Drug WarRant

I’m on my way to Los Angeles for a few days for work.

Here are a few items to get your blood boiling…

Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war tragedy

On the night of May 27, as armed men streamed through his front door, Westcott grabbed his gun. But the 29-year-old didn’t have a chance to shoot before he died in a volley of gunfire. And those who killed him weren’t robbers.

They were police officers from the same agency he had enlisted to protect his home.

Imprisoning Women for Addiction

At MCI-Framingham, women committed solely under Section 35 are, in many respects, treated worse than convicted prisoners. Like other prisoners, they are strip-searched, subjected to body-cavity inspections, and deprived of their personal possessions and dignity. But unlike other prisoners, they cannot visit the library, pray at the chapel, or participate in prison programs. In fact, civilly committed women at MCI-Framingham cannot even access the addiction treatment programs available to sentenced prisoners.

As Governor Deval Patrick has acknowledged, Massachusetts is the only state that incarcerates people suffering from addiction who have not been convicted of crimes. This lawsuit seeks to end that practice.

Via Diane Goldstein, comes this from the Center for Investigative Reporting: Doctor pleads guilty to billing fraud at Los Angeles-area rehab clinic

A Southern California physician pleaded guilty to falsely identifying teenagers as drug or alcohol addicts to justify millions in bills to the government’s rehabilitation program for the poor. […]

The Redondo Beach doctor had been medical director since 1999 and was responsible for $46 million in fraudulent claims, prosecutors said. Whitson referred questions to his attorney, who declined to comment.

Four Atlantic counselors also pleaded guilty to fraud last year. They were accused of spending only a half-hour twice a week with students while fabricating the paperwork to bill for up to five 90-minute counseling sessions each week.[…]

At Atlantic, prosecutors stated that Margarita Lopez, Tamara Diaz, Cindy Leticia Ortiz and Arthur Dominguez enrolled students in substance abuse counseling even if they didn’t have an addiction problem. At the direction of their supervisors, they then fabricated counseling notes to justify billing the government for sessions that never happened. Dominguez, for example, was instructed to improve his fake paperwork if it appeared to be copied and pasted.

Terminal Cancer Patient Rushed to Hospital During Felony Trial for Medical Pot

Despite Mackenzie’s deteriorating condition, his trial is expected to be completed Friday, Linda Bowman, the judicial trial court supervisor at the Scott County Clerk’s Office, told The Huffington Post. If Mackenzie is found guilty, he faces at least three years in prison — a punishment that he’s said equates to a death sentence. […]

District Court Judge Henry Latham ruled in May that Mackenzie is barred from using his condition as a defense in court during his trial as a reason for why he was growing marijuana, the Associated Press reported.

Raid on Denver Pot Club Illustrates Continued Intolerance of Marijuana Consumption Outside the Home

Last week Denver police raided and shut down Maryjane’s Social Club, one of the few places in Colorado, aside from private residences, where people could legally smoke pot. Or so it seemed. Maryjane’s did not advertise and was open only to paying members, but in the eyes of Denver officials that was not sufficiently private. […]

But to qualify as a private club, Douglas says, an organization would have to satisfy the “balancing test” set forth by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in U.S. v. Lansdowne Swim Club, a 1990 discrimination case. That test includes factors such as the club’s selectivity, its history and mission, the formalities it observes, whether it advertises for members, whether its facilities are used by nonmembers, the control that members have over the club’s operations, and whether the club generates profits for the people who run it.

That’s just utter hogwash.

He’s taking the definition of a private club in a completely different context and trying to apply it to anything that’s “not public.”

The law doesn’t say that marijuana has to be smoked in a private club. Rather is says that it’s an offense to consume marijuana “openly and publicly.”

From any fair reading of the intent of the law, that’s clearly a prohibition against smoking it around others who would be surprised or bothered by it. In other words, out on the street, or lighting up in a regular restaurant, etc.

You don’t need to charge a membership fee, and you certainly don’t have to be a private club as defined in U.S. vs. Lansdowne Swim Club.

Really all you should need is a sign that says, “Beyond this point, people may be smoking cannabis. If that bothers you, don’t go there.”

Now, fortunately in other areas of the state, private clubs are not running into trouble. But they shouldn’t have to worry at all (other than meeting normal regulatory requirements of establishments). Legalization of marijuana does not mean that users are to hide in their homes in shame.

Bizarre

VANCOUVER, Wash. — John Larson, a recently retired high school science and math teacher, hopes to be in the first wave of legal recreational marijuana salespeople opening shop here in Washington State this week.

Mr. Larson, 67, who was talked into the venture by his children, said he had never tried marijuana, and, in fact, voted against legalizing it in 2012. But as a business idea — well, that’s different.

“If people were dumb enough to vote it in, I’m all for it,” he said over a cup of coffee near his shop here in southern Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. “There’s a demand, and I have a product.” [Emphasis added]

Really? That’s the way you want to talk about your customer base in the New York Times?

I suggest finding another place to shop. Unfortunately, due to the expected shortages, he’ll probably get good sales anyway, but that would be a real shame.

The July 21-28 issue of The Nation has a cover story on “Guess Who’s Profiting from Pot Prohibition

Ironically, both CADCA and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids are heavily reliant on a combination of federal drug-prevention education grants and funding from pharmaceutical companies. Founded in 1992, CADCA has lobbied aggressively for a range of federal grants for groups dedicated to the “war on drugs.” The Drug-Free Communities Act of 1997, a program directed by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, was created through CADCA’s advocacy. That law now allocates over $90 million a year to community organizations dedicated to reducing drug abuse. Records show that CADCA has received more than $2.5 million in annual federal funding in recent years. The former Partnership for a Drug-Free America, founded in 1985 and best known for its dramatic “This is your brain on drugs” public service announcements, has received similarly hefty taxpayer support while advocating for increased anti-drug grant programs.

The Nation obtained a confidential financial disclosure from the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids showing that the group’s largest donors include Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, and Abbott Laboratories, maker of the opioid Vicodin. CADCA also counts Purdue Pharma as a major supporter, as well as Alkermes, the maker of a powerful and extremely controversial new painkiller called Zohydrol. The drug, which was released to the public in March, has sparked a nationwide protest, since Zohydrol is reportedly ten times stronger than OxyContin. Janssen Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that produces the painkiller Nucynta, and Pfizer, which manufactures several opioid products, are also CADCA sponsors. For corporate donors, CADCA offers a raft of partnership opportunities, including authorized use of the “CADCA logo for your company’s marketing, website, and advertising materials, etc.”

The article goes on to talk about a variety of financial interests of those opposing legalization, including asset forfeiture and other sources.

This isn’t a surprise to us. We’ve long talked about the fact that the most ardent supporters of prohibition are either sadomoralists or financially profiting from the drug war (or both).

You can read more about Big Prohibition here.

What is it about this simple, natural green symbol that makes people so afraid?

ISU sued for prohibiting logo on pro-marijuana shirt

FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is helping students in the Iowa State University chapter of NORML bring a lawsuit against the university for withdrawing approval to use the university logo on a T-shirt that also has a cannabis leaf. Other official student organizations can use the logo on their shirts, but not if there’s a green pointy leaf on it.

I’ve had some experience myself with university fear of the leaf symbol. At another ISU, where I work, the registered student organization chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy ran into a situation some years ago where they were denied permission to distribute flyers in the residence halls for their upcoming Hempfest simply because of the leaf on the flyers. A clear-cut case of unconstitutional content discrimination, yet it took months of bouncing around various administrative offices to resolve the issue.

Some years later, the SSDP group chalked the sidewalks on campus to promote Hempfest, all in proper accordance with university guidelines on how student groups were allowed to chalk. An overzealous administrator, concerned about how that would look to a large group of visiting prospective students and parents that weekend, directed someone at facilities to power wash all of the chalked advertisements. In that case, the university actually apologized to the group for what had been done, which was a real step forward.

It’s just a picture of a leaf. Since it represents all sorts of things, including using hemp for industrial purposes, food, rope, medicine, etc., it doesn’t solely stand for recreational use. Also, groups using it are often specifically promoting political action (getting people to consider legislative change – a critical part of citizen responsibility), it’s not a symbol that means “pro-drug.”

And yet that simple image frightens people. It seems to have developed a power that represents an entire cultural movement.

Curious.

Such a great clip

Jacob Sullum:

Washington’s state-licensed pot stores are expected to start opening next week, but they won’t have much to sell. A slow state licensing process for marijuana producers, combined with the difficulty of obtaining local approval for grow operations, will result in shortages that are apt to be more severe than those seen in Colorado after recreational sales began there in January. The result could be prices almost twice as high as those charged by medical marijuana dispensaries and black-market dealers.

Setting up a system that ends up with legal marijuana charging more than the black-market is not the way to do it.

Get your act together, Washington.

“Drugs.” It’s a word like “food.” Encompasses a whole range of things, with a wide variety of impacts on humans.

Oreos and broccoli are both “food.” Yet I would guess that any educated person would say that there’s a difference in what happens if you eat a lot of one, compared to a lot of the other.

And yet, we’ve constantly dealt with public policy that treats “drugs” interchangeably (at least when convenient to do so).

NIDA’s Nora Volkow, whose entire job’s purpose is to find negative aspects to “drugs,” epitomizes this (intentionally) sloppy approach to science and policy.

“Look at the evidence,” Volkow said in an interview on the National Institutes of Health campus, pointing to the harms already inflicted by tobacco and alcohol. “It’s not subtle — it’s huge. Legal drugs are the main problem that we have in our country as it relates to morbidity and mortality. By far. Many more people die of tobacco than all of the drugs together. Many more people die of alcohol than all of the illicit drugs together.

“And it’s not because they are more dangerous or addictive. Not at all — they are less dangerous. It’s because they are legal. . . . The legalization process generates a much greater exposure of people and hence of negative consequences that will emerge. And that’s why I always say, ‘Can we as a country afford to have a third legal drug? Can we?’ We know the costs already on health care, we know the costs on accidents, on lost productivity. I let the numbers speak for themselves.”

We hear this over and over. “We can’t afford a third legal drug. Look at all the costs from alcohol and tobacco.”

Last I heard, marijuana is different than either alcohol or tobacco. Sure you can smoke both marijuana and tobacco (although you don’t have to), but the affects on the lungs are dramatically different and so is the nature of dependency. Sure, both marijuana and alcohol can make you high, but their mechanisms are remarkably different, as are the way they affect behavior.

Why are these the three? Why aren’t we considering the advisability of having the drug caffeine legal, given the societal costs of the other two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco? Or how about sugar? Certainly sugar is much more dangerous to health and national health costs than marijuana.

The “we can’t afford a third legal drug” is extremely dishonest (and so naturally it’s used by the Kevin Sabet group all the time). Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, caffeine, sugar, khat, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, etc., are all different. It does no good to crafting public policy to assume that any one of them will have the same effect on society as one of the others.

This is part of a new campaign by the ACLU: War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

All across the country, heavily armed SWAT teams are raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night, often just to search for drugs. It should enrage us that people have needlessly died during these raids, that pets have been shot, and that homes have been ravaged.

Our neighborhoods are not warzones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color.

As our new report makes clear, it’s time for American police to remember that they are supposed to protect and serve our communities, not wage war on the people who live in them.

Even the Los Angeles Times (which has historically been a bit of a drug war cheerleader) thinks it’s out of control —

Editorial: Have police departments gone too far with SWAT units?

The ACLU rightly urges the federal government to scale back its program of military hand-me-downs to civilian agencies, and suggests that the Department of Justice require data collection on SWAT deployments. Local and state governments also need to standardize criteria and oversight for when the units are used, and insist that they be deployed only when necessary, and proportionate to the situation. Together, those steps would help restore the notion that police exist to protect and serve, not conquer.

Of course, awareness on this issue owes a huge debt of gratitude to Radley Balko, who has been at the very front line of talking about the militarization of the drug war.

He has another article today:

Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records laws

Some of these LECs [Law Enforcement Councils] have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

A police state happens when the people fail to stop it from developing (or even actively encourage it through succumbing to fear). It is up to us to insure that the public knows the warning signs (and that we’ve already reached the point of urgency).

Global Day of Protest Against the War on Drugs

Every year, the United Nations designates June 26 as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Sounds good, right? […] In recent years, some countries have “celebrated” their approach to drug abuse and trafficking by executing and torturing those convicted of drug crimes. Still sound good? Not so much.

And so, in response, people around the world are challenging not only the harshest of punishments for people convicted of drug crimes but also the criminalization of drug use in the first place — namely the war on drugs, which began in earnest in this country over 40 years ago and has since been spread worldwide with the help of the UN. For the second year in a row, an international groundswell of activists have organized a Global Day of Action under the moniker Support, Don’t Punish, with support from groups like the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the International Drug Policy Consortium, and the Drug Policy Alliance. In addition to the thousands of actions around the world focusing on various aspects of the failed drug war, drug policy reform advocates will be taking their protest right to the source: the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

I like the idea of taking this day back.