Drug WarRant

Via Jim at Vice Squad:

A middle school in Pennsylvania was placed in “lockdown” at 2PM on Tuesday:

Students were kept in their classrooms while three dogs searched the building, looking for marijuana, cocaine, crack, amphetamines, heroin and ecstasy.

The dogs were claimed to have “alerted” on 31 lockers — this school might be the very fulcrum of the global trade in illegal drugs. So the authorities padlocked the highly suspicious lockers (along with neighboring ones), then went about securing a search warrant.

No drugs were found. None.
Here’s an interesting twist. The police are upset with the school officials. Apparently this was initiated by the school and the police cooperated and conducted the sweep, but the school made it sound like the police made the decisions. The most controversial decision was made by the school. They padlocked all the suspicious lockers while getting the warrant.

In the interim, hundreds of students filed passed the padlocked lockers of their classmates as school ended.

“My concern was that when other kids see that type of thing, a stigma is attached — regardless if we find anything or not,” said Upper Allen Twp. police chief James Adams.

Now this little story, in addition to being a stinging indictment of the school administration, has another implication. Remember the drug dogs? They alerted on 31 lockers? Now go back to the horribly flawed Supreme Court decision this year in Caballes (see here, here, here for background). The court ruled that the mere fact of a dog alerting on your car was enough to justify a full blown search.
It was bad enough when I was crunching the numbers based on a 90% success rate. When you see a drug dog performance that is at best 0 for 31 (could be worse if they actually failed to alert to lockers with drugs), then you realize that essentially all that’s needed to rip apart your car on a whim with no cause at all is to just bring a dog along.

Via TalkLeft comes this article about an upcoming showdown (which I paraphrase):

Karzai: “You tortured prisoners!”
U.S.: “Oh yeah? Well… you have poppies!”

Freeport is a town of about 26,000 in the middle of a large agricultural area in Northern Illinois. And yet, the Freeport Journal Standard editorial today nails Congress as far as mandatory minimums and the drug war: Mandatory Minimums a Smoke Screen.

Lost in the debate over Terri Schiavo and the filibuster – two less harmful examples of the new GOP judicial obsession – is Congress’ latest push to do an end-around a recent Supreme Court ruling that found the draconian sentencing guidelines imposed during the crime and drug war hysteria of the 1980s unconstitutional. One of those new creates a stricter definition of “gang crime,” allowing alleged gang defendants to be federally prosecuted. Another imposes insanely harsh sentences for a variety of low-level drug crimes, even though alcohol and cigarettes still kill far more people each year in America – legally.

Both bills have drawn fierce opposition from human rights, religious and civil rights groups, and are vehemently opposed by the American Bar Association. But in their zeal to bang the old “tough on crime” drum, the GOP rages forward, undaunted and oblivious to the obvious hypocrisy.

For example, even as states across the nation, not to mention Great Britain, Canada and Russia, move toward decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis, the proposed new law requires anyone convicted in federal court of passing a joint to someone who ever set foot in drug treatment to prison for a minimum of five years – 10 years for a second offense.

Meanwhile, the average time served by convicted rapists in America is about seven years.

What’s more, despite its obsession with low-level drug offenders of all stripes, Congress has done nothing to reverse the sentencing disparity for possession of crack – a scourge disproportionately found in black communities. Federal sentences for crack defendants remain far harsher than those for powder cocaine, a drug of choice favored by white America, including lawyers and Wall Street types with money to blow.

The Congressional push comes amid news last week of a dramatic shift over the past decade in U.S. drug policy from the most dangerous substances – cocaine and heroin – to the least harmful, diverting precious resources away from the prosecution of violent and white-collar crime. […]

No, the real threat to America isn’t “judicial activism.”

It is the insanity of putting more and more Americans in prison for low-level drug crimes – leaving millions of broken families, newly dependent on government handouts, behind.

I don’t agree with everything in the editorial, but it’s positive and an extremely powerful statement — clearly the editorial staff at the Journal Standard has researched the issue and knows the truth about mandatory minimums, the sentencing project study, crack cocaine disparities and much more. Nice to see.

Assistant Editor Michael Smith has it right in today’s Galveston County Daily News:

Some in the Texas Legislature think the police ought to know how much cold and allergy medicine you’re buying.

They want consumers’ names entered in a log at the drugstore every time they buy remedies, such as Nyquil, Sudafed and Tylenol, that contain pseudoephedrine.

The rationale is that drug dealers and users are buying those products as ingredients for making methamphetamine, sometimes called “poor man’s cocaine.” […]

The government and various other drug warriors say there is an epidemic of methamphetamine cooking and use in the state. They would like us to believe that a significant portion of that epidemic is accounted for by people who buy Sudafed at Walgreens for $8 a box, from which they are able to extract a minute amount of active ingredient.

We just don’t buy it. […]

Government should intrude into our private business only when there is an irrefutable cause for it, coupled with a profound and undeniable benefit in doing so.

We see neither here. We see the camel’s nose at the tent flap. Let him in and soon he’ll be monitoring your bed, rooting through your medicine cabinet, inventorying your bookshelves and rifling through your sock drawer.

Every day, more people wake up and see the drug war as a Big Brother invasion into ordinary people’s lives.
It’s about time.

“bullet” The Whizzinator: A House Panel’s No. 1 Priority — that’s right, our tax dollars are spent investigating ways to outlaw a fake penis that’s used to fool drug tests …

The Whizzinator isn’t quite the gold standard in athletic endorsements. Rather, [Rep. Bart] Stupak is bemoaning the ease with which people can buy Whizzinators with credit cards, money orders or checks, and have them delivered by U.S. mail or UPS or FedEx.

“How will we stop the flow?” he asks plaintively. A small cluster of spectators — seizing on the unintended double-entendre — giggle audibly in the back of the room.

It is one of those mornings.

“bullet” Keeping a handle on the more important issues is House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, who said “I really think there needs to be a federal standard.” For energy policy? No, for professional sports drug testing. H.R. 1862 would suspend first time offenders for two years, and second offenders for life — from any professional sport. And in case you’re thinking that it’s time that something is done about steroids, keep in mind that every one of these drug prohibition lists in sports includes marijuana.
Watch for an increase in belligerant drunk professional athletes.
And since I’ve always said I’d never work for a company that required drug testing on principle alone, I guess I’ll have to give up that dream of professional sports (and stick to the amateur 4-Square circuit).
“bullet” In an OpEd — OxyContin’s dangers outweigh its benefits — Rep. Stephen Lynch says he wants to outlaw OxyContin, even by prescription.
As Radley Balko notes:

In a time when some 50 million people suffer from chronic pain — most of it untreated or undertreated — the idea of taking the leading opioid pain medication off the market is particularly heartless and cruel.

“bullet” And as our Representatives claw and crawl over each other in their pathetic efforts to lead the way in passing more laws and escalating our drug war, mortgaging a future both in terms of tax money and human capital…
“bullet” … a quiet meeting that really matters went unremarked by all the blowhards.

The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country’s most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina. […]

There were no cameras, not a single microphone, and no evidence of a lawmaker or Bush administration official in the room — just some hungry congressional staffers and boxes of sandwiches from Corner Bakery. But what the three spoke about will have greater consequences than the current fuss over filibusters and Tom DeLay’s travel.

With startling unanimity, they agreed that without some combination of big tax increases and major cuts in Medicare, Social Security and most other spending, the country will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina’s economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago.

But please don’t disturb our Congressmen… they’re busy dreaming up ways to crush the futures of potential taxpayers so that we can support them in prison with money we borrowed from China.

Interesting analysis of the Afghanistan situation by David Bosco at Slate.

Adam wrote and asked me to take on the OpEd in the Washington Post: Cutting Marijuana Use Calls for More Than Tough Policing by Joseph Califano

The increased potency of today’s marijuana and the greater knowledge we have of the dangers of using marijuana justify the increased attention that law enforcement is giving to illegal possession of the drug.

And so it begins. In the first three words he invokes the Big Lie of today’s marijuana prohibitionist: increased potency.
Let me say this simply and clearly. There is absolutely no evidence that increased levels of THC in marijuana have any impact on the smoker other than needing to smoke less pot for the same effect. Oh, they’re all using the lie. Some are more obvious about it than others. But I’m still waiting for a single bit of evidence.
So let’s see what else Joey has to say.

As has been true of tobacco since the 1960s, we’ve learned a lot about the dangers of marijuana since the 1970s.æ The drug adversely affects short-term memory, the ability to concentrate and motor skills.

Uh, Joe. We knew about that back in the 70s. In fact, it was a matter of considerable amusement. The interesting thing is that in the decades since, there’s been no indication that any of this has long-term detrimental effects. This is like saying one of the “dangers” of eating desserts is a short-term sugar rush. Well, duh!

Recent studies indicate that it increases the likelihood of depression, schizophrenia and other serious mental health problems.

Now this is an oversimplification of a complex set of studies with questionable methodology that have, at best, shown a link, not causation. Most of it is explainable through self-medication and other factors. Also, the “serious mental health problems” part is a real joke, since the questionnaire that determined that showed that over 8% of the population had “serious mental health problems.”

Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has repeatedly expressed concern about the adverse impact of marijuana on the brain, a matter of particular moment for youngsters whose brains are still in the development stage.æ Volkow has stated: “There is no question marijuana can be addictive; that argument is over.æ The most important thing right now is to understand the vulnerability of young, developing brains to these increased concentrations of cannabis.”

Well then, let’s see if Nora Volkow is a reliable source, or just another prohibitionist using the Big Lie. Check this out:

Volkow, here to speak to people working in the drug-addiction field, said many scientists used to believe marijuana was not addictive.

But she said the pot consumed by the Baby Boom generation had much less of the active ingredient THC – which interacts with receptor proteins in the brain that translate pleasure responses – than the types now available.

“It is this chemical that can lead to the addiction,” she said. “When people were taking marijuana in the past, they were consuming a very weak drug.

And we have a winner! Yep, it’s the Big Lie again. Pot is not physically addictive, but it does have the potential for dependency. However, that dependency is weak — much weaker than alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine, and it’s very easy for most people to quit (dependence is often not due to marijuana, but other psychological factors).
Nora Volkow also claimed that drug addiction normally ranges from 20-30 percent of those who use it, yet there have been over 95 million Americans who have used pot and only 3.1 million used it regularly over the past year (just over 3%) — and there’s no evidence that the 3.1 million are addicted.
Back to Califano:

The next question is how to make public policies, including law enforcement approaches, more effective in discouraging marijuana use.æ Availability is the mother of use, so doing a far better job of reducing availability is high on the list.æ Beyond that — and recognizing that reducing demand is key to that goal — we should use the increased arrest rate as an opportunity to discourage use.

Now he’s just delusional. Reducing availability of marijuana? How? Despite 30 years of oppressive laws, there has been no significant reduction at all. And increasing the arrest rate as an “opportunity to discourage use”? What, is he high?
No, but he is an old-fashioned temperance whore. And, as I indicated in the title, he is the King of the Whoppers.
Califano is head of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA). This is a huge organization with big funding and tons of connections within the Government’s Drug War Community. And when they release a report, they get lots of coverage in the media. But the major media is starting to be gunshy — they’ve been burned so many times. Several times, the New York Times has had to print retractions because of CASA’s intentionally false use of numbers from flawed studies.
CASA is the laughingstock of the scientific community. They reported, for instance, that 25% of alcohol sold was consumed by minors. Patently false – a result of not making elementary adjustments to survey data. When confronted with the evidence, Califano actually defended his organization’s use of bad numbers.
In one case, Califano’s organization actually inflated the numbers by 1,790 percent in order to make their point.
Big Lies. Big Liar.

Marco wrote in to tell me about his experience being one of the chosen. Yes, he was selected to participate in a paid survey — the kind that ends up part of the government’s statistics in the war on drugs. So I think it’s interesting to hear the reactions of someone who went through it.
A couple of highlights:

The marijuana questions were more numerous than the other drugs. Most of the questions dealt with if you used, when you used, when you stopped using, how often you used, etc. It featured questions like:

“How do you feel about occasional marijuana usage by adults?”

1. Strongly Disapprove
2. Disapprove
3. Neither approve nor disapprove

Woah! Where’s number 4 and 5?

As you can tell, there was a definite bias in the questions. Directly after this were questions about your spirituality and belief in God, then your mental health. […]

I got the definite feeling that this survey is going to link sanity and happiness to a persons’ spirituality and drug habits.

Not surprised.

USA Today gave a fairly scathing editorial against our approach to marijuana enforcement, drawing upon the Sentencing Project study. Definitely worth a read. The conclusion?

It’s time for a serious debate on whether massive arrests of low-level users are worth the cost or having any benefit.

And being willing to back up their statement, they offered our Drug Czar a chance to respond. Which he did with this more of the same old response.
Here’s an example:

We are more concerned about marijuana today. Studies long ago established marijuana as a risky substance. For youth, it is the single largest source of abuse and dependency. But compelling new research shows an increased public health threat.

First, marijuana potency has more than doubled within the past 10 years. […]

Note the complete nonsense when you read between the lines. “Risky”? Compared to what? “Single largest source of abuse and dependency”? Well, only if you define abuse as using something that’s against the law, and only if you define dependency as those who get caught and take treatment over jail.
And then note that nice little segue from compelling new research on public health dangers and increased potency. Oh no, he doesn’t come out and say it — he never does. But he’s a master at implying something that absolutely doesn’t exist and has absolutely no support in any studies: the connection between higher potency pot and… anything.
He does this all the time. He’ll say something like “This is not your grandfather’s pot. It’s much more potent, and recent studies have shown that the hole in the ozone layer is growing. That should be cause for alarm.” And people nod sagely and think “Oh, I didn’t realize it, but apparently today’s pot causes holes in the ozone layer.” Nobody questions why the two were put together.
So the one small quibble I have with the USA Today editorial, which was generally excellent, is that they, too, got caught.

Today’s more potent marijuana carries substantial health and social risks. It can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide and schizophrenia, especially among teens, according to government research. Its use should be discouraged.