Drug WarRant

I want to point out two absolutely amazing posts by friends of Drug WarRant. These are situations where they are taking on ignorance or emotional blockage of facts. In both cases, they faced an impossible challenge of cracking open a welded shut mind, but the quality of their debate is worth reading, and learning from, for its own sake.
“bullet” First, check out thehim (him of the wonderful drug war roundups at Kos) at Blog Reload, as he debates one of the Vigil for Lost Promise mothers in a series of emails.
What patience! What clear rational thought (his)!
“bullet” Now we go over to Political Crossfire Forums, where someone at the forum was trying the old prohibitionist trick of faking the numbers to attempt to link drugs and violence. Brian Bennett came through with an outstandingly researched point by point rebuttal.
Check them out.

Today, June 19, is the 20 year anniversary of the death of Len Bias, and there are hundreds of stories in the newspapers remembering him. They are stories of lost promise, of what might have been, of basketball and of individuals who have been influenced by the Len Bias legend.
But few even touch on the real story — the fact that Len Bias’s death triggered a (possibly unintentional) near-genocidal attack on the African American population in the United States. Or at the very least, the systematic disenfranchisement of African American males.
Surprised? Skeptical? Read on and see what you think.

Here’s a great opportunity for everyone who reads this to get involved and make a contribution (without spending any money).
Back in 2004, I worked on a voting guide based on drug policy issues and managed to complete guides for 19 states, but I ran out of time to collect the information for the rest. Yet even those 19 state guides seemed to reach a lot of people, based on the email I got (and the large number of google-related visits).
This year, I’ve put together a voting guide framework using a wiki (a website structure that allows any registered user to make changes and add information, similar to Wikipedia).
The easy address to get there is http://voting.drugwarrant.com
How it works
Register for a free account (you don’t have to use your real name, but you do have to use an actual email address of some kind in order to complete your registration — to prevent spammers). Then, when you’re logged in, simply go to the state page you want to change, click on “edit,” type your information, click on “save.” That’s all there is to it!
There are special ways of coding things in a wiki that are different from other web applications (for things like bold or italic, etc.), and that information is available there as well. But if you don’t like dealing with that kind of thing, don’t worry about it. Just type. Someone else will come along and “pretty it up.”
Afraid of messing things up? Don’t be. Each page keeps past versions, so even if you mistakenly delete the whole thing, we can fix it.
What to enter?
Eventually, we’d love to have as much drug-policy-related information as possible on every race for Governor, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House, along with relevant state-wide initiatives. Depending on the interest within a state, we could continue on to State Senate and State House races — that’s really up to those adding information.
In some cases, you may be particularly interested in a single race (maybe because you’re working on it) — and that may be all that you enter. Or you may want to take on a state and start working on getting information entered. Or take a state that somone else started and expand on it.
There are lots of good sources of information that you can use. Vote-Smart.org provides detailed information on the candidates in each race, starting with who’s running (just getting that info entered is a huge help). Over the next few months, they will also be encouraging candidates to fill out position surveys on a variety of topics. The Senate and House candidate survey includes the following statements and asks if the candidate supports the statement:

• Reduce prison sentences for those who commit non-violent crimes.
• Support mandatory jail sentences for selling illegal drugs.
• Expand federally sponsored drug education and drug treatment programs.
• Decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
• Allow doctors to recommend marijuana to their patients for medicinal purposes.
• Increase border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.
• Eliminate federal funding for programs associated with the “war on drugs.”
• Increase financial support to Colombia to combat “the war on drugs.”

Those surveys should be helpful once they’re available.
Additionally, at the voting guide, we have some other sources of information, such as the Drug Policy Alliance 2005 Voter Guide (which lists how House members voted on specific bills or amendments). And of course, if you’re ambitious, you can use old-fashioned sleuthing — everything from reading their web-sites to calling their office — to get more information.
Finally, if even typing the information in the wiki is confusing, or you’d rather not register, feel free to email information to: voting@drugwarrant.net
We’ve got a little over 4 months to put together some useful information for voters. After all, when it comes to the drug war, we already know that the voters are ahead of the politicians. Let’s give them the information they need to put the politicians on notice.

In comments below, Terry at US Marijuana Party mentions this story from back in April in Buffalo:

A loud “flash bang” concussion device is detonated inside a Kensington Avenue house as Buffalo Police SWAT officers, clad in black armor and brandishing automatic assault rifles, storm a lower apartment.
“Buffalo Police. Search warrant. Buffalo Police,” the officers yell to the now temporarily stunned occupants inside.
Within seconds, there are multiple shotgun blasts. At the same instant, another officer cradles a 1-year-old boy out the front door and down a flight of steps to safety.
When the smoke clears, three large pit bull terriers lay dead, in pools of their own coagulated blood. Five people are in handcuffs.

So first you deafen the occupants. Then you announce yourselves. Then you kill the dogs. This must be what Scalia was talking about when he said “we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously.”
Right.

… and the winner is Glenn Reynolds:

However, the exclusionary rule is a lousy remedy for these kinds of things, since it doesn’t protect those innocent of any crime. (If you’re innocent, there’s nothing to exclude). I’d rather see a rule that disciplines officers for improper behavior without regard to the exclusion of evidence.

Now, it’s true that the exclusionary rule isn’t perfect, but as Breyer so eloquently stated it in his dissent, it’s been shown for ages to be the most effective solution. And the exclusionary rule isn’t just for guilty people (I get so tired of people asserting that rights are for the guilty). The whole purpose of the exclusionary rule is to protect all citizens. It’s a deterrent to future police misconduct, not a punishment for that misconduct. There’s a big difference.
People like Glenn seem to think that the idea is that the entire advantage of the exclusionary rule is that the bad guy gets off. That’s stupid. The advantage of the exclusionary rule is that when the bad guy gets off, the police will sit up and go “Well, that sucked — let’s not ever let that happen again!” and they won’t let it happen again. They’ll take the time to do it right — to get the facts right, and the law right. And we’ll all be safer and more free because of it.
This means that now and then a bad guy has to go free. That’s the price of insuring better work by the police in the future.
Now, the exclusionary rule can’t protect us from the really bad cop — the kind that tortures a suspect to get him to sign a consent form (other means are necessary to catch such vermin). The exclusionary rule protects us from the well-meaning, yet overzealous cop who cuts some corners to put the bad guy away. The rule says that cutting corners is not acceptable, and if you want to catch the bad guy, you’ve got to follow the law.
That’s an important principle. Without the exclusionary rule, who will tell the cops? And will they listen?
Glenn then follows his idiocy with:

I don’t see the Supreme Court fixing this any time soon. Congress could limit officers’ ability to barge in without announcing themselves (by banning it, say, except where there’s a serious risk of danger to people’s lives) by legislation. I doubt it will, though. States could do the same, of course, as regards state law enforcement. I think that they should.

Um, Glenn, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s already been banned by the Constitution — the Justices were in complete agreement about that part, just not on the proper punishment or deterrence. Congress banning it would do… what?
Update: It appears Andy McCarthy needs to go back to school as well. See Radley’s post.

Breyer’s dissent (pdf) in the Hudson Supreme Court case is really impressive (if you’re a Constitutional rights geek like me, you’ll enjoy reading it). Here’s a justice who understands the importance of the 4th Amendment as part of our guarantee of freedom.
He methodically and thoroughly dismantles every one of the majority’s points, shows some real exasperation with Scalia’s lack of logic, and concludes:

There may be instances in the law where text or history
or tradition leaves room for a judicial decision that rests
upon little more than an unvarnished judicial instinct.
But this is not one of them. Rather, our Fourth Amendment
traditions place high value upon protecting privacy
in the home. They emphasize the need to assure that its
constitutional protections are effective, lest the Amendment
‘sound the word of promise to the ear but break it to
the hope.’ They include an exclusionary principle, which
since Weeks has formed the centerpiece of the criminal
law’s effort to ensure the practical reality of those promises.
That is why the Court should assure itself that any
departure from that principle is firmly grounded in logic,
in history, in precedent, and in empirical fact. It has not
done so. That is why, with respect, I dissent.

And what was Scalia’s justification for ignoring hundreds of cases of precedent? Because we don’t need it any more.

…we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously

…except of course that he had no such evidence.
Via The Agitator (and Radley continues to be the go-to source for information on this), there’s an excellent editorial at The Orange County Register

Unfortunately, the ruling is likely to lead to more military-style no-knock raids of people’s homes and businesses, which will mean some innocent people’s homes will be raided, and a few people are likely to be killed. […]
The decision could mean, in effect, that every search warrant becomes a “no-knock” warrant.[…]
Since drug raids are often based on confidential informants whose reliability can be dicey, this decision is likely to lead to more military-style policing and more “wrong-door” raids on innocent people. It is wrong-headed and potentially tragic.

What’s particularly disturbing to me is that the new court seems to be on a very dangerous path for us. Already, the court had been way too lenient on allowing “drug war exceptions” to just about every part of the Bill of Rights, and deferring to the government in Fourth Amendment cases without requiring any proof of effectiveness. But now there seems to be a disturbing trend toward an “ends justifies the means” approach to policing.
In Caballes, Justice Stevens (who actually was on the correct side in Hudson) allowed a dog sniff without suspicion because revealing “no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.” In other words — it was there, so it was OK to search for it to see if it was there. Convoluted logic and — ends justifies the means.
Now in Hudson, the majority opinion by Scalia claims that the legal search warrant would have discovered the drugs anyway, so the illegal entry doesn’t matter. The bizarre claim is that it’s too much of a penalty on the police to make them give up that particular case, because of the comparatively small infraction of neglecting to knock. But what the majority leaves out is what the cost is to the rest of society in having a government that no longer respects right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Another disturbing part of this is that the majority is making the case that it really isn’t all that important for the police to obey the law. When we have the highest rate of citizen incarceration in the world, and yet at various levels of hierarchy we frequently now see clearly stated that the government is not required to obey the law, then what do we call ourselves?

Link

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled on Thursday that a violation by the police of the “knock-and-announce” rule when they enter a home with a warrant does not bar the use of evidence gathered in the search.

The tie was broken by Alito, who ruled in favor of the State of Michigan in Hudson v. Michigan.
Scalia wrote the opinion, joined by Alito, Thomas, Roberts, and Kennedy in part.
Dissenting were Breyer, Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg.
A really bad decision. What’s the incentive for the cops to follow the law, if failure to do so allows them to use anything they found?
See Radley Balko’s earlier description of the case at Slate. He’s been all over it today. Here, here, here. Also Breyer cites Balko in his dissent (Page 10 – pdf)
Lyle Denniston at ScotusBlog has some interesting additional analysis on the ruling, including future implications for Fourth Amendment violations.

The Sentencing Project has a new report (pdf) by Ryan King on methamphetamines that claims that media hype about the “epidemic” is, in many cases, overblown — something that we’ve already known for some time.
Here’s the start of the report:

Methamphetamine is a dangerous drug that represents a substantial
challenge to policymakers, health care professionals, social service
providers, and the law enforcement community. Over time, methamphetamine abuse can result in the deterioration of physical and mental capacities, the dissolving of family ties, diminished employment prospects, and a lifetime spent cycling through the criminal justice system. The consequences of irresponsible drug abuse harm not only the individual, but his or her family and the larger community. Thus, it is important that our public resources be effectively
directed to both prevent the development of such a habit as well as treat those
individuals before the proverbial die has been cast.
Unfortunately, the American strategy of drug control since the early 20th Century has emphasized an approach of prevention based on instilling fear about a substance through dramatized descriptions and images of the consequences of use coupled with a notion of treating people with harsh punishments out-of-step with the harm caused by the drug. Historically, the domestic response to drug use has been to demonize the drug and the people who use it while exaggerating the impact of its use (“You’ll be hooked the first time you try it”). This strategy has been complemented in the past two decades with mandatory minimums, sentencing enhancements, and a ban on access to services such as public housing, income assistance, and federal educational aid as the result of a drug conviction.

Seems like a reasonable start, right? And a good description of the problem.
Then I go over to The Drug Update where I see:

Sentencing Project Claims Methamphetamine is Not a Problem
In a recent press release, the Sentencing Project claimed that Methamphetamine is not a problem. However, drug policy expert Mark Kleiman disagrees with this. Go here for his thorough analysis.

Not a problem? That’s not the way I read the opening. So I looked further in the Sentencing Project report and found headings like:

Misleading media reports of a methamphetamine “epidemic” have hindered
the development of a rational policy response to the problem […]
Methamphetamine in America: The Extent of the Problem […]

In what possible way is the report saying that meth is not a problem?
Then I realized that Daniel probably made the mistake of reading Mark Kleiman’s post without questioning (a student’s mistake), and of not understanding Mark’s blind spots.
Let’s go to Mark’s “thorough” analysis: Even real drug problems get hyped. It’s long, it’s got anecdotes, and it has opinion, but thorough it is not.
It’s another opportunity for Mark to rail at Jack Shafer, someone he appears to despise with an unreasonable passion. He spends an inordinate amount of time in his article complaining about Jack’s suggestion that the media might look for a balanced approach to reporting and not over-hype the problem (A Meth Test for the Press
How will it respond to a nonhysterical new study? by Jack Shafer) He’s done this with Jack Shafer before. Mark regularly uses Straw Man arguments in drug policy, and this is no exception.
Mark also rips apart the Sentencing Project’s report by claiming that the government data they use doesn’t tell the whole story. The Sentencing Project and Jack Shafer, however, both note that the data is imperfect, but conclude that a rational approach to the problem requires something other than hysteria.
Mark Kleiman, drug policy expert, “counters” with:

How big a problem methamphetamine is right now, and how big it’s likely to get, are matters mostly of guesswork. We don’t have the right data to make convincing current estimates or adequate models to make strong predictions. […]
Offhand, I’m not sure what to do about meth. […]
So it’s possible that the meth wave is less a problem we ought to be trying to fix than a situation we need to ty to adjust to as best we can. But that’s no excuse for pretending it’s not happening. Media criticism is good clean fun, but it’s no substitute for studying the actual phenomena.

????
So study the actual phenomena, Mark. And when you actually have something to contribute to the discussion, join in.

This is only peripherally a drug war post, but I thought it was worth mentioning that this is flag day, and of course, Congress is once again considering a flag burning amendment as a dangerous distraction. Julian Sanchez at Hit and Run has done a pretty decent job of explaining why that’s stupid.
Let me give you my take.
If some idiot decides to burn a piece of red, white, and blue cloth in order to protest a government policy, my freedom is not endangered in any way, nor is my country.

However, every day that Congress goes to work, my freedom is in jeopardy, through their continued destruction of the Constitution. And now they want to damage the Constitution further to promote a purely political agenda. I can’t even remember the last flag burning episode in the United States. The only ones who have been desecrating any flags are the politicians standing in front of them.
Celebrate your freedom today by fighting the politicians who would take it away.

Former drug czar Barry McCaffrey says the darndest things. What is it about drug czars and former drug czars? They’re so used to making stuff up that it doesn’t even phase them anymore.
Here’s an article published in the Monterey County Herald on June 10 and re-printed in Therapeutics Daily (free registration required).

Drug addiction is a medical problem that should be treated as a chronic disease, according to experts gathered Friday at the Hyatt Regency Monterey for a national forum on drug and alcohol dependency.

OK so far, but McCaffrey hasn’t been quoted yet…

Illegal drug use in the United States “has by and large already been decriminalized,” said former U.S. drug czar and retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey. The problem, he said, isn’t that drugs are illegal, but that they cause mental, medical, legal and social problems.

What???
There are a whole lot of people in jail, and who have been denied financial aid, and who have lost their families, (and even who are dead), who would be surprised to learn that drugs are essentially decriminalized. Perhaps Barry would be willing to give them a note to give to their arresting officer or judge.
And, you know, if drugs are causing legal problems, wouldn’t at least part of those legal problems have something to do with the fact that the drugs are illegal?
And finally, drugs can’t actually cause any of those problems. It’s possible that abusing drugs could lead to some of those problems. But not drugs themselves.

McCaffrey served as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration and now teaches national security affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
He and Barry W. Karlin, chairman and CEO of CRC Health Groups Inc., addressed the Western U.S. Summit for Clinical Excellence on Tuesday, which drew 250 health professionals — social workers, psychologists, addiction counselors, researchers and doctors — under the aegis of the Ben Franklin Institute of Scottsdale, Ariz.

And McCaffrey was the best they could do?

McCaffrey has recently returned from Afghanistan, where the new government has been waging an opium-eradication campaign.
Such work has been successful in other countries, he said. In the past five years, Pakistan and Thailand have essentially ended large-scale opium poppy farming, and Peru and Bolivia have halted coca farming, though “there is nothing more lucrative than growing coca or opium.” [emphasis added]

Peru and Bolivia have halted coca farming??? In whose reality? Numbers in this area are extremely unreliable (usually understated), but according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime most recent statistics, Bolivia had 27,700 hectares of coca in cultivation in 2004, while Peru had 50,300. Hardly halted.
And while I haven’t taken the time to look up the Pakistan and Thailand figures, as countries they are hardly analogous to Afghanistan.

Success demands a three-pronged approach, McCaffrey said: help from the government to establish legitimate crops by teaching farmers how to grow them, supplying them with seed, tools and other materials and building road networks to get them to market; eradicating illegal crops; and having a nation’s leadership publicly denounce drug cultivation as harmful to the country.

Yes. That’s what we tried in Colombia. Didn’t work.

In Afghanistan’s case, he said, opium use “is non-Islamic, not in accord with their traditions,” and its continued presence generates massive drug abuse, addiction, graft, violence and corruption.

The fact that it is illegal causes the problems. The fact that it is present is simply an unalterable function of supply and demand.

Afghanistan is now the world’s No. 1 heroin supplier, he said. Proceeds from drugs fund terrorist campaigns by al-Qaida and warlords, and destabilizes the democracy the U.S. hopes to see built there, he said.

Well, when you make it profitable by putting the control in the hands of criminals…

McCaffrey said he has been supportive of efforts to “create conditions of law and order” on the U.S.-Mexican border, but said that 95 percent of illegal immigrants who cross into the United States have nothing to do with crime or drugs.

True.

Canada, he said, is one of the largest producers of marijuana, and the Netherlands is one of the top suppliers of mood-enhancing drugs such as Ecstasy.

Well, U.S. customs agents say that the amount of marijuana entering the U.S. through Canada “is dwarfed by that from Mexico.”

McCaffrey and Karlin said educating young people from middle school through high school is key.
A youth who can reach age 21 without abusing drugs or alcohol, Karlin said, stands a better than 90 percent chance of having no substance abuse problems as an adult.

Actually, the critical time is the younger years, and we could reduce abuse in younger children by legalizing and regulating drugs.

Drug and alcohol addiction can’t be cured with a few weeks of treatment at a detox center, he said.
It has to be treated “as a chronic condition, with long-term care, like diabetes, hypertension or asthma.”

And yes, it helps that you can get asthma treatment without getting thrown in jail.

McCaffrey said there have been victories in the war on drugs domestically.
In the past three years, U.S. “current use” — use of any drug within the past 30 days — has declined nationwide 11 percent, he said. During the past 20 years, drug abuse has fallen 50 percent, and crime and teenage pregnancy are in decline.

What??? Drug abuse has fallen 50 percent? Where? And teenage pregnancy decline is a drug war victory? Did McCaffrey actually believe those ads?

The nation faces a problem with rising use of methamphetamines, pharmaceutical painkillers and artificial opiates, “the new heroin,” McCaffrey said.

Ah yes. The new heroin, the new crack. The same old story.

Drugs and alcohol, he said, are involved in most cases where people are arrested and incarcerated for crimes, or hospitalized for traumatic injuries, and cost billions of dollars in lost productivity, health care, material loss and damage.

Did you know that police are involved in most cases where people are arrested and incarcerated for crimes? and that hospitals are involved in most traumatic injuries, and the drug czars cost us billions of dollars in lost productivity, health care, material loss and damage?
Go back to West Point, General.