Drug WarRant

Obama to nominate ACLU lawyer to lead Justice Department’s civil rights division

Vanita Gupta, a longtime civil rights lawyer, deputy legal director of the ACLU and director of its Center for Justice, will be appointed acting head of the division Wednesday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., administration officials said.

Gupta has been a critic of the drug war and has been regularly outspoken about the need to change our racist marijuana laws.

Plus…

Her first case involved leading an effort to win the release of 38 defendants in Tulia, Tex., whose drug convictions and long sentences were discredited by her legal team. All of the defendants were pardoned in 2003 by Gov. Rick Perry, and Gupta helped negotiate a $5 million settlement for the defendants.

I guess I just wish this wasn’t happening so late in the game.

Cute…

http://youtu.be/d8AuMOGx_KY

US calls for major reinterpretation of international drug laws

In a little-noticed October 9 press conference, Assistant Secretary of State for Drugs and Law Enforcement Bill Brownfield acknowledged that the UN Drug Control Conventions, the pillar of international drug laws, should be reinterpreted to allow more policy flexibility. “The first of them was drafted and enacted in 1961,” he said. “Things have changed since 1961.”

Brownfield specified that the treaties should “tolerate different national drug policies, to accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs.”

Brownfield spent a lot of time specifically discussing marijuana legalization in Colorado, Washington state, and Uruguay. “How could I,” he said, “a representative of the Government of the United States of America, be intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United States of America have chosen to walk down that road?”

But just to be clear…

A spokesperson for the State Department clarified that Brownfield’s remarks didn’t intend to call for changing the UN Drug Conventions. The remarks instead advocated for a reinterpretation of the treaties.

So, apparently the US position is, rather than changing the outdated conventions to something appropriate or at least reflecting reality, we should just sometimes look the other way? Or perhaps we could just use them to arbitrarily punish the countries we don’t like.

There’s a small group of pot-obsessed prohibitionists who don’t have anything meaningful to do and instead have decided…

Cherry Creek parents to spy on Aurora’s new pot stores

One parent commented on our news item Monday morning that he or she has organized more than 24 other parents from neighboring Cherry Creek Schools to spy on the city’s new recreational pot shops — to see if they recognize anyone, to take photos to share with one another, to “publicly shame those who think pot is cool,” according to the comment from user the3Ds, who apparently works at Denver International Airport, lives in Tallyn’s Reach and volunteers at her daughter’s school library.

According to the reader’s comment, their group will “document every person who walks into that shop. We will also make an effort to take a photo and send it around to each other to see if it’s a parent at one of our kid’s schools. We have also promised to tell everyone we know that the parent is a pot-head and make sure to notify the Principals that we don’t want that parent chaperoning our children’s field trips, driving carpool to school events or hosting our kids at their house for slumber parties and playdates.”

How ridiculous.

Hmmm… this seems like a good opportunity for a counter spying operation. Take pictures of those taking pictures and shame the shamers. I can imagine flyers with the picture of one of them taking a picture from their car, with the caption: “Have you seen this person lurking in your neighborhood?”

 

 

… and go.

 

 

I’ve been a little out of touch this past week, as I’ve been dealing with a large kidney stone, which was finally removed by laser last night. I really don’t recommend having a kidney stone.

I got a little lesson about the problems of over-regulating drugs this week. One of the common pain meds prescribed by doctors is Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 5/325. Now, realize that this is already set up to prevent abuse of Hydrocodone — because the Acetaminophen will kill you if you take enough to abuse the Hydrocodone. But on October 6, Hydrocodone combinations were moved by the DEA from Schedule III to Schedule II, over the objections of much of the medical community. What this means is that doctors can no longer phone a prescription to your pharmacy — you have to take a physical signed piece of paper — and there can be no refills.

As several doctors told me this week, this concerns them because patients have to come in more often, and may be stuck without pain medication when they need it. They also indicated that the practical result is that they’ll end up prescribing larger amounts, just to be sure, resulting in lots more leftover drugs.

More stupidity by the feds.

New at the pot shop: Milder marijuana for novices

I’m very happy to see this trend.

Recreational marijuana sellers are reaching out to novice cannabis users with a raft of edible products that impart a milder buzz and make it easy for inexperienced customers to find a dose they won’t regret taking.

In many ways, the marketing shift is the pot-industry equivalent of selling beer and wine alongside higher-alcohol options such as whiskey and vodka.

“No one buys a handle of Jim Beam and thinks they should drink all of that in one sitting,” said Tim Cullen, owner of two Denver-area marijuana dispensaries. “But people do want to eat an entire cookie, an entire piece of chocolate. So these products allow you to do that and not have a miserable experience.”

I’m also loving the fact that we’re seeing use of the term “overdowd” (named after Maureen Dowd) as a way of referring to the panicky paranoid reaction by newbies who don’t understand edibles and consume too much at once.

This story has already been discussed here a bit in comments, but it’s worth highlighting:

Once you’ve dehumanized drug offenders, it’s easy to steal their identities by Radley Balko

Consider what the federal government is arguing here. It’s arguing that if you’re arrested for a drug crime, including a crime unserious enough to merit a sentence of probation, the government retains the power to (a) steal your identity, (b) use that identity for drug policing, thus making your name and face known to potentially dangerous criminals, (c) interact with those criminals while posing as you, which could subject you to reprisals from those criminals, (d) expose photos of your family, including children, to those criminals, and (e) do all of this without your consent, and with no regard for your safety or public reputation.

The mindset that would allow government officials to not only engage in this sort of behavior, but to then fight in court to preserve their power to continue it is the same mindset that, for example, allows drug cops to compel juveniles and young women to become drug informants, with little regard for their safety — and to then make no apologies when those informants are murdered.

The list of atrocities and indignities routinely conducted in the name of the drug war is extraordinarily long.

The only true solution is to end it.

Oliver nails it with one of the most powerful and entertaining pieces to inform the public about this travesty.

Via Radley Balko and Philip Smith: Meet 59-year-old David Hooks, the latest drug fatality

This has all the classic features. With just a modicum of investigation, police could have learned that Hooks “was a successful businessman who ran a construction company that, among other things, did work on US military bases. Hooks had passed background checks and had a security clearance.”

Instead, the took the word of a burglar.

And, if the police had possessed an ounce of intelligence, they would have considered that someone who just had their place burglarized would not be thinking “police” when…

His wife, Teresa, was upstairs in her craft room when she heard a car drive fast up the driveway, and she looked out the window.

“She saw several men all in black and camo with hoods on,” Shook said. “She ran downstairs, woke David and said, ‘The burglars are back.’ ”

Hooks retrieved a gun and headed out of the bedroom as the officers broke down the back door.

And now he’s dead.

Police apparently searched for 44 hours and failed to find any drugs.

I can just imagine the conversations that were going on by police radio… “But Chief, there’s nothing here.”…”Keep searching until you find something.”

Again, this case (while we admittedly don’t know everything yet) appears to show so many problems with the system — problems in the law, in policy, in decision-making, in judicial oversight, and in training.