Drug WarRant

Nguyen Tuong Van was hung in Singapore a couple of hours ago. But before we spend too much time discussing this individual who was put to death for smuggling drugs, keep in mind that he has a lot of company in certain parts of the world.
From this article in CNN today [thanks to dwrr], the use of execution for drug crimes is startlingly common.
Despite the fact that death penalty figures are kept a closely guarded secret in many countries (so detailed statistics are often hard to track down), it appears that

Despite the profligate use of the death penalty for drug cases (Aren’t there worse criminals for them to go after?), drug use and trafficking still seem to flourish in those countries.
And how about Thailand? Less than an ounce? If you’ve got any enemies, it sure would be easy for them to slip less than an ounce in your pocket without your knowledge as you’re heading for the airport.
Well, I think I know some of the countries I’m crossing off my vacation itinerary.

Link

So you’ve got corrupt Mexican federal agents in an all-out revenge war with corrupt former soldiers who were trained by the U.S. to hunt drug traffickers.
The drug war is so corrupt that we now have a situation where both sides of feuding drug gangs are made up of former “good” guys. You never have a shortage of bad guys with a drug war. Prohibition just makes more of them for you!

Well, I think it’s finally time to reserve the rubber room for Bill O’Reilly.
I don’t know if you’ve been following his rants about how stores shouldn’t use the phrase “Happy Holidays” because it’s offensive to Christians and therefore Americans. This silly campaign became ridiculously sublime when it was discovered that the Fox News store was selling holiday ornaments for your holiday tree, including a Bill O’Reilly one (they’ve since changed the wording in their store).
So what’s behind this anti-Christian, anti-American effort to destroy Christmas by uttering the offensive words “happy” and “holidays”? On Neil Cavuto’s show, O’Reilly made it clear:

Happy Holidays, Bill.
[I wish someone would tell the progressives that they’re supposed to be for legalized drugs.]

The AP discusses a GAO report:

Do they even see how clueless they appear? The government continues to look at quantities of drugs seized as if that was a measure of “winning.” And then they act baffled that the prices and availability have, somehow, not been significantly affected.
Drug traffickers treat seizures in much the same way that department stores account for shoplifting — as a normal write-off in their business.

DARE Generation Diary pointed out this outrageous TV ad…

The implication? Smoking pot leads to HIV. Of course, this is stupid on the surface since the likelihood of “getting stupid” (and thus having unprotected sex, thereby getting HIV) is not very likely to be stimulated by pot use.
On a deeper level, this ad is seriously offensive, since, while the documented incidents of people getting HIV from smoking pot have to be about nil, there is a verified epidemic of HIV as a result of needle sharing, and this same government has obstructed and opposed needle-exchange programs which have been proven to save lives and limit the spread of HIV.
In fact, the whole notion of a website with the address hiv.drugabuse.gov is offensive. Even more so is the fact that there is not a single mention on that site of HIV contracted through needles (and of course, no mention of needle exchange or harm reduction programs).
Correction: bcoherent points out that the ad does not seem to implicate pot, but rather some unspecified pills (I should have watched it closer instead of so quickly getting upset by the message). That reduces my surface objection to the ad (the pot issue), and I’m all for people not “getting stupid” at parties, but it doesn’t change the offensiveness of a campaign that projects hiv fear onto unspecified drug use, while ignoring what the government has done to block harm reduction efforts (sexual and drug related) that would reduce the spread of hiv.

25 year old Nguyen Van Tuong will soon hang for smuggling drugs to Australia and making the mistake of routing his flight through Singapore (he should have used Travelocity).
TalkLeft has been covering this well, including the strange story of the Singapore hangman.
Over at Crooked Timber, Brian Weatherson questioned Singapore’s justification for hanging and suggested some kind of human rights protest. The majority of the commenters to that post missed the point and mostly seemed to parrot the dual talking points of “Singapore has the right to enforce its own laws” and “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” (I would guess that you could come up with at least a half-dozen non-drug laws that are enforced in other countries to which those same commenters would vociferously object, like some of the extremist Islamist laws enforced against women).
One of the best comments about this story comes from Glen Whitman at Agorophilia:

In other words, if you know that you face death for smuggling drugs, the law itself provides incentive to kill any witnesses? The law itself provides incentive to shoot it out to the death with the police. This is a lesson to Singapore, but also from Singapore.
The same lesson applies to the drug war here, even though we don’t use Darshan Singh’s services. As we have ratcheted up the penalties for drug trafficking over the years, we have, through the law, added incentives for criminals to use force to avoid capture. This increase in the use of force and the inflation of weapons for protection then encouraged law enforcement to increase their use of force. Now we’re stuck in the middle, dodging the bullets. (Other side effects have included the use of children and the poor as mules.)
Inflation of violence is a direct result of our own laws. This statement is not in any way meant to excuse or reduce criminals’ responsiblity for their own violence, but it is essential to note that there are inexorable forces in criminal justice (as a function of economics) that we ignore at our own peril.
When you are driving and you’re caught speeding, you curse to yourself, think about the delay, and the cost of the fine, and how it’ll affect your insurance, and that you’re embarrassed to be caught, and how everyone’s going to be looking at you pulled over on the side of the road, but you pull over anyway, because in the overall scheme of your life, these are minor indignities that you can face and move past. What if that same situation meant that you would lose everything you own and spend the next 55 years in prison? Would you pull over without hesitation?

Link

Morales has made it clear that he wouldn’t side with the drug warriors.

I wonder who the U.S. will send to “monitor” the elections?

Walters isn’t even trying any more. Check out this standard obligatory news release: Drugged Driving as Common as Alcohol-Impaired Driving Among Teens. He’ll get some play from the dumber media outlets, but I’m betting most of the majors will pass on it or question it.
Here are a couple of the startling discoveries:

Anyone who was ever a teen since cars were invented will not be surprised to learn that teens might use a car to do something that they can’t do at home. I’m only surprised that it’s the second most popular place.
Then, there’s this one…

This is the best you’ve got?? That is so incredibly weak. This study doesn’t cover such basic details as how recently marijuana was smoked (could have been days), whether it caused impairment, or even… whether the one tested for marijuana was driving, or was a passenger or a pedestrian. I can give you this page of studies about marijuana and driving, and yet the Drug Czar can only come up with the old trauma unit garbage. Come on, John. Give me something hard.
Oh, and by the way, I decided to follow the link to theantidrug to check out the “New Driver’s Kit” (which I never found), but I got distracted by the section of Resources for Faith Leaders that had this gem:

I wonder why I’ve missed all the reports of marijuana smokers dropping dead the first time they use it. Oh, that’s right — because nobody has even died directly from smoking pot. Ever.
“bullet” I know we don’t have Andrea Barthwell to kick around much anymore, but I miss her, and I caught her lying (or at least misleading) again big time today. Even though it’s only peripheral to the drug war, it’s still a whopper and worth discussing.
Check out this Illinois news item:

OK, it gets good here. The fatal 15. Ooh, scary. But wait a second. How do they figure that again? “percent of all traffic fatalities” ??? Does that really mean anything?
So I looked up the statistics in the U.S. Department of Transportations Traffic Safety Report 2004. Sure enough. Alcohol-related traffic fatalities as a percentage of total traffic fatalities: Rhode Island at 50.6 percent, Illinois at 45.2 percent, and so forth, down to the lowest: Alaska at 31 percent. Problem is that this says nothing about the overall level of traffic fatalities in the state. So I compared Illinois (one of the fatal 15) with Alaska (the supposed safest in this model).
Alcohol-related traffic fatalities per 100,000 population:

• Illinois: 4.75
• Alaska: 4.73

The reason it’s so close? Alaska is a more dangerous state for traffic fatalities than Illinois. It turns out that Illinois is very safe state for traffic fatalities, so even the low amount of alcohol related fatalities show up as a high percentage of total fatalities. Fatal 15? Not a chance.
(Oh, and the definition of alcohol-related fatalities? It’s 0.01 BAC or higher. That’s right.)
So how did this “Fatal 15” crap get started?
We go to the website of the Coalition to End Needless Deaths (END)

That’s right. Barthwell’s group invented it. And what is the purpose of END? From looking at their website, it appears to be a scam to bring in tax-free donations so that Andrea and Thomas can talk to the media once a year about the Fatal Fifteen.
It’s Barthwell. Business as usual.

Could’ve told you this would happen.
Lots of up-in-arms in the blogosphere today over Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity in the Washington Post.

Apparently, CIFA is already reading some blogs, and Atrios went so far as to put out a distress call seeking a libertarian — he’s apparently ready to believe in those black helicopters.
None of this would be possible to the extent that it is now without the past decades of erosion of the rights of American citizens under the excuse of the war on drugs. And during all that time, people sat by and said, “Why should we get worked up over some stoned hippies? It’s not worth diluting our efforts for or against gay marriage and abortion. After all, we don’t deal drugs (sure we smoke some pot and stuff), but we’re not the ones they’re after.”
And when the Justice Department said with each erosion, “Trust us. We’ll only use these powers to get the bad guys,” the nation collectively bent over and accepted it. And now the 4th Amendment is so far up our asses that it’ll take some major surgery (or a DEA agent doing a full cavity search) to get it out again.
And now we also have an administrative mindset that is willing to give an official and public sanction to the notion that torture is OK when needed to get information from the bad guys. Not here. Yet. Trust us.

“bullet” At Dare Generation Diary:

• Link. Just how are school drug zones calculated, anyway? As the crow flies or as the dealer walks? (NY State Court of Appeals goes with the crow)
• Profiting from the Drug War, part 47,283.

“bullet” D’Alliance talks about GOP Support for Industrial Hemp. I take issue with the headline. The hemp bill referred to was introduced by Ron Paul (as much libertarian as Republican) and three Democrats. And then you’ve got a couple of Republicans that are interested in the issue for practical reasons. Perhaps the title should be: “A small assortment of rogue, lilbertarian-minded politicians from both sides of the aisle support Industrial Hemp despite the active antagonism and indifference respectively from the Republican and Democratic parties.”
“bullet” Grits for Breakfast notes what should be obvious, but seems to be missed by our law-and-order prison-complex punishment-oriented criminal justice system: