Drug WarRant

This has been reported in a variety of places already, but is worth noting:

A minister tested positive for cannabis today at a voluntary session designed to show the capability of a high-tech drugs testing machine.
Edwina Hart, Social Justice Minister at the National Assembly for Wales, had not been using drugs, but the result showed that her hands had been cross contaminated with traces of the substance, from door handles, money or other public areas.

She said: “You could pick it up from any where couldn’t you?”

Conservative Assembly Member William Graham, who had arranged for police to demonstrate the drug testing machine at the Assembly, also tested positive for cannabis.

Radley Balko at The Agitator has the best take on this:

This technology is already here in the U.S., and at risk of appearing the Luddite, threatens to make the Fourth Amendment obsolete, or at least more obsolete.

If virtually all of us have traces of some illicit substances on us, then virtually all of us are subject to further searches. Meaning none of us any longer has the the right “to to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…”

GritsForBreakfast has the bad news. Lots of good work in the Texas legislature this year was undone by Governor Perry’s veto pen, including a bill to require police to inform drivers of their fourth amendment rights, and a fix of the probation system.
Condolences to the people of Texas.

Reuters has an article today: Mexico’s Fox under fire as drug war spirals.
Poor Vicente Fox. We used to wine and dine him and show him off at fancy parties. Now we don’t return his calls.

MEXICO CITY, June 19 (Reuters) – In the first four years after Mexican President Vicente Fox took office, he became Washington’s sweetheart in its war on drugs with his crackdown on traffickers.

But an escalating gangland turf war that has killed at least 600 people south of the U.S. border this year has soured the romance, with serious doubts raised about Fox’s ability to rein in the violence.

A senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official, Anthony Placido, told Congress last week that Mexico’s corrupt police forces were “all too often part of the problem rather than part of the solution” in fighting the drug cartels.

Fox won office in 2000, ending 71 years of one-party rule and promising to clamp down on the multibillion-dollar cross-border trade in cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

Profitable black-market trade with high demand, plus increased prohibition, equals increased violence and corruption. Basic arithmetic.

“The honeymoon period following the capture of these top drug traffickers is now over for Fox,” Jorge Chabat, a Mexican security analyst, told Reuters.

“We are now seeing a return to the relationship we had during the 1990s between Washington and Mexico that was characterized by conflict and reconciliation,” he added.

Analysts say the real problem is the heavy U.S. demand for cocaine and marijuana and the ability of the drug cartels to pay off police, politicians and judges inside Mexico.

The analysts are giving all the hints, but it seems the drug warriors can’t count to 4.

Could a certain Deputy Director at the ONDCP be getting a little big for his britches? Is the Czar himself in danger of falling out of favor?
A little bird informs me that trouble (and maybe a power struggle) is brewing inside the Czar’s office, and that there may be a shakeup soon.
This could get interesting.

“bullet” Christopher sent me this AP story: College towns lead in marijuana use (talk about headlines stating the obvious). The interesting point — Christopher notes that if the numbers are true in the article, then 17.5 million Americans smoked pot in the last 30 days. This isn’t lifetime use – this is current use.
If we locked all those people up, that would be the equivalent of arresting the entire population of my state of Illinois (including Chicago). Oh, and you’d have to throw neighboring Wisconsin in the clink as well. Talk about a futile war.
One additional note in that article. After mentioning that 12.2 percent of Boston residents reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, John Auerbach, executive director of the public health commission for the city of Boston, is quoted as saying “…we’re not surprised that substance abuse is a serious issue in the Boston area.” [emphasis added] There is a difference between “use” and “abuse” and it upsets me that our public officials (and the media) have continually blurred that line to the disservice of public health and public discourse. Part of this has been the promotion, on the part of the ONDCP, that any use of an illegal substance constitutes abuse. Wrong.
“bullet” Nice piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer by local resident Don Parcell Drug war looks more like Prohibition. It’s so great seeing people come to that realization.
“bullet” Several people have sent the article by George Will This War is Worth Fighting. (Note, it’s been published all over the country with a variety of headlines.) It’s an incoherent article, with some good facts and more propaganda from Walters, and ultimately Will doesn’t really seem to even know if he has a point.
“bullet” TalkLeft has an update on Renee Boje, a medical marijuana war refugee living in Canada. She has, unfortunately, been ordered extradited to the United States. Her alleged co-conspirator Peter McWilliams died awaiting federal trial — choked to death on his own vomit when prosecutors refused to allow him medical marijuana to control his nausea. Let’s hope that Canada listens to Renee’s appeal of this horrible decision.

Congratulations to Jeralyn Merritt and the always outstanding TalkLeft.
TalkLeft is three today, which makes it one of the wise old elders in blog years.
TalkLeft is the most prominent blog on the left that consistently and thoroughly covers the drug war and actively fights its injustices.
Thanks, Jeralyn, for all your inspiration and encouragement.

Here are some of the highlights from the Hinchey debate from the actual transcripts (instead of my hurried scribbling in yesterday’s posts):

From the Denver Post, Commerce Clause is Infinitely Elastic by Ed Quillen.
He spends the first part of the column examining Wickard and commerce clause history trying to find how Raich and Monson’s activity of growing their own could reach the level of interstate commerce. And then…

But if you think about this, it becomes apparent that this affects a vital element of interstate commerce. You’re in pain, you grow some medicine and take it, then you go about your life.

And in that process, you do not buy anything from the immense pharmaceutical industry, which, in 1999-2000 spent more on lobbying and other political persuasion than any other industry: $262 million, with $177 million going to 625 lobbyists (more than one for every member of Congress), $65 million for ads and $20 million for campaign contributions.

Imagine the dire economic consequences for congressional campaigns if Americans quit feeding the pharmaceutical cash machine. And now that it’s totally empowered by the Supreme Court, our Congress can find new ways to ensure that we perform our economic duties.

While it may be legal now to generate your own electricity with a solar panel, Congress now has the power to outlaw that, since you might have otherwise bought the electricity from a mercury-spewing plant in Arizona.

Growing your own vegetables obviously affects the commerce of those agribusiness campaign contributors in California and Illinois. Compile your own computer’s operating system, and you’re affecting the interstate commerce of the Microsoft monopoly. Walking or bicycling to work instead of driving affects the income of multinational oil companies, and is thus a matter of interstate commerce. So is just about any other act of traditional American self-reliance.

[…]

Funny.
And all too true.

…comes from reader BD in comments:

Isn’t it interesting that Angel Raich, totally cognizant and aware of her pain, didn’t arouse as much sympathy from our public servants as Terri Schiavo did?

[First off — welcome to post number 1,000 at Drug WarRant. What a ride! When I started this blog just under two years ago, I expected to be posting once or twice a week. Obviously I got a little more involved than that.]
Now, on to Mark Souder. Why is he the scum of the earth? Because he’s using the death of a 14-year-old girl for his cheap drug war theatrics. Today on the floor of the House, he invoked the death of Irma Perez as an indictment against the entire medical marijuana movement. He also did so last year when this amendment came up. He did it on his website for awhile, and he did it in the Washington Times last week.
Here’s what Souder said in the Times:

The consequences of this kind of quackery are real and tragic. Last year, 14-year-old Irma Perez was laid to rest in California after dying from an ecstasy overdose at a party. Her friends, having recognized that Irma felt unwell after taking the MDMA pill, attempted to give her marijuana because they believed “that drug is sometimes used to treat cancer patients.” Had she received early — and real — treatment, Irma likely would have survived the overdose.

Now here’s the full story as reported at the time:

According to several sources close to the investigation, Perez had a strong negative reaction April 23 after taking a blue pill presumed to be MDMA, known on the street as ecstasy. Toxicological tests are still pending to show whether the pill was contaminated with other substances.

Perez complained of feeling awful and said she felt like she was “going to die,” the sources said. In response, her friends gave her water and helped her take a bath.

She also was given ibuprofen and possibly marijuana, apparently because the friends knew that drug is sometimes used to treat cancer patients, sources said.

The two girls also contacted a 17-year-old boy who allegedly supplied them with the drug and asked him for advice, the sources said. He has since been arrested on the same charges as the two girls.

[Note: Toxicology tests later confirmed the ecstasy, but there have been no further public reports as to why Irma died from that dose. Ecstasy overdose deaths are extremely rare and usually require 48 tablets or more. There are, however, rare liver conditions that prevent the body from breaking down Ecstacy. None of these questions were ever answered publicly.]
The real point is — this had absolutely nothing to do with medical marijuana. The friends also thought to give her ibuprofen. Would Mark Souder outlaw that? These friends were searching, grasping at any straw to do something, except the one thing that they very clearly knew — contact adults for help. Why didn’t they? Because they were scared. Because they had been made more afraid of getting help than of letting their friend die.
Marsha Rosenbaum had the right response to this tragedy.

Missing from our educational efforts is a fallback strategy of harm reduction for those teens who, like Perez and her friends, say “yes” despite our efforts.

In addition to providing sound information about alcohol and other drugs, young people should learn to recognize signs of distress and know that they can and must get help. This was not what happened in Perez’s case. For five hours her friends tried on their own to help, using makeshift methods, such as giving her a bath. Perez finally lapsed into the coma from which she never recovered. …

Many in law enforcement, such as Commander Trisha Sanchez of the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force, agree that the message we send our teens should be clear. The use of alcohol and other drugs is a poor choice, but if you do experiment and there is a problem, you will not be punished by calling for help.

But what does Mark Souder say about harm reduction? He has attacked the notion of harm reduction as even being valid. So he is opposed to letting kids know that they can get help.
If anybody is responsible for the death of Irma Perez (and many like her), it is people just like U.S. Congressman Mark Souder, who put the drug war above the lives of the citizens.
For him to attempt to pawn off his own guilt as a contributor to mass murder on those who are trying to help the sick is the lowest of the low. And yes, Mark Souder is the scum of the earth.
[Note: The DEA’s Karen Tandy also used this story to cravenly promote the fiction that medical marijuana is a myth that kills. So Mark will have some company.]