Drug WarRant

Just a reminder that guest rants are welcome here. Check out Terry Scott’s latest entry — a fascinating series of connections.

Last night was our commencement ceremony. It was a blast, and I can’t say how much I enjoyed greeting our students as they crossed the stage.
For those students who read this blog regularly, please keep in touch and keep reading DrugWarRant. The responsibility is yours to make something happen in this drug war. Vote. Get involved. Tell people. Don’t worry about what people will think if you speak up — in many cases, they feel the same way, but are too frightened to say so. Others can be taught, and if you take the time to learn some basic facts, they’ll appreciate that you are speaking from a position of strength.
And thanks for your inspiration. The response to my talks about the Drug War at Theatre of Ted and the enthusiasm of those of you who came to me for material for papers and speeches provoked me to start this blog.
To my other readers: Thanks for your patience the past couple of weeks. Some interesting things have happened in the drug war, and I’ll be trying to do a little catch-up.

It’s the end of the school year at Illinois State and I’ve been a bit too busy to post this past week — a week that included sponsoring a 60 hour four-square marathon to raise money for student scholarships, plus visiting artists, a final theatre party, and lots of fun (so I can’t complain). Except for about 4 hours sleep, I was at the theatre building from 10 am Wednesday until 5 am Saturday.
Thanks to friends like Patrick, who have continued to send me tidbits while I’ve been too busy to post, such as:
“bullet” Riedy taken off SWAT team

Joseph Riedy, the Bethlehem police officer who shot John Hirko Jr. to death, has been removed from the squad that raided Hirko’s home because of concerns that Riedy’s participation would make the city vulnerable in future lawsuits.

Wrong move on the part of the city. Should just eliminate the team.
“bullet” Last One Speaks has the big news:
The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco by Craig Reinarman, PhD, Peter D. A. Cohen, PhD and Hendrien L. Kaal, PhD., published this month in the American Journal of Public Health.

Results. With the exception of higher drug use in San Francisco, we found strong similarities across both cities. We found no evidence to support claims that criminalization reduces use or that decriminalization increases use.

Conclusions. Drug policies may have less impact on cannabis use than is currently thought.

No surprise there. But it is yet another scientific study that lays waste to the arguments of the drug warriors.
I’ve still got finishing up to do with the semester, so posting may be light for a few more days. Continue to check the sites on the left, and take a moment to write some letters to the editor over at MAP.

“bullet” Eric Schlosser’s Make Peace with Pot, in the New York Times today.

The current war on marijuana is a monumental waste of money and a source of pointless misery.æ America’s drug warriors, much like its marijuana smokers, seem under the spell of a powerful intoxicant.æ They are not thinking clearly.æ

“bullet” Daniel Forbes’ The Drug War Includes Fixing Elections, today at LewRockwell.com

With two federal watchdog agencies freeing the White House drug czar to overtly influence state ballot initiatives, the Senate is poised to reauthorize this anti-democratic exercise for the next five years — the wheels greased by a ten-year total of $4 billion in taxpayer-funded advertising designed to sway the votes of those who pay for it.

Thanks to T Chris at TalkLeft and a tip of the hat to Jeff:
This New York Times Article points out:

To reduce the flow of cocaine into this country by encouraging farmers in Peru to grow food instead of coca, the United States in the early 1990’s started to subsidize a year-round Peruvian asparagus industry, and since then American processing plants have closed and hundreds of farmers have gone out of business. …

“We’ve created this booming asparagus industry in Peru, resulting in the demise of a century-old industry in America,” said Alan Schreiber, director of the Washington Asparagus Commission. “And I’ve yet to hear anyone from the government tell me with a straight face that it has reduced the amount of cocaine coming into this country.” …

“We’re a victim of the drug war,” said Mr. McKay, 73. “It seems like we still got plenty of cocaine coming into this country, but now we got cheap asparagus as well.”

So, we’re using our taxpayer money to pay farmers in another country to undercut our own farmers, in an effort to prevent them from growing…

“The irony is that they didn’t plow under the coke to plant asparagus in Peru,” said John Bakker, executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. “If you look at that industry in Peru and where it’s growing, it has nothing to do with coca leaf growers becoming normal farmers. Coca leaf is grown in the highlands. The asparagus is near sea level.”

Oh yeah, that policy makes about as much sense as all our drug war policies.

Check out this Mother Jones review by Debra J. Dickerson of Jennifer Gonnerman’s book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (Thanks to David for the tip).

Because of New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, Elaine’s childish irresponsibility cost her 20 to life, Nathan’s defeatist chivalry a minimum 25. These two self-destructive fools were treated like drug kingpins, yet they couldn’t even afford lawyers. (Meanwhile, George Deets, the insatiable addict whose drug ring was responsible for a biweekly kilo of cocaine on New York’s streets, remained not only free but well paid by the police and with his inventory restocked.)

Sixteen years later, as a result of ever-increasing calls to overturn mandatory minimums for low-level offenders, Bartlett experiences the only stroke of luck in her benighted life: She receives clemency from Governor George Pataki, leaves Bedford Hills prison, and returns home to New York City as a poster child for sentencing reform.

It’s all downhill from there. Gonnerman wryly subtitled this book about life after long-term incarceration a “prison odyssey” because, as Bartlett soon realizes, she’s simply “left one prison to come home to another.” One in the flood of 600,000 prisoners released each year from our 30-year incarceration boom, Bartlett returns to an overcrowded, filthy project apartment and the four children who have grown up in her absence.

TalkLeft points out another review by Elaine Cassel.
Both reviews are good, and the book itself is going on my must-read list.

Thanks to Scott for pointing out this delightful ditty (mp3 file), which includes the lyrics:

We can’t find Bin Laden and we’re stuck in Iraq
but we got Tommy Chong under key and lock.
Tommy Chong.
Serving 9 months in prison for selling bongs.
To you i sing this song.
Tommy Chong. …
Gotta turn around this world of hate
and educate instead of incarcerate

Via Last One Speaks — a story that both of us missed when it happened — fortunately the ACLU is on top of it:

DENVER — The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado today filed a lawsuit against the Denver North Metro Drug Task Force on behalf of a local woman who was forced to strip naked in the parking lot of her condominium in full view of her neighbors while male law enforcement officers conducted an unjustified, humiliating, and degrading “decontamination” ritual that had no legitimate purpose. …

The ACLU’s client was forced to stand naked in the pool, apply the cold water to her body and then dunk her head into the water. At least two male firefighters standing inside the small “enclosure” monitored the entire process while holding a hose and a brush. A third male law enforcement officer, watching through a gap in the tarps, issued orders directing each separate step of the “decontamination” ritual. Numerous additional male officers stood in the parking lot nearby where they could observe the woman naked as she shook and shivered from cold, fear, and humiliation.æ

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Denver, seeks a declaration that the SWAT team violated the woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by forcibly breaking into her home and carrying out the search as a “no-knock” raid without legal justification. The lawsuit also contends that the authorities violated the Fourth Amendment by inviting a private videographer with no law enforcement function to accompany them into woman’s home to film the events.æ

Interestingly, this is the same task force that decided that people don’t have the right to privacy in what they read. In 2000, they went after the Tattered Cover Book Store to find out what books its customers were reading — they thought if they could prove that an individual was reading about methamphetamine, then they could tie them to an alleged meth lab. Fortunately the book store won.
This is a drug task force that is completely out of control. They seem to believe that they are a law unto themselves, answerable only to themselves.
And that is the problem with drug task forces in general (which usually include a combination of local, state, and DEA officers). There is a breakdown in accountability — they often defy local or state rules and procedures, and with current federal drug policy goading them toward excess and financially rewarding them for numbers of arrests, abuse is almost guaranteed. Additionally, they are trained to use military-style techniques against U.S. citizens, not as a last resort, but as standard operation. This dehumanizes targets and makes all of us potential “enemies” (while we’re actually their employers).
This 2002 Alternet article on task forces (which was focusing on Tulia, another task force disaster) notes:

“These task forces,” says Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas ACLU, “have one motive and one motive only: to produce numbers lest they lose their funding for the next year. But no one questions how they go about their business.” …

Task force cops have even started talking like businessmen. Witness this Wall Street-flavored assessment from one Texas task force’s quarterly report: “Highway seizures were off a bit this quarter, but crack sales are still strong.”

The more you look into drug task forces, the more you realize that the shoddy police work exhibited in Tulia — shady narc, iffy suspect IDs, a lack of corroborating evidence — is the norm rather than an aberration. “Everybody’s talking about Tom Coleman,” says Barbara Markham, a former task force agent turned whistle blower. “Well, there are whole task forces of Tom Colemans out there.” A very scary thought given an undercover cop’s ability to send someone to jail for life solely on his word.

Not convinced? — here’s some excerpts from a 2002 Drug War Chronicle article on task forces (a Texas focus again, but the problem is national), which also includes a long list of specific abuses and then goes on to note:

“You don’t need these kinds of units,” said Harrington [director of Texas Civil Liberties Project]. “They need to abolish these task forces all together. They are structured so you can’t avoid this sort of abuse. What in heaven’s name was the point in creating all these regional task forces?

Money, of course.

“These things need to be abolished,” he told DRCNet. “They are ridiculous and dangerous. They botch things up, they’re unprofessional, and they’re violating peoples’ rights with serious consequences.”

And there is something people can do, he said. “There is growing grassroots pressure to de-fund and de-legitimize these task forces. These things are funded at the county level, so if people agitate at the county level that can be very effective. If the counties don’t ask for the federal money, that’s the end of it.”

Got a drug task force forming in your community? Just say no.

Check out ProtectLiveMusic.org a project of the Drug Policy Alliance. It’s a good awareness site of some of the drug laws in particular that are targeting the music industry (just as Anslinger targeted musicians in the early days of criminalization). There are action items where you can make a difference.
This Saturday, April 24, is their Day and Night of Outrage, complete with some wonderful music, in clubs around the country.

On Tuesday, John Ashcroft’s ” Justice” Department asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raich vs. Ashcroft, which found that the federal ban does not apply to those who use cannabis for medical purposes on their doctors’ advice, obtain the medicine without buying it, and get it within their state’s borders. The government contends there should be no medical exceptions to the federal anti-marijuana laws.

The December 16, 2003 decision in Raich vs. Ashcroft (Ninth Circuit Case No. 03-15481) was the first time a federal court had found a constitutional limitation to application of the Controlled Substances Act, the federal law that prohibits all use of marijuana. The court ruled that patients who grow their own or receive it free do not affect interstate commerce. Congress’s ability to regulate interstate commerce is the basis for federal drug laws. The December ruling applies to California and the six other states in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction that allow medical cannabis use: Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Of course, there’s no certainty what will happen with the Supreme Court, and yet I find myself welcoming the battle. It’s a good case. Properly narrow. After all, they grew the pot themselves, didn’t sell it, and used it in accordance with their state and local laws — it’s hard to defend the federal interest.
I really want to see the Supreme Court tell John Ashcroft that the Constitution isn’t about giving him the right to do whatever he wants to us.

Update: Learn more about the case at Angel Justice.