Drug WarRant

Today’s activities are underway at the Students for Sensible Drug Policy conference. I’m going to try to live blog in sections throughout the weekend, so bear with me if some of this is sketchy or paraphrased. It’s all happening too fast to do much editing and re-writes!
Before the start of the opening session, I had the opportunity to meet Howard Woolridge of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. What a ball of fire! You may have heard of his horseback rides across the country wearing a T-shirt saying “Cops Say Legalize Drugs — Ask Me Why.” He’s great fun to talk with and is wonderfully involved in
Opening plenary session began with a very stirring charge by SSDP Executive Director Kris Krane, who established the SSDP’s student activism as the anti-war movement of this generation, and rightly mentioned the drug war as being the underlying source of everything else from the Patriot Act to other abuses in the war on terror.
The opening panel included Steph Sherer, Executive Director, Americans for Safe Access,
Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and Ethan Nadelmann, Founder, Drug Policy Alliance.
All were great — Ethan gave a very powerful speech, including defining the movement (paraphrased)

We care about racial justice, about the constitution, about the U.S. being a responsible member of the world, about not leading the world in incarceration. We are the people who love drugs, who hate drugs and who don’t give a damn about drugs, but we all believe that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with drugs.

Ethan talked about how he sees that the war on drugs is morphing — drug testing, urine testing, air testing, room testing, GPS bracelets — toward a total surveillance society. With prison costs, instead of locking them up, he suggested that we’ll be using surveillance — getting people accustomed to losing little bits of freedom.
The beginnings of a totalitarian society.
He talked about the recent Zogby survery that found 45% of Americans open to the possibility of banning cigarettes, and the disturbing fact that the majority of young people agreed (more than fundamentalists). He talked about how the younger generation has to be smart and not become the creators of the next prohibition movement.

We want policy that is dealing with all substances with maturity and wisdom, not prohibition and idiocy.

Rob Kampia couldn’t be there, Aaron Houston, Director of Government Relations, with the Marijuana Policy Project, gave a updates, including the notion that the Hinchey Amendment is in closer reach after the last election.

I found this article amusing: Home Office chided over ‘hairy chest’ policy

A LEADING chief constable attacked the Government’s “hairy chest” approach to law and order yesterday after Tony Blair announced a series of Home Office measures to tackle crime.
Terry Grange criticised the constant introduction of new legislation which, he said, was done without planned thinking and was based largely on the need to respond to critics.

Boy, if that isn’t a description of politicians’ approach to crime legislation in general!
Of course, you might as well call it the “My dick is bigger than yours” approach, which is immediately countered by “No, I’ve got a big one, too.” It’s impossible to be smart on drugs or crime when the brain has been shut off and the members of Congress are busy comparing… members.

This is only a preliminary ruling, a California Superior Court Judge has slapped down three counties that were trying to back out of medical marijuana. San Diego, San Bernardino and Merced counties were trying to buck the voters and claim that they didn’t have to allow medical marijuana because the state law conflicted with federal law.
The preliminary ruling indicated that the state law could coexist with the federal prohibition, which means that the counties must obey the state law.

I always enjoy reading his letters. Here’s one today in the Oregon Statesman Journal.

We’re not doing the Colombian people any favors by funding civil war. Nor are Americans being protected from drugs.
Destroy the Colombian coca crop and production will boom in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Destroy every last plant in South America and domestic methamphetamine production will increase to meet the demand for cocaine-like drugs.
The self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are seemingly incapable of applying basic economic principles to drug policy. Instead of waging a futile supply-side drug war abroad, we should be funding cost-effective drug treatment here at home. [emphasis added]

James Kilpatrick has an OpEd on the Supreme Court case of Florida v. Rabb. This should be an interesting 4th Amendment case — simply boils down to whether the state can use a dog to sniff the outside of your house and based on what the dog has to say, then search your house.
This case will give the Supremes a chance to show whether they really believe in the sanctity of the home as they play off cases like Kyllo (can’t use heat imaging devices on homes) with cases like Caballes (dog sniff OK on cars even without other suspicion). The court has already pretty much given up on car ownership rights — we’ll have to see what happens with your home.
A loss on this one would be devastating — The police would be able to take a dog (and note that drug-sniffing dogs are not particularly reliable in their results) to any home and get it to “point,” and you’d be subject to a full search of your home.

I’m off to Washington, DC to the SSDP conference, and I’ll be blogging from there as I get a chance. Just look at this amazing line-up — I’m going to have some really tough choices to make in the break-out sessions.
Update: Of course, the first step will be to actually get a working plane out of here. I’m getting to know the Bloomington, Illinois airport a little more than I planned.

Link

An Open Letter to Bill Bennett
by Milton Friedman, April 1990

In Oliver Cromwell’s eloquent words, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken” about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish.

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.

Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on “Prohibition and Drugs.” The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition.

Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, “crack” would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man’s lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built.

Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, “be forever for rent,” but it would be a lot emptier.

Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable.

Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes “on suspicion” can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.

Milton Friedman passed away today at the age of 94.

I thought last night’s debate went exceptionally well. The crowd really seemed to enjoy it, and both debaters did a good job. Unfortunately as moderator, I had to insure an even playing field and couldn’t get into it myself — even though there were times that I was absolutely itching to do so. The most I could do is force someone to a more direct answer if they were dodging the question (which I did a few times).
Kudos to William Otis, who flew out from Washington to take part in the debate. He is Counselor to the Administrator of the DEA — a political appointment who provides advice to Karen Tandy. He was quite nice and seemed sincere in his efforts — a combination of really believing a lot of what he said (partly due to a lack of detailed knowledge or understanding), along with repeating the DEA line in a number of areas (even though his own personal preferences might not go that far).
I was impressed by the fact that Otis was open to correction of factual errors in his information. During the debate, he said that Marinol did not cause a person to get high. When I told him that was incorrect, he said he’d be happy to look that up and change what he said in the future (Marinol’s site doesn’t specifically say that it gets you high but that the effects included “dizziness, feelings of exaggerated happiness, paranoid reaction, drowsiness, and thinking abnormally.”) Mr. Otis also several times mentioned the dangers of marijuana and driving, citing a Memphis “study” that has been widely rejected for its methodology. When I brought this up after the debate, he agreed to investigate it further.
Some of the more outrageous moments in the debate included the following claims by William Otis

1. Drug dealers would benefit from legalization.
2. There is no difference between “use” and “abuse” for illegal narcotics.

Mostly I felt that Mr. Otis could benefit from a lot more actual information. I think that he lives in a bit of a propaganda bubble and needs to read more about the drug war (although that might make it more difficult for him to do his job). I was surprised to learn, for example, that he was unaware that President Bush had actually campaigned in 2000 on letting the states choose regarding medical marijuana.
Bryan Brickner, representing the other side, had a delightful approach — not so much focusing on lots of details (although he had them), but rather painting a picture — of individual freedom and the promise of America, and the marvelous life of marijuana user Louis Armstrong, and the shattering of America’s promise through the non-sensical arrest and incarceration of people for… using drugs. There were tons of points that I wanted him to cover that he didn’t, and yet he was keeping the message clear and clean, which was more important. Sometimes you can’t give people all your points or you overwhelm them — something that Bryan seemed to understand well.
Bryan Brickner was the clear winner in my mind (not only on style, but on actual substance).
All in all, a great experience. A big thanks to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Federalist Society and the Coalition of Student-Professionals for Social Change (and Shaleen).

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting article at Salon this morning. While the drug war is never mentioned in it, it would certainly be implied in the premise.
It’s a suggestion to the Democrats that they can expand their strength, particularly in the interior Western regions, by appealing to certain libertarian principles.

No political party can be everything to everyone. As Republicans are forced to rely more and more on their base of white Southern evangelicals, they will be increasingly viewed as the party of intrusive governmental control.
In the process, the Democrats have the chance to become the party that stands for the right of adults to make decisions about their own lives free of moralistic governmental interference and regulation. Those who cast their votes based principally on such libertarian sentiments — driven by the belief that the government should, to the greatest extent possible, stay out of their lives — will view the Democratic Party as the far more attractive choice.

I don’t know if the Democratic Party is capable of going there, but it certainly is an interesting thought, and perhaps political self-interest is an argument to use with Democrats.

Sound like a trick question? Read Radley’s post over at Hit and Run.
Courtesy of the drug war comes the concept of using crimes for which you’ve been acquitted as part of the sentencing formula.
From a U.S. District Court in Virginia (and the whole thing is a pretty disturbing read):

From the public’s perspective, most people would be shocked to find out that even United States citizens can be (and routinely are) punished for crimes of which they were acquitted.

No kidding. I knew the 6th Amendment was in trouble, but did not realize that the Supreme Court had authorized sentencing based on acquitted charges.
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Both Radley Balko and I will be at the SSDP National Conference this weekend. I’ve known Radley online for some time, but am looking forward to meeting him in person for the first time. I’m also looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of drug policy reformers and Drug WarRant readers this weekend. Hope to see you there. Please introduce yourself to me.
Also, a reminder that I will be moderating a debate at 6 pm tonight in Urbana/Champaign, Illinois. Should be fun.