Drug WarRant

There were a couple of articles this week about the situation in Colombia — the more we do there, the messier it gets.
The latest is about this new amnesty offered by Uribe’s “Justice and Peace Law.” Basically it’s a way for traffickers (including mass murderers) to get a light country-club sentence for a few years, and retire on their drug trafficking profits wealthy and free of legal hassles (and, unlike Marc Emery, free of fear of extradition to the U.S.). Special consideration is given to the right-wing AUC.
Apparently, a number of the big guys are looking to cash in and let a new batch of traffickers take over. And in the process, they’re having a clearance sale.
From Daniel Kurtz-Phelan at Slate:

In preparation for getting in on the deal, the drug lords seem to be emptying out their warehousesÖselling off stockpiles of cocaine so they have enough cash on hand to go legit for a few years without giving up their fabulous wealth and swank lifestyles. These stockpiles, by all accounts, are massive. They have allowed traffickers to insulate their business and maintain a steady flow of imports to the United States and Europe regardless of how many coca plants South American soldiers and American defense contractors are killing with machetes and herbicide at any given time. On a recent visit to Bolivia, the head of South America operations for the U.S. Agency for International Development said that traffickers have so much cocaine on hand they could keep exports constant for a year and a half even if production stopped altogether.

The recent slew of seizures is a good sign of a sell-off: According to a basic law of drug-war economics, every increase in the amount of cocaine seized reflects a more-or-less proportionate increase in the amount of cocaine shipped. An American anthropologist doing fieldwork in southern Colombia reports additional evidence that the cocaine market is glutted: Peasant producers of coca paste (the base material for cocaine) are having trouble finding buyers for their productÖan indication that so much cocaine is being shipped from warehouses that traffickers don’t need to buy paste to manufacture more. Over the past few months, paste prices in Putumayo, the heart of Colombian coca country, have fallen between 10 percent and 40 percent.

In the past decade, Washington has poured billions of dollars into Colombia with the ostensible purpose of fighting the drug trade. Meanwhile, the street price of cocaine has steadily declined, from around $250 a gram in the late 1980s to well under $100 today. Now Congress is debating whether to help finance Uribe’s demobilization effort, despite concerns that it’s a lucrative retirement plan for traffickers.

Thank God we’ve been spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money over there in order to increase the profit margin to the most ruthless traffickers, so that they can have a luxurious retirement package.
There’s an interesting point made in this article, too. The fact that increased seizures are not an indication of drug war success, but rather of drug war failure. Increased seizures means more has been shipped. Every time police nab a truck full of drugs because the license plate was dangling by a wire, that doesn’t mean that they were successful — it means that there is so much being smuggled that the traffickers were even willing to hire an idiot to drive a valuable shipment. So the next time you hear about a record seizure, read between the lines to imagine what they didn’t get.
[More on the amnesty from Council on Hemispheric Affairs.]

This one’s from my area.
Lincoln, Illinois veteran police officer Diana Short is arrested for growing marijuana and bail is set at $2,500, which she’s able to raise. Then she’s indicted for other counts of drug trafficking and her bail raises to $10,000. Well, she doesn’t have that much money, so she convinces her daughter to buy materials to make meth and tries to recruit inmates in the jail to make it so she can raise bail.
Knowing her phone calls will be monitored, she uses code over the phone, such as telling her daughter to gather as many as 2,000 “little white things.”
Her bail is now $25,000 and her daughter has bail of $10,000.
This is a story that shows rampant stupidity. Not only of this former police officer and her daughter, but of the drug war in general.

The Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force is being disbanded. So sad.
This is the group that raided a landscaper’s house because he had hibiscus (with white flowers) in his front yard. They thought it was pot. They also grilled him about his bamboo, watermelons, and cantaloupes.
Now some of these task force members are out of a job. Hmmm… Well, I doubt the florist is going to want to hire them. Same for the grocery store produce department. Maybe… “You want fries with that?”
One interesting part of this article is the speculation of how the crime rate will change. The thing is, since the local police departments are hiring many of them, I’d say they’re going to have better success in actually fighting crime. The task force was (as they nostalgically pointed out) more involved in “memorable” busts and seizures that only took a drop out of the ocean of supply. Regular police work (to the extent that it isn’t wasted on pot busts) is more useful to the community.
Farewell Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force. We won’t miss you.

In a recess appointment, John “Got Milk?” Bolton has been appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His job will be to straighten them out, or piss them off, or dismantle them, or something to that effect.
How much do you want to bet that there’s one part of the U.N. that Bolton will decide is working just fine?

At the Onion

We helped train some of these criminals as part of the effort to go after drug lords. We made criminal drug trade profitable. We’re not only losing the drug war, we are fueling violence through prohibition.
Link

NUEVO LAREDO – Warring Mexican gangs stepped up the urban battle in Nuevo Laredo late last week, prompting the U.S. ambassador in Mexico City to close the consulate in this border town that terrorized citizens compare to a war zone in Baghdad.

The pitched battle — with bazookas and grenades — was so fierce that after the shooting a house at the fighting’s center was riddled with holes the size of melons. Part of it had collapsed. A building across the street was pocked with holes, indicating a response with heavy weapons. Hundreds of bullet casings from AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons littered the street. Cars, many with Texas plates, lay like victims, their windows shattered and their bodies scourged by bullet holes.

Link
No need to track down drug traffickers or deal with the hard work of ripping up plants in the fields of Afghanistan. Opium is so plentiful in that country, that the DEA could pick up 20,000 pounds of it in the offices of the provincial governor.
A bit embarrassing, don’t you think?
Still nobody willing to state the obvious — the drug war is a failure there (as well as here), and needs to be scrapped.

Kirk Tousaw has a good overview at Cannabis Culture on the future proceedings in the Marc Emery case.
Here’s the real interesting part: When it comes time for the Canadian courts to decide on the extradition:

One of the key sections is 44. That lists reasons why the Minister SHALL NOT order surrender:

44. (1) The Minister shall refuse to make a surrender order if the Minister is satisfied that

(a) the surrender would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances; or

(b) the request for extradition is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status or that the person’s position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons.

Obviously we will be arguing that both subparagraphs apply. Marc is a victim of political persecution and the US system is the poster child for unjust and oppressive laws. Another reason the Minister may deny surrender is if it would shock the Canadian conscience.

There’s a long way to go on this case, and it’s going to cause some waves.

In the London Free Press: America Targets Emery

The arrest of Canadian pot activist Marc Emery is being used to advance the agenda of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a London friend charges.

“Someone needed to made an example of (him) to further the agenda of the American drug enforcement agency,” said Teresa Tarasewicz, co-owner of the City Lights Book Shop.

OpEd by Connie Fogal, Leader, Canadian Action Party

The arrest of Marc Emery and two others on July 29, 2005 in Canada to serve the questionable USA War On Drugs is a wake up call for Canadians. Marc Emery is a serious activist promoting the legalization of Marijuana use in Canada. The significance for Canadians of his arrest is not about anyone’s personal attitude to the legalization of marijuana. The significance speaks to the core of being Canadian, being a sovereign nation, being able to make decisions we choose in our interest, in our own time, on our own terms.

From an article by Dana Gee in the Vancouver Province:

SANTA MONICA — Tommy Chong thinks the Drug Enforcement Agency’s plan to prosecute pot advocate Marc Emery should go up in smoke.

The former Vancouver resident and one-half of the stoner comedic partnership of Cheech and Chong was shocked when told of Emery’s trouble with the DEA.

“They’re going to extradite him down to the [U.S.] for something that’s not really a crime in Canada,” Chong said at a party here Friday night. “If Canada goes for that, they really suck.”

Last year, Chong ran afoul of the U.S. war against drugs when he was jailed for nine months after being found guilty on one count of conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia across a state line.

“Look what happened to me for a bong,” said Chong. “Imagine if I had a seed in it — I’d still be in jail.

“The DEA, their budget, it depends on pot busts. Pot busts are the simplest, because we are the most harmless.

“What they did to me and what they are doing to a lot of people is violating their civil rights. What they are really looking for is diversion — these guys are up to their eyeballs in wars and thievery, Haliburton and Enron.”

Link

“The drug czar has blood on his hands for blocking the humane and medical use of cannabis for sick, disabled and dying people,” Kubby said.

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red”
— Macbeth

[Update: Link fixed.]