Drug WarRant

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The word is that Colombian President Uribe is going to face new challenges when facing a Democratic House as he lobbies for more drug war funding.
Chris Kraul writes in the Los Angeles Times:

When Republicans were in control of the U.S. Congress, Uribe, a U.S.-educated ally of President Bush, managed to convince the leadership that despite ongoing problems, he was still fighting against drugs and terrorism as best as could be expected.
Now as Uribe arrives in Washington today on one of his frequent trips to lobby Congress, the tables have turned. At this pivotal point in binational relations, he faces a Democratic majority far more prone to blame him for a slew of human rights abuses, the alarming alleged paramilitary connections to his government and the failure to slow cocaine production.
The latest setback occurred Monday, when the White House released a survey showing that despite massive spraying of defoliants to wipe out coca crops, farming of the base material for cocaine in Colombia grew 9% in acreage in 2006, the third straight year of increases. The growth came despite a 24% jump in spraying, prompting critics to call for a new approach to the Plan Colombia anti-drug and terrorism aid package, which costs the U.S. $700 million a year.

And Patty Reinert and John Otis in the Houston Chronicle:

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, in Washington yet again to lobby for trade and aid, will be greeted by Democrats planning a dramatic change in U.S. support for the South American nation. The program would veer away from military and anti-drug efforts and toward development and human rights projects. […]
Instead of allocating close to 80 percent to the Colombian military and drug-eradication programs, as has been the case for the past decade, lawmakers are proposing that only 65 percent of the total aid package go to the military. The remainder would be designated as economic and humanitarian aid.

While I suppose this is a welcome trend, it still seems ridiculous to those of us who really understand the economics and dynamics of the drug war. It’s like saying that instead of giving an 80/20 split of school funding for beating/educating children we’re going to reduce it to 65% for beating children. Sure, it’s an improvement, but it’s still stupid.
Unfortunately, this appears to be the ongoing problem with the Democrats when they actually attempt to deal with drug war excesses. Rather than taking any kind of bold step that would make a significant difference, they sort of water down the bad policy a little, which sets themselves for accusations of being soft on drugs — the very thing that they were trying to escape by avoiding the strong decision.
…
There’s one thing that I’m waiting for right now from the Democratic Congress. It’s a tiny thing in the overall scheme of the drug war, but it’s a chance for the Democrats to make an actual change. It’s getting close to the time of year for the annual Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment. This is the amendment that would prevent the federal government from interfering with states that have medical marijuana laws. We need to gain about 50 votes over the past few years’ attempts.

Your tax dollars at work. Decades of taxpayer money spent, poor farmers’ lives ruined, excessive violence… And drug war success in Colombia is measured this way…

The results of the 2006 U.S. Government survey of cultivation in Colombia indicate that statistically there was no change in the amount of coca being grown between 2005 and 2006. The 2006 coca cultivation estimate is subject to a 90 percent confidence interval of between 125,800 and 179,500 hectares. The 90 percent confidence interval for the 2005 estimate was between 127,800 and 160,800 hectares. The significant overlap between the two years‰ estimates means that it is not possible to infer year-to-year trend information.
The survey estimates that there were 157,200 hectares under cultivation, an increase of 13,000 hectares from the 2005 estimate, subject to the confidence limitations described above. The 2006 area surveyed increased by 19 percent compared with 2005, and almost all of the increase was identified in these newly surveyed areas. Because they had not been previously surveyed, it is not possible to know with certainty if the coca found in these areas is in fact newly planted and had not been producing for a period of time.
Rapid crop reconstitution, a move to smaller plots, and the discovery of previously unsurveyed coca growing areas, have posed major challenges to the techniques and methodologies used to understand Colombia‰s coca cultivation and cocaine output. After losing one-third of the estimated coca cultivation to herbicidal spraying between 2001 and 2004, traffickers and growers implemented the widespread use of techniques such as radical pruning and replanting from seedlings. Such countermeasures result in crops that are initially unproductive or significantly less productive than mature fields. Yet, when surveying a field, it is impossible to know with certainty whether it is a mature, productive field, or a field which has been sprayed with glyphosate, and then pruned or replanted. […]

Translation from ONDCP-speak: We’re sure that the drug war in Colombia is a huge success, even though the facts say otherwise. And it’s not our fault anyway, because the drug traffickers aren’t cooperating with us. But we can solve the problem if we do more of the same.
It really burns me up that these people actually get a paycheck from us.

You cannot fight a military war against drugs. All that you will do is destroy your own country.

Three Mexican army officers and 16 soldiers were ordered detained Monday in connection with the weekend shooting deaths of two women and three children at a military checkpoint in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. […]
Three of the four women in the car were rural schoolteachers. The dead included Griselda Galaviz Barraza, 25, and her three children, ages 7, 4 and 2.
Defense officials said the troops were members of the 24th Motorized Infantry Regiment involved in “the permanent campaign against drug trafficking.”

Well, at least those kids won’t use drugs.
This is sickening. And inevitable. Using force to attempt to undo economic laws of supply and demand inevitably result in corruption and collateral damage. That’s a fact.

“bullet” thehim’s Shooting Fish in a Barrel discusses a High School undercover operation (where the officer approaches students asking them to procure drugs for them) and just how ridiculous it is to assume that arrests in that situation have any meaning at all. It’s also reminiscent of this despicable case, where an attractive female undercover cop gets H.S. boys with raging hormones to buy drugs for her.
“bullet” At Reason’s Hit and Run: The Minnesota Supreme Court chips away even more at the Fourth Amendment, in a case involving drugs and dogs, of course.
“bullet” This was in the Drug War Chronicle I posted yesterday, but it’s worth highlighting. Phillip Smith discusses the Ed Rosenthal trial and the interesting activist tactic of people in the medical marijuana movement refusing to testify against Rosenthal.
“bullet” Good post by Scott Morgan on ONDCP’s “Dr.” David Murray’s appearance at CATO for a discussion of “Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.” See also the comments there.
“bullet” Grits for Breakfast has several interesting posts: Austin Tells TV show COPS “No Thanks”, plus Unreliable urinalyses accuse innocent people, and A really bizarre reaction to police corruption.
“bullet” Alex at Drug Law Blog asks Will it Regulate?

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“bullet” LA Times editorializes: Ending the Marijuana Monopoly: Federal Officials Should Allow Competition in Growing the Drug for Needed Studies on Its Medical Use.
Good. Puts more pressure on DEA bad girl Michele Leonhart, who has to decide how to ignore the recommendations of DEA Judge Bittner.
“bullet” Scott Morgan rants Testing Positive for Marijuana Doesn’t Mean You’re High
“bullet” In a completely meaningless act, that merely showed that prosecutors are vindictive, that trials where the facts are excluded are shameful, and jurors who survive the process that weeds out the informed are clueless, Ed Rosenthal is again convicted and will be forced to serve zero time in prison.

I’m very busy in New York, seeing shows and giving walking tours all over the city. I’ve brought 79 people from Central Illinois to the city this year for a theatre trip. Saw Grey Gardens last night, Frost/Nixon and Year of Magical Thinking today, then LoveMusik, Moon for the Misbegotten, Spring Awakening, Crazy Mary, and a performance by Momix.
I will find some moments to blog in between all this craziness, but for right now, consider this an open thread.

This editorial in the Edmonton Journal (Canada) responds to the suggestion that Harper will pursue a U.S.-style war on drugs.

If that is the case, it would be an unfortunate mistake with predictable and very disappointing outcomes.
While Washington from time to time trumpets bravely that it has scored a victory in the war on drugs, by all empirical measures it has been an abject failure.

It then goes on to detail the costs of the war in the U.S., and then:

One of the driving forces behind the U.S. war on drugs, especially under the Republican party, is Christianity. The religious right has placed “saving” people from the scourge of drugs as an important American value and tantamount to saving souls. It is one reason that successive administrations have continued to throw increasing resources at a fruitless war. The message, in essence, that the small number of those rescued from the grip of drugs justifies the billions used in the war.
Perpetuating the war also appeals to the military and law enforcement communities. They see it as another almost limitless source of funds to buy new equipment and recruit personnel. If the U.S. were to move toward a more permissive stance on illicit drug use, spending in this area would diminish, as would the number of military personnel, police officers and prison guards. In the U.S., prison and court costs alone for people jailed on drug charges — mostly users and foot soldiers of organized crime, not the kingpins — mean that our neighbours to the south pay out about $10 billion a year.

Interesting point about the Christian influence in the war on drugs. And it is true. There are many who support the war on drugs through a misguided sense of “morality” (which seems to be in the nature of attempting to save one sinner by sending the entire congregation to hell). “Christian” support of the war on drugs is, in actuality, a perversion of Christianity.
Christian morality is a personal choice that must be freely taken by an individual — you don’t achieve it through imposition by a secular government. But this popular tendency to push for criminal laws to enforce moral standards demonstrates self-doubt — a faith that is so weak that they require the secular government to enforce it.
The informed and enlightened Christian (regardless of their beliefs on the morality of drug use) sees the entire picture and is horrified by the suffering imposed upon the people by the state. To participate in, or support such a war, would be immoral.
Additionally, the notion of the mere use of certain drugs as being immoral (oddly just the ones that have been outlawed by the state) has no grounding in Christianity — it is primarily the invention of religious dogma and imposed upon the masses by the church.
Anyway, back to the Edmonton Journal…

Research has shown repeatedly that having young people involved in supervised after-school sports programs is the best way to keep kids and drugs apart.

Absolutely true — although I wouldn’t limit it to sports programs. Music, theatre — any after school activities are far better at preventing youth drug abuse than school drug testing or enforcement activities.

If the Harper government believes that throwing more money into law enforcement and drug interdiction is the right model, it should do so only after explaining how it expects to succeed when all other similar efforts have shown no benefit and, in many cases, have resulted in considerable harm.

Accountability. What a concept!

In today’s Independent on Sunday (UK), Hugh O’Shaughnessy reports:

America has spent billions battling the drug industry in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. And the result? Production as high as ever, street prices at a low, and the governments of the region in open revolt.
The immensely costly “war on drugs” in Latin America is slowly collapsing like a Zeppelin with a puncture. The long-forecast failure for strategies which involve police and military in forcibly suppressing narcotics – first decreed by President Richard Nixon decades ago – is now pitifully evident in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries of the Western hemisphere.
The estimated $25bn ( UKP13bn ) that Washington has spent trying to control narcotics over the past 15 years in Latin America seems to have been wasted. […]
Last month, an inquiry for the UK Drug Policy Commission said: “The research suggests that the greatest reductions in drug-related harm have come from investment in treatment and harm reduction. However, the bulk of expenditure on drug policy in the UK is still devoted to the enforcement of drug laws”.
In Britain, as in Latin America, drugs clearly can’t be controlled by armies and police forces.

The editorial staff of the Independent agrees and chimes in:

You Can’t Fight Drugs With Guns
The worldwide “war on drugs” that relies on armies and police to destroy crops and arrest traffickers has failed. […]
As Hugh O’Shaughnessy argues today, the world is finally beginning to realise that you can’t beat narcotics with machine guns and policemen’s truncheons.