Drug WarRant

I’m still getting caught up — this was quite an interesting tidbit from last week. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,183 cities with a population over 30,000, passed a resolution, sponsored by Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, opposing mandatory minimum drug sentencing at both the federal and state level.
Here’s the text (pdf):

OPPOSING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES
WHEREAS, fair and effective criminal justice policies are in the
interest of the citizens of every U.S. city and town; and
WHEREAS, 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of the Sentencing
Reform Act of 1986 which established federal mandatory minimum
sentences for drug offenses; and
WHEREAS, twenty years of mandatory minimum sentencing has
resulted in a tremendous increase in the U.S. prison population,
particularly of drug offenders; and
WHEREAS, people incarcerated for drug offenses return to their
communities facing barriers to employment, housing, public
assistance, and education opportunities; and
WHEREAS, the cost of providing services to returning prisoners
is borne primarily by local governments; and
WHEREAS, almost two-thirds of prisoners have dependent children,
and their prolonged absence destabilizes families and threatens
the economic and social vitality of communities; and
WHEREAS, mandatory minimum sentencing reflects a “one-size fits
all” approach to administering justice that does not allow
courts to impose sentences appropriate to the crime that take
into account the offender’s role in the crime, and the
characteristics of the offender, and
WHEREAS, mandatory minimum sentencing has been ineffective at
achieving its purported goals: reducing the level of substance
abuse and crime and increasing penalties for the most serious
offenders; and
WHEREAS, mandatory minimum sentencing has exacerbated racial
disparities in the criminal justice system, and, particularly
when used to punish drug offenses, has resulted in the
disproportionate incarceration of African American offenders,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that The United State Conference
of Mayors states its opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing
on both the federal and state levels, and urges the creation of
fair and effective sentencing policies that permit judges to
determine appropriate sentences based on the specific
circumstances of the crime and the perpetrator’s individual
situation; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that states should review the effects of
both federal and state mandatory minimum sentencing and then
move forward.

This is good stuff — the Conference of Mayors is a pretty important voice for urban policy.

Update: Corrected size of cities to read 30,000.

If it wasn’t all so sad, it would be funny.
The situation in Afghanistan is so absurd, since nobody in power is allowed to actually talk about any solutions to the illegal drug trafficking that would really work.
So every now and then, President Hamid Karzai comes out with a statement about his resolve against opium and asks for more assistance in eliminating it in Afghanistan:

Afghanistan wanted better cooperation with its neighbours and the international community against drugs, the president said.
“We have always said that Afghanistan wanted to release itself from this evil plant. Help us in this struggle and take our hand,” he said.

“…release itself from this evil plant.” What magnificent hyperbole!
Yep. Another public statement to show that he’s serious about it. Just like the various eradication efforts.
The problem is that the crop substitution efforts are not working at all, since none are even close to being as lucrative as opium, and it appears at present that Afghanistan’s entire economy is based on two things:

1. Foreign aid, mostly tied to efforts to eradicate the illegal drug trade, and…
2. The illegal drug trade.

So Karzai continues to perform his comedy routine to show the world he’s serious.

What an outstanding editorial this weekend in the Charleston (WV) Gazette:

THIS week’s mass murder in a drug-infested St. Albans suburb raises a troubling thought: Much of America’s criminality and gun violence among addicts and illegal drug dealers apparently is spawned by the nation’s harsh prohibition of narcotics.
Almost a century ago, the United States plunged into Prohibition, the criminalization of alcohol. Immediately, illicit dealers began supplying bootleg booze in the shadows. Gun battles erupted between rival rum-runners. Prisons were crammed with alcohol offenders. Police and judges were bribed to overlook “speakeasy” bars. Street gangs and the Mafia grew in that grotesque time.
After Prohibition was repealed, alcohol became legal under state regulation — and the wave of alcohol crimes faded.
Today history is repeating itself, via criminalization of disapproved drugs. Illicit dealers supply banned substances in the shadows. Gun battles erupt between rival operators. Prisons are crammed with narcotics offenders. Police and judges sometimes are bribed to look the other way. Street gangs and the Mafia profit from the lucrative trade. So do Muslim terrorists who control Afghanistan’s opium poppies, and Latin American cartels in control of cocaine production. Local American peddlers carry guns, so they won’t be robbed of their cash or stash. They sell to children or anyone able to buy. Addicts commit robberies to get money for daily fixes. Impure mixes by amateur suppliers cause overdose deaths.

Wow! To see a newspaper editorial so clearly understand the parallels between drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition is just downright… intelligent (a factor that seems too often to be missing).
The editorial goes on to talk about and quote from LEAP — which obviously had an impact on the editorial board — and concludes with:

Legalizing alcohol again in 1933 gradually took gunfire out of the booze business. If America likewise legalized narcotics and regulated them through health agencies, would today’s drug murders, police cost and prison expense similarly be eliminated? This newspaper long has called for legalization of marijuana, which is no more harmful than beer. LEAP advocates that step for all narcotics.
Congress and West Virginia’s Legislature should study this question — but don’t hold your breath while you wait for change, because nearly all politicians brag about being “tough on drugs.” Thus they guarantee that the narcotics trade will remain in the hands of criminals.

This is a pretty good one to send to friends.

Responding to growing conflict between states and the federal government over the issue of medical marijuana, Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) will offer an amendment later this month to the Science, State, and Justice spending bill to forbid the U.S. Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from spending any federal tax dollars to target and prosecute patients who possess or use medicinal cannabis in compliance with their state laws. Eighty percent of the American public supports the physician-supervised use of cannabis as a medicine, and they do not wish to see their tax dollars wasted by those in Congress who would target the sick and dying in their overzealous war on drugs. Last year, 161 members of Congress voted in favor of Hinchey-Rohrabacher, but we need 57 more members to join with them to stop Washington’s war on patients.
Sincerely,

Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
Member, Board of Directors
NORML/NORML Foundation

This is the fourth attempt for this provision in as many years. Write your representative now!
Here’s the result of the vote on this amendment from 2005. [does M. Simon care to comment?]

I had an exhilarating and exhausting time in New York, seeing 7 shows and giving walking tours, while hosting a tour group of 74 people. I’m back now and trying to recover.
Obviously, it was a bit difficult to keep up with posting during that time, but a big thanks is due to the regular commenters who did a marvelous job of watching out for Drug WarRant in my absence.
In particular, check out the comments from my last post, with Sandra LaCagnina’s complaint about my involvement in Vigil for Lost Promise. While I wasn’t available to immediately respond, everyone else has done a wonderful job.
And Sandra, I don’t delete comments simply because they disagree with my views. As you can see, I don’t even delete them when they accuse me of things I don’t do. You are welcome here, and I encourage you to join in the dialog.

Tonight is the night for the DEA’s Vigil for Lost Promise, remembering those who died from drugs. And if this was a parents’ event and not a DEA event, it might be a good remembrance, but the DEA’s involvement makes it a cynical exploitation of young people’s deaths to promote their destructive (and lucrative) drug war.
I have my own Vigil for Lost Promise and I ask you to take a moment to remember those who have died from the drug war itself and read their stories as well.
The Marijuana Policy Project has also responded with the charge that the DEA vigil ignores other DEA victims:

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s “Vigil for Lost Promises,” scheduled for this evening at 6:30 pm. at the DEA’s headquarters, commemorates victims of drug abuse but ignores the seriously ill patients who have suffered and died at the hands of the DEA, one such victim charged today.
“At dawn on September 5, 2002, I awoke to five federal agents pointing assault rifles at my head,” said Suzanne Pfeil, who suffers from paralysis and pain caused by post-polio syndrome. Pfeil is a member of the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in Santa Cruz, California. “They yelled at me to put my hands in the air and to stand up ‘NOW,’ while I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t,” Pfeil said. Eventually, the agents handcuffed Pfeil, confiscated her physician-recommended medicine, ransacked WAMM’s premises, arrested founders Mike and Valerie Corral (herself an epileptic) and confiscated the medical marijuana used by approximately 250 patients, most suffering from cancer, AIDS or other life-threatening conditions. “Thirty-three of our members have died since the raid, and there is no doubt that some of those deaths were hastened by the stress, terror, and deprivation of their medicine by the DEA,” Pfeil added.
Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., said, “If the DEA wants to honor victims, it should recognize the cancer patients and paraplegics who’ve had assault rifles pointed in their faces and been slapped in handcuffs by the DEA, for the simple act of taking their medicine.” Later this month, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would stop such DEA raids in states with medical marijuana laws.
Houston also expressed concern about misleading material put out by the DEA and some members of Congress, falsely implying that medical marijuana contributed to the death of 14-year old Irma Perez, who died of an MDMA (ecstasy) overdose in April 2004. Detailed information about victims of the DEA’s attacks on medical marijuana patients can be found at http://www.mpp.org/pdf/HorrorStories_Brief.pdf. Background on Suzanne Pfeil, the WAMM raid, and Irma Perez is at http://www.mpp.org/pdf/LostPromises_Brief.pdf.

It’s good to see that someone else has noted how Irma Perez’s death has been exploited by the drug warriors.
The most bizarre statement involved with this vigil comes from DEA head Karen Tandy:

“This vigil gives hope for an America without drugs.”

Really? An America without drugs? No aspirin? How about cancer or AIDS drugs? Nicotine? Caffeine? Antacids?
Even if she really means that this vigil gives hope for an America that is devoid of those specific drugs that are currently illegal, where could she even get the idea that’s possible? Is she that stupid? (Or think we are?)
Ah… maybe she means there’s hope for an America without illegal drugs. And with legalization, that could happen. But somehow I doubt that’s what she had in mind.

Link

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to end U.S. Army helicopter support for a joint U.S.-Bahamas drug-interdiction program that over the past two decades has resulted in hundreds of arrests and the seizure of tons of cocaine and marijuana. […]
But in a May 15 letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Rumsfeld said it was time after more than 20 years to shift the equipment elsewhere. The military is being stretched thin by the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and other commitments around the globe.
The Bahamas anti-drug program, Rumsfeld wrote, “now competes with resources necessary for the war on terrorism and other activities in support of our nation’s defense, with potential adverse effects on the military preparedness of the United States.”

It was bound to happen.
I think we should have a series of debates between Rumsfeld and Walters where they attempt to prove that they are actually deserving of receiving taxpayer money.

PFC Judson Parkin received a Purple Heart Medal for his service in Iraq. His first lieutenant wrote about him:

“He performed his duties in an outstanding manner and never wavered under fire. He upheld the Marine Corps tradition of bravery, risking his life…”

In fact, Parkin was rewarded with seven medals and ribbons in three years of service.
One little problem: right before his deployment to Iraq, they found less than a gram of marijuana in his room. This didn’t prevent them from shipping him out, but after he returned…

As the time passes, his ordeal looks more and more like a quote from Kafka, with endless circling of a bureaucratic machine around and around the same issue, never moving an inch ahead, multiple punishments for the same insignificant crime and growing numbers of official letters confirming the receipt of a complaint, but never bringing any solution.
“During Private Parkin’s deployment, he was not recommended for promotion because of his past drug abuse,” wrote Major J.R. Jurgensen of the U.S. Marine Corps Office of Legislative Affairs in December 2005 in response to Senator Feinstein request about Parkin’s fate.
Not recommended for promotion? That’s punishment number one.
“His punishment included reduction in rank…” That’s punishment number two. “…the recommendation for an Other than Honorable [discharge] (OTH).” And that’s punishment number three.
“If the Marine Corps discharges me as OTH,” wrote Parkin to Jeff Goldstein, his history teacher in high school, “I will lose ALL my benefits, including the GI Bill and my veteran medical benefits.”
Scary as it sounds, Parkin prepared for the worst, but he could not imagine that yet another punishment, arguably the most severe one, was in store for him.
Since September 2005, when his commanding officer at the time, J. M. Odonnell recommended OTH, Parkin was left at Camp Pendelton as a Remain Behind Element (RBE) to wait for a decision made on his behalf.
In the time period, his papers got lost several times, his chain-of-command officers cannot give him any time frame of the upcoming decision or tell him when his punishment number four will be over, so he spends his days tending to miscellaneous chores — from gardening to heavy lifting — and basically rotting away.

This is unbelievable.
I can understand the military having rules about the use of drugs and alcohol (and particularly having time and place rules), but this kind of stupidity in our government is harmful. If his infraction was really that serious, they shouldn’t have let him go to Iraq.
This isn’t the only case like this. There were also the 21 Guardsmen in Iowa who tested positive… again just before shipping out.

MAZAR-e-SHARIF, Afghanistan, June 2, 2006 (ENS) – It’s a day out in
the country for Noor Mohammad, as he stands in the middle of a field
with a stick, beating energetically at the opium poppy plants around him.
“I like destroying poppies,” he said. “It’s fun to be away from the
city for a day.”
Noor, 16, is in the tenth grade at a school in Mazar-e-Sharif, the
capital of Balkh province. His one day trip to the country is part of
an experiment being conducted by the government’s counter-narcotics
department in Balkh.
“Even with transportation and lunch, students come a lot cheaper than
any other work force,” explained Zabiullah Akhtari, a senior
government official in charge of poppy eradication in Balkh. “We’re
going to use students several more times before the end of the poppy season.”
Not all the participants share Noor’s enthusiasm for the task. By
contrast, Parwaiz, 14, is scared to death. Sitting exhausted under a
tree after his day’s labors, he looked around nervously as he spoke
to a reporter.
“It’s a difficult task, but we have been ordered to do it by our
school,” he said. “Now we’re just hoping that armed [militia]
commanders don’t attack us.”

Link

Editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune:

The drug war is its own drug. You start with a little, and pretty soon you just need more, and more, until it has consumed your life.
Unable to stem the demand for illegal drugs, and unwilling to fully fund workable alternatives such as treatment and drug courts, lawmakers around the country have become addicted to applying criminal justice solutions to a public health problem.
The result has been similar to the individual who is disappointed to find that casual use of a softish drug hasn’t solved all of his problems so, instead of getting clean, he moves on to larger amounts and/or harder drugs.

Interesting analogy. If true, you’d think people like Mark Souder would have OD’d by now…