Drug WarRant

If you’re in the Chicago area, here’s your chance to meet Judge James P. Gray, author of the outstanding Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs

The Heartland Institute will host a reception for Judge James P. Gray on July 14, 2006 at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel (Prince of Wales Room) at 163 East Walton Placein Chicago. The reception will begin at 5:30 PM and end around 8:00 PM. Hors d’oeuvres are free but the booze costs money.

Wish I could be there.

Warning: meandering political philosophy ahead…
I’ve been continuing to think about DEA head Karen Tandy’s lies as well as the constant lies of other drug warriors (mostly political officials). Again, it’s not that I’m surprised that they lie. I’m not. It’s also not particularly new. But I couldn’t stop thinking about… what it means.
Now, I understand selective truth telling in an argument. If you’re trying to promote one side of an debate, you don’t feel obligated in every case to tell everything you know that might be favorable to the other side. I also understand exaggeration and misleading simplification as argument techniques. However, the idealist in me believes that even such behavior should be extremely limited among public servants who are working for us (just as my boss would expect me to be both honest and complete with him on any issue of importance at work).
I have rarely known a drug policy reformer to lie about drug policy (at most, they’re usually guilty of hyperbole or exaggeration, as I’ve been at times), despite the fact that the “threshold of integrity” should theoretically be lower for volunteer activists than for appointed or elected officials.
However, our public servants involved in the drug war go way beyond selective truth telling, exaggeration, and misleading simplification. They even go beyond simply telling lies. They go all the way to blatant organized campaigns to push people into believing things that not only are not true, but are in fact the opposite of the truth.
As far as I can tell, there are only two possible explanations for this behavior:

1. They are personally corrupt and don’t give a damn about the impact of their actions on the public.
2. They think they have the answers, but don’t believe that the public will make the “right” decision if they know the truth.

Either way, the actions are antithetical to the very concept of Democracy, and are strong symptoms of Authoritarianism.
This came to mind again tonight watching John Dean on the Daily Show talking about his new book Conservatives Without Conscience in which he claims that today’s conservatism is veering dangerously close to authoritarianism. And make no mistake about it — John Dean is definitely a conservative, but he’s not part of the new authoritarian group of conservatives that have largely neutralized the libertarians and Goldwater conservatives in their midst. I don’t know how good the book is, but it seems likely that he’s on to something real.
Certainly anything that moves us from Democracy toward Authoritarianism is a serious concern. And I see the lies by Karen Tandy and John Walters, and Mark Souder, and…, as actual attacks on Democracy.
When you think of it this way, you realize that Karen Tandy isn’t just an embarrassment. She’s a threat to our nation. And every time she lies, those lies must be exposed to the public.

— they received the right to be treated as citizens of a free country.

GOOSE CREEK, SC — The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that a federal court has approved a landmark settlement in its lawsuit challenging police tactics in the high-profile drug raid of Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina. The settlement includes a consent decree that sets a new standard for students’ rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Absent a warrant, police will now need either to have probable cause and pressing circumstances or voluntary consent in order to conduct law enforcement activity on school grounds – effectively granting Goose Creek students the essential privacy rights enjoyed by all Americans.
“Goose Creek students now have a unique place in our nation,” said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU’s Drug Law Reform Project. “They are the only students in the nation who have complete protection of their Fourth Amendment rights of search and seizure.”
The November 5, 2003 police raid of Stratford High School was recorded by both the school’s surveillance cameras and a police camera. The tapes show students as young as 14 forced to the ground in handcuffs as officers in SWAT team uniforms and bulletproof vests aim guns at their heads and lead a drug dog to tear through their book bags. The ACLU represents 20 of the nearly 150 students caught up in the raid.

My earlier posts on Goose Creek are here and here. Here’s the terms of the settlement, and you can also view the video of the raid with narration by the principal.

For those late to the game, in Ravin, the Alaska State Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution’s privacy provision took precedence over the government’s “need” to search people’s homes for small amounts of marijuana. In other words, marijuana is not dangerous enough to justify an invasion of privacy for small amounts. This got Governor Frank Murkowski’s knickers in a twist, and he’s been going all nuts trying to find a way to get the police back into people’s homes, so he held some ridiculous show hearing trying to claim that marijuana is more dangerous now, and finally got the legislature to pass a law “re-criminalizing” small amounts of marijuana.
The ACLU has led the charge to fight this despicable back door effort to overturn Ravin (joined by anonymous plaintiffs Jane Doe and Jane Roe).
Today, Superior Court Judge Patricia Collins granted summary declaratory judgment in favor of the ACLU, meaning that unless and until the State Supreme Court overturns it, Ravin is the law in Alaska, not Frank Murkowski.

The state suggests that, in effect, Ravin does not extend constitutional protection to the personal use of small quantities of marijuana by adults in the privacy of the home, but, rather, provides a framework for trial courts to determine, apparently on a case-by-case basis, whether current data about marijuana establishes that the government has a sufficient interest in prohibiting possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults in the home. As did the Alaska Court of Appeals in its opinion on rehearing in Noy v. State, this court rejects that interpretation of Ravin. […] As the court of appeals found in Noy, “both in the Ravin opinion itself and in the supreme court’s later description of Ravin, the Alaska Supreme Court has repeatedly and consistently chararacterized the Ravin decision as announcing a constitutional limitation on the government authority to enact legislation prohibiting the possession of marijuana in the privacy of one’s home.
Ravin is a decision by this state’s highest court on the government’s authority to enact legislation prohibiting the possession of small amounts of marijuana in the privacy of one’s home. That decision is the law until and unless the supreme court takes contrary action. […]
Plaintiffs’ motion for summary declaratory judgment is GRANTED to the extent set forth in this decision. […]

Today’s full ruling (pdf large file, about 1 meg)
Other files:

• The ACLU’s legal complaint
• The ACLU’s motion seeking to immediately block implementation of the law
• A memorandum in support of the motion
• A letter previously sent by the ACLU to Alaska Attorney General Marquez explaining the constitutional basis for its legal challenge

I know others have addressed this, but I have to at least mention it.
On June 28, there was an excellent, thoughtful, and intelligent letter in the Denver Post called One Soccer Mom’s Take on the Drug War.
Well, naturally, DEA head Karen Tandy felt the need to respond with Another Soccer Mom’s Take on the Drug War. And it is a vile piece of attempted deception.

Marijuana is against the law because it’s a dangerous, addictive drug.
This is a health issue. According to the American Lung Association, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more cancer-causing material than cigarette smoke.

Feel free to read the rest of the letter. It’s all ridiculous (and others have debunked it point by point). But let’s take a moment to focus on this section.
This is a lie. Period.
Karen Tandy knows full well that the studies have shown marijuana does not cause cancer. It doesn’t matter if that was a true attribution to the American Lung Association or not. The only purpose for writing that was to imply that marijuana causes cancer — something Karen Tandy knows not to be true.
That makes it a lie, and a despicable one. This is a public official, paid by our tax dollars, lying to the American people about cancer. This should be, at the very least, a fireable offense.
Don’t let the fact that they do it all the time blunt your outrage.

Could it be that American business is starting to come to their senses and reject the government’s propaganda (and the lies of the drug testing industry)? Reynolds Holding at Time.com seems to think so. Check out his article: Whatever Happened to Drug Testing?

The percentage of businesses that force their employees to pee in a cup is dropping — largely because it never made much sense in the first place […]
Despite the growing demand for drug tests in sports and other fields, the percentage of employers with testing programs has dropped steadily since 1996, from 81% to 62% in 2004, according to the American Management Association, which sees the trend continuing. […]
Pragmatists contend that the drop-off is mostly a matter of cost. Although individual drug tests seem cheap — $25 to $50 each, according to Quest — the total expense gets difficult to justify when so few tests come up positive. According to a 1999 ACLU study, the federal government spent $11.7 million to find 153 drug users among almost 29,000 employees tested in 1990, a cost of $77,000 per positive test. Many industries, particularly construction, transportation, health care and retail, also face labor shortages, and the fierce competition for workers may compel employers to forgo drug tests that could dissuade or disqualify people from taking a job — either because they take drugs or simply resent the invasion of privacy.
But the most persuasive explanation for testing’ s fall from favor is that, from a business perspective, it never made much sense. Companies began to test primarily because the federal government drafted them into the war on drugs. [emphasis added]

This is an excellent trend. If it continues, eventually those companies with mandatory drug testing will begin to realize that they are at a competitive disadvantage.
The Time article also exposes one of the dirtiest tricks used by the drug testing industry — the allegation that recreational drug users were five time more likely to file worker’s compensation claims (example) and other similar contentions. The thing is, these are all complete lies.

But the benefits were always at best a bit murky. The oft-cited research, the so-called Firestone Study, was actually a 1972 speech given to lunching Firestone Tire and Rubber executives by an advocate for helping employees overcome “medical-behavioral problems” like alcoholism. The advocate, whose name has long been forgotten, mentioned drugs only in passing and never identified the source for the statistics or anything else that might make the numbers credible. Truth be told, employment experts say there has been virtually no research indicating that drug tests improve safety or productivity on the job.

You got to give the drug testing industry some backhanded credit, I guess — an entire business plan built upon a lie — and they’ve made billions off it.
I’ve stated this before, and I’ll repeat it here: I’ll never work for a company that has mandatory suspicion-less drug testing. Just for the principle of it. I could pass a drug test with flying colors (as long as they don’t test for caffeine), but I won’t be part of a company that has such poor management philosophy. I believe in personnel management done by people, not by urine. And as a manager, I’ve had no hesitations about firing someone who shows up to work drunk or stoned (you don’t need to force all your employees to piss in a cup to figure that one out). But it’s also none of my business what they do on Friday night, if they show up on Monday ready to work.
In other drug testing fields, I’ve got to say that I’m also cautiously pleased at a feeling I’m getting regarding school drug testing. While I don’t have any numbers to back it and there are school districts regularly adding drug testing around the country, I’m starting to see more and more articles where the idea is being seriously questioned by school board members and the community in terms of cost, effectiveness and the invasiveness into individual students’ privacy. Certainly, the work done by SSDP, ACLU, DPA and others in this area has made a difference. And all it takes is a couple of people to not blindly accept the claims of the drug testing industry — to ask some intelligent questions and point out the problems with drug testing.
Maybe we can get rid of this cancerous blight on our society.

“bullet” Lynn Zimmer, co-author of the outstanding Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts: A Review Of The Scientific Evidence, died on Sunday at the age of 59.
“bullet” Drug policy reformer and political candidate Ben Masel was pepper-sprayed and arrested by University of Wisconsin-Madison police as he collected signatures for his senatorial campaign. He plans to sue. (He’s already suing police in Kansas City for a different case.) Go get ’em, Ben!
“bullet” Also from the Drug War Chronicle, Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck attended a rave and said she felt safer there than at a hotel bar.

“These people using ecstasy and whatever they’re using, they are not aggressive, they’re not shouting, they’re not fighting, you don’t get people puking all over the place, it’s a far, far better environment,” Ms Kanck told ABC local radio.
“If I had a choice between being at a rave party and a hotel bar, I’d go to the rave party every time.”

“bullet” DEA raids medical marijuana dispensaries in California, and also targets doctors. Now this was a joint effort with state and local, and the DA says that they were not targeting the sick, but only those who were abusing the medical marijuana system. The problem, though, by bringing in the feds, they have forfeited any ability to make the raids appear legitimate (whether they were or not), because the feds don’t care about medical use. It’s additionally, suspect coming so soon after the Hinchey amendment vote in Congress.
Within the current system in California, there will always be some controversy over whether medical marijuana dispensaries are “getting around” the medical marijuana rules, or whether doctors are prescribing too easily. But there’s an easy solution. Legalize marijuana.

I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time.
I rarely go to the theatre, generally preferring to wait for DVD, but this one — I was ready. It opened tonight… but not in my area. Damn.

Embedded in the visionary headtrip of A Scanner Darkly is a hotly political call to arms.
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Slipped into the summer movie season like acid in your happy meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counterprogramming. […] Linklater’s return to Waking Life’s surreally pulsing world of rotoscope animation — and his flashback to Philip K. Dick’s like-titled drug dystopia of the late ’70s — is a prefab cult flick pitched to a drastically underserved group of filmgoers: stoners, depressives, bookworms, conspiracy theorists, movie critics, and various other head-scratching freaks for whom the promise of Hollywood action sounds more like a threat. What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture’s last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience.
– Rob Nelson, SF Weekly

This movie definitely isn’t for everyone, and from what I’ve heard, is a very bleak look at a drug war world that Philip K. Dick pessimistically predicted, without giving any answers, but it seems relevant to today. I’m a big fan of both Philip K. Dick and Linklater’s work.
Use this thread to discuss the movie (and assume that there may be spoilers).

Here’s what we know for sure regarding the gateway theory:

1. Over 99% of those who never try marijuana will not become addicted to heroin.
2. Over 99% of those who do try marijuana will not become addicted to heroin.

One of the things that really worried me about the ridiculous gateway assertions in the rat study below was how some of the more gullible (or outright corrupt) media outlets would play the story.
And I was right to worry. Take a look at these headlines:

• Cannabis ‘can lead to harder drugs’
• Early cannabis abuse ‘does lead to heroin addiction’
• Study: Marijuana may lead to other drugs
• Adolescent Drug Users Turn Compulsive Addicts
• Cannabis Use May Lead To Heroin Addiction
• CANNABIS IS LINKED TO HEROIN Dope kids at risk
• ‘Dope Smokers More Likely To Use Hard Drugs’
• Study: Marijuana may lead to other drugs
• Early cannabis abuse ‘leads to heroin addiction’

Remember that the study found, at most, that rats pre-treated with THC are prone to self-administer heroin more frequently than control rats after both they and the control groups are forcibly addicted to heroin by the scientists. There was no indication that the THC-pretreated group was more likely to “use” hard drugs.
Yet these media morons manage headlines like “Dope Smokers More Likely To Use Hard Drugs.”
Interestingly, it’s possible that the study may not even show what the scientists claim. Drug WarRant commenter J speculates…

First of all, as Pete pointed out, the experimenters found no evidence that rats exposed to THC in adolescence became addicted to heroin more easily than controls [“vehicle”]. They did show that THC exposure did cause the rats to use more heroin. They also showed that when the lever used for self administering heroin was disconnected, the controls pushed the lever more than the THC exposed.

This may mean that the controls were “more addicted” and did not as easily give up on getting their fix as did the THC exposed.
So why would one group use more heroin, but give up more easily when they can no longer self administer? It seems to me that being less sensitive to heroin would explain both of these. The THC exposed need to use higher doses of heroin to get the same effect as the controls, but have an easier time giving up since the heroin isn’t as potent to them. This is exactly the opposite of the conclusion of the authors:

Heightened opiate sensitivity in THC animals was also evidenced by higher heroin consumption during the maintenance phase (30 and 60 mug/kg/infusion) and greater responding for moderate-low heroin doses (dose-response curve: 7.5, 15, 30, 60, and 100 mug/kg/injection).

It doesn’t make sense to me that heightened sensitivity would lead to more use, it should lead to less use. Tolerance leads to more use.
So this may actually be evidence of a counter-gateway theory. Either way, one thing is clear: rats that do heroin get decapitated.

Interesting points.
Anyone else care to chime in on this one?
… and that last point is a good one. Regardless of whether I had cannabis as a juvenile, if I was a rat in a cage being subjected to scientific experiments that end with my decapitation, I’d be pressing that heroin lever like crazy.