Drug WarRant

The State of Ohio, which already got a huge black eye this year from “investing” millions in pension funds with a “rare coin dealer” who was also a campaign contributor, is again being shown to have no regard for financial accountability — this time in the theft of citizens’ assets.
Greg Schwartz of the Free Times has found:

On March 1, all Ohio law enforcement agencies
were supposed to send an annual report to the state attorney general’s office listing all money and property they’ve seized in drug cases during the previous fiscal year. But since 1997, less than half have complied, according to Attorney General Jim Petro’s staff.
What’s worse, it’s not clear that Petro even cares. His staff claims that the AG’s office has “neither the authority nor the resources” to enforce such reporting, which is required by Ohio law.
Ed Orlett, a spokesperson for the Ohio chapter of Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), believes this lack of enforcement could open a Pandora’s box of potential corruption. “It’s a multi-million dollar business,” says Orlett of search-and-seizure operations. “[Authorities] seize cash and property which they liquidate, and which goes into a law enforcement slush fund of sorts.”

I haven’t talked much about this recently, but asset forfeiture is one of the major abuses that has come out of the drug war. Originally intended to go after the assets of major organized crime operations, the drug war has brought it to the retail law enforcement market, with seizures of cash, cars, houses, land — anything they can attempt to link to drug transactions, even if they don’t have enough evidence to charge the owner with a crime.
Probably the most infamous case of asset forfeiture abuse is that of Donald Scott (listed on the Drug War Victims page) — a millionaire with a large piece of land that government agencies really wanted to have. Donald was shot and killed in a raid that was intended to find some drugs so they could seize the land. A later report stated: “It is the District Attorney’s opinion that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government. Based in part upon the possibility of forfeiture, Spencer obtained a search warrant that was not supported by probable cause. This search warrant became Donald Scott’s death warrant.”
There are also numerous stories of people losing their life savings or their homes. Recently, Boulder City Attorney Dave Olsen tried to seize a woman’s house for having 6 marijuana plants.
The fact that local law enforcement agencies get to keep most of what they seize (and the federal government actually helps local agencies do this, even in cases where the state government opposes it) makes this program ripe for abuse. It’s completely improper for an agency to profit from their seizure of citizens’ property, and yet that’s how the system works.
So for over half of Ohio’s law enforcement agencies to not even report what they’ve seized, and the state not hold them accountable — that’s criminal.
For more on asset forfeiture, visit Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR).

Look at all these unscrupulous thugs and criminals making big money from meth. They’ve found a big cash cow.
… and you’re paying for it.

Sometimes this guy just outdoes himself.

John Walters, White House drug czar: “Nobody says I need medicinal meth, medicinal crack, medical Jack Daniels. The fact of the matter is, and we have to have compassion for the sick and dying, but Prop. 215 is being used to suggest marijuana is good for you.”

You know, I really try to be a good person. I was raised to be a good person. I really believe in helping people and I generally don’t wish for bad things to happen to people. And yet, I must admit that there are times like this that I find a part of me hoping that the Drug Czar would find himself someday in the position of needing the relief of medical marijuana. Then I would like to be the one to bring it to him and have a nice little chat.

Via TalkLeft
The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that if one resident of the house is present and objects, a consent search is not allowed, even if another resident gives consent.
Judge Alito did not participate. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas dissented.

You can access the syllabus here; Justice Souter’s opinion here; Justice John Paul Stevens’ concurring opinion here; Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s concurring opinion here; Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.’s dissenting opinion here; Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion here; Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissenting opinion here; and the oral argument transcript here.

Update: Just a reminder. This ruling doesn’t help you if you’re not home and your spouse/roommate give consent for a search. Which is why it’s always a good idea to pick your spouse/roommate carefully, and make sure everybody in the house knows never to consent to a search without a warrant.
And if you ask why you should worry if you don’t have any drugs, I respond: Can you be absolutely sure that none of your friends lost something out of their pocket that went behind the sofa cushions when they visited you? Are you 100% certain that there isn’t a secret compartment or stash in the ceiling left by the previous occupant? Are you looking forward to hiring a lawyer to try to prove you knew nothing about those?

Good investigative journalism by Angela Valdez of the Willamette Week, exposing the “investigative journalism” of the Oregonian.
Meth Madness — How The Oregonian manufactured an epidemic, politicians bought it and you’re paying.
Via Hit and Run

The ACLU and Students for Sensible Drug Policy are filing a federal lawsuit today against the Department of Education and Secretary Margaret Spellings. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the law that strips college financial aid from students with drug convictions. See New York Times article today. More info on the lawsuit is available here.
This is being covered over at the DARE Generation Blog, where they are also seeking students who have been denied financial aid to be part of the class action suit. If you’re on a campus and would like to help out, go to the lawsuit page and print out some fliers to put up around campus to help them find plaintiffs.

In Slate: How Not to Report About Meth:

Start your article with an anecdote, preferably one about a user who testifies about how methamphetamine destroyed his life. Toss out some statistics to indicate that meth use is growing, even if the squishy numbers don’t prove anything. Avoid statistics that cut against your case. Use and reuse the words “problem” and “epidemic” without defining them. Quote law enforcement officers extensively, whether they know what they’re talking about or not. Avoid drug history except to make inflammatory comparisons between meth and other drugs. Gather grave comments from public-health authorities but never talk to critics of the drug war who might add an unwanted layer of complexity to your story.
Finally, attach a sensationalistic headline, such as “The Next Crack Cocaine? As Meth Use Grows, Officials Fear Region Is Unprepared to Deal With It.” That’s what the Washington Post did on March 19 in a piece that landed on the front page of the Metro section.

Jack does a great job once again at taking down the irresponsible reporting that has so often, over the years, fueled the excesses of the drug war. The result of such reporting is extremely destructive to society (see Len Bias, or crack cocaine), and it’s done strictly for ratings.
Update: Since I mentioned Len Bias above, it occurred to me that not all my readers may be familiar with the Len Bias story. Here’s a good recap of the situation and the result from CounterPunch.

On June 19, 1986, Maryland University basketball star Len Bias died from an overdose of cocaine. As Dan Baum put it in his excellent Smoke and Mirrors, The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, “In life, Len Bias was a terrific basketball player. In death he became the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs.” It was falsely reported that Bias had smoked crack cocaine the night before his death. In fact he had used powder cocaine and there was no link between this use and the failure of his heart, according to the coroner. Bias had signed with the Boston Celtics and amid Boston’s rage and grief Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, a Boston rep, rushed into action. In early July he convened a meeting of the Democratic Party leadership: “Write me some goddamn legislation,” he ordered. “All anybody in Boston is talking about is Len Bias. They want blood. If we move fast enough we can get out in front of the White House.” In fact the White House was moving pretty fast. Among other things the DEA had been instructed to allow ABC News to accompany it on raids against crackhouses. “Crack is the hottest combat-reporting story to come along since the end of the Vietnam war,” the head of the New York office of the DEA exulted.
All this fed into congressional frenzy to write tougher laws. House Majority Leader Jim Wright called drug abuse “a menace draining away our economy of some $230 billion this year, slowly rotting away the fabric of our society and seducing and killing our young.” Not to be outdone, South Carolina Republican Thomas Arnett proclaimed that “drugs are a threat worse than nuclear warfare or any chemical warfare waged on any battlefield.” The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was duly passed. It contained 29 new minimum mandatory sentences. Up until that time in the history of the Republic there had been only 56 mandatory minimum sentences. The new law had a death penalty provision for drug “king pins” and prohibited parole for even minor possession offenses. But the chief focus of the bill was crack cocaine. Congress established a 100-to-1 sentencing ratio between possession of crack and powder cocaine. Under this provision possession of five grams of crack carries a minimum five-year federal prison sentence. The same mandatory minimum is not reached for any amount of powder cocaine under 500 grams. This sentencing disproportion was based on faulty testimony that crack was 50 times as addictive as powdered coke. Congress then doubled this ratio as a so-called “violence penalty.”

And we’ve been living with the horrific results of those laws ever since.

Bolivian President Evo Morales is going to the United Nations in an attempt to legalize the leaf in the international community.

Under the slogan “coca is not cocaine”, they are calling for coca-based products, ranging from staples such as tea and bread to cosmetic goods such as shampoo, to be mass-produced and exported from all over South America.
But the plant, because of its close link to cocaine, is listed by the UN as a poisonous species, something which Bolivia hopes to change this week as it takes the case for legalising coca to the UN narcotics and crime agency in Vienna.

He’ll have a tough go of it with that hard-line group, but I wish him luck.
Needles to say, the U.S. is not amused.

If he succeeds in changing the plant’s status by 2008, Washington will not be happy. The US, which spends $1bn a year on its so-called “war on drugs” across South America, says it would be impossible to legalise coca growing in Bolivia without sending cocaine production soaring.
US officials express serious concerns that the new wave of leftist Latin American leaders – from Bolivia’s President Morales to the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez – are acting in the interests of cocaine barons.

Of course, in reality, it’s the United States that acts in the interests of cocaine barons. If it wasn’t for our government, it wouldn’t be so profitable.

Sometimes you read a sentence and your head explodes.

Clark County Sheriff Bill Young ended the long-standing practice of placing narcotics inside the vehicles of law-abiding motorists as a training exercise for drug-sniffing dogs in April 2005.

Link. Via Baylen at To the People.

Radley Balko at The Agitator continues to be one of the most important reads out there. He’s got tons of posts and pictures from his recent trip to investigate the Cory Maye case.
He and I are in total agreement regarding the improper use of military-style tactics against American citizens in the name of the drug war (or for other reasons for that matter). That led me to my Drug War Victims page, and him to his continuing series on Paramilitary Police Raids.
Today he discusses SWAT teams further, and it’s a good post. Here’s an excerpt:

We also need to ask ourselves, quite simply, if we want to live in a society where its appropriate to serve warrants on nonviolent offenders with cops dressed in battle garb. I sure as hell don’t. Does a pot smoker really deserve to have his door beaten down while he’s sleeping? To be sworn at, forced to the ground at gunpoint, and handcuffed? Go back to that Churchill quote: “Democracy means that when there’s a knock at the door at 4 am, it’s probably the milkman.” What does it mean that we’ve reached the point where not only can we no longer be sure it’s actually the milkman, but that police don’t even bother to knock?
Factor in the fact that many of these raids are conducted on evidence as flimsy as a single tip from a single confidential informant, who may have given that tip in exchange for drugs, money, or leniency with respect to his own drug charges, and judges who’ve turned warrant applictations into a rubber-stamp process, and you’ve effectively created a police state. Cops can break down your door in the middle of the night barely any evidence at all. They can terrorize your family at gunpoint. And even when they make a mistake (and they often do), there’s rarely if any disciplinary action taken, or changes in procedure to made to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again. The best example of that is the fact that the same mistakes do continue to happen. Over and over.