Drug WarRant

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It really is the height of arrogant butchery when the ONDCP claims to be on the side of the environment.
They spray poisonous chemicals on crops that go on to damage the water and the human and animal life. They make the drug black-market profitable and therefore they enable and encourage criminal enterprises and then push them into the parks and the rainforests where clearcutting endangers the entire world ecosystem.
And then the drug czar plaintively points out that a hummingbird is dying because of people who use cocaine.
No, you Gaia-murdering psychopath, the hummingbird is dying because of your selfish and destructive policies.

Check out this entire editorial in the Register Citizen (CT)

Illegal drug seizures and purchases by police have tripled during the past decade. The dramatic increase indicates there are more illegal drugs on the streets in the Northwest Corner and there are more police officers on the beat to fight the drug local drug infiltration.
It takes money to fight the influx of illegal street drugs and local law enforcement is finding ways to raise the funds needed to hire more police personnel. Getting illegal drugs off the streets is a never-ending and costly battle that all communities must fight.

So we ratchet up the drug war, and the drug war gets bigger, so we need to spend more money to ratchet up the drug war as it gets bigger. Thank God law enforcement is willing to hire more law enforcement, or we’d be unable to ratchet up the efforts to ratchet up the drug war…
Or read this editorial in the Sun-Sentinal (FL)

If you thought the global war on terrorism was tough, the war on drugs is next to impossible. […]
Despite upbeat pronouncements in years past, cocaine prices in the United States have actually dropped and its purity increased, making it a bigger, more affordable draw in an attentive market. More than a decade after the number of illegal drug users fell to a 25-year low of 12 million in 1992, it spiked to 20 million users in 2005.
Things clearly are not going well for the war on drugs. It’s time to retool, or at least rethink, the U.S. strategy, the linchpin of which has been a $5 billion effort to fight the drug industry in Colombia.

Ah, sounding a little like they may have a clue? Not so much…

Plan Colombia, based on combating the drug problem at its source, was a reasonable tactic. Colombia supplies 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in America and much of the crop abused worldwide. And the effort has had some success. This month, the United Nations estimated that the amount of Colombian land used to grow coca, from which cocaine is derived, dropped by nearly 10 percent last year.
But it’s not enough. America, and the world, needs a fresh approach because never has the global fight against drugs, which are used to finance terrorist activity, been more essential.
BOTTOM LINE: Increase Efforts To Combat Drug Abuse

Sigh.
OK, even forget the stupidity about the 10% reduction in land cultivated. That’s been shown to be a highly suspect figure and really more an indication of increased yields (and increased ability to hide production).
But to realize that everything that you’re doing is a failure, yet be unable to even notice the solution of drug policy reform perched on your doorstep, has got to be a kind of mental illness.
I’ve said this before, but I’m bringing it out again…

Some days it feels like I’m watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I’m standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I’m crazy.

Oh, and by the way… You know how they ratcheted up the war in Mexico big time? Troops, arrests, battles. That’ll force the drug criminals to cease operations, right?
Maybe in bizarro world, but not on earth.

Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs. […]
Many Mexicans fear even the army is outgunned. […]
Seizures at the U.S. border indicate the flow of drugs north may actually be increasing – 20 percent more cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana has been seized in the past six months, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The drug war: A blend of depraved venality and gross incompetence wrapped up in the denial of reality and passed off as unimpeachable virtue.

Hawaii has been going overboard in its drug war zeal — the most recent addition being random suspicionless drug tests for all teachers.
Rich Figel has a nice history lesson and challenge in Sunday’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He talks about the parallels to alcohol prohibition:

…we’re committing the same mistakes all over again. During the past 30 years, hundreds of billions of your tax dollars have been spent in a futile strategy that has backfired. Just as Prohibition created conditions for moonshiners, bootleggers and the mob to prosper, the War on Drugs has only benefited organized crime, drug dealers and prison contractors. As long as the profit motive exists for black market goods, there will be suppliers who will step forward to fill the need.

and then he issues a challenge:

Let’s start an island-wide discussion about dealing realistically with our drug problem. In future columns, I’ll be writing in more detail about the history of drug use in the United States, the current state of affairs and alternatives worth considering.
I’m inviting members of government, law enforcement, the prison system and addiction experts to share their views. I want you to tell us what you think. There are no easy solutions. But I believe the majority of Americans are pragmatic people, and once we get past certain emotional issues, we’re capable of finding common ground.
Or would you rather let Big Brother call the shots? Because that’s where we’re heading, unless we change course.

I’ll be very interested to see what happens.

Having been raised as the son of a minister (and therefore spending a lot of time considering the fundamental compassionate roots of Christianity), I got a bit of a sad chuckle out of this one (via Jim Henley, via Crooked Timber).
If you’re unfamiliar with the new phenomenon of Conservapedia (billed as the answer to the “liberal” Wikipedia), it can be quite… bizarre. This essay about the Adultress Story is a prime example. The story of Jesus saying “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” is determined to not be authentic in the Bible, primarily because it interferes with people’s desire for bloodthirsty retribution.

Amid this scholarship [denying its authenticity], why is the emphasis on this passage increasing? The answer lies in its liberal message: do not criticize or punish immoral conduct unless you are perfect yourself. But one need not be perfect before he can recognize and punish wrongdoing in himself and others. Civilized society may not depend on stoning to deter immoral crimes, but it does depend on retribution enforced by people who are themselves sinners.

In the post below, the pope talked about divine retribution. These people are looking for divine allowance to practice personal and societal retribution on those who violate their definition of moral behavior, regardless of the flaws of those imposing the punishment.
Christianity and retribution. Not the way I remember it.
But it’s what you see in the sado-moralism of many of the drug warriors. Treatment more cost-effective than incarceration? Who cares! We want retribution. Punishment. Criminalization. Prisons. We want retribution. Death from dirty needles and tainted drugs. We want retribution. Doors smashed in the middle of the night. (But we’re not including our own “youthful indiscretions,” of course.)
William Bennett doesn’t want Jesus telling him not to cast stones when he has a gambling problem himself. Mark Souder doesn’t want anything to put a downer on his psycho-sexual punishment fantasies.
Ah, yes. The new Christianity. “Blessed are those who inflict punishment on others for petty moral crimes, for they shall feel smug.”

“bullet” Senator Tom Harkin (via)

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.

Now that’s some hall-of-fame logic. You’d think all those health professionals and pharmaceutical companies that gave him over half a million dollars would have been able to teach him something about what emergency room mentions actually mean… Oh. Right.
“bullet” Pope Benedict

Benedict on Saturday turned to the issue of drug trafficking and its damage to society, threatening Latin American drug dealers with divine retribution.
“God will call you to account for your deeds,” Benedict warned drug dealers..

Oops… another unintentionally funny line… wait for it…

“Human dignity cannot be trampled upon in this way,” the pope declared

The pope should try actually having a chat with God. I have my own relationship with the Divine Presence and, while I would never be stupid enough to claim to speak for Him, I get the distinct impression that if He was actually into the divine retribution shtick, drug dealers would be considerably further down on that list than Benedict himself.

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Police Mistakenly Raid Wrong House
Officers with the Hendersonville Police Department mistakenly entered the wrong house when executing a search warrant early Saturday morning.
Two teams of officers were executing a search warrant shortly after 1 a.m. at 729 Geneva St., when one team of three officers went to the rear of the wrong house, said Capt. John Nicholson.

here it comes….

“This has never happened before,” Nicholson said.

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Oakland medical marijuana patient and activist Angel Raich dropped her
lawsuit against the federal government Thursday, ending a five-year legal
odyssey which had taken her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I’ve lost all faith in the judicial system, I don’t understand how somebody
can lose their constitutional right to life in this country,” she said
Thursday.

It has become abundantly clear that the courts cannot be depended upon to protect the rights of individuals from government abuse.
Unfortunately, that means our hope lies in the cesspool that is Congress, and it will take a massive uprising of motivated citizenry to rouse them from masticating in their trough and to prod them into an uncharacteristically noble action — righting a wrong.
And in the meantime, despicable parasites like John Walters feed off the anguish of the dying and the shattered lives and communities, and pat Congress on the head saying “It’s OK. Continue gnawing on the bones of the innocent. It’ll all work out. Trust me.”
Fortunately, the voice of drug policy reform is growing stronger every day, and despite stuffing ears with cotton and brains with mush, it is getting very hard to ignore us. We will prevail. We must.

Check out this anti-driving-stoned commercial from MTV Canada.

“bullet”

“bullet” Your wonderful DEA at work: DEA Agent Posed Suspect In Sombrero
“bullet” This has been making the rounds. A former officer and his wife took some marijuana that he had confiscated and baked it into brownies. The pot caused him to freak out, thinking he was dying. The audio of the 911 call is pretty funny. It’s interesting how the dispatcher seems much more aware than the ex-cop of the ridiculousness of dying from eating a marijuana brownie.
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly

The world is abuzz today with the news:

The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug’s risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.
Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.

Part of me is thrilled by this news. Finally, one of the all-powerful pharmaceutical companies — part of the industry that has worked to block safe natural medicines like marijuana while pushing their own dangerous high-priced cocktails on massive populations who didn’t know they needed it — is getting a taste of their own medicine.
Another part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Somehow, I fear, the drug warriors will use this case to find a way to make pain medication even less available to those who really need it.
There’s another developing part of this story that is fascinating, involving drug warrior and Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani — reported by Brian Ross, Richard Esposito and R. Schwartz at ABC News:

Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin. […]
Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the DEA’s drug diversion office began a criminal investigation into the company.
According to the book “Painkiller,” by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, both Giuliani and his then-partner Bernard Kerik “were in direct contact with Asa Hutchinson, the administrator of DEA.” […]
Kerik told New York Magazine at the time that Giuliani had raised $15,000 in donations for a “traveling museum operated by the DEA.”

That “traveling museum” would be the the outrageous one I’ve spent so much time protesting. Back to ABC:

Some officials told ABC News there were questions inside the agency of whether the donations were an attempt to influence the DEA.
Meier wrote that “with Giuliani now in the mix, the pace of DEA’s investigation into Purdue’s OxyContin plant in New Jersey slowed as Hutchinson repeatedly summoned division officials to his office to explain themselves and their reasons for continuing the inquiry.”
Giuliani publicly praised the company, Purdue Frederick, when it hired him in May 2002 for an undisclosed amount. “Purdue has demonstrated its commitment to fighting this problem,” he said, referring to the issue of drug addiction.
According to Giuliani Partners, Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under Giuliani, was in charge of helping Purdue improve security at the New Jersey plant.
Kerik left Giuliani Partners after disclosures he was under criminal investigation.
In hiring Giuliani, Purdue said, “Giuliani Partners is uniquely qualified” to address the issue of preventing drug abuse.

There’s just a ton of investigation begging to happen here.
One place to start just might be GVI Security Solutions. They’re listed as one of the contributors to the DEA museum exhibit. They also later named former DEA head Asa Hutchinson to their Board of Directors in 2005. And the Chairman of GVI, Howard Safir, was the former New York Fire Commission and Police Commissioner, with both appointments coming from Giuliani.
Who knows how many other tangled incestuous webs you’ll find in this story.
Update: More from Mark Kleiman.