Drug WarRant

I’ve neglected following up on the new Tulia due to other distractions, but it’s been well covered by the other drug policy blogs. Grits for Breakfast continues to be all over the story.
Be sure to read The Usual Suspects by Dave Mann of the Texas Observer.

When the arrests came two years later, residents of Palestine must have been surprised to learn that their small town apparently had more crack dealers than restaurants. On Oct. 13, teams from the Anderson County sheriff’s office, Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Marshall’s Service, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) started at 7 a.m. and swept through tiny Palestine (population 17,000) to round up an astonishing 40 indicted drug dealers.

More arrests followed in the coming days. In all, a total of 72 Anderson County residents were detained on various state and federal drug dealing charges. After the arrests, the U.S. Department of Justice put out a celebratory press release that boasted of cracking a large Anderson County drug distribution ring.

“This coordinated effort shows the success that can be achieved when resources and people are pooled together,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Orwig said in the statement. Curtis Bitz, head of the Dogwood Trails task force, told the Lufkin Daily News, “There’s no question as to whether they did it or not.”

An examination of the charges, however, raises questions about the drug bust, especially about the sheer number of people charged as dealers. Could there really be 72 crack dealers in little Palestine? And is it only a coincidence that all 72 of them are black?

Keep the pressure on this one.

Via TalkLeft.
I’m a big fan of Durbin. He’s one of my senators and generally smart on drug and crime issues. He introduced the Truth in Trials Act to recognize the validity of state medical marijuana laws.
If you want to get an idea of how he works, check out this exchange (about halfway down the page) last year when Karen Tandy was nominated for head of the DEA.
I wish him the best of luck.

Thanks to Cyndy in comments, comes this news:

The Ann Arbor City Attorney, Stephen Postema, has declared that the medical marijuana measure which passed with a 74% majority is “invalid”, according to the Ann Arbor News, and Police Chief Dan Oates has instructed his officers to continue enforcing state and federal marijuana laws in the same manner as in the past.

Regardless of any actual case law regarding such conflicts, it is unconscionable for a public servant to act in this way. Postema and Oates work for the city and should be trying to find a way to accommodate the local measure, rather than intentionally defying it.
Now if Ann Arbor had passed an ordinance that was more restrictive of individual rights than state and federal law (such as prohibiting certain kinds of political speech), then Postema and Oates would have no choice but to follow state and federal law.
But this is a case of how local prosecution chooses to enforce laws. The state appeals court ruling (regarding an Ypsilanti law in 1977) that Postema quoted merely said that “city officials weren’t prohibited from referring marijuana cases for prosecution under state law.” This doesn’t mean that they must.
When California first passed medical marijuana laws, there were a number of vigilantes like Postema and Oates who wanted to enforce their own personal view of law within a conflicting situation. The people got together and forced many of these out of office. Perhaps the same will be true in Ann Arbor.

At Salon:

Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to use his five-year term as Afghanistan’s first elected president to crack down on warlords and the country’s booming drug economy.

Hey, Hamid. What other economy do you have? Maybe you should think about developing a legal economy before you destroy the other one?

Karzai has said smashing Afghanistan’s opium and heroin smugglers will be his top priority and the key to reining in warlords resisting the feeble authority of the central government.

The resources of the entire United States can’t stop the opium and heroin smugglers, and Karzai thinks he has a chance? And the only way he could control it is by taking it over.
Just to give some perspective, neighboring Tajikistan doesn’t produce any opium or heroin — it’s just a route for trafficking — yet the drug trade there is 10 times as big as the national budget.
I predict one of three outcomes in the next five years.

1. Karzai gives up on his promise.
2. Karzai doesn’t last in office 5 years.
3. Karzai ends up being the head drug trafficker.

Any bets?

Having parlayed his election loss to a dead man into a top federal job and a national attack on personal liberty, Attorney General Ashcroft is now tired and is likely to step down.