Drug WarRant

Via Hammer of Truth, comes this report that Steve Kubby has been released from jail.

I just spoke with a very happy Steve Kubby, who was released from Placer County jail this afternoon, where he had been held since January 27th, following his expulsion from Canada on January 26th.[…]
… it appears that Kubby was freed once again at the initiative of the Placer County jailers and sheriff who are still refusing to do the dirty work of their higher ups, who like to have their underlings do their killing for them.
As MarijuanaNews reported last week, Steve has lost 25 pounds in the last month. Marinol has controlled most of the symptoms of his adrenal cancer, but this remains a very dangerous and unethical medical experiment because of the absence of the other cannabinoids.

Kubby is still scheduled to return to court on March 14.
Update: Nice article in the LA Times.

So in the latest Colombian news — Due to extensive government corruption, wealthy drug traffickers have opened a new door to transporting their drugs… … from the U.S. to Colombia.
“How’s that?” you ask.
The U.S. has complex negotiations regarding what preferential treatment Colombia has to give the United States in exchange for turning their country into a wasteland, and there have been free trade negotiations as well. Here’s one of the outcomes:

Colombian negotiators also caved on the issue of intellectual property rights. As a result, patents held by U.S. pharmaceutical companies will now be more comprehensively protected in Colombia, which means that cheaper generic drugs will likely be replaced with the more expensive U.S.-produced versions. Stephanie Weinberg, a policy adviser for the aid organization Oxfam International, said that the trade agreement “could dangerously hinder Colombia’s access to important lifesaving drugs at affordable prices.”

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is heavily funded by drug traffickers, thought it was a good deal.
Interestingly, in a country where we are spending taxpayer money to convince farmers to switch to crops other than coca…

The Bush administration succeeded in getting Colombia to agree to initially lower, and eventually remove entirely, tariffs on U.S. poultry, corn and rice. Consequently, heavily subsidized U.S. farmers will be able to flood the Colombian market with these products, threatening the livelihood of their Colombian counterparts.

Oh, that makes sense.
However, at least the Colombian flower growers will get some help.

The deal also allows U.S. companies to purchase privatized public utility companies and allows more Colombian flower exports to the United States. Interestingly, the greatest benefactor of increased Colombian flower exports will be the country’s largest flower producer: the Dole Food Company, a U.S. multinational that controls 25 percent of the Colombian flower industry.

Boy, we sure know how to play the drug war, don’t we. Use taxpayer money to rape a country, destabilizing it without actually affecting the flow of drugs, and then pick up some of the choice leftovers.

So I wrote about a stupid and horrible bill proposed in Idaho, thinking it was one of those ridiculous measures that pops up in every session and then just quietly dies. But no.

The bill, which passed [the Senate] by an 18-16 vote, would mean pregnant mothers convicted of doing marijuana, LSD, methamphetamine or other drugs could face up to five years in jail and a $50,000 penalty.

Now I’m not sure what it says about Idaho or their legislators, when we have to turn to Senator Compton for help.

During a passionate debate, Sen. Dick Compton, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he’d like to see drug dealers publicly stoned, but voted against the bill out of a fear of unintended consequences.

The one real voice of reason is coming from the Idaho State Journal, which previously noted:

Pediatricians rightly worry that women using any of the above drugs will not seek prenatal care for fear of becoming a felon.
One local doctor also says the best time to convince a woman to stop taking drugs is when she’s pregnant or has just given birth. Drive them underground and that opportunity may never present itself.

… and now says:

Interestingly, the 35-member Senate includes only four women, three of whom voted against the bill.
And while methamphetamine and other drugs are widely thought to have negative consequences if taken during pregnancy, the only substance definitively shown to harm a fetus is alcohol, a product legal to those age 21 and over.

“bullet” Don’t forget 60 Minutes tonight.
“bullet” Increase in secrecy in federal trials (mostly drug cases).

The number of criminal cases that have reached verdicts but still have most of their records sealed has more than doubled in the last three years.

As TalkLeft notes, there are often good reasons for cases to be sealed. However, it is disturbing to see the increased level of secrecy, particularly when entire cases are sealed. [thanks, Casey]
“bullet” thehim’s Drug War Roundup is outstanding as always.
“bullet” Libby’s got a ton of important stuff at Last One Speaks, including the BuzzFlash interview with Charles Bowden, a report on Steve Kubby’s failing health, Patriot Act passage, a nice post about Howard Woolridge, and a police chief complaining about (and getting pulled) Marijuana Policy Project PSA’s on the radio.
“bullet” Grits for Breakfast notes that an entire police department in Texas was shut down for tampering with evidence and stealing drugs.
“bullet” Hammer of Truth is looking to declare a war… on drug prohibition rhetoric.
“bullet” Loretta Nall’s been making an impact in her run for Governor of Alabama. There’s video available of her speech to the Black Mayors Conference (where she talked about racism and the drug war).
“bullet” Radley Balko continues to light up the web with his stories of botched drug raids and his updates on Cory Maye.

This blog has received a nomination for the distinguished Koufax Award in the category of Best Single Issue Blog. It’s an extremely competitive category with some amazing blogs, and it’s great just to be listed with them.
Stop by and vote for your favorite in the comments, or by email. (Only once)
Here’s the info on the voting, with links to other award categories as well.

Mohammed Daoud, governor of Afghanistan’s Helmand province, either knows nothing about Afghanistan, or nothing about drugs.
He has vowed to destroy all the opium in his province in two months (the Helmand province is the leading producer of opium in Afghanistan.)
Mark May 4 on your calendar. Let’s see how he does.

… for today goes to Ianthia Smith, Guardian Staff Reporter, for the article Bahamas on winning side of drug war.
Ianthia actually led off the article with:

The Bahamas is one step closer to winning its drug war…

On step closer to winning the drug war! Wow, that is big news. Especially since nobody in the history of the world has actually won a drug war yet (to my knowledge).
But then again, maybe Ianthia meant it in the way I might say that, by eating a bowl of Wheaties this morning, I moved one step closer to winning an Olympic Gold Medal.
Now, here’s the evidence that the Bahamas is winning its drug war:

1. Seizures of marijuana doubled in 2005, demonstrating the success of the drug war.
2. Seizures of cocaine decreased in 2005, demonstrating the success of the drug war in previous years

Kind of hard to lose when you measure it that way.

Must see TV. Tomorrow (Sunday, March 5), CBS’s 60 Minutes (7 pm ET/PT, 6 pm CT), includes a segment on Marc Emery. I don’t know how the segment will turn out, but this is the kind of visibility he needs.

The last place he wants to be is in jail, but Emery says if the Canadian courts allow the U.S. government to extradite him and a U.S. jury puts him away, he still sees a silver lining.

“I am blessed by what the DEA has done,” he tells Simon. “I would rather see marijuana legalized than me being saved from a U.S. jail. I hope that if I am incarcerated, I can influence tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people to take up my cause.”

Note: There are a couple of short preview videos at the CBS page.

Link

Saying that mandatory minimums are a
“one-way ratchet upwards” and cannot “satisfy the basic dictates of fairness,”
Judge Patricia Wald, testifying on behalf of the American Bar Association,
raised a host of concerns about such sentencing practices in testimony before
an Organization of American States Commission that is examining the issue. […]
Wald noted that mandatory minimums lead to an array of problems,
including: […] “Unchecked power” by prosecutors that Wald says, “dangerously disturbs the balance between the parties in an adversarial system, and deprives defendants of access to an impartial decisionmaker in the all-important area of sentencing.” […]
Wald, retired chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit and former judge at the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, concluded by saying that she was “saddened
to see that the sentences imposed on war crimes perpetrators responsible for
the deaths and suffering of hundreds of innocent civilians often did not come
near those imposed in my own country for dealing in a few bags of illegal
drugs.”

I love it!

Washington DC — By the request of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the
nation’s largest medical marijuana advocacy organization, Congressman
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) this week led a group of three other House
lawmakers in calling for a Government Accountability Office (GAO)
investigation of how much money the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
spent each year over the past decade to enforce federal medical
marijuana laws. Joining Hinchey in the GAO request are Congressmen Ron
Paul (R-TX), Sam Farr (D-CA), and Barney Frank (D-MA).

“We want to find out what the Department of Justice spends annually to
prosecute medical marijuana patients so we can tell the American people
exactly how much of their taxes is being wasted and diverted away from
critical law enforcement activities, including homeland security
activities,” Hinchey was quoted saying in a press release from his office.

This is good. However, looking over the letter, I think they could have worded it better in one place. They specifically request:

…that you determine the amount of funds spent for any DEA activity relating to medical marijuana including money spent on investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and advocacy.

It’s good that they included advocacy, but in that case, they shouldn’t have limited it to the DEA, but also included the ONDCP.