Drug WarRant

Vote Hemp has just come out with their own voting guide, which shows:

Dennis Kucinich	A+
John Edwards	B-
Howard Dean	C-
Al Sharpton	D-
John Kerry	F
Wesley K. Clark	F
George W. Bush	F

Balance that with Granite Staters’ Medical Marijuana voting guide.

Dennis Kucinich	A+
John Kerry	A-
Wesley K. Clark	B+
Al Sharpton	B
Howard Dean	D-
George W. Bush	F
John Edwards	F

There’s also NORML’s Presidential Scorecard, which shows Kucinich as best and Edwards as worst of the Democratic candidates, and my summary of the candidates’ responses to Vote-Smart.

“bullet” Walter in Denver has discovered two drug war victims from 1989 that I’ll have to add to my Drug War Victims page.
“bullet” Libby at LastOneSpeaks has been on a tear with tons of interesting material.

• She has the info on Rand Beers, John Kerry’s ‘national security advisor,’ who was one of the architects of the notorious Plan Columbia. That particular relationship makes me a little more uneasy about Kerry, along with his unwillingness to answer some surveys.
• She has the story of the High School drug search in Narragansett, Rhode Island. The dogs didn’t find any drugs, but they claimed a locker “smelled” like marijuana (even though no drugs were there) so they suspended the locker’s owner. Outrageous. Is the lesson we give our young people that there is no such thing as due process?
• Libby also had a delightful little dust-up with Mark Kleiman regarding medical marijuana. For the record, she’s right.

My friend Desert Cat points me to Vox Day (the love child of William F. Buckley and Ayn Rand), who is also an ardent foe of the drug war. He is also not hesitant to tell conservatives that support the war why they’re wrong, as he does here and here.

The upshot is that the Drug War is yet another example of short-sighted conservatives being snookered by statists. The centralizers burn to increase central power by any means necessary, and this has been one of their most successful tactics. Remember, back when the country actually was conservative, opium, cocaine and marijuana were all legal. There’s nothing inherently conservative about the Drug War, and there’s nothing inherently libertine about opposing it. I don’t want drugs to be legal so that I can use them, I want them to be legal so government agents don’t have an excuse to trample on the Constitution, steal private property and shoot people in the head. …

Let me grant the most paranoid conservative fear and state that even if I knew that every school child in America would immediately begin smoking pot every single day that I would still support ending the drug war. Even if I knew that every single adult in America would be riding the electric high wire on cocaine every night, I would still support ending the drug war. Because neither of those things will kill America dead beyond any hope of recovery the way that increasing the power of the central state always kills a society in the end. This has been clear since the days of Rome; it is true now.

Powerful words. And this brings up a point I’d like to make again about the political spectrum of the drug war. Opposing the drug war is not a left-wing or right-wing notion, but rather it’s a function of being smart.
Take a look at some of the opponents of the drug war. Both William F. Buckley, Jr. and Walter Cronkite have spoken out elequently against the war. Two of the most intelligent politicians against the excesses of the drug war are former Republican Governor Gary Johnson, and Democratic Senator Richard Durbin. And in the House, you actually have, as co-sponsors of anti-drug war bills, radical conservative Dana Rohrabacher and radical liberal Barney Frank.
My own politics draw inspiration from left libertarian, classic liberal, and progressive liberal approaches (among others). In this blog, I stick strictly to the drug war and leave other issues alone (except related issues like the Patriot Act). And I love the fact that the other bloggers I interact with favorably on drug policy reform wander far across the political spectrum.
With advance apologies (because I’m going to be oversimplifying and probably getting these wrong) and the caveat that these descriptions are just to make a point, here’s a few examples of the range of bloggers who are smart about the drug war. Last One Speaks is probably liberal, and it’s no secret that Talk Left: The Politics of Crime leans to the left. And BigLeftOutside is very liberal. Desert Cat would probably be considered an anti-statist conservative Christian and it’s possible that Vox Day is as well. I’d classify Walter in Denver as a practical libertarian and RandomActOfKindness as a Libertarian. Conservative blogs Balloon Juice and Ipse Dixit both have been extremely supportive of Drug WarRant and the principles of drug policy reform, and I consider Eugene at The Volokh Conspiracy as a practical conservative who is open-minded about drug war issues.
Whether you are conservative, liberal, or libertarian, there are plenty of reasons to oppose the drug war. Here’s a few.

Each election cycle, Project Vote-Smart provides in-depth coverage of candidates, including distributing a questionaire for them to fill out on a wide variety of issues.
On this page, I have combined the drug policy answers of a number of candidates for President in a single chart for comparison purposes.

Here’s a sneak peek of “Rewind.” (RealAudio streaming file)

[Backwards running scenes of girl passed out, throwing up in toilet, drinking, smoking pot, buying pot, starting the day]

Narrator (girl): “Life doesn’t rewind. So if your child is drinking and smoking pot, stop them, while you still can.”

[Mother holding baggie as daughter is ready to leave for the day]

Mother: “Jessica. We need to talk.”

---

First Reaction: I’m actually surprised at the fact that this may be a somewhat reasoned approach to an ONDCP ad for the first time. This doesn’t make it proper to spend tax money doing it on the Superbowl, in my mind. However, at least this ad is not one of those ridiculous “pot=terrorism” or “smoke pot and you’ll kill your little brother” ads that have been typical of the ONDCP.
What I like about this ad is the inclusion of alcohol (BIG move there) and the results of the misadventure being the sort of yucky drank-too-much, smoked-too-much reality of partying that can all too often be part of teenagers’ lives.
I need to watch it some more (and perhaps catch some detail that I’m missing on the postage-stamped RealVideo file that I found), but at this point it seems to me that the over-riding message of the ad is that parents should talk with their kids, that young kids shouldn’t be using alcohol and drugs, and that people need to learn to use alcohol and drugs responsibly. Sounds OK to me.
Update: I think I just saw the other new one during Superbowl trophy ceremony. Perhaps someone can verify this? Caught the end of it, but it was a girl standing on a pier indecisively while her friend is splashing/drowning in the water and the voice over says something like “If you friend was in trouble you’d help them, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?”
Disgusting. That’s the same old ONDCP that we’re used to seeing.

Yesterday’s Denver Post had some additional detail on the case of the marijuana stolen by the Feds (here’s my recap of the case), and the Post article included this:

Department of Justice attorney Michael Hegarty argued that the officers who went into Don Nord’s apartment in Hayden on Oct. 14 were all deputized Drug Enforcement Administration agents acting “under the color” of federal law.

Through this they claim they don’t have to follow the state judge’s directions and are exempt from his contempt citation. And the fact that they were serving a state warrant? What color is that?
This points out a growing concern that I’m having regarding an emergent federal takeover of state and local law enforcement activities.
You see, the Constitution gives police power to the states and none to the federal government. The feds have developed certain police functions over the years through the Commerce Clause, regulating interstate commerce, treasury functions, etc.
However, in recent years, primarily through ploys in the drug war, you have the huge growth of the joint federal and state task force. These task forces are usually developed in part through federal grants and the money is very attractive to state and local police. Once the task forces are started, it’s almost impossible to shut them down because of the fear of losing funding.
In 2002, there were 207 local and state task forces through the DEA alone. All of them received funding from the DEA, and 153 of them received extra funding from DEA headquarters, including state and local overtime payments. (Other joint forces have been developed in immigration and terrorism operations.)
Eventually, these joint forces end up under the thumb of federal agencies, even to the point of actually disobeying or circumventing the courts and laws of their own states.
The Colorado case is just one example. For years, this kind of thing has been happening in asset forfeiture cases. As detailed in a powerful series of reports in the Kansas City Star back in 2000:

Police and highway patrols across the country are evading state laws to improperly keep millions of dollars in cash and property seized in drug busts and traffic stops.

Most states don’t want law enforcement agencies to profit so easily from such confiscations — they see it as a dangerous conflict of interest. For that reason, they have passed laws blocking seized property from going directly back to police, and many states designate seizures to be used for other purposes, such as education.

But a yearlong examination by The Kansas City Star reveals that police agencies in every one of more than two dozen states checked by the newspaper have used federal law enforcement to circumvent their own laws and keep most of that money for themselves.

The founding fathers left law enforcement to the states for good reason. Partly as a check on abusive centralized power of the Federal Government, and partly because law enforcement is, and should be, a local issue.
A report (pdf) from a Task Force of the American Bar Association on the Federalization of Criminal Law notes:

A lessening of citizens’ perception about their power to have an impact on critical crime
issues should be avoided. Confusion of state and federal authority can
leave citizens uncertain about who bears the responsibility for dealing
with crime, while at the same time dissipating accountability for one
governmental authority or the other to seriously confront the problem.
On the whole, state law is easier to modify (and so more easily
accommodates new local conditions) than is national legislation. Public accountability in the state and local segments of government is higher.
As a result, the movement of the crime debate to the federal level may
leave local citizens with the belief that they have less power to influence
the debate about the response to crime and therefore less control over
crime’s immediate impact upon them.

Or, as in the case in Colorado, less control over law enforcement itself, with the Federal government holding the strings of our own police officers.

TWO policemen flanked the doors of the Purple Haze cafe in Leith at 4pm, as Scotland’s first ever cannabis cafe prepared to open its doors.

The cafe had earlier been swamped with camera crews, photographers and reporters as owner Paul Stewart outlined his proposal for the cafe.

As the doors opened, around 30 prospective punters, who had gathered outside in the freezing cold, began filing in.æ The police handed each one a letter explaining that the possession of cannabis was still an offence.

So began the first day in the UK of cannabis downgraded to Class C, as reported by the Edinburgh Evening News. Although the classification provides for a fair amount of decriminalization, marijuana is still illegal, and people can be arrested for possession. This is somewhat dependent on the philosophy of the local police.

After a few hours a distinctive smell began to come from the cafe doors.

After nearly three hours of business, police officers moved into the cafe and began charging customers, many of whom had been there since it opened.

Insp Phillip later said three people had been charged and added their details would be passed on to the procurator fiscal.æ He said he was satisfied the “appropriate” action had been taken.

Among those caught was Mr Stewart, who will now face charges of allowing people to take drugs on his premises.

He vowed to fight the charges, saying that human rights lawyers had already contacted him offering to represent him.

“It was a good night, although with the glare of the media and all the police attention there were bound to be a few teething problems,” he said afterwards.

“We will be challenging these charges, as I feel they are totally illegal.æ I was very happy with the way the Police handled the event, though, and there was no trouble when they charged people.

It’ll be interesting to see how things settle. That’s what will matter. The greatest fear of the drug warrior is that marijuana will be used commonly and the sky won’t fall. (Much like this summer in parts of Canada when it was temporarily legal to possess cannabis.) Then the slumbering masses of matrix population may just wake up and wonder why we’ve been spending so much of our resources incarcerating people for smoking pot.

Take a good look. Scary, intense, powerful U.S. Attorney for Nebraska appointed by George Bush. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, he calls his work “part of the United States’ push for narcotics ‘demand reduction.’ When U.S. officials ask countries such as Mexico and Colombia to fight drug supplies, he said, officials there ask Americans to fight demand.”

Wednesday’s announcement followed a months-long narcotics investigation of shops that sell water bongs, hookahs and other items used to smoke, conceal or consume illicit drugs under the premise of tobacco use.

Yep, that’s right. Mike Heavican, after months of investigation, discovered stores were selling pipes (something customers discovered by looking in the window).
Eric Sterling, who oversees the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a Maryland-based national civil liberties organization said:

“The goods are out there in the public eye, so it requires absolutely zilch investigation.
“It’s easy, cheap and headline-grabbing.”

Heavican disagreed:

Many drug dealers, addicts and users would not seek “the carrot of treatment” without “the stick of prosecution.”

Huh?
Thanks to TalkLeft for the tip, and now, if you don’t mind, I’ll finish this post with excerpts from an earlier post of mine from September: Chong Bong Gone Wrong
I asked my friend George how this affected him:

“Well, you know, I like to toke up a little on the weekends, particularly when I’m watching the Sci-fi channel. But now that you can’t buy bongs, I guess I won’t be able to anymore. It really sucks, ’cause I’ve got a whole ounce of BC Bud that I’m going to have to throw out.

“But hey, I understand. They’ve gotta fight those terrorists, and I heard there’s some kind of connection there. I guess the terrorists use the bongs for, uh, something.”

To help all those drug users who no longer can smoke their pot, I am going to break the law and offer special marijuana pipes online. DEA, and Mike Heavican, come and get me.

These pot paraphernalia pipes are pictured at right. Now, some people say that these items can be used for bizarre purposes like eating, making pies, or target practice for expert archers. But I’m here to tell you that their purpose is for smoking pot.

So, here is the link to purchase your own Apple Pipes.

(Note: some assembly required, pen shaft and aluminum foil screen not included)

I was very honored to have been nominated at Wampum for Koufax Awards for Best Single Issue Blog and Best New Blog. I didn’t make the finals in either category, but no matter — there’s some really great blogs to check out and vote for. Do so here.
However, all that pales in comparison to the newest honor I’ve received from the 2004 Blogroll Predictions at Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness:

(6) Most Likely To Conduct a Daring, Tunneling Jailbreak on Behalf of Tommy Chong: Pete at Drug War Rant.

Now that’s cool!

“bullet” Via Vice Squad, Art Garfunkel is fighting the charges.
“bullet” Via TalkLeft. Read Senator Durbin’s response to Ashcroft’s unwillingness to even discuss American freedom:

Attorney General Ashcroft’s response today is an unfortunate over-reaction to a reasoned and measured effort to mend the PATRIOTAct. Three months ago I asked senior officials at the Department of Justice to work with me and my staff on changes to the PATRIOT Act that reflect the very real concerns of many Americans. After 90 days of silence, today they issued a veto threat. This extraordinary reaction to a bill that hasn’t even had a hearing in the Senate demonstrates that the Administration fears that this reasonable bipartisan approach is likely to succeed.

Go Dick!
“bullet” Today’s the day. Great Britain has reclassified and downgraded marijuana. See TalkLeft’s post and my earlier posts.
“bullet” Good article. Great headline: No Child’s Urine Left Behind
“bullet” Interesting drug war discussion going on at John Kerry Internet Town Meeting. Why not join in? Maybe we can increase the candidate’s awareness.
“bullet” Eugene Volokh has commented on my student organization’s conflict with the university regarding their free speech rights. (I mentioned it back in November) Relevant documents are available here.