Drug WarRant

Via Radley Balko, comes this gem.
Here’s the story in brief: Officer pulls over Estrela (age 19) who is not wearing a seat belt as part of the “click-it or ticket” seat belt campaign, targeting those who are under 18 and not wearing a seatbelt (officer thought he was younger). While investigating his age, the smell of marijuana is noticed and back seat passenger appears to be clutching something. Officer asks her to show him and it’s a $10 bag of pot. Officer then gets consent to search the car and finds 101 tablets of Oxycontin and $3,980 in cash. Seat-belt violation now turns into felony drug bust with multiple charges and forfeiture of Estrela’s car.
Now there are some basic lessons to be learned from this story;

1. Don’t smoke pot in the car.
2. In particular, don’t smoke pot in the car when you’re carrying a bunch of illegal drugs and cash.
3. If you’re smoking pot in the car and carrying a bunch of illegal drugs and cash (see #1 and #2 above), wear your seat belt.
4. When pulled over, don’t hold your marijuana tightly in your fist.
5. Never, never consent to a search. They may end up searching anyway, but you should never consent, even if you have nothing. You never know what someone else might have left in your car.
6. If you carry lots of cash with you, be prepared to make a large donation to your local police agency (the police also seized the $353 Estrala had in his wallet).
7. Big Brother is keeping an eye on you.

So recent research suggests that excessive use of cannabis may have a connection with bone loss. What the research really has learned is some intereting possibilities for research into preventing bone loss having to do with cannabinoid receptors.
Now I’m waiting (and I probably won’t have to wait long) for the first drug warrior to say “If you smoke a joint, your bones will be brittle.”
What’s nice in this story is that there are people who understand that preliminary research is just that.

A spokesman for the National Osteoporosis Society said: “It is always interesting to hear about these pieces of research and we will watch with interest to see what happens.”

Yep.
Keep in mind that I am perfectly accepting of the possibility that there are dangers involved in long-term heavy use of cannabis. (After all, that is true of just about any substance in the world.) We should research them — and at the same time we should be willing to research the potential positive benefits of cannabis. The existence of potential dangers does not diminish the clear fact that legalization is the best public policy.
But interestingly, every scare that has been trumpeted over the years regarding marijuana has turned out to be a lot of hot air and conjecture. And quite frankly, I’m not really worried that a smoking gun will be found. You see, the danger in drugs comes from suddenly discovering that, after a certain number of years of use, everybody taking that drug drops dead, or grows a third arm or something. And marijuana has had more testing than just about any drug in history. The laboratory has been the world and the guinea pigs have been a huge percentage of the world’s population.
Believe me, if there were serious dangers, we’d have known it a long time ago.

On eradication in Afghanistan:

One question not asked in the NY Times story is how much it matters to the drug problem in the U.S. whether the Afghan government cracks down on poppy-growing or not. […] I can assure you that the answer to that unasked question is: “Damned little.” […]

So, from a U.S. perspective, the optimal amount of poppy eradication in Afghanistan is whatever amount is most likely to lead to good outcomes in Afghanistan.

And I don’t see many scenarios where the U.S. advocating poppy eradication in Afghanistan helps us.

The Supreme Court released decisions on five cases today, including the Livestock Marketing Case (one of the last from the December sitting besides Raich).
Raich was not included, and the next day for decisions is Tuesday, May 31 (after the holiday).
For full coverage of the case, go to my Raich v. Ashcroft page.

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.