Drug WarRant

The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War…

Yes, today is the day that nine Supreme Court Justices convene in the highest court in the most powerful country in the world and discuss…

Oh, I wish I could be there when Ken Starr, who has already altered the national status of blow-jobs, explains to the Supreme Court that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” threatens the fabric of our nation and our educational system.
Of course, the reality is that this is a serious case. At its worst, the Supreme Court (no friend to any case involving even the hint of drugs) could rule that schools have broad authority to regulate student speech that is contrary to their educational message, even if they are not in school and the speech is not disruptive.
And there’s also a deep significance as to the philosophy of educating citizens. It concerns me that authoritarians are pushing to train young people that the proper order of things in a free democracy is submission to authority. Get used to peeing in a cup on demand. Get used to being controlled in what you think, what you say. That’s what the world is about.
For the most comprehensive look at the case, check out my resource guide:
http://bong.drugwarrant.com
If you’re in DC today, SSDP will be holding a rally at the Supreme Court .

“bullet” The Drug War Roundup this week focuses on building a wall. Tons of good stuff.
“bullet” I’ve been wondering for some time just what this “skunk” is that the British media seem to be smokin’ and why is it that they seem to be the only ones?

Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction – – and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised. […]
“Once it has hit the frontal lobes of the developing adolescent, you just don’t know whether they’ll recover or not.”

Well, thehim’s been wondering the same thing, and he may have an explanation.
“bullet” Also via thehim, check out this Open Letter to Bill Richardson by the strangely named xxdr zombiexx.
“bullet” Interesting concept: If the police attack you illegally in your home, you have the right to resist.

This editorial in the Sacramento Bee got my attention:

Why Finance More Drug War Failures?
Two days after President Bush promised $3.7 billion more in aid to fight cocaine trafficking in Colombia, Sacramento police and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents announced the largest crack cocaine bust in the city’s history. Police seized seven pounds of crack and two pounds of pure cocaine Tuesday. The drugs’ estimated street value was a modest $375,000.
The juxtaposition of the two events, the president’s promise of yet more aid for drug fighting in Colombia and the record cocaine seizure in Sacramento, is instructive. Over the last seven years, U.S. taxpayers have spent $4.7 billion to finance Plan Colombia, under which the Colombian government sprayed millions of acres with herbicides to eradicate coca fields and launched military offensives against guerrillas. It has had minimal impact on the availability or price of cocaine in the United States. […]
Critics within Colombia point out that U.S.-financed eradication efforts have produced thousands of refugees and that the spraying kills not just coca but legal crops such as cassava, plantains and sugar cane, leaving small farmers with nothing. Money promised for economic development for alternatives to the lucrative drug trade never materialized. Meanwhile, coca growing has moved to new areas within Colombia, including the country’s fragile national parks, and other countries in the region, destabilizing them in the process.

Exactly. We’ve been throwing money away on eradication and just causing more problems.
Excellent editorial. Until…

U.S. efforts should be focused in our own communities, on, in his words, “an obligation to reduce the demand.” Don’t waste billions more in Colombia. Fight drug traffickers on the U.S. streets. Use the money for local police and prosecutors, for drug treatment and education, for economic development, housing, job training and after-school programs. [emphasis added]

And it ends up talking about how these are the best ways to “win a war on drugs.”
Sigh.
If they’d just left out the parts I bolded, it would be a good editorial, but instead it’s just more of that muddle-headed thinking that surely some kind of fighting is necessary since we’re in a “war.” So while everybody seems to see that the war isn’t working, you’ve got some people saying “The problem is, we’ve got to kill more Colombians,” and someone else saying “No, no, you’re wrong — that doesn’t work. We’ve got to kill more Americans.”
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.

It’s a fun little story: Bolivia wants drink giant to drop ‘coca’ from Coca-Cola
Mostly a publicity stunt as part of Bolivia’s efforts to improve the image of their exceptionally useful coca plant, and work toward making it once again an important part of their legal economy. But it may have struck a nerve

Coca-Cola released a statement on Thursday saying their trademark is “the most valuable and recognized brand in the world” and was protected under Bolivian law.
The statement repeated the company’s past denials that Coca-Cola has ever used cocaine as an ingredient — but was silent on whether the natural coca leaf was used to flavor their flagship soda.
Bolivian coca growers say that only a few years ago the company used to purchase tons of their leaves annually. They express frustration that Coca-Cola can use their beloved coca leaf — yet not defend it to a suspicious world.
“Instead of satanizing the leaf, they need to understand our situation,” said David Herrera, a state government supervisor for the coca-rich Chapare region. “They exported coca as a raw material for Coca-Cola, and we can’t even freely sell it in Bolivia.”

This got me thinking about the Coca Cola™ trademark.
If Bolivia and some of the other countries end up successfully navigating the international obstacles to allow the use of coca leaves in a variety of commercial products (toothpastes, analgesics, food products, etc.), soft drinks would be a natural.
And if somebody made a cola using coca leaves, it would be, by definition, a coca cola. Theoretically they could use those words on their product and advertisements (not as their brand name, but as a descriptor). So you could have Pepsi’s coca cola, for example.
I don’t know very much about trademark law, but it seems to me that a lot of lawyers could get very rich over this.
And I also wonder what the Coca Cola™ company is willing to do to avoid this situation even coming up…

The Vermont Supreme Court yesterday ruled 3-2 that police need a search warrant to search a car unless there are circumstances such as “when an officer’s safety is threatened, or evidence might be destroyed, or a suspect might flee.”
Reading that, you might think, “Well duh! That’s clear from the Fourth Amendment.”
Except that this is contrary to federal precedent, which allows officers much more latitude in searching cars without a warrant, particularly when the driver has been arrested (as had happened in this case).
Link

The ruling, which represented a rare departure from frequent unanimity, said the state constitution provides Vermonters with greater protections from unreasonable searches and seizures than does the federal Bill of Rights.

(Actually, the federal Bill of Rights provides greater protections from unreasonable searches and seizures than does the federal government.)
Of course, this ruling has little direct impact outside Vermont, but it may provide an example of “See, it’s possible to conduct police work without trampling on rights.”
Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan is the kind of man we need all over the country serving the citizens in that role. Read his reaction to the ruling:

“Vermont has a proud history of protecting one’s privacy interest, and this is a profound example of Vermont’s uniqueness,” he said. “We’ll respect the law.”

Wow.

I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope that [the government] will open it and see what it says.

–Bill Maher

“bullet”

“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly

I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t let my feelings get away like that. And I should have been smart enough to not listen to this radio program featuring ONDCP’s “Dr.” David Murray and gambler/sado-moralist/former drug czar William Bennett.
So Bill Bennett asks about medical marijuana, and this is what David Murray, a federal employee paid by my tax dollars, has to say:

This is really hurting us, and it’s hurting the people because it’s a fraud. There is no medical value to smoked, raw, weed marijuana — the Food and Drug Administration, scientific bodies have weighed in on this. This is not an open, or a contested issue — it’s clear. It is risky. It is dangerous to the people who use it, and it is not therapeutically valuable. It’s not a medicine, so the fraud is to keep offering it as a medicine. And in state initiatives supported by very powerful legalization lobbies with millions of dollars behind it, they’ve sometimes pulled the wool over voters in state initiatives in places like California, and now even New Mexico.

This isn’t worth debunking. This is a guy throwing handfuls of his own feces around the room. When that happens, there’s no point sticking around. You just hope that an attendant will be around soon to put him back in his cell.
So I turned it off. If any of the rest of you want to listen to the rest and see what the callers had to say, let me know what happened.
I’ve got some other thoughts going through my head right now…
Link

Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.
“I’m sure not going to let them kill me,” she said. “Oh my God.”

Link

On June 14, Natalie Fisher went to Peter McWilliams’ home, where she worked as housekeeper to the wheelchair-bound victim of AIDS and cancer. In the bathroom on the second floor, she found his life-less body. He had choked to death on his own vomit. …
I thought about the judge who had denied him his day in court and had ordered him to forgo the medication that kept him alive. I suppose he’s happy, I said to myself, now that he’s murdered Peter.
I’m one of those libertarians who generally tries to look at government policies more as folly than as evil. But sometimes, the evil that government does transcends simple folly. Sometimes I have to be reminded that there is a real human cost of government.

There is a real cost to what the David Murrays of this world do to our country, our citizens, our soul.

Take the quiz. It’s a tricky one.

Two years ago I reported about a particularly heinous police action in Flint, Michigan. Innocent partygoers at Club What’s Next were strip searched and arrested for “frequenting a drug establishment” simply because someone else at the club possessed illegal drugs.
Fortunately, on October 13, a judge threw out the cases. And now today…

Detroit — The American Civil Liberties of Michigan filed a class action lawsuit in Federal District Court today against the City of Flint, the Flint Police Department and Genesee County Sheriff Department on behalf of 40 innocent young men and women who were strip and/or cavity searched and wrongfully arrested during a 2005 raid of a licensed Flint nightclub.
‹These young people simply did what thousands like them do all over the country š they went to a licensed and legal club to listen to music, dance and socialize,Š said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. ‹A judge has already agreed with us that the arrests were unlawful and we now seek to hold Flint and Genesee County accountable for their reckless disregard for the patrons‰ rights and to ensure that these practices are abolished.Š

Communities have to be made to pay. If that’s the only way to stop the un-American, un-Constitutional, and unacceptable abuses of drug war power, then so be it. Let every community that turns its police force over to an oversight-free multi-jurisdictional task force pay. Every community that turns a blind eye to abuse because they’ve been told it’s “for the children” — let them pay.
And to Corey and all the others who have endured both the indignity of the event and the two years that followed, thanks for being willing to stand up for the rights of all of us.