Drug WarRant

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…

Yay, us.

Via

Glenn Greenwald makes a great comment about government investigative and enforcement powers.

Didn’t we all learn this point early on in school: there are criminals in the world, and allowing the police to break down our doors without warrants would help criminals be caught. Despite that fact, we don’t allow the police to break down our doors without warrants, because the police can catch criminals by searching homes only when they have warrants, a process enshrined in the Constitution in order to avoid the inevitable abuse that comes from allowing the Government to search our homes without any oversight. Thus, people (such as the Founders) who favor the warrant requirement before the police can search our homes aren’t pro-criminal. They know that criminals can be caught while preventing government abuse and lawlessness. Why is it so hard — for some people — to apply that same, quite basic reasoning to eavesdropping and all other forms of surveillance?

Now he was referring the NSA eavesdropping and Canadian terrorists, but the statement applies full well to the drug war.
I sometimes find myself wondering if I was the only one awake when that lesson was taught in school, or if, through some conspiracy, I ended up learning about a different constitution than everyone else. Because so often I hear people complain about “criminals’ rights” or spout the inane “If you don’t have anything to hide…”
Just because they claim it would make their job easier is no justification for government to break the laws that make us free citizens.
So keep in mind that when I complain about police dogs sniffing cars without suspicion, or police breaking down doors in the middle of the night because there might be some marijuana there, or randomly drug testing kids in schools, or searching people of a certain color in a certain neighborhood, it is not just about my belief that we should legalize drugs, and it certainly is not about defending drug dealers. It is about defending my country from my government. It is about protecting the Constitution of the United States, something my elected servants swore an oath to do, but that I seem to care more about actually doing.

The DEA’s New Groove by Arthur Delaney.

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2006 — The federal agency whose agents kick down doors and storm houses with guns drawn will soon pick up a new weapon to wage its war: candles.
At its headquarters in Virginia, the Drug Enforcement Administration, along with a number of drug awareness and prevention organizations, will host a vigil to remember young people who have lost their lives to illegal drug use.
The agency is promoting “A Vigil for Lost Promise,” the first DEA event of its kind, with a Web site, www.vigilforlostpromise.com that profiles eight young people who died from heroin and huffing. […]
Some people who oppose the more familiar tactics of the DEA — pursuing and arresting drug traffickers — are not impressed by the vigil.
“If it’s a drug enforcement agency. Why are they doing this kind of thing?” says Pete Guither, an Illinois University administrator who on the side writes a blog criticizing the war on drugs. He believes many of the problems associated with drug abuse stem simply from the fact that drugs are illegal.
Guither says he feels sorry for families who have lost members to drug abuse, and he would support the vigil if it weren’t part of the DEA’s “propaganda war.”
Guither has put together a spoof site (www.vigilforlostpromise.org) lamenting the loss of lives in drug raids and mocking the DEA’s apparent sympathy.
Guither’s site appears above the DEA’s site when “Vigil for Lost Promise” is typed into Google. It looks just like the DEA’s site, until phrases like “Our view is that the DEA, and the other prohibitionist groups who sponsor that site, are hypocrites, since they are, in fact, partially to blame in many drug deaths” appear.

Welcome, ABC News readers.
And any VigilForLostPromise.com supporters — before you start flaming, remember:

1. Drug Policy reformers care about the lives lost to drugs, and we feel for the loss felt by their families. We also care about the lives lost to the drug war and feel for their families as well.
2. Oppressive laws and enforcement didn’t prevent the deaths being mourned, and there’s no evidence that increasing the penalties would have either.
3. Many overdose deaths have been caused by the drug war. Think in particular about the recent rash of deaths from tainted heroin. As Cliff Thornton says “There is no drug known to man which becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals.”
4. More reasons the drug war contributes to drug deaths are listed here.

“bullet” Maia Szalavitz has an excellent article at Reason on the recent trial of Dr. Paul Heberle: The Doctor Wasn’t Cruel Enough: How one physician escaped the panic over prescription drugs.
“bullet” The Aspen Daily News: Marijuana Group Not High on the Patriot Act Our friend Jeralyn Merrit of TalkLeft gets quoted in this article about NORML’s legal seminar: “Once you give the government power, it’s very hard to get it back.”
“bullet” Pierre Lemieux has an entertaining column in the Western Standard (Canada): Dissenters From the Drug War

Journalist H.L. Menken characterized Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Why the busybodies’ own happiness at knowing that others are unhappy is deemed morally superior is an interesting paradox.
Whether some drugs help or hinder happiness should be for each individual to decide for himself.

At the Drug War Chronicle:

It’s a trio that gives the Bush administration nightmares, and they were all together in Bolivia last weekend. Bolivian President Evo Morales hosted Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in what he called an “axis of good” during a visit to Bolivia’s coca-growing Chapare region, and Chavez announced he would support Morales’ call to legalize and industrialize the coca leaf by providing $1 million in funding for research into coca’s uses and factories to turn it into coca flour or tea.

My first reaction is to have a nice chuckle over the likely discomfiture of the drug warriors over this news. And that’s fine. But then I think about how incredibly destructive our drug war has been to Latin America and how difficult it is for them to struggle to find solutions to that overbearing imposition, and I get serious again.

Tony Newman has an excellent piece at AlterNet: The Top 10 Things I Know About Drugs

1. Drugs are everywhere….
2. Different people have different relationships with different drugs….
3. People use drugs for joy and for pain….
4. Drug abuse does not discriminate, but our drug policies do. …
5. Relapse happens. …
6. Smoking five cigarettes is better than smoking 20. Using marijuana is better than using heroin….
7. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse….
8. Prohibition doesn’t work. Prohibition is responsible for most of the violence associated with drugs….
9. Drugs and the drug war touch most families…
10. We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren’t going anywhere….

*Bonus point: The public is ahead of the politicians….

I’ll be heading off to New York Monday for a week of theatre. I’m taking 74 people and showing them the city with walking tours each day, plus seeing 7 shows (Lieutenant of Inishmore, The History Boys, Drowsy Chaperone, Faith Healer, Sweeney Todd, Awake and Sing, Red Light Winter),
So I’ll be pretty busy, but if there are any Drug WarRant regulars in New York who’d like to get together for some coffee and to talk drug policy, I’d love it. Wednesday afternoon would be the best time for me, but there may be other good times during the week.
Email me if you’re interested.

From an OpEd by Ronald Fraser in the Niagara Gazette:

When there is a big gap between the views of ordinary Americans on a public issue and the voting record of their elected representatives in Congress on that issue, something is wrong. In the national debate over the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the people and their representatives in Congress seem to be living on different planets.

Great description.