Drug WarRant

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.

Link
Let’s see, at roughly $25,000 per year in taxpayer money to pay for his prison lodging…

President Bush is showing his eagerness to reward failure by declaring tomorrow National DARE Day 2006.
Hammer of Truth got a better idea and declared April 11 an official DARE Generation Day. The DARE Generation are the fabulous members of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.
Classy idea.

Peter Letang, Delaware’s former chief prosecutor says that we’re losing the drug war. He talks about the costs and the profit incentives connected to prohibition. He doesn’t have a firm solution, but he’s willing to talk about it.

I do not vote anyone else’s proxy in making these comments, but I can report that a number of police officers, members of the Criminal Justice Council, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys and corrections staff, have spoken to me echoing my thoughts. I am intrigued that those conversations have generally been in hushed tones.
I do not regard a recommendation for dialogue on this subject to be blasphemy, and I do recognize that there are downsides to attempting to reduce the profit from the drug market. I am equally aware, however, that the societal impact of what we have been attempting over the past many years has been frustrating, in large part ineffective and expensive. Candid discussions today will impact the next generation.

This is a sign that we’re making some serious progress. Part of the problem in the past has been that the prohibitionists have created an environment where simply talking about options other than prohibition was considered some kind of equivalent to treason.
But now we’re seeing more people from all walks of life speaking up and, at the very least, questioning the validity of the drug war. These are all cracks in the facade that is propping up prohibition.
Looks like Peter Letang is a potential candidate for joining Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, if he hasn’t already.

And the moron drug warriors keep looking for more ways to destroy people…
“bullet” Illinois House OKs Bill to Neuter Dogs of Drug Suspects

Under the bill, if a dog already has been determined to be vicious according to the state’s Animal Control Act, and its owner is then charged with a felony violation of drug, methamphetamine or marijuana laws, the owner would have to get the dog neutered or spayed.
The operation would have to be performed within a week of a person being charged with the drug crime. Owners who fail to comply would be charged with a misdemeanor.

Apparently, the idea is to have more docile dogs for the inevitable future time when the SWAT team shows up, or something.
“bullet” Officer Posing As High Schooler Leads Drug Sting

She was new in school, a demure blonde with a sob story.
With her mother dead and father chronically absent, the girl said, she needed to get high to kill the pain. For three months, students at Falmouth High bought her story and sold her the drugs she said she needed.
But yesterday, the real story emerged.
The girl who some students yesterday said they knew as Keane was in fact a fresh-faced cop whose three months at Falmouth High School culminated before the start of classes yesterday when nine teenage boys were led out of their homes in handcuffs on charges of selling her marijuana and ecstasy.

This is despicable. You put an attractive blonde girl with a sob story in with a bunch of hormone raging High School boys and they’ll rob a bank for her. Of course, they got drugs for her. I’m sure if they didn’t have any, they found out who did.
Look, I don’t want kids doing drugs, and I think we can find ways to reduce drug use by children, but I also don’t want kids growing up thinking that they can’t trust anybody and nobody trusts them. Being forced to pee in a cup, dealing with dog searches, and having friends who are narcs. What horrible lessons we teach.

I have a guest post (in collaboration with Hypatia) over at Glenn Greenwald’s Unqualified Offerings: Using the Drug ‘War’ to Expand Government Power. Check it out.
Welcome Glenn Greenwald readers. Naturally, the post just got up today, and already I have more news to add regarding seizure and no-knock searches…
“bullet” Via TalkLeft comes the outrageous story of prosecutors and ATF agents attempting to seize the gold-capped teeth of a couple of drug defendants being held in jail. The agents had gotten a warrant and were on their way to taking the defendants to a dentist before the defense attorneys found out and were able to get a judge to intervene.

“I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and I have never heard of anything like this,” said Richard Troberman, past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and an expert on forfeiture law. “It sounds like Nazi Germany when they were removing the gold teeth from the bodies, but at least then they waited until they were dead.”

Jeralyn at TalkLeft has read the court papers and reacts.

The warrant did not authorize the defendants to be removed from the FDC and transported to a dentist. This must have been done by the agents executing the warrant, on their own. No one has explained yet how these defendants were removed from the FDC. An agent can’t simply take someone out without proper authorization. This is a mystery.[…]
To make this even worse, I’m told by someone with knowledge about the case that at least one of the defendants had the grill placed in his mouth years ago when he was in the Navy, long before he was ever involved in drug trafficking.

“bullet” Radley Balko has, as usual, an outstanding article about no-knock searches. In this particular article, he analyzes the case of Hudon vs. Michigan, which is being considered at the Supreme Court.

At issue is whether or not police who used an illegal “no-knock” raid to enter a defendant’s home can use the drugs they seized inside against the defendant at trial.

This will have some important Fourth Amendment impact. If the Supreme Court rules that drugs seized during an illegal no-knock raid can be admissible, then we’ll never be safe in our homes. As it is, legal no-knock searches are authorized. for the flimsiest of excuses. What we really need is a tightening of the definition of exigent circumstances for no-knock searches.

Via Dare Generation Diary.
Great news. There’s a settlement in the Goose Creek High School drug raid.

A federal judge gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a $1.2 million plan to settle lawsuits filed over a high school drug sweep where police drew their guns.
Surveillance videotapes captured the 2003 raid, in which officers ordered students to lie on the floor and used a dog to search them. Police found no drugs and no arrests were made, but the raid provoked marches and the resignation of the school’s principal.
Fifty-nine students and their families sued the Goose Creek police and the Berkeley County School District, claiming their constitutional rights were violated.

Here’s some background on the raid, and you can watch actual video footage here
A random drug search with dogs and guns drawn and students forced to lie on the floor, racial overtones to the areas searched, and a whole lot more. This was one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen.
And it came about because the drug war keeps leading people to believe that they have the right to do anything to American citizens in the name of the war on drugs. The principal and police at Goose Creek forgot that their students were human beings and Americans with rights.
If it takes a lawsuit to remind them of that fact, then so be it. And just maybe some other schools will be reminded.

The first patient has applied for the new medical marijuana law in Rhode Island, which allows qualified persons to possess or buy 2.5 ounces of marijuana for medical purposes.
This was a law passed in January over the Governor’s veto. I wasn’t aware at the time, however, that it’s temporary. According to the article, the legislature must renew the law next year or it will expire. (How come they never do drug war penalties that way?)
One oddity in the article. The apnews.myway piece is illustrated with a picture of Angel Raich, the famous California medical marijuana patient. It’s a rather strange juxtaposition, since there’s no mention of her case in the article.

Some interesting discussions going on on the conservative side of the internet.
Pajamas Media links to a fascinating piece at Austin Bay, which was inspired by an email from a reader.
This all got kicked off with this post about a Creators Syndicate Column on immigration, which included:

U.S. demand for illegal narcotics feeds Mexican corruption. Narcotics trafficking negatively affects political and economic conditions in Mexico (and thus has an impact on immigration). Getting real control of the borders means curbing America’s appetite for illegal drugs.

Glenn Reynolds responded to that:

Or just legalizing them, putting the narcotics lords out of business.

Ah, yes.
But the Austin Bay reader goes much further with a very well crafted argument that gets to the heart of the failure of prohibition (even if done with an extra bit of negativity toward drug users).

“Getting real control of the borders means curbing America’s appetite for illegal drugs.” Take an old GP’s word on the subject as an honest of the fact that nothing in the power of the United States government (or in the power of those governments of the several States) can achieve this end. First, it is not “America’s appetite for illegal drugs” but rather the desires (and in a slender minority of cases the *need*) for psychoactive substances — everything from alcohol and tobacco through the various chemicals covered by the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, and the many inhalants used for “huffing” to induce cerebral hypoxia — that makes up this “appetite.” Think of the epidemiology in terms of political economics. Just as macroeconomic trends are created by millions of discrete microeconomic decisions, aggregate public health problems are defined by millions of individual cases. […]
Government is an agency armed and engined for the exercise of the police power in civil society and in international affairs. Its functions are punitive, and it can be described as persuasive only in that one is “persuaded” when somebody points a pistol at one’s head. It is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. And you can’t force a person to stifle his appetite for alcohol, tobacco, “controlled substances,” or toxic inhalants if he truly wants them. It’s impossible to prevent efforts at self-destructively perverse behavior even when you’ve got an individual in a prison cell on a 24-hour-a-day suicide watch. The exercise of the police power to such an end is not only intrinsically ineffective but ultimately destructive to civil society. It not only puts that government into a state of war with a huge portion of the same population it’s constituted to serve but also guarantees that the officers of that government will be corrupted either by the manifold opportunities to profit from the desire for the prohibited substances or a corrosively fanatical zeal for the exercise of normative control. What’s worse? Government as prostitute or government as dominatrix? You’re readily able to make a comparison as regards the matter of illegal drugs. What we’re getting right now is *both*

Excellent job articulating the fundamental failure of the concept of a drug war.

The Controlled Substances Act and all other precedent and subsequent legislation at all levels – federal, state, and local – must be repealed and replaced by nothing whatsoever. Let the dopers have what they want, brought to them at market-clearing prices which will drop so low that the drug “Lords” of the worldwide criminal economy will see their profits disappear into thin air. De-incentivize the drug trade, allow the drug addicts who won’t save themselves to crash and burn (which they’ll do anyway), and absolve all government agencies of any responsibility for cleaning up any of the self-inflicted woundings the drug addicts suffer. The rest of the First World will rapidly follow suit. Only American idiocy in this regard has really held them in the “War on Drugs.” The productivity of the First World nations will no longer be channelled into Third World criminal enterprises. FARC and Hugo Chavez will be de-funded. The drug gangs of Central Asia will have markets of such vastly reduced profitability that they will not be able to secure the manpower and material resources to continue militarily significant operations. And there are thousands of other examples of changes for the better that I can leave to you as an exercise for the student. Consider the global impact of organized crime (including criminal regimes masquerading as diplomatically recognized governments) deprived of the financial resources they presently gain as the result of their activities in drug trafficking. Let the drug addicts crash and burn. The prolongation of their survival is not worth the perversion of civil government and the destruction of civil society that the “war on drugs” has been inflicting upon these United States for the past century and more.

Now that may be attractive to a certain conservative viewpoint — no doubt there will be liberals with a different concern about those drug addicts crashing and burning. But the great thing is that this solution still allows liberal approaches to address those concerns without the baggage of prohibition.

Punish criminal and negligent behavior resulting from drug-induced impairment (much as we punish acts of negligence or violence when a malefactor injures someone under the influence of alcoholic inebriation), but otherwise leave the drug addict to suffer the fate he has chosen for himself.

Exactly. Some extraordinary stuff, and Austin Bay seems to be in basic agreement.
I’d love to see this discussion continued and expanded throughout all areas of the blogging community.
“bullet” In a separate story, Free Republic has a good discussion going on Radley Balko’s article Government Goons Murder Puppies!.