Drug WarRant

Well, Lou Dobbs is definitely upset. He appears to be attempting to make up in passion what he lacks in coherence.

We must end the abuse of drugs and alcohol, and provide successful treatment for Americans whose addictions are destroying their own lives and wounding our families and society.
Whatever course we follow in prosecuting other wars, we must commit ourselves as members of this great society to only one option in the War on Drugs — victory.

I guess the “how” will come later this week?

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has introduced (again) an industrial hemp farming bill. The bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Barney Frank (D-MA), Raþl Grijalva (D-AZ), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Jim McDermott (D-WA), George Miller (D-CA), Pete Stark (D-CA) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)

“It is indefensible that the United States government prevents American farmers from growing this crop. The prohibition subsidizes farmers in countries from Canada to Romania by eliminating American competition and encourages jobs in industries such as food, auto parts and clothing that utilize industrial hemp to be located overseas instead of in the United States,” said Dr. Paul. “By passing the Industrial Hemp Farming Act the House of Representatives can help American farmers and reduce the trade deficit Ö all without spending a single taxpayer dollar.”

Indefensible is right. And yet, this bill has an extraordinarily low chance of passing, because most of Congress is too scared to do anything right if it could even be perceived as having a connection to drugs (although I’d love to be proved wrong).

It’s actually a very simple and straightforward bill. It essentially amends the Controlled Substances Act to add the following:

(B) The term ‘marihuana’ does not include industrial hemp. As used in the preceding sentence, the term ‘industrial hemp‰ means the plant Cannabis sativa L. and any part of such plant, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration that does not exceed 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis. …
(i) INDUSTRIAL HEMP DETERMINATION TO BE MADE BY STATES.ÖIn any criminal action, civil action, or administrative proceeding, a State regulating the growing and processing of industrial hemp under State law shall have exclusive authority to determine whether any such plant meets the concentration limitation set forth in subparagraph (B) … and such determination shall be conclusive and binding.

How can you vote against that?

In this ridiculous post, ONDCP Deputy Director Bertha Madras has a rather silly “rebuttal” to the new study showing the value of marijuana in relieving certain symptoms in AIDS sufferers.
But the really interesting part…
Remember the recent story about how a pharmaceutical company was developing a “new” concept? It was… smokable medicine. At the time, I noted that this pretty much ruined ONDCP’s usual blather about how there’s no such thing as smoked medicine.
Well, check out the quotes in Bertha’s piece:

No drugs in leaf form are being approved as prescription pharmaceuticals…
A smokable plant is not modern medicine….
[emphasis added]

It really is remarkably funny.

Lou Dobbs, who is already missing way too many brain cells, is apparently getting high sucking on the tailpipe of the drug war this week (or am I mixing metaphors?)
From last night:

DOBBS: Abusing them, dependent upon them, and the drugs are last week hailing a decline in drug use. I mean, it is just remarkable.
We have been engaged in a three-decade-long war against drugs, this government. And we’re failing.
And this broadcast is going to continue its series of reports which we began tonight on “The War Within,” and we’re going to focus on this, and we’re going to try our level best not only to increase the body of public knowledge, but try to spur this government into some action to help twenty thousand young Americans who are being killed every year.
It’s just — it’s disgraceful. It’s horrible. It’s tragic.
Christine, thank you very much.
Christine Romans.
That leads us to the subject of our poll tonight.
Do you believe we should commit to win the war on drugs in this country? Yes or no?

And if you thought that was a badly worded poll question, check out tonight’s:

QUICKVOTE
Do you believe only a nation bent on its own destruction would continue to permit its population to consume 2/3 of the world’s illegal drugs?
__ Yes
__ No

Lou has been at this kind of nonsense for some time. You may remember that he recently unfairly maligned Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
So I’m guessing that during his drug war week, Lou isn’t going to bother address the excellent letter that Ethan sent him last week:

Dear Lou,
When I wrote my open letter to you on the subject of U.S. drug policy in 2003 (which a friend has archived here), I honestly thought that you might consider its points. I was, of course, sadly mistaken. 2 1/2 years later, you’re still spouting the same spectacular damage.
You state, “A group of law enforcement agents now say that effort is actually fueling drug trafficking and violence, and they say the answer is to end the war on drugs.” You call this argument “idiocy.”
Can I assume that you do not dispute the first half of this statement? After all, the ONDCP itself has confirmed in its ads that drug money funds crime and terrorism. This is not disputed by the vast majority of drug policy reform advocates, as far as I can tell — except in the sense that the ONDCP’s emphasis on marijuana is telling and hilarious and seen by anyone with a functioning cortex as precisely the cynical maneuver that it is.
I further assume that you will not dispute the connection between Prohibition II and the $500 billion black market that it has inaugurated. Had we not “banned” drugs, that $500 billion per year might have gone somewhere a bit more productive. Even Milton Friedman, while he might have had issues with the “somewhere a bit more productive” angle, questioned why we would fund our enemies quite so readily. Of course, you’re much smarter than Friedman, and I can only assume that you’ll get around at some point to telling us how and why.
That leaves the second half of your statement. We could take you right out of 2007 and plunk you down in the dying days of Prohibition I, and your argument would hold up just as well — which is to say, not at all. You’re the Eliot Ness of the new millennium, and it’s kinda cute, except that it’s helping to destroy more lives than it could ever possibly save. When the first nuclear blast goes off in one of our cities due to drug profits, I have no doubt that the witch hunt will begin in earnest, with you at the forefront. At that point, it will be too late to speak of irony.
What you appear to want is a silver bullet. A silver bullet is not forthcoming, Lou. At least within the context of the drug war, you have betrayed yourself as a liberal of the destructive variety that conservatives such as you routinely accuse all liberals of being. You want the federal government to come in and Fix Things, heedless of the angels of your better judgment, who are crying out that neither public health nor supply and demand work as you’d have us believe.
I challenge you to produce evidence that prohibition has ever worked. It doesn’t count in the event that the end result was the adoption of more lethal drug B after the banning of less lethal drug A. You can’t do it, Lou. You simply can’t. Bathtub gin hurts you; crack cocaine destroys you. But you’ll keep trying, even as our land of the free cements its role as the world’s number-one incarcerator — at your well-deserved expense.
Most of these drugs, now so vilified, have been with us in one form or another since the beginning of recorded history. (And yes, I include the Bible, if you feel like going there.) If you want to lock people up for plucking a God-given plant from the ground, in the face of much greater dangers, it’s going to be increasingly upon you to explain why — especially when, by all appearances, it’s only increasing the danger that we’re both going to get blown up.
If wishes were horses, prohibitionists would ride. True conservatives, meanwhile, should recognize that legalization and regulation would tax those who use drugs, instead of taxing the entire U.S. populace to the tune of a laughably inadequate $80 billion per year.
While I’m a private citizen with no organizational ties, I have little doubt that history will show that I worked for your purported cause even as you worked against it. What with the vast resources at your disposal, I respectfully suggest that there is little excuse for this.
Sincerely yours,
Ethan Straffin

Radley said it right…

Finally, a serious inquiry into Johnston’s death should take a critical, sweeping look at the fundamental nature of drug policing. The Atlanta Journal reported last month that a misguided focus on arrest numbers and stacking statistics have led to low morale, short-cutting, and conducting high-stakes raids resulting in paltry amounts of contraband. The lure of a big bust, as was promised by the real informant in the Johnston case (a suspect arrested on other charges who said police would find a kilogram of cocaine in Johnston’s home) can make a career, tempting officers to cut corners.
A proper look into Johnston’s death, then, wouldn’t end with the lying narcotics officers. It would include criticism of the entire culture of the city’s drug policing. It would include criticism not just of the police, but also of prosecutors and judges. It would reevaluate long-standing policies on the proper way to conduct a drug investigation. And it would ask tough questions about the goals, priorities, and very nature of drug policing.
To their credit, the Johnston family is calling for precisely that kind of sweeping review.

Read the whole thing.

Word is out (via NORML) that DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner has ruled today in favor of Lyle Craker/MAPS. This, if it holds, would finally break the monopoly on research marijuana currently held by NIDA/DEA. The key is that no researcher wants to study potential commercial applications of marijuana if they’re dependent on the government for their supply (particularly when the government only grows low-grade schwag. The 87-page decision (pdf) includes:

“I conclude that granting Respondent’s application would not be inconsistent with the Single Convention, that there would be minimal risk of diversion of
marijuana resulting from Respondent’s registration, that there is currently an inadequate supply of marijuana available for research purposes, that competition in the provision of marijuana for such purposes is inadequate, and that Respondent has complied with applicable laws and has never been convicted of any violation of any law pertaining to controlled substances. I therefore find that Respondent’s registration to cultivate marijuana would be in the public interest.”

Press release should be out in the morning. Of course, the DEA will probably start working on ways to block this development.
In related news, a study using the government’s low-quality pot had good, if unsurprising results:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Smoking marijuana eases a type of chronic foot pain in people with the AIDS virus, according to a study published on Monday that the researchers touted as demonstrating marijuana’s medicinal benefits. […]
The study, appearing in the journal Neurology, focused on sensory neuropathy — a kind of severe nerve pain usually felt as aching, painful numbness and burning in the feet — associated with human immunodeficiency virus infection.

And naturally:

But the White House drug policy office said the research was flawed and offered only “false hope.” […]
David Murray, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s chief scientist, said the suffering of AIDS patients is an issue of great concern.
“Unfortunately, this particular study is not terribly convincing,” Murray said, citing what he saw as methodological problems.
“Unfortunately, it will lead many people into a false hope that street marijuana is somehow going to be the thing I can use that will make me feel better and won’t jeopardize my health. Now that is a fraud and a dangerous one,” he told Reuters.

Murray, you inhuman, sadistic putz. Unsupported claims of a cure can be called “false hope.” But a symptom reliever cannot, by definition be called “false hope.” Either it relieves symptoms or it doesn’t. Period. There’s nothing that can be false hope about it. And you have absolutely no evidence that marijuana will jeopardize anyone’s health.
Update: For further reading on the decision regarding growing non-government pot for research, see Boston Globe. San Francisco Gate has a good article on the medical marijuana research for HIV patients.

Use. Abuse. Two completely different words. Sure, they have some letters in common, and they have connections to each other, but there are different words. Sure, there are a few words where you can add a couple of letters without changing their meaning, such as regardless/irregardless or oriented/orientated. Use and abuse don’t work that way.
And yet, the ONDCP, the DEA and most of the prohibitionists have undertaken a systematic campaign to blur or eliminate the difference in meaning. And, to a large extent, they have succeeded. Take a look at this surreal example in a opening of a recent AP story:

Drug Czar Says Drug Abuse Has Declined

Illegal drug use in the United States has dropped sharply since 2001, but abuse of prescription drugs remains a problem, the director of National Drug Control Policy said Friday.

What?
Am I out of line, here? Let’s go to the American Heritage Dictionary:

Use: To take or consume; partake of
Abuse: To use wrongly or improperly; misuse

Clearly different meanings. In fact, the definition of “abuse” even refers to “use” as a different word! American Heritage also has a specific definition for substance abuse: “The overindulgence in and dependence on an addictive substance, especially alcohol or a narcotic drug.” Overindulgence in, dependence on. Not use. Abuse.
Take a look at the ONDCP’s schizophrenic approach toward these terms in the new 2007 National Drug Control Strategy. From the introduction:

To focus the Nation‰s drug control efforts directly on the problem of drug abuse, the President set ambitious goals for driving down illicit substance use in America.

What?
It gets even muddier as you read the document, which contains:

• 211 instances of the word “use”
• 77 instances of the word “abuse”
• 109 instances of the phrase “drug use” or “substance use”
• 56 instances of the phrase “drug abuse” or “substance abuse”
• 53 instances of “user” or “users”
• 7 instances of “abuser” or “abusers”

When I moderated a debate with William Otis (Counselor to the Administrator of the DEA), I asked him point blank whether there was a difference between “use” and “abuse” when it comes to illegal drugs, and he said “No.”
Why?
Prohibitionists in general, and the administration in particular, need to blur the distinction for several reasons.
First, it’s easier to demonize when you don’t have to make distinctions of casual use versus addiction, or marijuana versus heroin, etc. They’re all just druggies.
Second, admitting that there is such a thing as responsible or casual use would require them to confront the notion that people who are of no danger to themselves or others are having their lives destroyed by their government.
Third, and most important, they need to invent a reachable goal. They need numbers showing that the drug war works. That ain’t easy. But it doesn’t matter to the government if those numbers really mean anything — only that they provide some public relations cover for their war.
If you’re the government and you want to show a decrease in the “drug problem,” what do you do? Try to help heroin addicts? No percentages in that — their numbers are too small, and it takes some real effort. How about even hard core marijuana users? Still, too few and too difficult.
There is, however, an easy secret target — the casual marijuana user. We’re talking about the person who enjoys having pot with friends now and then — no big deal — a get-together on the weekend, or whatever. These make up the largest population of illicit drug users in America, and are the easiest to sway. This population is more susceptible to scare tactics, because… it’s no big deal to them. They can have a beer instead of pot and it’s no great loss. Marijuana is just something they enjoy. So when the government demonizes marijuana, they can often get a percentage of this large group to stop using marijuana (or become afraid to admit using it in surveys, which amounts to the same statistical value).
So when you see the Drug Czar bragging about the success of his efforts through reductions in numbers, this is because he has already destroyed the meaning of “use” and “abuse.”
This approach does absolutely nothing to help those with drug problems. It does absolutely nothing to address abuse. This destruction of the English language is so the government can harm people who have no problem with drugs as a tactic toward proclaiming victory.

Story at The Agitator.

It constantly amazes me that the prohibitionist politicians out there aren’t satisfied with banning drugs, but they want to ban everything else as well, in the name of the drug war. Pipes, rolling papers, roach clips, a banner with “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” written on it, glass vases, coffee stirrers, look-alike substances, marijuana flavored candy, cigar wrappers, needles, cold medicines… you name it.
Now some politicians in North Carolina want to ban empty space. The Kinston Free Press is having none of it.

State Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, is well-intentioned, but seriously misguided when he proposes a new state law making it a felony for people to “have any compartment, space or box” in their vehicle for the purposes of hiding illegal items.
Let’s really think about this. If this law were passed, it would make it illegal to have empty space in your vehicle.
Empty space. Why could it possibly be the government’s business if you want to conceal something in your car? Some folks might want to hide sensitive documents, cash, legally possessed guns or a computer.
Moore says he filed the bill at the request of the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, whose officers lament that sometimes they pull over vehicles after drugs have been delivered. That is, the secret compartment is empty. Sorry, folks, but this is not the way our country should work. Innocent until proven empty? Give us a break!
This is like saying, “Your car is capable of going 180 mph, so we’re going to charge you with speeding.”

Next up: going after people who have empty body cavities where they might hide drugs…

Remember the discussions about Barry Cooper, the ex-cop who was marketing the Never Get Busted video? There was some divided opinion within the drug policy reform community, whether this guy was legit or an opportunist, or some combination thereof.
While I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, others now have viewed the video, and it appears that the “combination thereof” description may fit.
Mark Draughn has a review of the video here, and there’s some detailed analysis at Flex Your Rights
While there appears to be a fair amount of useful information, there’s one very glaring problem: Barry Cooper recommends consenting to a search if you’re holding.

Even though you have the constitutional right to refuse consent — when you refuse it raises a huge red flag. You could almost call it a huge reasonable suspicion.

That is just plain wrong. Constitutionally. Morally. Ethically. And just about every other way. What Barry Cooper is saying is that the Constitution is meaningless and the police will, in every instance, violate your Constitutional rights. I don’t believe that we’re that far gone yet. But even if he was right — if standing on your right to refuse consent would cause the police to search and that they’d manipulate the truth to get away with it, I still think it is right to stand up for your rights.
And what we need to do is continue to make sure that everyone knows that they have the right to not consent to a search, and that people who are not holding should also not consent to a search (in fact, I actually wish a cop would ask to search my car, just so I could refuse).
You may find the video interesting, or useful, but I’d advise against following Barry Cooper’s advice in this one area.
Update: Via Tanya (breaking my heart), I learn that Loretta Nall has reviewed it in detail and wants her money back.