Drug WarRant

This is certainly the surprise nomination. Bush’s personal lawyer, charges of cronyism, early positive statements from Daily Kos and Harry Reid, conservative bloggers’ heads explode, and threats of a Republican filibuster?
It’s hard to know what to think. However, (via Volokh Conspiracy) &c. blog notes this piece of writing from Harriet Miers:

Now, while drug laws are not specifically mentioned, it seems hopeful that she, at least at one time, believed that giving up rights to fight crime was not the answer.

Via Drug Policy Alliance:

Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) has introduced a bill that would subject thousands of low-level, nonviolent methamphetamine offenders to long mandatory minimum prison sentences. These penalties are even worse than the ones enacted for crack in the 1980s. Breaking up families and wasting taxpayer dollars will do nothing to reduce the problems associated with methamphetamine abuse.
Please click on the link below to take action. We need to flood Congress with faxes and emails. Souder’s goal is to pass his bill before Thanksgiving. The last time we went toe-to-toe with Souder, we stopped his plan to let the White House spend taxpayer money on “attack” ads against marijuana reform ballot measures and Congressional candidates who support reform. With your help we will beat him this time too!
Take action now.
Souder’s bill, the Meth Epidemic Elimination Act, would lower the amount of methamphetamine it takes to get a five-year mandatory sentence from 5 grams to 3 grams (about a sugar packet’s worth). It would lower the amount of methamphetamine it takes to get a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence from 50 grams to 5 grams (about a thimbelful). These are even worse than the penalties enacted for crack cocaine in the 1980s, which devastated tens of thousands of families and wasted tens of billions of dollars. Although the new mandatory minimums would not apply to simple possession, they would be so low that many methamphetamine users would be charged with “possession with intent to distribute” just for possessing a weekend’s worth of methamphetamine.
Congressman Souder is the biggest drug war extremist in Congress. He controls a key Congressional Committee and is at the center of all drug war evil. His 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, for instance, has kept more than 160,000 Americans from getting college aid because of drug convictions. Two years ago he tried to give the White House the ability to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money on “attack” ads against marijuana reform ballot measures and Congressional candidates who support reform. We beat him back and stopped that proposal, along with a proposal that would have allowed the White House to punish states that enact medical marijuana laws.

I had already commented on the title (Elimination?) earlier, but I didn’t know all the details of the bill then. Naturally, if it comes from Souder, it’s got to be a mess.
We must stop Souder. Regardless of your views on meth (and I think it can be a pretty dangerous drug if abused), excessive madatory minimums don’t work. They’re costly to taxpayers and society. This will cause tons of problems for years to come if it passes (and you know that Congress are too whimpy to vote down so-called “tough on drugs” measures.
Next. It’s time to get rid of people like Souder and Sensenbrenner. I don’t mean shoot them or anything. But these sado-moralists are heads of crucial committees. We need to vote them out of office, or change the party in the House so they’re no longer committee chairs.

(No, not a discussion about steroids…)
For those who haven’t been following, the discussion on the Drug War Victims page that was mentioned a couple of posts back has been continuing at amazing length (and non-stop). I learned that this blogging software has a limit of 100 comments on a post, so I’ve had to create additional pages to get more commenting room.
It’s quite an entertaining debate.
For the Prohibitionists:

• Jake — aligned with, connected with, or working with the police force involved in the Hirko case. Very animated and prolific writer.

For the Drug Policy Reformers:

• Kaptinemo
• Hope
• muleskinner
• Sukoi
• runruff

Go to this page and read the first 200 comments and then dive into the comments window at the bottom for the up-to-the-moment discussion.

“bullet” Drug War Chronicle’s Phil Smith is in Afghanistan, reporting in person on the drug war there. You can read his dispatches here.
“bullet” Washington Post reports about a Congressional dog and pony show (sans pony). Congress is considering more funding for law enforcement dogs, so they watched them sniff explosives and marijuana. As jackl notes, dogs can only be trained to do one or the other (a point neglected by the Post), meaning that every dog trained to sniff pot, is one that isn’t making us safe from terrorists.
“bullet” Mary Jane’s Last Dance — an offensive operation in Philadelphia targeting drug paraphernalia in Spencer’s Gifts in the mall.

Detectives took shot glasses, dishes, bowls, Frisbees, CDs, magnets, sneakers, headbands, stationery, lighters, pins, bracelets, key chains, cookie cutters and dozens of other “marijuana” merchandise from the Oxford Valley store. The pieces to one chess set were various sized marijuana leaves.

“bullet” Via Cannabis News and NORML:

Marijuana use, as indicated by the presence of cannabis metabolites, is not associated with crash culpability among injured drivers, according to data presented at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine.

“bullet” Coffee with… Gary Storck Wisconsin’s top medical marijuana advocate speaks out.
“bullet” Vets Against the (Drug) War — Outstanding article about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Also:
“bullet” It’s fun when they fight. Souder and the Drug Czar are at odds again.
“bullet” Loretta Nall Announces Run for Governor of Alabama. That’s one I’d love to see!

I’m a huge fan of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). A great group of dedicated people who perform an incredibly important service. Their speaker’s bureau arranges for cops against prohibition to speak to Rotary Clubs and other similar organizations. Having a cop speak against the drug war to a group like that is priceless in terms of impact.
This article describes such a talk by LEAP V.P. Peter Christ. The article also includes reactions from local cops to Peter’s visit (Naturally, they’re less enthused about making changes.)
One item in the article that caught my eye:

No matter what the justifications, however, Clifton Heights Police Chief Walter Senkow objected to legalization on a moral basis.

“At that point, we’re telling our kids, it’s okay to abuse their bodies,” Senkow said.

Moral basis? Since when is it the responsibility of the Police Chief to guard our morals? Is Senkow prepared to arrest people for not honoring their mother and father? Or for not keeping the Sabbath holy? Or for not loving their neighbor? Or for not being pure in heart? Since we don’t have specific laws for those things, does that mean that we’re somehow giving a bad message to our kids?
The Police Chief is actually ready to discard an idea that might make his work more effective, because of his need to give a particular moral lesson (while ignoring many others). Perhaps he should leave that to families and churches, and focus on effectively serving and protecting.
Turning to law to provide a moral example has a major drawback.
Laws are created by politicians.
Now think about it. Do you really want to look to politicians for your moral foundation?

There’s been a rather entertaining exchange going on in the comments of my Drug War Victims page. One of the interesting characters visiting that page is Jake, a real gung-ho drug warrior who referred to the victims as “sh*tbags” and thanked God for Nixon creating the DEA.
I think Kaptinemo is having way too much fun debating him.
Jake recently posted:

So then… what’s your solution guys? You want drugs to be legal? Okay. Let’s make all other crimes legal too. You know, i don’t think stealing should be a crime. Just because we don’t like a law… doesn’t mean we should just disgard it.

That paragraph would be a great one for a class studying logical fallacies. The Kaptin points out that Jake is guilty of conflation (combining disparate items into one). The statement also fits into the Ignoratio Elenchi fallacy (as do many drug warrior arguments) — arguing something completely irrelevant, or to an irrelevant thesis. [I thought about referring to red herring, but that often implies intentional misdirection. Aristotle referred to Ignoratio Elenchi as ignorance of what makes a refutation, which seems appropriate for Jake.] There are, I believe, two Ignoratio Elenchi arguments in Jake’s single statement. Can you find them?
Of course, such a ridiculous argument is also fun to counter in reverse:

• Why not have a 2 year minimum prison sentence for parking meter violations?
• Why not have no-knock guns-drawn middle-of-the-night raids for suspected tax fraud?
• Why not seize the cars of those who exceed the speed limit?
• Why not bust people for possession of Twinkies? (Do you want your children raised in a world where people get fat from eating Twinkies?)

There’s another ignorant response I often see on bulletin boards when I’m wandering around the net (bringing us to the title of this post).
Someone in the discussion will rationally talk about how we can reduce violence, corruption, cost, overdoses, disease, etc. by ending the drug war. And then some Jake will say:

It seems to me that you would eliminate all the problems of the drug war if everybody just stopped making, selling, and using drugs.

Sigh. Yes, that’s true. And if wishes were horses…
Perhaps you have the ability to change the course of the stars in the sky. Because unless you do, the notion of completely eliminating drug use is a fantasy — a fiction, and has no place in a rational discussion.
This means the debate has to start with: “Given the fact that there will always be some people who make, sell, and use drugs regardless of what we do, what should our policy be?”
When you start to look at the realities of the arguments, and toss away the irrelevancies and impossibilities, then you’ll generally find that drug policy reform is the only logical approach that you can take.
I think that part of the reason that people resort to the arguments of ignorance is that they can’t handle the thought of “druggies winning.” They have decided that certain drugs are bad and those who use certain drugs are also bad. Therefore, those bad druggies must suffer. Then someone comes along and calmly and logically explains how ending prohibition would solve all sorts of problems, and a circuit in their head explodes. “But… but…” they whine in their head, “but… that would mean that the druggies would win! NOOOO!”
And they promptly yell “Well, why don’t you just legalize murder while you’re at it?”

Read it
You and I are just happy it all worked out. But this story has got to be giving some prohibitionists a crisis of faith.

Souder, Sensenbrenner, and Blunt (that’s frightening by itself) have introduced H.R. 3889, the Methamphetamine Epidemic Elimination Act.
Wow. Just pass a bill and eliminate Meth? Amazing. Let’s pass some other bills. How about the Cancer Elimination Act, or the Toxic Waste Elimination Act, or the Crooked Politicians Elimination Act?

Afghan minister quits after ‘drug war rift’ with Karzai
Oops.

This is old news now, but I wanted to at least weigh in on the “news” that Kate Moss used cocaine. A surprise to absolutely nobody, yet somehow requiring shocked horror as a reaction.
As far as I’m concerned, the best response came from Sarah Doukas, director of the Storm agency:

“I know Kate, and I have represented her for the last 18 years. Over this time she has consistently demonstrated herself to be a professional and exceptional model and a loyal, special and dear friend to me and countless others,” Doukas said.

Does anything else matter?