Drug WarRant

Via TChris at TalkLeft comes this:

Although this was a ruling in relation to the state constitution, it has relevance to an upcoming Supreme Court case dealing with the same issue. (Georgia v. Randolph, Scott)
The Supreme Court has already ruled in US v. Matlock that if two people control a home, the one at home can give consent to search, and the absent one is out of luck. So if you have a roommate and you’re not there, your roommate can consent without a warrant and anything found can be used against you. However, Georgia v. Randolph, the issue is when both are home and one consents to the search while the other refuses — ie., can the officers “shop around” for someone in the house that will give consent?
The New York Court of Appeals in People v. Cosme ruled:

My view is that nobody else can waive my rights and consent to a warrantless search of my person, house, papers or effects, simply because they are a roommate, spouse, or otherwise share a location with me. I get that notion from the Constitution of the United States, which says, in part:

I’m hoping that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the 4th Amendment in Georgia v. Randolph, but they haven’t had a very good track record with that amendment.
Regardless, if you share your home with someone, you might want to stop by Flex Your Rights with your roommate(s) and maybe pick up a copy of “Busted” while you’re there.

For a fascinating, yet disturbing weekend read, check out Crackpot Crackdown by Jordan Smith in yesterday’s Austin Chronicle.

It’s a story of racism, a district attorney who runs the county, and drug convictions with absolutely no evidence.

The new Department of Justice US Prison Population report (pdf) is to be released tomorrow. Here are some of the key figures in the report (thanks to Common Sense for Drug Policy, and jackl):
State Prison Inmates in 2002:

• 21.4% were drug offenders — 265,000 out of 1,237,500.
• 31.5% of all women in state prison were serving time for drugs — 25,100
  out of 79,800 women total.
• 25.1% of all blacks in state prison were serving time for drugs — 126,000
  out of 501,700 blacks.
• 27.4% of all Hispanics in state prison were serving time for drugs —
  61,700 out of 225,000 Hispanics.
• 14.8% of whites in state prison were serving time for drugs — 64,500 out
  of 435,100.

Federal Prison Inmates 2003:

• Total: 158,426 Inmates
• Drug offenses: 86,972
• Violent offenses: 16,688
• Property offenses: 11,283
• Public-order offenses: 42,325 (includes immigration and weapons)
• Other: 1,158

At Drug WarRant, I always welcome those who have opposing viewpoints. In fact, it’s often refreshing to have someone actually have the guts to debate us about drug policy reform. (Note how recently we had a discussion that went on for hundreds of posts with “Jake.”)
So I feel the need to explain why I have deleted some comments recently. We have had a commenter here for quite some time who is quite involved and supportive in drug policy reform. Then another commenter recently showed up using the same name, with a very different viewpoint — ie, a series of random disconnected inflammatory comments, including insults thrown at other commenters here at Drug WarRant. As I did not feel at the time that this second person had any intention of actually discussing anything, I deleted most of his comments.
In the past day, he has actually asked some questions and made some posts that were relevant, and so those will stay. As long as he is actually discussing and not disrupting, he is welcome.
It still leaves the question of two very different commenters with the same name — perhaps one of them will choose to make a slight alteration.

Earlier this year, I mentioned Jeff Trigg’s experience with jury duty, and how telling the truth (that he believed in the principle of jury nullification) caused him to be excused. (Parts 1, 2, and 3 )
Now Baylen Linnekin has gone through a similar experience in being called for jury duty for a drug case.
Read his story. What would you have done?

A nice little overview article at About by Andrew Somers is now online: How do we end the War on Drugs?. The recommendations:

1. End the black market by ending prohibition.
2. Regulate the manufacture, sale, and distribution of soft substances using the alcohol model.
3. Use taxation, and spread the revenues so generated to education and treatment efforts.
4. Provide addicts with clean supplies to demolish the black market, and greatly increase the availability of treatment options for them in a non-criminal setting.

Radley Balko’s got a ton of excellent posts right now about the horrors of the drug war:
“bullet” Because what we need is more killing

Outrage ensued. A new policy has been issued this week. It’s worse.
“bullet” Militarizing Mayberry
SWAT teams in a town with a population of 2,701? Madness!
“bullet” Militarizing Mayberry Ct’d
Lawsuit filed against drug task force for terrorising two women over a hunt for marijuana. Good.
“bullet” Wrong House
“bullet” Wrong House Part II
“bullet” Wrong House Part III (a follow-up on the Bel-Aire, Kansas Sunflower Debacle)
“bullet” Painkillers
The DEA’s war on pain relief is especially damaging to low-income areas.

Surging Mexican violence draws comparisons to Colombia.

We’ve seen this for so many years. If you push down somewhere, it pops up somewhere else. Prohibition has absolutely no impact on the availability of drugs — it just costs money, destroys lives and land, creates wealthy super-criminals, and corrupts law enforcement. Can’t anybody do a cost assessment?
No. Take a look at Uribe. If anyone should have a first-hand awareness of the costs of prohibition, it’s him. And yet at the recent Summit of the Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies (see this article by Dan Feder), President Uribe talked about increasing efforts, not only in Colombia, but in neighboring countries.
One point of interest (worth reading in Feder’s article) is that Uribe did feel compelled to address calls for legalization (could they be getting louder?). He, of course, dismissed such calls, but his justifications were absurd and contradictory. He even admitted that he tended away from the use of “cold reason” when thinking about it.
It seems to me that the future of Latin America depends on a choice of two directions:

1. The countries pull together all their spine and refuse to allow the U.S. to continue its destructive drug war inside their borders, or
2. Latin America eventually self-destructs (along with the Southwest border of the U.S.)

Of course, it doesn’t help that in many cases, the drug war is actually a cover for political agendas, access to valuable resources, and military positioning.

Another good article about prohibition — Law officers calling for end to ‘war against drugs’ by Lisa Hoffman with Scripps Howard News Service, which has been picked up by a few media outlets. Again, this features members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition who are doing an incredible job of getting the message out there.
This one shows, by contrast, just how bankrupt the arguments of the ONDCP are. After the article shows some very good points from LEAP about the failure of the drug war and noting that…

… the ONDCP sputters into the picture with the usual hand-picked manipulated statistics, emotional non-sequitors, and ad hominem attacks…

Hmmm…. imagine, in a democracy, a federal agency whose purpose is to lie to the people through both informal and coordinated media blitzes, to interfere with the election and lawmaking process by campaigning against local voting initiatives and state/local bills, to attempt to stifle and suppress contrary factual speech, and to promote and support policies that are contrary to the common good of the people. Meet the ONDCP.
Anyway, contrats to LEAP on all their recent coverage (Norm Stamper in the LA Times, Howard Woolridge’s ride, etc.). This is a very important organization to support, and they do great work with their speaker’s bureau. If you’ve got connections with a local Rotary Club or similar organization, why not try to arrange to get one of their speakers. It’s a great way to reach local leaders who may be more likely to open their minds to the subject when an ex-cop is talking.

Via Cannabis News, Marijuana less cancerous than tobacco.
This United Press International article by Steve Mitchell, Senior Medical Correspondent, reports what we had a preview of before — that this whole business of prohibitionists touting that marijuana has higher numbers of carcinogens is irrelevant. The truth is that marijuana use does not increase your risk of cancer at all.
What made this article particularly interesting is that the UPI Senior Medical Correspondent, through a combination of analysis and reactions from others, called Karen Tandy what she is: a liar.

Good reporting UPI.
Wait, did I just say “Good reporting UPI?” What’s happening?