Drug WarRant

Jacob Sullum properly points out the hysteria behind the latest unfounded crack baby: the meth baby. He quotes from an open letter from physicians and drug treatment specialists:

Despite the lack of a medical or scientific basis for the use of such terms as “ice” and “meth” babies, these pejorative and stigmatizing labels are increasingly being used in the popular media, in a wide variety of contexts across the country. Even when articles themselves acknowledge that the effects of prenatal exposure to methamphetamine are still unknown, headlines across the country are using alarmist and unjustified labels such as “meth babies.”…

Although research on the medical and developmental effects of prenatal methamphetamine exposure is still in its early stages, our experience with almost 20 years of research on the chemically related drug, cocaine, has not identified a recognizable condition, syndrome or disorder that should be termed “crack baby” nor found the degree of harm reported in the media and then used to justify numerous punitive legislative proposals.

The term “meth addicted baby” is no [more] defensible. Addiction is a technical term that refers to compulsive behavior that continues in spite of adverse consequences. By definition, babies cannot be “addicted” to methamphetamines or anything else.

I’m out of town and missed the news until today, but as the many contributors who wrote me said… this needs to be posted:
Link

EMERY EMPIRE RAIDED AT REQUEST OF UNITED STATES
Cannabis activist and two others arrested
By Jennifer Garner

Canadian police acting under orders from US officials raided the headquarters of the British Columbia Marijuana Party (BCMP) in Vancouver today (Friday, July 22).

The search warrants were authorized at the highest levels of the provincial government in concert with a cross-border US-Canada law enforcement pact authorized by the a US-authored Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters treaty (MLAT) between the US and Canada.

The US has issued extradition orders for Marc Emery, who was arrested while traveling in Halifax to a hemp festival, as well as two others who work with Emery on television productions and other endeavours.

American officials accuse Emery of “a conspiracy to produce marijuana and distribute marijuana seeds, and money laundering.”

The DEA and other agencies are claiming that by selling seeds to pot-growing Americans, Emery is engaged in a criminal enterprise with the growers.

“Their activities resulted in the growing of tens of thousands of marijuana plants in America,” claims US federal attorney Jeff Sullivan. “[Emery] was involved, allegedly, in an illegal distribution of marijuana in [the United States.] He is a drug dealer.”

Vancouver police armed with a search warrant raided the legendary store in the heart of Vancouver’s “Vansterdam” district.

Chris Bennett, manager of Pot-TV who was onsite when the BCMP center was raided today, said he is particularly angry that Canadian police were acting as enforcers of American drug laws.

‹They’re taking him down to face charges in the United States of America, where sentences are much harsher that one would face in Canada,” said Bennett.

More at:

• Cannabis Culture Forums
• Last One Speaks – start at the top and keep reading.

Thanks to Tim and others.

This is nothing new — something I’ve railed about for some time as it relates to drug task forces here in the states, but this article from Canada just kind of drove me a little nuts.

It was a drug raid that came close to going tragically wrong.

As armed narcotics officers got set to barge through the door of a suspect’s home in Spryfield, other officers peering through a window were horrified to see a man inside levelling a rifle at the door. […]

“We go through a door and sometimes those inside are wired or stoned.” […]

“Almost inevitably, when we go through a door, we know there is going to be weapons of some sort inside,” Staff Sgt. McTiernan said. […]

“A lot of these guys are not always sure who is coming through the door.

“If they know it’s the police, it’s not normally an issue because they know we are not there to harm them.”

But it can be a different story “if they think it’s someone else coming in to rip them off.” […]

“A lot of times when we go through doors, we don’t always know what is in there and we find loaded firearms,” he said […]

“They know their door could come down and they could be arrested at any time. […]

Isn’t anyone going to ask: “Why the hell are you going through the door?”

Make sure you read Radley Balko’s latest at Fox: Justice Often Served by Jury Nullification

The doctrine of jury nullification (search) rests on two truths about the American criminal justice system: (1) Jurors can never be punished for the verdict they return, and (2) Defendants cannot be retried once a jury has found them not guilty, regardless of the jury’s reasoning. So the juries in both the Rosenthal and Paey cases could have returned a “not guilty” verdict, even though Paey and Rosenthal were undoubtedly guilty of the charges against them.

This may sound radical, perhaps even subversive, but jury nullification serves as an important safeguard against unjust laws, as well as against the unfair application of well-intended laws. It’s also steeped in American and British legal tradition.

As the legislature continues to act in ways that are far outside the wishes of those they represent (particularly in terms of the drug war), and the courts seem willing to defer to the legislature, and the executive is eager to go after doctors, sick people and pot smokers, then it may fall upon the individual to correct the government perpetrated injustices, by refusing to convict based on bad law.

Via NORML’s ezine comes this ruling: (I’m quoting extensively, because it’s pretty important)

Traverse City, MI: The presence of cannabis’ primary metabolite, THC-COOH, is insufficient evidence of impairment to warrant a conviction under the state’s “zero tolerance” per se drugged driving law, according to a recent ruling by the Michigan Court of Appeals. The decision upholds a trial court ruling that found the “prosecution must prove that the presence of a controlled substance in a defendant’s body is proximate cause of an accident resulting in death or serious injury” in order for the defendant to be guilty of violating the state’s two-year-old drugged driving statute.

Michigan is one of ten states that have enacted so-called “zero tolerance” drugged driving laws. Under Michigan’s law, it is a criminal offense for an individual to operate a motor vehicle with any detectable level of a Schedule I substance present in his or her bodily fluids. (In six states – Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, and Utah – individuals may be criminally prosecuted if they operate a vehicle with any level of a Schedule I drug or drug metabolite in their system. Three additional states – Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Virginia – have enacted per se drugged driving standards, prohibiting individuals from operating a motor vehicle if they have levels of Schedule I drugs present in their body above a specific threshold.)

In the case before the court, the defendant tested positive for the presence of the THC metabolite THC-COOH (a non-psychoactive compound produced during the body’s biological process of converting THC into a water soluble form), but maintained that she was unimpaired at the time of her accident. The prosecution argued that it was not required under Michigan’s “zero tolerance” drugged driving law to establish that the defendant’s impairment caused the accident, only that she had an illegal substance present in her body. The appellate court upheld the trail court’s ruling, affirming that marijuana’s metabolite is neither psychoactive nor classified as an illegal substance, and that the prosecution had failed to prove a causal relationship between the presence of a controlled substance in the defendant’s body and the accident.

Michigan’s Supreme Court had previously held that the legislature did not “intend to impose strict liability on an individual” involved in a driving-related accident, the appellate court determined. Rather, the legislature’s intent is to criminally punish only individuals whose impaired driving causes another person’s injury.

“The defendant’s purposeful operation of [a] vehicle while under the influence must have been a substantial cause of the victim’s death,” the court of appeals determined. It further found that the “legislature did not intend to include [the cannabis metabolite] as a Schedule I controlled substance because it has no pharmacological effect on the human body … and its levels in the blood correlates poorly, if at all, to an individual’s level of THC-related impairment.”

As a result, the appellate court ruled, “Imposing a penalty on a driver when the … accident would have occurred regardless of that intoxication would … fail to serve the purpose of the statute.”

An excellent ruling. These zero tolerance laws are ridiculous, becuase they proclaim to be about safety, yet the levels being tested have absolutely nothing to do with impairment.
It would be the equivalent of saying that if anyone had ever seen you take a drink in the past, then you’re now guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Let’s hope that this kind of sanity continues in other court cases. Legislatures and law enforcement must be held to a standard of actually proving impairment (or a reasonable expectation of actual impairment) if they’re going to enact/enforce substance-related driving laws.

Great article in the Rolling Stone by Robert Dreyfuss

America’s long-running war on drugs has, literally, gone to pot.

More than two decades after it was launched in response to the spread of crack cocaine — and in the midst of a brand-new wave of methamphetamine use sweeping the country — the government crackdown has shifted from hard drugs to marijuana. Pot now accounts for nearly half of drug arrests nationwide — up from barely a quarter of all busts a decade ago. Spurred by a Supreme Court decision in June affirming the right of federal agents to crack down on medical marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration has launched a series of high-profile raids against pot clinics in California, and police in New York, Memphis and Philadelphia have been waging major offensives against pot smokers that are racking up thousands of arrests.

By almost any measure, however, the war has been as monumental a failure as the invasion of Iraq.

Harsh. Nice. (Although I’d say that the drug war is worse failure.)

“For Walters, it’s all marijuana, all the time,” says Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He is reinforcing the atmosphere that marijuana is the drug we should care about, and that the government will do everything it can, including locking everyone up, if that’s what it comes to.”

Good one, Graham. And true.
The whole article is worth a read.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Seeing Drug War Religious Extremists Mark Souder and John Mica rake the Drug Czar’s office over the coals for not being tough enough in the war on drugs is simultaneously hilarious and sad.
The Representatives made it clear that Meth is the new Heroin (or the new Crack, or the new pot that’s so powerful that it’s the new crack, or something) and that the administration had better do something about it. This, of course, is a problem for the administration since marijuana is their only path toward their numbers goals (there just aren’t enough meth users that can be easily coerced into quitting in order to help the Czar’s percentages.)

Rep. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., formerly head football coach at the University of Nebraska, said meth poses a greater threat to U.S. society than foreign terrorists.

“Meth is the biggest threat to the United States, maybe even including al-Qaida,” Osborne said.

Whoa! That’s different! Meth isn’t the new Heroin. It’s the new suicide bomber. Which makes it part of the war on terror!
But wait — the war on terror is now over! It’s been renamed the “Global Struggle Against Extremism.”
And since Souder is an extremist … (OK, this is getting confusing) … then the war against meth has become a struggle against Souder, right?
Right?????

President Bush has sent a new nomination to the Senate for confirmation as Deputy Director for Demand Reduction, ONDCP to replace Andrea Barthwell. (Note: the word “vice” also means “to replace” — just seems odd to use it there.)

The nominee is Bertha K. Madras, a researcher with Harvard Medical School. Her expertise appears to be in neurobiology, and she focuses on dopamine, finding drugs to cure cocaine addiction, the neurobiology of ADHD, Parkinson’s and others (including primate work), along with specialized forms of brain imaging. She’s done some cameos for the Drug Czar in the past, and she’s been involved in some educational outreach programs related to addiction. She’s also received the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Public Service award, presented by Nora Volkow, director of NIDA.
I don’t know too much about her, but despite her strong ties to prohibitionist shills, her scientific credentials seem legit. What I don’t understand is why she’d give up her research work to go parrot the czar’s propaganda.
And does she know that working for the Drug Czar seems to corrupt people? When Andrea Barthwell went to work for Walters, she talked about wanting to make a difference in terms of shifting drug policy more toward treatment instead of prohibition. And colleagues of hers (whom I know) thought highly of her back then. They say she changed. Clearly not for the better.
Do you really want this job, Bertha?

That’s right — two years ago today, I started blogging. I thought at the time that I’d post once a week or so (since this is post #1062 I think you can see that my estimate was a bit off).
I just went back and looked at my first post. It was a report on the debate over the Hinchey Amendment to stop using federal funds to go after medical marijuana patients. I’ve now covered that failed attempt in 2003, 2004, and 2005. A bit depressing, but, on the other hand, there have been tons of incredible new accomplishments over the past two years in our fight to bring sanity back to drug policy.
Thanks to Adam, Avedon, Baylen, Ben, Daniel, Daksya, desertcat, disgustedvet, David, Ethan, ezrydn, filchyboy, gemsbok, Herb, Jacob, jackl, Jeff, Jeralyn, Jim, John, kaptinemo, Klay, Kris, Krissy, Kwix, Libby, lorax, Loretta, M. Simon, Matt, Mark, nephalim, norbizness, nhop, Radley, Randy, Richard, SayUncle, Scott, Sister Geoff, sixtyfps, Steve, Tad, Taylor, Terry, thehim, Tom, Walter, Yan and lots of others whom I’m sure I’ve left off this list. The encouragement and discussions have made continuing this blog a joy.
Lots more to do.

Link

IROQUOIS FALLS, Ont. — Police in northern Ontario have charged a Toronto man after they found marijuana fields stretching “three football fields in length” in what is considered to be one of Canada’s largest pot busts.

Investigators found more than 21,000 marijuana plants behind a home nestled in the woods of Iroquois Falls, east of Timmins.