Drug WarRant

Michael Mayo has an excellent column in today’s Sun-Sentinel:
An ounce of pot, 10 bullets and one failed drug war

“What in the hell were they doing with a SWAT team?” asked Eleanor Shockett, a retired Miami-Dade circuit judge who advocates a sweeping overhaul of drug laws. “To break into someone’s home at six in the morning, possibly awaken someone from a deep sleep, someone who has a concealed weapons permit? What did they expect to happen?”

This is a tragedy that never should have happened.

Even if Diotaiuto, 23, was a small-time pot dealer, which his friends and family deny, the methods used show the madness of our country’s war on drugs.

No discretion. No proportionality. No sense.

“Using SWAT in this case is like using a sledgehammer on a fly,” said Jack Cole, a former narcotics detective for the New Jersey State Police who heads Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a drug-law reform group. “I’d much rather use a little bit of stealth.”

That says it all.
I’m going to stay on top of this story, because as many people need to hear about it as possible. I’m pleased to hear already that the community is up in arms and people are investigating.
Let’s be clear about this. This cannot simply be blamed on a “mistake” by the Sunrise Police Department. Certainly from a legal and liability standpoint, they’re at fault. However, where did the Sunrise Police get the idea to do this? How has this kind of violent attack on citizens become part of the “acceptable” arsenal for police department’s to even consider?

Via Cannabis News, check out this article by Laura McPhee in Nuvo (Indiana)
Cannabis Cure: Miracle or Myth?

However, an examination of the facts about marijuana demonstrates that the most common and dangerous myths about America‰s most widely used illegal drug and its medicinal value are actually those perpetuated by the federal government itself.

Indeed. This is really an excellent comprehensive (and long) article about marijuana and medical marijuana history along with analysis of the major arguments against medical marijuana.

Link

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) – The United States has revoked the U.S. visas of six Venezuelan military officers, including a top anti-drugs chief, just days after President Hugo Chavez ended cooperation with Washington’s anti-narcotics agency.

Of course, the interesting thing about the DEA is that, despite its name, the agency’s goals really aren’t about drugs. For the DEA, drugs exist as a tool, an excuse, or a justification. It’s absolutely fine with the DEA that the drug war is unwinnable. They don’t fight the drug war in order to win it. They use the drug war for power, budget, and furthering political aims.
Drug-Empowered Absolutism
Update: It gets curiouser…
General Lopez Hidalgo accuses DEA of running seized drugs

As president of Defense Council of the Nation Secretariat (Codena), Lopez Hidalgo says DEA agents spirited seized drugs to other countries alleging that on several occasions the DEA reported seizures but the amounts were changed … “what happened with the difference of kilos? … it shows a procedure that is not legal in Venezuela.”

Further Update: Venezuela is apparently willing to work with the DEA, but only if the DEA doesn’t act like the DEA runs Venezuela (Link)
I love this passage:

According to Chacon, one of the main issues is that in the building that houses Venezuela’s anti-drug trafficking agency, Conacuid, there is a floor that is used by the DEA, where it does not allow any Venezuelans to enter. “We demand [of the U.S.] that they would please open this floor,” said Chacon. “The day that the DEA allows us to open up a floor in the DEA’s building [in the U.S.], where only Venezuelans are allowed to enter, we will allow them to open a floor where only North-Americans are allowed to enter into Conacuid, in the meantime no,” added Chacon.

It’s official. Computer games have caused more overdose deaths than marijuana.

Give me your best shot in comments.

Libby at Last One Speaks has this story about Marc Craven Caven, a career snitch who uses entrapment as his normal method of operation.
Here’s what he does. After getting hired by a police force, he goes looking for people who are working minimum wage jobs. Using fake business cards identifying himself as John King of Evergreen Construction and Landscaping, he offers them a high paying construction job. While stringing them along on the job offer, he asks them to buy him some pot. They do it in order to get a better job, but get arrested instead.
Caven’s been doing this in Oregon for over 32 years, and while a lot of cases have gotten thrown out of court (and despite Caven’s own criminal record), police forces continue to hire him and some poor hard-working employed citizens get their lives destroyed because they were offered a chance for a better job.
The real criminals here are the police departments and drug task forces who hired Caven, along with the district attorneys who prosecuted the cases.
As one defense attorney said: “The job of law enforcement is to catch criminals, not create them.”
Read the whole article
Update: Article had the name spelled both Craven and Caven. The name appears to be Caven, the activity craven.

I just realized that it’s been some time since I gave you an update on the HHS stalling tactics.
As a recap, this is about the efforts by Americans for Safe Access to use a new law called the Data Quality Act to force Health and Human Services to stop spreading false info about medical marijuana (a step which could, theoretically, assist long-term efforts to re-schedule medical marijuana). (Background post — Actual Petition(pdf) )
At the time, I was excited about this, because the law requires that the agency respond in 60 days. (What I did not realize at the time was that the law also allows the agency to grant itself extensions.)
The original complaint was filed on October 6, 2004.
On December 1, HHS responded (in part)

We have not yet completed our response to your complaint because of other agency priorities and the need to coordinate agency review of the response. We hope to provide you with a response within 60 days from the date of this letter.

On February 2, 2005, HHS responded (in part):

Your October 4, 2004, request for correction of information disseminated by the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the medical use of marijuana is still under review. While the goal of the Food and Drug Administration is to respond within 60 days to such requests, we are unable to do so in this case. We anticipate that a response will be forwarded to you by April 1, 2005.

On April 5, 2005, HHS responded (in part):

We wrote to you on February 2, 2005, indicating that we would need additional time to complete our response to your request and expected to reply by April 1, 2005. At this time we are continuing to prepare our response but require additional time to coordinate Agency review. We anticipate that a response will be forwarded to you by April 15, 2005.

On April 20, 2005, HHS gave its “decision” (in part):

Both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the HHS Information Quality Guidelines provide that federal government agencies may use existing processes that are in place to address correction requests from the public. In the case of marijuana HHS currently is in the process of conducting a review in response to the petition for change that was submitted to DEA in October 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC), an association of public-interest groups and medical cannabis patients that includes the ASA. [2] In the course of the review, HHS will evaluate all the publicly available peer reviewed literature on the efficacy of marijuana

In English… they essentially said that they will not actually answer the question, but instead will refer it to the current marijuana re-scheduling petition and have the charges of misinformation answered through that process — a process that draws upon HHS recommendations. (Of course, one re-scheduling petition for marijuana took 22 years before finally being rejected, so this is obviously an attempt to bury the questions without response and at the same time keep from having to say anything that might end up helping the re-scheduling of marijuana.)
So ASA, on May 19, filed an appeal (according to the procedures, the appeal must be filed with… you guessed it…. Health and Human Services). In that appeal, ASA essentially said “You’re full of crap. Answer the charges.” (although they used different wording)
HHS had 60 days to respond.
On July 28, 2005, HHS responded (in part):

Your appeal of the denial of your Request for Corrections under the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) Guidelines for Ensuring the Quality of Information Disseminated to the Public, received by OPHS on May 20, is still under review.We could not respond within the 60 day guideline.At this time we are continuing to prepare our response but require additional time to coordinate Agency review. Our goal is to have a response to your appeal within 60 days of the date of this letter.

(That’ll be roughly one year from the start of the process)
It’s so nice that we have this Data Quality Act now, so we can get quick corrections of bad information in the government.
Oh, and by the way, in case you’re wondering why nobody’s using the Data Quality Act against the ONDCP… In their guidelines, they’ve actually exempted all statements made by ONDCP personnel to the press from being covered by the Data Quality Act.

“bullet” Keith Gottschalk used to be a talk show host here in Central Illinois and I got to know him through that and through his blogging as well. He’s got a column yesterday in Rabble (a progressive Canadian publication) about the Marc Emery situation: A U.S. view: An open letter to Irwin Cotler.

As a U.S. citizen I would be ashamed to have Mr. Emery, a Canadian citizen and politician, tried in the United States. It would be a grotesque violation of human decency and the right of people to be tried in their own nations for breaking their own nation’s laws.

Extraditing Emery to the U.S. will only embolden the U.S. DEA and other U.S. law enforcement agencies to continue to exploit what are often, in actuality, unilateral ‹mutual cooperationŠ treaties with other countries, and bring foreign nationals forcibly into the U.S. to serve draconian sentences for drug and other crimes that are handled quite differently where they live.

“bullet” Thomas Knapp has written a fascinating post: Something’s rotten in DEA’n’Marc, in which he speculates that the DEA action against Marc Emery may have some connection to Loretta Nall’s run for Governor.

Enter the DEA and the sudden, screeching halt to Loretta Nall’s livelihood. If you think that’s coincidence, give me a call — I’ve got some Enron shares I’m looking to unload. Unlike Bob Riley and Lucy Buxley, Nall doesn’t get a government paycheck to pay the bills while she tries to climb the political ladder. She has to work for a living. And the work she’s done for some time has been for POT-TV.

Let’s not take this lying down.

First and foremost, it is imperative that we fight the corruption of America’s politics by its own bureaucrats, using our money. Please, write your congresscritters and ask for an investigation into the ONDCP/DEA’s abuse of public funds and political power to stuff the ballot box.

“bullet” At Slate, Jack Schafer writes: Why Does Drug Reporting Suck? Still.
Quite interesting.

There was some additional information in the papers today, and I planned an update, but Radley’s done it very well already. Go read.
There’s no way that this killing can be justified. Because there is no justification for the police decision to bust into his house.
We must, as a society, come to the conclusion that busting down a door to make an arrest should be reserved for those rare situations where it is required to save the lives of citizens (like hostage situations). The prevention of flushing is not a sufficient reason.

…for getting people talking!
The blogosphere has been alive in the past day with talk of the drug war (as of this point, Feedster tracks about 50 blogs discussing Tierney and meth since his article appeared). All because a New York Times columnist dared to question it.
Oh, sure, there are debates about the numbers he used for use/abuse/addiction. The biggest critique (from Mark Kleiman) appears to be that the numbers are wrong because we don’t have good enough system to accurately identify the numbers.
But none of that is able to derail the major points that Tierney boldly lays out:

• Prohibition isn’t always the answer
• Media hype doesn’t help the problem
• Drugs are both good and bad, depending on how they’re used

And people are talking. Check out the comments at TalkLeft (65 at this point) and at Balloon Juice (47 at this point). In addition to some well-reasoned ones, there are the usual idiots…

• “Meth is bad. I know someone who was addicted. It was horrible. How can you want to legalize it?” (this is usually in response to someone who notes that prohibition actually caused the more dangerous aspects of meth)
• “I suppose you’d be OK with making murder legal as well, wouldn’t you?” (this is usually in response to someone who notes that meth exists as a problem even though it’s illegal)

Lots of blind spots out there. But discussion is good. Discussion is great!
People read the New York Times. And look at what they’ve been reading lately:

• Column: Debunking the Drug War (8/9)
• Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting (8/4)
• Column: Handcuffs And Stethoscopes (7/23)
• Editorial: Cutting College Aid, And Fostering Crime (7/20)
• Column: Punishing Pain (7/19)
• OPED: Let A Thousand Licensed Poppies Bloom (7/13)
• Editorial: Playing AIDS Games In New Jersey (6/30)

Nice.
The first step is getting people so they’re actually able to talk about alternatives to prohibition. Many people don’t realize how huge a leap that is for those who have been conditioned all their lives.