Drug WarRant

This editorial in the Lima (Ohio) News nails it:

Morales’ popularity in Bolivia does have a great deal to do with U.S. drug-control policies, which have disrupted traditional agricultural patterns and customs in South America without reducing the flow of cocaine. The war on drugs undermines civil society in Latin America, promotes violence and corruption, and creates opportunities for ruthless people to make fortunes.
Aside from ending the drug war, there is little the U.S. can or should do to counter the trend.

Steve Kubby (who was extradited from Canada) is now in jail in the United States waiting for his hearing tomorrow. He is unable to take marijuana, of course, and even though they are giving him Marinol, it doesn’t do the job.
Here’s an alert that will let you help keep the public pressure up.
Here are transcripts of some phone conversations that Steve had with friends this weekend, which give you an idea of what he’s going through.
More information here

Tomorrow’s Washington Post has an article by Zachary A. Goldfarb: Census Bureau, Activists Debate How and Where to Count Inmates.
This has become a pretty important issue, since the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population. While prisoners do not have a vote, their numbers add to the local population in terms of determining legislative districting and government spending. It has reached the point where there are some fairly perverse incentives.

“For people in prison, their bodies count but their voices don’t,” said Kirsten Levingston, director of the criminal justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Their presence in the tabulation column expands the influence of those who have an incentive to keep them in prison, not those who need the resources to help keep them out.” [or help them rejoin the work force after their release]

Specific example:

In New York state, activists find what they consider the most glaring example of the distortions created by the census policy. More than 40,000 convicts from New York City, in the southern part of the state, are housed in prisons upstate. Seven state Senate districts would not qualify as districts without their prison population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, an activist group. More worrisome, the group says, is that two politicians from those areas, Republican state Sens. Dale Volker and Michael Nozzolio, lead the committees on the legal code and crime and have been enthusiastic backers of long-standing, controversial laws that require long prison sentences for drug crimes.

There were a couple of statements in the article I found additionally disturbing.
Goldfarb:

The U.S. prison population has been rising steadily for decades, a result of the sharp increase in urban poverty, the influx of addictive drugs and stiffer penalties for crime. [emphasis added]

It’s really pretty disingenuous to attribute increased prison population on “the influx of addictive drugs.” First, the drugs have always been around, and in general, people are not getting arrested because they’re addicted. The increase is due to prohibition and the influx of an epidemic of drug laws. If Goldfarb doesn’t understand the rise of prison population, he shouldn’t just attempt to make it up out of thin air for his article.
I also take exception to the quote by Representative Serrano:

“If there are 10,000 people in prison on drug issues and you count them back home, that could help bring more money to fight the drug war,” said U.S. Rep. Jose E. Serrano, a Democrat who represents the Bronx, a high-crime borough of New York City.

To fight the drug war? We’ve had plenty of fighting in the drug war — now what we need is some intelligence (and I don’t mean spying — I mean less-stupid politicians). We need to get smart on crime and drugs, not tough.
The census issue is going to get interesting. Personally, I’d like to see prisoners counted where they called home, if for no other reason than it would reduce the incentive for communities to build more prisons, and force the criminal justice system in this country to make some hard choices.

Definitely take the time to see this outstanding video produced by Common Sense for Drug Policy and featuring members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).
After you’ve seen it, download it and show it to all of your law and order friends who are resisting your efforts to convince them that prohibition is wrong. Do you know someone in your local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Lions Club, or similar organization? Show them this video and then suggest that they schedule one of these officers as a speaker.
When you see this video, you come to realize just how important a group like LEAP is, because many of those whose minds most need to change give greater value to words from a former police officer.
Now this is just a short promo video, yet it was full of great information. Here’s a few statements that caught my attention:

Under prohibition, we have given the right to the criminal
of

• who’s going to supply the drugs to the United States,
• what kind of drugs are going to be supplied,
• how much those drugs are going to cost,
• how they’re going to be produced,
• how potent they’re going to be
• what age levels they’re going to sell to,
• and where they’re going to sell.

And if they decide they’re going to sell to 10-year-old kids on our playgrounds, by God that’s where they’ll be sold.

– Jack Cole

Drug legalization is not to be construed as an approach to our drug problem.
Drug legalization is about our crime and violence problem.
Once we legalize drugs, we gotta then buckle down and start dealing with our drug problem, and that’s not going to be easy, but it’s something we can do.

– Peter Christ

South Africa (1993) Under Apartheid
incarcerated 851 black males per 100,000 population
United States (2004) Under Prohibition
incarcerated 4,919 black males per 100,000 population

I attended the medical marijuana hearing in the Illinois legislature last year, when we had high hopes that were dashed by the sudden appearance of Drug Czar John Walters, who spoke his usual lies, and caused legislators to whimper and crumple.
It appears that New Mexico Senators are made of sterner stuff. They’re also considering a medical marijuana bill, so the Drug Czar sent special assistant David W. Murray to straighten them out.
Link

He likened medical-marijuana proponents to “medicine shows, traveling charlatans and snake-oil salesmen” selling phony “tinctures, magical herbs and remedies.” Murray said medical marijuana is an issue that has been brought forth not by the medical profession but by advocates of drug legalization.
“They use emotion, they use suffering patients, they use anecdote,” he said. And in a statement that some committee members criticized, Murray added: “I regard much of that as cynical and manipulative.”

Big mistake.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen , took him to task for those words, pointing out that sponsors of crime legislation often bring victims of crimes to testify without being called “cynical and manipulative .”
“I don’t know how you do it back East,” Sanchez told Murray, “But this is the people’s house. Everybody has a right to be here just as much as you do. When you said this to us, you showed us where you were really at. I don’t think you should go to a state and say such things about their people.”

Wow!
And these guys are smart.

Noting his argument that marijuana has no medicinal value, Sen. Clint Harden, R-Clovis , said, “We are not talking about the healing power of marijuana. The purpose of this is to reduce pain.” […]
Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell , disputed statements by Murray and some state law-enforcement representatives that medical marijuana will increase use of the drug. He compared the bill to the concealed-carry law, which lets people apply for permits to carry hidden guns. Some opponents said that law would give criminals the right to carry concealed weapons.
“But robbers are already doing that,” Adair said. Likewise, those who smoke marijuana illegally are doing so without a medical-marijuana law, he said.
Sen. John Grubesic, D-Santa Fe, told Murray he had a hard time accepting the claim that medical marijuana is “the huge bogey man you want it to be.”

The committee gave the measure a do-pass with bipartisan support.

Feds smoke out largest drug tunnel yet

It runs from Tijuana, Mexico, to Otay Mesa, California. […]
Officials said the tunnel is about seven-tenths of a mile (1,148 meters) or more than 1,200 yards long. Initial reports said it is 5 feet high and 3.5 feet wide. […]
Made of concrete, the passageway had lighting, electricity, ventilation and a pump to remove water, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.[…]
An investigation is under way to determine who built the passageway.

Sergant Schultz was interviewed by authorities but knew nothing.

That’s right. A student group is suing the Department of Education, because, well, the Department of Education is apparently made up of a bunch of morons.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy is an incredible activist group that has been working tirelessly to overturn the stupid and counter-productive Higher Education Act provision that denies financial aid to those who get any kind of drug conviction. This law they’re fighting is the garbage created by sado-moralist Mark Souder and his ilk.
In order to pursue the next step in their effort, SSDP filed a Freedom Of Information request to find out state by state how many students had been denied financial aid because of this law. The Department of Education is happy to provide the information, and when requested to provide information that is in the public interest, it is standard procedure to waive the very large processing fee (about $4,000 in this case).
However, the tic-tac-toe playing, single-digit-composite-ACT-scoring, can’t-divide-by-10-in-their-head apparatchiks in the Department of Education decided (after looking at the website of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and concluding that these students were in favor of drug legalization) that providing the requested information would not serve the public interest, but rather the commercial interests of those who might profit from the legalization of drugs.
I kid you not.

• Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Public Citizen lawsuit press release
• Text of the Lawsuit (pdf)
• DARE Generation Diary
• Jacob Sullum’s nice takedown at Hit and Run

With all the hysterical media in Britain going on and on about how marijuana makes everyone go psychotic, I’ve been surprised that I haven’t heard more of that Reefer Madness style reporting in the U.S. — in fact, there’s been little in the press here about the connection.
Well, the Boston Globe tackled the subject in Studies Link Psychosis, Teenage Marijuana Use by Carey Goldberg. And it’s a remarkably well-balanced job of reporting. (Even the headline uses the word “link” instead of indicating causality.)
While showing the potential concern over the subject, the article makes clear that causality has not been determined, that even if marijuana does provide some cause for concern, it’s only for a small percent of the population, only for those pre-disposed toward psychosis, and only for those who start smoking as children. And the reporter got reactions from NORML as well. Other than missing the opportunity to mention self-medication, the reporter did a good job.
As this story gets more play in the states, it seems to me that there’s two things we need to continue to emphasize.

1. The lack of strict causality evidence, and the fact that there are other reasonable explanations for the links
2. The fact that marijuana legalization models include regulating the abuse of marijuana by children, something that prohibition does not. If we want to seriously think about reducing abuse at young ages, we need to look at legalization and age regulation.

Count on William F. Buckley, Jr. to give an interesting perspective on our Latin American drug policies. He notes that Morales, a socialist who has called for an end to US crop eradication in Bolivia, knows how to use the free trade argument against us.

Morales shapes his complaint in language similar to that which has been used by the father of the movement against socialism, Milton Friedman — the language of free trade. Whose problem is it that many Americans use cocaine? And that they desire it intensely enough to give it a street price sufficient to support Bolivian producers at every level — the agricultural workers, the refiners and the exporters?
The point is in part cynical, because Morales knows perfectly well that human weakness will always produce a demand for toxic substances, if they provide intense pleasures en route to devastation. But he is shrewd enough to pick up on the point of free trade — even though it is a part of the neoliberalism he has otherwise denounced. What right does the U.S. government have to convert its concern for weak-minded Americans into a veto power on Bolivian agriculture?
[…] one country’s right to protect its own citizens against another country’s products does not automatically grant the right to forbid that country the freedom to produce them. […]
Mr. Morales is … threatening to revise policy on libertarian grounds. Let the United States meet its own problems in any way it chooses. But do not let it rely on a venerable, 500-year-old nation to undertake its dirty work.

Buckley observes that if the United States wants to continue to pursue its policies in countries like Bolivia, it’ll be through the free market — we’ll have to pay premium prices in foreign/military aid to do so. (But then, our Congress has never had much problem with that.)

New rant added at Guest Rants — My ‘religion’ by tros.