Drug WarRant

Via Hit and Run, we get Debra Saunders’ article today in the SFGate — a followup to the 60 Minutes piece on mandatory minimums.

When I reached Bogan on his cell phone, I asked him how many drug kingpins he thought were in federal prison today. Bogan answered, “My estimation is of the 85,000 drug traffickers in the federal system, there are probably fewer than 1 percent of whom you could call kingpins.”

She also notes:

The worst part is that “60 Minutes” didn’t touch on the most egregious case in the federal system, that of Clarence Aaron, who is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a first-time, nonviolent offense that netted him $1,500. “60 Minutes” executive producer David Gelber confirmed that federal officials wouldn’t allow the show access to Aaron.

… and ends:

But if you feel safer because first-time offenders are in for 12-1/2 years to eternity, it’s because you’ve bought into an illusion: It’s like feeling safer because Al Capone’s accountant is doing more time than Capone.

From Alternatives, in Salem Oregon, check out an important editorial about pain medicine: Chronic Pain – The Hidden Epidemic by Rick Bayer, MD.

While the science of pain control has progressed, the politics of pain control remains in the Dark Ages.

This doctor’s editorial particularly takes the current administration to task for their drug policies and what that means for suffering patients:

To fix the problem of untreated and under-treated pain in chronically ill patients, we must vote out the Bush/Ashcroft party and re-examine our nation’s War on Drugs.æ What are we gaining besides over-funding the doctor-busting narcotics agencies while laying off police who actually protect us from violent criminals? Why are we willing to sacrifice civil liberties, healthcare, education, a clean environment, and solid infrastructure in a self-destructive pursuit of a “drug-free America”? We need drug education and drug treatment–not another war.æ

We can no longer be passive when drug warriors threaten the practice of compassionate scientific medicine and make the chronically ill do without necessary medication.æ For the compassionate, I ask you to inform yourself, contact your representatives, and vote.æ For those who need more convincing, I ask you to consider that anyone is only one accident away from a life with chronic debilitating pain.

Oh, it’s good to be the king.æ You float high above the law and plunder your subjects with impunity.

Yesterday’s Rocky Mountain News skewers the DEA and their arrogance for disobeying a judge’s order to return marijuana and paraphernalia to a medical marijuana user.

“The feds can’t just steal the marijuana and therefore make it federal property,” [attorney Kristopher Hammond] said.

But they try, and they convince local law enforcement officials that even they don’t have to obey Colorado law.

As Hammond puts it, “It’s no secret that the federal government claims to be for states rights – until the states do things they don’t like, such as enacting a medical marijuana statute.”

He’s asking the judge to cite the DEA with contempt.æ We hope the judge does just that.æ If he doesn’t, or if the DEA brushes off the citation as if it were a gnat, perhaps Hammond should try again in federal court.

Even if it isn’t found in contempt, the DEA is clearly guilty of violating the old mob dictum: “Never steal anything small.”

You can now read the entire transcript from the 60 Minutes program on mandatory minimums: More Than They Deserve.
A sample:

“Judges throughout the country, of all political persuasions, feel that they have to have discretion so that they can do justice in the individual cases,” says Martin, who is resigning from the bench.

“It is unjust. It’s taking people who are low-level violators and putting them in jail for 15-20 years. I had a situation where a defendant was an addict. He sat on his stoop. People came to him and said, ‘Do you know where I can buy some crack?’ He told them about an apartment where there was crack being sold. For this, the people who sold it every once in a while gave him some crack for his own personal use. The guideline range for that man was 16 years in jail. That doesn’t seem to me like justice.”

The online story is not exactly a transcript of the show, and is a little nicer to the one drug warrior represented (Congressman Bill McCollum) than Bradley was on the show.
Note this exchange in the article…

[Bradley:] If you look at the government’s own figures, it had 12 million illegal drug users in 1991. Now, there are 19 million, so it’s gone up after a decade of tough sentences by 7 million drug users.

“If we didn’t have those tough sentencing laws, you’d have a whole lot more people than 19 million on drugs,” says McCollum. “It would be worse today if we didn’t have them. Far worse.”

On the show, Bradley follows this with a expression of disbelief that this record could possibly be considered a success, and McCollum repeated his idiotic and unsupported assertion that it would have been worse without the drug war.

The Associated Press announced that Principal George McCrackin of Stratford High School in Goose Creek had resigned (see my original story). Several hours later, the AP headline was revised to a indicate that he had been “reassigned”…

Following a November drug sweep in which police with guns drawn ordered Stratford High students to the floor, Berkeley County School District officials announced Monday that Principal George McCrackin had resigned.

“I realized it is in the best interest of Stratford High School and of my students for me to make a change,” McCrackin said.

District Superintendent J. Chester Floyd said he had had several conversations with McCrackin and that the decision to reassign him came last weekend.

“These past 60 days have been extremely challenging and pressure filled, particularly for Mr. McCrackin,” Floyd said. “His decision reiterates his commitment to doing what’s best for the school and the students at all times.”

Floyd has not decided to what position McCrackin will be reassigned, but he said McCrackin would probably spend time in the coming weeks preparing for two lawsuits filed by students stemming from the incident.

So basically, he has resigned as principal so he can move to an office and work on his lawsuits.
Probably safer for the kids…

Watch 60 Minutes tomorrow (Sunday, Jan 4) for a segment on mandatory minimums by Ed Bradley that will include interview with Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and a board member of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Update: This was an extremely good piece and not only slammed mandatory minimums, but indicted the entire drug war. Bradley was great. Nice to see in a mainstream news magazine!

In another story from Drug Sense:

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Comcast Cable has censored Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana ( GSMM ), prohibiting the group from purchasing airtime on the company’s cable system in New Hampshire, according to GSMM Campaign Coordinator Aaron Houston.æ Houston approached Comcast last month, asking to buy airtime for a television commercial, but he was denied without receiving any written material detailing the company’s reasoning.

When a Comcast representative informed Houston on December 1 of the company’s denial, the representative noted that officials in Comcast’s legal department had not viewed a specific television spot from GSMM, but the officials had denied the group based on its message about medical marijuana.æ After receiving a written request from Houston seeking an explanation, the representative said reasons for the denial would be sent to GSMM in writing.æ Then, on December 16, the same representative told Houston in a telephone call that Comcast’s legal department “doesn’t issue written explanations.” …

Interestingly, Comcast recently struck a deal with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America ( PDFA ).æ In October 2003, Comcast announced a three-year advertising pledge, valued at $50 million, allowing PDFA to increase exposure for anti-drug advertising on Comcast’s cable systems in 35 states.æ The deal constituted “the largest single upfront commitment of advertising from a major media company to The Partnership in the organization’s history,” according to a PDFA news release.

In an end of the year report, Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist ripped into the PROTECT Act — a federal law he said comes close to intimidating federal judges who hand down lighter sentences. He also blasted Congress for failing to adequately fund the judiciary.
Buried in this particular UPI report of Rehnquist’s year in review statement was the fact that in fiscal 2003, “criminal cases in trial courts hit a record 70,642, breaking a record set in 1932, one year before the 18th Amendment — the Prohibition Amendment — was repealed.”
Very interesting.

I had a great time the past week plus, visiting relatives. These were wonderful times with people I love who, by the way, are now almost unanimously behind drug war policy reform — I feel that I’ve had some impact there over the years.
I’m very proud of my Dad for recently asking the question of whether it’s time to look at non-criminal solutions to the drug problem when a judge was speaking at Kiwanis club (I think that was it).
So I continued to do my work informally, but now I’m back, and there’s a ton of stuff going on. It’ll take me a while to get completely caught up. Feel free to let me know if I’m missing anything major.
Here’s a few things to start with that have been reported well elsewhere.
“bullet” TalkLeft notes that cancer causes a change in Wisconsin politician Gregg Underheim‘s views of medical pot.
“bullet”TalkLeft reports on NORML’s 2003: The Year in Review for the top ten marijuana events of 2003.
The Austin Texas Chronical also had a Top 10 (or 8) Drug War Moments that were very interesting.
“bullet” Talkleft and Walter in Denver both had excellent comments on the ongoing controversy over the return of confiscated pot in Colorado. The judge has ordered it returned, the DEA refuses. A very interesting conflict, typical of the arrogance of the feds.
“bullet” The new Drug Sense Weekly has a number of items including:
There is a transcript available of John Walters’ brief appearance on CNN a couple of weeks ago. While it was primarily a puff piece, kudos to Catherine Callaway for catching the Drug Czar when he tried to lie and say that his own survey was the only one that counted.
“bullet” The new Drug War Chronicle issue, with loads of good articles, including the excellent:
In Farewell Report, Syracuse Auditor Examines Drug War, Finds It Wanting

The report had not started out as an indictment of the drug war, said Lewis. But as the numbers came in, they showed twice as many arrests for drug crimes as for any other offense — nearly one-third of them on marijuana charges. “We started looking at statistics for the Police Department because public safety is so important,” Lewis said. “But we were surprised to learn that twice as many people are arrested for drug-related incidents than for any other violation, and the violence in our neighborhoods is worse every year.”

The report did not just rely on statistics, Lewis said. “I went to many neighborhood meetings and I listened to people and talked to people,” Lewis said, “and they universally said they weren’t that concerned about others using drugs at home. It was the violence associated with drug sales on street corners that concerned them. If we made those drugs available in some other fashion, well, I don’t think we’d be spending $34 million a year to prevent people from smoking pot in their living rooms. Our policy today may be contributing to the violence, just as prohibition did for the last generation,” Lewis said.

“The police are a little concerned, but this is not an attack on the police,” Lewis clarified. “This is a question of public policy, and somebody has to ask the fundamental question: Why are these drugs illegal? When we talk about how we deal with this illegal drug or that one, we are dancing around the real question. We need to decriminalize drugs, and by that I don’t mean legalizing them but dealing with them from the medical approach, not the criminal justice approach. We need to be talking about treatment on demand, and maybe making some drugs available through harm reduction programs. We need a different approach than locking people up.”

The full report is supposed to be available soon at ReconsiDer.

I’ll be away visiting family over the next few days. And while our drug czar has not taken a vacation from his lies, I don’t feel like reporting his comments at this time. So I leave you with this tree and some reading suggestions.
Feel free to browse through the site and check out some of the longer articles, if you haven’t gotten to them yet, such as
Why is Marijuana Illegal, War on a Plant, and Frequently Asked Questions. For something on the lighter side, check out my parody Increase in Burger Abuse Seen.
For updates on any critical news regarding the drug war over the holidays, you can always check out TalkLeft.
Finally, for a special holiday treat, check out Susan Wells’ “A Drug War Carol.”