Drug WarRant

Kris Krane, Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, did a great job on Fox news debating the issue of home drug testing.
SSDP’s 2006 International Conference is being held at the Georgetown Law Center in D.C. — should be a great weekend of activist training. I may be there as well.

In Fayetteville, NC:

The widening investigation has revealed deputies stealing hundreds of- thousands of dollars from drug stops on Interstate 95, beating and robbing people in their homes, swindling money from county coffers and working with drug dealers to steal money and drugs from other dealers.

Some deputies are accused of kidnapping drug dealers and holding them for ransom. One is accused of giving someone two trash bags full of marijuana to burn a pawnshop to settle a personal vendetta. The home of a man who was set to testify against that deputy was firebombed shortly before trial.

Sinclair is accused of trying to extort money from a man he suspected of selling drugs by pouring lighter fluid on the man’s arm and setting him on fire. Prosecutors say Sinclair had gone to the wrong house and terrorized the wrong man. Court records say the man was seriously injured.

In Chicago, IL:

Prosecutors have alleged the men stole hundreds of thousands of dollars and falsely arrested many people. Although the Police Department had been investigating numerous misconduct claims against the men for years, the criminal case against them did not gain traction until prosecutors became suspicious because the officers consistently failed to show up in court to testify on significant drug arrests they had made, officials said.

Authorities said they now believe many of those arrests were bogus, and any cases the officers handled are suspect.

The memo links Herrera to 67 cases. Finnigan, accused of being the ringleader of the schemes, is linked to 10 cases. Sherry is linked to 29 cases and Suchocki is linked to three cases. Some cases were linked to more than one of the officers.

This is just one of the many destructive influences of the drug war. Just as it attracts criminals to the profits of drug trafficking, it attracts and feeds the corruptible in public service. And both prey upon the citizens whose hard-earned tax money pays for the war.

Study Finds No [Causal] Link Between Marijuana Use And Depression

Yeah, we knew that already.

And yet, we must celebrate that another study has confirmed what we already know, because our opponents — the drug warriors — use every means at their disposal to mislead the public, and we need these moments to remind the public that they’ve been fed bullshit (although we, of course, do it more politely than that). Now this is the most comprehensive study to date, and should put the nail in the coffin on that little bit of ignorance, but I’m sure someone will still try to promote that discredited link. God, that depresses me.

I’m waiting for someone to promote a link between marijuana use and ingrown toenails. And sure enough, NIDA will fund a study trying to find this link (denying possible research that could save people’s lives), and years later the study will confirm that no, there is no link between marijuana and ingrown toenails, but we’ll be on to the next manufactured scare.

It’s time for the people and the press to stand up and say:

We’re not going to listen to you anymore! You have no legitimate authority to tell us about the dangers of marijuana. For almost a century, you and your predecessors have lied and misled the public non-stop, from saying that it will turn you into a bat or cause you to cut up your family with a chainsaw, to the outrageous claims about marijuana addiction and potency today. You have no moral credibility left.

Show us the bodies. Close to half the American population has tried marijuana with no ill effects. Marijuana has been used for thousands of years with no evidence of significant harm. If you’ve got something to say about the dangers of marijuana, then you’re going to have to show us the bodies. No more implied statements. No more hypotheses. Incontrovertible, airtight, watertight, triple confirmed documented proof with bodies is all we’ll believe from you.

You no longer have the right to tell us of the dangers of marijuana. You must make your case now by talking about the real reasons for marijuana prohibition — the political, racist, classist, corporate and government job-protecting, profit-protecting pressures that make marijuana your boogie man, not ours.

We’re not listening to you, any more.

For a strangely convoluted, yet fascinating take on the drug war in Colombia, be sure to read Danna Harman’s three part series in the Christian Science Monitor that concludes today:

1. The War On Drugs: Ambushed In Jamundi
2. Plan Colombia: Big gains, but cocaine still flows
3. Rethinking Plan Colombia: some ways to fix it

At times, you think may that Harman is cheerleading for the drug warriors, who are fighting a difficult, but successful battle. Yet if you read the entirety of the series and see how all the brush strokes create a bigger picture, you can’t help but come away with the image that Plan Colombia has been an absolute failure and a disaster to both Colombian and American citizens.

One of my favorite quotes:

“We’re making first downs,” US Ambassador to Colombia William Wood is fond of saying, “…but we’re not sure how long the football field is.”

Here’s William Wood making first downs…

How else can you read this?

BOGOTA, Colombia — Despite growing bipartisan concern over alleged corruption in the Colombian army, the U.S. Congress appears likely to approve increased funds for this country’s war on drugs.

A final vote on Plan Colombia funding — the largest U.S. foreign aid program outside the Middle East and Afghanistan — probably won’t take place until after the November congressional elections. But staffers and analysts in Washington say Colombia will receive more than $750 million, exceeding the $728 million for the current fiscal year.

So what’s this corruption they’re talking about? Well, there’s this…

…reports that army officers planted explosives in Bogota, the capital, in the days leading up to Uribe’s second inauguration in August, in an apparent scheme to collect rewards for discovering the bombs.

and this…

In August, army units in the Caribbean port of Barranquilla killed six people, an incident at first portrayed as accidental deaths during a kidnapping rescue attempt, then as drug-gang killings.

oh, but wait! There’s this one…

But the most disturbing incident for some U.S. legislators happened in May, when Colombian army troops killed 10 U.S.- trained anti-narcotics police officers and an informant in the village of Jamundi, near Cali in the west of the country.
The shootout was first described as a case of mistaken identity. But one high-ranking Uribe official has since then called it “a criminal act” in which the army units allegedly did the bidding of narco-traffickers.

So the drug war in Colombia has encouraged and fueled widespread corruption and violence in the country. It has caused the destruction of poor farmers’ lives, ruined their crops, and poisoned their water. It has led to the destruction of valuable rainforest.

And it doesn’t work.

Just look at the numbers daksya put together below and it’s clear as can be.

But Congress wants to spend more money on it.

Idiots.

To be fair, the LA Times article, through their interview with Adam Isaacson of the Center for International Policy, gets to perhaps the real reason for Congress’ interest in increasing funds to the Colombia Drug War:

“Uribe knows he is one of the only friends the U.S. has in Latin America, and he is taking advantage of it.”

If Congress wants to buy a country, I wish they wouldn’t use something so destructive as the drug war as their excuse.

Via
Great quote from the Reno News and Review:

The fact is, the prohibition against marijuana has to end in this country, and that’s why we endorse Question 7 (Regulation of Marijuana Initiative), which will make possession of up to one ounce of Mary Jane legal in Nevada for people over 21 years old. (OK, there’s more to it than that, check out www.regulatemarijuana.org.) With all the important things we have to worry about, it doesn’t make sense to spend one more cent of resources persecuting a mostly innocuous and private activity. Don’t prohibit it, regulate it. American citizens have been irreparably harmed by the so-called War on Drugs. There are dozens of reasons for ending prohibition and not that many for keeping it.

This is going to be interesting. Recent polls show it to be getting very close.

This is old news to many of you by now, yet it is an essential and critical moment in American criminal drug war history that rivals the exposure of the Tulia, Texas drug sting scandal.

Blogger Radley Balko got things going. A lot of other wonderful people stepped up to the plate, and now a man who was on death row for protecting himself and his daughter from home invasion is now getting a new trial. It’s not over, of course. But at least it’s on a path that could lead to a more sane future for Cory and his daughter.

You can get the background to the story here and read Radley’s full archive of Cory Maye posts here.

And be sure to read Sure beats getting Dan Rather fired, huh by Jim Henley, and The Cato policy analyst who may have saved a man’s life by Gene Healy.

Well, I had an incredible adventure exploring Prague and the Czech Republic, the mountains of Slovakia, Budapest, and Vienna. And I didn’t even have to go through body cavity searches at customs — the very nice customs lady looked at my passport and warmly said: “Welcome home, Peter!”
A lot of people have asked me about the fact that the Czech Republic has very lax laws regarding marijuana. While I don’t know the specifics of the laws, as far as I can tell, it’s somewhat the equivalent of decriminalization — they just don’t bother arresting people for it. And, quite frankly, it was a total non-issue. Nobody cared. I didn’t see any drug dealers or drug problems. Society hadn’t gone crazy. Some people smoked pot. Most didn’t. (Most, in fact, drank beer, which is very big there.)
Anyway, I’ve been wading through all my emails and phone messages and everything since I got back and now I’ll be back to regular posting again. A few posts will be catch-up, but I won’t be able to get to everything that happened while I was gone.
A special thanks to all the regulars who kept Drug WarRant active in the comments and through the community messageboard while I was away!

The headline at CNN online shouts ‘Cali leaders forfeit $2.1 billion‘. In the article, US attorney general Alberto Gonzales noticeably omits any comment on the impact of this event on the overall US cocaine trade, instead offering a meek self-congratulation:

“The brothers’ guilty pleas effectively signals the final, fatal blow to the powerful Cali cartel,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a Washington news conference. “This is a day of pride for the people of Colombia and for international law enforcement.”

With good reason.

The heads of the Medellin cartel, one, Carlos Lehder, was incarcerated in the US in 1992, and two, Pablo Escobar, was killed in a shootout in 1993. The heads of the other big cartel, based in Cali, once responsible for 80% of the cocaine imported into the US, are now behind bars as well. So how has the War on Drugs been going? One corner away from victory? Well, not quite.

According to the UN World Drug Report 2006, these are the figures depicting the recent state of the cocaine trade.

• Production: Potential cocaine production in Colombia in metric tons
• Wholesale: US Wholesale price (per gm; inflation-adjusted)
• Retail: US Retail price (per gm; inflation-adjusted)

Year	Production	Wholesale	Retail
1990:	92	68	275
1991:	88	69	254
1992:	91	67	237
1993:	119	60	199
1994:	201	56	180
1995:	230	50	168
1996:	300	44	157
1997:	350	42	154
1998:	435	38	149
1999:	680	36	138
2000:	695	34	147
2001:	617	24	108
2002:	580	25	93
2003:	550	23	80
2004:	640	23	90
2005:	640	*	104

Just give it five more years. This time..

Plan Colombia and Beyond is a very nice blog to keep up with the WoD and Colombia.

I took lots of pictures in Vienna today, but I thought I’d share this one with you.