Drug WarRant

August 13, 2004:

John Walters, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently startled the media by admitting that the $3.3 billion Plan Colombia, now in its fourth year, has failed to make a significant dent in the amount of cocaine flowing out of that country.

Yesterday:

John Walters, director of the US National Drug Control Policy, said on Wednesday in Miami that methods used to combat drugs in Colombia – principally aerial fumigation – were being studied to see how they can be replicated in Afghanistan.

So you’ve got a state, Oregon, that has passed a law allowing assisted suicide in specific situations. Unwilling to accept the audacity of a state wanting to control its own medical practices, the DEA steps in and starts yanking the licenses of doctors who participate (under the notion that the Controlled Substances Act gives the feds the authority to override at whim).
Apparently this infuriated the President, who called in the Attorney General… and I’ve just gotten hold of this transcript of his remarks:

President: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states respectively.”… The federal government has no place here. The question is a moral one, an individual one. Grappling with the nature of life and the purview of God, in which the federal government has no… Forget it. The courts are gonna nail you. You pull this crap one more time, you’re fired.

Wow! The President really does believe in states’ rights, in individual moral responsibility, in limited federal government… unfortunately this President also happens to be the fictional President Bartlett on “The West Wing.”
In real life, the feds have appealed the case to the Supreme Court and the Supremes have taken the case – Oregon v. Gonzales.
It’s of interest to me because of the over-reach of the Controlled Substances Act, once again interfering in the right of states to allow doctors and patients to choose their own medical course of treatment. Clearly, there are logical connections to Raich v. Ashcroft, and people are already starting to wonder how Raich will affect Gonzales.
Moon Over Pittsburgh has a nice little update on Raich and discusses Gonzales as well. Worth a read if you’re interested in the Supreme Court, federalism and the CSA.

Now that Art Linkletter is back in the news as spokesperson for USANext, it gives us the oppotunity to laugh at his exchanges with Nixon again.
Hesiod over at The American Street has all the fun, including this:

Linkletter: “Another big difference between marijuana and alcohol is that when people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable. You don’t see people –”

Nixon: “That’s right, that’s right.”

Linkletter: “They sit down with a marijuana cigarette to get high –”

Nixon: “A person does not drink to get drunk.”

Linkletter: “That’s right.”

Nixon: “A person drinks to have fun.”

Linkletter: “I’d say smoke marijuana, you smoke marijuana to get high.”

Nixon: “Smoke marijuana, er, uh, you want to get a charge of some sort, and float, and this, that and the other thing.”

Yup. Richard Nixon was an alcoholic.
But, even Richard Nixon knew that Art Linkletter was pretty much an out of touch old fogey. Later on, he famously met with Elvis an enlisted him as an “anti-drug” crusader (what a bizarre moment that was). As Tricky Dick said to Bob Haldeman at the time:

“This is just what I’ve been looking for. Elvis Presley, a rock ‘n’ roll hero to millions, wants to help with our anti-drug crusade. This will go a lot farther with the kids than Art Linkletter.”

There’s more, including Linkletter’s analysis of various marijuana grades.
Update: A commenter reminds me that Linkletter’s daughter had supposedly died in an “LSD-related” incident. There’s several problems with that:

1. The story is false. Diane Linkletter committed suicide and there were no drugs in her system. It appears that the Linkletter family preferred to “encourage” the LSD story than face the reasons for suicide.
2. Even if it was true, it would have been completely irrelevant to the ratcheting up of the war on marijuana caused in part because Linkletter and Nixon were idiots.
3. I have absolutely no sympathy for people in power who experience a tragedy and then procede to use that power to destroy the lives of countless others through ill-advised and counter-productive laws.

Our favorite drug czar was speaking to the press again, this time in preparation for today’s release of President Bush’s national drug control strategy for 2005.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday.

OK, before I break something, let’s take a trip in the wayback machine.
1.

“I want to escalate the war on drugs,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft in his first interview after being nominated for the post. “I want to renew it. I want to refresh it.” [link]

2.

A draft of Ashcroft’s “Strategic Plan” from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department’s seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. [link]

3.

In an attempt to show just how benign the War on Terror will be for law-abiding citizens, Ashcroft has chosen an odd model: the War on Drugs. At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Ashcroft repeatedly said that the tools in the fight against terrorism should be at least as strong as the ones used to fight gambling, organized crime, and illegal (“illicit” in government parlance) substances. Law enforcement officials, he said, should be able not only to freeze terrorists’ assets, but seize them–“Just like we have for those individuals involved in drug trafficking.”[link (9/27/01)]

4.

The drug war and the war on terrorism is converging both practically and,
more important, rhetorically. This will allow the Justice Department and the
Defense Department to use all their new, extraordinary powers for both.
Timmy the drug user will go from being an exaggerated fictional ad to a
basis for ignoring due process for street-level drug investigations and for
involving the military in more domestic law enforcement.[link (11/29/02)]

5.

Ashcroft: “And finally, the Patriot Act updated our anti-terrorism laws to reflect new technologies and to give us the same tools used to fight against drug dealers and organized crime so that we can fight against terrorists.”[link (6/8/04)]

and back to the present…

The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday.

OK, can I break something now?
But wait!!! It goes from being horrifyingly inane to mind bogglingly stupid.

On the other hand, Walters said it ought to be easier to go after drugs traffickers than terrorists because the drugs trade involved many thousands of people, making it potentially more vulnerable to attack and disruption.

??? Um. Can you repeat that?

On the other hand, Walters said it ought to be easier to go after drugs traffickers than terrorists because the drugs trade involved many thousands of people, making it potentially more vulnerable to attack and disruption.

Excuse me while my head explodes.

So Jeff Trigg over at Random Act of Kindness is trying to drum up the support of Illinois-based bloggers to promote his pet cause — improving ballot access for Libertarian Party candidates.
But you know what? It’s a good idea anyway. And it doesn’t matter if you support Libertarians or some other third party, or even one of the major parties.
If you’re interested in drug policy reform, you want improved ballot access. Third party candidates (and Libertarians in particular) are much more likely to support drug policy reform publicly. (When I did drug policy-based voting guides, it was mostly the Libertarian candidates who wrote me to thank me for the endorsement. Not a single Democrat or Republican did.) Democrat and Republican politicians not only won’t discuss drug policy reform, they often don’t have to because they’re running unopposed in Illinois. Even a Libertarian candidate that doesn’t have a chance of winning can ask the questions and start the dialog.
So I’m 100% behind this idea. If you’re in Illinois, do your part to help out. Here are the instructions from Jeff:

House Bill 758 is a bill that would reduce the petition signatures that independent and third party candidates need to get in 90 days so they can appear on the ballot. Currently, independent and third party candidates often need 30 to 40 times the number of signatures that Republicans and Democrats need. In the recent Iraq election ALL candidates had the exact same requirement. HB758 would reduce the signatures needed to only double what the Republicans and Democrats need. Passing HB758 is simply the right thing to do.

First, email “Chris Rhodes” ( chris@joincross.com ) and ask him to talk to his boss, Leader Tom Cross, about sponsoring HB758 and getting his leadership team to do likewise. Ask Chris to find out from Tom his thoughts/stance on HB758 and to post those on his blog. (Sorry to put you on the spot Chris but I had to. I’ll try to make it up to you somehow.)

Second, email, call, fax, mail, or otherwise ask our own State Representative to sponsor HB758 immediately.

Don’t know who your rep is? Go here and type in your address.

Now that you know the name of your Rep., go here and find their phone and fax numbers and their addresses.

Some Republican House Member email addresses are here.

For full disclosure – Jeff Trigg, Libertarian – put me up to this but I agree our ballot access laws need to be more free and equal. Please just take a few simple steps and ten minutes to help us out.

Be sure to check out Joe Conason’s take on the tapes.

…The Texas politician couldn’t reassure his friend that he hadn’t used cocaine, let alone marijuana, but as governor he was imprisoning young men and women unlucky enough to be arrested in possession of those narcotics, often for draconian mandatory-minimum sentences. He always cherished his image as a tough, swaggering, law-and-order politician who didn’t hesitate to imprison teenagers.

But that isn’t what happens to people from good families….

While I’ve been pretty wrapped up in the Illinois medical marijuana effort, it’s important to note that some other efforts are ongoing around the country…
“bullet” D’Alliance shares a nice editorial about Senate Bill 795 in New Mexico, and also reports on how it did in committee:

Our medical marijuana bill unanimously passed the Senate Public Affairs Committee! After all of our mmj patients spoke, the committee asked if anyone was there to oppose the bill – and there was DEAD SILENCE!

What? We get the Drug Czar and a former DEA head and New Mexico gets nothing? Odd.
“bullet” Texans for Medical Marijuana are working hard on HB 658.
“bullet” Loretta reports on New Jersey and Connecticut bills.
“bullet” Cannabis News passed on this report last week that “Medical marijuana advocates have filed suit against the California Highway Patrol, demanding that officers stop confiscating pot from authorized users.” That should be interesting.
“bullet” Check out Kevin Hayden’s piece over at the Street. He starts with a report on the medical marijuana bill in Texas and then moves to a call for decriminalization.

I’ve read the myths, I’ve read the research through the years. I trust what I’ve seen and experienced directly, the most. Medicinal? Obviously. Who knows better than actual patients? Adults should have this choice especially. But they also should have its use available for non-medical purposes. Bush smoked pot. A pretzel put him at greater risk of physical harm.

A lot has been made today of the revelation of tapes of George W. Bush prior to becoming president, secretly recorded by Doug Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister who was acquainted with the President. Personally, I don’t think it’s so much a case of startlingly frank admissions secretly recorded, as it is an indication that strategies had already been discussed and established for the George Bush presidency.
First, I don’t think anyone seriously doubts (or has doubted) that Bush used marijuana and coke along with his early alcohol “youthful indiscretions,” so the marijuana admission is not big news, but what is interesting is the notion of establishing an approach where “truth” is considered improper.
Check out the recording as reported in the NY Times:

Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than “just, you know, wild behavior.” He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. “If nobody shows up, there’s no story,” he told Mr. Wead, “and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up.” But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, “I haven’t denied anything.”

He refused to answer reporters’ questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: “I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

He mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use. “Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don’t do them,” he said

Now check out a drug policy approach that was promoted by Bush’s drug czar a couple of years later:

DRUG CZAR: JUST SAY NO ABOUT DRUG USE

Don’t Worry If It’s A Lie, Parents Told

Note to boomer parents: It’s OK to lie to your children about your youthful drug use, the federal drug czar said Thursday in New Orleans.

“They’re your kids, not your confessors,” said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.æ “Don’t treat them like your peers.æ Treat them like your children.” [emphasis added]

Sound familiar?
The Drug Czar’s specific guidance received very little positive press, so it was quickly dropped (the current line is “It’s not your father’s marijuana”), but the notion of avoiding “truth” as an approach has been a hallmark of the national drug policy under Bush.
Update: Good discussion in the comments regarding the key issue here. MSNBC contacted me Monday about appearing to talk about this blog entry, but the segment got cancelled at the last minute. So close… However, they seemed interested in a possible future appearance. I’d love to get in a good debate on the drug war.

I had a great time speaking before the 2005 Libertarian Party of Illinois convention this afternoon. Thanks for your warm reception and welcome to the new visitors to my blog.
Come back regularly — the site is always changing. For first-time visitors, here’s a few stories you may want to check out — some based on references I gave in the talk, and others just for fun.

• Drug War Victims – a partial group of people whose lives were ended by drug war tactics
• My stories on the Illinois medical marijuana hearing, the take-down of Andrea Barthwell and a feature on Irvin Rosenfeld
• A historical view — Why is Marijuana Illegal?
• Background on the Raich v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case.
• Just for fun: A satire on the government’s war on burgers in 2043, Increase in Burger Abuse Seen
• More fun: If I were Contrarian King of the United States

Despite the real risk of heart damage and death from drugs such as Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx…

…federal advisers, after three days of meetings last week, said the drugs offer enough benefits to let a patient and his doctor decide on their use…

The advisers from the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, oddly enough, had nothing to say about letting a patient and their doctor decide on using medical marijuana, which kills nobody.