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, in a reversal of a campaign position, said Tuesday he could support legislation legalizing the use of marijuana for certain medicinal purposes.
The governor‰s position comes as lawmakers stepped up a push in the final two weeks of the 2007 session for New York to join 12 other states and allow marijuana for those suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis and other painful conditions.
In a debate last summer, Spitzer said he opposed medical marijuana. Now he said he is ‹openŠ to the idea after being swayed by advocates in the past couple of months.
‹On many issues, hopefully you learn, you study, you evolve. This is one where I had, as a prosecutor, a presumption against the use of any narcotic which wasn‰t designed purely for medicinal and medical effect. And now there are ways that persuaded me that it can be done properly,Š the governor told reporters.

Wait a second. Did I just read that a politician was willing to learn and change his position based on the facts? Wow.
Maybe there is some hope for this country.

Update: The New York Assembly passed the medical marijuana bill 95-52 late today. Next stop, the Senate.

(Actually, in my mind, it’s the only Paris Hilton coverage that was ever worth watching.) Tommy Chong discusses the appropriate “punishment” for Paris on the Colbert Report tonight. (It’ll probably be available at Comedy Central later.)
Tommy always cracks me up. At one point, Colbert asks him “Are you high right now?” and Tommy replies “… Of course!”
Update: here’s the video!
Further update: Tanya defends Paris Hilton’s honor from Tommy’s lechery. I’d agree if it wasn’t so clear that it was simply Tommy play-riffing on Paris’ intentionally self-promoted reputation.

Tom Angell and SSDP have filed a Freedom of Information Request to get copies of ads the government ran a few years ago connecting drugs with terrorism. Now, just the notion of the government even resisting the dissemination of advertisements that they publicly ran with taxpayer money is bizarre enough. The only possible justification that I can think of is that releasing them would harm national security because it would offer proof to the rest of the world that this country is run by idiots.
(Come to think of it, hiding corruption, lawbreaking, or stupidity seem to be the main reasons for government secrecy these days.)
This kicker is the typo in the letter Tom got from the White House, saying that since the General Counsel is predisposed until June 19, he’ll have to wait 200 years for a response.
Update: stranger and stranger. Talk about defensive… Is the ONDCP starting to lose it completely? Tom reports that an ONDCP staffer apparently read the blog, is upset for having been made fun of (calling the post “childish”), and ominously threatened “if you’re going to play games like this, you can expect the same games to be played on you.”
Best response to that from crimethink at Hit and Run:

What, is the ONDCP going to post the SSDP’s typos? Or do they have something more sinister in mind?

Better be careful with your spelling, Tom.

Over at TownHall, Debra Saunders writes about failed Plan Colombia:

The New York Times reported last year that anti-drug planes have to fumigate three times as much land as they did in 2002 to kill the same amount of coca.
And for what? An endgame that produces more cocaine than the world wants — and at cheaper prices? […]
“Can you tell me any other product that has gone down in price in the last few years?” Curtis asked — and you can’t include technological products that change. Think milk or bread or beef.
Those consumer prices are not falling. It takes a Washington-born government program — designed to drive up the price of cocaine — to drive down the cost of cocaine. The one thing drug warriors never demand of an American anti-drug program is that it actually work.

Marijuana Policy Project is giving every House lawmaker a set of these playing cards with 52 reasons why you should support medical marijuana access.
It’s a gimmick, sure, but it’s a good one, and it might actually get Congress’ attention while they’re busy playing War.
(The joker is sadly hilarious.)

This is a pretty amazing story.

Ascension Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend drove up to a
traffic light. As the light turned green, the car in front of them
lurched forward, then stalled. Alverez-Tejeda managed to
stop in time, but the truck behind him tapped his bumper. As
Alverez-Tejeda got out to inspect the damage, two officers
pulled up in a police cruiser and arrested the truck driver for
drunk driving. The officers got Alverez-Tejeda and his girl-
friend to drive to a nearby parking lot, leave the keys in the
car and get into the cruiser for processing. Just then, out of
nowhere, someone snuck into their car and drove off with it.
As the couple stood by in shock, the police jumped into their
cruiser and chased after the car thief with sirens blaring. The
police then returned to the parking lot, told the couple that the
thief had gotten away and dropped them off at a local hotel.
The whole incident was staged.

Everyone mentioned above except Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend were police (or working for them). It was all an elaborate ruse to search the car without tipping off the drug conspirators.
This was a case that went to the 9th Circuit Court on whether this was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and the court ruled that it was not.
It’s certainly an interesting case, and a little disturbing, but it’s not the huge Fourth Amendment debacle that a few are making it out to be.
What some commenters online are failing to notice is that both parties agreed that the government in this case had more than enough probable cause (from wiretaps, etc) to legally search the car. This was not a fishing expedition in the sense that we’re used to examining. The only question was how they went about getting the car to do the search. So the court was examining whether the nature of the seizure (pretending to steal the car instead of just taking it) was unreasonable, and ruled it wasn’t.
And quite frankly, compared to the violence of home invasion as part of the drug war, this ruse involving a tap of the bumper seems less of a constitutional concern to me.
This doesn’t meant that I like it. Just that I don’t think the 9th Circuit was wrong in this case, given the current weakness of the Fourth Amendment.
However, I also think that law enforcement should consider carefully the ramifications of their actions. They probably considered this operation to be a crafty or cute idea (and I can imagine the high-fives afterwards with the car “thief.”) But what does it say to the public that they serve?
One of the serious repercussions of the drug war is the fact that, in the eyes of the public, law enforcement has become a force to be feared, not trusted. An agency of lies and corruption that will take your friends away. That breakdown in the perception of law enforcement’s status with the public makes it easier for violent crime to exist, and is destructive to communities.
Every time that law enforcement uses techniques such as lying and stealing as part of their standard operating procedure, they drive a further wedge into their relationship with their employers and feed the societal sickness we are experiencing.
___
Note that this thought was articulated by Kozinski within the 9th circuit opinion:

If people can’t trust the representations of government officials, the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” will become even more terrifying.

Full 9th Circuit opinion here (pdf). Articles at Wired Blog, Volokh, Daily Kos.

If you’ve had a hard time really understanding what the dynamics are in Colombia politically and how they relate to the drug war, this opinion piece from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs gives an excellent analysis.

Here’s another one that makes you slam your head against a wall.

While acknowledging that police made a mistake in bursting into the wrong apartment for a drug raid, Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer yesterday cautioned that the city needs to maintain aggressive drug enforcement.

Why is this important to Mayor Ellen?

Ensuring public safety is the city’s goal, she said.
“Citizens want a restored sense of personal and community security, peace of mind and they want to feel safe,” she said.

Sounds good. So how does the city of Annapolis make you feel safe?

Members of the Police Department’s special team sent to raid an apartment in the Spa Cove complex at 8:20 p.m. Wednesday broke open the door and threw in a percussion grenade. Once inside, the tenants said, the officers kicked a man in the groin, and handcuffed him and a woman.
Police quickly realized they were at the wrong address.

Kicked in the groin = feeling safe? In what alternate dimension?
But they eventually got the “bad” guy, right?

When they went to the correct apartment, nobody was there and no drugs were found, police said.

I’m betting there are a couple of citizens of Annapolis who would personally like to help Mayor Ellen O. Moyer feel.. “safe.”

This is rich.
A botched drug raid led to a five-day suspension for the officer who failed to verify the address before a forced entry raid. Now you might think that a five-day suspension is outrageously light for subjecting innocent citizens to a wrong-address drug raid.
However, on appeal the sentence was actually reduced to one-day, because — and this is truly amazing — there was so much incompetence involved that it was deemed unfair to give that officer a whole five days suspension. Of course, nobody else was given anything more than a written reprimand.

Hearing examiner Don Williams wrote that several circumstances that were beyond Caruthers’ control caused “catastrophic results.”
“The FBI was to verify the location but lost sight of the informant as to which house he was entering to verify the location,” Williams wrote. “Broadwater and Caruthers got tied up in other duties that prevented their getting together with the informant to verify the location.”
He also pointed out that other officers in Caruthers’ chain of command suggested no discipline in the case. Williams ruled that although the city had just cause to discipline Caruthers, he believed that a one-day suspension is reasonable.
“We’re happy it was reduced, but we still feel that at most, he should have gotten a written reprimand just like Tegan Broadwater,” [Caruthers’ attorney] Driskell said.

Incompetent? Corrupt? Join the Drug War! It’s not just a job… It’s a place where you’ll feel right at home.

The headline says it all:

At least 47 dead in 1 week; killings linked to drug war
Mexico violence leaves President blaming U.S. market

You know, there are times when I’d like to blame the law of gravity for something stupid I did, but I at least realize that there’s no practically useful point in doing so.