Drug WarRant

The Brits really seem to like this sensationalistic stuff.
The BBC magazine has a feature:

Out of joint: Here, one father tells the traumatic story of how cannabis turned his bright and promising teenage son into a wreck.

Gives you a sense of it right there doesn’t it? Standard Reefer Madness stuff

My son James was always a popular teenager. He had masses of friends, was good at sport, and was also intelligent and handsome. Like many boys in their teens, he was constantly going out to meet friends, arrange football or cricket games or see his long-term girlfriend. … I remember thinking one sunny day seven years ago that life was good, and couldn’t get much better.

With that setup, you know something dark is going to happen…

But I hadn’t reckoned on cannabis.

Aha! I knew there had to be a villain in this story.

It was as though someone had stolen my lovely James overnight. He was talking weirdly, his thoughts were all over the place, he was having hallucinations, and was totally paranoid. He thought people and vampires were after him. But it was going to get a lot worse, and I’m still waiting for my son to fully return to me.

That demon cannabis.
Then the story gets strange. They get him off cannabis after six months and onto a bunch of anti-psychotic drugs. A year later he loses weight, loses his friends, becomes violent, stops taking his medicine and starts drinking, becomes more violent, and finally has to be subdued by 10 police in riot gear.
All this due to cannabis?
But finally his son saw the light…

It took another trip to hospital a year later, before James finally realised he needed to take some sort of medication to stay stable. That was over four years ago, which I’m told is a hopeful sign. Since then he has not only given up all drugs, but also cigarettes and even alcohol.

So he has given up all drugs but is staying on his medication. And in addition to giving up all drugs, he also gave up cigarettes and even alcohol. Somebody needs to teach this guy what the word “drugs” means.

Questions raised for years about city ‘flex squad’ in the Baltimore Sun (via Hit and Run).
The Southwestern District flex squad has been disbanded and its officers suspended under a huge list of allegations, including rape charges against some officers, plus planting drugs, falsifying arrest reports and lots more.

Troubles in the flex squad became public this month with the disclosure of the rape allegation.
Jones, 28; Steven P. Hatley, 27; and Brian J. Shaffer, 28, have been charged with rape, conspiracy to rape, sexual offense, assault and violation of official duties. […]
While investigating the rape allegation, police said in an affidavit, they seized 11 bags of suspected cocaine from Shaffer’s duffel bag[…]
“When you’re on a flex squad, you’re going fishing,” said a former top commander in the Baltimore Police Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works in law enforcement. “And you’re going to the prime fishing spots. You’re going where the drugs are; you’re going where the guns are.” […]
“They put stuff on you,” said Marlon Harris, a 21-year-old Southwest Baltimore resident whose criminal record includes several drug arrests. “Knockers want you to give up a gun or a house, and they’ll let you go. They’re dirty. It was just a matter of time before they got caught. I’m glad.”

Again, I feel the need to point out that most police officers are good people who perform an excellent and important job (and if you want some excellent examples, meet some of the officers with LEAP). We see more of the bad officer in drug enforcement, since the scum inevitably finds its way there for the ultimate in corruption opportunities.
I daresay that the drug war also corrupts many who, in another world would be acceptable police officers, but here got sucked in to the dark side. Why? Because the laws and the drug war society told them that their employers — the citizens — were actually their enemy, and they developed a war mentality in justifying their own tactics.

Interesting article by Sharon Lerner in the Village Voice, Anatomy of a Drug Craze: Why Tough Laws Can’t Claim Credit For Beating Back Crack
Decades after the hysteria of the crack “epidemic,” and the legacy of bad law (including racist bad law) that emerged and damaged our society far more than any drug epidemic could, it is now possible to analyze and understand.

But while tough sentencing laws were effective in filling the prisons, drug experts say they had little to do with crack’s decline.
[…]
So if the war on drugs didn’t stamp out crack–and even made a bigger mess where the drug left off–why is crack receding to whatever extent it is? Experts say the answer lies in who has stopped using it–and who hasn’t. The average age of those still smoking crack has increased over the past 10 years, with the largest group of users now in their thirties. Thus the “little brother theory”: kids who have seen their older relatives and friends messed up by crack decide against using it themselves. “Crack is the lowest rung on the nasty-dirty ladder now,” says John Galea, who runs the Street Studies Unit for the state’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse. “Kids just don’t think it’s cool anymore. Even heroin addicts look down on crackheads now.”
Some researchers say the little brother effect points to the beginning of the end for crack.
But they also say that crack would be on the decline with or without its bad reputation, simply because most drugs enjoy only a limited heyday.
Illegal drug fads typically go from incubation to plateau to decline over a period of years ( though some, like heroin, will go through the process many times, resurging in popularity as their bad reps fade from memory ).

It’s a very interesting article (read the part about how law enforcement actually made things worse), and it’s nice to see someone in the media taking a look backward to, maybe, learn something.
I suspect that there’s a lot this could teach us about our current meth “epidemic” as well. (Speaking of which, check out Jan Frel’s post Meth! Meth Disaster at Alternet (via TalkLeft).)

For my regular readers… You don’t get opportunities like this very often, so here’s your chance.
Be pleasant and polite. She’s a nice liberal girl with a B.A. in political science who thinks she has the drug war figured out.

Adam Isaacson’s got the data:

• Total U.S. aid to Colombia over the seven years between 2000 and 2006: $4.72 billion
• Square miles of Colombia sprayed with “Round-Up Ultra” herbicide, 2000-2005: 2,550
• Land area of Delaware, square miles: 1,954
• Square miles planted in Colombia with coca, the plant used to make cocaine, in 2000, the year Plan Colombia began: 526
• Approximate cost of fumigating one square mile, conservative estimate: $162,000
• Reduction in Colombian coca-growing from 2003 to 2004, in acres: 0
• Percentage of coca plots detected by the United Nations in 2004 that did not exist the year before: 62
• Amount per month, according to the United Nations, that a Colombian farmer nets from a hectare (2.5 acres) of coca: $199
• Percentage of Colombia’s rural population living below the poverty line: 82
• “Arbitrary arrests” documented by Colombian human-rights groups between August 2002 and August 2004: 6,332
• Percentage of murders in Colombia that end in a sentencing: 4%
• Colombians forcibly displaced from their homes by violence, January 2000-September 2005: 1.8 million

Go read

This could be huge. Former NY state criminal justice official Scott Christianson takes a different look at crime statistics in today’s Christian Science Monitor.
Christianson first notes that violent crime has been falling, particularly in the past 10 years, and in some cases has reached its lowest point in 40 years.
And yet…

But discussions of police performance often fail to note another important but overlooked trend, apparently unrelated to the falling crime rate: Federal statistics reveal that the nation’s “clearance rate” – the percentage of cases for which police arrest or identify a suspect – has fallen dramatically. And this shift is fraught with implications.
The arrest clearance rate for reported homicides recently dropped to about 60 percent compared with about 90 percent 50 years ago. This means that a murderer today has about a 40 percent chance of avoiding arrest compared with less than 10 percent in 1950. The record for other FBI Index Crimes is even more dismal: The clearance rates have sunk to 42 percent for forcible rape, 26 percent for robbery, and 13 percent for burglary and motor vehicle theft, all way down from earlier eras.

If the crimes aren’t being cleared, is this due to a lack of police resources? Apparently not.

It’s not that America’s cops haven’t been making arrests – in fact, their total annual arrests jumped from 3.3 million in the nation in 1960 to 14 million in 2004, a staggering number that helps to explain why the United States imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world.
So, if reported crime has been going down and arrests have gone up, what accounts for the plummeting arrest clearance rates for murder, robbery, rape, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft?
Part of the answer must involve drug law enforcement – victimless offenses that aren’t reported to the police or included as FBI Index Crimes. Instead of arresting suspects for burglaries and other serious reported crimes, cops today spend much of their energy going after illegal drugs. Their arrest rate for drug possession ( especially marijuana ) has shot up more than 500 times from what it was in 1965.

Interesting.
Now, the causality is far from certain — there certainly are other factors involved, and more research is needed. But it makes a lot of sense, and there’s plenty of evidence to support the notion that the drug war has interfered with, or distracted, police from doing their job in other areas. Partly due to the additional work load of dealing with the drug war, but also through focusing on the drug war to the expense of other crimes. Not every police officer or department is seduced by the glamor (or profit) of the drug bust, but many are.
And this goes right up the line. For example, after 911…

While Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida minions were diligently preparing for their murderous mission, the FBI was looking the other way with equal determination. More than twice as many FBI agents were assigned to fighting drugs (2,500) than fighting terrorism (1,151). And a far greater amount of the FBI’s financial resources was dedicated to the war on drugs….
In Phoenix, where the now infamous Ken Williams memo originated, counterterrorism agents complained bitterly about their efforts being given “the lowest investigative priority” by a supervisor who preferred glamorous drug-fighting investigations.

Christianson speculates that the drug war could affect police performance in other ways, such as emboldening violent criminals who assume a lower likelihood of being caught, or decreasing community cooperation with police.
So is the drug war making up less safe from murderers, thieves and rapists? At the very least, this whole issue demands further investigation.

Asked why the arrest clearance rate has dropped so much, one leading police scholar, Professor David Bayley of the State University of New York at Albany, said, “I haven’t a clue. I’ve been involved in the field for 40 years and best as I can tell, nobody has even raised this stuff. Hearing about it now is like being hit by a bus.”

Wow.

SCOTUSblog previews today’s Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Grubbs.
While this is a pornography case, it has a lot of potential connection to the drug war.
The case involves Anticipatory Search Warrants. These are warrants that are issued in advance to be triggered by a certain event, such as after the package pornography is delivered, or after the informant goes into your house to sell you drugs. Then they search your house and find what they sent there and arrest you for possessing it. These anticipatory warrants are used a lot in drug stings.
In Grubbs, there was a technicality issue in the warrant (the triggering event had been left off the actual warrant). The government says that doesn’t matter because the 4th Amendment only requires the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Interestingly, the defense will be taking that on and actually attempting to get the Supreme Court to rule that anticipatory warrants themselves are unconstitutional. Here’s the idea:

In response, Mr. Grubbs seeks not only to refute the government’s arguments, but also to challenge the constitutionality of anticipatory warrants generally. He relies on the text of the Fourth Amendment, which requires that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” This language, Mr. Grubbs contends, means that the probable cause must exist at the time of issuance; under an anticipatory warrant, there is only probable cause once the future contingency is satisfied. Further, the conferral of discretion on executive officers to determine when probable cause exists at a future time is inconsistent with the constraining purpose of the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Grubbs denies that there is any compelling law enforcement need for anticipatory warrants given the other options available to police to seek warrants quickly.

The language seems clear to me… “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” How could a warrant be issued prior to probable cause existing?
Should be interesting.

Scott over at Flex Your Rights Blog writes about a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that’s a slap at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last week that police may not automatically search vehicles following an arrest of the driver. This finding contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York v. Belton, which holds that police may search any vehicle following the lawful arrest of its driver. The Belton rule is supposed to prevent suspects from destroying evidence or reaching for weapons, but in practice it’s just another excuse to search people […]

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who lies awake at night cursing the Supreme Court’s decision in New York v. Belton. In a unanimous ruling, the NJ Supreme Court concluded that Belton‰s logic “simply does not pass muster.” The article also notes that MA, NV, OR, NM, WY, and PA have similarly rejected the Supreme Court’s outrageous effort to strip arrestees of their 4th Amendment protections.

Fascinating issue. The article referenced points out how New Jersey (and the other states) can ignore U.S. Supreme Court precedent:

“The United States Supreme Court interpretations of the Federal Constitution establish not the ceiling but only the floor of minimal constitutional protection,” the justices wrote.
The ruling, in essence, gives people in New Jersey greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures under the state constitution than the U.S. Supreme Court has provided under its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.

Scott hopes the New Jersey decision will embolden other states to follow suit.

Not much time to post right now, so I may comment more later.
Link

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that federal authority to regulate doctors does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people.[…]
The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses, the court majority said.
“Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state balance,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

And who was on the side of the Federal government against the states (in fact, in this case, it was simply the executive branch of the federal government against the states)?

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself, Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that federal officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine.

Update: As discussed in comments, it seems likely that Thomas voted this way, at least in part, so he could write his own dissent.
This Supreme Court decision is causing a lot of talk around the blogosphere. Certainly, at first glance, many are shocked at the comparison of Raich and Oregon.
Professor Bainbridge‘s reaction is common:

According to our Supreme Legislature Court, federal drug law does not preempt state law when it comes to doctors prescribing drugs so their patients can kill themselves, despite the long-standing moral and legal traditions against suicide. But federal drug law does preempt a state law that would allow doctors to alleviate suffering by prescribing a simple joint.

What many are noting with this decision is the whole notion that in complex cases (and when are they not at the Supreme Court level), it isn’t simply a matter of interpreting the text of the constitution as it was written, but it requires filling in gaps — making judgements — and those judgements inevitably involve Justices using their own views of the subject matter.
Armando at Daily Kos

Federal power vs. state power – whither federalism? So the lineup of the Justices in this decision makes it startlingly clear that EACH AND EVERY JUSTICE was a results-oriented legal realist in this case. As they are in EVERY case with such ambiguity and import.

John Cole at Balloon Juice:

Were Alito on the court, I have seen nothing that would persuade me that he would not join the other ‘federalists’ in trying to strike down the ban.
All together now, conservatives– “States Rights!”

All Justices are activist judges. They have no choice.
Now this case is also, to some extent, even more complex. It involves the interpretation of the CSA by the Executive Branch. The CSA specifically forbids marijuana. It does not specifically forbid assisted suicide — that idea was Ashcroft’s. Some have opined that the same Court would uphold a ban against assisted suicide if Congress passed it.
Interestingly, in fact, one could interpret this decision to be, in part, a reaction to recent Executive Branch power grabs.

The Drug Czar is taking his Pee-in-a-Cup circus on the road to convince educators to spend taxpayer money on drug testing kids (and the first event is Thursday!) If he isn’t countered, his message may seem logical to school districts that don’t know the facts.
However, there’s no reason why we can’t attend these same public events and find ways to tell the truth.
The fabulous Students for Sensible Drug Policy have been on top of this issue for some time, and have done a great job in the past of countering the Drug Czar by showing up to events like these, passing out some real facts, and giving the press someone to interview on the other side (ONDCP doesn’t like this, but the press eats it up).
Here’s the info from DARE Generation Diary

Full Schedule:
Orlando, FL, January 19, 2006
(Rosen Centre Hotel, 9840 International Drive)
San Diego, CA, February 22, 2006
(Hilton San Diego Mission Valley, 901 Camino del Rio South)
Falls Church, VA, March 15, 2006
(Fairview Park Marriott, 3111 Fairview Park Drive)
Milwaukee, WI, April 25, 2006
(Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, 333 West Kilbourn Avenue)
If you live in or around any of these cities, please get in touch with SSDP as soon as possible by calling our world headquarters at (202) 293-4414 to find out how you can counteract the Drug Czar’s propaganda machine when it comes to town. Students, parents, and activists had a great time raining on the Drug Czar’s parade last year. Let’s make sure he and his cronies know that we’ll continue to be there providing the truth wherever and whenever they proliferate lies.
If you’re planning on going, be sure to take a look at the student drug testing section of SSDP’s website, where you’ll find talking points and other materials.
Make sure to sign up with ONDCP if you’re planning on attending one of the summits.

NORML is also working on countering the summit. The University of Central Florida chapter of NORML has already gotten some coverage in the college paper

Members of the UCF chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws are taking a stand at the Rosen Centre Hotel Thursday while the site hosts a regional student drug-testing summit.
The event, held by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, takes place at 8:30 a.m. and is intended to convince local educators that drug testing high school students will better serve the environment in public schools. NORML will argue, however, that national statistics have shown that this process does nothing to deter drug use and is nothing more than a waste of money.

[Updated to new edition] If you’d like a nice printable piece to counter drug testing advocates, the ACLU and Drug Policy Alliance has one that’s excellent. Making Sense of Student Drug Testing: Why Educators Are Saying No (pdf) [2nd Edition].
At the very least, we shouldn’t let the Drug Czar off easy. With any luck, we’ll have educators coming to these events interested in drug testing, but leaving turned off by it.