Drug WarRant

Thanks to your help, in less than two days, our Vigil for Lost Promise has reached first position on Google for both Vigil for Lost Promise and Lost Promise searches (ahead of the DEA propaganda site).
Another way we can educate people about the real lost promise.

I posted an excellent letter from Walter Cronkite that meant a lot to me, and several of you expressed similar feelings. After all, who could object to the common sense expressions of one of the top journalists of our time?
Wait for it…
Yesterday, on Bill O’Reilly’s show:

O’REILLY: Time now for “The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.”
You know, I admire Walter Cronkite. The man’s nearly 90 years old, still kicking. But there is no question that the former newscaster is a far left guy. Since his retirement from CBS News, he has embraced all kinds of progressive causes.
Here’s the latest. Mr. Cronkite now trying to raise money for the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug legalization outfit that’s partially funded by our pal, George Soros. Cronkite actually signed a fundraising that said in part, “We have locked up literally millions of people of color who have caused little or no harm to others.”
The people Cronkite is talking about are street drug dealers who sell heroin, crack, and meth, among other dangerous drugs. Apparently Walter Cronkite doesn’t feel this is harmful. That view, with all due respect, is insane.
Memo to Walter. Hard drug dealers hurt and sometimes kill people, sir. It is ridiculous you do not understand that.
Mr. Cronkite is welcome to debate me on the issue any time.

O’Reilly wouldn’t last five minutes in a real drug war debate (one where he wasn’t able to turn off his opponent’s mic).
Then again, O’Reilly has one advantage. He makes up his “facts.” From claiming that terrorists in Afghanistan are a source of Ecstasy to claiming that the reason that Holland has lower rates of marijuana use than the U.S. is due to Holland’s lower population. (Link). And, of course, the attack on Christmas was done as part of a well-funded fringe effort to legalize drugs.

Via TalkLeft.
It seems the police set a guy’s head on fire in an effort to get him to spit out marijuana he was trying to swallow.

A man whose head caught fire when police simultaneously zapped him with pepper spray and a Taser gun during his arrest last summer faces prison time after being sentenced on a drug charge in the same incident.

The judge sentenced the flambÚed man to 14 months and 12 days in prison.

Our Drug Czar is known for asserting the complete opposite of the truth (like when he blamed drug users for damaging the environment in Colombia, while calling for increased spraying of toxic chemicals).
Here, he does it again when referring to drug use.

“It breaks up families; it destroys learning, memory, retention, self-discipline; it is a catalyst to crime, crime at a very young age; self-destruction, other destruction; child abuse and endangerment,” he said. “And it also is, in terms of its revenue, it takes millions of dollars out of affected communities.” [emphasis added]

Millions of dollars out of affected communities? Is he referring to the voluntary purchase of a product by a buyer from a seller where a large portion of the money ends up outside of the community? Then you might as well blame car dealerships.
But if we really want to talk about the loss of millions of dollars out of affected communities, let’s talk about the millions in tax dollars that we pay Walters to fly around and give inane speeches. Let’s talk about the billions we spend on prisons and the drug war infrastructure. Let’s talk about the loss of tax revenue from keeping drugs illegal.

Unlike some people, I have no problem enjoying the performances by entertainers who have personal views I despise, or who lack basic common sense. Bruce Willis now joins that category.
Link

“I’m talking also about going to Colombia and doing whatever it takes to end the cocaine trade. It’s killing this country. It’s killing all the countries that coke goes into.
“I believe that somebody’s making money on it in the United States. If they weren’t making money on it, they would have stopped it. They could stop it in one day.”

Yes, Bruce, people are making money from it. But no, you couldn’t stop it in a day, or a century.
Go back to licking your toxic cappucccino foam.

The DEA has gotten even more offensive than usual:

FEB 15–(Washington, D.C) The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
announced today the first-ever Candlelight Vigil to be held at DEA
Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia on June 8th, 2006 to 2,500
members gathered for the XVIth Forum of the Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America (CADCA).
The “Vigil for Lost Promise” will be a first of its kind remembrance,
and the first of its kind of hope: hope and confidence that our work
is shielding others from the great tragedy of drugs. The DEA along
with its partners will bring together those who have lost loved ones
–and their promise– to drug use and abuse.

For the DEA to do this…
along with such sponsors as Joyce Nalepka and Drug Free Kids: America’s Challenge, NIDA, and the Partnership for a Drug Free America…
is downright sickening.
It is the prohibition promoted by these groups that have contributed to drug deaths.
So they have a special website for this vigil at www.vigilforlostpromise.com (I’m not making it a link because I don’t want to give them links right now — you’ll see why) Go ahead and type it into your browser and check it out.
Now check out a similar-looking site with very different content at http://www.vigilforlostpromise.org
That page links to both Drug War Victims and a description of my view of the lost promise idea.
If you have a web page and would like to help on this, simply place a link to http://www.vigilforlostpromise.org with the words ‘Vigil for Lost Promise’ as the linked words. With some help, we can make the .org site come up first in Google searches.

Nice editorial in the North County Times:

If parents want to test their kids for drugs, the kits are cheap and available these days. But Vista Unified School District and other public officials should stick to education. […]
It just doesn’t make sense. Research shows that kids are better able to stay off drugs when they play sports or join clubs like the debating society, the school newspaper or the chess club. Why would officials want to discourage such participation by treating kids like criminals —- forcing insecure adolescents to give urine samples?
And although there are some authorities who say drug testing helps kids say no to pushy peers, there is at least one credible study that found mass testing fails to reduce rates of drug use by students.
Then there is the matter of federal intrusion into local policy: We don’t want the White House telling school districts how to handle student discipline any more than we want our school officials to demand urine from our children. […]
Yet the Vista school district and President Bush would invade the bodies and trample the privacy of an overwhelming majority of drug-free students in order to deter or catch a few who need help.
Mass drug testing crosses an old and noble line that has properly corralled officials since the founding of the republic. What makes the American system work so well is that government officials must leave the people alone in most circumstances. Intervention in people’s lives requires some clear evidence that they are doing something wrong.
Officials often drift to less freedom in the name of greater security, requiring the public to reassert that fundamental right to be left alone. […]
But mass drug testing is an offense against liberty; no government, federal or local, should subject a broad category of innocent children to indignities in hopes of catching a few in destructive behavior. What a terrible lesson for Vista’s children.

Powerful words.

The piece from the Wall Street Journal mentioned here yesterday, is being discussed at Free Republic.
Every time drugs come up there, it’s an explosion. You’ve got a good group of intelligent libertarian conservatives mixing it up with wacked-out social conservatives led by drug warrior robertpaulsen.
Fun to watch.

As a child, I grew up with the reassuring presence of Walter Cronkite on the television news. This is before the days of instant information and news as entertainment that must be profitable. Then, the networks considered the news the responsibility of a free media, even if it lost money. Cronkite was one of the greats. He didn’t read the news — he told us what was happening and helped us put it in perspective. I watched his emotional broadcasts covering the Apollo missions and the first walk on the moon, and I learned about the Vietnam war and the protests, and so much more.
For many years, Walter Cronkite has been one of those bright lights in opposition to the destructive drug war, and it was a thrill today to get an email from… Walter Cronkite!
Sure, it was a fundraising appeal for Drug Policy Alliance (a good organization that Walter is helping) and it was probably sent to thousands of people, but still — I got an email from Walter Cronkite!
So I thought I’d share it with you.

Dear Peter,

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: “And that’s the way it is.”

To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire – least of all in a time of war.

I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost – and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.

I am speaking of the war on drugs.

And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.

While the politicians stutter and stall – while they chase their losses by claiming we could win this war if only we committed more resources, jailed more people and knocked down more doors – the Drug Policy Alliance continues to tell the American people the truth – “the way it is.”

I’m sure that’s why you support DPA’s mission to end the drug war. And why I strongly urge you to support their work by giving a generous donation today.

You see, I’ve learned first hand that the stakes just couldn’t be higher.

When I wanted to understand the truth about the war on drugs, I took the same approach I did to the war in Vietnam: I hit the streets and reported the story myself. I sought out the people whose lives this war has affected.

Allow me to introduce you to some of them.

Nicole Richardson was 18-years-old when her boyfriend, Jeff, sold nine grams of LSD to undercover federal agents. She had nothing to do with the sale. There was no reason to believe she was involved in drug dealing in any way.

But then an agent posing as another dealer called and asked to speak with Jeff. Nicole replied that he wasn’t home, but gave the man a number where she thought Jeff could be reached.

An innocent gesture? It sounds that way to me. But to federal prosecutors, simply giving out a phone number made Nicole Richardson part of a drug dealing conspiracy. Under draconian mandatory minimum sentences, she was sent to federal prison for ten years without possibility of parole.

To pile irony on top of injustice, her boyfriend – who actually knew something about dealing drugs – was able to trade information for a reduced sentence of five years. Precisely because she knew nothing, Nicole had nothing with which to barter.

Then there was Jan Warren, a single mother who lived in New Jersey with her teenage daughter. Pregnant, poor and desperate, Jan agreed to transport eight ounces of cocaine to a cousin in upstate New York. Police officers were waiting at the drop-off point, and Jan – five months pregnant and feeling ill – was cuffed and taken in.

Did she commit a crime? Sure. But what awaited Jan Warren defies common sense and compassion alike. Under New York’s infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws, Jan – who miscarried soon after the arrest – was sentenced to 15 years to life. Her teenage daughter was sent away, and Jan was sent to an eight-by-eight cell.

In Tulia, Texas, an investigator fabricated evidence that sent more than one out of every ten of the town’s African American residents to jail on trumped-up drug charges in one of the most despicable travesties of justice this reporter has ever seen.

The federal government has fought terminally ill patients whose doctors say medical marijuana could provide a modicum of relief from their suffering – as though a cancer patient who uses marijuana to relieve the wrenching nausea caused by chemotherapy is somehow a criminal who threatens the public.

People who do genuinely have a problem with drugs, meanwhile, are being imprisoned when what they really need is treatment.

And what is the impact of this policy?

It surely hasn’t made our streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people…disproportionately people of color…who have caused little or no harm to others – wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals.

With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort – with no one held accountable for its failure.

Amid the clichÚs of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we’ve become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane.

But nothing will change until someone has the courage to stand up and say what so many politicians privately know: The war on drugs has failed.

That’s where the Drug Policy Alliance comes in.

FromæCapitol Hill to statehouses to the media, DPA counters the hysteria of the drug war with thoughtful, accurate analysis about the true dangers of drugs, and by fighting for desperately needed on-the-ground reforms.

They are the ones who’ve played the lead role in making marijuana legally available for medical purposes in states across the country.

California’s Proposition 36, the single biggest piece of sentencing reform in the United States since the repeal of Prohibition, is the result of their good work. The initiative is now in its fifth year, having diverted more than 125,000 people from prison and into treatment since its inception.

They oppose mandatory-minimum laws that force judges to send people like Nicole Richardson and Jan Warren to prison for years, with no regard for their character or the circumstances of their lives. And their work gets results: thanks in large part to DPA, New York has taken the first steps towards reforming the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws under which Jan was sentenced.

In these and so many other ways, DPA is working to end the war on drugs and replace it with a new drug policy based on science, compassion, health and human rights.

DPA is a leading, mainstream, respected and effective organization that gets real results.

But they can’t do it alone.

That’s why I urge you to send as generous a contribution as you possibly can to the Drug Policy Alliance.

Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing war on drugs about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion. The Drug Policy Alliance is the one organization telling the truth. They need you with them every step of the way.

And that’s the way it is.

Sincerely,

Walter Cronkite

I am continually amazed at lawmakers’ proud display of their complete and absolute absence of even the barest glimmerings of human intelligence. I have to assume that their parents still tie their shoes for them.

Idaho lawmakers are taking their drug war all the way back to the womb. There’s a proposal making its way through the Legislature that would make it a felony offense – punishable by up to five years in jail and a $50,000 penalty – for a pregnant woman to take certain drugs, among them marijuana, LSD and methamphetamine.

It didn’t take long for the Idaho State Journal to find the glaring problem with this:

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 what doctor wants to be the one calling the cops on patients? What if the doctor doesn’t call? Will the Legislature also send him to jail for conspiracy, or harboring a fugitive?

Perhaps we can rename State Senator Denton Darrington’s bill. I’d call it “The Discourage Pregnant Drug Addicts from Getting Medical Help, Take Babies From Their Mothers, and Soak the Taxpayers With Increased Prison and Welfare Costs Act.”
Think it would pass then?