Drug WarRant

Loyal reader Brian sent this one in to me from Tyler, Texas Morning Telegraph…
POT EATER GIVEN 40 YEARS IN JOINT

Timothy Wayne Whitlock traded a joint for “the joint” – marijuana for 40 years in prison.

The Troup man was convicted of tampering with evidence Wednesday for eating a “doobie” in front of an officer who stopped him for a traffic violation.

A Smith County jury sentenced the man after about one and one-half hours of deliberation and found him guilty after five minutes of consideration.

The third-degree felony was enhanced to a first-degree felony because of the 31-year-old’s three prior trips to the penitentiary. He faced 25 years to life in prison.

Idiot District Attorneys Joe Murphy and Jason Parrish actually asked for the maximum: life in prison.
Now it certainly appears that Whitlock is no choir boy…

He has two felony burglary of a building convictions and a felony driving while intoxicated conviction. He also has eight misdemeanors, including two driving while intoxicated charges, resisting arrest, fleeing police, two thefts and two possession of marijuana charges.

… and I don’t know Whitlock — he may be the scum of the earth and the personification of evil — but that still doesn’t justify 40 years for eating a joint.
A criminal justice system that allows for such a sentence is cruel, is in violation of basic human rights, is un-American, and is in desperate need of radical reform.
Update: Readers disgusted vet and sixtyfps point out this story, and TalkLeft has more about some that aren’t getting 40 years…

The FBI announced today that criminal charges are being filed against 16 current and former U.S. soldiers, cops, prison guards and an INS agent who allowed 1,230 pounds of cocaine to get through Arizona checkpoints and accepted more than $222,000 in bribes.

As disgusted vet says…

The punchline? They might get PROBATION!

Just as recently it seems that more mainstream sources are questioning, or outright condemning, the drug war in Colombia, it’s also nice to see more taking on the DEA and its war on pain.
USA Today has Prescriptions for Painkillers are Harder to Get and the Washington Examiner has an editorial: Pain relief is major casualty of drug war.
The Agitator (who’s been all over this) and TalkLeft, have more on these articles and the issue in general.
The Examiner editorial is quite strong — starts out:

As federal prosecutors target physicians who prescribe large doses of pain-killing drugs because they can also be abused, doctors are increasingly afraid to provide relief for sick people with intractable pain. As Pain Relief Network President Siobhan Reynolds said, “Ninety-eight percent of doctors won’t touch [chronic pain patients] with a 10-foot pole.”

That shows how this effort by the federal government is, in essence, a criminal act of massive proportion (and provides additional justification for the need to get the feds out of medical decisions).
The editorial concludes:

The system is indeed broken when the federal government is more concerned about the welfare of drug addicts than the 25 million Americans identified in a 2002 National Institutes of Health study who live with unrelenting pain – while the means to alleviate it remains just beyond their reach.

Here, I believe the Examiner is being a bit sarcastic. They know that the federal government doesn’t really give a damn about the welfare of drug addicts. And yet, if you look at it, the entire supposed reason to have the feds involved in pain medication diversion is to prevent addicts from getting drugs.
So yes, in this case, the paper is saying that the policy of the DEA is to prevent addicts from getting drugs at the expense of those legitimately in pain (hence, caring more about addicts that pain sufferers).
In actuality, the DEA only cares about getting busts, some notches on its belt, and more funding.
It’s hard for us (who see all the hypocrisy of the drug war) to imagine, but the entire drug war (with all the costs, and prison, and killing) is supposedly fought to prevent some people from voluntarily using drugs.

And, of course, it doesn’t even work.

It’s Jim Lindgren at Volokh Conspiracy this time…
The beginning of the post is a glance at a new study that purports to be able to predict Supreme Court decisions based on the number and tenor of questions asked in the oral arguments. And the numbers correlate fairly well to rule against the party that gets the most questions.
If so, as Jim notes, that would bode poorly for Raich, as Barnett got a lot more questions than the government (although I think that the tenor of them was not so certain).
Of course, the problem with such a method is that it really can hold true only in cases where the Supreme Court has pre-decided the outcome (and it may, in fact, be an indication that most cases are pre-decided and oral arguments have little value). If the Justices had not yet reached a majority in Raich, then the number of questions in oral is probably irrelevant.
Jim goes on to look back again at Wickard and does a good job of getting to the nub of the issue in Raich (something I’ve discussed before).

Reading Wickard, which is a pretty weakly reasoned case by my lights, reminds me that the Supreme Court is in a bind in Raich. Either the Court has to follow the Constitution and strike down federal drug regulation of intrastate noncommercial uses of marijuana (a controversial decision to follow the rule of law), or it has to expand Wickard radically, rendering the Commerce Clause almost (though not quite) a dead letter. Stated another way, the Court either has to expand its federalism jurispridence slightly (eg, Lopez & Morrison, but in the controversial drug area), or it has to limit Lopez & Morrison to their facts by radically expanding federal power under the Commerce Clause. It can’t stand still. Perhaps that is why the Court has been so slow to render an opinion.

Exactly.
This is the point, I think, that many miss. Voting for the government is not a vote to continue things as they are — it is, in fact, a potentially dramatic expansion of federal power. Voting for Raich might seem, on the surface, a radical action, yet such a decision could be narrowly tailored. Tough one.
… and our next possible chance to find out is Monday.

Stupid article of the month goes to Cliff Kinkaid of (In)Accuracy in Media. (Cliff has shown up as a drug war idiot before).
Check out this column that appeared in The Conservative Voice.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) said today that The Washington Post’s coverage of the marijuana problem in today’s paper shows that it has become little more than a house organ of the pro-dope movement and its patron, billionaire George Soros.

In a front-page story today, Dan Eggen of The Washington Post publicizes a report from the Sentencing Project, identified only as a left-leaning “Washington-based think tank,” lamenting the number of arrests of marijuana users and dealers. Eggen neglects to mention that the group is heavily financed by drug-legalizer George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI), and that the report was underwritten by OSI and the pro-dope Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).

“The Post concealed the facts about where the so-called study came from and who financed it,” declared Cliff Kincaid, editor of AIM. “These facts are directly relevant to whether it deserves serious consideration, let alone front-page treatment. The Eggen story amounts to a press release for the Soros line on drug policy.”

How irresponsible of the Washington Post. But wait… here’s Rich Lowry of the National Review yesterday with The War on Pot: Wrong drug, wrong war. No mention of Soros. No mention of “left-leaning.” No discrediting of the Sentencing Project. In fact, he agreed with the conclusions fairly strongly. Is Cliff Kinkaid going to go after Lowry and the National Review, too? Are they part of the pro-dope movement patronized by George Soros? Or is Kinkaid just the founding member of the pro-stupid movement?
Kinkaid went further in attempting to demonstrate what “Accuracy in Media” means (at least in his mind):

Kinkaid commented, “Tell that to the families of the victims of the killer student in Red Lake, Minnesota, Jeff Weise, an admitted pothead who bragged about marijuana being his ‘gal of choice’ before he killed nine people and himself.” Weise was also on psychiatric drugs.

There, Kinkaid tries to out-Anslinger Walters. His interpretation of the situation is at best dishonest.
Finally, after complaining that the Post “concealed the facts” about the Sentencing Project, he tosses out this whopper:

Meanwhile, a new government study linking marijuana to mental illness, including depression, schizophrenia and suicide, got only a few sentences from The Post.

Kinkaid wouldn’t know accuracy if it sat on his face. If he had bothered to check, he would have found out that the government’s “study” was a survey and it wasn’t new (it was also useless information — getting a few sentences was way more than it deserved).
Wanker.

In today’s Washington Times…

Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican and subcommittee chairman, holds a hearing today that will examine whether the Defense Department still can fulfill its decade-and-a-half-old mandate to be the lead agency for detecting and monitoring airborne and seaborne efforts to bring illegal drugs into the United States.

The Department of Defense “has been unable or unwilling to fulfill this responsibility,” states the briefing paper

Ooh, catfight!
This, after Souder recently criticized the administration for cuts in certain areas of the drug control budget (even though the overall budget increased).
This could be an interesting fight. Walters, et al, are opportunists — they use the drug war for political purposes and financial/power gains. Souder, on the other hand, is a true believer — a real nutcase who buys every reefer madness claim as holy writ and has convinced himself that prohibition is a mission from God.
So what happens when Souder tells the Pentagon to stop wasting so many resources on terrorists and do a better job seizing marijuana shipments? Hmmm….

In USA Today.

One of the most closely watched decisions involves whether states can shield medical marijuana users from federal prosecution on drug charges. The case, which was heard last November, pits the conservative anti-drug interests of the Bush administration against conservative principles of states’ rights. […]

While many believe the court will back the federal government in the marijuana case, its delay in issuing an opinion so far offers states’ rights advocates hope that justices are wary of further extending federal authority, said Pepperdine law professor Doug Kmiec, a former Justice Department official under President Reagan and the first President Bush.

“It may suggest that the expansive assertion of government power asserted by the Bush administration was deeply troubling to the justices, or at least that the issue is so close that the wording of opinions is being examined and negotiated with far more than the usual care,” he said.

I never understood the assumption held by many that the Supremes would overwhelmingly side with the government in Raich. If they were only looking at it as a marijuana issue, or only noting what happened in the oral arguments, there’s reason to look at it that way. However, if you read all the briefs, it’s almost impossible to see it as a slam-dunk for the government — in fact, it’s pretty obvious that the Supremes would have to be very creative to rule for the government at all.
Now that the decision is taking so long, people are starting to pay a little more attention to the complexities.

Reported in the Knox News Sentinel. In Gatlinburg last week, DEA Head Karen Tandy claimed that the drug war was making progress, but complained “that the media doesn’t report the issue fairly.”

“Good news doesn’t sell,” Tandy said. “You won’t read about it in the press.”

Fortunately for her audience, though, she assured them that the drug war isn’t doing too well…

Tandy said that drug seizures are “on track this year to hit $1 billion” and predicted that amount will eventually climb to $3 billion a year.

“And that’s more money, by the way, that will be going back to you,” she told the assembly of hundreds of law enforcement officers in a reference to state and federal laws that allow funds seized during drug busts to be returned to the agencies that confiscate them.

Ah, so that’s what she means by progress. More money for drug warriors.

Pot Bill is Out of Time

JUNEAU — The governor’s attempt to outlaw at-home marijuana appears dead for this legislative session.

With the Legislature scheduled to adjourn for the year on Tuesday, lawmakers said Saturday the bill is out of time. The news came just two days after Gov. Frank Murkowski declared it one of his “must have” bills.

Perhaps the legislature realizes that the bill is embarrassing?

The Drug Czar’s office has been hosting a series of Drug Testing Summits in select cities to push its profitable random drug testing regime in schools. Fortunately, despite constant claims of success (May 9 entry), their propaganda has not been given without opposition.
For those who don’t know, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) is a fabulous organization of committed students, and they’ve been on the case.
Tom Angell and Ross Wilson of the SSDP attended the Summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

Our objective was simple: prevent the ONDCP from being
able to present itself as all-knowing and authoritative on the topic of
student drug testing in front of an audience of open-minded educators and
school officials who are rightly concerned with preventing substance abuse
among their students.

They brought handouts that countered the propaganda and got involved in the discussions.
Here’s some more of Tom’s report:

Reformers should be aware that the ONDCP has fully adopted rhetoric about
drug abuse as a public health problem. Since it is a pediatric onset
communicable disease (like tuberculosis), they say, we must test young
people. They claim that testing is nonpunitive and confidential and that
they just want to be able to identify those that need help.

But testing students who want to participate in extracurricular activities
only deters students who do use drugs from joining the activities in the
first place because they don’t want to be tested. In this way, the stated
aim of drug testing is undermined because the very students who ONDCP says
they want to help won’t be identified since they aren’t putting themselves
in the position of being tested.

Ross asked a question to this effect and got a complete nonanswer from a
researcher at Ball St. University (who conducted one of the three studies
commonly cited by ONDCP). The educators in the audience must have
noticed.

Earlier in the day, when deputy drug czar Mary Ann Solberg finished her
opening remarks, I followed members of the media (who were following her)
into the ONDCP’s press room. Before she began taking questions, I
announced to the room that if any members of the press wanted to hear from
opponents of drug testing they could talk with me to learn SSDP’s
perspective. All of them immediately raised their hands and expressed
interest in talking to me after the depty drug czar finished. So I sat
down, interested to hear how she was going to answer reporters’ questions.
But as soon as I did, two gentlemen from the ONDCP asked me to leave the
room because, apparently, only credentialed reporters were allowed there.
So I left and waited in the hallway.

As journalists trickled out of the ONDCP’s interview room, each came up to
me, very interested in what I had to say about the topic. I ended up
doing interviews with two television network affiliates, the two largest
papers in Pittsburgh, a smaller community paper, a college paper, and a
radio news broadcast that is syndicated on 13 stations.

Read this article and imagine how it would have been reported had Tom not been there to provide counter info.
Great job, Tom!

At
the conclusion of the summit, an official from the Department of Education
asked how many folks were thinking of taking advantage of the federal
grant money that’s been made available for student drug testing. Only
five or six people in the room raised their hands.

If anyone’s available, or already planning on attending the summit in Portland on Wednesday, please get in touch with Tom to strategize.

A must read: Backing for Colombia Drug War Criticized, by Andrew Selsky, Associated Press Writer (in New York Newsday).
Fascinating article — even more so because it’s AP, which is often likely to follow the government line in drug war issues. Are the cracks starting to show?
First, note how Andrew describes the location of the U.S. Ambassador in reporting his comments (emphasis added):

In a conversation at his guarded residence, U.S. Ambassador William Wood said the efforts must persist if Colombia’s rebels, who have been at war in Colombia for 40 years, are ever to be defeated.

“In Colombia, terrorism without narcotics is a much more vulnerable target,” Wood told reporters from The Associated Press and another news agency. “If you take away drugs, you reduce incentive, the power to corrupt, the ability to buy weapons.”

But criticism of the costly effort is mounting.

The reporter, in this case, hardly needed to point out the absurdity of the U.S. Ambassador’s actual words. The notion that we can actually take away the drugs is as unrealistic as overturning the law of gravity. And unless we can actually take them all away (impossible), our efforts just fuel the black market profits.
Andrew lets others make the point, starting with…

In an editorial this week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Colombia “has turned into a sinkhole of money and military resources over the past five years.”

“The Congress should scrap Plan Colombia now, rather than throw more good money after bad,” the newspaper said, pointing out that availability of Colombian cocaine and heroin on U.S. streets appears undiminished.

John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said recently that “the drug war is failing to achieve its most basic objectives.”

Andrew then lists several embarrassments to the efforts in Colombia (corruption, etc.) and goes on to allow the normally unspeakable to be spoken:

One foreign drug agent recently stationed here said he personally believed the solution was to legalize drugs, so trafficking would not be so hugely profitable. The FARC and their paramilitary foes control much of the drug trade in Colombia, which produces most of the world’s cocaine and much of its heroin.

“We should recognize that by criminalizing drugs, we are allowing outlawed groups in Colombia to earn a vast amount of money,” said the agent, who did not want to be further identified.

The Monitor, a daily in McAllen, Texas, said in a recent editorial that the drug war is “a demonstrated failure,” and argued for legalization.

Of course, it’s a shame that the fear is so strong that the former drug agent had to be unidentified, but still, this to me is a huge step in reporting.
And finally, Andrew notes that the administration is not likely to be part of reality (emphasis added)…

“There is no sign that in FY 2006 that we’re going to take a cut,” Wood said, relaxing near a crackling fire in the mansion that serves as his official residence.

Thank you, Andrew Selsky
Update: Looks like this AP story is getting some circulation. Libby had already covered it on Saturday, based on its appearance in another source.