Drug WarRant

Anthony Papa has a good article at Alternet: Two years in jail for a joint?

The war on drugs reached the pinnacle of cruelty when 18-year-old Mitchell Lawrence was sentenced to two years in jail for selling a teaspoonful of marijuana to an undercover police officer for $20. […]
Aguirre approached Mitchell and asked him if he had any weed. Mitchell pulled out a small bag of marijuana. The cop offered him $20. Mitchell hesitated; Aguirre insisted. Mitchell, who had seen Aguirre hanging out with other kids, motioned the cop to follow him up the street where he intended to smoke with him. Aguirre waved the $20 in his face. Mitchell, who was broke at the time, took the money, the first time he had ever accepted money in exchange for marijuana.
In the months that followed, Aguirre approached Mitchell again for marijuana. This time, however, Mitchell refused. Weeks later, a crew of undercover cops stormed Mitchell’s home and placed him under arrest. Mitchell was found guilty of distribution of marijuana, committing a drug violation within a drug-free school zone and possession.
On March 22, 2006, Mitchell Lawrence was sentenced to two years in prison.

This case is an indictment of the drug war, the entrapment methods used to make criminals out of those who are not, and the travesty of school zone laws.

Via DARE Generation Blog, comes a piece at Slate by Ryan Grim: A lie college students might want to tell.
It’s about the provision of the Higher Education Act that denies financial aid to those with drug convictions. A bad law (written and promoted by Mark Souder of Indiana) that also makes no sense. It serves no useful purpose whatsoever. It has nothing to do with whether the student is doing well in school-work — financial aid already has provisions for keeping your grades up. And it has nothing to do with being a law-abiding citizen — people aren’t denied aid for rape, assault, burglary, traffic violations, tax fraud, or drunk driving. It’s about additionally punishing drug users — and not just any drug users, but those who really want to make something of their lives by going to college.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy have been fighting this provision for years, and made significant progress recently with a change to reduce the negative impact, but they’re still working on getting rid of it entirely. They also had to fight the Department of Education to get actual statistics, but they got them, and frankly, the statistics floored me.
189,065 students were denied financial aid because of drug convictions.
I work at a university with 20,000 students and I see all the hope and promise of young people learning about themselves and their future. We’re talking about taking the equivalent of 10 universities this size and dashing the hopes and promise of those students.
Tragic.
There were a couple of other interesting points in the Slate article. First, it appears that Souder’s constituents reaped what he sowed…

If this law betters the lives of young people–Souder calls it a way to reduce youth drug use by reducing demand–then no state has done better than Souder’s own Indiana. As of August 2005, nearly 9,000 Indiana students–one in 200–have been denied aid since the law passed. That’s the highest proportion of students affected in any state by a wide margin.

(Of course, Souder just makes up the notion that the law reduces demand.)
Second, it appears the law mostly penalizes people for telling the truth.

There’s another funny thing about the Department of Education’s numbers: They don’t show the number of college applicants punished for drug convictions. They show the number punished for owning up to drug convictions. On their financial-aid applications, students are asked to check a box if they’ve been convicted of selling or possessing drugs. But the department has no way to verify students’ answers. Officials can cross-check the answers with federal arrest records, but they make up a very small percentage of all drug convictions.
So far, about 190,000 students across the country (and abroad) have told the truth and been denied financial aid. It’s impossible to know how many lied and headed off to college, federal aid in hand.

Reported at the Washington Post
The University of Maryland becomes the fifth school to pass a student referendum that says marijuana violations should be treated no more harshly than alcohol violations. This is part of the Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) movement. The idea is that for most students, both alcohol and marijuana are illegal, yet marijuana violations often end up with suspensions or being kicked out of housing, while alcohol violations do not. Their view is that alcohol is actually more dangerous than marijuana, so marijuana should not result in higher penalties. This is not about changing the law, but rather school policy, and such referendum is non-binding (no school has yet changed their policy). The U-MD referendum passed with roughly 2/3 voting in favor.
The administration reaction?

The university’s vice president for student affairs said the administration takes any strong message from student elections very seriously. But she doesn’t think the school will be able to treat drug and alcohol violations the same way.
“You’ve got to look at these two issues differently,” Linda Clement said, because marijuana can bring harder drugs, dealers and crime. “Our campus police believe very strongly that drug activity attracts people to the campus who are dangerous.”
The vote comes just as the school, which has enjoyed a growing national reputation for its academics in recent years, also is fighting off the bad publicity that postgame student riots have brought. Last week, drunken students celebrated the women’s basketball national championship win by setting fires and shaking buses in College Park.

Who are the dangerous ones again?
Stupid reaction award goes to:

Gwendolyn Dungy, executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, laughed when she heard about the vote. She doesn’t know of any college in the country that treats drug and alcohol violations the same — mostly because of the law, she said, because, unlike smoking marijuana, drinking is legal after 21.

Um, yes, but we’re talking about the policy for those who are under 21, when both are illegal, and both have university policy penalties separate from criminal sanctions. It’s nice to know that Gwendolyn can laugh about students getting suspended or being denied housing for harming nobody.

John Fugelsang has an extensive (and quite witty) rant on the drug war over at Huffington Post.
Here are a couple of excerpts:

They always told us “Pot makes you violent. And Lazy.” Which never scared any kids I knew. I always thought if the violent people were lazy, we’d have a lot less crime. Imagine the thug who threatens, “I’m gonna kill you, man. Right after this burrito.”
And this is why so many kids have a hard time taking the drug war seriously. We’re always changing the reasons, but the message stays the same. We keep telling them “drugs are bad! Drugs are bad! Drugs are bad!” and that, my friends, is not the problem.
The problem is not that drugs are bad. The problem is that drugs are great.
[…]
Back then, Chinese immigrants were the group everybody was allowed to hate, and people really didn’t like the thought of good Christian folks going to smoke in the opium dens of “the heathen Chinese.” . White people took opium too, but they usually ate it, or shot it up. You know, the wholesome way.
So they passed a law taxing imported smokable opium. This is noteworthy, since besides the obvious racism, it was the first time the government used taxes not to raise money (as the founders intended), but to punish and control private behavior. Thus began a long tradition of drug laws that work about as well as British toothpaste.
[…]
And since it’s April, it’s worth mentioning that from the 1600s to the 1800s, cannabis hemp was used as a currency – legal tender. In fact for over 200 years you could pay your taxes in cannabis hemp. So next April 15th, try to send the IRS a few loose marijuana cigarettes. I’m sure they’ll appreciate your knowledge of our history, and you can even file it as a “joint return.”
[…]
In 1996 the voters of California approved a medical marijuana proposal. The Clinton White House promptly put the kibosh on it. George W. Bush is also opposed to medical marijuana. Now both of these presidents have been vague, at best, about their drug histories. But they’ve had no problem locking up others for the same behaviors. Which I take as a sign that neither of them truly believes in the drug war.
Because if they really felt at their core that illegal drug use was evil, they’d confess their crimes and ask forgiveness. Remember – if they thought it was a sin, they’d turn themselves in. Imagine Johnnie Cochran saying it – it’ll sound better.

Go ahead and read the rest, and then tell me if you can spot the common, but significant logic flaw in Val’s statement in the comments there.

Hammer of Truth has the story.
You may remember this guy. He’s the DEA agent who was doing a presentation in a school and telling the kids to stay away from guns and that he was the only one in the room professional enough to handle a Glock .40. One second later he shot himself in the foot. And it was captured on video. (Hammer of Truth’s got the video in the post. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.)
According to the Smoking Gun, he’s suing the DEA for allowing the tape (recorded by an audience member) to be disseminated.
Apparently he’s had a hard time getting people to take him seriously. Gee, I wonder why.

Link

“We’re not going to stop this stuff coming across the border,” the sheriff said. “They couldn’t stop Prohibition, and we’re not going to stop the drug trade.”

Via Drug Sense (Thanks, Allan):

James Blair, a spinal injury patient arrested on marijuana cultivation charges in 2003, received a check today from the City of Emeryville for $15,000 for marijuana seized by the Emeryville Police Department. Assisted by the patient advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Blair received one of the largest cash settlements to date in a case of wrongful police action in regard to medical marijuana. The City of Emeryville has now adopted a policy of not confiscating medical marijuana from qualified patients who show a valid medical marijuana identification card or doctor’s recommendation.

Nice.
However, there’s also this breaking news from an Oregon attorney (again, thanks Allan):

Received a call around 5pm today from a patient/caregiver/person responsible for the grow site that police were there wanting consent to look at the garden. Turned out police were part of ROCN, the Regional Organized Criminal Narcotics Taskforce, including Portland Police Bureau, Multnomah County Sherrif and a DEA agent.
Law Enforcement said that if consent were given to inspect, and if the garden was out of compliance they would seize the excess and no arrests would be made. Consent based on this condition was granted.
Although the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program had told the police that 7 people had their gardens registered there, paperwork provided at the scene demonstrated that 3 designated caregivers each were caring for 3 patients each, justifying 56 mature plants and 162 starts or seedlings. Fewer plants than these numbers were observed at the location.
The DEA agent, however, was instructed to seize all the plants which he had observed as a part of the conditional consent given. The patients/caregivers advised this agent that they were co-operating, but that they wanted a search warrant so that the federal magistrate was aware that the garden appeared to be in compliance with state law.
The decision to seize the plants was made by the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of drug prosecutions for the District of Oregon, John Diets. Notwithstanding my request of law enforcement on the scene, he refused to speak with me about his decision.
To their credit, Portland Police Bureau officers and the Multhnomah County Sherrif refused to participate in the search and seizure of the medicinal garden and left the scene. DEA agents required the patients/caregivers and I to leave while they awaited the warrant.
More information to be provided, as it develops.

Via Libby at Last One Speaks comes this rather humorous study of jazz musicians, drugs and mental health.
The startling conclusion? Jazz musicians like to use drugs and also have unusual, often troubled minds.
I’ve known some jazz musicians, and other creative people of the same mental intensity. The answer is that they are afflicted with a rare form of genius.

[Testifying before Congress in 1948]
Harry Anslinger: “I need more agents.”
Senate: Why?
Anslinger: “Because there are people out there violating the marijuana laws.”
Senate: Who?
Anslinger: “Musicians… And I don’t mean good musicians; I mean jazz musicians.”

I’m just kidding, of course, but Arianna Huffington’s new post sounds delightfully like a lot of stuff I’ve been talking about here.
First, about the fact that the reasons to oppose the drug war cross political lines:

Let’s face it, it’s not exactly left-wing to come out against a $40-billion-dollar-a-year War on Drugs that has unfairly targeted people of color, siphoned resources from the war on terror, and pitted the government against its own people.
Nor is it left-wing to want to put an end to a War on Drugs that has turned into a war on America’s minority communities. While blacks make up 13 percent of drug users, they account for 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. And the average prison term for black drug offenders is 69% longer [pdf] than for whites.
It’s not left-wing. It’s not right-wing. It’s common sense. And it’s why people from all parts of the political spectrum are finally speaking out on the issue.
As I’ve said before, on how many issues do Jesse Jackson, George Soros, Walter Cronkite, the ACLU, Cato, Bill Buckley, George Shultz and the Heritage Foundation agree?

And then about our political leaders…

The only ones who don’t seem convinced are our political leaders, who continue to hide on the issue — just as so many of them are hiding on the war in Iraq. And they’re doing it for the same reason: they are terrified of being seen as soft on defense, soft on the military, soft on terror, and soft on crime and drugs.
And their fear is making them soft in the head — and soft in the spine.
Aren’t you sick and tired of politicians who are supposed to be on your side betraying you — and betraying common sense — because of their fears?

Nice post.
And today, Balloon Juice’s John Cole linked approvingly to my collaborated post over at Glenn Greenwald’s, while last week Glenn Reynolds suggested legalizing drugs.
It is true. Drug policy reform is left, right, and center. It is libertarian, democratic and republican. It is right for the people and the country.

Here’s a big part of our problem.
In this column by Bill McLellan in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he talks favorably about a visit from LEAP member Howard Woolridge. McLellan, like Woolridge, thinks that all drugs should be legalized and regulated. But what about the politicians?

…I wondered if we are about to reach the second phase of this particular fight. That would be getting the politicians on board.
The people are ahead of the pols on this. […]
But what politician dares speak the truth to this issue? I remember when James Gierach ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Illinois in 1994. He was a straight arrow, a former assistant state’s attorney from Cook County. He had reached the same conclusion that Woolbridge has reached. Party leaders treated Gierach as if he were a nut. He was not even allowed to participate in the debates, so he crashed them, and the papers, including this one, made his crusade seem like a farce.
Even now, when I mention legalization to candidates, they say, “Can you imagine what my opponents would do to me in a 30-second attack commercial?”
So the politicians leave the truth to fellows like Woolbridge….

If only politicians could handle the truth! Ah, but I must be some kind of deluded idealist to even imagine such a thing.