Drug WarRant

I really can’t imagine that President Bush is looking forward to his upcoming trip down south.

Like many Americans at this time of year, President Bush is striking out for southern climes.
Packing strategies for fostering trade, fighting drug traffickers and fending off the regionwide shift to the political left, Bush flies out Thursday on a swing through the friendlier parts of Latin America.

Even sticking to the “friendlier parts” can’t be much fun for him. His drug war is losing popularity by the day, and the war in Iraq has pretty much stripped him of the ability to offer either bribes or threats in Latin America.
He’s a lame duck, unsure of his strength in countering the influence of the President of Venezuela!
Here’s an interesting thing to discuss…. Could it be that this administration’s love affair with the drug war could end up being a liability to… the drug war? It seems that the rest of the world is starting (in bits and pieces) to identify the excesses of the drug war with the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration. And they’re starting to see that the advantages of defying U.S. drug policy might outweigh any potential repercussions.

Via Talk Left comes an interesting development in the Ed Rosenthal Case

Recap of Ed Rosenthal for those who are new to the story: Medical marijuana grower authorized by Oakland, California, arrested by feds, not allowed to mention legal status in his federal trial, convicted. Jurors find out they were duped by the government and are outraged. Judge isn’t happy either and sentences Ed to one day. Ed appeals anyway out of principle and is granted new trial. Feds decide to re-trial and try to pile on more charges to get him.

Now a federal judge is asking the tough questions in this case.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 3 Ö A federal judge has asked the United States attorney here to submit all trial preparation memorandums in the case against a leading advocate of medical marijuana so that the court can determine if the government has been pursuing a ‹vindictive prosecution.Š
The judge, Charles R. Breyer, ordered the review at the request of lawyers for Ed Rosenthal, a spokesman in the effort to legalize marijuana who has been in a closely watched court battle with the government.

Oh, and Tommy Chong is raising money for Ed Rosenthal’s defense fund.

See the obedient Hitlerjugend marching off to the drug war. It doesn’t matter if they know that D.A.R.E. has been proven to be, at best, ineffective. Nothing’s going to stop them from teaching the children that marijuana leads to coma and death.

See also this idiocy, granted the status of “education.”
Update: I know that this kind of stuff can seem pretty depressing to readers here, but re-watch that video and realize that the TV station got it right. Not only did they mention the D.A.R.E. effectiveness controversy in the lead-in, they gave it significant detail in the piece, even going so far as to mention that D.A.R.E. might have the opposite effect.
This actually served to make D.A.R.E. lady and daddy drug war look a little… creepy, particularly when juxtaposed with the little marching soldiers footage.
There’s some parents out there who watched that news item and went… “Wait a second…”
And that’s good news.

Via Grits for Breakfast comes this news that Halle Berry is going to be playing the role of the lead NAACP attorney in a movie about the Tulia drug bust. (46 people, mostly black, in a very small town, busted for drug sales based on the word of one officer.)
According to the article, production will begin in May.
Having a big star like her bring popular visibility to this aspect of the drug war could be very valuable.

“bullet”

“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly

The Food and Drug Administration is aware of the dangers of nausea:

Severe vomiting can be life threatening and require intravenous fluids and hospitalization.

So it’s good to know that the FDA is there to make sure that the necessary medicine is available to… dogs.

Good news, dog owners: There’s a new drug to keep Fido from vomiting all over your living room or car. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, Cerenia, to treat or prevent vomiting resulting from motion sickness and other causes.

Of course if you’re a human suffering from nausea due to cancer treatments, the FDA prefers that you die.

It’s always a treat to read Lester Grinspoon, and he’s got an OpEd in the Boston Globe today.

A NEW STUDY in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine.
It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine — and US drug policy — that we still need “proof” of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years. […]
And it is extraordinarily safe — safer than most medicines prescribed every day. If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

He concludes by attempting to give Congress an “out.”

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the US government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana — and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use. Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite “important new data” and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.
The new Congress could go far in establishing its bona fides as both reasonable and compassionate by immediately moving on this issue. Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions of Americans suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and other debilitating illnesses.

My page on the Morse v. Frederick “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” Supreme Court case has been expanding as more briefs come in. A while back, I told you about some of the Amicus briefs supporting the principal in this case. Now we have a number of briefs supporting the student.
I think the best one may be the one from Student Press Law Center (joined by Feminists for Free Expression, The First Amendment Project, The Freedom to Read Foundation and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression). A strong brief throughout, and does a good job of identifying the petitioners’ attempts to create a new category of speech to be prohibited simply because it doesn’t agree with what the schools want to say.

There is likewise no constitutional exception, as Petitioners argue, for “subject-changing” speech that diverts the audience’s attention away from the school’s preferred message. […]
Robust independent student speech is fundamental in a democratic society. Not only is it constitutionally safeguarded, but it also provides students with a powerful and vital civics lesson.5 This Court has stated repeatedly that the fact that schools are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. […] ( It is most important that our young become convinced that our Constitution is a living reality, not parchment preserved under glass. ).

Other amicus briefs on behalf of the student Frederick include National Coalition Against Censorship (joined by American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression), the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). All breifs are available at the page as pdf files.
The ACLJ is the right-wing religious legal group. They’re the odd bedfellow in this particular case — arguing preemptively under the concern that expanding schools’ power to control students’ speech might someday be used against religious speech.
The brief from Students for Sensible Drug Policy is a really fascinating piece of work. In my mind, it is actually less effective in a strict legal sense than some of the other amicus briefs in making the specific case on behalf of the student, and yet it has the potential to serve a very important purpose. It appears to me that the SSDP brief is actually using the excuse of presenting an amicus brief to educate the Justices on important issues.
Essentially they creatively find a way to tell the Justices about some of the failures of the drug war by tying them to the compelling interest of students to discuss issues related to the drug war without interference. This tactic allows SSDP to bring up the fact that D.A.R.E. and the ONDCP Media Campaign are failures. It even allows them to mention the Goose Creek debacle..

Some schools go beyond these common measures and
employ more severe tactics, which they claim are geared
towards drug prevention. In Goose Creek, South Carolina,
for example, armed police officers stormed a public high
school shortly before the start of the school day and, at
gunpoint, ordered the students to the floor in order to
conduct a drug search. The principal requested the raid
based on suspicions cast by a few students and teachers,
and some surveillance videos showing nothing more than
‹students congregating under cameras, periodically
walking into a bathroom with different students and coming out moments later.Š Despite a thorough search
involving drug-sniffing dogs, no drugs were found.
Similarly, zero-tolerance policies have led to severe
punishment for trivial and even mythical offenses. Schools
have suspended students or turned them over to police for
possessing ordinary items that school officials said looked
like or ‹imitatedŠ drugs, such as a bag of dirt that officials
said looked like marijuana or a mixture of sugar and
Kool-Aid that officials said ‹imitat[ed] drug activity.Š
Students are also deeply affected by drug policies
outside of school. Mandatory minimum drug sentencing
laws, for example, have a significant impact on the
children of offenders who are forced to grow up without one
or both parents. Indeed, 67% of incarcerated parents — and
74% of incarcerated mothers — at the federal level are in
prison due to a drug offense. Young people similarly are
affected by a provision in the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which
subjects persons convicted of a state or federal felony drug
offense to a lifetime ban on receiving cash assistance and
food stamps. Some students may become homeless when family members run afoul of this one-strike policy that
permits public housing agencies to evict entire families if
one member of the family engages in drug activity.

And the brief goes on to list one travesty after another that involves students, supposedly to support the argument that students are so directly involved in all aspects of the drug war, that their ability to freely discuss it is even more critical.
But ultimately, the purpose of the SSDP brief appears to be to make sure the Justices know that if they were considering limiting speech in this case, it would not be for a noble, worthwhile, or useful purpose.

Check out this exchange at the National Review’s conservative group blog “The Corner”
Andrew Stuttaford

Who is losing Afghanistan?
George W. Bush, that’s who. His watch. His administration. His incompetence. His arrogance. His failure to learn from failure.
I wish I could say that I was surprised by this latest report from Aghanistan, but I’m not:

“British officials are worried about the consequences of US proposals to eradicate Afghanistan’s opium poppy harvest, which include spraying the crops from the air, a policy it adopted in Colombia. The fear is that tough anti-narcotic measures now would alienate poor farmers who have no alternative livelihood and drive more Afghans into the hands of the Taliban. Such a policy would further endanger British troops, military commanders say. ”
As I’ve said time and time before, the decision by the Bush administration to prioritize the drug war ahead of the war against the Taliban is of course, madness. It’s time for the Brits to take a stand, and announce that either Bush’s drug warriors leave Afghanistan or Britain’s troops do. Ninety days would seem to be adequate warning.

Andrew adds more here
Then another Cornerite jumps in:
Michael Ledeen

I don’t suppose there’s any room for doubt in Andrew’s categorical denunciation of the anti-narcotics campaign in Afghanistan. If there were, I would point out that the terrorists, most certainly including the Taliban, are major narcotics traffickers, derive a great part of their income from the drug traffic, and are in cahoots with various mafias in the project.
Has anybody asked if the local growers are going to be reimbursed? Or do we take the Guardian and the Times as canonical? It’s bad, and that’s that.
Life is rarely so simple as that.

Ledeen has never been the sharpest tack in the box, and Stuttaford nails him.
Andrew Stuttaford

Michael, it’s not just the Times and The Guardian. As you very well know, newspaper after newspaper after newspaper (across the ideological spectrum) has reported on this idiocy (I’ve cited plenty on this Corner in previous posts). If you prefer, check with the Senlis folks (also previously cited on the Corner). They are on the ground. If you don’t like Senlis, try the British Army. I’ve previously quoted a number of its representatives on the Corner too, and they, Michael, are also on the ground, and they are doing their best while the Bush administration does its incompetent, contemptible worse.
As for your point about the Taliban being drug traffickers, well, I hate to tell you, but it actually makes mine. The reason that the Taliban is able to make so much money out of this trade is the Western interdiction of Afghan opium. Black markets are always very profitable. In that sense, the drug warriors are the jihadis’ best friend. Thanks for nothing, guys.
And I’m sorry, Michael, this *is* simple. Basic economics usually is.
The drug warriors need to be thrown out of Afghanistan, and fast, please.

Boy, it sure is nice to see a conservative who hasn’t drunk the cool-aid, and isn’t afraid to use things like economics, and… a brain.

Why not both?
This bit of insanity has been making the rounds.

Mayor Thomas Lauzon on Saturday said he hoped the Legislature would consider imposing the death penalty on convicted crack and heroin dealers, and to legalize marijuana.

Crazy? Or crazy like a fox? After all, there’s a legalization advocate who could never be accused of being soft on drugs.
Oh, wait. We haven’t heard from the Governor yet…

Jason Gibbs, spokesman for Gov. James Douglas, said he had not discussed the issue of imposing the death penalty on crack and heroin dealers with the governor. But, he added, Douglas would oppose legalization of marijuana. “He’s not unalterably opposed to the death penalty, but he doesn’t have any plans to introduce it. There are some circumstances he would support a death penalty, but I’m not sure this is among them,” Gibbs said. “Marijuana is a gateway drug for some folks, so he would not support legalization.” Gibbs was referring to the view of some that marijuana is a “gateway drug” because it is the first step toward more serious drug usage and addictions.

Now that’s some scary crazy. He’s sure that marijuana legalization would be out of the question, but will have to check as to whether the death penalty for non-violent drug offenders should be in play.
Where do they find these people?