Drug WarRant

Libby at Last One Speaks reminds me about Flex Your Rights and their excellent video: “Busted: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters.” I thought I was pretty well informed, but I learned a few things from the DVD (only $25 at their site). It’s an excellent, perhaps essential, part of the education of citizens in a world where the vast majority of people are not even aware of their rights — and routinely give them away to ever expanding enforcement techniques.
Flex Your Rights is now offering the video for only $5 as a BitTorrent computer download. A great deal if you’re set up for that type of download.

I neglected to mention that the Becker-Posner Blog has addressed the drug war, first by Economist Gary Becker and then a response by Judge Richard Posner
These are a couple of highly respected scholars, and so it’s nice to see them talk about the failure of the drug war, and to see them apply the tools of their trade to the problem. (I’ve always felt that economists should be stepping up more to explain to our politicians that drug demand is inelastic — and what inelastic demand means.)
Becker has the better argument in his call for legalization. Posner is uncomfortable with it (although he agrees that the cost of the drug war has not been worth it, despite what he believes is a “partial victory” in the war), so he tries to talk economics, in which he comes off completely incompetent (he should leave that to Becker, and stick to the legal stuff). Also, as Tbag notes on his blog Posner has some bizarre notions of legal substitutes for illegal drugs (cigarettes for pot? liquor for heroin?). I know what he’s trying to say, but it doesn’t work very well.
Tbag also has an interesting comment regarding his own views on the drug war…

Without sending my libertarian allies on this issue running for the woods, I’d like to propose government control over distribution.

I wouldn’t worry about it, Tbag. I think this is one issue where libertarians would prefer government control over the current system… at least for now.

In the Sun-Times today, the article Blagojevich focuses ire on drug-based game has some oddities:

Gov. Blagojevich is using the roll-out of “Narc,” a new video game set in the drug underworld, to promote legislation that would ban the sale of violent and sexually explicit games to minors.

“These kinds of games teach kids to do the very things that in real life, we put people in jail for,” …

The game, to be released today, has automatic weapons, gore and the fictitious officer Jack Forzenski, who spits out lines such as “You have the right to shut the hell up.”

Players can become “narcotics officers” who arrest dealers and use confiscated dope to change the look and speed of “Narc” to score more points.

Hmmm… instead of teaching kids to do the very things we put people in jail for, it seems to be teaching them to do the very things that we pay big taxpayer dollars for.

The Charlottesville Daily Progress has an interesting article by Liesel Nowak: Tough on crime means losing drug war, critics say

Critics have said that the traditionally harsh penalties in federal court have led to jury nullification, in which jurors rule with their conscience instead of the law, and that the tough-on-crime spirit of the federal system is losing the war on drugs.

Take the recent case of a Charlottesville man. Jurors in a 2004 federal trial acquitted city resident Todd Jones, charged in a violent drug conspiracy, though they convicted two others in the same case. At least one juror believed Jones was guilty.

The article goes on to examine the failure of the drug war.

Since the inception of mandatory guidelines in 1987, drugs have continued to move through society even as an increasing number of men and women are locked up.

“If you want to use the war on drugs analogy, then let’s use it. We’re losing,” lawyer J. Lloyd Snook III said. “If the definition of insanity is doing something over and over and hoping for a different result, then this is insane.”

According to the National Office of Drug Control Policy, in 2003 the federal government spent $19 billion on the war on drugs – a rate of about $600 per second. And the Bureau of Prisons reports that 89 percent of federal prisoners were convicted of drug crimes.

Not a bad article.

Available here:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/wj032105_walters.rm
If the link doesn’t work for you, just type ‘Walters’ in the video search on the homepage. (Thanks to Tom Angell of SSDP, who also asked a very good question.)

John Walters will be on C-Span’s Washington Journal from 9-9:30 am Eastern on Monday morning. (Thanks, Bob!)
If you’re going to call in, here are a few suggestions:

1. Write out your question and have it in front of you. Otherwise, you’ll get so anxious about being on air, that you’ll get tongue-tied.
2. Limit yourself. Find one specific point that you want to approach and really hone in on that one. Don’t try to ask a multiple-part question — it dilutes your clarity to the audiences and gives him the opportunity to answer whichever part he likes the most and ignore the rest.
3. Focus. You won’t be given much time, so be prepared to keep it as short as possible.
4. Speak to your audience. You don’t care what Walters thinks (you’re not going to change his mind) — it’s what the listeners get that’s important. Don’t talk about detailed conspiracies — stick to the simple points that listeners will understand — things like:
   • Why do you want to throw sick people in jail for following the advice of their doctors?
   • Why are you spending federal taxpayers’ money to campaign against state medical marijuana initiatives? Are you willing to publish how much you have spent on that?
   • If there really is a link between potent pot and treatment as you constantly imply, why won’t you talk about it on the ONDCP website where it would be subject to data quality review?
5. Remember that it’s not about winning — Walters has a huge advantage in this situation in that you cannot cross examine after he spins his answer in a completely new direction. It’s about getting your point across to the listeners through a well-crafted question.

The Ottawa Citizen comes through in this article by Dan Gardner yesterday.
Gardner takes apart all the claims of massive increases in potency, and shows that it’s a combination of different measuring techniques, and the range of higher and lower THC concentrations that have always been available, with a conclusion that there have been some overall average increases in potency due to better horticultural techniques, but not the levels claimed by prohibitionists.
He then goes on to debunk Walters’ implied link to increased treatment and emergency room statistics, and concludes with a section on how smokers automatically self-regulat:

Mr.æ Earleywine notes that surveys asking users how high they get show no change since the 1970s, despite the increase in marijuana potency.æ “It’s just that they’re smoking less of it, rather than getting higher.”

Oddly enough, this suggests that rising marijuana potency may produce a modest health benefit.æ “When smoking stronger pot, you smoke less and you have less exposure to tars and respiratory irritants,” Mr.æ Earleywine says, adding with a laugh, “so in some ways it’s worth smoking the best pot you can afford.”

Then today, Gardner finishes up with part 2: How Science Is Skewed to Fuel Fears of Marijuana in which he takes on the junk science and bad reporting that add to misconceptions about pot.
For example, recent claims that link marijuana to psychosis have gotten some major press, particularly in England. Yet, Gardner notes that the methodology is potentially suspect (subjects were not evaluated for psychosis, but merely asked a series of questions, including: feeling that other people cannot be trusted; feeling that you are being watched or talked about by others; never feeling close to a person; and having ideas and beliefs that others do not share. Some of these could be more a result of the illegality of marijuana than any indications of psychosis.
And even with this suspect methodology, the scientists who ran the study themselves are not happy with the press coverage:

“It is quite clear that media claims that our research shows cannabis use causes psychosis are exaggerated,” Mr.æ Fergusson says.æ

Science is being subordinated to politics, Mr.æ Fergusson feels.

Good articles.

Interesting article shows how complex and silly state leglislative activities can get.

Medical marijuana was one of this session’s most glaring examples of how bills can be delayed, held hostage and even killed as a result of political spats between lawmakers.

In this case, Rep. Dan Silva, D-Albuquerque, admitted this week he was working to hold up SB 795 until the Senate Judiciary Committee heard a bill of his dealing with impact fees on Albuquerque developers.

The connection was Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, the chairman of the judiciary committee as well as the sponsor of the medical-marijuana bill.

The medical marijuana bill died without being heard because they literally ran out of time. Governor Bill Richardson said he would have signed it.

The ACLU, Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs, and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law have released a report on the impact of the drug war on women and families.

“We’ve gone from being a nation of latchkey kids to a nation of locked-up moms, where women are the invisible prisoners of drug laws, serving hard time for someone else’s crime,” said Lenora Lapidus, Director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “Family values ought to mean keeping families together. Treatment can cure drug addiction, but there’s no cure for a family destroyed.”

While women are still the minority in prison for drug crimes, their numbers are growing fast, and often the ones caught in the net with severe sentences are spouses or girlfriends who

1. Get caught in the increased use and severity of “conspiracy” charges, when all they did was answer the phone.
2. Don’t know enough about the information to trade with prosecutors for a reduced sentence

It’s nice to see this issue get some additional coverage — and it’s been helped in part by a very visible source who had not been particularly known as a drug policy reform advocate in the past:

“When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard
to be selfish … So many of the women here … will never have
the joy and well-being that you and I experience. Many of
them have been here for years — devoid of care, devoid of love,
devoid of family.

I beseech you all to think about these women — to encourage
the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing
guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time
offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would
be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in
prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate,
no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for
life ‘out there’ where each person will ultimately find herself,
many with no skills and no preparation for living.”

— Martha Stewart

I had a great (and exhausting) week in New York. Walked all over the city with my students and saw some wonderful shows (Glass Menagerie, Spamalot, Play Without Words at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Shockheaded Peter, and Upright Citizens’ Brigade) and, of course, ate a lot of fantastic food.

I’ve mentioned several times the offensive DEA museum exhibit on display in Times Square in New York: Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You (See my earlier posts here and here).
I passed by it several times this week, but held off going in — I would have just gotten too upset, and there would probably only be some minor functionary there to debate. Several of my students went and were utterly amazed at how ridiculous the exhibits were in attempting to connect drug use to terrorism.
Oddly, the DEA Museum had one of the tougher security checks in the city. Visitors had their bags searched and were checked in detail with a metal detector wand. This was much more than the security at crowded theatres, or at museums with priceless artifacts. As fas as I saw, the only places with such tight security were the NY Stock Exchange and Liberty/Ellis Island. But why?
I heard that the DEA got embarrassed by having part of one of their exhibits stolen from under their noses (but they weren’t searching people leaving, only entering). Did they think that much of themselves that they really believed that they were a major terrorist target? Or were they afraid of their own citizens?
Fortunately, the exhibit closed yesterday.
Next stop is Detroit, where it is scheduled to be at the Detroit Science Center from April 2 through October 2. You might want to contact them and ask how a DEA propaganda exhibit fulfills their non-profit mission to educate people about science.